Whatever the mixed emotions with which freedmen viewed their former owners after emancipation, nothing could obliterate the slave experience from their minds, and it would continue to shape the attitudes and behavior of many of them long after their old masters and mistresses had passed from the scene. Some preferred to put the past behind them, if only to contain their emotions and memories. Nearly a decade after the war, an older student at Hampton Institute, a black college, told a teacher that he preferred not to talk about slavery times. “I feel as if folks mightn’t believe me, and then, if I think too much about them myself, I can’t keep feeling right, as I want to, toward my old masters. I’d do any thing for them I could, and I want to forget what they have done to me.” When in the twentieth century ex-slaves reminisced about the old days, they were apt to be less harsh in their judgments, though Martin Jackson, who recalled “good treatment,” suspected many of them deliberately refrained from telling everything they knew.
Lots of old slaves closes the door before they tell the truth about their days of slavery. When the door is open, they tell how kind their masters was and how rosy it all was. You can’t blame them for this, because they had plenty of early discipline, making them cautious about saying anything uncomplimentary about their masters. I, myself, was in a little different position than most slaves and, as a consequence, have no grudges or resentment. However, I can tell you the life of the average slave was not rosy. They were dealt out plenty of cruel suffering. Even with my good treatment, I spent most of my time planning and thinking of running away.
But in the immediate aftermath of the war, memories were quite short, in some instances as short as the tempers of ex-slaves. All that might be required to set them off was the casual pronouncement by some northern visitor or reporter that many masters had been kind to their slaves. “Kind!” one freedman cried, not believing the naiveté and ignorance of the person who made the observation of his former master. “Kind! I was dat man’s slave; and he sold my wife, and he sold my two chill’en … Kind! yes, he gib me corn enough, and he gib me pork enough, and he neber gib me one lick wid de whip, but whar’s my wife?—whar’s my chill’en? Take away de pork, I say; take away de corn, I can work and raise dese for myself, but gib me back de wife of my bosom, and gib me back my poor chill’en as was sold away!”77
To forgive their former masters and mistresses for past wrongs was to forget neither the wrongs nor the men and women who had inflicted them. Forgiveness, like compassion, could be extended only so far. For many former slaves, the teachings of Christianity and their recollections of bondage would never be easily reconciled. Harry Jarvis remembered working for “de meanest man on all de Easte’n sho’, and dat’s a heap to say.” Early in the war, he fled the plantation, eventually joined the Union Army, and lost a leg in the Battle of Folly Island. Some years later, two white schoolteachers questioned him about slavery days, his escape and army service, and his intense religious conversion immediately after the war. “As you have experienced religion,” one of the teachers asked him, “I suppose you have forgiven your old master, haven’t you?” The question came unexpectedly, the glow immediately left the man’s face, and he dropped his head. Upon recovering his composure, he straightened himself and gave his reply. “Yes, sah! I’se forgub him; de Lord knows I’se forgub him; but”—and now his eyes suddenly blazed—“but I’d gib my oder leg to meet him in battle!” The schoolteachers thought it best at this moment to terminate the conversation.78
7
HOW THEIR FORMER SLAVES would perceive them had to be uppermost in the minds of the absentee planter families returning to their homes after the war. Where owners had abandoned their plantations, the slaves had often remained and continued to work the land, and in some regions they had been encouraged to believe that the land and the crops would remain in their hands. Now that the war had ended, however, the planters returned to reclaim their property—all but the slaves, whose freedom they were forced to acknowledge. Before long, many of the white families expected that life on the plantations would be very much as they had known it before the war. But success, as they clearly understood, still rested on the availability of labor—free black labor. As they approached the familiar surroundings, they had little way of knowing how many of their former slaves had remained, how they would be greeted, the extent to which the “old ties” had survived the crisis, and the kind of relationship they would be able to establish with those they had once called their “people.” The range of reactions they encountered suggested the diversity of black response and expectations elsewhere in the South.
Except for the physical devastation, some families found that little had changed since their hasty departure. Some of their slaves had left, never to be seen again, but substantial numbers had remained and still others would shortly return. The homecoming proved in some instances to be a most pleasant occasion, exceeding the expectations of the white family and allaying whatever fears they might have entertained. When he came onto his plantations near Natchez, a former Confederate general encountered “a perfect jubilee” celebrating his return. “They picked me up and carried me into the house on their shoulders, and God-blessed me, and tanked de Lo’d for me, till I thought they were never going to get through.” Returning to his “large and elegant” town house in Charleston, a former South Carolina slave owner found it occupied by his servants, “who were as humble, respectful and attentive as of old”; in his absence, they had kept the place “in the neatest and cleanest style.” No doubt his gratitude overflowed when he compared his situation with that of his far less fortunate neighbors, who found their places occupied by strange blacks cooking their meals in the drawing rooms.79
Despite the effusive homecomings, some planters quickly perceived that appearances could be quite deceiving. When Stephen Elliott returned to his father’s plantation at Beaufort, South Carolina, he found the former slaves comfortably settled and in good spirits. “They were delighted to see me, and treated me with overflowing affection.” The scene seemed to suggest that nothing had happened in his absence. But he soon learned otherwise, and in a most abrupt and unexpected manner. Although they greeted him warmly, the newly freed blacks combined their hospitality with an explicit statement of how matters now stood between them and their former owner. “They waited on me as before, gave me beautiful breakfasts and splendid dinners; but they firmly and respectfully informed me: ‘We own this land now. Put it out of your head that it will ever be yours again.’ ”80
The initial difficulty for some planters lay less in reclaiming their land than in dealing with changes in the demeanor of their former slaves. That “total change of manner” surprised and hurt Edward Barnwell Heyward “most of all” when he arrived to take over the Combahee rice plantations in South Carolina he had only recently inherited from his father. Only a year before, he had seen these people at the plantation to which they had been removed during the war, and they had seemed faithful and content. But now, as he wrote his wife, “Oh! what a change. It would kill my Father and worries me more than I expected or rather the condition of the Negroes on that place is worse than I expected. It is very evident they are disappointed at my coming there. They were in hopes of … having the place to themselves.” Not only did they refuse at first to come out of their cabins but when they did deign to speak with him, the old deference had given way to a provoking familiarity. “If I could meet with impudence, accompanied with intelligence,” Heyward told his wife, “it would not be so bad but to find the brutish rice field hands familiar, is perfectly disgusting. I have seen nothing like it before …”81
Rather than manifest any feelings of remorse or hatred for their former masters, many of the newly freed slaves would have been perfectly content never to see them again. Nowhere was this feeling more pervasive, of course, than on those lands they had been working and claiming as their own. The night before Captain Thomas Pinckney returned to El Dorado, his plantation fronting the Santee River in South Carolina, h
e stayed at the home of a neighbor who had overseen the property in his absence. His report was less than reassuring. “Your negroes sacked your house, stripped it of furniture, bric-a-brac, heirlooms, and divided these among themselves. They got it into their heads that the property of whites belongs to them; and went about taking possession with utmost determination and insolence. Nearly all houses here have been served the same way.” Proceeding to his plantation the next day, Pinckney could immediately sense how much the times had changed. Where he had once been welcomed by crowds of slaves shouting, “Howdy do, Marster! Howdy do, Boss!” only silence now greeted him. None of his former slaves was in sight. In the house, he found a solitary servant, and she seemed pleased to see him. But she claimed to know nothing about where the others had hidden themselves. The dinner hour passed but still none of the blacks ventured forward. Finally, the exasperated planter told his servant that he would come back in the morning and expected to see every one of his former slaves.
When Pinckney returned, he was armed. Since he had often carried a gun as a huntsman, he thought he could do so now “without betraying distrust” or causing any undue alarm among his men. But even as he armed himself, he tried to deny the necessity for doing so.
Indeed, I felt no fear or distrust; these were my own servants, between whom and myself the kindest feelings had always existed. They had been carefully and conscientiously trained by my parents; I had grown up with some of them. They had been glad to see me from the time that, as a little boy, I accompanied my mother when she made Saturday afternoon rounds of the quarters, carrying a bowl of sugar, and followed by her little handmaidens bearing other things coloured people liked. At every cabin that she found swept and cleaned, she left a present as an encouragement to tidiness. I could not realise a need of going protected among my own people, whom I could only remember as respectful, happy and affectionate.
After telling the servant to summon the men, he waited for them under the trees. Slowly, they began to appear, and Pinckney could see only sullen and defiant faces, none of them showing the slightest trace of that “old-time cordiality.” No longer, as he quickly noted, did they address him as “Marster” but instead made a point of referring to him as “you” or “Cap’n.” That was not all he noticed. His former slaves, too, had brought their guns. “Men, I know you are free,” he told them. “I do not wish to interfere with your freedom. But I want my old hands to work my lands for me. I will pay you wages.” The blacks remained silent. “I want you to put my place in order,” he continued, “and make it as fruitful as it used to be, when it supported us all in peace and plenty. I recognise your right to go elsewhere and work for some one else, but I want you to work for me and I will on my part do all I can for you.”
This time they responded; their remarks were brief, punctuated with defiance, and accompanied by none of the old “darky” antics. “O yes, we gwi wuk! we gwi wuk all right,” one of them assured him, but in a tone that suggested trouble rather than compliance. “We gwi wuk. We gwi wuk fuh ourse’ves. We ain’ gwi wuk fuh no white man.” If they refused to work for any white man, Pinckney asked them, where did they intend to go and how would they support themselves? He had only to look at their faces to anticipate their reply. “We ain’ gwine nowhar,” they declared. “We gwi wuk right here on de lan’ whar we wuz bo’n an’ whar belongs tuh us.” Some of them had not been born on this land, Pinckney recalled to himself, but had been purchased by him during the war—“in the kindness of his heart”—to avoid the division of a family in the settlement of an estate. If such thoughts crossed the minds of any of the blacks, there was nothing to indicate it. One of them, dressed in a Union Army uniform and carrying a rifle, made it clear that he would work or not as he pleased, come and go as he pleased, and he claimed a portion of the land as his own. And then, as if to underscore these words, he went to his cabin, stood in the doorway, looked his former master in the eye, brought his gun down with a crash, and declared, “Yes, I gwi wuk right here. I’d like tuh see any man put me outer dis house!”
After giving the blacks some time to reconsider their position, Pinckney assembled them once again. If anything, their attitude had grown “more insolent and aggressive.” Failing to reach any understanding with them, he now gave his former slaves ten days, after which those who remained unwilling to work for him would be forced off the plantation. Meanwhile, Pinckney heard of neighbors having similar experiences, some of them “severer trials” than his own. Where only a few years before “perfect confidence” had characterized slave-master relations, or so he thought, almost every white man now went armed, with his weapon exposed to view, and so presumably did most of the blacks. After consulting among themselves, the planters finally appealed directly to the Union Army commander at Charleston, and he agreed to send a company of troops and to address the blacks himself.
Despite the “Federal visitation,” which Pinckney thought had a “wholesome effect,” the blacks still refused to work. He decided now to wait them out until “starvation” brought about their capitulation. He did not have to wait long. One day, his former head plower came to see him, claiming that he could no longer feed his wife and children. When Pinckney reminded him that he had brought this grief on himself and could return to work at any time, the former slave replied, “Cap’n, I’se willin’. I been willin’ fuh right smart while. I ain’ nuvver seed dis way we been doin’ wuz zackly right. I been ’fused in my min’. But de other niggers dee won’ let me wuk. Dee don’ want me tuh work fuh you, suh. I’se feared.” Although Pinckney considered distributing some food rations “without conditions,” he decided that this might be interpreted as a sign of weakness. Several days later, as he no doubt expected, his head plower reappeared. “Cap’n, I come tuh ax you tuh lemme wuk fuh you, suh.” The planter assented, told him the plow and mule were ready, and he could now draw his rations. Having broken the back of the resistance, Pinckney now had the final satisfaction of watching his former slaves slowly drift back to their cabins and out into the fields. “They had suffered,” he recalled, “and their ex-master had suffered with them.”82
The ordeal of Adele Allston, like that of Thomas Pinckney, suggested comparable situations, particularly in low-country South Carolina, where the reluctance of freed slaves to yield their brief occupation of the plantations often reached the dimensions of outright rebellion. The death of Robert F. W. Allston had left his wife with the responsibility of managing the several plantations belonging to the family, located in a section of South Carolina where blacks outnumbered whites by six to one. When the Yankees came into this region, many of the planter families had fled. On the Allston plantations, the slaves plundered the houses, seized the barn keys, locked up the overseer at Nightingale Hall, and completely intimidated the overseer at Chicora Wood. With the end of the war, Adele Allston moved almost immediately to reclaim her property and reestablish her authority. The initial skirmishes were fought over the keys to the barns, which contained the crops that the blacks had already made. Union soldiers had turned the keys over to the slaves, encouraging them in some instances to distribute the contents among themselves. Both the freed slaves and the planters recognized that whoever controlled those keys exercised more than symbolic authority over the plantations themselves. “This would be a test case, as it were,” wrote Elizabeth Allston, who would accompany her mother on the trip. “If the keys were given up, it would mean that the former owners still had some rights.”
After taking the oath of allegiance to the United States and securing a written order which commanded the blacks to surrender the keys, Adele Allston and her daughter set out for the plantations. They were under no illusions as to what they might expect to find there. “If you come here,” a close friend had warned, “all your servants who have not families so large as to burthen them and compel a veneering of fidelity, will immediately leave you. The others will be more or less impertinent as the humor takes them and in short will do as they choose.” If she still insiste
d on returning, her friend offered some advice: “I warn you … not to stir up the evil passions of the blacks against you and your family if you wish to return here. The blacks are masters of the situation, this is a conquered country and for the moment law and order are in abeyance.” And one sure way “to stir up the evil passions,” she believed, was to attempt to dispossess the blacks of the property they had seized. “The negroes would force you to leave the place, perhaps do worse. I have not been in my negro street nor spoken to a field hand since 1st March. The only way is to give them rope enough, if too short it might hang us. No outrage has been committed against the whites except in the matter of property.” If her friend’s warnings were not sufficiently alarming, Adele Allston had only to read a recent letter from the overseer at Chicora Wood, in which he related how the blacks permitted him to say nothing to them about work. Despite these ominous reports, Adele Allston remained adamant in her determination to return and face her former slaves. It was bound to be a memorable experience.
Arriving first at the Nightingale Hall plantation (where the blacks had been “specially turbulent”), Adele and Elizabeth Allston encountered less trouble than they had anticipated. Stepping out of the carriage (but insisting that her daughter remain inside), Mrs. Allston stood in the midst of her former slaves, spoke to each of them by name, and inquired after their children. Gradually, the initial tension eased, the black foreman surrendered the keys, and the Allstons quickly moved on. “She did not think it wise to go to the barn to look at the crops,” Elizabeth wrote of her mother. “Having gained her point, she thought it best to leave.” At the Chicora Wood plantation, the keys were handed over with even less difficulty. The Allstons concluded that was because Daddy Primus, the head carpenter, who held the keys, “was a very superior, good old man.” Although the blacks here “seemed glad” to see them, the house which they had helped to plunder stood there for everyone to view, and many of the furnishings now adorned their cabins.
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