Been in the Storm So Long Read online

  To succeed required not only the physical strength to endure the trek but the ingenuity that might be necessary to elude pursuers. They devised various ruses and concoctions by which to throw off the bloodhounds, or simply clung to the swamps and rivers to cover up their tracks. They were known to dress themselves in Confederate uniforms and flee on their masters’ horses. They took advantage of the confusion and panic caused by the movement of troops and the sound of gunfire. Mary Lynn, a forty-five-year-old Virginia field hand, used the Christmas holiday festivities, when her absence for several days would not be noticed, to effect her escape. On some plantations, the slaves derived what initial advantages they could by tying up their master and overseer before fleeing. In Colonel Higginson’s black regiment, a freed slave named Cato related, to the obvious pleasure of his audience, the tale of his escape and how he had used some time-honored strategy to deceive and extract information from a white planter he encountered along the way. Overhearing the story, while standing in the background of the gathering, Higginson noted not only the freedman’s words but how they were received.

  “Den I go up to de white man, berry humble, and say, would he please gib ole man a mouthful for eat?

  “He say he must hab de valeration ob half a dollar.

  “Den I look berry sorry, and turn for go away.

  “Den he say I might gib him dat hatchet I had.

  “Den I say” (this in a tragic vein) “dat I must hab dat hatchet for defend myself from de dogs!”

  (Immense applause, and one appreciating auditor says, chuckling, “Dat was your arms, ole man,” which brings down the house again.)

  “Den he say de Yankee pickets was near by, and I must be very keerful.

  “Den I say, ‘Good Lord, Mas’r, am dey?’ ”

  Commenting on the soldier’s conclusion of the story, Higginson conceded that words alone could hardly capture “the complete dissimulation with which these accents of terror were uttered,—this being precisely the piece of information he wished to obtain.”120

  If slavery was really so disagreeable, Mary Chesnut suggested rather smugly in July 1861, “why don’t they all march over the border where they would be received with open arms. It amazes me.” For all of her insights into the “inscrutable” slave, she was in no position to perceive the daring and courage required for a successful escape, the magnitude of the risks, and the certainty of severe punishment for those who failed. “Ah, you know, my bredren,” an elderly runaway told a group of freedmen, “how dey try to keep us from gittin’ to Camp Nelson. Some o’ you hev only jist got from behind; where Massa ask you, ‘Would you like to be free, David?’ O’ course I should; but den, if I say so, dey jist cross my hands, tie ’em up, strip me; den whip me wid the cowhide, till I tell a lie, and say ‘No.’ ” That only a small percentage of slaves chose flight suggests the kinds of obstacles they faced. There were mounted citizens’ patrols, river patrols, and Confederate sentinels that had to be eluded, as well as pursuing bloodhounds (“the detective officers of Slavery’s police,” one freedman called them); some of the boats used by runaways broke apart or overturned, drowning the occupants; and nervous Union guards sometimes mistook escapees for enemy soldiers and shot and killed them. While attempting to escape across a river to the Union lines, a young slave and his mother were fired upon by the master’s son; the mother managed to reach the other bank safely but her son died soon afterwards from bullet wounds. Some years before, her husband and two other sons had been sold, and she was now left to lament her most recent and ironic fate:

  My poor baby is shot dead by that young massa I nussed with my own boy. They was both babies together. Missus made me nuss her baby, an’ set her little girl to watch me, for fear I’d give my baby too much, no matter how hard he cried. Many times I wasn’t allowed to take him up, an’ now that same boy has killed mine.

  Even if certain and severe punishment awaited apprehended runaways, they might have counted themselves fortunate to be returned to their masters; in numerous instances, mounted slave patrols ran them down with their horses, shot them on the road, or tied them to the horses and dragged them to the nearest jail.121

  Although hardly unique to the Civil War, the slave runaway most vividly demonstrated to an already apprehensive white South the breakdown and possible collapse of discipline and control. To many whites, in fact, there was little to distinguish the runaway from the rebel; both threatened to bring down the system, and reports of new desertions invariably fueled talk of subversion, insurrection, and the very death of slavery. “They are traitors who may pilot an enemy into your bedchamber!” the Reverend C. C. Jones of Georgia warned. “They know every road and swamp and creek and plantation in the county, and are the worst of spies. If the absconding is not stopped, the Negro property of the county will be of little value.” This usually reserved churchman, who prided himself on his religious work with the slaves, became so deeply disturbed over the mounting reports of runaways in the neighborhood that he suggested the need to define them as insurrectionists and mete out summary justice. After all, he wrote his son in the Confederate Army, “they declare themselves enemies and at war with owners by going over to the enemy who is seeking both our lives and property.” Responding to his father’s concerns, Charles C. Jones, Jr., who had served as mayor of Savannah before enlisting in the Army, disdained anything that would “savor of mob law” but agreed that defectors who evinced sufficient intelligence and leadership qualities to devise “a matured plan of escape” and to influence others to flee should be treated as armed insurrectionists and executed. “If insensible to every other consideration,” Colonel Jones suggested, “terror must be made to operate upon their minds, and fear prevent what curiosity and desire for Utopian pleasures induce them to attempt.”122

  Nearly everyone loyal to the Confederacy conceded that the effectiveness of any system designed to thwart slave desertions rested ultimately on local and individual vigilance. While some whites might choose to debate legal niceties, most of them were concerned only with achieving immediate and conclusive results. Henry A. Middleton, a South Carolina planter, obviously appreciated the dispatch with which Georgetown County had dealt with apprehended runaways.

  [O]f the people who went away three men, returned to the plantation of Dr. McGill and carried away their wives—the six were taken together making their way to the enemy. The men were tried yesterday by the provost martials court—they were sentenced to be hung—to day one oclock was fixed for the execution that no executive clemency might intervene … there was a crowd—the blacks were encouraged to be present—the effect will not soon be forgotten.123

  On the nearby Allston rice plantation, Stephen (the valet) had defected with his wife and children, and the effect on the other slaves, according to the overseer, had been noticeable: “I Can see since Stephn left a goodeal of obstanetry in Some of the Peopl. Mostly mongst the Woman a goodeal of Quarling and disputeing & teling lies.” That was all the more reason for Adele Petigru Allston, who had become the mistress of the plantation upon the death of her husband, to act firmly in this matter. Unable to apprehend Stephen, she resolved to make an example of his wife’s mother, not so much out of spite as the conviction that parents and relations should be held responsible for the actions of their families. “You know all the circumstances of Stephen’s desertion,” she wrote the local magistrate.

  You know that his wife is Mary’s daughter and she is the third of her children who have gone off.… It is too many instances in her family for me to suppose she is ignorant of their plans and designs. She has been always a highly favoured servant, and all her family have been placed in positions of confidence and trust. I think this last case should be visited in some degree on her.

  At the same time, Adele Allston informed Jesse Belflowers, the overseer, of her decision to remove Mary and James (Stephen’s father) to “some place of confinement” in the interior of the state and hold them there “as hostages for the conduct of their children
.” If by making an example of these individuals, she had thought to instill proper subordination in the remaining slaves, subsequent events on the Allston plantations, particularly with the coming of the Yankees, would prove less than reassuring.124

  What compounded the problem of control was the difficulty of anticipating defections; every slave owner would have to make his own determination and act accordingly. Anxious about retaining his house servant and cook, a Georgia planter put heavy iron shackles on her feet while she worked and locked her in the cornhouse at night. In the Mississippi River region, a Union officer who returned from a raid with two hundred slaves reported having found twenty-five of them chained in a cane brake. On the plantation in Virginia where Susie Burns labored, any slave contemplating an escape during the war years needed to elude the vigilant eye and drunken wrath of the master. “Used to set in his big chair on de porch wid a jug of whiskey by his side drinkin’ an’ watchin’ de quarters to see that didn’t none of his slaves start slippin’ away.” More commonly, a slave owner made an example of runaways who were apprehended and returned to the plantation. If not immediately sold, they were liable to be whipped, chained at night, put to work on Confederate fortifications, or removed for safekeeping to non-threatened areas. After thwarting an attempted escape, the son of a South Carolina planter sold two of the leaders in Charleston and punished the others “by whips and hand-cuffing,” making certain that they were chained and watched at night. But some planters, acting as though their tenure as slave owners might be short-lived, were so unnerved by defections that they vented all of their frustrations on those they could apprehend. “W’en de Union soldiers wur near us,” a freedwoman named Affy recalled, “some o’ de young han’s run off to git to de Union folks, an’ massa ketch dem an’ hang dem to a tree, an’ shoot dem; he t’ink no more’n to shoot de culled people right down.… But t’ank God, I got away, an’ him won’t git me agin.”125

  Even in the face of danger and repeated failures, the slaves persisted in their attempts to reach the Union lines. Having been thwarted in their initial attempt to escape from a plantation near Savannah, a seventy-year-old black woman and her husband immediately made plans to try again. While the plantation whites were meting out punishment to her husband, she collected their twenty-two children and grandchildren in a nearby marsh. After drifting some forty miles down the river in a dilapidated flatboat, the family was rescued by a Union gunboat. “My God!” she exclaimed as they came aboard, “are we free?” Her husband subsequently made good on his second escape attempt. No less persistent was a Maryland servant who tried to join others in a mass escape despite the fact that his hands and feet had been amputated some years before because of severe frostbite. “Well, I got him back and had him tied up,” the owner told a visiting Englishman, “for I thought he must be mad. But it was no use, he got away again, and walked to Washington.” How, asked the curious visitor, could he have managed such a remarkable deed? The answer no doubt must have seemed equally incredible.

  Oh, he just stumped along. He was always a right smart nigger, and he could do many things after he lost his limbs. He could attend to the cooking and sew with his teeth very well, and could get on a horse and ride as easy as look. He was always a remarkably strong nigger. Why, even after he lost his hands, he could kill a man, almost, with a blow of one of his knobs.

  The persistence of some black runaways came at the expense of their white pursuers. After overtaking his slave in a swamp, a South Carolina master found himself engaged in a fierce struggle. He managed to shoot the slave in the arm, shattering it badly. Knowing what awaited him if captured, the fugitive grimly fought on, unhorsed his master, and then beat him “until he was senseless.”126

  Rather than flee to the Yankees, numerous slaves responded to particular provocations, as they had before the war, by decamping for the nearby woods or swamps, where they might hide out for extensive periods of time. After all, even the much-hunted Nat Turner had managed to elude his pursuers for nearly eight weeks. Near the end of the war, Anna Miller recalled, “my sis and nigger Horace runs off. Dey don’ go far, and stays in de dugout. Ev’ry night dey’d sneak in and git ’lasses and milk and what food dey could. My sis had a baby and she nuss it ev’ry night when she comes. Dey runs off to keep from gettin’ a whuppin’.” Far more dangerous were the colonies of runaways that formed in some areas, from which slaves would forage the countryside for provisions. While searching for runaways, a group of whites in South Carolina found such a settlement in a nearby swamp, “well provided with meal, cooking utensils, blankets, etc.,” as well as twelve guns and an ax. In Surry County, Virginia, a scouting party investigated a similar runaway camp but never lived to report their findings; the fugitives killed them.127

  Assumptions about slave contentment, docility, or indifference prepared few whites for the extent of the runaway problem. “Unlettered reason or the mere inarticulate decision of instinct brought them to us,” thought one Union officer, while a white resident of Natchez deemed it little wonder “that they long to throw aside their chains and ‘live like white people’ as they say.” The slaves themselves had little difficulty in explaining why they had fled. Reflecting upon their escapes, exchanging stories across the campfires in the contraband villages, answering the queries of Union officers and reporters, they usually talked about the oppressiveness of enslavement, the difficulties of carrying out plantation duties while freedom was so close at hand, and the determination to liberate themselves rather than wait for the Yankees.

  Massa wanted we niggers to go ’way with him, but we want come to Yankees ’cause he treat us too bad. We hear you come down ’long time ago. Massa said de Yankees would take de niggers and sell us in Cuba, and want us to fight, but we talk it over, and agreed to come to de Yankees. When Massa ran away he shot one man’ lip off, who refused to follow him. I want to be free. I know freemen have to work—can’t live without work. Dere’s great difference between free and slave. When you free you work and de money b’long to yourself.128

  Fearing imminent removal or sale, some slaves chose to escape. The moment her master ordered all the house servants into wagons, a Virginia slave went into hiding. Thomas Pritchard, a carpenter, disappeared while the master and a slave broker were discussing the terms of his sale. Some slaves had heard rumors that they were about to be conscripted for military service or put to work on Confederate fortifications. “They’s jest takin’ me, sir,” Tom Jackson of Virginia explained, “an’ I run off.” Some were eager to locate their families or join the slaves from their plantation who had already escaped. “All of our friends were ober here,” a runaway explained. Isaac Tatnall, who had been hired out, fled when his master refused to pay him his share of the wages. “Last month,” Tatnall remarked, “master took him all, but he lost by dat, cause dis month I runned away, and he’s lost $1,880.”129

  The uncontrolled rage of their masters, often for no easily ascertainable reason other than the imminent loss of the war, hastened the departure of many slaves. “They does it to spite us,” a runaway woman testified, “ ’cause you come here. Dey spites us now ’cause de Yankees come.” This woman had just escaped with two of her children, leaving behind her eldest son whom the master had just “licked” almost to death because he suspected him of wanting to join the Yankees. Stories of recent beatings ran through the testimony of numerous newly arrived refugees. “Master whipped me two or three weeks ago,” a freedwoman declared, “because I let the cows from the bog road into the yard. Struck me and knocked me down with his fist. Left Monday night, and walked all the way. I am free; come here to be protected; was not safe to stay.” On the morning of his escape, a Georgia slave noted, he had been promised a whipping, but “when de time came dis chile was about five miles from dar, and he nebber stopped until las night.” Among the slaves who fled after harsh treatment were those who felt compelled to contain their anger rather than risk the consequences of direct retaliation. “They didn’t do something and run
,” a former slave suggested. “They run before they did it, ’cause they knew that if they struck a white man there wasn’t going to be a nigger.”130

  Although specific provocations helped to sustain the steady movement toward the Union lines, the overriding consideration remained the prospect of freedom and the pride that a slave took in expediting his or her own liberation. “I wants to be free,” a South Carolina runaway kept repeating. “I came in from the plantation and don’t want to go back; I don’t want to go back; I don’t want to be a slave again.” The intensity of this feeling even induced elderly slaves to make the perilous trek, refusing to postpone any longer that dream that had eluded them for a lifetime. “Ise eighty-eight year old,” one refugee told the Yankees. “Too ole for come? Mas’r joking. Neber too ole for leave de land o’ bondage.” Near Vicksburg, where slaves had been deserting in substantial numbers, a planter went out to the quarters and asked the “patriarch” among his slaves, “Uncle Si, I don’t suppose you are going off to those hateful Yankees, too, are you?” “O no, marster,” he replied, “I’se gwine to stay right here with you.” When the planter visited the quarters the next morning, he found that every one of his slaves had left that night, including Uncle Si and his wife. Searching the nearby woods for them, he came across Uncle Si, bending over the prostrate body of his wife, weeping. The planter wondered why he had subjected her to such a difficult and now fatal journey. “I couldn’t help it, marster,” the old man replied; “but then, you see, she died free.”131