Dixie After the War Part 14

Many families had arranged for a gradual emanc.i.p.ation, a fixed percentage of slaves being freed by each generation. By will and otherwise, they provided against division of families, an evil not peculiar to slavery, as immigrant ships of today, big foundling asylums, and train-loads of home-seeking children bear evidence.

But freedom as it came, was inversion, revolution. Whenever I pa.s.s "The House Upside Down" at a World's Fair, I am reminded of the South after freedom. In "South Carolina Women in the Confederacy,"[12] Mrs. Harby tells how Mrs. Postell Geddings was in the kitchen getting Dr. Geddings'

supper, while her maid, in her best silk gown, sat in the parlour and entertained Yankee officers. Charleston ladies cooked, swept, scrubbed, split wood, fed horses, milked and watered the cattle; while filling their own places as feminine heads of the house, they were servants-of-all-work and man of the house. Mrs. Crittendon gives an anecdote matching Mrs.

Geddings'. A Columbia lady saw in Sherman's motley train an old negress arrayed in her mistress' antiquated, ante-bellum finery, lolling on the cushions of her mistress' carriage, and fanning (in winter) with a huge ostrich-feather fan. "Why, Aunt Sallie, where are you going?" she called out impulsively. "Law, honey! I'se gwine right back intuh de Union!" and on rode Aunt Sallie, feathers and flowers on her enormous poke-bonnet all a-flutter.

Mrs. Jewett, of Stony Creek, saw her negro man walking behind the Yankee Army with her husband's suit of clothes done up in a red silk handkerchief and slung on a stick over his shoulder. Her two mulatto nurse-girls laid down their charges, attired themselves in her best apparel and went; her seamstress stopped sewing, jumped on a horse behind a soldier who invited her, and away she rode.

As victorious armies went through the country, they told the negroes, "You are free!" Negroes accepted the tidings in different ways. Old Aunt Hannah was not sure but that the a.s.surance was an insult. "Law, marster!" she said, "I ain' no free n.i.g.g.e.r! I is got a marster an' mistiss! Dee right dar in de great house. Ef you don' b'lieve me, you go dar an' see."

"You're a d----d fool!" he cried and rode on. "Sambo, you're free!" Some negroes picked up the master's saddle, flung it on the master's horse, jumped on his back and rode away with the Yankees. After every Yankee army swarmed a great black crowd on foot, men, women, and children. They had to be fed and cared for; they wearied their deliverers.

Yankees told my father's negroes they were free, but they did not accept the statement until "Ole Marster" made it. I remember the night. They were called together in the back yard--a great green s.p.a.ce with blossomy altheas and fruit-trees and tall oaks around, and the scent of honeysuckles and Sweet Betseys making the air fragrant. He stood on the porch beside a table with a candle on it. I, at his knee, looked up at him and out on the sea of uplifted black faces. Some carried pine torches. He read from a paper, I do not know what, perhaps the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation. They listened silently. Then he spoke, his voice trembling:

"You do not belong to me any more. You are free. You have been like my own children. I have never felt that you were slaves. I have felt that you were charges put into my hands by G.o.d and that I had to render account to Him of how I raised you, how I treated you. I want you all to do well. You will have to work, if not for me, for somebody else. Heretofore, you have worked for me and I have supported you, fed you, clothed you, given you comfortable homes, paid your doctors' bills, bought your medicines, taken care of your babies before they could take care of themselves; when you were sick, your mistress and I have nursed you; we have laid your dead away. I don't think anybody else can have the same feeling for you that she and I have. I have been trying to think out a plan for paying wages or a part of the crop that would suit us all; but I haven't finished thinking it out. I want to know what you think. Now, you can stay just as you have been staying and work just as you have been working, and we will plan together what is best. Or, you can go. My crops must be worked, and I want to know what arrangements to make. Ben! d.i.c.k! Moses! Abram! line up, everybody out there. As you pa.s.s this porch, tell me if you mean to stay; you needn't promise for longer than this year, you know. If you want to go somewhere else, say so--and no hard thoughts!"

The long line pa.s.sed. One and all they said: "I gwi stay wid you, Marster." A few put it in different words. Uncle Andrew, the dean of the body, with wool as white as snow, a widower who went sparking every Sunday in my grandfather's coat and my grandfather's silk hat, said: "Law, Marster! I ain' got nowhar tuh go ef I was gwine!" Some wiped their eyes, and my father had tears in his.

Next morning, old Uncle Eph, Andrew's mate, was missing; his aged wife was in great distress. She came to my father reproachfully: "Marster," she said, "I wish you wouldn' put all dat foolishness 'bout freedom in Eph's hade. He so ole I dunno what gwi become uh him 'long de road. When I wake up dis mo'nin', he done tied all his close up in his hankercher and done lit out." In a few days he returned, the b.u.t.t of the quarters for many a day. "I jes wanter see whut it feel lak tuh be free," he said, "an' I wanter to go back to Ole Marster's plantation whar I was born. It don'

look de same dar, an' I done see nuff uh freedom."

Presently my father was making out contracts and explaining them over and over; he would sign his name, the negro would make his mark, the witnesses sign; and the bond for a year's work and wages or part of the crop, was complete. At first, contracts had to be ratified by a Freedmen's Bureau agent, who charged master and servant each fifty cents or more. After one of our neighbours told his negroes they were free, they all promised to stay, as had ours. Next morning all but two were gone. In a few days all returned. The Bureau Agent had made them come back.

Many negroes leaving home fared worse than Uncle Eph. After the fall of Richmond, Mr. Hill, who had been a high official of the Confederacy, went back to his plantation, where he found but three negroes remaining, the rest having departed for Washington, the negro heaven. One of these, a man of seventy, said he must go, too. His ex-master could not dissuade him.

He was comfortably quartered and Mr. Hill told him he would be cared for the rest of his life. Nothing would do but he must sell his chickens and his little crop of tobacco to one of the other negroes and go. Mr. Hill gave him provisions for ten days, had the wagon hitched up and sent him to Culpeper, where he was to take the train. On Culpeper's outskirts was the usual collection of negroes, snack-house, bad whiskey, gambling, and kindred evils. Here Uncle John stopped. He had started with $15 cash. In less than a week his money was gone and he was thrown out on the common.

Mr. Hill, summoned before the Provost-Marshal on the charge of having driven Uncle John off, said: "The man sitting out there in my buggy can tell you whether I did that." The testimony of the black witness was conclusive, the Provost dismissed the case. Mr. Hill went to the commons.

Lying in the sun, stone-blind, was Uncle John. He raised his head and listened. "Mistuh, fuh Gawd's sake, please do suppin fuh me!" "Old man, why are you here?" "Lemme hear dat voice again!" "Uncle John!" "Bless de Lawd, Marster! you done come. Marster, a 'oman robbed me uf all I had an'

den th'owed me out. Fuh Gawd's sake, take me home!" "I will have you cared for tonight, and tomorrow I will come in the wagon for you." "Lawd, Marster, I sho is glad I gwine home! I kin res' easy in my min', now I _know_ I gwine home!"

Mr. Hill returned to the Provost: "I shall come or send for the old man tomorrow," he said. "Meanwhile, he must be cared for." The Provost was indifferent. This was one of many cases. "If you do not provide food and shelter for that negro," he was sharply a.s.sured, "I shall report you to the authorities at Washington." The Provost promised and sent two orderlies to attend to the matter. Next morning the master was back. The old man was dead. He had been put in the scale-house, an open shed. There, instead of in his old home surrounded by friends who loved him, Uncle John had breathed his last.

From many other stories, companions in pathos, I choose Mammy Lisbeth's.

Her son went with the Yankee army. She grieved for him till her mistress'

heart ached. The mistress returned one day from a visit to find Lisbeth much excited. "Law, Miss, I done hyerd f'om my chile!" "How, Mammy?" "A Yankee soldier come by an' I ax 'im is he seed my son whar he been goin'

'long? An' I tell 'im all 'bout how my chile look. An' he say he done been seen 'im. An' I say, 'Law, mister, ain't my chile gwi come home?' An' he gimme de answer: 'He can't come ef he ain' got no money.' An' I answer, 'Law, marster, I got a fi'-dollar gol' piece my ole miss dat's done dade gimme long time ago. Does you know any safe pa.s.sin'?' An' he answer, jes ez kin', how he gwine datter way hisse'f, an' he'll kyar it. I run in de house an' got dat fi'-dollar gol' piece an' gi' to 'im. An' now my chile's comin' home, Miss! my chile's comin' home! He say, 'In 'bout two weeks, you go to de kyars evvy day an' look fuh im.'" Her mistress had not the heart to tell her the man had robbed her. Never before had a white man robbed her; it was second nature to trust the white face.

"It is heart-breaking," her mistress wrote, "to see how she watches for him. She is at the depot every day, scanning the face of every coloured pa.s.senger getting off. I've been to the Bureau making inquiries. The Agent says if he could catch the rascal, the robber, he would string him up by the thumbs, but her description fits any strolling private. He says: 'Any woman who would trust a stranger so with her money deserves to be fooled.

I wouldn't trouble about it, Madam!' Yankees do not understand our coloured people and us. How can I help being troubled by anything that troubles Mammy Lisbeth?"

Here is another old letter: "Cousin mine: I came home from school a few days ago. Railroads all broken up and it took several days to make the journey in the carriage, stopping over-night along the route. At most houses, there was hardly anything to offer but shelter, but hospitality was perfect. Only cornbread and sa.s.safras tea at one place; no servants to render attention; silver gone; family portraits punctured with bayonets; furniture and mirrors broken. Reaching home, found everything strange because of great change in domestic regime. Our cook, who has reigned in our kitchen for thirty years, is in Richmond, coining money out of a restaurant. Most of our servants have gone to the city. Our old butler and Mammy abide. I think it would have killed me had Mammy gone!

"I cannot tell you how it oppressed me to miss the familiar black faces I have loved all my life, and to feel that our negroes cared so little for us, and left at the first invitation. I have something strange to tell you. Mammy has been free since before I was born. I never knew till now. I was utterly wretched, and exclaimed: 'Well, Mammy, I reckon you'll go too!' She took it as a deadly insult; I had to humble myself. While she was mad, the secret burst out: 'Ef I'd wanted to go, I could ha' gone long time ago. No Yankees sot me free! My marster sot me free.' She showed me her manumission papers in grandfather's hand, which she has worn for I don't know how long, in a little oil-silk bag around her neck, never caring to use them. Domestic cares are making me gray! But I get some fun trying to do things I never did before, while Mammy scolds me for 'demeaning' myself." There was honour in the "gritty" way the Southern housewife adapted herself to the situation, humour in the way spoiled maidens played the part of milkmaid or of Bridget.

"Do you know how to make lightbread?" one of our friends inquired, and proceeded to brag of her new accomplishments, adding: "I had never gotten a meal in my life until the morning after the Yankees pa.s.sed, when I woke to find not a single servant on the place. There was a lone cow left. I essayed to milk her, but retired in dire confusion. I couldn't make the milk go in the pail to save my life! It squirted in my face and eyes and all over my hair. The cow switched her tail around and cut my countenance, made demonstrations with her hind feet, and I retired. One of my daughters sat on the milking-stool and milked away as if she had been born to it."

"The first meal I got," another friend wrote, "my sons cooked. They learned how in the army. I thought the house was coming down while they were beating the biscuit! They drove me from the kitchen. 'We don't hate the Yankees for thrashing us,' they said, 'but G.o.d knows we hate them for turning our women into hewers of wood and drawers of water.' Now, I'm as good a cook as my boys. Can do everything domestic except kill a chicken.

I turn the chicken loose every time."

"I write in a merry vein," was another recital, "because it is no good to write in any other. But I have the heart-break over things. I see this big plantation, once so beautifully kept up, going to rack and ruin. I see the negroes I trained so carefully deteriorating every day. We suffer from theft, are humiliated by impertinence; and cannot help ourselves. Negroes call upon me daily for services that I, in Christian duty, must render whether I am able or not. And I cannot call upon them for one thing but I must pay twice over--and I have nothing to pay with. This is the first rule in their lesson of freedom--to get all they can out of white folks and give as little as possible in return."

Letters teemed with experiences like this: "We went to sleep one night with a plantation full of negroes, and woke to find not one on the place--every servant gone to Sherman in Atlanta. Negroes are camped out all around that city. We had thought there was a strong bond of affection on their side as well as ours! We have ministered to them in sickness, infancy, and age. But poor creatures! they don't know what freedom is, and they are crazy. They think it the opening of the door of Heaven. Some put me in mind of birds born and raised in a cage and suddenly turned loose and helpless; others, of hawks, minks and weasels, released to do mischief.

"We heard that there was much suffering in the camps; presently our negroes were all back, some ill from exposure. Maum Lucindy sent word for us to send for her, she was sick. Without a vehicle or team on the place, it looked like an impossible proposition, but my little boys patched up the relics of an old cart, borrowed the only steer in the neighbourhood, and got Maum Lucindy back. The raiders swept us clean of everything. We are unable to feed ourselves. How we shall feed and clothe the negroes when we cannot make them work, I do not know."

My cousin, Mrs. Meredith, of Brunswick, Virginia, congratulated herself, when only one of her servants deserted his post to join Sheridan's trail of camp-followers. A week after Simeon's departure, she woke one morning to discover that six women had decamped, one leaving her two little children in her cabin from which came pitiful wails of "Mammy!" "Mammy!"

Simeon had come in the night, and related of Black's and White's (now Blackstone) where a garrison had been established, that calico dresses were as plentiful as leaves on trees and that coloured women were parading the streets with white soldiers for beaux. My cousin, Mrs. White, said a whole wagon-load of negro women pa.s.sed her house going to Blackstone, and that one of them insisted upon presenting her with a four-year-old child, declaring it too much trouble. It was not an unknown thing for negro mothers to leave their children along the roadsides.

Blackstone drew recruits until there was just one woman-servant remaining with the Merediths. Why she stayed was a mystery, but as she was "the only pebble on the beach," everything was done to make home attractive. One day she asked permission (why, could not be imagined) to go visiting. She did not return. Shortly, Captain Meredith was haled before the Freedmen's Bureau at Black's and White's to answer the charge of thrashing Viny.

Marched into court, he took a chair. "Get up," said the Bureau Agent, "and give the lady a seat." He rose, and Viny dropped into it. She was shamefaced and brazen by turns; finally, burst into tears and begged "Mars Tawm's" pardon, saying she had brought the charge because she had "no 'scuse for leavin'" and had to invent one; "nevver knowed Mars Tawm was gwi be brung in cote 'bout it."

The early stirrings of the social equality problem were curious.

Adventurous Aunt Susan tried the experiment of "eatin' wid white folks."

She was bursting to tell us about it, yet loath to reveal her degradation--"White folks dat'll eat wid me ain't fitten fuh me to eat wid," being the negro position. "But dese folks was rale quality, Miss,"

Susan said when murder was out. "I kinder skittish when dee fus' ax me to set down wid 'em. I couldn' eat na'er mouthful wid white folks a-lookin'

at me an' a rale nice white gal handin' vittles. An' presen'ly, mum, ef I didn' see dat white gal settin' in de kitchen eatin' her vittles by herse'f. Rale nice white gal! I say, 'Hucc.u.m you didn' eat wid tur white folks?' She say, 'I de servant.'"

Mrs. Betts, of Halifax (Va.), was in her kitchen, her cook, who was in her debt, having failed to put in an appearance. The cook's husband approached the verandah and requested a dollar. "Where is Jane?" he was asked. "Why hasn't she been here to do her work?" "She are keepin' parlour." "What is that?" "Settin' up in de house hol'in' her han's. De Civilise Bill done been fulfill an' n.i.g.g.e.rs an' white folks jes alike now."

Coloured applicant for menial position would say to the door-opener: "Tell dat white 'oman in dar a cullud lady out here want to hire." "De cullud lady" was capricious. My sister in Atlanta engaged one for every day in one month, in fact, engaged more than that average, engaged every one applying, hoping if ten promised to come in time to get breakfast, one might appear.

With two hundred black trial justices, South Carolina had more than her share of funny happenings, as of tragic. A gentleman who had to appear before some tribunal, wrote us: "Whom do you suppose I found in the seat of law? Pete, my erstwhile stable-boy. He does not know A from Z, had not the faintest idea of what was to be done. 'Mars Charles,' he said, 'you jes fix 'tup, please, suh. You jes write down whut you think orter be wroted, an' I'll put my mark anywhar you tell me.'"

Into a store in Wilmington sauntered a sable alderman whom the merchant had known from boyhood as "Sam." "What's the matter with Sam?" the merchant asked as Sam stalked out. Soon, Sam stalked back. "Suh, you didn'

treat me wid proper respecks." "How, Sam?" "You called me 'Sam,' which my name is Mr. Gary." "You're a d----d fool! There's the door!" Gary had the merchant up in the mayor's court. "What's the trouble?" asked the mayor.

"Dis man consulted me." "You ought to feel flattered! What did he do to you?" "He called me 'Sam,' suh." "Ain't that your name?" "My name's Mr.

Gary." "Ain't it Sam, too?" "Yessuh, but--" "Well, there ain't any law to compel a man to call another 'Mister.' Case dismissed." "Dar gwi be a law 'bout dat," muttered Sam.

Washington was the place of miracles. When Uncle Peter went there, some tricksters told him his wool could be made straight and his colour changed--"Said dee could make it jes lak white folks' ha'r," he informed his mistress mournfully, when he had paid the price--nearly his entire capital--and returned home with flaming red wool. His wife did not know him, or pretended not to, and drove him out of the house. He appealed to his mistress and she made Manda behave herself.

"Ole Miss," asked my mother's little handmaiden, "now, I'se free, is I gwi tu'n white lak white folks?" "You must not be ashamed of the skin G.o.d gave you, Patsy," said her mistress kindly. "Your skin is all right." "But I druther be white, Ole Miss." And there was something pathetic in the aspiration.

Some of the older and more intelligent blacks held their children back from doffing with undignified haste old ways for new. But in most cases, the Simian quality showed itself promptly ascendant. Negroes did things they saw white people do, not because these things were right or seemly, but because white people did them, selecting for imitation trifles in conduct which they thought marked the social dividing line between white and black. As, for instance, they dropped the old sweet "Daddy" and "Mammy" for the dreadful "Pa" and "Ma," or the infantile "Popper" and "Mommer" which white people inflict upon parents. It would be laughable to hear a big buck negro addressing his sire as "Popper."

I have seen in a Southern street-car all blacks sitting and all whites standing; have seen a big black woman enter a car and flounce herself down almost into the lap of a white man; have seen white ladies pushed off sidewalks by black men. The new manners of the blacks were painful, revolting, absurd. The freedman's misbehaviour was to be condoned only by pity that accepted his inferiority as excuse. Southerners had taken great pains and pride in teaching their negroes good manners; they wanted them to be courtly and polished, and it must be said for the negroes, they took polish well. It was with keen regret that their old preceptors saw them throw all their fine schooling in etiquette to the winds.

Interest in and affection for negroes made these new manners the more obnoxious. Here, in one woman's statement, is the point ill.u.s.trated: "I considered Mammy part of our family; my family pride would have been aggrieved, I would have tingled with mortification, to see her so far forget what was due herself as to push herself into places where she was not wanted. These are things she could not possibly do of herself, her own good taste, perfect breeding, and st.u.r.dy self-respect forbidding. But her husband and son quickly succ.u.mbed to the demoralisation of freedom and were vulgar and troublesome; we were in fear and trembling lest they should lead her into some situation in church, theatre, or car, where she would find herself conspicuous and from which she would not know how to withdraw until officially escorted out in the midst of trouble created by her men."

Many worthy negroes, the old, infirm and children, lost needed protection.

Negroes had not been permitted to get drunk--except around corn-shucking and Christmas. There was no such restraint now. Formerly, a negro, if so disposed, could not beat his child unmercifully. Now, women and children might feel a heavy hand unknown before. White people might not interfere in family disputes as formerly, though they continued, at personal risk, to do what they could. A case in point was that of Mr. R., a respected merchant of Petersburg, who ejected his cook's drunken husband from the kitchen where the brute was cruelly maltreating her. The old gentleman was arrested and marched through the streets, as I have been told, by negro sergeants to trial before a negro magistrate.

A characteristic common to uncultured motherhood is over-indulgence and over-severity by turns. When provoked, the negro mother would descend like a fury upon her offspring, beating it as a former master would never have suffered her to abuse his property. A word or suggestion from a white would bring fresh blows upon the luckless wight, the mother thinking thus to demonstrate independence and ownership.

Under freedom, negroes developed bodily ills from which they had seemed immune. A consumptive of the race was rarely heard of before freedom.

After freedom, they began to die of pulmonary complaints. There were frequent epidemics of typhoid fever, quarters not being well kept. "The race is dying out," said prophets. Negroes began to grow mad. An insane negro was rarely heard of during slavery. Regular hours, regular work, chiefly out of doors, sobriety, freedom from care and responsibility, had kept the negro singularly exempt from insanity and various other afflictions that curse the white. Big lunatic asylums established for negroes soon after the war and their continual enlargement tell their own story.[13]

Freedom broke up families. Under stress of temptation, the young and strong deserted the aged, the feeble, the children, leaving these to shift for themselves or to remain a burden upon a master or mistress themselves impoverished and, perhaps, old and infirm.

In the face of so much distraction, demoralisation and disorder, the example of those negroes who were not affected by it shines out with greater clearness as witness for the best that is in the race. Thousands stood steadfastly to their posts, superior to temptations which might have shaken white people, performing their duties faithfully, caring for their children, sick and aged, shirking no debt of love and grat.i.tude to past owners. Some negroes still live in families for which their ancestors worked, the bond of centuries never having been broken.