Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 (47 page)

Read Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 Online

Authors: Midori Takagi

Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865
9.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Source:
Andrew E. Ellett, Accounts, 1865, Newton M. Lee Papers, VHS.
 
Page 132
streets and halls with music, excitement, and a feeling of anticipation.
35
Richmonders showered soldiers with gifts and flattered them through imitation. Young women would wait for the units to march by and hand out sweets and delicacies to them, while young boys and even male slaves incorporated elements of the military uniform into their everyday clothing by sewing yellow stripes to their outer pants seams.
36
Hundreds of women happily gathered in church basements and formed sewing groups to supply the troops with socks and bandages.
37
Most of the war years, however, were filled not with flag-waving but with deprivation and loss punctuated by housing and food shortages, increasing crime, and civil riots. It was these circumstances that gradually gave Richmond the look of a "beleaguered city."
38
The increase in population with the arrival of military personnel, refugees from border states, and their slave servants, placed enormous pressure on the city's structure and services.
39
Hotels and boarding-houses were filled beyond capacity with guests bedding down in every nook and cranny including on top of billiard tables.
40
Food shortages and high costs as a result of the Union blockade of the Virginia coast, smaller harvests, and unscrupulous merchants purposely withholding goods to inflate prices forced residents to improvise or simply do without staples. Meals made without fat, butter, or sugar were quickly dubbed "blockade inventions."
41
Theft of food, clothing, and fuel quickly increased as prices soared. Punishments became more severe. With mounting caseloads the Hustings Court had little time or room for compassion. Bent on deterring further theft and vice, the court severely punished transgressors as lessons to the larger populace. This new attitude brought harsh justice to souls such as Albert Rush, a slave resident who was sentenced to thirty-nine lashes for stealing three Confederate dollars' worth of coal. Anthony Bradley, a white man, served three months in prison for stealing five Confederate dollars' worth of lumber.
42
Richmond residents responded to the shortages in ways other than petty theft. Midway through the war, in what became known as the Bread Riot of April 1863, a group of white women angered by rising food costs and by the governor's refusal to standardize prices marched down Main Street and proceeded to smash and loot food and clothing stores. Within a short time the women, along with some thieves who took advantage of the situation, seized goods worth $13,000 in Confederate money including 310 pounds of beef from government wagons. Clearly the women's immediate purpose was "to get food," but their protest suggested deeper and broader social and economic ills plaguing the city. The mayor, the governor, and the president of the Confederacy, however, were in no mood to hear or address the problems that their citizens
 
Page 133
faced; they merely demanded that the women stop. When the demonstrators refused to back down, Davis ordered the militia to shoot.
43
After several tense minutes, the demonstrators dispersed and left.
While the hardships suffered by white residents were great, those endured by slave and free black Richmonders were even greater. With rampant inflation and a much-devalued currency, slave laborers working outside the war effort found themselves working harder for less money (or payment in kind) than in previous years. Richmond slave women were probably the first to notice this shift, which was unusual because in the city's history it was generally the men who first felt the impact of any broad labor and economic change.
Slave women found themselves burdened with more tasks and responsibilities. During the war years it was not uncommon for the cook to also act as the chambermaid, washer, ironer, and nurse. Families seeking domestic help often would list in newspaper advertisements a multitude of roles they expected a single slave worker to fulfill as basic qualifications for employment.
44
This was largely because many Richmond families could no longer employ servants for each job and therefore depended on the one or two slaves who remained to perform all chores for the same low pay.
Not only did employers hire fewer slave servants, they also shortened the contract terms. Although most domestics still negotiated yearly contracts, it was not uncommon for slaves to clean house "by the month."
45
This arrangement appealed to families staying in Richmond temporarily (such as refugee families moving south) or to those whose finances were rocky, but such contracts robbed slaves of any stability or assurance of cash payments.
Equally damaging to domestic slaves' working and living conditions was employers' insistence on hiring single persons without children. With increasing frequency the words "without incumbrance" appeared in advertisements.
46
Employers no longer wanted workers with infants because of the high costs of feeding extra mouths. Such restrictions were devastating to slave mothers desperate for domestic positions that would allow them to remain in Richmond and keep their families together.
Slave men encountered similar problems when job hunting in Richmond's industries and factories. Job prospects in the private sector became rather slim. The tobacco firms, which traditionally had employed the greatest number of slave laborers, had largely closed their doors. By 1863 the number of manufactories declined from a high of fifty-two to as few as a half dozen.
47
This reduction is attributable to a number of factors including a decline in available capital and credit, increased labor costs, the Union blockade of the Virginia coast (which made shipping
 
Page 134
tobacco to Europe difficult), and high taxes on tobacco.
48
Furthermore, resources to manufacture tobacco became scarce as workers, and even the buildings, were commandeered for the war effort; free black and slave laborers were commonly assigned to the batteries, while the warehouses were refitted as prisons for Union soldiers and hospitals for wounded Confederates.
49
Growers and manufacturers not deterred by these factors were hobbled by the 1863 executive proclamation and General Assembly act limiting the production of tobacco as a way to encourage more grain cultivation.
50
By 1862 the largest single employer of city slave workers was the Confederate government. In addition to the public defense projects, most of the major industries, such as the railroads, flour milling, iron foundries, shoemakers, saddlers, lumberyards, livery businesses, and even the firehouse, were under the direction of the Confederacy. Slave laborers working in these various businesses frequently reported to an officer or worked on a production schedule set by one of the government agencies. A slave looking for work in Richmond during these years would have been hard-pressed to find a job that was not connected to the government.
Slaves paid a high price for accepting such work. In addition to harsh conditions, bondmen suffered from the immediate loss of their working and living privileges. As government slaves, they could neither hire themselves out nor negotiate cash payments because all contracts were handled directly between the various war departments and slave owners. Although the amount of payment each slave received varied depending on the type of job and the level of skills he or she possessed, the scale of payments set by the government was fixed. The informality and flexibility of the hiring system, which had for so long given slaves the ability to choose employers, negotiate the pay, and receive the cash directly, was summarily replaced by rigid bureaucratic procedures. As a result, slave hospital workers Hannah, Joseph, and Henry, a laundress, a nurse, and a cook, could not expect contracts for more than $15, $20, and $25 (Confederate currency) per month, respectively.
51
Furthermore, they would not see any cash from those earnings until after the hospital paid the slave owners, and their owners paid them. In the midst of a war, timely payments were not always certain.
Overtime bonuses also were discontinued. Limited government finances and impressment laws eliminated opportunities to earn cash above the set work payments. Given the financial situation of the Confederate government, it could ill afford to pay for extra work performed by slaves. More telling, however, government officials unaware of the subtleties of urban industrial slavery saw little need to give slave workers
 
Page 135
any incentives beyond the threat of physical punishment and "life on the public works."
Richmond slaves faced difficulties beyond the loss of their working privileges. Escalating inflation and constant supply shortages affected bond men and women the same way it did other poor Richmonders. Like the women of the bread riot, slave workers found themselves unable to stretch the supplies or their board money to feed themselves and their families. Providing for a family became even more difficult without the usual opportunities to earn overtime bonuses. Staples such as butter, sugar, and salt doubled and quadrupled in cost during the war, elevating them from common household goods to nearly unattainable luxuries. Butter, for example, sold for 75 cents per pound in 1862. A year later it sold for $3.00 (Confederate money) per pound a price well beyond the budgets of slaves and many other Richmonders.
52
To supplement the meager cash payments and supplies given by owners, slave laborers continued to moonlight, or work second jobs, even though city and state governments greatly discouraged it. Hawking goods or providing laundry and cooking services were fairly typical extra jobs that brought small sums of money. David, who spent long days working for Turpin and Yarbrough's store tried to make ends meet by selling newspapers on the streets. Aaron made extra income by selling fruits near the railroad station to passing soldiers and visitors. One slave woman, Dicey, created an unusual position for herself by "selling various articles of clothing for different ladies in the city." It seems that the wealthier ladies of Richmond had begun to sell their silk dresses and shawls for extra cash, probably to buy groceries and other essentials. In order to spare these ladies the shame and humiliation of selling their own clothes at the local street market, Dicey hawked the clothes for them, for a small fee.
53
If the pressures of daily life did not make slave and free black Richmonders weary, then the mounting legal restrictions probably did. With each passing year black residents saw their "freedoms" dwindle as "webs of restraint" were quickly spun around them in efforts to prevent slave rebellion and pro-Union activities.
54
Even though thousands of fully armed troops were stationed in and around the city and were prepared to meet any sign of danger, city council officials felt it necessary to tighten the reins of slavery, if only to help white Richmonders sleep easier at night. Wartime regulations were hardly new; most reiterated the restrictions laid down in the codes passed in 1852 and again in 1859.
55
Slaves were prohibited from purchasing, trading, or drinking liquor, keeping a cookshop or any other store, selling newspapers, and hiring themselves out.
56
They also were prohibited from renting rooms
 
Page 136
or houses, carrying a cane at night, or smoking in public. Watchmen constantly patrolled the streets and alleys to break up any illegal assemblies of black residents at local grocery stores or cookshops. Free black visitors were not allowed to enter the city without a certificate of ''good character and loyalty" from a county judge. Those who tried to enter without such papers were summarily pressed into service. Slaves confiscated as runaways also were sent to work for the war with no hope of relief.
57
These wartime regulations surprised few slave and free black residents. They were already familiar with the restrictions against carrying canes, buying medicine, or standing on sidewalks. What probably did surprise them, however, was the fervency with which the laws were enforced. In the past city slave workers had little to fear when looking for work because arrests were so rare. But with Richmond in a state of war and martial law, authorities were quick to execute the new regulations. Between 1849 and 1851, for example, only three slaves had been arrested for self-hiring. But between 1862 and 1864, eighty-five slave workers spent time in jail for this crime.
58
The zeal with which the public guard and night watchmen enforced the codes was matched only by the fervor of the court judges in punishing transgressors. Albert Rush was one of many slave residents automatically sentenced to thirty-nine lashes regardless of the crime. Although "39" was a common punishment for crimes such as larceny or assaulting a fellow slave in the prewar era, the chances of receiving a lighter sentence were fairly good. Confessing to a crime in the prewar era, for example, often resulted in lowering the sentence to twenty-five stripes. Slave women also escaped the full "39" for crimes such as larceny, frequently receiving punishments of fifteen to twenty lashes. During the war, however, punishments became fairly standard in their severity for both men and women. Assaults on slaves or free blacks by either group automatically resulted in "39." The majority of slaves picked up for "going at large" spent time in jail until their owners paid the requisite fine of $10 (Confederate currency) and court costs. For major offenses, such as attacking a white person or grand larceny, slaves received two to three sentences of "39" to be administered over several weeks. The harshest punishments, however, were reserved not for slaves but for free blacks. The common sentence for stealing, remaining in the commonwealth without the court's permission, or assaulting a white person was immediate and permanent enslavement.
City slave and free black residents did not have to participate in selfhiring or petty theft to court danger. Just living in Richmond, which was overrun by armed, drunken soldiers, proved fairly hazardous. Hardly a

Other books

Just Wanna Testify by Pearl Cleage
The Unreasoning Mask by Philip Jose Farmer
Sisters of Misery by Megan Kelley Hall
The Proving by Brosky, Ken
Dark Hunger by Rita Herron
Affairs of the Heart by Maxine Douglas
Republic or Death! by Alex Marshall
Quozl by Alan Dean Foster
Come Destroy Me by Packer, Vin
The Kill by Jan Neuharth