THE BONDAGE OF THE FREE
"Had slavery lasted a few years longer," I have heard my mother say, "it
would have killed Julia, my head-woman, and me. Our burden of work and
responsibility was simply staggering."
In the ante-bellum life of the mistress of a Southern plantation there was
no menial occupation, but administrative work was large and exacting. The
giving out of rations, clothes, medicines, nursing of the sick, cutting
out of garments, sewing, spinning, knitting, had to be directed. The
everlasting teaching and training, the watch-care of sometimes several
hundred semi-civilized, semi-savage people of all ages, dispositions and
tempers, were on the white woman's hands.
The kitchen was but one department of that big school of domestic science,
the home on a Southern plantation, where cooks, nurses, maids, butlers,
seamstresses and laundresses had understudies or pupils; and the white
mistress, to whom every student's progress was a matter of keen personal
interest and usually of affectionate concern, was principal and director.
The typical Southern plantation was, in effect, a great social settlement
for the uplift of Africans.
For a complete picture of plantation life, I beg my readers to turn to
that chapter in the "Life of Leonidas Polk" written by his son, Dr. W. M.
Polk, which describes "Leighton" in the sugar-lands on Bayou La Fourche.
Read of the industrial work and then of the Sabbath, when the negroes
assembled in the bishop's house where the chaplain conducted the service
while the bishop sat at the head of his servants. Worship over, women
withdrew into another room, where Mrs. Polk or the family governess gave
them instruction; the children into still another, where Bishop Polk's
daughter taught them; the men remained with the chaplain for examination
and admonition. The bishop made great efforts to preserve the sanctity of
family life among his servants. He christened their babies; their weddings
were celebrated in his own home, decorated and illuminated for them. The
honour coveted by his children was to hold aloft the silver candlesticks
while their father read the marriage service. If a couple misbehaved, they
were compelled to marry, but without a wedding-feast.
Andrew P. Calhoun, eldest son of John C. Calhoun, was President of the
South Carolina Agricultural College and owner of large lands in Alabama
and South Carolina. He took pride in raising everything consumed on his
plantations. In the New York home of his son, Mr. Patrick Calhoun, three
of his old servants live; his wife's maid says proudly: "I have counted
thirty things on my Miss' dinner-table that were grown on the place."
Cotton and wool were grown on the place and carded, spun, dyed, woven into
cloth by negro women; in great rooms, well lighted, well aired, well
equipped, negro cutters, fitters and seamstresses fashioned neat and
comfortable garments for a contented, well-cared-for laboring force. Mrs.
Calhoun devoted as much time to this department of plantation work, which
included the industrial and moral education of negro women, as Mr. Calhoun
devoted to the general management of his lands and the industrial and
moral uplift of negro men. The Polk and Calhoun plantations were types of
thousands; and their owners types of thousands of planters who applied
the same principles, if sometimes on lesser scale, to farming operations.
No institutional work can take the place of work of this kind. It is like
play to the real thing. Without decrying Hampton, Petersburg and Tuskegee,
it can be said with truth that these institutions and many more in
combination would be unable to do for a savage race what the old planters
and the old plantation system of the South did for Africa's barbarians.
Employers of white labor might sit at the feet of those old planters and
learn wisdom. Professor Morrison, of the Chair of History and Sociology at
Clemson College, tells me that the instruction of students in their duty
to their servants constituted a recognised department in some Southern
colleges.
[Illustration: FRANCES DEVEREUX POLK
(Wife of General Leonidas Polk, the Warrior Bishop.)
She was the spiritual and industrial educator of many negroes, and the
mistress of a large sugar plantation.]
Mammy Julia was my mother's assistant superintendent, so to speak. "I
could trust almost anything to her," her mistress bore testimony, "for she
appreciated responsibility and was faithfulness itself. I don't know a
negro of the new order who can hold a candle to her." Mammy Julia and my
mother had no rest night or day. Black folks were coming with troubles,
wants, quarrels, ailments, births, marriages and deaths, from morning till
night and night till morning again. "I was glad and thankful--on my own
account--when slavery ended and I ceased to belong, body and soul, to my
negroes." As my mother, so said other Southern mistresses.
Perhaps the Southern matron's point of view may be somewhat surprising to
those who have thought that under ante-bellum conditions, slavery was all
on the negro's side and that all Southern people were fiercely bent on
keeping him in bonds. Many did not believe in slavery and were trying to
end it.
Mrs. Robert E. Lee's father and uncle freed some five hundred slaves, with
General Lee's approval, thus alienating from her over $500,000 worth of
property. The Hampton family, of South Carolina, sent to Liberia a great
colony of freed slaves, who presently plead to be brought home. General
Preston, Confederate, of Kentucky, freed his negroes; he would not sell,
and could not afford to keep, them; they were "over-running and ruining
his plantation, and clearing up forests for firewood; slavery is the curse
of the South."
Many families had arranged for a gradual emancipation, a fixed percentage
of slaves being freed by each generation. By will and otherwise, they
provided against division of families, an evil not peculiar to slavery, as
immigrant ships of today, big foundling asylums, and train-loads of
home-seeking children bear evidence.
But freedom as it came, was inversion, revolution. Whenever I pass "The
House Upside Down" at a World's Fair, I am reminded of the South after
freedom. In "South Carolina Women in the Confederacy,"[12] Mrs. Harby
tells how Mrs. Postell Geddings was in the kitchen getting Dr. Geddings'
supper, while her maid, in her best silk gown, sat in the parlour and
entertained Yankee officers. Charleston ladies cooked, swept, scrubbed,
split wood, fed horses, milked and watered the cattle; while filling their
own places as feminine heads of the house, they were servants-of-all-work
and man of the house. Mrs. Crittendon gives an anecdote matching Mrs.
Geddings'. A Columbia lady saw in Sherman's motley train an old negress
arrayed in her mistress' antiquated, ante-bellum finery, lolling on the
cushions of her mistress' carriage, and fanning (in winter) with a huge
ostrich-feather fan. "Why, Aunt Sallie, where are you going?" she called
out impulsively. "Law, honey! I'se gwine right back intuh de Union!" and
on rode Aunt Sallie, feathers and flowers on her enormous poke-bonnet all
a-flutter.
Mrs. Jewett, of Stony Creek, saw her negro man walking behind the Yankee
Army with her husband's suit of clothes done up in a red silk handkerchief
and slung on a stick over his shoulder. Her two mulatto nurse-girls laid
down their charges, attired themselves in her best apparel and went; her
seamstress stopped sewing, jumped on a horse behind a soldier who invited
her, and away she rode.
As victorious armies went through the country, they told the negroes, "You
are free!" Negroes accepted the tidings in different ways. Old Aunt Hannah
was not sure but that the assurance was an insult. "Law, marster!" she
said, "I ain' no free nigger! I is got a marster an' mistiss! Dee right
dar in de great house. Ef you don' b'lieve me, you go dar an' see."
"You're a d----d fool!" he cried and rode on. "Sambo, you're free!" Some
negroes picked up the master's saddle, flung it on the master's horse,
jumped on his back and rode away with the Yankees. After every Yankee army
swarmed a great black crowd on foot, men, women, and children. They had to
be fed and cared for; they wearied their deliverers.
Yankees told my father's negroes they were free, but they did not accept
the statement until "Ole Marster" made it. I remember the night. They were
called together in the back yard--a great green space with blossomy
altheas and fruit-trees and tall oaks around, and the scent of
honeysuckles and Sweet Betseys making the air fragrant. He stood on the
porch beside a table with a candle on it. I, at his knee, looked up at
him and out on the sea of uplifted black faces. Some carried pine
torches. He read from a paper, I do not know what, perhaps the
emancipation proclamation. They listened silently. Then he spoke, his
voice trembling:
"You do not belong to me any more. You are free. You have been like my own
children. I have never felt that you were slaves. I have felt that you
were charges put into my hands by God and that I had to render account to
Him of how I raised you, how I treated you. I want you all to do well. You
will have to work, if not for me, for somebody else. Heretofore, you have
worked for me and I have supported you, fed you, clothed you, given you
comfortable homes, paid your doctors' bills, bought your medicines, taken
care of your babies before they could take care of themselves; when you
were sick, your mistress and I have nursed you; we have laid your dead
away. I don't think anybody else can have the same feeling for you that
she and I have. I have been trying to think out a plan for paying wages or
a part of the crop that would suit us all; but I haven't finished thinking
it out. I want to know what you think. Now, you can stay just as you have
been staying and work just as you have been working, and we will plan
together what is best. Or, you can go. My crops must be worked, and I want
to know what arrangements to make. Ben! Dick! Moses! Abram! line up,
everybody out there. As you pass this porch, tell me if you mean to stay;
you needn't promise for longer than this year, you know. If you want to go
somewhere else, say so--and no hard thoughts!"
The long line passed. One and all they said: "I gwi stay wid you,
Marster." A few put it in different words. Uncle Andrew, the dean of the
body, with wool as white as snow, a widower who went sparking every
Sunday in my grandfather's coat and my grandfather's silk hat, said: "Law,
Marster! I ain' got nowhar tuh go ef I was gwine!" Some wiped their eyes,
and my father had tears in his.
Next morning, old Uncle Eph, Andrew's mate, was missing; his aged wife was
in great distress. She came to my father reproachfully: "Marster," she
said, "I wish you wouldn' put all dat foolishness 'bout freedom in Eph's
hade. He so ole I dunno what gwi become uh him 'long de road. When I wake
up dis mo'nin', he done tied all his close up in his hankercher and done
lit out." In a few days he returned, the butt of the quarters for many a
day. "I jes wanter see whut it feel lak tuh be free," he said, "an' I
wanter to go back to Ole Marster's plantation whar I was born. It don'
look de same dar, an' I done see nuff uh freedom."
Presently my father was making out contracts and explaining them over and
over; he would sign his name, the negro would make his mark, the witnesses
sign; and the bond for a year's work and wages or part of the crop, was
complete. At first, contracts had to be ratified by a Freedmen's Bureau
agent, who charged master and servant each fifty cents or more. After one
of our neighbours told his negroes they were free, they all promised to
stay, as had ours. Next morning all but two were gone. In a few days all
returned. The Bureau Agent had made them come back.
Many negroes leaving home fared worse than Uncle Eph. After the fall of
Richmond, Mr. Hill, who had been a high official of the Confederacy, went
back to his plantation, where he found but three negroes remaining, the
rest having departed for Washington, the negro heaven. One of these, a man
of seventy, said he must go, too. His ex-master could not dissuade him.
He was comfortably quartered and Mr. Hill told him he would be cared for
the rest of his life. Nothing would do but he must sell his chickens and
his little crop of tobacco to one of the other negroes and go. Mr. Hill
gave him provisions for ten days, had the wagon hitched up and sent him to
Culpeper, where he was to take the train. On Culpeper's outskirts was the
usual collection of negroes, snack-house, bad whiskey, gambling, and
kindred evils. Here Uncle John stopped. He had started with $15 cash. In
less than a week his money was gone and he was thrown out on the common.
Mr. Hill, summoned before the Provost-Marshal on the charge of having
driven Uncle John off, said: "The man sitting out there in my buggy can
tell you whether I did that." The testimony of the black witness was
conclusive, the Provost dismissed the case. Mr. Hill went to the commons.
Lying in the sun, stone-blind, was Uncle John. He raised his head and
listened. "Mistuh, fuh Gawd's sake, please do suppin fuh me!" "Old man,
why are you here?" "Lemme hear dat voice again!" "Uncle John!" "Bless de
Lawd, Marster! you done come. Marster, a 'oman robbed me uf all I had an'
den th'owed me out. Fuh Gawd's sake, take me home!" "I will have you cared
for tonight, and tomorrow I will come in the wagon for you." "Lawd,
Marster, I sho is glad I gwine home! I kin res' easy in my min', now I
_know_ I gwine home!"
Mr. Hill returned to the Provost: "I shall come or send for the old man
tomorrow," he said. "Meanwhile, he must be cared for." The Provost was
indifferent. This was one of many cases. "If you do not provide food and
shelter for that negro," he was sharply assured, "I shall report you to
the authorities at Washington." The Provost promised and sent two
orderlies to attend to the matter. Next morning the master was back. The
old man was dead. He had been put in the scale-house, an open shed. There,
instead of in his old home surrounded by friends who loved him, Uncle John
had breathed his last.
From many other stories, companions in pathos, I choose Mammy Lisbeth's.
Her son went with the Yankee army. She grieved for him till her mistress'
heart ached. The mistress returned one day from a visit to find Lisbeth
much excited. "Law, Miss, I done hyerd f'om my chile!" "How, Mammy?" "A
Yankee soldier come by an' I ax 'im is he seed my son whar he been goin'
'long? An' I tell 'im all 'bout how my chile look. An' he say he done been
seen 'im. An' I say, 'Law, mister, ain't my chile gwi come home?' An' he
gimme de answer: 'He can't come ef he ain' got no money.' An' I answer,
'Law, marster, I got a fi'-dollar gol' piece my ole miss dat's done dade
gimme long time ago. Does you know any safe passin'?' An' he answer, jes
ez kin', how he gwine datter way hisse'f, an' he'll kyar it. I run in de
house an' got dat fi'-dollar gol' piece an' gi' to 'im. An' now my chile's
comin' home, Miss! my chile's comin' home! He say, 'In 'bout two weeks,
you go to de kyars evvy day an' look fuh im.'" Her mistress had not the
heart to tell her the man had robbed her. Never before had a white man
robbed her; it was second nature to trust the white face.
"It is heart-breaking," her mistress wrote, "to see how she watches for
him. She is at the depot every day, scanning the face of every coloured
passenger getting off. I've been to the Bureau making inquiries. The Agent
says if he could catch the rascal, the robber, he would string him up by
the thumbs, but her description fits any strolling private. He says: 'Any
woman who would trust a stranger so with her money deserves to be fooled.
I wouldn't trouble about it, Madam!' Yankees do not understand our
coloured people and us. How can I help being troubled by anything that
troubles Mammy Lisbeth?"
Here is another old letter: "Cousin mine: I came home from school a few
days ago. Railroads all broken up and it took several days to make the
journey in the carriage, stopping over-night along the route. At most
houses, there was hardly anything to offer but shelter, but hospitality
was perfect. Only cornbread and sassafras tea at one place; no servants to
render attention; silver gone; family portraits punctured with bayonets;
furniture and mirrors broken. Reaching home, found everything strange
because of great change in domestic regime. Our cook, who has reigned in
our kitchen for thirty years, is in Richmond, coining money out of a
restaurant. Most of our servants have gone to the city. Our old butler and
Mammy abide. I think it would have killed me had Mammy gone!
"I cannot tell you how it oppressed me to miss the familiar black faces I
have loved all my life, and to feel that our negroes cared so little for
us, and left at the first invitation. I have something strange to tell
you. Mammy has been free since before I was born. I never knew till now. I
was utterly wretched, and exclaimed: 'Well, Mammy, I reckon you'll go
too!' She took it as a deadly insult; I had to humble myself. While she
was mad, the secret burst out: 'Ef I'd wanted to go, I could ha' gone long
time ago. No Yankees sot me free! My marster sot me free.' She showed me
her manumission papers in grandfather's hand, which she has worn for I
don't know how long, in a little oil-silk bag around her neck, never
caring to use them. Domestic cares are making me gray! But I get some fun
trying to do things I never did before, while Mammy scolds me for
'demeaning' myself." There was honour in the "gritty" way the Southern
housewife adapted herself to the situation, humour in the way spoiled
maidens played the part of milkmaid or of Bridget.
"Do you know how to make lightbread?" one of our friends inquired, and
proceeded to brag of her new accomplishments, adding: "I had never gotten
a meal in my life until the morning after the Yankees passed, when I woke
to find not a single servant on the place. There was a lone cow left. I
essayed to milk her, but retired in dire confusion. I couldn't make the
milk go in the pail to save my life! It squirted in my face and eyes and
all over my hair. The cow switched her tail around and cut my countenance,
made demonstrations with her hind feet, and I retired. One of my daughters
sat on the milking-stool and milked away as if she had been born to it."
"The first meal I got," another friend wrote, "my sons cooked. They
learned how in the army. I thought the house was coming down while they
were beating the biscuit! They drove me from the kitchen. 'We don't hate
the Yankees for thrashing us,' they said, 'but God knows we hate them for
turning our women into hewers of wood and drawers of water.' Now, I'm as
good a cook as my boys. Can do everything domestic except kill a chicken.
I turn the chicken loose every time."
"I write in a merry vein," was another recital, "because it is no good to
write in any other. But I have the heart-break over things. I see this big
plantation, once so beautifully kept up, going to rack and ruin. I see the
negroes I trained so carefully deteriorating every day. We suffer from
theft, are humiliated by impertinence; and cannot help ourselves. Negroes
call upon me daily for services that I, in Christian duty, must render
whether I am able or not. And I cannot call upon them for one thing but I
must pay twice over--and I have nothing to pay with. This is the first
rule in their lesson of freedom--to get all they can out of white folks
and give as little as possible in return."
Letters teemed with experiences like this: "We went to sleep one night
with a plantation full of negroes, and woke to find not one on the
place--every servant gone to Sherman in Atlanta. Negroes are camped out
all around that city. We had thought there was a strong bond of affection
on their side as well as ours! We have ministered to them in sickness,
infancy, and age. But poor creatures! they don't know what freedom is, and
they are crazy. They think it the opening of the door of Heaven. Some put
me in mind of birds born and raised in a cage and suddenly turned loose
and helpless; others, of hawks, minks and weasels, released to do
mischief.
"We heard that there was much suffering in the camps; presently our
negroes were all back, some ill from exposure. Maum Lucindy sent word for
us to send for her, she was sick. Without a vehicle or team on the place,
it looked like an impossible proposition, but my little boys patched up
the relics of an old cart, borrowed the only steer in the neighbourhood,
and got Maum Lucindy back. The raiders swept us clean of everything. We
are unable to feed ourselves. How we shall feed and clothe the negroes
when we cannot make them work, I do not know."
My cousin, Mrs. Meredith, of Brunswick, Virginia, congratulated herself,
when only one of her servants deserted his post to join Sheridan's trail
of camp-followers. A week after Simeon's departure, she woke one morning
to discover that six women had decamped, one leaving her two little
children in her cabin from which came pitiful wails of "Mammy!" "Mammy!"
Simeon had come in the night, and related of Black's and White's (now
Blackstone) where a garrison had been established, that calico dresses
were as plentiful as leaves on trees and that coloured women were parading
the streets with white soldiers for beaux. My cousin, Mrs. White, said a
whole wagon-load of negro women passed her house going to Blackstone, and
that one of them insisted upon presenting her with a four-year-old child,
declaring it too much trouble. It was not an unknown thing for negro
mothers to leave their children along the roadsides.
Blackstone drew recruits until there was just one woman-servant remaining
with the Merediths. Why she stayed was a mystery, but as she was "the only
pebble on the beach," everything was done to make home attractive. One day
she asked permission (why, could not be imagined) to go visiting. She did
not return. Shortly, Captain Meredith was haled before the Freedmen's
Bureau at Black's and White's to answer the charge of thrashing Viny.
Marched into court, he took a chair. "Get up," said the Bureau Agent, "and
give the lady a seat." He rose, and Viny dropped into it. She was
shamefaced and brazen by turns; finally, burst into tears and begged "Mars
Tawm's" pardon, saying she had brought the charge because she had "no
'scuse for leavin'" and had to invent one; "nevver knowed Mars Tawm was
gwi be brung in cote 'bout it."
The early stirrings of the social equality problem were curious.
Adventurous Aunt Susan tried the experiment of "eatin' wid white folks."
She was bursting to tell us about it, yet loath to reveal her
degradation--"White folks dat'll eat wid me ain't fitten fuh me to eat
wid," being the negro position. "But dese folks was rale quality, Miss,"
Susan said when murder was out. "I kinder skittish when dee fus' ax me to
set down wid 'em. I couldn' eat na'er mouthful wid white folks a-lookin'
at me an' a rale nice white gal handin' vittles. An' presen'ly, mum, ef I
didn' see dat white gal settin' in de kitchen eatin' her vittles by
herse'f. Rale nice white gal! I say, 'Huccum you didn' eat wid tur white
folks?' She say, 'I de servant.'"
Mrs. Betts, of Halifax (Va.), was in her kitchen, her cook, who was in her
debt, having failed to put in an appearance. The cook's husband approached
the verandah and requested a dollar. "Where is Jane?" he was asked. "Why
hasn't she been here to do her work?" "She are keepin' parlour." "What is
that?" "Settin' up in de house hol'in' her han's. De Civilise Bill done
been fulfill an' niggers an' white folks jes alike now."
Coloured applicant for menial position would say to the door-opener: "Tell
dat white 'oman in dar a cullud lady out here want to hire." "De cullud
lady" was capricious. My sister in Atlanta engaged one for every day in
one month, in fact, engaged more than that average, engaged every one
applying, hoping if ten promised to come in time to get breakfast, one
might appear.
With two hundred black trial justices, South Carolina had more than her
share of funny happenings, as of tragic. A gentleman who had to appear
before some tribunal, wrote us: "Whom do you suppose I found in the seat
of law? Pete, my erstwhile stable-boy. He does not know A from Z, had not
the faintest idea of what was to be done. 'Mars Charles,' he said, 'you
jes fix 'tup, please, suh. You jes write down whut you think orter be
wroted, an' I'll put my mark anywhar you tell me.'"
Into a store in Wilmington sauntered a sable alderman whom the merchant
had known from boyhood as "Sam." "What's the matter with Sam?" the
merchant asked as Sam stalked out. Soon, Sam stalked back. "Suh, you didn'
treat me wid proper respecks." "How, Sam?" "You called me 'Sam,' which my
name is Mr. Gary." "You're a d----d fool! There's the door!" Gary had the
merchant up in the mayor's court. "What's the trouble?" asked the mayor.
"Dis man consulted me." "You ought to feel flattered! What did he do to
you?" "He called me 'Sam,' suh." "Ain't that your name?" "My name's Mr.
Gary." "Ain't it Sam, too?" "Yessuh, but--" "Well, there ain't any law to
compel a man to call another 'Mister.' Case dismissed." "Dar gwi be a law
'bout dat," muttered Sam.
Washington was the place of miracles. When Uncle Peter went there, some
tricksters told him his wool could be made straight and his colour
changed--"Said dee could make it jes lak white folks' ha'r," he informed
his mistress mournfully, when he had paid the price--nearly his entire
capital--and returned home with flaming red wool. His wife did not know
him, or pretended not to, and drove him out of the house. He appealed to
his mistress and she made Manda behave herself.
"Ole Miss," asked my mother's little handmaiden, "now, I'se free, is I gwi
tu'n white lak white folks?" "You must not be ashamed of the skin God gave
you, Patsy," said her mistress kindly. "Your skin is all right." "But I
druther be white, Ole Miss." And there was something pathetic in the
aspiration.
Some of the older and more intelligent blacks held their children back
from doffing with undignified haste old ways for new. But in most cases,
the Simian quality showed itself promptly ascendant. Negroes did things
they saw white people do, not because these things were right or seemly,
but because white people did them, selecting for imitation trifles in
conduct which they thought marked the social dividing line between white
and black. As, for instance, they dropped the old sweet "Daddy" and
"Mammy" for the dreadful "Pa" and "Ma," or the infantile "Popper" and
"Mommer" which white people inflict upon parents. It would be laughable to
hear a big buck negro addressing his sire as "Popper."
I have seen in a Southern street-car all blacks sitting and all whites
standing; have seen a big black woman enter a car and flounce herself down
almost into the lap of a white man; have seen white ladies pushed off
sidewalks by black men. The new manners of the blacks were painful,
revolting, absurd. The freedman's misbehaviour was to be condoned only by
pity that accepted his inferiority as excuse. Southerners had taken great
pains and pride in teaching their negroes good manners; they wanted them
to be courtly and polished, and it must be said for the negroes, they took
polish well. It was with keen regret that their old preceptors saw them
throw all their fine schooling in etiquette to the winds.
Interest in and affection for negroes made these new manners the more
obnoxious. Here, in one woman's statement, is the point illustrated: "I
considered Mammy part of our family; my family pride would have been
aggrieved, I would have tingled with mortification, to see her so far
forget what was due herself as to push herself into places where she was
not wanted. These are things she could not possibly do of herself, her
own good taste, perfect breeding, and sturdy self-respect forbidding. But
her husband and son quickly succumbed to the demoralisation of freedom and
were vulgar and troublesome; we were in fear and trembling lest they
should lead her into some situation in church, theatre, or car, where she
would find herself conspicuous and from which she would not know how to
withdraw until officially escorted out in the midst of trouble created by
her men."
Many worthy negroes, the old, infirm and children, lost needed protection.
Negroes had not been permitted to get drunk--except around corn-shucking
and Christmas. There was no such restraint now. Formerly, a negro, if so
disposed, could not beat his child unmercifully. Now, women and children
might feel a heavy hand unknown before. White people might not interfere
in family disputes as formerly, though they continued, at personal risk,
to do what they could. A case in point was that of Mr. R., a respected
merchant of Petersburg, who ejected his cook's drunken husband from the
kitchen where the brute was cruelly maltreating her. The old gentleman was
arrested and marched through the streets, as I have been told, by negro
sergeants to trial before a negro magistrate.
A characteristic common to uncultured motherhood is over-indulgence and
over-severity by turns. When provoked, the negro mother would descend like
a fury upon her offspring, beating it as a former master would never have
suffered her to abuse his property. A word or suggestion from a white
would bring fresh blows upon the luckless wight, the mother thinking thus
to demonstrate independence and ownership.
Under freedom, negroes developed bodily ills from which they had seemed
immune. A consumptive of the race was rarely heard of before freedom.
After freedom, they began to die of pulmonary complaints. There were
frequent epidemics of typhoid fever, quarters not being well kept. "The
race is dying out," said prophets. Negroes began to grow mad. An insane
negro was rarely heard of during slavery. Regular hours, regular work,
chiefly out of doors, sobriety, freedom from care and responsibility, had
kept the negro singularly exempt from insanity and various other
afflictions that curse the white. Big lunatic asylums established for
negroes soon after the war and their continual enlargement tell their own
story.[13]
Freedom broke up families. Under stress of temptation, the young and
strong deserted the aged, the feeble, the children, leaving these to shift
for themselves or to remain a burden upon a master or mistress themselves
impoverished and, perhaps, old and infirm.
In the face of so much distraction, demoralisation and disorder, the
example of those negroes who were not affected by it shines out with
greater clearness as witness for the best that is in the race. Thousands
stood steadfastly to their posts, superior to temptations which might have
shaken white people, performing their duties faithfully, caring for their
children, sick and aged, shirking no debt of love and gratitude to past
owners. Some negroes still live in families for which their ancestors
worked, the bond of centuries never having been broken.
When this is true, the tie between white and black is yet strong, sweet
and tender, like the tie of blood. The venerable "uncles" and "aunties"
with their courtly manners, their good warm hearts, their love for the
whites, are swiftly passing away, and their like will not be seen again.
They were America's black pearl; and America had as good reason to be
proud of her faithful and efficient serving-class as of her Anglo-Saxons.
They were needed; they filled an honourable and worthy place and filled it
well.
[Illustration: MRS. ANDREW PICKENS CALHOUN
Daughter of General Duff Green, of Georgia, and daughter-in-law of John C.
Calhoun, the statesman, of South Carolina.
This picture was taken when Mrs. Calhoun was 71 years of age.]
This is not to justify slavery. Slavery was forced upon this country over
Colonial protests, particularly from Southern sections fearing
negroisation of territory; the slave-trade was profitable to the English
Crown; our forefathers, coming into independence, faced a problem of awful
magnitude in the light of Santo Domingo horrors; New England's slave-ships
and Eli Whitney's cotton-gin complicated it; it is curious to read in the
proceedings of the Sixth Congress how Mr. John Brown, of Rhode Island,
urged that this Nation should not be deprived of a right, enjoyed by every
civilised country, of bringing slaves from Africa[14]--particularly as
transference to a Christian land was a benefit to Africans, a belief held
by many who believed that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Through kindliness
of temperament on both sides and the clan feeling fostered by the old
plantation life of the South, the white man and the negro made the best
they could of an evil thing. But the world has now well learned that a
superior race cannot afford to take an inferior into such close company as
slavery implies. For the service of the bond-slave the master ever pays to
the uttermost in things precious as service, imparting refinements,
ideals, standards, morals, manners, graces; in the end he pays that which
he considers more precious than service; he pays his blood, and in more
ways than one.
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