Been in the Storm So Long

by Leon F. Litwack

  Recognizing his former master among the prisoners he was guarding, a black soldier greeted him effusively, “Hello, massa; bottom rail top dis time!” Observing black soldiers with rifles and bayonets demanding to verify the passes of white men and women, a Confederate soldier returning home after a prisoner exchange could hardly believe his eyes. “And our own niggers, too,” he exclaimed. “If I could have my way, I’d have a rope around every nigger’s neck, and hang ’em, or dam up this Mississippi River with them. Only eight or ten miles from this river slaves are working for their masters as happily as ever.” Both scenes, each of them incredible in its own way, pointed up much of the confusion into which a rigidly hierarchical society had been thrown. Nor would that confusion of roles end with the war itself. “I goes back to my mastah and he treated me like his brother,” recalled Albert Jones, who had spent more than three years in the Union Army. “Guess he wuz scared of me ’cause I had so much ammunition on me.”90

  Whether by guarding prisoners, marching through the South as an army of occupation, or engaging Confederate troops in combat, the black soldier represented a sudden, dramatic, and far-reaching reversal of traditional roles—as spectacular as any in the history of the country. What made this reversal even more manifest, however, was the conduct of the slaves on the plantations and farms that lay in the path of the advancing Union Army. Once the Yankees made their presence felt, or earlier, at the first sound of distant guns, the ties that bound a slave to his master and mistress, including loyalties and mutual affections that had endured for decades, would face their most critical test.

  Chapter Three

  KINGDOM COMIN’

  We’ll soon be free,

  We’ll soon be free,

  We’ll soon be free,

  When de Lord will call us home.

  My brudder, how long,

  My brudder, how long,

  My brudder, how long,

  ’Fore we done sufferin’ here?

  It won’t be long,

  It won’t be long,

  It won’t be long,

  ’Fore de Lord will call us home.1

  AFTER SEARCHING the slave quarters, the overseer solved the mystery of the missing ammunition. Ishmael had been accumulating shot and powder with the intention, as he confessed, to desert to the enemy. That had been the first indication of trouble on the Manigault rice plantations, located in coastal Georgia along the Savannah River. The war was in its seventh month, the slaves had been “working well and cheerfully,” and no desertions had been reported. But the Yankees were moving into the Sea Islands, black field hands had reportedly sacked the town of Beaufort, and a panicky Savannah feared imminent attack. Equally ominous were the reports of “murmuring” and disaffection among the slaves working the Savannah River plantations. “We had no trouble with our own Negroes,” Louis Manigault noted, “but from clear indications it was manifest that some of them were preparing to run away, using as a pretext their fear of the Yankees.” In the months that followed, Manigault, like so many plantation managers, came to discover that the always arduous task of controlling enslaved workers took on new dimensions under wartime conditions. His own slaves would teach him that much and more.

  Seeking to minimize potential slave defections, Manigault conferred with his overseer, William Capers, a “remarkable” man and “perfect Gentleman” in whom he had complete confidence. The previous overseer had foolishly placed himself “on a par with the Negroes,” participating in their prayer meetings and “breaking down long established discipline.” Capers was not so easily misled. He claimed to know the Negro character, arguing that “if a Man put his confidence in a Negro He was simply a Damned Fool.” Only by understanding and acting upon that proven proposition, he believed, had he achieved success in managing slaves. In late 1861, convinced that “all was not quite correct” among the Manigault slaves, he advised that those most likely to cause trouble be removed to a safer area. Manigault agreed, and the two men soon learned how accurately they had appraised the character of some of those selected. That night, three of them attempted to escape; they were quickly apprehended and forcibly removed in handcuffs. The remaining seven “came very willingly.”

  Despite these precautions, trouble persisted on the Manigault plantations. On February 21, 1862, Jack Savage, the head carpenter, ran away. That came as no surprise to Manigault, who said he epitomized the “bad Negro.” “We always considered him a most dangerous character & bad example to the others.… I think Jack Savage was the worst Negro I have ever known. I have for two years past looked upon him as one capable of committing murder or burning down this dwelling, or doing any act.” At the same time, he was “quite smart” and “our best plantation Carpenter,” and that presumably was why he had been retained. Savage did not flee to the Yankees; instead, he secluded himself in the nearby swamplands, where other neighborhood runaways soon joined him, including Charles Lucas, a Manigault slave (“one of our Prime Hands”) who had been entrusted with the plantation stock and who had recently been punished after the mysterious disappearance of some choice hogs. “His next step,” Manigault guessed, “was to follow the animals which he had most probably killed himself, and sent to the retreat where he expected soon to follow.” Shortly after this incident, Manigault sold a large portion of the livestock. “This was,” he explained, “through fear of their being all stolen some night by our Negroes.” On August 16, 1863, nearly eighteen months after his escape, Jack Savage returned to the plantation, “looking half starved and wretched in the extreme,” but acting with such impertinence that Capers suspected he would soon flee again. With Manigault’s approval, Capers quickly sold him in Savannah for $1,800, despite Savage’s attempt to depress that price: “It would have provoked you,” the overseer wrote, “to have heard Jack’s lies of his inability &c.” That same month, Charlie Lucas was apprehended.

  While trying to anticipate runaways among the field hands, Manigault also had to deal with defections among his household servants. The disappearance of “his Woman ‘Dolly’ ” must have particularly perplexed him, as the description which he posted in the Augusta and Charleston police stations indicates:

  She is thirty years of age, of small size, light complexion, hesitates somewhat when spoken to, and is not a very healthy woman, but rather good looking, with a fine set of teeth. Never changed her Owner, has been always a house Servant, and no fault ever having been found with her.

  At a loss for a plausible explanation, Manigault finally concluded that she had been “enticed off by some White Man.” Although such defections annoyed Manigault, he found even more incredible the strange behavior of Hector, who for nearly thirty years had been his “favorite Boat Hand” and “a Negro We all of us esteemed highly.” He had been a good worker, a trusted slave, “always spoiled both by my Father and Myself, greatly indulged,” and “my constant companion when previous to my marriage I would be quite alone upon the plantation.” And yet, he was “the very first to murmur” and “give trouble” after the outbreak of the war. Only after considerable personal anguish did Manigault agree to remove him to Charleston; there was no question in his mind but that Hector “would have hastened to the embrace of his Northern Brethren, could he have foreseen the least prospect of a successful escape.”

  The wartime experience with his slaves unsettled Manigault. The unexpected behavior of Hector proved to be “only One of the numerous instances of ingratitude evinced in the African character.” In the end, he would no longer harbor any illusions about the depth of slave fidelity. “This war has taught us the perfect impossibility of placing the least confidence in any Negro. In too numerous instances those we esteemed the most have been the first to desert us.”

  When Manigault paid his last wartime visit to his Georgia properties, the sound of cannon fire could be heard in the distance. He thought the slaves still seemed pleased to see him. More than two years would elapse before he would see any of them again; meanwhile, on Christmas Eve 1864, Yankee
troops left a trail of destruction as they moved through the largely abandoned Savannah River plantations.2

  2

  “DE WAR COMES ter de great house an’ ter de slave cabins jist alike,” recalled Lucy Ann Dunn, a former slave on a North Carolina plantation. When the Yankees were reported to be approaching, even the less perceptive whites might have sensed the anxiousness, the apprehension, the excitement that gripped the slave quarters. “Negroes doing no good,” a Tennessee planter reported. “They seem to be restless not knowing what to do. At times I pity them at others I blame them much.” The tension was by no means confined to the fields but entered the Big House and affected the demeanor of the servants, including some who had hitherto betrayed few if any emotions about the war. “I tole you de Nordern soldiers would come back; I tole you dose forts was no ’count,” Aunt Polly, a Virginia house slave, exclaimed to the master’s son. “Yes,” he replied, obviously taken aback by her bluntness, “but you told me the Southern soldiers would come back, too, when father went away with them.” “Dat because you cried,” she explained, “and I wanted to keep up your spirits.” With those words, Aunt Polly, a long-time family favorite for whose services her master said he could set no price, prepared to leave her “accustomed post” in the kitchen.3

  Although few slaves demonstrated such “impertinence” in the presence of the master’s family, they did appear to be less circumspect in expressing their emotions. The pretenses were now lowered, if not dropped altogether. “The negroes seem very unwilling for the work,” a young white woman confided to her journal; “some of their aside speeches very incendiary. Edward, the old coachman, is particularly sullen.” On some plantations, the once clandestine prayer meetings were noticeably louder and more effusive, and there appeared to be fewer reasons to muffle the sounds before they reached the Big House. The singing in the slave quarters, Booker T. Washington remembered, “was bolder, had more ring, and lasted later into the night.” They had sung these verses before but there was no longer any need to conceal what they meant by them; the words had not changed, only their immediacy, only the emphasis with which certain phrases were intoned. “Now they gradually threw off the mask,” Washington recalled, “and were not afraid to let it be known that the ‘freedom’ in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world.”4

  The mood of the slaves often defied the analysis of the master. On certain plantations, the slaves continued to act with an apparent indifference toward the war and the approaching Union troops, leaving their owners to speculate about what lay behind those bland countenances. In early 1865, as General Sherman’s troops moved into South Carolina, a prominent rice planter observed little excitement among his slaves; in fact, they seemed “as silent as they had been in April, 1861, when they heard from a distance the opening guns of the war.” Each evening the slave foreman dutifully obtained his instructions for the next day, and the work proceeded smoothly and silently. “Did those Negroes know that their freedom was so near? I cannot say, but, if they did, they said nothing, only patiently waited to see what would come.” A neighboring planter found his slaves performing little work but they “appear to be calm and are quite lively. They are orderly and respectful more so than one could expect under the circumstances.” With Yankee raiding parties reported a few miles away, the daughter of a Louisiana planter observed the slaves busily engaged in preparations for a Christmas party. That night, after hearing that a nearby town had been virtually destroyed, the white family witnessed the slave festivities with mixed feelings.

  We have been watching the negroes dancing for the last two hours. Mother had the partition taken down in our old house so that they have quite a long ball room. We can sit on the piazza and look into it. I hear now the sounds of fiddle, tambourine and “bones” mingled with the shuffling and pounding of feet. Mr. Axley is fiddling for them. They are having a merry time, thoughtless creatures, they think not of the morrow.

  On New Year’s Day 1864, Catherine Broun gave her servants their customary party—“everything I would prepare for a supper for my own company”—even as she wondered how many of them would be with her by the end of the year; the “general opinion” in her neighborhood was that few of the slaves would remain. “I sometimes think I would not care if they all did go, they are so much trouble to me we have such a host of them.”5

  Before the arrival of the Union Army, the roadsides were apt to be filled with the retreating columns of Confederate troops, their condition imparting most vividly and convincingly the visage of defeat. For many slaves, that sight alone confirmed what the “grapevine” and the demeanor of their “white folks” had earlier suggested, and the contrast with the initial predictions of ultimate victory could hardly have been more striking.

  I seen our ’Federates go off laughin’ an’ gay; full of life an’ health. Dey was big an’ strong, asingin’ Dixie an’ dey jus knowed dey was agoin’ to win. I seen ’em come back skin an’ bone, dere eyes all sad an’ hollow, an’ dere clothes all ragged. Dey was all lookin’ sick. De sperrit dey lef’ wid jus’ been done whupped outten dem.6

  But even the anticipation of freedom did not necessarily prompt slaves to revel in the apparent military collapse of the Confederacy. Whether from loyalty to their “white folks,” the need to act circumspectly, or fear of the Yankees, many slaves looked with dismay at the ragged columns of Confederate soldiers passing through the towns and plantations. For some, faithfulness may have been less important than simply pride in their homeland, now being ravaged by strangers who evinced little regard for the property and lives of Southerners, black or white.7

  The ambivalence that characterized the reaction of some slaves to the demise of the Confederacy reflected an understandable tension between attachment to their localities and the prospect of freedom. Three years after the war, an English visitor asked a Virginia freedman his opinion of Robert E. Lee. “He was a grand man, General Lee, sah,” the ex-slave replied without hesitation. “You were sorry when he was defeated, I suppose?” the visitor then asked. “O no, sah,” the freedman quickly retorted; “we were glad; we clapped our hands that day.” If few slaves yearned for a Confederate victory, they did nevertheless view themselves as Southerners, they did sense that their lives and destinies were intricately bound with the white people of the South, and some even shared with whites the humiliation of defeat. “Dere was jes’ too many of dem blue coats for us to lick,” a former Alabama slave tried to explain. “Our ’Federates was de bes’ fightin’ men dat ever were. Dere warn’t nobody lak our ’Federates.”8

  When the unfamiliar roar of gunfire echoed in the distance, the emotions of individual slaves ranged from bewilderment and fear to unconcealed elation. In eastern Virginia, within earshot of the battle raging at Manassas, an elderly slave “mammy” preparing the Sunday dinner greeted each blast of the cannon with a subdued “Ride on, Massa Jesus.” When the guns were heard near Charleston, a sixty-nine-year-old woman exclaimed, “Come, dear Jesus,” and she later recalled having felt “nearer to Heaben den I eber feel before.” The younger slaves were apt to be less certain about what was happening around them. The strange noise, the hasty preparations, the talk in the slave quarters were at the same time exciting and terrifying. Two young slaves who lived in different sections, Sam Mitchell of South Carolina and Annie Osborne of Louisiana, each heard what sounded like thunder when the Yankees approached, and both of them sought an explanation. “Son,” Sam’s mother assured him, “dat ain’t no t’under, dat Yankee come to gib you Freedom.” When the cannons ceased booming, Annie’s brother told her, “We’s gwine be all freed from old Massa Tom’s beatin’s.” No amount of time could dim those recollections, any more than Sarah Debro, who had been a slave in North Carolina, could forget the moment she asked her mistress to explain the thunder that had frightened her “near ’bout to death.” Those were Yankee cannons killing “our men,” the woman replied, before breaking down in tears. Alarmed by this unusual sight, Sarah ran to the kitchen, where
Aunt Charity was cooking, and told her what had just happened. “She ain’t cryin’ kaze de Yankees killin’ de mens,” the black woman declared, “she’s doin’ all dat cryin’ kaze she skeered we’s goin’ to be sot free.”9

  To perform the usual plantation routines under these conditions proved to be increasingly difficult. Although planters and overseers tried to maintain business as usual, and some succeeded, the reported approach of the Union Army tended to undermine slave discipline and in some places it brought work to a complete standstill. From the moment Yankee soldiers were sighted in the vicinity, John H. Bills, a Tennessee planter, found he could exert little authority over his slaves. “My people seem Contented & happy, but not inclined to work. They say ‘it is no use’ the Yankeys will take it all.” Moble Hopson, who had been a slave in Virginia, recalled how they had paid little attention to the war until the day they reported to the field and found no one there to supervise them. “An’ dey stand ’round an’ laugh an’ dey get down an’ wait, but dey don’ leave dat field all de mawning. An’ den de word cum dat de Yankees was a comin’, an’ all dem blacks start tuh hoopin’ an’ holl’rin’, an’ den dey go on down to deer shacks an’ dey don’ do no work at all dat day.”10