Dixie After the War Part 22

A garrulous negress was entertaining one of these women with hair-raising accounts of cruelties practiced upon her by whites when, as a slave, she cooked for them. The schoolmarm asked: "Why didn't you black people poison all the whites and get your freedom that way? You're the most patient people on earth or you would have done so." A "mammy" who overheard administered a stinging rebuke: "Dat would ha' been a sin even ef our white folks wuz ez mean ez Sukey Ann been tellin'. Mine wuz good tuh me.

Sukey Ann jes been tellin' you dem tales tuh see how she kin wuk you up."

Perhaps the school-teacher had not meant to be taken more literally than Sukey Ann deserved to be.

Until freedom, white and black children could hardly be kept apart. Boys ran off fishing and rabbit-hunting together; girls played dolls in the garret of the great house or in a sunny corner of the woodpile. They rarely quarrelled. The black's adoration of the white, the white's desire to be allowed to play with the black, stood in the way of conflict. An early result of the social equality doctrine was war between children of the races. Such strife was confined almost wholly to white and black schools in towns, where black and white children were soon ready to "rock"

each other. A spirit of dislike and opposition to blacks, which their elders could hardly understand, having never experienced it, began to take possession of white children. The following story will give some idea of these dawning manifestations of race prejudice:

Negro and white schools were on opposite sides of the street in Petersburg, the former a Freedmen's Bureau inst.i.tution, the latter a private school taught by a very youthful ex-Confederate, Captain M., who, though he looked like a boy himself, had made, after a brilliant university course, a shining war record. The negro boys, stimulated by the example of their elders who were pushing whites off the sidewalks, and excited by ill-timed discourses by their imported white pedagogue, "sa.s.sed" the white boys, contended with them for territory, or aggravated them in some way. A battle ensued, in which the white children ran the black off the street and into their own schoolhouse, the windows of which were damaged by rocks, the only serious mischief resulting from exchange of projectiles.

In short order six Federal soldiers with bayonets fixed marched into the white schoolhouse, where the Captain was presiding over his cla.s.ses, brought by this time to a proper sense of penitence and due state of order, their preceptor being a military disciplinarian. The invading squad came to capture the children. The Captain indignantly protested, saying he was responsible for his boys; it was sufficient to serve warrant on him, he would answer for them; it was best not to make a mountain out of a mole-hill and convulse the town with a children's quarrel. The sergeant paid him scant courtesy and arrested the children. The Captain donned his old Confederate overcoat, than which he had no other, and marched down the street with his boys to the Provost's office.

The Provost, a soldier and a gentleman, after examining into the case and considering the small culprits, all ranged in a terrified row and not knowing but that they would be blown next moment into Paradise or the other place, asked the Captain if he would guarantee that his children would keep the peace. The Captain a.s.sured him that he could and would if the teacher of the coloured boys would keep his charges in bounds, adding that he would have the windows repaired at his expense. The Provost accepted this pledge, and with a withering look at the pedagogic complainant, said to the arresting officer: "Sergeant, I am sorry it was necessary to send six armed men to arrest these little boys." This happened at ten o'clock in the morning. Before ten that night the Provost was removed by orders from Washington. So promptly had complaint been entered against him that he was too lenient to whites, so quickly had it taken effect! Yet his course was far more conservative of the public peace than would have been the court-martialing of the children of prominent citizens of the town, and the stirring-up of white and black parents against each other.

"It's no harm for a hungry coloured man to make a raid on a chicken-coop or corn-pile," thus spoke Carpet-Bagger Crockett in King William County, Virginia, June, 1869, in the Walker-Wells campaign, at a meeting opened with prayer by Rev. Mr. Collins, Northern missionary. Like sentiment was p.r.o.nounced in almost the same words by a carpet-bag officer of state, a loud advocate of negro education, from the steps of the State House in Florida. Like sentiment was taught in direct and indirect ways by no small number of preceptors in negro schoolhouses.

A South Carolina schoolmarm, after teaching her term out at a fat salary, made of her farewell a "celebration" with songs, recitations, etc.; the scholars pa.s.sed in procession before the platform, she kissed each, and to each handed a photograph of herself for $1. She carried off a harvest.

Various other small ways of levying tribute were practiced by the thoughtless or the unscrupulous; and negroes pilfered to meet demands.

Schoolmarms and masters did not always teach for sweet charity's sake.

With moving stories some drew heavily upon the purse of the generous North for contributions which were not exactly applied to the negro's relief or profit. In order to attract Northern teachers to Freedmen's schools in Mississippi salaries were paid out of all proportion to their services or to the people's ability to pay. "Examinations for teachers' licenses were not such as to ascertain the real fitness of applicants or conduce to a high standard of scholarship," says James Wilford Garner in "Reconstruction in Mississippi." "They were asked a few oral questions by the superintendent in his private office and the certificate granted as a matter of course."

"While the average pay of the teachers in Northern schools is less than $300 a year, salaries here range from $720 to $1,920," said Governor Alcorn to the Mississippi Legislature in 1871. The old log schoolhouses were torn down by the reconstructionists, new and costly frame and brick ones built; and elegant desks and handsome chairs, "better suited to the academy than the common school," displaced equipments that had been good enough for many a great American's intellectual start in life. In Monroe County, schoolhouses which citizens offered free of charge were rejected and new ones built; teachers' salaries ranged from $50 to $150 a month; schools were multiplied; heavy special taxes were levied. In Lowndes, a special tax of $95,000 over and above the regular tax for education was levied. Taxpayers protested in formal meetings. The Ku Klux whipped several male teachers, one an ex-Confederate, and warned a schoolmarm or two to leave. Expenses came down.

What was true of one Southern State was true of others where costly educational machinery and a peculative system covering "deals" and "jobs"

in books, furniture, schoolhouse construction, etc., were imposed.

Whippings with which Ku Klux visited a few male teachers and school directors here and there, and warnings to leave served upon others of both s.e.xes, were, in most cases, protests--and the only effective protests impoverished and tax-ridden communities could make--against waste of public funds, peculation, subordination of the teacher's office to that of political emissary, Loyal League organizer, inculcator of social equality doctrines and race hatred. Some whippings were richly deserved by those who got them, some were not; some which were richly deserved were never given. It was not always Ku Klux that gave the whippings, but their foes, footing up sins to their account. It became customary for white communities to a.s.semble and condemn violence, begging their own people to have no part in it.

I have known many instances where Southern clergy maintained friendly relations with schoolmarms, aiding them, operating with them, lending them sympathy, thinking their methods often wrong, but accepting their earnestness and devotion and sacrifice at its full value. I have heard Southerners speak of faculties of certain inst.i.tutions thus: "Those teachers came down here in the spirit that missionaries go to a foreign land, expecting persecution and ostracism, and prepared to bear it." I have deeply respected the lovely and exalted character of some schoolmarms I have personally known, who suffered keenly the isolation and loneliness of their position; to missionaries and teachers of this type, I have seen the Southern att.i.tude change as their quality was learned. I have seen munic.i.p.al boards helping with appropriations Northern workers among negroes, while these workers were ungraciously charging them with race prejudice. And I have seen the att.i.tude of such workers gradually change towards their white neighbours as they understood our white and black people better.

Early experiments must have sometimes perplexed the workers. Negroes had confused ideas of education. Thus, a negress who did not know the English alphabet, went to a teacher in Savannah and demanded to be taught French right off. Others simply demanded "to know how to play de pianner." The ma.s.s were eager for "book-learnin'." Southerners who had been trying to instruct indifferent little negroes beheld with curiosity this sudden and intense yearning when "education" was held up as a forbidden fruit of the past.

It has been said that Southern whites would not at first teach in the negro schools. "Rebels" were not invited and would not have been allowed to teach in Bureau schools. Reconstructionists preferred naturally their own ilk. Certainly all Southerners were not opposed _per se_ to negro schools, for we find some so influential as the Bishop of Mississippi advising planters in 1866 to open schools for their negroes. Leading journals and some teachers' conventions in 1867 advocated public schools for negroes, with Southern whites as teachers. It has been said, too, that Northern teachers who came to teach the negroes could not secure board in respectable white families, and, therefore, had no choice but to board in black. I think this may be wholly true. The Southerner firmly believed that the education given the negro was not best for him or the country; and he was deeply prejudiced against the Northern teacher and all his or her ways. The efforts of Black and Tan a.s.semblies to force mixed schools upon the country was a ground of prejudice against teachers and the schools; so, too, the course of some teachers in trying to compel this.

How could rational people, with the common welfare at heart, advocate mixed schools when such feelings were in evidence at outset as the captain and the pedagogue incident and many similar ones in many States proved existent? Such feelings were not and are not limited to the South. Only a year or two ago the mixed school question caused negroes to burn a schoolhouse near Boston. Many white and black educators at the North seem to agree that it is not best to mix the races there. Prominent negroes are now a.s.serting that it is not best for the negro child to put him in schools with whites; he is cowed as before a superior or he exhibits or excites antipathy. Besides, he casts a reflection upon his own race in insisting upon this a.s.sociation.

If white Southerners at first objected to teaching negroes, this objection speedily vanished before the argument: "We should teach the negroes ourselves if we do not wish them influenced against us by Yankees," and, "We should keep the money at home," and the all-compelling "I must make a living." As the carpet-bag governments went out of power, Northern schoolteachers lost their jobs and Southern ones got them. As negroes were prepared, Southern whites appointed negroes to teach negroes, which was what the blacks themselves desired and believed just.

School fights between the races ceased as Southern whites or Southern negroes came in charge of schools for blacks, and as Northern people who came South to work in charitable enterprises understood conditions better.

Those who had unwittingly wrought ill in the first place had usually meant well. The missionary of the sixties and seventies was not as wise as the missionary of today, who knows that he must study a people before he undertakes to teach and reform them, and that it is all in the day's work for him not to run counter heedlessly to established social usages or to try to uproot instantly and with violence customs centuries old. A reckless reformer may tear up more good things in a few weeks than he can replant, or subst.i.tute with better, in a lifetime.

THE CARPET-BAGGER

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CARPET-BAGGER

The test-oath was invitation to the carpet-bagger. The statements of Generals Schofield and Stoneman show how difficult it was to find in the South men capable of filling office who could swear they had "never given aid or comfort" to a Confederate. Few or no decent people could do it. In the summer of 1865, President Johnson instructed provisional governors to fill Federal offices of mail, revenue and customs service with men from other States, if proper resident citizens--that is, men who could take the test-oath--could not be found. Office-seekers from afar swarmed as bees to a hive.

The carpet-bagger was the all-important figure in Dixie after the war; he was lord of our domain; he bred discord between races, kept up war between sections, created riots and published the tale of them, laying all blame on whites. Neither he nor his running mate the scalawag or turn-coat Southerner, was received socially. Sentence fell harder upon the latter when old friends insulted him and the speaker on the hustings could say of him no word too bitter. His family suffered with him. The wife of the native Radical Governor of one Southern State said when her punishment was over: "The saddest years of my life were spent in the Executive Mansion.

In a city where I had been beloved, none of my old friends, none of the best people, called on me." In times of great poverty, temptations were great; men, after once starting in politics, were drawn further than they had dreamed possible. Again, men with State welfare at heart, urged compromises as the only way to secure benefits to the State; on being irritated, urged unwisely; on being ostracized, out-Heroded Herod. Our foreign office-holders were not all bad men or corrupt. We will not call these carpet-baggers. The carpet-bagger has been defined: "A Yankee, in a linen duster and with a carpet-bag, appearing suddenly on a political platform in the South, and calling upon the negroes to vote him into office." I give portraits of two types.

In the wake of Sherman's Army which pa.s.sed through Brunswick, Virginia, toward Washington, came and stopped two white men, Lewis and McGiffen.

They were desperadoes and outlaws, carried Winchester rifles and were fine shots; said they hailed from Maine; to intimates, the leader, Lewis, boasted that he had killed his step-father and escaped the hangman by playing crazy. They leased the farm of a "poor white," Mrs. Parrish. Lewis opened a negro school and a bank, issuing script for sums from twenty-five cents to five dollars; he organized a Loyal League, collecting the fees and dues therefrom. He armed and drilled negroes and marched them around to the alarm of the people. Court House records show lawful efforts of whites at self-protection. August 8, 1868, Lewis was tried before William Lett, J. P., for inciting negroes to insurrection, when, under pretense of preaching the Gospel to them, he convened them at Parrish's. He was sentenced to the penitentiary for seven years. The State was under military rule, and the decision of the civil court was set aside and Lewis left at large. John Drummond was a witness against Lewis.

Lewis soon had the negroes well organised; he established a system of signal stations from the North Carolina line to Nottoway and Dinwiddie. By the firing of signal guns, they would receive notice to congregate.

Suddenly, all hands on a man's plantation would stop work and say: "Got orders, suh, tuh go tuh de Cote House." And all at once roads would be lined with negroes from every direction bound for the Court House. In a few hours the little town would fill with darkeys, a thousand or more on the streets. They would collect thus from time to time, and hold secret or public political meetings, Lewis, McGiffen and other speakers working them up to a state of great excitement.

At one meeting, a riot occurred in which several men were killed or wounded. Mr. Freeman Jones, later Sheriff of the County, gave me a version of it. He said: "Meade Bernard (afterwards Judge Bernard) and Sidney Jones were set upon. Negroes knocked the last-named gentleman senseless, continuing chastis.e.m.e.nt until he was rescued by the Freedmen's Bureau officer. When Bernard was attacked, his old coloured nurse, Aunt Sally Bland, rushed into the melee, crying: 'Save my chile! save my chile!'

Sticks were raining blows on his head when she interfered, pleading with them to desist until they stopped. These white men had shown all their lives, only kindness to negroes. When set upon they were doing nothing to give offense, they were simply listening to the speeches. One negro, observing their presence, cried out: 'Kill the d----d white scoundrels!'

Others took up the cry.

"The whites, a little handful, retreated towards the village, followed by at least a thousand negroes, yelling intention to sack and fire the town.

The road pa.s.sed through a very narrow lane into Main Street. Here they were blocked and confronted by Mr. L. G. Wall, carrier of the United States Mail, who, as a Government official, halted them, telling them he had right of way and that they were obstructing Government service; he ordered them to move back and make room; they would not; he drew his pistol and fired five or six times. I believe every shot took effect.

Several negroes were desperately wounded. The mob retired and Wall went on. In the suburbs the negroes held an angry meeting, but they had got enough of mob violence." Which was fortunate. The normal white male population of the village did not exceed forty or fifty. White men went to the polls soon after not knowing what to expect, and found everything quiet. Negroes had come, voted early and gone. They had learned a salutary lesson.

Lewis claimed to be an officer duly commissioned, and went about making arrests, selecting some prominent men. One of his victims was William Lett, an old and wealthy citizen, and the justice before whom Lewis had been brought to trial. A complaint by Mr. Lett's cook was the ostensible ground of Lewis' call upon Mr. Lett; the real purpose was robbery. The outlaws had seduced into their service John Parrish, an unlettered boy who liked to hunt with them, and who, boy-like, was pleased with their daredevil ways. He composed the third in the "team" that went around arresting people. He recently gave me the next chapter in the Lewis story.

"I was jes a little boy an' I done what I was ordered to. I was goin' out sqir'l huntin', an' I see Dr. Lewis, an' he had a paper in his han', an'

he say: 'Johnny, I want you to go with me this evenin'.' I says: 'I wants to go squir'l huntin'.' He says: 'I summons you to go wid me to serve a warrant on Mr. Lett.' An' I lef' my dawgs at my sister's an' I taken my little dollar-an'-a-half gun along. He says: 'Johnny, people tell me this ole man is mighty hot-headed. If he comes out of his house an' I tell you to shoot, shoot.' Dr. Lewis called Mr. Lett out to de gate, an' read de warrant to him. An' Mr. Lett said he wouldn' be arrested by him, an' Dr.

Lewis grabbed at his coat collar, an' Mr. Lett broke loose, an' hollered for somebody to han' him his gun outer de house. An' he went into de house an' got a gun an' shot Lewis, an' Lewis stepped behin' de gate-pos', an'

he called to me: 'D---- him! where is he?' An' I said: 'Jes behin' de winder.' An' I stepped behin' de corner, an' Dr. Lewis called me, an' I stepped out, an' I thought I see a gun or pistol pointin' my way f'om de winder, an' I thought I heard Lewis say 'Shoot!' an' I shot. It warn't nothin' but a little bitter dollar-an'-a-half bird gun. But dem shot went through de weather-bo'din'. I heard Mr. Lett's gun when it fell an' I heard him when he fell. Lewis was standin' behin' de gate-pos'. The cook-woman hollered: 'Here he is! here he is, going out at de back door!'

And thar was a little chicken-house. An' Lett shot Lewis with bird-shot."

Mr. Freeman Jones summed it up simply thus: "When the gang came to capture Mr. Lett, the old man attempted a defense, ordering them off his place, and barricading himself behind the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be a chicken-coop. Lewis shot and nearly killed him; the old man lingered some time between life and death." Mr. Lett, it seems, was shot by both. "They toted Lewis away," concludes Parrish, "to de house of a feller named Carroll, an' he stayed thar. They sent for de military soldiers an' they came, an' I stated de case well as I could, an' they discharged me." Lewis was tried in the civil court, sentenced to a term in the penitentiary, was carried by the sheriff to that inst.i.tution and pardoned next day by Governor Wells, military appointee of General Schofield; he got back to the county almost as soon as the sheriff.

The people became more and more incensed at repeated outrages. Dr. Powell, whose a.s.sa.s.sination was attempted, tells me that the immediate cause of the final tragedies was that Lewis ordered Carroll to leave home. John B.

Drummond, volunteering, was appointed special constable to arrest Lewis.

He met Lewis and his gang in a turn of the road and halted them, telling Lewis he had a warrant for him. Lewis fired, killing him instantly. The temper of the public was now such that Lewis and McGiffen fled the State, enticing Parrish along. They sought asylum in North Carolina and sent Parrish back for some property. A reward was offered for them. In a little one-horse wagon which Parrish brought with Lewis' pony, they travelled by night to Charleston, South Carolina. Here Lewis opened a school and Parrish hired himself out. They staid there two years. McGiffen married again. He had taken his little child from his Brunswick wife; now he concluded to carry it back to her.

"I went with him," says Parrish. "We come near a village an' we stopped at a man's house. He mistrusted something wrong." (Naturally! Dr. Powell says he saw his guests moulding bullets, ordered them out, and they defied him, declaring they would spend the night.) "He sent out an' got two men an'

they come in thar wid thar guns an' staid all night. When we got up in de little town nex' mornin', thar come out twenty men wid guns in thar han's, an' de Mayor he was thar, an' McGiffen tole 'em to stop; an' they stopped.

He tole 'em thar couldn' but one or two come near. They suspicioned about our having the little chile along. You see, thar was trouble 'bout dat time 'bout children bein' kidnapped an' carried off to de Dismal Swamp. I see ten or thirteen men on de railroad, an' they comin' pretty close.

McGiffen hollered out for 'em to stop, or he would certainly shoot. An'

they stopped. Then somebody hollered 'Close up!'

"I had de little boy in my lap. To keep him f'om gittin' hurt, I set him down by de roadside. McGiffen an' me had been ridin' one horse, takin'

turns, de one ridin' carryin' de baby. A feller kep' comin' closer, an' I hollered, 'Stop, sir, or I'm goin' to shoot you!' an' I shot him in de han'. He kep' hollerin' I had killed him, an' de other fellers sorter scattered, an' that give McGiffen chance to git away. An' I got away. Had to leave de baby settin' thar side de road. An' they follered me up an'

got me, an' they got McGiffen. After they captured us, they heard about thar bein' three strangers down whar we had come f'om, an' they suspicioned we was de men dat had been advertised for because of de trouble in Brunswick. An' they sent after Lewis. It was one night. He had unbuckled his pistols an' laid 'em on his bureau, an' some visitors come to see him; an' he was talkin' to them, an' eight or ten men stepped up behin' him an' that's how they got him. An' they had de three of us. An'

Governor Walker sent Bill Knox, de detective, an' Dr. Powell he was sent to identify us. An' we were carried to Richmond, an' then we were carried to Greensville, an' we were tried. De little boy was sent back to his mother. I was sent to de penitentiary for eight years, but I got out sooner for good behaviour; an' I learned a good trade thar. But I don't think they ought to ha' sent me, because I was jes a boy an' I done what I was ordered to do when I shot Mr. Lett--that what's they sent me for. An'

de military soldiers had said I warn't to blame. Lewis he played off crazy like he done befo', an' they sent him to de asylum, an' he escaped like he done befo'. De superintendent was a member of de Loyal League. An'

McGiffen was hung, an' I never thought he ought to ha' been hung."

Military rule was at an end and Virginia was back in the Union when the fugitives were captured.