Been in the Storm So Long (89 page)

The terms he chose to describe the challenge facing planters in the postwar South suggested the need to adopt modern industrial techniques to ensure their continued mastery over a class of workers who had only recently broken the chains of bondage. That the ideal binding force should have been introduced by Northerners would seem, therefore, to have been less ironic than logical. Like the planters, Federal authorities appreciated full well the need to guarantee and compel black labor. When the officers of the Freedmen’s Bureau enlightened the ex-slaves in the fall of 1865 on the futility of their land expectations, they supplied at the same time the forms that the new dependency would assume.

W
HEN THE POSTWAR
southern legislatures adopted measures to compel blacks to contract with an employer or face arrest as vagrants, they had merely written into law what the Union Army and the Freedmen’s Bureau had already demanded of the freed slaves. Despite the virtual abrogation of the Black Codes, the contract system remained very much intact. In South Carolina, for example, the Union commander voided the Codes but simultaneously ordered freedmen to contract in the next ten days or leave the plantations on which they lived. The Codes had contained clauses which offended northern standards of justice and fairness. The contract, on the other hand, was a much-venerated instrument of law which enjoyed high standing both in the North and in the South. Embodying as it did a voluntary agreement between two parties, in which the terms and conditions were spelled out, the contract suggested what the Codes had not—impartiality, equality before the law, and the traditional American virtues of give-and-take and compromise.

Federal authorities introduced the contract into wartime labor relations in the South as a way of protecting the newly freed slaves, easing the transition from slave to free labor, and compelling former owners to recognize emancipation and compensate their workers. Drawn up initially by Union Army officers and Freedmen’s Bureau agents, the contract also came to be accepted as the most expedient way to get the blacks back to the fields, to regulate the quality of their labor, and to ensure a stable working force for the highly seasonal agriculture of the South. With often the noblest of intentions, then, the Freedmen’s Bureau, from the moment of its inception, urged the ex-slaves to sign contracts, assured them they
would be treated fairly, and warned them of the consequences of noncompliance. “Your contracts were explained to you, and their sacredness impressed upon you, again and again,” the Bureau commissioner for Mississippi told the freedmen. “If you do not have some occupation you will be treated as vagrants, and made to labor on public works.”
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The planters were in such perfect agreement about what they expected of their freed black laborers that they often used the same language in the contracts. By affixing his signature to the agreement, the freedman invariably promised to render “perfect obedience,” to be “prompt and faithful” in the performance of his duties, and to maintain a proper demeanor. On the Heyward plantations in South Carolina, the laborers not only recognized the “lawful authority” of the employer and his agents but agreed to conduct themselves “in such manner as to gain the good will of those to whom we must always look for protection.”
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Few employers went so far as the South Carolina planter who bound his blacks to be “strictly as my slaves” in obeying his instructions. Nor did many think it necessary to adopt the proviso which another planter insisted upon—that the freedmen always address him as “master.” But few would have dissented from the spirit that had inspired such stipulations. It made little difference to H. A. Moore, a South Carolina planter, if his freedmen addressed him and his wife as “Mr. & Mrs. Moore” or simply as “Massa Maurice & Miss Bettie,” but they were always to “speak politely to us.”
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Lest the freedman be in any way tempted to compromise his “perfect obedience,” most contracts barred him from possessing “deadly weapons” or “ardent spirits,” and the employer reserved the right to enter the freedman’s cabin at any time. During working hours, moreover, the laborer agreed to have no visitors and to obtain his employer’s permission before leaving the plantation for any reason (numerous contracts required such permission at all times). In some regions, the freedmen agreed to submit to punishment for contract violations—“our employer being the judge whether we are to be punished or turned off.” But most contracts could not provide corporal punishment for violations, if only because a Bureau official might disallow the entire agreement; however, employers did specify fines for any absenteeism, negligence in work, or breakdowns in expected demeanor. For the more serious offenses, like insubordination or desertion, the laborer could be dismissed, thereby forfeiting all or a portion of his wages and crop shares for the year.
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In some rare instances, as on one South Carolina plantation, the employer agreed to submit cases of misconduct and conflicts between himself and the freedmen to a jury of his own laborers, whose judgments would be binding on both parties. The “model” contract drawn up by Martin Delany in South Carolina stipulated that the panel adjudging such disputes include the employer, a freedman, and a third party acceptable to both of them. But if the offense warranted dismissal or a forfeiture of pay, an officer of the Freedmen’s Bureau would preside and make the final decision.
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Under the old task system, which some contracts maintained, a laborer
had been expected to complete a prescribed amount of work each day, with the rest of the time his own. To determine how much work a free laborer, as distinct from a slave, should perform each day raised some obvious difficulties, but some enterprising planters and overseers resolved the dilemma by borrowing from past experience. “There’s a heap in humbuggin’ a nigger,” a Mississippi overseer advised. “I worked a gang this summer, and got as much work out of ’em as I ever did. I just had my leading nigger, and I says to him, I says, ‘Sam, I want this yer crop out by such a time; now you go a-head, talk to the niggers, and lead ’em off right smart, and I’ll give you twenty-five dollars.’ Then I got up a race, and give a few dollars to the men that picked the most cotton, till I found out the extent of what each man could pick; then I required that of him every day, or I docked his wages.” Precisely because the task and gang systems remained vivid reminders of slavery, both came into growing disrepute after the war; most contracts stipulated a six-day workweek and a ten- to twelve-hour workday—usually from sunrise to sunset, with an hour or more for dinner. The question of time off on Saturday would take on increasing importance in the annual negotiations over a new contract.
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Reacting against the close personal supervision that had characterized slavery, the freedmen had already expressed strong reservations about the presence of an overseer on the plantation. During the war, newly freed slaves had vented much of their anger on their overseer, and in some instances they had either driven him off or refused to work until he had been removed. After the war, antipathy to the overseer in no way diminished, despite the efforts of some planters to make the position more palatable and more consistent with emancipation by redesignating the overseer as a superintendent. “With the negroes a name is imposing,” one observer wrote. “Many would engage cheerfully to work under a ‘superintendent,’ who would not have entered the field under an ‘overseer.’ ” But the distinction escaped many ex-slaves, and this same observer conceded that “it is easier to change an odious name than an odious character.” As a Mississippi planter confided to him, “I should get along very well with my niggers, if I could only get my superintendent to treat them decently. Instead of cheering and encouraging them, he bullies and scolds them, and sometimes so forgets himself as to kick and beat them. Now they are free they won’t stand it. They stood it when they were slaves, because they had to.” On a plantation in Coahoma County, Mississippi, a Freedmen’s Bureau agent endeavored to ascertain why the laborers objected to the employment of a former overseer to supervise the work. “I made inquiries regarding the treatment of the hands, by Mr. Hogan, and found no complaint whatever; the only objection was that he was an old overseer. The Freedmen have an idea that overseers are no longer allowed.” He lectured the freedmen on their obligation to obey “whoever their employer chose to employ as their superintendent.”
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Where an overseer no longer supervised the field hands, black dissatisfaction would now most likely fall directly on the employer himself or on
the black driver. Like the overseer and the task and gang systems, the driver symbolized for many blacks the excesses and close supervision of slavery; nevertheless, he enjoyed considerably more staying power than the overseer, and the freedmen tended to view his presence with fewer misgivings. The typical contract obligated laborers to obey a driver selected from their ranks, but “out of compliment to the changed times” he would now be known as a foreman or captain. That satisfied some freedmen, but only if a change in personnel accompanied the new appellation. In the Sea Islands, a group of laborers told a Union officer that “the drivers ought now to work as field hands, and some field hands be drivers in their place.” Already convinced that the old ways of managing blacks would no longer suffice, Edward B. Heyward, the South Carolina rice planter, acknowledged the importance of naming as his foreman an individual who had never before held that position. “Had he turned loose old ‘Wasp’ [the former driver] on the plantation,” Heyward’s son recalled, “I am quite sure he would have had few Negroes in his fields. But how Wasp would have enjoyed it!” On many plantations, however, the old driver still commanded the respect and loyalty of the blacks, and employers relied heavily on his leadership to continue agricultural operations with the least amount of disruption; in some places, as on the Manigault rice plantations, the landowner made a contract with a black foreman or manager, in which he entrusted the entire agricultural operation to him, including the hiring and disciplining of the hands. At the end of the year, the owner retained one half of the net profits, while the blacks divided the rest among themselves. “Little or no intercourse is thus held between Gen’l Harrison [the employer] and the Mass of the Negroes,” Manigault wrote of that unique arrangement on his old place, “and provided the Work is performed it is immaterial what Hands are employed.”
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If the constraints imposed by contracts upon the movements and behavior of black laborers assumed a near uniformity, the amount and the method of compensation tended to vary considerably, even within the same region. “I furnish everything but clothes, and give my freedmen one third of the crop they make,” an Arkansas planter declared, but “on twenty plantations around me, there are ten different styles of contracts.” The compensation offered a freedman reflected the scarcity of labor in the district, the planter’s ability to pay, agricultural prospects, how successfully the laborers pressed their demands, and how effectively planters were able to decide among themselves on maximum rates. Despite variations within regions, the wage rates and crop shares tended to be higher in the lower than in the upper South: a first-class male field hand could generally expect to make no more than $5–$10 a month in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee; $8–$12 in South Carolina and Georgia; $10–$18 in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana; and $15–$25 in Arkansas and Texas. On the same plantation, however, wage scales fluctuated according to how the employer classified his laborers; on a Mississippi plantation, for example, the employer paid first-class male laborers $15 a month, first-class
women $10, and drivers $40, while the average hand netted about $10.
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The value of these wages obviously depended upon the degree to which the employer maintained his laborers—that is, whether he furnished the lodgings, food, clothing, and medical care or deducted those items from wages. On a plantation in Louisiana, for example, field hands earned $25 a month but they had to purchase their food, clothing, and other provisions, and each hand paid a tax to ensure regular visits by a doctor; most of the wage, they testified, went for food, they could ill afford a contemplated tax for schools, and it was “pretty tight living.” The method and time of payment reflected an employer’s dim view of black character. The alleged propensity of blacks to spend their wages quickly and foolishly induced employers to insert clauses in contracts whereby they would provide certain necessities “at the current prices” and deduct the expense from the freedmen’s pay. And to ensure compliance with the contract, they preferred to pay the laborer half of his earnings on a quarterly or monthly basis, withholding the rest until the end of the year; in many cases, they withheld all payments until the crop had been completed, although advancing money or provisions against the final settlement. If a laborer worked for a portion of the crop rather than wages, his share usually ranged from one fifth (with board) to one half (less the deductions made for provisions). Since the agreed-upon share would be divided among all the laborers on the plantation, individuals received amounts commensurate with the work they performed and their position and sex.
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