Been in the Storm So Long (39 page)

Where slave misbehavior had been particularly “outrageous,” as in northern Louisiana and the adjoining Mississippi counties, the Yankee raiding parties had no sooner returned to their bases than local whites demanded swift and severe retaliation. Not content to leave such matters entirely in the hands of the planters, a newspaper in Alexandria urged that public examples be made of “the ungrateful and vindictive scoundrels” who seized their masters’ property, volunteered information to or acted as guides for the enemy, and “were seen armed or participated in any active demonstration.”

The newspaper advised whites to scrutinize recent slave conduct and then select a particularly “diabolical” offender for immediate and public punishment. “This will inspire wholesome terror. Its example will be long remembered.” Acknowledging the losses already suffered by some masters and the fear of losing still more, the editor asked the planter class to place the security of the entire white population above any pecuniary considerations: “Here and there the life of a slave forfeited by his crime will entail a loss, but a great and good result will be attained, and those who are instrumental in engraving a wholesome lesson on the minds of this impressionable population will have cause to be thankful hereafter for this suggestion.”
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Requiring little prompting, some slaveholders had already acted in this spirit. In Rapides Parish, which included the town of Alexandria, John H. Ransdell moved very quickly to reassert his authority after the Yankees
departed. “Things are just now beginning to work right,” he informed his absentee neighbor, Governor Thomas O. Moore. “The negroes hated awfully to go to work again. Several have been shot and probably more will have to be.” Less than a month later, he concurred with the governor that the recent Yankee raids had left him thoroughly disillusioned with the blacks. Even when two of the governor’s runaways returned, expressing pleasure at having escaped from the Yankees, Ransdell doubted their story and suspected “deep laid villany at the bottom of it.” In neighboring Mississippi, James Alcorn, a planter in Coahoma County, thought the recent Union raids had “thoroughly demoralized” the slaves, rendering them “no longer of any practical value to this vicinity.” Less than a month later, he informed his wife: “Hadley, Anthony & Bill are very faithful, about ten days since I whipped several in the field house including your filthy, lazy Margaret; it helped them greatly.”
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Nearly a year elapsed before the Union Army returned to these regions, and this time some of the slaves insisted that they be permitted to accompany the soldiers rather than be left behind. Near Alexandria, an elderly slave told a Union correspondent, “Oh, master! since you was here last, we have had dreadful times.” Several other slaves who had gathered around him corroborated his narration of a reign of terror.

Even if such stories were exaggerated for northern consumption, the fact remains that many slaves realistically perceived the degree to which their “freedom” rested on a Yankee presence. Once the troops moved on, despite the assurances of Union officers and regardless of how exemplary black behavior might have been, the status and conditions of labor of the slaves tended in many regions to revert back to what they had been, sometimes with painful consequences for those who insisted upon asserting their freedom or who were thought to have been “spoiled” by the Yankees. “The negroes’ freedom was brought to a close to-day,” a South Carolina white woman reported with relief, noting that as soon as the Yankees moved on, Confederate “scouts” assembled the slaves, told them the Union soldiers had no right to free them, and advised them to return to their usual tasks. Many former slaves recalled precisely that experience. “They tol’ us we were free,” an ex-North Carolina slave testified about the Yankees, but the master “would get cruel to the slaves if they acted like they were free.” Although recognizing that he was free, a former Alabama slave knew better than to claim that freedom in the presence of his master. “Didn’t do to say you was free. When de war was over if a nigger say he was free, dey
shot him down. I didn’t say anythin’, but one day I run away.” After Confederate troops briefly reoccupied several parishes in southern Louisiana, James Walkinshaw, an overseer, quickly made it clear to the blacks he supervised that the Yankee invasion had changed nothing. “Don’t contradict me,” he shouted at a slave who protested his order to work harder. “I don’t allow anybody white or black to do that; if you contradict me again, I’ll cut your heart out; the Yankees have spoiled you Niggers but I’ll be even with you.” Apparently the verbal reprimand was not sufficient, for the overseer terminated the incident by stabbing the “spoiled” slave in the breast.
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The racial tensions exacerbated by black behavior during the Yankee invasion persisted long after the troops had moved elsewhere. With even greater vigilance, slaveholders and local whites scrutinized the remaining blacks, looking for any actions, words, or changes in their demeanor that suggested Yankee influences. Eliza Evans, a former Alabama slave, could recall quite vividly the day she first used the surname which a Yankee soldier had persuaded her to assume. “Jest Liza,” she had told the soldier when he asked for her name. “I ain’t got no other names.” After ascertaining that she worked for a John Mixon, the Yankee had told her, “You are Liza Mixon. Next time anybody call you nigger you tell ’em dat you is a Negro and your name is Miss Liza Mixon.” The idea appealed to the young slave. “The more I thought of that the more I liked it and I made up my mind to do jest what he told me to.” Several days later, after the Yankees had withdrawn from the area, Eliza was tending the livestock when her master approached. “What you doin’, nigger?” he demanded to know. “I ain’t no nigger,” she replied. “I’se a Negro and I’m Miss Liza Mixon.” Startled by her response and sensitive to any signs of post-Yankee insolence, the master picked up a switch and ran after her. “Law’, but I was skeered!” she recalled. “I hadn’t never had no whipping so I ran fast as I can to Grandma Gracie.” She reached her grandmother about the same time her master did. “Gracie,” he charged, “dat little nigger sassed me.” When Eliza explained what had happened, revealing the conversation with the soldier, her grandmother decided to mete out the punishment herself. “Grandma Gracie took my dress and lift it over my head and pins my hands inside, and Lawsie, how she whipped me and I dassent holler loud either.” Still, as she recalled the incident many years later, Eliza Evans suggested that she had derived considerable self-pride from this initial assertion of freedom. “I jest said dat to de wrong person,” she concluded.
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What, then, was “freedom” and who was “free”? The fluctuating moods of individual masters, unexpected changes in the military situation, the constant movement of troops, and widespread doubts about the validity and enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation were bound to have a sobering effect on the slaves’ perceptions of their status and rights, leaving many of them quite confused if not thoroughly disillusioned. The sheer uncertainty of it all prompted blacks to weigh carefully their actions and utterances, as they had earlier in the war, even in some instances to
disclaim any desire to be free or to deny what the Yankees told them. “Sho’ it ain’t no truf in what dem Yankees wuz a-sayin’,” Martha Colquitt recalled her mother telling her, “and us went right on living just like us always done ’til Marse Billie called us together and told us de war wuz over and us wuz free to go whar us wanted to go, and us could charge wages for our work.”
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Only with “the surrender,” as they came to call it, did many slaves begin to acknowledge the reality of emancipation. The fall of Richmond and the collapse of the Confederacy broke the final links in the chain. With freedom no longer hanging on every military skirmish, slaves who had shrewdly or fearfully refrained from any outward display of emotion suddenly felt free to release their feelings and to act on them. Ambrose Douglass, who claimed to have celebrated emancipation every time the Yankees came into Harnett County, North Carolina, sensed that this time it was different, and he proposed to make certain. “I was 21 when freedom finally came, and that time I didn’t take no chances on ’em taking it back again. I lit out for Florida.” The day the war ended, Prince Johnson recalled, “wagon loads o’ people rode all th’ough de place a-tellin’ us ’bout bein’ free.” When the news reached Oconee, Georgia, Ed McCree found himself so overcome that he refused to wait for his master to confirm the report of Lee’s surrender: “I runned ’round dat place a-shoutin’ to de top of my voice.”
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In the major cities and towns, far more than in the countryside, the post-Appomattox demonstrations resembled the Jubilees that would become so firmly fixed in black and southern lore. If only for a few days or hours, many of the rural slaves flocked to the nearest town, anxious to join their urban brethren in the festivities and to celebrate their emancipation away from the scrutiny of their masters and mistresses. When news of “the surrender” reached Athens, Georgia, blacks sang and danced around a hastily constructed liberty pole in the center of town. (White residents cut it down during the night.) Although urban blacks had enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy in the past, military occupation afforded them the first real opportunity to express themselves openly and freely as a community, unhampered by curfews, passes, and restrictions on assemblages. Even before Appomattox, many of them made full use of such opportunities.
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The largest and most spectacular demonstration took place in Charleston, less than a month after Union occupation. More than 4,000 black men and women wound their way through the city streets, cheered on by some 10,000 spectators, most of them also black. With obvious emotions, they responded to a mule-drawn cart in which two black women sat, while next to them stood a mock slave auctioneer shouting, “How much am I offered?” Behind the cart marched sixty men tied together as a slave gang, followed in turn by a cart containing a black-draped coffin inscribed with the words “Slavery is Dead.” Union soldiers, schoolchildren, firemen, and members of various religious societies participated in the march along with an impressive number of black laborers whose occupations pointed up the important
role they played in the local economy—carpenters, butchers, tailors, teamsters, masons, wheelwrights, barbers, coopers, bakers, blacksmiths, wood sawyers, and painters. For the black community of Charleston, the parade proved to be an impressive display of organization and self-pride. The white residents thought less of it. “The innovation was by no means pleasant,” a reporter wrote of the few white onlookers, “but they had sense enough to keep their thoughts to themselves.”
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Less than a week after the end of the war, still another celebration in Charleston featured the ceremonial raising of the United States flag over the ruins of Fort Sumter. Far more dramatic than any of the speeches on this occasion was the presence of such individuals as William Lloyd Garrison, the veteran northern abolitionist, for whom this must have been a particularly satisfying day. Robert Smalls, the black war hero who had delivered a Confederate steamer to the Union Navy, now used that same ship to convey some 3,000 blacks to Fort Sumter. On the quarterdeck stood Major Martin R. Delany, who had once counseled emigration as the only alternative to continued racial oppression and enslavement and who would soon take his post as a Freedmen’s Bureau agent in South Carolina. Next to Delany stood another black man, the son of Denmark Vesey, who some thirty-three years before had been executed for plotting a slave insurrection in Charleston.
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Nearly a week after the fall of Richmond, the Confederate dream lay shattered. When the news reached Mary Darby, daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, she staggered to a table, sat down, and wept aloud. “Now,” she shrieked, “we belong to Negroes and Yankees.” If the freed slaves had reason to be confused about the future, their former masters and mistresses were in many instances absolutely distraught, incapable of perceiving a future without slaves. “Nobody that hasn’t experienced it knows anything about our suffering,” a young South Carolina planter declared. “We are discouraged: we have nothing left to begin new with. I never did a day’s work in my life, and don’t know how to begin.” Often with little sense of intended irony, whites viewed the downfall of the Confederacy and slavery as fastening upon them the ignominy of bondage. Either they must submit to the insolence of their servants or appeal to their northern “masters” for protection, one white woman wrote, “as if we were slaves ourselves—and that is just what they are trying to make of us. Oh, it is abominable!”
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Seeking
“temporary
relief” from the recent disasters, including the loss of “many of our servants,” Eva B. Jones of Augusta, Georgia, immersed herself in fourteen volumes of history. But she found little comfort in a study of the past, only additional evidence of human depravity.