The Changing South
"The bottom rail is on top" was a phrase which had flashed throughout
the late Confederate States. It had been coined by the negroes in 1867
to express their view of the situation, but its aptness had been
recognized by all. After ten years of social and economic revolution,
however, it was not so clear that the phrase of 1867 correctly described
the new situation. "The white man made free" would have been a more
accurate epitome, for the white man had been able, in spite of his
temporary disabilities, to compete with the negro in all industries.
It will be remembered that the negro districts were least exposed to the
destruction of war. The well-managed plantation, lying near the highways
of commerce, with its division of labor, nearly or quite self-sufficing,
was the bulwark of the Confederacy. When the fighting ended, an
industrial revolution began in these untouched parts of the Black Belt.
The problem of free negro labor now appeared. During the year 1865 no
general plan for a labor system was formulated except by the Freedmen's
Bureau. That, however, was not a success. There were all sorts of
makeshifts, such as cash wages, deferred wages, coöperation, even
sharing of expense and product, and contracts, either oral or written.
The employers showed a disposition to treat the negro family as a unit
in making contracts for labor, wages, food, clothes, and care. ¹ In
general these early arrangements were made to transform slavery with its
mutual duties and obligations into a free labor system with wages and
"privileges." The "privileges" of slavery could not be destroyed; in
fact, they have never yet been destroyed in numerous places. Curious
demands were made by the negroes: here, farm bells must not ring; there,
overseers or managers must be done away with; in some places plantation
courts were to settle matters of work, rent, and conduct; elsewhere,
agreements were made that on Saturday the laborer should be permitted to
go to town and, perhaps, ride a mule or horse. In South Carolina the Sea
Island negroes demanded that in laying out work the old "tasks" or
"stints" of slavery days be retained as the standard. The farming
districts at the edge of the Black Belt, where the races were about
equal in numbers, already had a kind of "share system," and in these
sections the economic chaos after the war was not so complete. The
former owners worked in the field with their ex-slaves and thus provided
steady employment for many. Farms were rented for a fixed sum of money,
or for a part of the crop, or on "shares."
¹ J. D. B. De Bow, the economist, testified before the Joint Committee
on Reconstruction that, if the negro would work, free labor would be
better for the planters than slave labor. He called attention to the
fact, however, that negro women showed a desire to avoid field labor,
and there is also evidence to show that they objected to domestic
service and other menial work.
The white districts, which had previously fought a losing competition
with the efficiently managed and inexpensive slave labor of the Black
Belt, were affected most disastrously by war and its aftermath. They
were distant from transportation lines and markets; they employed poor
farming methods; they had no fertilizers; they raised no staple crops on
their infertile land; and in addition they now had to face the
destitution that follows fighting. Yet these regions had formerly been
almost self-supporting, although the farms were small and no elaborate
labor system had been developed.
In the planting districts where the owner was land-poor he made an
attempt to bring in Northern capital and Northern or foreign labor. In
the belief that the negroes would work better for a Northern man, every
planter who could do so secured a Northern partner or manager,
frequently a soldier. Nevertheless these imported managers nearly always
failed because they did not understand cotton, rice, or sugar planting,
and because they were either too severe or too easy upon the blacks.
No Northern labor was to be had, and the South could not retain even all
its own native whites. Union soldiers and others seeking to better their
prospects moved west and northwest to fill the newly opened lands, while
the Confederates, kept out of the homestead region by the test oath,
swarmed into Texas, which owned its own public lands, or went North to
other occupations. Nor could the desperate planters hire foreign
immigrants. Several States, among them South Carolina, Alabama, and
Louisiana, advertised for laborers and established labor bureaus, but
without avail. The negro politicians in 1867 declared themselves opposed
to all movements to foster immigration. So in the Black Belt the negro
had, for forty years, a monopoly of farm labor.
The share system of tenantry, with its attendant evils of credit and
crop lien, was soon established in the Southern States, mainly in the
Black Belt, but to some extent also in the white districts. The landlord
furnished land, house, fuel, water, and all or a part of the seed,
fertilizer, farm implements, and farm animals. In return he received a
"half," or a "third and fourth," his share depending upon how much he
had furnished. The best class of tenants would rent for cash or a fixed
rental, the poorest laborers would work for wages only.
The "privileges" brought over from slavery, which were included in the
share renting, astonished outside observers. To the laborer was usually
given a house, a water supply, wood for fuel, pasture for pigs or cows,
a "patch" for vegetables and fruit, and the right to hunt and fish.
These were all that some needed in order to live. Somers, the English
traveler already quoted, pronounced this generous custom "outrageously
absurd," for the negroes had so many privileges that they refused to
make use of their opportunities. "The soul is often crushed out of labor
by penury and oppression," he said, "but here a soul cannot begin to be
infused into it through the sheer excess of privilege and license with
which it is surrounded."
The credit system which was developed beside the share system made a bad
condition worse. On the 1st of January, a planter could mortgage his
future crop to a merchant or landlord in exchange for subsistence until
the harvest. Since, as a rule, neither tenant nor landlord had any
surplus funds, the latter would be supplied by the banker or banker
merchant, who would then dictate the crops to be planted and the time of
sale. As a result of these conditions, the planter or farmer was held to
staple crops, high prices for necessities, high interest rate, and
frequently unfair bookkeeping. The system was excellent for a thrifty,
industrious, and intelligent man, for it enabled him to get a start. It
worked to the advantage of a bankrupt landlord, who could in this way
get banking facilities. But it had a mischievous effect upon the average
tenant, who had too small a share of the crop to feel a strong sense of
responsibility as well as too many "privileges" and too little
supervision to make him anxious to produce the best results.
The negroes entered into their freedom with several advantages: they
were trained to labor; they were occupying the most fertile soil and
could purchase land at low prices; the tenant system was most liberal;
cotton, sugar, and rice were bringing high prices; and access to markets
was easy. In the white districts land was cheap, and prices of
commodities were high, but otherwise the negroes seemed to have the
better position. Yet as early as 1870, keen observers called attention
to the fact that the hill and mountain whites were thriving as compared
with their former condition, and that the negroes were no longer their
serious competitors. In the white districts better methods were coming
into use, labor was steady, fertilizers were used, and conditions of
transportation were improving. The whites were also encroaching on the
Black Belt; they were opening new lands in the Southwest; and within the
border of the Black Belt they were bringing negro labor under some
control. In the South Carolina rice lands, crowds of Irish were imported
to do the ditching which the negroes refused to do and were carried back
North when the job was finished. ¹ President Thach of the Alabama
Agricultural College has thus described the situation:
By the use of commercial fertilizers, vast regions once considered
barren have been brought into profitable cultivation, and really afford
a more reliable and constant crop than the rich alluvial lands of the
old slave plantations. In nearly every agricultural county in the South
there is to be observed, on the one hand, this section of fertile soils,
once the heart of the old civilization, now abandoned by the whites,
held in tenantry by a dense negro population, full of dilapidation and
ruin; while on the other hand, there is the region of light, thin soils,
occupied by the small white freeholder, filled with schools, churches,
and good roads, and all the elements of a happy, enlightened country
life.
¹ The Census of 1880 gave proof of the superiority of the whites in
cotton production. For purposes of comparison the cotton area may be
divided into three regions: first, the Black Belt, in which the farmers
were black, the soil fertile, the plantations large, the credit evil at
its worst, and the yield of cotton per acre the least; second, the white
districts, where the soil was the poorest, the farms small, the workers
nearly all white, and the yield per acre better than on the fertile
Black Belt lands; third, the regions in which the races were nearly
equal in numbers or where the whites were in a slight majority, with
soil of medium fertility, good methods of agriculture, and, owing to
better controlled labor, the best yield. In other words, negroes,
fertile soil, and poor crops went together; and on the other hand the
whites got better crops on less fertile soil. The Black Belt has never
again reached the level of production it had in 1860. But the white
district kept improving slowly.
All the systems devised for handling negro labor proved to be only
partially successful. The laborer was migratory, wanted easy work, with
one or two holidays a week, and the privilege of attending political
meetings, camp meetings, and circuses. A thrifty negro could not make
headway because his fellows stole from him or his less energetic
relations and friends visited him and ate up his substance. One Alabama
planter declared that he could not raise a turkey, a chicken, a hog, or
a cow; and another asserted that "a hog has no more chance to live among
these thieving negro farmers than a June bug in a gang of puddle ducks."
Lands were mortgaged to the supply houses in the towns, the whites
gradually deserted the country, and many rice and cotton fields grew up
in weeds. Crop stealing at night became a business which no legislation
could ever completely stop.
A traveler has left the following description of "a model negro farm" in
1874. The farmer purchased an old mule on credit and rented land on
shares or for so many bales of cotton; any old tools were used; corn,
bacon, and other supplies were bought on credit, and a crop lien was
given; a month later, corn and cotton were planted on soil that was not
well broken up; the negro "would not pay for no guano" to put on other
people's land; by turns the farmer planted and fished, plowed and
hunted, hoed and frolicked, or went to "meeting." At the end of the year
he sold his cotton, paid part of his rent and some of his debt, returned
the mule to its owner, and sang:
Nigger work hard all de year,
White man tote de money.
The great landholdings did not break up into small farms as was
predicted, though sales were frequent and in 1865 enormous amounts of
land were put on the market. After 1867, additional millions of acres
were offered at small prices, and tax and mortgage sales were numerous.
The result of these operations, however, was a change of landlords
rather than a breaking up of large plantations. New men, negroes,
merchants, and Jews became landowners. The number of small farms
naturally increased but so in some instances did the land concentrated
into large holdings.
It was inevitable that conditions of negro life should undergo a
revolutionary change during the reconstruction. The serious matter of
looking out for himself and his family and of making a living dampened
the negro's cheerful spirits. Released from the discipline of slavery
and often misdirected by the worst of teachers, the negro race naturally
ran into excesses of petty criminality. Even under the reconstruction
governments the proportion of negro to white criminals was about ten to
one. Theft was frequent; arson was the accepted means of revenge on
white people; and murder became common in the brawls of the city negro
quarters. The laxness of the marriage relation worked special hardship
on the women and children in so many cases deserted by the head of the
family.
Out of the social anarchy of reconstruction the negroes emerged with
numerous organizations of their own which may have been imitations of
the Union League, the Lincoln Brotherhood, and the various church
organizations. These societies were composed entirely of blacks and have
continued with prolific reproduction to the present day. They were
characterized by high names, gorgeous regalia, and frequent parades.
"The Brothers and Sisters of Pleasure and Prosperity" and the "United
Order of African Ladies and Gentlemen" played a large, and on the whole
useful, part in negro social life, teaching lessons of thrift,
insurance, coöperation, and mutual aid.
The reconstructionists were not able in 1867-68 to carry through
Congress any provision for the social equality of the races, but in the
reconstructed States the equal rights issue was alive throughout the
period. Legislation giving to the negro equal rights in hotels, places
of amusements, and common carriers, was first enacted in Louisiana and
South Carolina. Frequently the carpetbaggers brought up the issue in
order to rid the radical ranks of the scalawags who were opposed to
equal rights. In Florida, for example, the carpetbaggers framed a
comprehensive Equal Rights Law, passed it, and presented it to Governor
Reed, who was known to be opposed to such legislation. He vetoed the
measure and thus lost the negro support. Intermarriage with whites was
made legal in Louisiana and South Carolina and by court decision was
permitted in Alabama and Mississippi, but the Georgia Supreme Court held
it to be illegal. Mixed marriages were few, but these were made
occasions of exultation over the whites and of consequent ill feeling.
Charles Sumner was a persistent agitator for equal rights. In 1871 he
declared in a letter to a South Carolina negro convention that the race
must insist not only upon equality in hotels and on public carriers but
also in the schools. "It is not enough," he said, "to provide separate
accommodations for colored citizens even if in all respects as good as
those of other persons.... The discrimination is an insult and a
hindrance, and a bar, which not only destroys comfort and prevents
equality, but weakens all other rights. The right to vote will have new
security when your equal right in public conveyances, hotels, and common
schools, is at last established; but here you must insist for yourselves
by speech, petition, and by vote." The Southern whites began to develop
the "Jim Crow" theory of "separate but equal" accommodations. Senator
Hill of Georgia, for example, thought that hotels might have separate
divisions for the two races, and he cited the division in the churches
as proof that the negro wanted separation.
About 1874, it was plain that the last radical Congress was nearly ready
to enact social equality legislation. This fact turned many of the
Southern Unionist class back to the Democratic party, there to remain
for a long time. In 1875, as a sort of memorial to Sumner, Congress
passed the Civil Rights Act, which gave to negroes equal rights in
hotels, places of amusement, on public carriers, and on juries. Some
Democratic leaders were willing to see such legislation enacted, because
in the first place, it would have little effect except in the Border and
Northern States, where it would turn thousands into the Democratic fold,
and in the second place, because they were sure that in time the Supreme
Court would declare the law unconstitutional. And so it happened.
In regions where the more unprincipled radical leaders were in control,
the whites lived at times in fear of negro uprisings. The negroes were
armed and insolent, and the whites were few and widely scattered. Here
and there outbreaks occurred and individual whites and isolated families
suffered, but as a rule all such movements were crushed with much
heavier loss to the negroes than to the better organized whites.
Nevertheless everlasting apprehension for the safety of women and
children kept the white men nervous. General Garnett Andrews remarked
about the situation in Mississippi:
I have never suffered such an amount of anguish and alarm in all my
life. I have served through the whole war as a soldier in the army of
Northern Virginia, and saw all of it; but I never did experience ... the
fear and alarm and sense of danger which I felt that time. And this was
the universal feeling among the population, among the white people. I
think that both sides were alarmed and felt uneasy. It showed itself
upon the countenance of the people; it made many of them sick. Men
looked haggard and pale, after undergoing this sort of thing for six
weeks or a month, and I have felt when I laid [sic] down that neither
myself, nor my wife and children were in safety. I expected, and
honestly anticipated, and thought it highly probable, that I might be
assassinated and my house set on fire at any time.
By the fires of reconstruction the whites were fused into a more
homogeneous society, social as well as political. The former
slaveholding class continued to be more considerate of the negro than
were the poor whites; but, as misrule went on, all classes tended to
unite against the negro in politics. They were tired of reconstruction,
new amendments, force bills, Federal troops--tired of being ruled as
conquered provinces by the incompetent and the dishonest. Every measure
aimed at the South seemed to them to mean that they were considered
incorrigible and unworthy of trust, and that they were being made to
suffer for the deeds of irresponsible whites. And, to make matters
worse, strong opposition to proscriptive measures was called fresh
rebellion. "When the Jacobins say and do low and bitter things, their
charge of want of loyalty in the South because our people grumble back a
little seems to me as unreasonable as the complaint of the little boy:
'Mamma, make Bob 'have hisself. He makes mouths at me every time I hit
him with my stick.'" ¹
¹ Usually ascribed to General D. H. Hill of North Carolina, and quoted
in The Land We Love, vol. 1, p. 146.
Probably this burden fell heavier on the young men, who had life before
them and who were growing up with diminished opportunities. Sidney
Lanier, then an Alabama school-teacher, wrote to Bayard Taylor: "Perhaps
you know that with us of the young generation in the South, since the
war, pretty much the whole of life has been merely not dying." Negro and
alien rule was a constant insult to the intelligence of the country. The
taxpayers were nonparticipants in the affairs of government. Some people
withdrew entirely from public life, went to their farms or plantations,
kept away from towns and from speechmaking, waiting for the end to come.
There were some who refused for several years to read the newspapers, so
unpleasant was the news. The good feeling produced by the magnanimity of
Grant at Appomattox was destroyed by the severity of his Southern policy
when he became President. There was no gratitude for any so-called
leniency of the North, no repentance for the war, no desire for
humiliation, for sackcloth and ashes, and no confession of wrong. The
insistence of the radicals upon obtaining a confession of depravity only
made things much worse. Scarcely a measure of Congress during
reconstruction was designed or received in a conciliatory spirit.
The new generation of whites was poor, bitter because of persecution,
ill educated, overworked, without a bright future, and shadowed by the
race problem. Though their new political leaders were shrewd, narrow,
conservative, honest, and parsimonious, the constant fighting of fire
with fire scorched all. In the bitter discipline of reconstruction, the
pleasantest side of Southern life came to an end. During the war and the
consequent reconstruction there was a marked change in Southern
temperament toward the severe. Hospitality declined; the old Southern
life had never been on a business basis, but the new Southern life now
adjusted itself to a stricter economy; the old individuality was
partially lost; but class distinctions were less obvious in a more
homogeneous society. The material evils of reconstruction may be only
temporary; state debts may be paid and wasted resources renewed; but the
moral and intellectual results of the revolution will be the more
permanent.