Been in the Storm So Long (59 page)

If Avary, Humphreys, and Rhett were oblivious to the tradition of the white rapist and vigilante in the South and the deeper roots of violence, sexual exploitation, and labor troubles, they nevertheless voiced the prevailing outrage and despair over the continued presence of more than 80,000 black occupation troops. Nothing seemed more contrived to humiliate white manhood, insult white womanhood, and demoralize the ex-slave than the “vindictive and revengeful” act of Federal authorities in stationing black troops in their midst. Nothing could evoke more terror in a southern community than the rumor that black troops might be sent there. “Think of a lot of negroes being brought here to play master over us!” young Eliza Andrews exclaimed, and few whites needed to be reminded of the terrible implications of what she had said. Nor were they oblivious to the fact that many of the soldiers were northern blacks who had been raised outside the plantation tradition and discipline. “Few of them perhaps have had opportunities of spiritual instruction,” Henry Ravenel observed, “or of forming attachments to their masters, or of being benefitted by that domestic relation which the presence of the master on the plantation always creates.”
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Regardless of how they conducted themselves, black soldiers by their very presence violated tradition and provoked a vehement response in a people who had always viewed armed blacks as insurrectionists. After all, a New Orleans newspaper explained, white men and women in the South had customarily encountered blacks “only as respectful servants,” and now they were understandably “mortified, pained, and shocked” to find some of those same blacks in the towns and villages and on the public roads “wearing Federal uniforms, and bearing bright muskets and gleaming bayonets. They often recognized among them those who had once been their own servants.” Few Confederate Army veterans were able to maintain their composure when they returned to their homes to find armed, uniformed black men patrolling the streets, jostling their women from the sidewalks, and claiming authority over their families. “Boy, le’ me see your gun,” a recently paroled Confederate soldier declared with disdain as he moved to examine the rifle of a black soldier. Not knowing what the white man’s intentions might be, the soldier stepped back and readied his gun for possible use. Hastily departing, the ex-Confederate murmured, “How the war
has
demoralized the cussed brutes!”
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The catalogue of “atrocities” and “daily outrages” for which black soldiers were held responsible seemed limitless, with nearly every white
man and woman prepared to relate some still more horrible tale. While sometimes exaggerated or invented, the stories usually contained an element of truth; their authenticity, however, was less important than how whites chose to define an “outrage.” The black soldier mixed indiscriminately with whites, occasionally at “miscegenation” dinners and dances; he did not always wait to be addressed before he deigned to speak to whites; he might reprimand and harass whites in the city streets, perhaps even arrest them for a trivial offense; and in several communities, he conspired to release black prisoners from the jails, charging that they could not obtain impartial justice, and he clashed openly with the authority of local police.
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No white man who witnessed the incident was likely to forget that day in Wilmington, North Carolina, when a black sergeant arrested the chief of police for carrying a weapon illegally and then escorted him as a prisoner through a throng of cheering freedmen. Nor were black soldiers immune to meting out extralegal justice if they thought local courts and officials would fail to punish whites for offenses against black persons. In Victoria, Texas, they entered the jail, dragged out a white man accused of murdering a freedman, and lynched him. With equal dispatch, black soldiers in South Carolina disposed of an ex-Confederate soldier who had fatally stabbed a black sergeant after he had refused to leave a railway car in which several white women sat; the soldiers tried him by “drumhead courtmartial” and then shot and buried him.
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That black soldiers exercised a subversive influence on the recently freed slaves seemed obvious to most whites. During the war, slave owners had often blamed the massive desertions from the plantations on outside influences, preferring to think that black soldiers “intimidated” faithful slaves who had otherwise wished to remain in their service. And now, in this critical period of transition, the conduct of the black troops allegedly encouraged impressionable freedmen to defy white authority. By insulting whites in the presence of the ex-slaves, the soldiers created erroneous illusions of power and even superiority. By making black laborers dissatisfied with their working conditions and telling them they would soon obtain the lands of their masters, the soldiers encouraged false expectations and the withdrawal of steady labor. By boarding the trains and streetcars and sitting indiscriminately in public places, they encouraged the violation of time-honored southern customs. By their behavior, Henry Ravenel believed, these “diabolical savages” had turned “a quiet, contented, & happy people” into “dissatisfied, unruly, madmen intoxicated with the fumes of licentiousness, & ready for any acts of outrage.” Eliza Andrews readily agreed, after observing events in the Georgia community where her family resided. What appalled her was not simply that black soldiers cursed and threatened whites on the public streets but that they did so “while hundreds of idle negroes stood around, laughing and applauding it.” Nor did the Reverend John H. Cornish of Mississippi think it altogether coincidental that the day after black troops created a disturbance
by violating seating arrangements in the local Baptist church, one of his own servants suddenly turned on him.
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Not all whites shared an excessive concern for the demoralizing impact of black troops. On the contrary, some even hoped that such troops, if properly disciplined, might restrain the ex-slaves by their example and instruct them in the ways of responsible behavior. Even without black troops, a South Carolina planter thought, the freedmen were bound to test their newly won rights, and his fellow whites deceived themselves to think otherwise.

That was putting the best possible face on black occupation, but most whites, if judged by their often hysterical letters and appeals to be relieved of black troops, were unable to share the South Carolinian’s insight and equanimity. The problem, as many whites viewed it, lay precisely in the ability of the black troops to command the loyalty of the freedmen for whatever purposes they deemed appropriate. In urging the removal of those troops, the planters on Edisto and Wadmalaw islands, off the coast of South Carolina, complained of how their presence and influence undermined “the little control we had over the labor.” Endorsing their petition, a Freedmen’s Bureau officer agreed that white troops would more effectually secure “good order” and prove less troublesome to the planter class.
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That some black soldiers, particularly the ex-slaves, derived considerable satisfaction from the power they exerted over the white population was doubtless true. Conscious of the explosive potential in such a situation, and not averse to placating native whites, Union Army commanders placed restrictions on the black troops, forbade them in some areas from fraternizing with the local blacks, and severely punished any offenses they committed against the white populace. The tensions between black and white soldiers frequently erupted into violent clashes, and native whites readily exploited those antagonisms to their own advantage. “Never have I witnessed such lack of confidence as is beginning to dawn here with us,” a black soldier wrote from Louisiana in August 1865, “and if there ever was a time that we felt like exterminating our old oppressors from the face of the earth, it is at this present time. The overthrow of the rebellion is consigning us to perpetual misery and distraction.” Despite their proven service to the Union, another soldier protested, they were “still compelled to feel that they are black, and the smooth oily tongue of the white planter is enough to condemn any number of them …”
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Not only did black soldiers complain about the insults to which white citizens daily subjected them but their own officers rendered them virtually
defenseless in responding to such provocations. It simply made no sense. Traitors to the country, whom they had been asked to exterminate only a few months before, suddenly became their principal accusers and, even more disturbingly, commanded greater respect and credibility in the eyes of the white Yankees than the black men who had fought to save the Union. “A report from any white citizen against one of our men, whether it be credible or not, is sufficient to punish the accused,” a black soldier charged, and the punishments inflicted upon them were as severe as anything they had experienced or witnessed during slavery. “Men have been bucked and gagged in their company streets, exposed to the scorching rays of the sun and the derision of the majority of the officers, who seem to take delight in witnessing their misery.” By the eve of Radical Reconstruction, a white newspaper in Wilmington, North Carolina, was able to exult, “The true soldiers, whether they wore the gray or the blue, are now united in their opposition … to negro government and negro equality. Blood is thicker than water.”
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The pride black soldiers once derived from military service quickly dissipated. Since the end of the war, William P. Green wrote, “our task has become more laborious, our treatment more severe,” and he saw little reason to expect any improvement. Neither did Christian A. Fleetwood, a sergeant major and one of the recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor for valiant conduct in battle. “No matter how well and faithfully they may perform their duties,” he wrote of his fellow soldiers, “they will shortly be considered as ‘lazy nigger sojers’—as drones in the great hive.” Rather than “remain in a state of marked and acknowledged subserviency,” he decided that he might better serve his race outside the Army. Like Fleetwood, many blacks asked to be discharged rather than serve as second-class soldiers under the command of white men who no longer made any attempt to mask their racial antipathies.
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If disillusionment drove many blacks out of the Army, the mounting aggression and hostility of white citizens made life intolerable for those who remained. Even before the war had ended, the white South placed no higher premium on any demand than the removal of the black troops from their midst. “Why are these savages still kept here to outrage & insult our people?” Henry Ravenel asked. The matter assumed greater urgency with every new report of an “outrage” and every new rumor of an impending black insurrection. “They were taught during the war that it was their duty to kill the whites & they cant learn now that the war is over,” Ravenel confided to his journal. “Their shooting propensities still continue strong, showing a tendency toward reversion to the savage state.” Finding that reports of “outrages” secured results, whites besieged Federal authorities with their protests and petitions, often with the backing of local Union Army commanders and Freedmen’s Bureau agents. And with President Johnson adopting an avowedly conciliatory policy, the demobilization of black troops proceeded rapidly. By 1866, most of them had been mustered out of service or transferred to posts outside the South. The nightmare had
ended, Governor Humphreys of Mississippi seemed to suggest in his report to the legislature; the removal of black troops had freed the white race from “insults, irritations and spoliation,” while the ex-slaves were now free to pursue “habits of honest industry” and to enjoy the “friendship and confidence” of their former masters.
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Now that they were being discharged, the black soldiers lined up to receive the appropriate papers and their final pay. Around many of the camps, guards had been posted with orders to exclude peddlers, who were said to be lying in wait. “Beware of these unprincipled knaves!” a black newspaper warned of the “modern Shylocks” who sought to swindle the soldiers out of their discharge pay. But the black veteran had far more to fear than peddlers as he left his camp and entered civilian life. If he remained in the South, he entered a society in which the dominant population only grudgingly recognized his freedom, refused to admit him as an equal, and remembered all too vividly his service in the Union Army. To many whites, at least, he was a traitor and more than likely a potential troublemaker. As a soldier, he had been feared; as a civilian, he seemed no less dangerous. A prominent South Carolinian had predicted a race war if the troops were not removed; now that they had been mustered out, another South Carolinian feared the discharged black soldier would contribute his services to the agitation for land.
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Although the black soldier had fought to preserve the Union, he found himself with less voice in the government, in the courts of law, and in the work place than those he had only recently vanquished. “The great question with us is: Shall traitors to our country hold the balance of power again?” a black minister in North Carolina asked. “I give you the unequivocating answer, No! They shall die so dead, so dead, so dead.” Not nearly as confident, a black veteran in Beaufort, South Carolina, addressed an appeal to President Johnson, reiterating his devotion to the Union and requesting some clarification of black freedom. “We Want to Know Some thing A Bought our Rites.” But as the President’s policy for the South unfolded, J. H. Payne, a black sergeant stationed in North Carolina, found himself placing what faith he had left in God rather than in Andrew Johnson.