THE OLD-TIME NEGRO
I
That the “old-time Negro” is passing away is one of the common
sayings all over the South, where once he was as well known as the
cotton-plant and the oak tree. Indeed, he has become so rare that
even now when a gray and wrinkled survivor is found he is regarded as
an exceptional character, and he will soon be as extinct as the dodo.
That he will leave a gap which can hardly be filled is as certain as
that the old-time cavalier or the foster-father of romance has left
his gap.
The “new issue” at which the old-time Negro, who had been the servant
and the associate of gentlemen, once turned up his nose from his
well-secured position, and of which he spoke in terms of scornful
reprobation, has, with the passing of time, pushed him from his
stool, and is no longer the “new issue,” but the general type that
prevails commonly—the Negro with his problem; a problem which it
may, as has been well said by Mr. Root, take all the wisdom, all the
forbearance, and all the resolution of the white race to solve.
Some of the “Afro-Americans,” with the veneer of a so-called
education, to judge from recent works written by certain of them,
presume to look down somewhat scornfully on this notable development
of their race, and assume a fine scorn of the relation which once
existed all over the South between the old-time Southerner and
the old-time darky, and which still exists where the latter still
survives.
They do not consider that large numbers of this class held positions
of responsibility and trust, which they discharged with a fidelity
and success that is the strongest proof of the potentiality of the
race. They do not reckon that warm friendship which existed between
master and servant, and which more than any other one thing gives
promise of future and abiding friendship between the races when left
to settle their relations without outside interference.
One going through the South now—even through those parts where the
old-time darky was once the regular and ordinary picture—unless he
should happen to drift into some secluded region so far out of the
sweep of the current that its life has been caught as in an eddy,
would never know what the old life had been, and what the old-time
Negroes were in that life. Their memory is still cherished in the
hearts of those to whom they stood in a relation which cannot be
explained to and cannot be understood by those who did not know it
as a vital part of their home-life. Even these will soon have passed
from the stage, and in another decade or two the story of that
relation, whose roots were struck deep in the sacredest relations of
life, will be only a tradition kept alive for a generation or two,
but gradually fading until it is quite blurred out by time.
Curiously, whatever the Southerners may think of slavery—and there
were many who reprobated its existence—whatever they may think of
“the Negro” of to-day, there is scarcely one who knew the Negro in
his old relation who does not speak of him with sympathy and think of
him with tenderness. The writer has known men begin to discuss new
conditions fiercely, and on falling to talking of the past, drift
into reminiscences of old servants and turn away to wipe their eyes.
And not the least part of the bitterness of the South over the Negro
question as it has existed grows out of resentment at the destruction
of what was once a relation of warm friendship and tender sympathy.
Of African slavery it may be said that whatever its merits and
demerits, it divided this country into two sections, with opposing
interests, and finally plunged it into a vast and terrible war. This
is condemnation enough.
One need not be an advocate of slavery because he upsets ideas that
have no foundation whatever in truth and sets forth facts that can be
substantiated by the experience of thousands who knew them at first
hand.
II
It is well known by those who knew the old plantation-life that there
were marked divisions between the Negroes. There were among them
what might almost be termed different orders. These were graded by
the various relations in which the individuals stood to the “white
folks”—that is, to the master and mistress and their family.
The house-servants represented a class quite distinct from and quite
above the “field-hands,” of whom they were wont to speak scornfully
as “cornfield niggers,” while among the former were degrees as
clearly defined as ever existed in an English gentleman’s house,
where the housekeeper and the butler held themselves above the rest
of the servants, only admitting to occasional fellowship the lady’s
maid.
Among the first in station were the mammy, the butler, the
body-servant, the carriage-driver, the ladies’ maids, the cook, and
the gardener, with, after an interval, the “boys” who were attached
to one or the other position as assistants and were in training for
the places when the elders should fail. Among the “field-hands” was,
first, the “head man.”[58]
The “head man” was the equal of any other servant—a rank due,
perhaps, partly to his authority and partly to the character that
brought him this authority. He was the foreman, or assistant
superintendent of the plantation. He carried the keys; he called the
hands to work; directed them, and was, to some extent, in authority
over them. Such a one I knew, mighty in word and act, who towered
above the hands he led, a “head man,” indeed.
A somewhat inaccurate idea prevails of the Southern plantation
life, due, possibly, to the highly colored pictures that have been
painted of it in books of a romantic order, in which the romance much
outweighed the ha’penny-worth of verisimilitude. The current idea
is that a Southern plantation was generally a great estate, teeming
with black slaves who groaned under the lash of the drivers and at
night were scourged to their dungeons, while their masters revelled
in ill-used luxury and steeped themselves in licentiousness, not
stopping at times to “traffic in their own flesh and blood.”
It may be well to say in the outset that nothing could be further
from the truth.
There were great estates, but they were not numerous. There were,
possibly, a score of persons in Virginia who owned over three hundred
slaves, and ten or a dozen who owned over five hundred. Such estates
were kept up in a certain style which almost always accompanies large
wealth. But the great majority of the plantations in Virginia, and,
so far as my reading and observation have gone, elsewhere, however
extensive were the lands, were modest and simple, and the relation
between masters and servants was one of close personal acquaintance
and friendliness, beginning at the cradle and scarcely ending at the
grave.
At the outbreak of the war, while the number of the white population
of the Southern States was about thirteen millions, the number of
slave-owners and slave-hirers, including those who owned or hired but
one slave, was, perhaps, less than half a million; that is, of the
adult whites, men and women, estimating them as one-fifth each of the
population, less than one in ten owned or hired slaves.[59]
Thus, while slavery on the great plantations, where the slaves
numbered several hundreds, was liable to such abuses as spring
readily from absenteeism, on most of the plantations the slaves and
the masters were necessarily brought into fairly close contact, and
the result of this contact was the relation of friendship which has
been the wonder and the mystification of those who considered slavery
the sum of all the villainies.
The chief idea that prevails as to the relation is taken from a work
of fiction which, as a political pamphlet written under the stress
of deep feeling, whatever truth it had as basis, certainly does not
present a true picture.
Work was parcelled out among the “hands,” the “hands” being divided
into sections: pough-hands, drivers, hoe-hands, etc.
Their homes were known as “the quarters.” On the larger plantations
they were divided by streets.
On the plantation which the writer knew best, there were several
double-cabins on the quarters-hill and three or four facing on the
backyard. In one of the latter was a room which was the joy of his
heart, and which, after forty years, is still touched with a light
more radiant than many a palace apartment he has seen. It was known
as “Unc’ Balla’s room,” and its occupant was so great a man to me
that in his own field I have never known his superior. “Uncle Balla”
was the carriage-driver, and not from Jehu down was ever one who, in
the writer’s mind, could equal him in handling the reins. He was the
guide, philosopher, and friend of my boyhood. And no better, saner,
or more right-minded guide ever lived.
In that room were “chists,” which I even now think of with an
indrawing of the breath, as I imagine their precious and unexplored
contents. Verily, they must have held golden ingots! Then, there was
his cobbler’s bench, for he was a harness-maker and cobbler—and his
cooper’s bench, for he made the noggins and piggins and pails for
the milkmaids and housewives, deriving therefrom a little income.
And when it came to horses! As I have sat and heard the learned at
races and horse-shows air their knowledge, I have often been filled
with a sudden longing that Uncle Balla were there to show what real
knowledge was.
He lived for thirty years after the war in a little house on the
edge of the plantation, and when he began to fail he was brought
home, where he could be better looked after. At the end, his funeral
services were conducted from the front portico and he was followed to
the grave by white and black.
Each cabin had, or might have had, its little yard and garden, and
each family had its chicken-house and yard.
On the larger plantations, where the Negroes numbered two hundred
or more, nearly everything was made by them, so that such an estate
was a little world in itself, substantially self-supporting. On our
place, while the spinning and weaving and the carpentry-work were
done on the place, most of the cloth for clothing and the shoes were
bought in town in the spring and autumn, and the tailor and cobbler
kept them in order. In purchasing the shoes, each person brought his
measure, a stick the exact length of his foot. This stick had certain
marks or notches on it, and the Negro kept a duplicate, by which to
identify his shoes when they arrived.
III
No servants or retainers of any race ever identified themselves more
fully with their masters. The relation was rather that of retainers
than of slaves. It began in the infancy of both master and servant,
grew with their growth, and continued through life. Such a relation
does not now, so far as I know, exist, except in the isolated
instances of old families who have survived all the chances and
changes with the old family servants still hanging on. Certainly,
I think, it did not exist anywhere else, unless, perhaps, on the
country estates of the gentry in England and, possibly, in parts of
France and Germany.
This relation in the South was not exceptional. It was the general,
if not the universal rule. The servants were “my servants” or “my
people”; the masters were to the servants, “_my_ master and _my_
mistis,” or “my white folks.” Both pride and affection spoke in that
claim.
In fact, the ties of pride were such that it was often remarked that
the affection of the slaves was stronger toward the whites than
toward their own offspring. This fact, which cannot be successfully
disputed, has been referred by Professor Shaler to a survival of a
tribal instinct which preponderated over the family instinct. Others
may possibly refer it to the fact that the family instinct was,
owing to the very nature of the institution of slavery, not allowed
to take deep root. Whatever the cause, it does not appear even now
to have taken much root, at least, according to the standard of the
Anglo-Saxon, a race whose history is founded upon the family instinct.
The family ties among the Negroes often appear to be scarcely
as strong now as they were under the institution of slavery.
Marital fidelity is, if we are to believe those who have had good
opportunities of observation, not as common now as it was then. The
instances of desertion of husbands, of wives, of parents, or children
would possibly offset any division that took place under that
institution.
A number of old Negroes whom I have known have been abandoned by
nearly all of their children. Often, when they grow up, they leave
them with scarcely less unconcern than do any order of the lower
animals.
The oldest son of our dining-room servant went off at the time of one
of Sheridan’s raids and was never heard of again until some twenty
years after the war, when it was learned that he was a fisherman on
the lower James, and although he lived, and may be living yet, within
a hundred miles of his old home, where his father and mother lived,
he never took the trouble even to communicate with them once. The
next son went off to the South after the war, and the only time that
he ever wrote home, so far as I know, was when he wrote to ascertain
his age, in order that he might qualify to vote. The same may be said
of many others.
* * * * *
The Mammy was, perhaps, the most important of the servants, as she
was also the closest intimate of the family. She was, indeed, an
actual member of the household. She was usually selected in her
youth to be the companion of the children by reason of her being
the child of some favored servant and, as such, likely to possess
sense, amiability, judgment, and the qualities which gave promise
of character and efficiency. So she grew up in intercourse with the
girls of the family, and when they married she became, in turn, the
nurse and assistant to the old mammy, and then the mammy of her young
mistress’s children, and, after, of their children.
She has never been adequately described. Chiefly, I fancy, because it
was impossible to describe her as she was.
Who may picture a mother? We may dab and dab at it, but when we have
done our best we know that we have stuck on a little paint, and the
eternal verity stands forth like the eternal verity of the Holy
Mother, outside our conception, only to be apprehended in our highest
moments, and never to be truly pictured by pen or pencil.
So, no one can describe what the Mammy was, and only those can
apprehend her who were rocked on her generous bosom, slept on her
bed, fed at her table, were directed and controlled by her, watched
by her unsleeping eye, and led by her precept in the way of truth,
justice, and humanity.
She was far more than a servant. She was a member of the family in
high standing and of unquestioned influence. She was her mistress’s
coadjutress and her wise adviser, and where the children were
concerned, she was next to her in authority.
My father’s mammy, old Krenda, was said to have been an African
princess, and whether there was any other foundation for the idea
than her commanding presence and character, I know not; but these
were unquestionable. Her aphorisms have been handed down in the
family since her time. Among them was one which has a smack of the
old times and at least indicates that she had not visited some modern
cities: “Good manners will cyah you whar money won’t.”
I remember my mammy well, though she died when I was a child. Her
name was Lydia, and she was the daughter of old Betty, who had been
my great-grandmother’s maid. Betty used to read to her mistress
during the latter years of her life when she was blind. Lydia had
been my mother’s mammy before she was mine and my brother’s, and she
had the authority and prestige of having been such.
After forty-five years, I recall with mingled affection and awe my
mammy’s dignity, force, and kindness; her snowy bed, where I was put
to sleep in the little up-stairs room, sealed with pictures from the
illustrated papers and with fashion-plates, in which her artistic
feeling found its vent; I recall also the delicious “biscuit-bread”
she made, which we thought better than that of all the cooks and
bakers in the world. In one corner stood her tea-table, with her
“tea-things,” her tea and white sugar.
I remember, too, the exercise of her authority, and recall, at least
two “good whippings” that she gave me.
One curious recollection that remains is of a discussion between her
and one of her young mistresses on the subject of slavery, in which
the latter fell back on what is, possibly, one of the strongest
arguments of the slave-holder, the Bible, and asserted that God had
put each of them in their places. It may be left to the reader to say
which had the better of the argument. The interest of the matter now
is rather academic than practical.
A few days before my mammy’s death she made her will, dividing her
“things,” for such wills were as strictly observed as if they had
been admitted to probate. Among her bequests her feather-bed and
pillows were left to my elder brother. She made my mother bring a
pen and write his name on the bed and pillows. And these pillows are
now in his rectory.
It was from our mammies that we learned those delightful stories of
“Brer Fox” and “Brer Hyah,” which the children of a later generation
have learned through the magic pen of “Uncle Remus.” It was from them
also that we learned many of the lessons of morality and truth.
Next to the mammy in point of dignity was, of right, the butler. He
held much the same position that is held by the butler in English
houses. He was a person in authority, and he looked that every inch.
He had his ideas, and they usually prevailed. He was the governor of
the young children, the mentor of the young men, and their counsellor
even after they had grown up.
Some of my readers may have seen in some hotel a Negro head-waiter
who was a model of dignity and of grave authority—a field-marshal in
ebony—doing the honors of his dining-room like a court chamberlain,
and ruling his subordinates with the authority of a benignant despot.
Such a one was probably some gentleman’s butler, who had risen by his
abilities to be the chief of the dining-room.
More than one such character rises before me from the past, and the
stories of their authority are a part of the traditional record of
every family. The most imposing one that I personally remember was
“Uncle Tom,” the butler of a cousin, whose stateliness impressed my
childhood’s fancy in a way which has never been effaced. I have seen
monarchs less impressive. His authority was so well recognized that
he used to be called in to make the children take their physic.
It was said that one of the children, who is now a matron of great
dignity and a grandmother, once, in an awed whisper, asked her
grandmother, who was the mistress of “Uncle Tom” and of several
hundred other servants, “Gran’ma, is you feared o’ Unc’ Tom?” And her
grandmother, who told the story, used to add: “And you know the truth
is, I am.”
It was a cousin of hers, Mrs. Carter, of Shirley, who used to say
that when she invited company she always had to break it to Clarissy,
her maid.
In truth, whatever limitation there was on the unstinted hospitality
of the South was due to the fact that the servants were always
considered in such matters.
This awe of the butler in his grandeur often did not pass away with
youth. He both demanded and received his due respect even from
grown members of the family. Of one that I knew it is told now by
gray-headed men how, on occasion, long after they were grown, he
would correct their manners, even at table, by a little rap on the
head and a whispered reproof, as he leaned over them to place a dish.
And I never knew one who did not retain his position of influence and
exercise his right of admonition.
I have known butlers to take upon themselves the responsibility of
saying what young gentlemen should be admitted as visitors at the
house, and to whom the ladies should be denied. In fact, every wise
young man used to be at pains to make friends with the old servants,
for they were a sagacious class and their influence in the household
was not inconsiderable. They had an intuitive knowledge, which
amounted to an instinct, for “winnowing the grain from the chaff,”
and they knew a “gent’man” at sight. Their acute and caustic comments
have wrecked the chances of many an aspiring young suitor who failed
to meet with their approval.
IV
There is a universal belief that the Negroes under slavery had no
education. I have seen it stated a number of times that it was made
a crime by law, in every State of the South, to teach one to read.
Such a statement is not true.[60] Teaching them was not encouraged,
generally, and such laws existed at one time in four of the States
of the South; but they did not exist in Virginia. Several of our
Negroes could read, and if it was not the same on most of the
plantations, it was at least the same on those of which I had any
knowledge. My great-grandmother’s maid used, I have heard, to read
to her regularly, and in our family the ladies used to teach the
girls as much as they would learn. But apart from book-learning, they
had, especially the house-servants, the education which comes from
daily association with people of culture, and it was an education
not to be despised. Some gentlemen carried on a correspondence about
home affairs with their butlers during their absence from home. For
instance, I recall hearing that when Mr. Abel P. Upshur was Secretary
of the Navy, some gentlemen were at his house, and were discussing at
table some public matter, when the butler gave them the latest news
about it, saying that he had that morning received a letter from his
master.
There is an idea that the Negroes were in the state of excitement
and agonized expectancy of freedom that the Anglo-Saxon race felt
it would have been in under similar circumstances. Much is made, at
certain kinds of meetings, of the great part which they contributed
toward saving the Union. Discussion of this may be set aside as
bordering on the controversial. But it may not be outside of this
phase of the matter, and it will throw some light on it to state
briefly what was the attitude of the Negro slave population toward
the quarrel between the North and the South.
The total number of Negro enlistments and reënlistments on the
Federal side was between 189,000 and 190,000. When it is considered
that this embraced all the soldier element of the Negroes in the
North and of the refugee element in the South, who were induced to
enter the army, either by persuasion of bounties or under stress
of compulsion, whether of military draft or of “belly-pinching,”
the number does not appear large. After midsummer, 1863, the North
occupied the States of Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, half of
Virginia, of Tennessee, of Louisiana, of Arkansas, of Mississippi,
and considerable portions of the Carolinas and Alabamas. That is,
she occupied a third, and nearer a half, of the entire slave-holding
territory of the South, while the penetration of her raiding parties
into the regions occupied by the Southern troops furnished, at times,
opportunity to, possibly, a fourth of the young men of that section
to escape from bondage had they been moved by the passion of freedom.
It is at once a refutation of the charge of the cruelty of slavery,
so commonly accepted, and an evidence of the easy-going amiability
and docility of the Negro race that, under all the excitement and
through all the opportunities and temptations surrounding them, they
should not only have remained faithful to their masters, but that the
stress of the time should have appeared to weld the bond between them.
That there was a wild and adventurous element among them is well
known. It was to be expected, and was an element in whom the
instincts of wild life in the jungle and the forests survived. Every
large plantation had one or more who had the runaway spirit keenly
alive. There were several on our place. They ran away when they were
crossed in love or in any other desire of their hearts. They ran away
if they were whipped, and, as they were the shirkers and loafers on
the plantations, if anyone was whipped, it was likely to be one of
them. Yet, curiously enough, if a runaway was caught and was whipped,
he was very unlikely to run off again until the spirit seized him,
when nothing on earth could stop him.[61]
One other class was likely to furnish the element that went off, and
this was the “pampered class.” House-servants were more likely to go
than field-hands. Their ears were somehow more attuned to the song of
the siren.[62]
Against those who availed themselves of the opportunities offered
them to escape from the bondage of domestic slavery may be put the
great body of the Negro race who, whether from inability to grasp the
vastness of the boon of liberty held out to them, or from fear of
the ills they knew not of, or from sheer content with a life where
the toil was not drudgery and the flesh-pots overbalanced the idea
of freedom, not only held fast to their masters, but took sides with
them with a quickened feeling and a deepened affection. For every one
who fled to freedom, possibly one hundred stood by their masters’
wives and children.
Doubtless there were many—possibly, the most of them—who remained
from sheer inertia or fear to leave. But a far larger number
identified themselves with their masters, and this union was not one
of lip-service, but of sentiment, of heart and soul.
In truth, they were infected with the same spirit and ardor that
filled the whites, and had the South called for volunteers from the
Negroes, I question not that they could have gotten half a million
men.[63]
A story is told of one of the old Negroes who belonged to the family
into which General Scott married. He went to the war to take care of
one of his young masters. He had no doubt whatever as to the justice
of the cause, but General Scott was to his mind the embodiment of
war and carnage, and the General had espoused the other side. This
disturbed him greatly, and one night he was heard praying down
outside the camp. After praying for everyone, he prayed: “And O Lord,
please to convut Marse Lieutenan’ Gen’l Scott and turn him f’om de
urrer o’ he ways.”
The devotion of slaves to their masters in time of war is no new
thing under the sun. The fact that their masters are in arms has
always, no doubt, borne its part in the phenomenon. But it does not
wholly account for the absolute devotion of the Negroes. It is to
the eternal credit at once of the Whites and of the Negroes that,
during these four years of war, when the white men of the South
were absent in the field they could intrust their homes, their
wives, their children, all they possessed, to the guardianship and
care of their slaves, with absolute confidence in their fidelity.
And this trust was never violated. The Negroes were their faithful
guardians, their sympathizing friends, and their shrewd advisers,
guarding their property, enduring necessary denial with cheerfulness,
and identifying themselves with their masters’ fortunes with the
devotion, not of slaves, but of clansmen.
The devotion of the body-servants to their masters in the field is
too well known almost to need mention, and what is said of them in
this paper is owing rather to the feeling that the statement of the
fact is a debt due to the class from which these came rather than to
thinking it necessary to enlighten the reader.
When the Southern men went into the field there was always a contest
among the Negroes as to who should accompany them. Usually, the
choice of the young men would be for some of the younger men among
the servants, while the choice of the family would be for some of
the older and more staid members of the household, who would be
prudent, and so, more likely to take better care of their masters.
And thus there was much heart-burning among the younger Negroes, who
were almost as eager for adventure as their masters.
Of all the thousands of Negroes who went out as servants with their
masters, I have never heard of one who deserted to the North, and I
have known of many who had abundant opportunity to do so. Some were
captured, but escaped; others apparently deserted, but returned laden
with spoils.
My father’s body-servant, Ralph Woodson, served with him throughout
the entire war. While at Petersburg, where the armies were within
a mile of each other, he was punished for getting drunk and he ran
away. But instead of making for the Union lines and surrendering
to a Union picket, which he could easily have done, he started for
home, sixty miles away. He was, however, arrested as a straggler or
runaway, and my father, hearing of him, sent and brought him back to
camp, where he remained to the end.
An even more notable instance which has come to my knowledge was
that of Simon, the servant of a friend of mine. He disappeared from
camp during the Spottsylvania campaign, and just when his master had
given him up he reappeared with a sack full of all sorts of things,
useful for the mess, which he declared “dem gent’mens on the other
side had gin him.” He had borrowed of the Egyptians.
The letters and annals of the time are full of references to the
singular, but then well-known fact, that while the people of the
South gave their sons joyfully to the cause, they were most unwilling
to allow their Negroes to go. The reason for this has been much
misapprehended. It has been generally supposed outside that it was
because they were afraid to lose their property. Nothing could be
more unfounded. They were afraid their servants might be hurt or
suffer some harm.
Fathers who wrote their sons to be always at the post of honor,
would give them explicit directions how to keep their servants out
of danger. The war in some way was concerned with the perpetuation
of slavery, and it was felt that it was not just to expose slaves to
danger when such was the case.
Something of this same feeling played its part in the decision not
to enlist Negroes in the army of the Confederacy.
In the field they showed both courage and sagacity, and many are the
instances in which, when their masters were wounded and left on the
field, they hunted for them through scenes which tested men’s courage
as much as the battle itself. The records of the time are full of
such instances.
V
When the war closed and the Negroes were set free, the feeling
between them and their old masters was never warmer, the bonds of
friendship were never more close. The devotion which the Negro had
shown during the long struggle had created a profound impression
on the minds of the Southern whites. Even between the Negroes and
poorer whites, who had always been rather at enmity, a better
feeling had grown up. The close of the war had accomplished what
all the emancipation proclamations could not effect. Their masters
universally informed their servants that they were free.
I remember my father’s return from Appomattox. For days he had been
watched for. Appomattox was less than a hundred miles from our home.
The news of the surrender had come to us first through one of the
wagon-drivers, who told it weeping. I seem to see the return now—my
father on his gray horse, with his body-servant, Ralph, behind him.
I remember the way in which, as he slipped from his horse, he put
his hand over his face to hide his tears, and his groan, “I never
expected to come home so.” All were weeping. A few minutes later
he came out on the porch and said: “Ralph, you are free; take the
saddles off and turn the horses out.”
He had carried a silver half-dollar all through the war, saving it
till the last pinch. This had come when he reached the river on his
way home. The ferryman had declined to take Confederate money, and he
paid him his half-dollar to ferry him across.
Such was the end of slavery, the institution which had divided this
country in twain, and finally had convulsed it and brought on a
terrible war.
When the end of slavery came there was, doubtless, some
heart-burning, but the transition was accomplished without an
outbreak, and well-nigh without one act of harshness or even of
rudeness.
If there was jubilation among the Negroes on the plantation it was
not known to the Whites. In fact the Negroes were rather mystified.
The sudden coming of that for which they had possibly hoped, with the
loom of the unknown future, had sobered at least the elders. Their
owners, almost without exception, conveyed to them the information
of their freedom, which thus had a more comprehensible security than
could have been given by the acts of Congress, or the orders of
military authorities.
In some cases the old Negroes sought and held long conferences with
their mistresses or masters in which the whole matter was canvassed.
In every instance the assurance was given them that they should
live on the old plantations, if they wished to do so and were still
willing to work and would obey orders.
As was natural, the Negroes, in the first flush of freedom, left
the estates and went off “for themselves,” as the phrase ran.[64]
They flocked either to the cities, or to the nearest centre
where a garrison of Union troops was posted, and where rations
were distributed partly as a measure of necessity and partly from
a philanthropic sentiment which had more or less ground for its
existence. But after a time, many of them returned to work. Those of
them who had anything shared what they had with their masters. Some
of them brought eggs and chickens; others saved a part of the rations
given by the Government.
It is no part of my intention in this paper to go generally into
the relation of the two races since the emancipation of the
Negroes. Certain phases of this relation have been dealt with by me
elsewhere. While it is easy to see what mistakes have been made in
dealing with the subject, no one can tell with any assurance how a
different system might have worked out. All we can say, with absolute
certainty, is that hardly any other system could have been more
disastrous than the one which was adopted.
One fact, I think, cannot be soundly controverted—that the
estrangement of the Negro from the white race in the South is the
greatest misfortune that has befallen the former in his history, not
excepting his ravishment from his native land.
VI
The old-time Negro has almost quite passed from the earth, as have
his old master and his old mistress. A few still remain, like the
last leaves on the tree, but in no long time they, too, will have
disappeared. But so long as he survives, the old family feeling of
affection will remain in the hearts of those who knew him. Every week
or two the newspapers contain the mention of the passing from the
stage of one or more of those whose place in some old family made
them notable in their lives and caused them to be followed to the
grave by as sincere mourners among the whites as among the blacks.
But how many of them pass without any other notice than the unfeigned
mourning of those whom they loved and served so faithfully!
No Southerner, whatever his feelings of antagonism may be to the
Negro race, ever meets an old Negro man or woman without that feeling
rising in his breast which one experiences when he meets some old
friend of his youth on whom Time has laid his chastening hand.
Nor has the old feeling by any means died out in the breast of the
old Negro himself. Only as the whites look on the young blacks with
some disapproval, so the old Negro regards the younger generation of
whites as inferior to the generation he knew.
Not long since a friend in Richmond told me the following story: A
friend of his in that city invited him in the shooting season to go
down to his father’s place to shoot partridges. The house had been
burned down, but old Robin was still living there, and had told him
not long before that there were a good many birds on the place.
Accordingly, the two gentlemen one morning took their guns and dogs
and drove down to the old Ball plantation, where they arrived about
sunrise. Old Robin was cutting wood in front of his cabin, and my
friend began to shout for him: “Oh, Robin! Oh, Robin!” The old fellow
stopped, and coming to the brow of the hill above them, called: “Who
dat know me so much bettuh den I know him?”
“Come down here!” called his master.
When the old fellow discovered who it was he was delighted.
“Yes, suh,” said he; “dyah’s plenty of buds down here on de branch.
I sees ’em eve’y evenin’ most when I comes down atter my cow. You go
’long and kill ’em and I’ll take keer of yo’ horse for yo’ and tell
Mandy to hev some snack for yo’ ’bout twelve o’clock.”
Just as he was leaving, he stopped, and leaning out of the wagon,
said: “Marse Gus, don’t yo’ shoot any ole hyahs down dere. I takes
my gun down wid me when I goes down atter my cow. Dem buds flies too
fas’ for me, but I kin manage to shoot a ole hyah if I ketch one
settin’ in de baid.”
The promise was given and was kept by the hunters until they were
about to stop for lunch. Just then a fine hare jumped up in front of
Marse Gus, and gave him a fair shot. In his ardor he fired at it and
knocked it over. At that moment old Robin was heard calling to them
to come on up to the house as “snack was ready.”
“There!” said Gus, as he picked up the hare, “now I’ve gone and
killed this hare, and that old man will never forgive me.”
“Take it and give it to him for his wife,” said his friend.
“Oh, no!” he said, “you don’t know old Robin; he will never forgive
me.”
“Well, put it down in the bottom of your game-bag; he will never know
the difference,” said his friend. And this was shamelessly done.
They were greeted by the old man cheerfully, with “You must have got
plenty of buds, I heard you shoot so much?”
“Oh, yes, we had very good luck!” said the huntsmen.
“You didn’t shoot any ole hyahs?” he inquired confidently.
The silence aroused his suspicion, and, turning, he shot a keen
glance at his master, which took in the well-filled game-bag.
“What you got in dem game-pockets to make ’em look so big? You
certain’y ain’ shoot as many buds as dat in dis time?”
Gus, convicted, poked his hand into his bag and drew out the rabbit.
“Here, Uncle Robin,” he said in some confusion, “this is the only one
I shot. I want you to take it and give it to Mandy.”
But the old man declined. “Nor, I don’ want it and Mandy don’ want
it,” he said, half-scornfully; “you done shoot it and now yo’ better
keep it.”
He stalked on up the hill in silence. Suddenly, stopping, he turned
back.
“Well, well,” he said, “times certain’y is changed! Marse Gus, yo’ pa
wouldn’t ’a’ told me a lie for a mule, let ’lone a’ ole hyah.”
* * * * *
The character of the old-time Negro can hardly be better illustrated
than by the case of an old friend of mine, John Dabney, to whom
I, in common with nearly all my acquaintances in Richmond, used
to be greatly indebted, for he was the best caterer I ever knew.
John Dabney was, in his boyhood, a race-rider for a noted Virginia
turfman, Major William R. Johnson, but, possibly because of his gifts
as a cook, he soon grew too fat for that “lean and hungry” calling,
and in time he became a celebrated cook and caterer. He belonged to a
lady in the adjoining county to my native county, and, prior to the
war, he bought himself from his mistress, as was not infrequently
done by clever Negroes. When the war closed, he still owed his
mistress several hundred dollars on account of this debt, and as
soon as he was able to raise the sum he sent it to her. She promptly
returned it, telling him that he was free and would have been free
anyhow and that he owed her nothing. On this, John Dabney took the
money, went to his old home and insisted on her receiving it, saying
that his old master had brought him up to pay his debts, and that
this was a just debt which he proposed to pay. And pay it he did.
The instances are not rare in which old family servants who have
worked under the new conditions more successfully than their former
owners, have shown the old feeling by rendering them such acts of
kindness as could only have sprung from a deep and abiding affection.
Whoever goes to the White House will find at the door of the
executive offices an elderly and very stout Negro door-keeper, with
perfect manners, a step as soft as the fall of the leaf, and an
aplomb which nothing can disturb. His name is Arthur Simmons, and,
until toward the close of the war, he was a gentleman’s servant in
North Carolina; then he came North. He is, possibly, the oldest
employee in the White House, having been appointed by General Grant
during his first term, and having held his position, with the
exception of a single term—that of General Harrison—to the present
time. It is said that Mr. Cleveland’s first appointment after
his return to office was that of Arthur Simmons to his old post.
Possibly, Mr. Cleveland had heard this story of him: Once, Arthur,
having learned that his old mistress had expressed a desire to see
the President of the United States, invited her to Washington, met
her at the station, saw to her comfort while in the city, arranged an
interview with the President for her, and then escorted her back to
take her train home.
On a part of the old plantation which I have attempted to describe
has lived for the past thirty years, free of rent, the leading Negro
politician in the upper end of Hanover County. His wife, Hannah, was
my mother’s old maid, who, after the war, as before it, served us
with a fidelity and zeal of which I can give no conception. It may,
however, illustrate it to state that, although she lived a mile and
a quarter from the house and had to cross a creek, through which,
in times of high water, she occasionally had to wade almost to her
waist, she for thirty years did not miss being at her post in the
morning more than a half-score times.
Hannah has gone to her long home, and it may throw some light on the
old relation between mistress and servant to say that on the occasion
of the golden wedding of her old master and mistress, as Hannah was
at that time too ill to leave her home, they took all the presents
in the carriage and carried them over to show them to her. Indeed,
Hannah’s last thought was of her old mistress. She died suddenly one
morning, and just before her death she said to her husband, “Open the
do’, it’s Miss ——.” The door was opened, but the mistress was not
there, except to Hannah’s dying gaze. To her, she was standing by her
bedside, and her last words were addressed to her.
It is a continual cause of surprise among those who do not know
the South intimately that Southerners should be so fond of the old
Negroes and yet should be so intolerant of things which Northerners
would regard with indifference. It is a matter which can hardly
be explained, but if anyone goes and lives at the South, he will
quickly find himself falling into Southern ways. Let one go on the
plantations where the politician is absent and the “bloody-shirt”
newspaper is unknown, and he will find something of the old relation
still existing.
I have seen a young man (who happened to be a lieutenant in a
volunteer company) kiss his old mammy on the parade ground in sight
of the whole regiment.
Some years ago, while General Fitzhugh Lee was Governor of Virginia,
a wedding took place in the executive mansion at Richmond. At the
last moment, when the company were assembled and all had taken their
places, waiting for the bride to appear, it was discovered that mammy
Celia, the bride’s mammy, had not come in, and no less a person than
General Lee, the Governor of Virginia, went and fetched her in on his
arm to take her place beside the mother of the bride.
VII
Unhappily, whatever the future may produce, the teachings of
doctrinaires and injudicious friends have lost the Negroes of the
present generation their manners and cost them much of the friendship
of the Whites.
None of us knows what relation the future may produce between the two
races in the South, but possibly when the self-righteous shall be
fewer than they are now and the teachings which have estranged the
races shall become more sane, the great Anglo-Saxon race, which is
dominant, and the Negro race, which is amiable, if not subservient,
will adjust their differences more in accordance with the laws which
must eventually prevail, and the old feeling of kindliness, which
seems, under the stress of antagonism, to be dying away, will once
more reassert itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] The name “driver” was unknown in Virginia, whatever it may have
been in the South. And the “driver” of slave-horror novels was as
purely the creature of the imagination as Cerberus, or the Chimera.
[59] In Georgia, for example, as shown by the investigation of
Professor Du Bois, one of the best educated and trained colored
men in the South, there were, in 1860, 455,698 negroes and 591,550
whites. Of these, there were 3,500 free negroes and 462,195 slaves
owned by 40,773 slave-holders, or about 10½ to each slave-holder.
Of these slave-holders,
16 per cent. of all—6,713 owned 1 slave. 10 ” ” —4,353 ” 2 slaves.
8 ” ” —3,482 ” 3 ” 2,984 ” 4 ” 2,543 ” 5 ” 2,213 ” 6 ” 1,839 ” 7 ”
1,647 ” 8 ” 1,415 ” 9 ” 4,707 ” 10 or under 15 slaves. 2,523 ” 15 ” ”
20 ” 2,910 ” 20 ” ” 30 ” 1,400 ” 30 ” ” 40 ” 739 ” 40 ” ” 50 ” 729 ”
50 ” ” 70 ” 373 ” 70 ” ” 100 ” 181 ” 100 ” ” 200 ” 23 ” 200 ” ” 300 ”
7 ” 300 ” ” 500 ” 1 ” 500 ” ” 1,000 ”
From this table it will be seen that 6,713, or about 16½ per cent.,
owned only one slave, 10½ per cent. owned only two slaves, and 50 per
cent. owned five slaves or fewer, while 66 per cent. (27,191) owned
under ten slaves; 1,102 owned between fifty and one hundred, and but
212 owned over one hundred, while only twenty-three owned over two
hundred.
[60] As to the education of the Negroes: See Report of U. S.
Commissioner of Education, 1901, vol. i, p. 745, _et seq._, for a
valuable paper by Prof. Kelly Miller, one of the most intelligent
colored men in the country. Citing the Report of U. S. Commissioner
of Education, 1868, he shows that such laws were adopted in Alabama,
Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina, about 1830-34. While in
Virginia in 1831, as in Delaware in 1863, public meetings were
prohibited. These laws grew out of the Nat Turner Insurrection. V.
Appendix.
[61] We had three or four such young men on our plantation, and
although the plantation lay within two or three miles of the roads
down which Sheridan and Stoneman passed, and within twelve or fifteen
miles of those along which Grant passed, these were the only negroes
from our place who went off during the war. In all, four young men
left us.
If anyone wishes to get an insight into this phase of the negro
character and at the same time pass a delightful half hour, let him
read Harry Stillwell Edwards’s story, “Two Runaways.”
[62] That very “Uncle Tom,” of whom I have spoken as a stern
and terrifying spectacle of grandeur, left his home and went to
Philadelphia.
[63] Several regiments were enlisted in the beginning of the war, but
the plan was changed and they were disbanded.
[64] Prince Kropotkin mentioned in his memoirs that the Russian serfs
who wanted to show their emancipation did the same thing.