White and Black Georgians—The Savannah Standard of Unionism.
The difference between Savannah and Port Royal negroes is the difference
between the child and the man. Young men, fresh from Massachusetts
common schools, do not surpass raw Cornish miners more; average Yankees
do not surpass average Mexicans as much. Naturally, in listening to the
negro delegations that called on Mr. Chase and General Gillmore, I heard
the best talkers they have; but there is a general air of intelligence
and independence among them, here, which comes only of education and
knowledge of the ways of the world. Train the children of the present
Port Royal negroes steadily in common schools, and let them mingle, till
middle age, with their superiors in life, learning to see for themselves
and take care of their own interests, and you will then have about what
the Savannah negroes are now. There are eight thousand five hundred of
them, who belong to the city proper; and, of these, about a thousand
have been free since long before the war, while many of the rest, being
sons and daughters of their masters, or, otherwise, house servants, have
had advantages not possessed by ordinary slaves. Besides these, there
are large numbers here who have escaped from their masters in the
interior, and these may always be set down as the most intelligent and
enterprising on their respective plantations.
A delegation, headed by one or two preachers and a school-teacher,
called on Mr. Chase, by appointment previously sought by one of their
number. Some of them were jet black; none of them were lighter than
mulattoes. The spokesman was a mulatto preacher, of more than usually
intelligent features, and with the quiet bearing of a gentleman. The
courtesy with which they approached and addressed the Chief Justice
could hardly have been surpassed by any of the accomplished counselors
of the Supreme Court; indeed, politeness seems to be a speciality of all
negroes, and, among the cultivated ones, it takes on a deferential grace
which no Anglo-Saxon may hope to exceed.
The spokesman said they had called partly to pay their respects and
express their gratitude to one whom they recognized as foremost and most
potential among the living in their deliverance; but mainly to inquire
what the Government was likely to do with them, and what they themselves
ought to be doing to secure the rights of which they thought they had
been unjustly deprived. Especially they desired to know what their
prospect was for being permitted to exercise, in common with all other
native freemen, the elective franchise.
“Suppose you _were_ permitted to vote,” said the Chief Justice, “what
guarantee would the Government have that you would know how to vote, or
that your influence would not be cast on the side of bad morals and bad
politics?”
“Oh, Mr. Judge,” ejaculated a little black fellow, “we know who our
friends are!”
“I am not so sure about that. You don’t know the positions of many of
the leading men here, and some of them, by professing to be your
friends, might easily deceive you.”
“No, sir; I ’sure you we knows our friends,” responded the same
coal-black speaker.
“Perhaps you in the cities may. I am not disposed, myself, to doubt it.
But here is a great mass of ignorant field hands from the plantations.
They are scattered all over Georgia, and they don’t have the advantages
or the opportunities of learning which you have. What is to prevent them
from voting just as their old masters may tell them?”
“Oh, we’ll tell them how to vote, sir; we have means of reaching them;
and _they’ll follow us sooner than they will their old masters or any
white man_.”
“Possibly; perhaps even probably. But neither they, nor even you, are
familiar with political history, the organization of parties, the
antecedents of parties or of leaders; and you are very liable to be
deceived. How do we know that, in your ignorance, you will not be
tricked into voting the slavery ticket, under some pleasant and
deceptive name, rather than the freedom ticket?”
“Mr. Judge, we always knows who’s our friends and who isn’t. We knows
the difference between the Union ticket and the Rebel ticket. We may not
know all about all the men that’s on it; but we knows the difference
between the Union and the Rebel parties. Yes, sir; we knows that much
better than you do! Because, sir, some of our people stand behind these
men at the table, and hear ’em talk; we see ’em in the house and by the
wayside; and we _know_ ’em from skin to core, better than you do or can
do, till you live among ’em as long, and see as much of ’em as we have.”
“I have no doubt of your competency to take care of yourselves in
Savannah,” said the Chief Justice; “but what your friends at the North
are afraid of, is, that your people in the interior will not know how to
tell whom to vote for, for the present at least, and that in their
bewilderment they will vote just as their old masters tell them they
ought.”
“I tell you, Mr. Judge,” said the preacher, “we can reach every colored
man in the State; and they would rather trust intelligent men of their
own color than any white man. They’ll vote the ticket we tell them is
the ticket of our friends; and, as fast as they can, they’ll learn to
read and judge for themselves.”
“Sir,” he continued, “the white population of Georgia is five hundred
thousand, and, of that number, fifty thousand, or one in ten, can’t read
and write. Give us three years to work in, and, among our younger
adults, the proportion who can not read and write will be no greater.
But, sir, these whites don’t read and write because they don’t want to;
our people don’t, because the law and public feeling were against it.
The ignorant whites had every chance to learn, but didn’t; we had every
chance to remain ignorant, and many of us learned in spite of them.”
Another delegation consisted of blacks from the country, wearing coarse
negro clothes instead of broadcloth, less graceful in their bearing, and
less cultivated in their talk. Their old masters were abusing them, were
whipping those who said they thought they were free, and were doing all
they could to retain them in a state of actual, if not also nominal,
slavery. Some were endeavoring to earn a living by hauling wood to the
country towns, and they complained that their old masters went with
cunning stories to the military authorities and contrived to have them
stopped. Others had tales of atrocities to tell, whippings and cutting
off of ears and the like, for the crimes of going where they pleased and
assuming to act as freemen. All the negroes knew that the North had
triumphed in the war, and that they were by consequence free; but the
white masters didn’t yet seem to understand it. Some of these men
appeared patient enough under their wrongs; others bore themselves
angrily, and were full of revengeful thoughts. A slave insurrection is
not probable; but where whites and negroes are alike unarmed, and the
negroes are nearly or quite equal to the white population, there may be
such a thing as goading the patient bearer of burdens into revolt. If
so, let the masters beware. On the levees of the Mississippi any man can
loose the floods of half a continent; but it takes many men to confine
them again.
Few of the negroes, and, indeed, few of the whites, spoke of any settled
arrangements between the late slaves and the late masters, on the basis
of the freedom of the blacks, and their consequent right to wages.
Wherever any bargains had been made, they seemed to be such as would
virtually establish the Mexican peonage instead of Southern slavery.
Negroes were hired at nominal monthly wages, “with board;” and whatever
debts they incurred in getting their clothing were to be subsequently
“worked out” at the same rates. The result was, of course, certain to be
that the masters would encourage the negroes to run in debt; and, this
done, would hold them forever by a constantly strengthening chain.[20]
I saw none of the negroes, either residing in Savannah or from the
country, who had any desire to be colonized away from their present
homes. Ask them if they would like to live by themselves, and they would
generally say “Yes” (as they did to Secretary Stanton); but further
inquiry would always develope the fact that their idea of “living by
themselves” was to have the whites removed from what they consider their
own country. Admiral Dahlgren’s observation at Charleston (that the
negroes couldn’t see what good it did them to make them free, unless
they were to have the land to which their slave labor had given all its
value), is confirmed here, as it was at Port Royal. The more intelligent
negroes generally think it would be better for their people to be freed
from contact with the whites; but their idea of accomplishing it is, not
to remove the blacks, but to have the whites remove from them. They
believe in colonization; but it is in colonization on the lands they
have been working. From the bare idea of enforced, or even voluntary,
removal to other sections, they utterly revolt.
No one, who saw or conversed with the leading Savannah negroes, would
doubt their entire capacity to support themselves. They were all
well-dressed, in clothes bought by their own earnings; many of them were
living in large and well-furnished houses; some owned their own
residences, and not a few had quite handsome incomes. In short, the
negro has shown in Savannah, just as in more northern cities, that in
proportion as he advanced in intelligence, he advanced also in the arts
of money getting, and gathered about him those substantial evidences of
prosperity which all governments regard as the best guarantee for the
good behavior of the citizen.
The negroes have been holding meetings here, marked, apparently, by more
than their usual discretion, and, indeed, so wisely conducted as to
elicit from one of the Savannah papers this eulogium:
A more orderly, decorous audience never assembled within the walls
of an edifice, than these enthusiastic people, whose sincere
gratitude was depicted in every emotion. We rejoice that these
people understand, perfectly, that freedom does not mean idleness,
but perseverance and industry.
A correspondent of one of the newspapers is reminded, by their bearing,
of certain passages of Scripture, and copies out, and the paper gravely
quotes, in its editorial columns, as follows:
For the Lord our God, He it is that brought us up, and our fathers,
out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did
those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way
wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed.
(Joshua xxiv: 17.)
And when thy sons asketh thee, in time to come, saying, what mean
the testimonies, and the statues, and the judgments, which the Lord
our God hath commanded you?
Then thou shalt say unto the son: We were Pharaoh’s bondmen in
Egypt; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.
And the Lord shewed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt,
upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household before our eyes.
And He brought us out from thence, that He might bring us in, to
give us the land which He sware unto our fathers. (Deut. vi: 20, 21,
22 and 23.)
The newspapers which make these Scriptural applications, however, it
must be remembered, are the productions of the Northern editors who have
come down in the wake of the army, or of Southern journalists who have
stood ready to change with the tide.
This evening several of these gentlemen called on me, on board the boat.
One, of unkempt hair and clothes, and glittering eye, that even opium
could have made no brighter, and air at once of the gentleman and the
seedy Southerner, has already a wide Northern acquaintance. Who has not
read of “Doesticks,”—his adventures at Niagara, and his multifarious
encounters with a single glass of ale? “Doesticks” turns up in the flesh
in Savannah; and Mr. Mortimer Thompson assures us that he finds it pay
down here very well, if it “were not for this cursed blockhead of a
Commanding General!” Alas! how that ghost still stands in the way of the
enterprising journalist! Even Punch, with all his gibes, is overawed
before our conquering Northern Mars; and Doesticks groans under the
oppression of the uniform of the “Commanding General.” His circulation
is good, he avers (and there lurks no fun, for a wonder, beneath the
word), every Rebel takes the paper, because every Rebel wants to know
the news from the Yankees; and there is a better chance than ever
before, to spread Yankee notions among this people, _if_ it weren’t for
that cursed Commanding General! Advertising is good; Savannah merchants
and Northern sutlers compete for the trade of the army and the city;
news is plenty; there is no trouble about selling papers and coining
money; _if_ it weren’t for the perpetual interference of that blockhead
of a Commanding General! Northern men could succeed, even better as
journalists here than Southerners, because they have more industry, know
more about their business, and could make better papers, _if_ it weren’t
for that Commanding General! I believe, from a hint Gillmore has given,
that the Commanding General is about to be changed; and, from the bottom
of my heart, I congratulate Doesticks on it.
Communication with the interior is yet very uncertain. The mails are all
stopped; the railroads broken up; the highways blockaded by sentries
that imitate the fly-trap—let you in but won’t let you out. There is no
scarcity of news here from the interior, but Savannah is, as yet, a
focus which receives all these diverse rays of intelligence and reflects
none back again. The town is full of black and white refugees from all
parts of Georgia; both races are daily coming in large numbers, some for
supplies, some to find what the policy of the Government is likely to
be, some to go North. What the negroes tell, in the way of trouble with
their masters, and petty persecutions that seem designed, since their
freedom can’t be taken away, to make freedom very unpleasant for them,
has already been partly recited. The whites are, of course, discreetly
silent on such subjects, though I have heard one or two refer rather
significantly to the “uncommon amount of whipping it takes now to keep
the plantation niggers in order.” But they are full of complaints of
their own, telling how lazy and worthless the negroes are, how Sherman’s
soldiers desolated the country, and how unsettled every one feels.
There is apparently no apprehension among them of guerrilla warfare; in
fact, they scout at the idea. Question them as to everything for which
the war was fought, the doctrine of secession, the rightfulness of
slavery, the wrongs of the South, and they are found as full of the
sentiments that made the rebellion as ever; but every man has apparently
schooled himself into saying, with an air of utter frankness: “We’re
whipped, and we give it up. There will be no more fighting of any sort;
no guerrillas; no resistance to the Government; and we all accept the
death of slavery as inevitable.” Ask them what should be done with them,
now that they’re subdued, and they say: “We’re wholly in the hands of
the Government, but would like to have our State Governments restored as
soon as possible.” Ask them what should be done with the negroes, now
that they’re free, and the bolder ones answer, “Put them under the care
of the State Legislature;” while all seem to insist upon some sort of
apprenticeship, or other legal restriction that will practically keep
them as much slaves as ever. I have found no Georgian who, now that his
slaves can no longer be made to work for him, expects to work for
himself. In fact, working for themselves does not seem to be, in any
event, of success or of failure, of loyalty or of rebellion, a part of
their philosophy of life. Work is for “niggers”—not for white men.
Nor do they seem to entertain any idea of selling off part of their
lands, in order to get money to stock and till properly the remainder.
Some of them think selling their lands, inherited from their fathers,
would be dishonorable; others affect to believe that nobody would buy;
while it is quite evident that, as long as they can help it, none of
them mean to sell.
“What would be the sense of my selling?” asked one. “Suppose I did; what
then could I do for a livelihood? I don’t know how to do anything to
make money, and I wouldn’t go at it if I did. I’m no book-keeper or
counter-jumper. I never learned a trade; I have no profession. I own
these lands, and, if the niggers can be made to work, they’ll support
me; but there’s nothing else that I know anything about, except managing
a plantation.”
By-and-by, however, necessity will begin to pinch them more and more.
Then, unless they succeed, in some way, in cheating the Government and
making emancipation a sham, many of them will throw their lands into the
market, rather than honestly attempt to work them with free labor. When
that time comes, Northern capital will have such an opening as rarely
coffers twice in one capitalist’s lifetime.
* * * * *
A large number of leading citizens of Savannah, and gentlemen gathered
here from different parts of the State, waited on the Chief Justice and
General Gillmore during our visit. One, a fine-looking old gentleman, of
rubicund visage and silvery hair, with two sons holding high rank in the
Rebel army, wanted to remonstrate against the admission of the negroes
to the public schools. He was painfully polite, but, in spite of his
calmness, the deep feeling under which he labored could not be wholly
concealed. “Sir, we accept the death of slavery; but, sir, surely there
are some things that are not tolerable. Our people have not been brought
up to associate with negroes. They don’t think it decent; and the
negroes will be none the better for being thrust thus into the places of
white men’s sons.”
Accompanying this old gentleman, and one or two of the other Savannah
magnates, was Mr. Charles Green, a noted British merchant, of many
years’ residence here. Mr. Green is among the wealthiest inhabitants;
has made more money out of the war than any one else, unless Savannah
rumor greatly belies him; lives in one of the finest houses; was the
first man to greet General Sherman and offer him the hospitalities of
his residence—in short, is at once a British and a Savannah institution,
and is, withal, a gentleman of culture and refinement. His cordial
courtesies had to be declined; but it was interesting to see, in the
short interview in which he tendered them, how completely the old
prejudices of the section retained their influence. Mr. Green was Doctor
Russell’s host during the much-abused _Times_’ correspondent’s stay in
Savannah, and in those days it does not appear that he differed very
widely from other secession-loving Britons in the South. But it is
amazing what difference success or failure makes in the soundness of a
principle!
Mingling freely with a crowd of fifteen or twenty gentlemen, who called
a little later, all Georgians, and all but two or three residents of
Savannah, I made some effort, by comparison of their various views, to
get at the nature and standard of Savannah Unionism. Some of them,
indeed, made no profession of being Union men, and said they only called
to indicate their entire disposition to submit, without opposition, to
whatever the Government might do, and to pay their respects to the man
whom they recognized as the ablest in our public life, and, by virtue of
his management of the finances, their real conqueror. But the most were
all desirous of being considered now warm Union men. They were all ready
to submit to anything. They were helpless, they said, but surely the
Government would be magnanimous. They knew slavery was gone; but the
Government ought not to permit the slaves to become vagabonds. If they
must have the negroes living among them, they ought to have some power
to make them work. The Rebel soldiers and officers were always spoken of
with warm kindness; and it was evidently only in exceptional cases that
active service for the Rebellion had made any of them think less of a
returning Rebel neighbor. They hoped civil government would be
re-established as soon as possible, and the military restraints removed.
Of course, confiscation would be abandoned, now that all had submitted;
and it would be very hard if the majority of the old voters were not
still permitted to vote. Judge Wayne, of the Supreme Court of the United
States, had returned within a few days, and settled down in his old
house, among his old neighbors. They were glad to welcome him back, and
hoped his coming was a token of the kindly feeling of the Judiciary
toward them. They knew they would not be betrayed in returning like
repentant children, and asking for protection in their rights.
This last phrase was reiterated so often that at last I exclaimed to one
of them: “But what rights have you?”
“Our rights as a sovereign State under the Constitution.”
“Your people, then, do not realize that, having rebelled from the
Constitution, and abjured all rights under it, they can not, with a very
good grace, after failing to destroy it, come back and demand the right
to enjoy it.”
“Why, of course, the Constitution stands. We only went out from under
it. It would be strange, if, when we come back under it, we should find
its protecting power gone.”
“You do not regard any of your rights, then, as destroyed or imperiled
by your rebellion?”
“Why should they be? The right to hold slaves has been destroyed by the
military authorities; but, unless the Constitution is destroyed, we have
all the powers under it we ever had.”
And, in short, they consider that they have the absolute right to State
Governments, the old suffrage, and, in a word, the old _status_ on
everything, slavery only excepted. Yet, withal, there is a curious
submissiveness about them, whenever there is talk of the power of the
conquerors. The simple truth is, they stand ready to claim everything,
if permitted, and to accept anything, if required.
* * * * *
In the evening a stroll through the streets gave some other phases of
the city life. As has been said, the place was full of returning rebel
soldiers. At every corner their friends, and particularly their female
acquaintances, were greeting them with a warmth that seemed in nowise
tempered by contempt for their lack of success. Many a stalwart fellow,
in coarse gray, was fairly surrounded on the sidewalk by a bevy of his
fair friends; and if without an arm or a leg, so much the better—the
compliments would rain upon him till the blushes would show upon his
embrowned cheeks, and he was fairly convinced that he had taken the most
gallant and manly course in the world.
Very pretty it was, nevertheless, if one could only forget what these
men had been doing, to see the warmth of their welcome home; to watch
little children clinging to the knees of papas they had almost
forgotten; to observe wives promenading proudly with husbands they had
not seen for years; to notice the delighted gathering of family groups
around some chair in the piazza, long vacant, but filled again by a
crippled soldier, home from the wars, with only his wounds and his glory
for his pay.
The bearing of the rebel soldiers was unexceptionable. My companion was
a staff officer, in undress uniform, and without arms. At times, for
squares, there would be no sentry in sight; so that it was not the mere
vulgar fear of immediate arrest that made them respectful. Occasionally
I observed them look curiously and rather admiringly at the elegant
texture and easy fit of the uniform, so unlike their own; often they
straightened up to a thorough soldierly bearing, and even sometimes
respectfully saluted as they passed.
Indeed, nothing was more touching, in all that I saw in Savannah, than
the almost painful effort of the rebels, from Generals down to privates,
to conduct themselves so as to evince respect for our soldiers, and to
bring no severer punishment upon the city than it had already received.
There was a brutal scene at the hotel, where a drunken sergeant, with a
pair of tailors’ shears, insisted on cutting the buttons from the
uniform of an elegant gray-headed old Brigadier, who had just come in
from Johnston’s army; but he bore himself modestly and very handsomely
through it. His staff was composed of fine-looking, stalwart fellows,
evidently gentlemen, who appeared intensely mortified at such
treatment—wholly unmerited, by the way, since they had no clothes save
their Rebel uniforms, and had, as yet, had no time to procure others—but
they avoided disturbance, and submitted to what they might, with some
propriety, and with the general approval of our officers, have resented.
What these men may become, under a lax rein, can not be said; but,
supposing themselves under a tight rein, they are now behaving, in the
main, with very marked propriety.
Half a dozen pretty women were keeping up a busy chatter, all to
themselves, in an ice-cream saloon, where we sat down for a few moments.
“I’m going North, in a few days,” said one, “to buy some clothes.” “But,
Laura, you musn’t do that; you’ll have to take the oath to get a pass;
and, you know, you’re just as much of a Rebel as ever you were.” “Yes,
of course,” with a pretty shrug of the aforesaid Laura’s pretty
shoulders, “but, then, one must have clothes, you know!” Of old, it was
discovered that sermons might be found in running brooks. May not
Generals and higher authorities, who believe in hard swearing as a means
of grace, take a lesson in statesmanship from an ice-cream saloon?
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Footnote 20:
General Carl Schurz, who subsequently examined these contracts
critically, said they substantially renewed the slavery of the
freedmen who entered into them