A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (26 page)

(September 25, 1866)

Georgia freedwoman Rhoda Ann Childs's chilling testimony before a Freedmen's Bureau agent documents the brutal racial and sexual violence of Reconstruction. With her husband, a former soldier in the U.S. Colored Troops, absent, Rhoda stood vulnerable to the abuse of eight white men. This horrific episode suggests not only the gratuitous violence of the period, but also the legacy of sectional and race hatred following Confederate defeat.

Rhoda Ann Childs came into this office and made the following statement:

“Myself and husband were under contract with Mrs. Amelia Childs of Henry County, and worked from Jan. 1, 1866, until the crops were laid by, or in other words until the main work of the year was done, without difficulty. Then, (the fashion being prevalent among the planters) we were called upon one night, and my husband was demanded; I Said he was not there. They then asked where he was. I Said he was gone to the water mellon patch. They then Seized me and took me Some distance from the house, where they ‘bucked' me down across a log, Stripped my clothes over my head, one of the men Standing astride my neck, and beat me across my posterior, two men holding my legs. In this manner I was beaten until they were tired. Then they turned me parallel with the log, laying my neck on a limb which projected from the log, and one man placing his foot upon my neck, beat me again on my hip and thigh. Then I was thrown upon the ground on my back, one of the men Stood upon my breast, while two others took hold of my feet and stretched My limbs as far apart as they could, while the man Standing upon my breast applied the Strap to my private parts until fatigued into stopping, and I was more dead than alive. Then a man, Supposed to be an ex-confederate Soldier, as he was on crutches, fell upon me and ravished me. During the whipping one of the men ran his pistol into me, and Said he had a hell of a mind to pull the trigger, and Swore they ought to Shoot me, as my husband had been in the ‘God damned Yankee Army,' and Swore they meant to kill every black Son-of-a-bitch they could find that had ever fought against them. They then went back to the house, Seized my two daughters and beat them, demanding their father's pistol, and upon failure to get that, they entered the house and took Such articles of clothing as Suited their fancy, and decamped. There were concerned in this affair eight men, none of which could be recognized for certain.

 

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Roda Ann X Childs

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(October 1866)

Virginian George Fitzhugh (1806–1881) ranked as one of the Old South's foremost intellectuals, justifying slavery, racial hierarchies, and the plantation system by comparing them favorably to free labor and the North's emerging bourgeois capitalist marketplace. In
Sociology for the South
(1854) and
Cannibals All
(1859), he criticized ideas of freedom and equality, noting that they bred cutthroat competition and internecine class warfare, rendering citizens “cannibals all.” Following the Civil War, Fitzhugh served as a Freedmen's Bureau agent, adjudicating court cases involving freedmen and -women. Writing in 1866 in
De Bow's
Review
, Fitzhugh expressed sympathy toward people of color but remained convinced that blacks would forever require white supervision, preferably that of their former masters.

Camp Lee, about a mile from Richmond, is but a branch or appendage of the Freedman's Bureau in that city. For this reason, and because we ourselves live at Camp Lee, and until recently held our court in Richmond, we have thought it would be appropriate to treat of the two in connection. Admitted behind the curtains, were we curious, prying, or observant, we might have collected materials for an article at once rich, racy and instructive; but we are, unfortunately, abstracted, and see or hear very little that is going on around us. What we have seen and heard, so far as we deem it interesting, we will relate, without breach of confidence, because nothing has been told us in confidence, and we have seen or heard nothing at all discreditable to any officer of the Bureau.

The institution has a very pretty name, but unlike the rose, “would not smell as sweet by any other name.” In truth, it is simply and merely a negro nursery; a fact which would have been obvious even to the blind, if led into our little court-room, where the stove was in full blast, and about a hundred cushites were in attendance, as suitors, witnesses or idle lookers-on. You may be sure, Mr. Editor, we smoked desperately and continuously. As this habit of ours, of smoking whilst sitting on the Bench, has been made the subject of remark in some of the Northern papers, we deem this explanation due to our contemporaries and to posterity; for as part, parcel, or appurtenance of the Negro Nursery, we shall certainly descend to posterity. Indeed, a good many of our Federal friends will be obliged to us for this explanation, for our soldiers smoked terribly in Richmond, quite as terribly as Uncle Toby's soldiers swore in Flanders.

This Negro Nursery is an admirable idea of the Federals, which, however, they stole from us. For we always told them the darkeys were but grown-up children that needed guardians, like all other children. They saw this very soon, and therefore established the Freedmen's Bureau; at first for a year, thinking that a year's tuition under Yankee school ma'ams and Federal Provost Marshals would amply fit them for self-support, liberty and equality, and the exercise of the right of suffrage. They have now added two years more to the duration of the Bureau, because they now see that the necessity for nursing the negroes is twice as urgent as they thought it at first. At the end of that time, they will discover that their pupils are irreclaimable
“mauvais sujets,”
and will be ready to throw up “in divine disgust” the whole negro-nursing and negro-teaching business, and to turn the affair over to the State authorities.

The American people, by that time, must become satisfied that they have expended enough, aye, and far too much, of blood and treasure in the hopeless attempt to make citizens of negroes. They must first be made men, and the Bureau is a practical admission and assertion that they are not men, and will not be for two years hence. By that time they think the Ethiopian will change his skin. We are sure he will not. Negro he is, negro he always has been, and negro he always will be. Never has he been, and never will he be a man, physically, morally, or intellectually, in the European or American sense of the term. None are so thoroughly aware that the term “negro” is, in its ordinary acceptation, the negation of manhood, as the abolitionists and the negroes themselves. They are no longer negroes, but “colored people.” Those who call them other than negroes, are acting falsely and hypocritically, for they thereby as good as assert that these blacks have changed their natures, moral and intellectual, and risen to an equality with the whites.

They are our fellow-beings, children, not men, and therefore to be compassionated and taken care of.

The Bureau has occasioned much irritation, and in some instances, no doubt, been guilty of wrong and injustice to our people; but it has saved the South a world of money and of trouble, and expended a great deal of money among us, at a time when we could spare neither men nor money to keep order among the negroes, or to support the helpless ones. We can bear it for two years longer, but after that time we must have negro-nurseries of our own; that is, like the Federals, we must institute a distinct and separate government for the negroes. A majority of those living in the country will subside, if they have not already subsided, into the
“statu quo ante bellum.”
The crowds of paupers, beggars, rogues, and vagabonds, infesting our cities and their suburbs, must be summarily dealt with by State bureaux located in each considerable town. No bureaux or bureau officers will be needed in the country, or in villages—nor are they even now needed.

We have resided at Camp Lee for more than a year. During that whole time there have been from three to five hundred negroes here, furnished with houses by the Federal authorities, part of which were built by the Confederates during the war for military purposes, and part by the State Agricultural Society. The grounds are still owned by that Society. The brick house, however, in which we reside was originally erected by Colonel John Mayo, deceased, father-in-law of General Winfield Scott. The dwelling-house, called the Hermitage, was burned down many years ago. The Society added a story to these brick buildings, and erected two-storied porticos in front and at the sides of them. They now make quite an imposing appearance, with a portico of a hundred and fifty feet in front, and wings of about eighty on the lower floor, and one of equal extent on the upper floor. We are, just now, the sole occupant of the lower floor, and a French lady the sole occasional occupant of the upper floor.

Most of this building, until a few weeks since, was occupied by Mrs. Gibbons, her daughter and Miss Ellison. Whilst they were here, Camp Lee was tolerable, and often very agreeable, even to us, separated as we are from our family. We hope, and have reason to expect, that they will return during this fall. In front of this building, we have a market-garden of two acres, which so far, owing to the drought, has been a great failure, but which Daniel Coleman (Freedman), our gardener, assures us will do wonderfully well as a fall garden. But we are quite incredulous. We are great at theory, and hence generally fail in practice.

Just beside our vegetable-garden stands Mrs. Gibbons' zoological-garden. Here she would sometimes have as many as a hundred and twenty negro orphans, of both sexes, and various ages. The buildings for them were ample and commodious. Mrs. G.'s attention and kindness to her wards was assiduous, untiring, and very successful. When she first took these infants in charge, some time last fall, the mortality among them was fearful; but after about two months, by frequent ablutions, close shaving of their heads, abundance of warm and clean clothing, and plenty of good and various food, they were rendered remarkably healthy, and so continued until their removal to Philadelphia. Mrs. G. removed, in all, about two hundred to that city. We presume they have not been so healthful there, for we learn, indirectly, that the Board of Health of that city has advised, or required, their removal. Poor things! Camp Lee was a Paradise to them. Immorality and crime in every form, want and disease, will fill up the balance of their existence. They will be feeble, hated, persecuted and despised. They lost nothing in losing their parents; but lost all in losing their masters. They will meet with no more kind Mrs. Gibbons in this cold, harsh, cruel world.

Mrs. Gibbons is a member of the Society of Friends, deputed by an association of ladies, of Philadelphia, belonging to that society, to superintend the negro orphan asylum at this place. The Bureau furnishes the ordinary rations to these infants, and the association abundance of whatever else that is needed for their comfortable subsistence. When Mrs. Gibbons left, she had on hand some fifty-five new comers, not yet prepared to be sent North. These were sent over to Howard Grove, another branch of the Negro Nursery at Richmond. We believe most of the sick, aged and infirm negroes are sent there. It was a Confederate hospital during the war, and is now a negro nursery and hospital. We have never visited it since the war. Near it is Chimborazo Hospital, now Nursery, and this also was a Confederate hospital. There were a great many negroes there last winter, but we believe the Bureau has succeeded in getting rid of all but the infants and infirm. We learn there are nine ladies there, teaching literary or industrial schools.

Miss Ellison was the teacher at this place. This teaching, however, is, we fear, but a cruel farce, that but incites to insubordination, and will induce the negroes to run a muck against the whites, in which Cuffee will come off second best. These negro orphans have lost their parents, but we feel quite positive that in three instances out of four their parents are not both dead. Negroes possess much amiableness of feeling but not the least steady, permanent affection. “Out of sight, out of mind,” is true of them all. They never grieve twenty-four hours for the death of parents, wives, husbands, or children. Some of the negroes at this place informed us, many months ago, that many of Mrs. Gibbons' orphans had parents in Richmond. About four weeks since, a very interesting little negro child, about two years old, was deserted by its mother, picked up in the streets of Richmond, and brought to Mrs. Gibbons. Not ten days since, just at the approach of a terrific storm, a negro mother left her little daughter, of about five years old, exposed in the field, within a few hundred yards of this place. It was picked up by some kind-hearted negro, and is now in the keeping of the French lady. It is clever, and extremely emaciate. It has been starved. But we do not blame the poor mother. She, too, deprived of a master, was no doubt starving, and the best she could possibly do was thus to expose her child, with the hope that some humane person able to provide for it might find it and take it in charge. . . .

The negroes in the country are contented, and valuable laborers. Having no rent to pay, abundance of food and fuel, and money enough at all times to buy plain necessary clothing, they are never punished by absolute want, never become restless or insubordinate. Besides, they dwell too far apart to combine for any mischievous purposes. But the excessive numbers of negroes about our towns, for want of employment, are continually in a state bordering on actual starvation, and all starving men are desperate and dangerous. We know from daily and careful observation that the Bureau in Richmond has and still is exerting itself to the utmost of its very limited powers to abate this nuisance, by refusing rations, and advising and persuading the negroes to remove into the country, where they can all find employment. Force, not “moral suasion,” governs all men, whether white or black. If the Bureau had the power to take these idle negroes up, and hire them out to the highest bidder, or put them out to the lowest, and were about to exercise the power, the negroes would at once squander, and find masters in the country. But the Radicals are afraid that if negroes are treated no better than poor white people, it will be said that they are re-enslaved, and subjected to a worse form of slavery than that from which they have just escaped. The result of all this must be, that a very large standing army must be kept up in the South by the Federal Government; portions of it stationed at every town south of the Ohio and Mason and Dixon's line; or the Constitution must be amended so as to authorize the several States to maintain standing armies. But even after all this is done, there will be frequent bloody collisions between the races in all of our Southern towns. Negroes, so useful in the country, are an abominable nuisance in town. Mobs at the South, after a time, will drive them out, as mobs have often done at the North. The Radicals hold the wolf by the ears. They have not tamed him, and instead of letting him go, are trying to mend their hold. This wolf is the opposing races in our towns and cities. In conquering the South and freeing the negroes, they but bought the elephant—and now they know not what to do with him. But he is
their
elephant, not ours, and we are of opinion should be left with them to be nursed and cared for. In two more years they will grow heartily tired of nursing this elephant and holding the wolf by the ears. Standing armies and Freedmen's Bureaus are rather more expensive cages than the country can now afford. These negro nurseries will be broken up, and their inmates, probably, be turned over to us at the South, to try our hands at nursing. If the North, after turning them over to us, will not intermeddle in their management, we will at once tame them, and make them useful, and instead of costing the nation some thirty millions a year, they will yield a neat annual profit to it of some two hundred millions. Then you will hear no more of idle, discontented, starving negroes. All will be well provided for, and all happy and contented.

We have the highest respect for all the offices of the Bureau in Richmond, from the commanding general down. They have even treated us with great courtesy and kindness; and we are witness to the fact that they discharge their duties with zeal, industry and integrity. Therefore, in calling the Bureau a negro nursery or a congeries of negro nurseries, we intend no disrespect—but only wish to convey to the public a full, accurate and comprehensive idea of the true character of the institution. Besides, we have been one of the nurses ourselves, and would not bring discredit on our own calling. . . .