When Freedom Cried Out
The negro is the central figure in the reconstruction of the South.
Without the negro there would have been no Civil War. Granting a war
fought for any other cause, the task of reconstruction would, without
him, have been comparatively simple. With him, however, reconstruction
meant more than the restoring of shattered resources; it meant the more
or less successful attempt to obtain and secure for the freedman civil
and political rights, and to improve his economic and social status. In
1861 the American negro was everywhere an inferior, and most of his race
were slaves; in 1865 he was no longer a slave, but whether he was to be
serf, ward, or citizen was an unsettled problem; in 1868 he was in the
South the legal and political equal, frequently the superior, of the
white; and before the end of the reconstruction period he was made by
the legislation of some States and by Congress the legal equal of the
white even in certain social matters.
The race problem which confronted the American people had no parallel in
the past. British and Spanish-American emancipation of slaves had
affected only small numbers or small regions, in which one race greatly
outnumbered the other. The results of these earlier emancipations of the
negroes and the difficulties of European states in dealing with subject
white populations were not such as to afford helpful example to American
statesmen. But since it was the actual situation in the Southern States
rather than the experience of other countries which shaped the policies
adopted during reconstruction, it is important to examine with some care
the conditions in which the negroes in the South found themselves at the
close of the war.
The negroes were not all helpless and without experience "when freedom
cried out." ¹ In the Border States and in the North there were, in 1861,
half a million free negroes accustomed to looking out for themselves.
Nearly 200,000 negro men were enlisted in the United States army between
1862 and 1865, and many thousands of slaves had followed raiding Federal
forces to freedom or had escaped through the Confederate lines. State
emancipation in Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia, and Tennessee, and
the practical application of the Emancipation Proclamation where the
Union armies were in control ended slavery for many thousands more.
Wherever the armies marched, slavery ended. This was true even in
Kentucky, where the institution was not legally abolished until the
adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Altogether more than a million
negroes were free and to some extent habituated to freedom before May,
1865.
¹ A negro phrase much used in referring to emancipation.
Most of these war-emancipated negroes were scattered along the borders
of the Confederacy, in camps, in colonies, in the towns, on refugee
farms, at work with the armies, or serving as soldiers in the ranks.
There were large working colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maryland
to Florida. The chief centers were near Norfolk, where General Butler
was the first to establish a "contraband" camp, in North Carolina, and
on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which had
been seized by the Federal fleet early in the war. To the Sea Islands
also were sent, in 1865, the hordes of negroes who had followed General
Sherman out of Georgia and South Carolina. Through the Border States
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi and along both sides of the
Mississippi from Cairo, Illinois, to New Orleans, there were other
refugee camps, farms, and colonies. For periods varying from one to four
years these free negroes had been at work, often amid conditions highly
unfavorable to health, under the supervision of officers of the Treasury
Department or of the army.
Emancipation was therefore a gradual process, and most of the negroes,
through their widening experience on the plantations, with the armies,
and in the colonies, were better fitted for freedom in 1865 than they
had been in 1861. Even their years of bondage had done something for
them, for they knew how to work and they had adopted in part the
language, habits, religion, and morals of the whites. But slavery had
not made them thrifty, self-reliant, or educated. Frederick Douglass
said of the negro at the end of his servitude: "He had none of the
conditions of self-preservation or self-protection. He was free from the
individual master, but he had nothing but the dusty road under his feet.
He was free from the old quarter that once gave him shelter, but a slave
to the rains of summer and to the frosts of winter. He was turned loose,
naked, hungry, and destitute to the open sky."
To prove that he was free the negro thought he must leave his old
master, change his name, quit work for a time, perhaps get a new wife,
and hang around the Federal soldiers in camp or garrison, or go to the
towns where the Freedmen's Bureau was in process of organization. To the
negroes who remained at home--and, curiously enough, for a time at least
many did so--the news of freedom was made known somewhat ceremonially by
the master or his representative. The negroes were summoned to the "big
house," told that they were free, and advised to stay on for a share of
the crop. The description by Mrs. Clayton, the wife of a Southern
general, will serve for many: "My husband said, 'I think it best for me
to inform our negroes of their freedom.' So he ordered all the grown
slaves to come to him, and told them they no longer belonged to him as
property, but were all free. 'You are not bound to remain with me any
longer, and I have a proposition to make to you. If any of you desire to
leave, I propose to furnish you with a conveyance to move you, and with
provisions for the balance of the year.' The universal answer was,
'Master, we want to stay right here with you.' In many instances the
slaves were so infatuated with the idea of being, as they said, 'free as
birds' that they left their homes and consequently suffered; but our
slaves were not so foolish." ¹
¹ Black and White under the Old Régime, p. 152,
The negroes, however, had learned of their freedom before their old
masters returned from the war; they were aware that the issues of the
war involved in some way the question of their freedom or servitude, and
through the "grape vine telegraph," the news brought by the invading
soldiers, and the talk among the whites, they had long been kept fairly
well informed. What the idea of freedom meant to the negroes it is
difficult to say. Some thought that there would be no more work and that
all would be cared for by the Government; others believed that education
and opportunity were about to make them the equal of their masters. The
majority of them were too bewildered to appreciate anything except the
fact that they were free from enforced labor.
Conditions were most disturbed in the so-called "Black Belt," consisting
of about two hundred counties in the most fertile parts of the South,
where the plantation system was best developed and where by far the
majority of the negroes were segregated. The negroes in the four hundred
more remote and less fertile "white" counties, which had been less
disturbed by armies, were not so upset by freedom as those of the Black
Belt, for the garrisons and the larger towns, both centers of
demoralization, were in or near the Black Belt. But there was a moving
to and fro on the part of those who had escaped from the South or had
been captured during the war or carried into the interior of the South
to prevent capture. To those who left slavery and home to find freedom
were added those who had found freedom and were now trying to get back
home or to get away from the negro camps and colonies which were
breaking up. A stream of immigration which began to flow to the
southwest affected negroes as far as the Atlantic coast. In the
confusion of moving, families were broken up, and children, wife, or
husband were often lost to one another. The very old people and the
young children were often left behind for the former master to care for.
Regiments of negro soldiers were mustered out in every large town and
their numbers were added to the disorderly mass. Some of the Federal
garrisons and Bureau stations were almost overwhelmed by the numbers of
blacks who settled down upon them waiting for freedom to bestow its full
measure of blessing, and many of the negroes continued to remain in a
demoralized condition until the new year.
The first year of freedom was indeed a year of disease, suffering, and
death. Several partial censuses indicate that in 1865-66 the negro
population lost as many by disease as the whites had lost in war.
Ill-fed, crowded in cabins near the garrisons or entirely without
shelter, and unaccustomed to caring for their own health, the blacks who
were searching for freedom fell an easy prey to ordinary diseases and to
epidemics. Poor health conditions prevailed for several years longer. In
1870 Robert Somers remarked that "the health of the whites has greatly
improved since the war, while the health of the negroes has declined
till the mortality of the colored population, greater than the mortality
of the whites was before the war, has now become so markedly greater,
that nearly two colored die for every white person out of equal numbers
of each."
Morals and manners also suffered under the new dispensation. In the
crowded and disease-stricken towns and camps, the conditions under which
the roving negroes lived were no better for morals than for health, for
here there were none of the restraints to which the blacks had been
accustomed and which they now despised as being a part of their
servitude. But in spite of all the relief that could be given there was
much want. In fact, to restore former conditions the relief agencies
frequently cut off supplies in order to force the negroes back to work
and to prevent others from leaving the country for the towns. But the
hungry freedmen turned to the nearest food supply, and "spilin de
gypshuns" (despoiling the Egyptians, as the negroes called stealing from
the whites) became an approved means of support. Thefts of hogs, cattle,
poultry, field crops, and vegetables drove almost to desperation those
whites who lived in the vicinity of the negro camps. When the ex-slave
felt obliged to go to town, he was likely to take with him a team and
wagon and his master's clothes if he could get them.
The former good manners of the negro were now replaced by impudence and
distrust. There were advisers among the negro troops and other agitators
who assured them that politeness to whites was a mark of servitude.
Pushing and crowding in public places, on street cars and on the
sidewalks, and impudent speeches everywhere marked generally the limit
of rudeness. And the negroes were, in this respect, perhaps no worse
than those European immigrants who act upon the principle that bad
manners are a proof of independence.
The year following emancipation was one of religious excitement for
large numbers of the blacks. Before 1865 the negro church members were
attached to white congregations or were organized into missions, with
nearly always a white minister in charge and a black assistant. With the
coming of freedom the races very soon separated in religious matters.
For this there were two principal reasons: the negro preachers could
exercise more influence in independent churches; and new church
organizations from the North were seeking negro membership. Sometimes
negro members were urged to insist on the "to sit together" with the
whites. In a Richmond church a negro from the street pushed his way to
the communion altar and knelt. There was a noticeable pause; then
General Robert E. Lee went forward and knelt beside the negro; and the
congregation followed his example. But this was a solitary instance.
When the race issue was raised by either color, the church membership
usually divided. There was much churchgoing by the negroes, day and
night, and church festivities and baptisms were common. The blacks
preferred immersion and wanted a new baptism each time they changed to a
new church. Baptizings in ponds, creeks, or rivers were great occasions
and were largely attended. "Shouting" the candidates went into the water
and "shouting" they came out. One old woman came up screaming, "Freed
from slavery! freed from sin! Bless God and General Grant!"
In the effort to realize their new-found freedom, the negroes were
heavily handicapped by their extreme poverty and their ignorance. The
total value of free negro property ran up into the millions in 1860, but
the majority of the negroes had nothing. There were a few educated
negroes in the South, and more in the North and in Canada, but the mass
of the race was too densely ignorant to furnish its own leadership. The
case, however, was not hopeless; the negro was able to work and in large
territories had little competition; wages were high, even though paid in
shares of the crop; the cost of living was low; and land was cheap.
Thousands seemed thirsty for an education and crowded the schools which
were available. It was too much, however, to expect the negro to take
immediate advantage of his opportunities. What he wanted was a long
holiday, a gun and a dog, and plenty of hunting and fishing. He must
have Saturday at least for a trip to town or to a picnic or a circus; he
did not wish to be a servant. When he had any money, swindlers reaped a
harvest. They sold him worthless finery, cheap guns, preparations to
bleach the skin or straighten the hair, and striped pegs which, when set
up on the master's plantation, would entitle the purchaser to "40 acres
and a mule."
The attitude of the negroes' employers not infrequently complicated the
situation which they sought to better. The old masters were, as a rule,
skeptical of the value of free negro labor. Carl Schurz thought this
attitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice,
or whatever you may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently
deeply rooted as this, that the negro will not work without physical
compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influence
upon the conduct of the people entertaining it. It naturally produced a
desire to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long as
possible ... or to introduce into the new system that element of
physical compulsion which would make the negro work."
The negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as
Benjamin C. Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result
of the settled belief in the negro's inferiority, and in the necessity
that he should not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in
some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master. I have
known of planters who considered it an offence against neighborhood
courtesy for another to hire their old hands, and in two instances that
were reported the disputants came to blows over the breach of
etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted upon written contracts,
except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept many negroes from
working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts. Besides, the
agitators and the negro troops led them to hope for an eventual
distribution of property. An Alabama planter thus described the
situation in December, 1865:
They will not work for anything but wages, and few are able to pay
wages. They are penniless but resolute in their demands. They expect to
see all the land divided out equally between them and their old masters
in time to make the next crop. One of the most intelligent black men I
know told me that in a neighboring village, where several hundred blacks
were congregated, he does not think that as many as three made
contracts, although planters are urgent in their solicitations and
offering highest prices for labor they can possibly afford to pay. The
same man informed me that the impression widely prevails that Congress
is about to divide out the lands, and that this impression is given out
by Federal soldiers at the nearest military station. It cannot be
disguised that in spite of the most earnest efforts of their old master
to conciliate and satisfy them, the estrangement between races increases
in its extent and bitterness. Nearly all the negro men are armed with
repeaters, and many of them carry them openly, day and night.
The relations between the races were better, however, than conditions
seemed to indicate. The whites of the Black Belt were better disposed
toward the negroes than were those of the white districts. It was in the
towns and villages that most of the race conflicts occurred. All whites
agreed that the negro was inferior, but there were many who were
grateful for his conduct during the war and who wished him well. But
others, the policemen of the towns, the "loyalists," those who had
little but pride of race and the vote to distinguish them from the
blacks, felt no good will toward the ex-slaves. It was Truman's opinion
"not only that the planters are far better friends to the negroes than
the poor whites, but also better than a majority of the Northern men who
go South to rent plantations." John T. Trowbridge, the novelist, who
recorded his impressions of the South after a visit in 1865, was of the
opinion that the Unionists "do not like niggers." "For there is," he
said, "more prejudice against color among the middle and poorer
classes--the Union men of the South who owned few or no slaves--than
among the planters who owned them by scores and hundreds." The reports
of the Freedmen's Bureau are to the same effect. A Bureau agent in
Tennessee testified: "An old citizen, a Union man, said to me, said he,
'I tell you what, if you take away the military from Tennessee, the
buzzards can't eat up the niggers as fast as we'll kill them.'"
The lawlessness of the negroes in parts of the Black Belt and the
disturbing influences of the black troops, of some officials of the
Bureau, and of some of the missionary teachers and preachers, caused the
whites to fear insurrections and to take measures for protection. Secret
semi-military organizations were formed which later developed into the
Ku Klux orders. When, however, New Year's Day, 1866 passed without the
hoped-for distribution of property the negroes began to settle down.
At the beginning of the period of reconstruction it seemed possible that
the negro race might speedily fall into distinct economic groups, for
there were some who had property and many others who had the ability and
the opportunity to acquire it; but the later drawing of race lines and
the political disturbances of reconstruction checked this tendency. It
was expected also that the Northern planters who came South in large
numbers in 1865-66 might, by controlling the negro labor and by the use
of more efficient methods, aid in the economic upbuilding of the
country. But they were ignorant of agricultural matters and incapable of
wisely controlling the blacks; and they failed because at one time they
placed too much trust in the negroes and at another treated them too
harshly and expected too much of them.
The question of negro suffrage was not a live issue in the South until
the middle of 1866. There was almost no talk about it among the negroes;
they did not know what it was. President Lincoln in 1864 and President
Johnson in 1865 had merely mentioned the subject, though Chief Justice
Chase and prominent radical members of Congress, as well as numerous
abolitionists, had framed a negro suffrage platform. But the Southern
whites, considering the matter an impossibility, gave it little
consideration. There was, however, both North and South, a tendency to
see a connection between the freedom of the negroes and their political
rights and thus to confuse civil equality with political and social
privileges. But the great masses of the whites were solidly opposed to
the recognition of negro equality in any form. The poorer whites,
especially the "Unionists" who hoped to develop an opposition party,
were angered by any discussion of the subject. An Alabama "Unionist," M.
J. Saffold, later prominent as a radical politician, declared to the
Joint Committee on Reconstruction: "If you compel us to carry through
universal suffrage of colored men ... it will prove quite an incubus
upon us in the organization of a national union party of white men; it
will furnish our opponents with a very effective weapon of offense
against us."
There were, however, some Southern leaders of ability and standing who,
by 1866, were willing to consider negro suffrage. These men, among them
General Wade Hampton of South Carolina and Governor Robert Patton of
Alabama, were of the slaveholding class, and they fully counted on being
able to control the negro's vote by methods similar to those actually
put in force a quarter of a century later. The negroes were not as yet
politically organized, were not even interested in politics, and the
master class might reasonably hope to regain control of them. Whitelaw
Reid published an interview with one of the Hamptons which describes the
situation exactly:
A brother of General Wade Hampton, the South Carolina Hotspur, was on
board. He saw no great objection to negro suffrage, so far as the whites
were concerned; and for himself, South Carolinian and secessionist
though he was, he was quite willing to accept it. He only dreaded its
effect on the blacks themselves. Hitherto they had in the main, been
modest and respectful, and mere freedom was not likely to spoil them.
But the deference to them likely to be shown by partisans eager for
their votes would have a tendency to uplift them and unbalance them.
Beyond this, no harm would be done the South by negro suffrage. The old
owners would cast the votes of their people almost as absolutely and
securely as they cast their own. If Northern men expected in this way to
build up a northern party in the South, they were gravely mistaken. They
would only be multiplying the power of the old and natural leaders of
Southern politics by giving every vote to a former slave. Heretofore
such men had served their masters only in the fields; now they would do
no less faithful service at the polls. If the North could stand it, the
South could. For himself, he should make no special objection to negro
suffrage as one of the terms of reorganization, and if it came, he did
not think the South would have much cause to regret it.
To sum up the situation at this time: the negro population at the close
of the war constituted a tremendous problem for those in authority. The
race was free, but without status, without leaders, without property,
and without education. Probably a fourth of them had some experience in
freedom before the Confederate armies surrendered, and the servitude of
the other three millions ended very quickly and without violence. But in
the Black Belt, where the bulk of the black population was to be found,
the labor system was broken up, and for several months the bewildered
freedmen wandered about or remained at home under conditions which were
bad for health, morals, and thrift. The Northern negroes did not furnish
the expected leadership for the race, and the more capable men in the
South showed a tendency to go North. The unsettled state of the negroes
and their expectation of receiving a part of the property of the whites
kept the latter uneasy and furnished the occasion of frequent conflicts.
Not the least of the unsettling influences at work upon the negro
population were the colored troops and the agitators furnished by the
Freedmen's Bureau, the missions, and the Bureau schools. But at the
beginning of the year 1866 the situation appeared to be clearing, and
the social and economic revolution seemed on the way to a quieter ending
than might have been expected.