A Just and Lasting Peace: A Documentary History of Reconstruction (67 page)

Doctor fix up medicine and told her to give it to me.

She say: “Uncle Will, take this medicine.” I 'fraid to take it . 'Fraid he was trying to kill me. Then two men, John and Charlie, come in. Lady say: “Get this medicine in Uncle Will.” One of the men hold my hand, and they gag me and put it in me. Next few days I can talk and ax for something to eat, so I git better. (I say: “Well, he didn't kill me when I took the medicine!”)

I stayed there with her. . . . . Next year I move right back in two miles, other side where I always live, with another lady. I stay there three year. Got along all right. When I left from there, I left there with $300 and plenty corn and hog. Everything I want, and three hundred cash dollars in my pocket!

A
FTER
F
REEDOM

Right after freedom, my father plaited baskets and mats. He shucked mops, put handles on rakes, and did things like that in addition to his farming. He was a blacksmith all the time, too. He used to plait collars for mules. He farmed and got his harvests in season. The other things would be a help to him between times.

My father came here because he thought that there was a better situation here than in Georgia. Of course, the living was better there because they had plenty of fruit. Then he worked on a third and fourth. He got one bale of cotton out of every three he made. The slaves left many a plantation, and they would grow up in weeds. When a man would clear up the ground like this and plant it down in something, he would get all he planted on it. That was in addition to the ground that he would contract to plant. He used to plant rice, peas, potatoes, corn, and anything else he wanted too. It was all hisn so long as it was on extra ground he cleared up.

But they said, “Cotton grows as high as a man in Arkansas.” Then they paid a man $2.50 for picking cotton here in Arkansas, while they just paid about 40 cents in Georgia. So my father came here. Times was good when we come here. The old man cleared five bales of cotton for himself his first year, and he raised his own corn. He bought a pony and a cow and a breeding hog out of the first year's money. He died about thirty-five years ago.

When I was coming along, I did public work after I became a grown man. First year I made crops with him and cleared two bales for myself at 12½ cents a pound. The second year I hired out by the month at $45 per month and board. I had to buy my clothes, of course. After seven years I went to doing work as a millwright here in Arkansas. I stayed at that eighteen months. Then I steamboated.

We had a captain on that steamboat that never called any man by his name. We rolled cotton down the hill to the boat and loaded it on, and if you weren't a good man, that cotton got wet. I never wetted my cotton. But just the same, I heard what the others heard. One day after we had finished loading, I thought I'd tell him something. The men advised me not to. He was a rough man, and he carried a gun in his pocket and a gun in his shirt. I walked up to him and said, “Captain, I don't know what your name is, but I know you's a white man. I'm a nigger, but I got a name just like you have. My name's Webb. If you call ‘Webb,' I'll come just as quick as I will for any other name and a lot more willing. If you don't want to say ‘Webb,' you can just say ‘Let's go,' and you'll find me right there.” He looked at me a moment, and then he said, “Where you from?” I said, “I'm from Georgia, but I came on this boat from Little Rock.” He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Come on upstairs.” We had two or three drinks upstairs, and he said, “You and your pardner are the only two men I have that is worth a damn.” Then he said, “But you are right; you have a name, and you have a right to be called by it.” And from then on, he quit calling us out of our names.

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4. Abraham Lincoln, “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction,” in
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5. “Transcript of Wade-Davis Bill (February 15, 1864),” U.S. National Archives & Records Administration, http://www.ourdocuments.gov/print_friendly.php?flash=true&page=transcript&doc=37&title= Transcript+of+Wade-Davis+Bill+(1864).

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7. “The Wade-Davis Manifesto,” in
The Radical Republicans and Reconstruction, 1861–1870
, ed. Harold M. Hyman (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 137–47.

8. Henry Highland Garnet, “Let the Monster Perish,” in
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9. “An Act to establish a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees,” in
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,
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, eds. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (New York: The New Press, 1994).

15. Thaddeus Stevens, “‘Reconstruction,' September 6th, 1865, in Lancaster,” in
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, vol. 2, eds. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

16. “A Freedmen's Bureau Officer Reports on Conditions in Mississippi, 1865,” in
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17. “From Edisto Island Freedmen to Andrew Johnson,” October 28, 1865, in
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, vol. 9, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).

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19. “Amendment 13,” in
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20. Carl Schurz, “Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,” in Carl Schurz,
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21.
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22. Joseph S. Fullerton to Andrew Johnson, February 9, 1866, in
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23. “Vicksburg, Miss., March 8, 1866,” in John Richard Dennett,
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, ed. Henry M. Christman (New York: The Viking Press, 1965).

24. Charles Sumner to the Duchess of Argyll, April 3, 1866, in
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,
vol. 2, ed. Beverly Wilson Palmer (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).

25. “The Civil Rights Act of 1866” (April 9, 1866),
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14 (Thirty-ninth Congress), 27–30.

26. Benjamin C. Truman, “Relative to the Condition of the Southern People and the States in Which the Rebellion Existed,” Senate Executive Document, No. 43, Thirty-ninth Congress, first session (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1866).

27. Carl Schurz, “The Logical Results of the War,” September 8, 1866, http://www.trip.net/~bobwb/schurz/speech/warresults.html.

28. Rhoda Ann Childs's Statement in
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, eds. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (New York: The New Press, 1992).

29. George Fitzhugh, “Camp Lee and the Freedman's Bureau,”
De Bow's Review
2, After War Series (October 1866): 346–55, in
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, eds. Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

30. Frederick Douglass, “Reconstruction,”
Atlantic Monthly
18 (December 1866): 761–65.

31. “President Johnson's Message,” December 3, 1866, in Edward McPherson,
The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction
(1871; reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, [2009]), 144–47.

32. Claude August Crommelin,
A Young Dutchman views Post–Civil War America: Diary of Claude August Crommelin
, trans. Augustus J. Veenendaal Jr. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).

33. Henry Latham,
Black and White: A Journal of a Three Months' Tour in the United States
(1867; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 262–79.

34. “An Act to Provide for more efficient Government of the Rebel States” [First Reconstruction Act] (March 2, 1867),
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14 (Thirty-ninth Congress), 428–29.

35. Anonymous, “Untitled,”
Charlottesville Chronicle
, March 6, 1867, in
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, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

36. “The Prospect of Reconstruction,”
The Nation
5 (March 14, 1867): 212–13.

37. “Impeachment from a Legal Point of View,”
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38. “Congress and the Constitution,”
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5 (March 28, 1867): 254.

39. “The Prospect at the South,”
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5 (March 28, 1867): 254–55.

40. “Land for the Landless,”
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41. John Forsyth, “The Argument of Numbers,”
Mobile Advertiser and Register
, June 27, 1867, and W. W. Screws, “Why Oppose a Convention?”
Montgomery Daily Advertiser
, June 28, 1867, in
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, ed. Donna L. Dickerson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003).

42. “The Freedmen,”
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1 (July 1867): 4–5.

43. Thaddeus Stevens, “Reconstruction,” July 9, 1867, in
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, Fortieth Congress, first session, in
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, vol. 2, eds. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).

44. “The Negro's Claim to Office,”
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45. “Samson Agonistes at Washington,”
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(August 24, 1867): 544.

46. George Fitzhugh, “
Cui Bono?
—The Negro Vote,”
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4, After War Series (October 1867): 289–92, in
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, eds. Paul F. Paskoff and Daniel J. Wilson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982).

47. “The Virginia Election,”
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5 (October 31, 1867): 354.

48. “What Shall We Do with the Indians?”
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49. Andrew Johnson, “Third Annual Message,” in
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, vol. 13, ed. Paul H. Bergeron (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1996).

50. J. T. Trowbridge,
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51. Cornelia Hancock to Philadelphia Friends Association for the Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen, January 1868, in
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54. S. A. Atkinson, “The Supreme Hour Has Come,”
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55. “Karinus,” Letter to the Editor—“Equal Suffrage in Michigan,”
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56. “This Little Boy Would Persist in Handling Books Above His Capacity. And This Was the Disastrous Result,”
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57. Thaddeus Stevens, “Speech on Impeachment Trial of Andrew Johnson,” April 27, 1868,
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58. “The Result of the Trial,”
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59. “Republican, at Chicago, May,” in Edward McPherson,
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60. Carey Styles, “Not Our ‘Brother,'”
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61. “Amendment 14,” in
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62. Henry McNeal Turner, “I Claim the Rights of a Man,” in
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63. “Remarks of William E. Mathews,”
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64. Ulysses S. Grant, “President Grant's Inaugural Address, March 4, 1869,” in Edward McPherson,
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65. Lydia Maria Child, “Homesteads,”
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66. “Amendment 15,” in
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67. Frederick Douglass, “At Last, at Last, the Black Man Has a Future: An Address Delivered in Albany, New York, on 22 April 1870,” in
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,
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