Been in the Storm So Long (35 page)

Few thought to ask the slaves to explain their apparent “betrayal” of the white families they had once served so faithfully. It remained easier to blame the Yankees and to cling to the notion that most slaves retained an affection for their “white folks” but feared to show it in the presence of the soldiers. Near Opelousas, Louisiana, a black youth rushed out of his cabin to tell a passing Union officer where his master had hidden two splendid horses. Although grateful for the information, the officer thought to ask the youth why he had betrayed his master’s prize possession: “You ought to have more love for him than to do such a thing.” Without the slightest hesitation, the slave replied, “When my master begins to lub me, den it’ll be time enough for me to lub him. What I wants is to get away. I want you to take me off from dis plantation, where I can be free.” Few whites were privy to the private conversations of their slaves; in the master’s presence, of course, a slave chose his words carefully and rarely betrayed his real feelings if they seemed inappropriate at the time. When Kate Stone’s brother ventured back to the family home in Louisiana, which they had abandoned, he had the rare opportunity to overhear a conversation between two of the remaining servants, one of whom was Aunt Lucy, the principal housekeeper. The two slaves sat before a fire drinking coffee and
discussing the merits of their mistress, Amanda Stone. Remaining well hidden, James Stone heard enough to make a full report when he returned to the exiled family. Not only had Lucy and Maria abused his mother verbally but they referred to her always as “that Woman,” talked exultantly of strutting about in her clothes and replacing her as the mistress, and heaped scorn upon the entire family.
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The number of slaves who “betrayed” their masters, ran away, became insubordinate, or remained faithful defies any precise statistical breakdowns. Conceivably, if slave behavior could be quantified, the results might suggest that a majority of slaves (particularly in the areas untouched by the Union Army) remained with their masters, at least for the duration of the war. But this would prove to be a highly misleading criterion for determining loyalty or fidelity. The master cared less about percentages of faithfulness in the neighborhood than how he could be reasonably certain of the conduct of his own slaves. More than anything else, the uncertainty depressed him. Manifestations of disaffection could sometimes be dismissed with the observation that the slave in question “had always been a bad Negro,” or “we always considered him a most dangerous character,” or he “has been a runaway from childhood.” The mounting anguish of the master, however, often coincided with the realization that the previous demeanor of his slaves, the efficiency and loyalty with which they had served him, the antebellum record of mischief and devotion simply offered no reliable clues as to how they would behave when the Union Army came into the neighborhood or when they were informed of their freedom.
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Within the same household and plantation, the pattern of “betrayal” and “loyalty” created bewilderment, dismay, and surprise. The old distinctions a master had been able to draw between the “good slaves” and the “bad niggers” were no longer dependable. “Jonathan, whom we trusted, betrayed us,” Mary Chesnut wrote. “The plantation house and mills, and Mulberry House were saved by Claiborne, that black rascal who was suspected by all the world.” Few of Adele Allston’s slaves behaved more faithfully than did Little Andrew, “whom we never had felt sure of” and had thought would desert to the Yankees. In Camden, South Carolina, Emma Holmes wrote of a family in which “the old, favored family servant” betrayed them while a young slave “formerly so careless and saucy, proved true as steel.”
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If slaveholding families came to be alarmed by the extent of the disaffection, the implications for their self-image as benign and benevolent patriarchs could be even more disturbing, sometimes downright traumatizing. No more plaintive cry resounded through slaveholding society than that the slaves in whom they had placed the greatest trust and confidence were the very first to “betray” them. If this complaint recurred most frequently, perhaps that was because it seemed least comprehensible. “Those we loved best, and who loved us best—as we thought—were the first to leave us,” a Virginian lamented, voicing an experience that would leave so many families incredulous. To Robert P. Howell, a North Carolina planter
who had lost a number of slaves, the behavior of Lovet “disappointed” him the most. “He was about my age and I had always treated him more as a companion than a slave. When I left I put everything in his charge, told him that he was free, but to remain on the place and take care of things. He promised me faithfully that he would, but he was the first one to leave … and I did not see him for several years.” To the wife of a prominent Louisiana slaveholder, the most troubling defection was that of “a colored woman born in the same house with me, always treated as well as me, always till my marriage slept in the same bed with me, and now, she is the first to leave.” John H. Bills, the Tennessee planter, least expected to hear of Tom’s departure—“he is the first to leave me & had thought would have been the last one to go”—while Louis Manigault, the rice planter, found himself at a loss to explain why the slave he esteemed most highly should have been “the very first to murmur” and “give trouble.”
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To whom could masters and mistresses turn for comfort and reassurance if not to the old family favorites, the legendary “aunties” and “uncles,” with whom they had lived so intimately, who had reared them as children, who had regaled them so often with their stories and songs, and who had shared with them the family tragedies and celebrations. But these slaves, too, refused to comply with the expectations of those who claimed to own them. “Even old Cirus went,” a perplexed Mississippian observed. “I reckon he is over a hundred years old.” Equally bewildered, Alexander and Cornelia Pope of Washington, Georgia, learned of “the rascality” of Uncle Lewis. This “old gray-haired darkey,” wrote Eliza Andrews, a neighbor and niece of the Popes, “has done nothing for years but live at his ease, petted and coddled and believed in by the whole family. The children called him, not ‘Uncle Lewis,’ but simply ‘Uncle,’ as if he had really been kin to them.” During the family prayers, he sat in a special place and was frequently called upon to lead the worship. “I have often listened to his prayers when staying at Aunty’s, and was brought up with as firm a belief in him as in the Bible itself.” Here, then, was the very prototype of the faithful servant, venerated by his owners and the townspeople as “an honored institution.” With the coming of the Yankees, Uncle Lewis not only deserted but told “a pack of lies” about his mistress and claimed a portion of the family lands. Although the Popes no longer tolerated his presence, the memories of their “fallen saint” and his startling betrayal lingered on.
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The behavior of an Uncle Lewis clearly overshadowed in significance if not in actual numbers those celebrated examples of wartime fidelity. The planter found it easier to resign himself to the defection of the field hands, for he may have had little direct contact with them, particularly if he employed an overseer or driver, and they could not be expected to have as strong an attachment to their “white folks.” But the conduct of the house servants, whom he thought he knew so well and no doubt felt he had pampered, most of whom had given him years of loyal service, raised questions which few slaveholding families wanted to confront. After awakening
one morning to discover that every one of his servants had decamped, a Georgia planter found himself revising assumptions he had never thought to question. “We had thought there was a strong bond of affection on their side as well as ours! We have ministered to them in sickness, infancy, and age.” Not all masters failed to appreciate the attraction of freedom, and a few treated the slaves’ aspirations with the respect they deserved. After losing a trusted slave, James Alcorn, a Mississippi planter, experienced the usual humiliation over being deceived but he stopped short of condemnation and had little difficulty in ascertaining the cause. “I feel that had I been in his place I should have gone, so good by Hadley, you have heretofore been faithful, that you should espouse your liberty but shows your sense. I wish you no harm.” Unlike Alcorn, most planters reacted with outrage and bewilderment, suffering a severe shock to their egos as well as their pocketbooks, and demanded to know why their trusted servants fled a situation in which they appeared to be perfectly content.
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The house servants achieved a reputation as the “white niggers” and “Uncle Toms” of slavery, who identified with and tried to emulate their masters, and whose disdain for the field hands was exceeded only by the pride they felt in their quality “white folks.” “We house slaves thought we was better’n the others what worked in the field,” a former Tennessee bondsman recalled. “We really was raised a little different, you know …” From the vantage point of the fields, a former South Carolina slave confirmed a common impression: “De house servants put on more airs than de white folks.” Contrary to this image of a slave hierarchy, house servants and field hands actually spent a great deal of time together, not only in the slave quarters which they often shared (sometimes as husband and wife, with one working in the house and the other in the field) but in the daily agricultural operations, with the servants often called upon to help at harvest time. In the few urban centers (like Charleston, New Orleans, and Richmond) and on the relatively small number of large “aristocratic” plantations (like those of low-country South Carolina and the Mississippi River), house servants approximated an elite class that lived up to the legend. Elsewhere, the lines were not so clearly drawn between field and house slaves. Typically, the slave quarters rather than the Big House constituted the real social world for most slaves; consequently, few house servants were unconcerned about how their fellow slaves judged them and many of them acted as an intermediary between the Big House and the quarters. Although some field hands spoke scornfully of the superior airs of house slaves, many relished the tales of life inside the Big House and took a vicarious delight in watching house slaves deceive their masters and mistresses.
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The distinctions between house and field slaves seem more pronounced in the literature than in the day-to-day operations of slavery. Sufficient examples of the elite house servant lording it over his or her fellow slaves were always on hand, however, to sustain and reinforce the prevailing image. The accounts of both fugitive slaves and planter families lent further
“inside” credence to that view. While the number of defections increased each day, Susan Smedes wrote, George Page, her father’s servant, “tried to make up in himself for what he looked on as the lack of loyalty on the part of the other servants. They were field Negroes; he belonged to the house.” Similarly, in the Allston household, Mammy Milly “held herself and her family as vastly superior to the ordinary run of negroes, the aristocracy of the race.” Nevertheless, surprisingly large numbers of house servants fled at the first opportunity, sometimes entire households, and if they remained, many of them refused to wait upon their masters and mistresses, coveted possession of the Big House and its contents (even Mammy Milly fell under suspicion), and “behaved outrageously.” After being told by Union soldiers that he was free, the coachman of a Virginia family headed directly for his master’s chamber, attired himself in the master’s finest clothes, and took his watch and chain and walking stick. Returning to the parlor, where his master sat, the slave “insolently” informed him that henceforth he could drive his own coach.
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The range of conduct exemplified by George Page and the Virginia coachman prompted whites to seek some plausible explanation that might be translated into appropriate action. But the initial assumptions they made about slave behavior rendered any real analysis impossible. What they found so difficult to believe was that their slaves might have developed their own standards of accepted behavior and evolved their own concepts of freedom. It was so much easier to think that the troublesome slaves, the defectors, and the rebels were simply not themselves, that they had been misled, that their minds had been contaminated by outside influences. After a Richmond slave denounced Jefferson Davis and refused to serve any white man, a local editor demanded that he “be whipped every day until he confesses what white man put these notions in his head.” There had to be an explanation which slaveholding families could accept without in any way compromising their self-esteem or the fundamental conviction that slavery was the best possible condition for black people. To pretend that the Yankees instigated slave aggression and enticed and forced slaves to desert their masters proved to be a highly popular explanation, since it contained a semblance of truth and conveniently evaded the hard questions. “The poor negroes don’t do us any harm except when they are put up to it,” Eliza Andrews thought. “Even when they murdered that white man and quartered him, I believe pernicious teachings were responsible.”
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Although many whites gave public voice to this charge, few thought it adequately explained the rate of desertion and betrayal. The more they reflected over their own experiences, as well as their neighbors’, slaveholders came increasingly to question the lax discipline and familiarity which, they now argued, had produced pampered, spoiled, and overly indulged servants. “It has now been proven,” Louis Manigault maintained, “that those Planters who were the most indulgent to their Negroes when we were at peace, have since the commencement of the war encountered the greatest
trouble in the management of this species of property.” Nor was that observation peculiar to Manigault’s rice plantations, for Julia LeGrand made precisely the same point based on her experience in New Orleans. “So many people have been betrayed by
pet
servants. Strange that some of the most severe mistresses and masters have kept their servants through all this trying year.” After noting how the most indulged slaves had turned out to be “the meanest” and least trustworthy, a Georgia planter indicated that his wartime experience left him with only one conclusion: “A nigger has got to know you’re his master, and then when he understands that he’s content.… Flail a nigger and he knows you.” That was, of course, time-honored advice. By nature, it had long been held, blacks required rigid discipline and the full exercise of the master’s authority; without those restraints, they would revert back to the barbarism from which they had emerged. The closer blacks approached a state of freedom, the more unmanageable and dangerous they became.
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