Been in the Storm So Long

by Leon F. Litwack

  No matter how eloquently former slaveholders praised the fidelity of those who remained, thinking the old ties had survived still another disruptive challenge, the most faithful often turned out to be the elderly, the infirm, and the very young, those who felt least compelled to uproot themselves. Although many of the older slaves embraced emancipation, for their children and grandchildren if not for themselves, some thought it too late to aspire to anything beyond the security afforded by the master and mistress. While the former master might feel obliged to retain and look after these people, he also recognized how little labor was left in them. “My crowd of darkies is rapidly decreasing,” a South Carolina lawyer and politician informed his brother. “Almost two weeks ago, my cook departed with her child. Last week, our house girl left, and this morning, another girl, lately employed in the culinary department, vacated. We still have six big and little—one old, three children, one man sick, so that you may perceive there are mouths and backs enough, but the labor is very deficient.” Anticipating future losses, Emma Holmes thought in May 1865 that every servant would leave except for Ann, “who is lame, solitary, very dull, slow, timid and friendless.” In some instances, the few remaining slaves shared the dismay of their “white folks” over the departures, but for altogether different reasons. “I was de only nigger left on de place,” recalled Esther Green, who was ten years old at the time. “I jus’ cried and cried, mostly because I was jus’ lonesome for some of my own kind to laugh and talk wid.”84

  To remain might be less of a commitment to the old place and the old ties than a necessary holding action, until the confusion surrounding emancipation had been clarified. After being informed of his freedom, Robert Glenn, a young Kentucky black, agreed to remain on the same plantation. But he spent much of his time, as he recalled, considering a different kind of life for himself. “I took my freedom by degrees and remained obedient and respectful, but still wondering and thinking of what the future held for me. After I retired at night I made plan after plan and built aircastles as to what I would do.” Nearly a year later, having failed to heed the first work call, he found himself awakened one morning by the foreman’s slap across the head. Glenn went about his usual tasks that day, feeding the stock and cutting firewood. His employer then ordered him to hitch a team of horses to a wagon and proceed to a neighboring farm where he was to pick up a load of hogs. Perhaps Glenn himself could not have anticipated his response. He refused to carry out the command. “They called me into the house and asked me what I was going to do about it. I said I do not know. As I said that I stepped out of the door and left.” He never returned.85

  With sufficient time, freedmen like Robert Glenn gained additional confidence in themselves, learned more about the opportunities made possible by their freedom, and determined to take their chances elsewhere. After spending the first year on the plantation or farm of their bondage, scores of blacks in every section of the South chose to leave. Even larger numbers, however, began to stake out a greater degree of autonomy for themselves without moving at all. The more perceptive white families could discern the changes in those who had remained, often quite gradual and subtle but no less threatening and disconcerting. “Henney is still with me,” a South Carolina woman informed her niece, “but not the same person that she was.”86

  Postscript: Four Letters

  WHETHER OR NOT the freed slave and the former owner ever met again after emancipation, each of them retained his or her own memories of the old times and places and the quality of the “old ties” that had bound them together. For generations, members of slaveholding families and their descendants would regale the reading public with period pieces and reminiscences in which their “black folk” figured conspicuously, most often appearing as the authors had always wished to perceive them. Unfortunately, few former slaves kept any written records of their thoughts during the critical juncture of their lives when they became free men and women. But the “old ties” occasionally yielded a letter written by a former slave to those who had once owned their bodies (though never wholly their minds); in some instances, the communications were barely legible or had been dictated to a friend, a teacher, or a clergyman. But if the black correspondents were at times illiterate, they seldom suffered from inarticulateness. Reflecting the experiences of the nearly four million black people who had endured bondage, the authors of these four letters revealed a wide range of emotions and perceptions about slavery, freedom, and the quality and endurance of the old relationships, and these in turn were profoundly influenced in each case by the fate of their post-emancipation expectations and aspirations.

  Liberty, Va. July 10th/1865

  Master Man,

  I have the honor to appeal to you one more for assistance, Master. I am cramped hear nearly to death and no one ceares for me heare, and I want you if you pleas Sir, to Send for me. I dont care if I am free. I had rather live with you. I was as free while with you, as I wanted to be. Mas. Man you know I was as well Satisfied with you as I wanted to be. Now Affectionate Master pleas, oh, pleas come or Sind for me. John is still hired out at the Same and doing Well and well Satisfied only greaving about home, he want to go home as bad as I do, if you ever Send for me I will Send for him immediately, and take him home to his kind Master. Mas, Man. pleas to give my love to all of my friends, and especialy to my young mistress dont forget to reserve a double portion for yourself. I Will close at present, hoping to bee at your Service Soon yes before yonders Sun Shal rise and Set any more.

  May I Subscribe myself your Most affectionate humble friend and Servt.

  Isabella A. Soustan87

  Montgomery, February 10, 1867

  My Dear Old Master,—I am anxious to see you and my young masters and mistresses. I often think of you, and remember with pleasure how kind you all ever were to me. Though freedom has been given to the colored race, I often sigh for the good old days of slave-times, when we were all so happy and contented.… I am tolerably pleasantly situated. I am hired to a Mr. Sanderson, who treats me very well. I am very well, and hope I may have an opportunity of coming to see you all next Christmas. I am still single and don’t think much about beaux. I don’t think the men in these days of freedom are of much account. If I could find one whom I think a real good man, and who would take good care of me, I would get married. Please, dear old master, ask some of my young mistresses to write to me.

  My kind and respectful remembrances to all.

  Your former servant and friend,

  Alice Dabney88

  February 5, 1867

  Mas William

  I guess you will be somewhat surprised to receive a letter from me. I am well & doing just as well as I could expect under the circumstances, one blessing is I have plenty to eat & have plenty of work to do, & get tolerable fair prices for my work. I have but two children, they are good size boys, able to plough & help me out a great deal. I still work at my trade. I once thought I wanted to come back to that old country, but I believe I have given up that notion. Give my best respects to old Mas Henry & his family Miss Jane & all the family.

  Tell Austin howdy for me & tell him I want him to write to me & give me all the news of that old country who has married who has died give me all the news I am anxious to hear from them all tell Austin to give them all my love to all I havent time to mention all ther names, but I wish to hear from all remember me to Coleman especialy. As I am in a great hurry I will close please send me word, direct your letter to Camden in the Case or in the name of S. B. Griffin, Camden, Washita County, Arksas.

  I remains as ever Respt

  Your humble Servant

  Jake89

  Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865

  To My Old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson,

  Big Spring, Tennessee

  Sir: I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought
the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

  I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here; I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school and are learning well; the teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated; sometimes we overhear others saying, “Them colored people were slaves” down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col. Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

  As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free-papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department at Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly—and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee there was never any pay day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

  In answering this letter please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die if it comes to that than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

  P.S.—Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

  From your old servant,

  Jourdon Anderson90

  Few individuals—white or black—have ever articulated the meaning of freedom more clearly or more precisely than Jourdon Anderson. How many such people came out of slavery remains difficult to determine. But as former slaveholders assumed the role of employers and prepared to deal with the freed slaves as workers, they sometimes found their plantations and farms overrun with men and women who evinced the same spirit and the same determination to work under conditions that would in no way compromise their newly won freedom. What happened to that spirit and to that determination would profoundly affect race relations and the nation for more than a century.

  Chapter Seven

  BACK TO WORK: THE OLD COMPULSIONS

  We have been faithful in the field up to the present time, and think that we ought to be considered as men, and allowed a fair chance in the race of life. It has been said that a black man can not make his own living, but give us opportunities and we will show the whites that we will not come to them for any thing, if they do not come to us. We think the colored people have been the making of them, and can make something of ourselves in time. The colored people know how to work, and the whites have been dependent upon them. They can work again, and will work. A white man may talk very well, but put him to work, and what will he say? He will say that hard work is not easy. He will say that it is hard for a man who has owned so many able-bodied negroes to have the Yankees come and take them all away.

  —CORPORAL JACKSON CHERRY, COMPANY I, 35TH REGIMENT, UNITED STATES COLORED TROOPS, DECEMBER 16, 18651

  “OLD LETITIA is with me still on the old terms and declines to make any change in consequence of her freedom,” William L. DeRosset, a former North Carolina slaveholder, informed his brother. “I can see no difference in her at all, and I notified her when I first saw the order freeing them, that she was at liberty to go, but that if she staid with me it must be as she had before & if she misbehaved I would not hesitate to flog her. She acquiesced fully & I have had no trouble.” With several of the other servants, however, he had been less successful. “Susie became impudent & I drove her off,” while Louisa “wanted to make a change” and left. To replace them, he managed to hire “two of the best servants I ever saw, both young mulatto women, & real niggers.” Having already surrendered the use of his right leg, the still unrepentant DeRosset remained willing to sacrifice his right arm if it would help to ensure the ultimate triumph of the Lost Cause. With blacks in his region abandoning the rice fields for more desirable labor, he recognized that unwelcome changes lay ahead. But DeRosset remained confident of the outcome and he would manage his laborers in that spirit. “The Negroes over the entire South are beginning to awaken to a sense of their still dependant position towards the whites and consequently are much more respectful and steadily improving in this respect. So that in a few years I think every thing will be about as it was except that we can not control their entire time.”2

  To listen to the former slaveholder, emancipation had changed only the method of compensation, not the basic arrangement, not the mutual understanding that had underlain the old system. If he continued to meet his obligations to his freed blacks and provide for their daily needs, if he agreed to pay them in some way for their labor (whether by wages or shares), he expected them to maintain the old demeanor and to comply with his expectations, regulations, and demands. “My own servants on the lot have not said a word about wages nor changed at all in their deportment or duty,” a Florida farmer and physician advised his cousin in North Carolina. The one problem he had encountered was a former slave who “was very idle & a little impertinent to my wife,” but he resolved the matter quickly and in a familiar fashion. “I gave her a moderate thrashing a few days ago and we have had no more trouble yet.” That same remedy, when coupled with the traditional reliance on mutual obligations, provided a Mississippi planter with all the security he needed to continue his agricultural operations. “We go right on like we always did,” he explained, “and I pole ’em if they don’t do right. This year I says to em, ‘Boys, I’m going to make a bargain with you. I’ll roll out the ploughs and the mules and the feed, and you shall do the work; we’ll make a crop of cotton, and you shall have half. I’ll provide for ye, give ye quarters, treat ye well, and when ye won’t work, pole ye like I always have.’ They agreed to it, and I put it into the contract that I was to whoop ’em when I pleased.”3

  Even as Henry W. Ravenel argued that both whites and blacks now need
ed to unlearn the old relationship, he had nothing drastic in mind. He insisted that the freed blacks were to show “deference, respect & attachment,” while their former masters, in return, would exercise “kindliness, care, & attention.” But there was little question as to where the ultimate authority lay. Like most planters, William Henry Stiles of Georgia prepared to manage his working force much as he had in the past. If the blacks were no longer legally bound to him, as he finally and only grudgingly conceded, neither did he feel obligated to employ them if they proved troublesome. After reprimanding his newly freed slaves for their independent work habits, such as taking more time off for meals than he permitted, Stiles advised them that they were perfectly free to leave. But if they chose to stay, he made clear, “they should work as they had obligated themselves to do—that is to work in the same manner as they always had done.” This kind of advice became commonplace, and the phrase “to work in the same manner as they always had done” was often written into newly devised labor contracts. To many planters, in fact, the principle was sufficiently important to risk their entire labor force. “Our freedmen will leave us,” J. B. Moore, an Alabama planter, confided to his diary. “They will not agree to work and be controlled by me, hence, I told them I would not hire them.”4