Been in the Storm So Long Read online

  Whether to overcome their own anxieties or to silence the skeptics, many whites flaunted pretensions to security. “We have slept all winter with the doors of our house, outside and inside, all unlocked,” a Virginia woman boasted in 1862. All too often, however, the incessant talk and repeated assurances betrayed something less than the confidence whites professed. Edmund Ruffin, for example, an ardent secessionist and defender of slavery, was obsessed with the question of security even as he sought to demonstrate his own unconcern. Almost daring the slaves to defy his expectations, he described in minute detail (albeit within the confines of his diary) the ease with which blacks could enter his room. Nor did he think himself unique in his unconcern. “[I]t may be truly said that every house & family is every night perfectly exposed to any attempt of our slaves to commit robbery or murder. Yet we all feel so secure, & are so free from all suspicion of such danger, that no care is taken for self-protection—& in many cases, as in mine, not even the outer door is locked.”29

  To have believed anything less would have been not only impolitic but subversive of the very institution on which the Confederacy claimed to rest. The “corner-stone” of the new government, affirmed Vice-President Alexander Stephens in March 1861, “rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” Wherever he traveled in the South, an English visitor observed in 1861, he found absolute confidence that this subordination would be maintained. To resolve any doubts, a slaveholder might choose to parade some of his more obsequious specimens before the curious visitor, favor them with some humorous and familiar remarks, and then ply them with the obvious questions. In making his response, the slave usually had little difficulty in discerning what was expected of him. “Are you happy?” the slave is asked. “Yas, sar,” he replies without hesitation. “Show how you’re happy,” the slaveholder demands. As if he had acted out this scenario many times before, the slave rubs his stomach and grins with delight, “Yummy! yummy! plenty belly full!” and the satisfied slaveholder turns to the visitor and remarks, “That’s what I call a real happy feelosophical chap. I guess you’ve got a lot in your country can’t pat their stomachs and say, ‘yummy, yummy, plenty belly full!’ ”30

  With few exceptions, the southern press expounded this kind of confidence, secure in the belief that “there was never a period in the history of the country when there was more perfect order and quiet among the servile classes.” In the Confederate Congress, a Virginian boasted that the slaves’ loyalty was “never more conspicuous, their obedience never more childlike.” In the eyes of some slaveholders, of course, that observation might have prompted more alarm than relief. Rather than face up to such implications, however, the press and southern leaders made the most out of conspicuous examples of black support for the Confederacy, dutifully parading every such act as additional testimony to the beneficence of slavery and the attachment of slaves to their “white folks.” When a slave became the first subscriber to the Confederate war loan in Port Gibson, Mississippi, for example, the local newspaper exulted: “The feeling at the South can be learned from this little incident. The negroes are ready to fight for their people, and they are ready to give money as well as their lives to the cause of their masters.”31

  If slaves deemed it politic to proffer their support and services, particularly in the early stages of the war, free blacks moved with an even greater sense of urgency to protest their loyalty and allay the suspicions of a white society which had always found them to be an anomaly and source of danger. In the decade preceding the outbreak of war, the more than 182,000 free blacks had faced growing harassment, increased surveillance, and demands for still further restrictions on their freedom. To identify with the white community in this time of crisis might hopefully serve to neutralize that opposition and improve their precarious position in southern society. In New Orleans and Charleston, where small colored elites had established churches, schools, and benevolent associations, the efforts to identify with whites were more conspicuous, their aloofness from the slaves was more pronounced, and their patriotic gestures tended to be more strident. In a memorial to the state governor, a group of free Negroes in Charleston, including a number of substantial property holders, could hardly have been more candid about their attachment to the common cause: “In our veins flows the blood of the white race, in some half, in others much more than half white blood, … our attachments are with you, our hopes and safety and protection from you, … our allegiance is due to South Carolina and in her defense, we will offer up our lives, and all that is dear to us.”32

  Clearly, the threat of invasion and the depredations of “alien” troops were capable of unifying diverse and conflicting groups in the South. Those free blacks who had managed to accumulate property were no doubt intent on protecting their investments, along with whatever privileges they enjoyed in a slave society. If some slaves and free Negroes later compared support of the Confederacy to the black driver forced to use the lash on his fellow slaves, still others made no apologies. When offering his support, Bowman Seals, a free black from Clayton, Alabama, claimed to understand fully “the quarrel” between the North and the South and how it affected his people. “I make no claim to be adversed to their best interests; but I know enough of Yankees and of their treatment of the starving blacks among them to understand that their war upon the South is prompted by no love of us, but only by envy and hatred, and by an intermeddling and domineering spirit.” If the North should succeed, Seals warned, “disorder and ruin” and “extremist want and misery” would be visited upon all classes and both races.33

  Had it not been for the exemplary conduct of “the faithful slave,” some white Southerners doubted that the war could have lasted for more than ten months. Hence the paeans of praise that would be heaped upon those black men and women who had stood with their masters and mistresses, the oratorical tributes to their loyalty, the monuments erected to their memory, and the romantic images and legends that would be elaborated upon to comfort and entertain generations of whites. The proven fidelity of such individuals even permitted slaveholders to indulge themselves with the notion of slaves as part of the extended family. “We never thought of them as slaves,” a Florida woman recalled, “they were ‘ours,’ ‘our own dear black folks.’ ” Underscoring this same theme, a Richmond woman remembered her slaves as “the repositories of our family secrets. They were our confidants in all our trials. They joyed with us and they sorrowed with us; they wept when we wept, and they laughed when we laughed. Often our best friends, they were rarely our worst enemies.” Even where the wartime evidence was at best inconclusive, many whites chose to dwell upon the supportive side of black behavior. When “massa” came home on leave, a Mississippi woman wrote, “no one showed himself [sic] more happy to see him than ‘Mammy’ as she fell upon the floor at his feet hugging and kissing him. ‘My Massa come.’ ‘My Massa come.’ I would be so glad if some of our northern friends could have seen her.”34

  If only masters and mistresses had been less insistent about their sense of security and equanimity, they might have been more believable. No matter how many times he heard slaveholders profess confidence in their blacks, William Russell, an English visitor, remained skeptical. After his extensive travels and conversations in the South during the early months of the war, he came away feeling that the very demeanor of the slaves suggested less than contentment with their lot. If these were the happiest creatures on earth, as he had been assured, how was he to explain the “deep dejection” he observed on so many of their faces. On a “model” Louisiana plantation he visited, where “there were abundant evidences that they were well treated,” the slaves “all looked sad, and even the old woman who boasted that she had held her old owner in her arms when he was an infant, did not smile cheerfully.” If these were such docile and passive people, moreover, as he had also been assured, how was he to explain the elaborate police precau
tions, the increased vigilance, the curfews, the night patrols. “There is something suspicious,” Russell concluded, “in the constant never-ending statement that ‘we are not afraid of our slaves.’ ”35

  4

  EVEN AS MANY MASTERS and mistresses struck a pose of confidence and equanimity, few were unaware of the slaves’ demonstrated capacity for evasiveness and dissimulation in the presence of whites. No matter how often slave owners kept reassuring themselves, the doubts and apprehensions were bound to surface. With each passing month, as the issues became clearer and the position of the Confederacy deteriorated, the ambiguities in the slave response would tend to dissolve and the whites who had proclaimed the loudest the faithfulness of their blacks were among those forced to reassess their perceptions in accordance with personal experiences. If the shock of recognition did not come easily for a people who had always claimed an intimate knowledge of the black personality, neither was it altogether unexpected; some whites, in fact, thought they knew their slaves too well to harbor any illusions about the future. “The tenants act pretty well towards us,” a Virginia woman wrote early in 1862, “but that doesn’t prevent our being pretty certain of their intention to stampede when they get a good chance—I, for one, won’t care one straw—but for the expense of having to hire ‘help.’ They are nothing but an ungrateful, discontented lot & I don’t care how soon I get rid of mine.”36

  To endure, perhaps even to survive, many slaves had learned from experience to anticipate the white man’s moods and whims, to know his expectations, to placate his fears, to flatter his vanity, and to feed his feelings of superiority. As a slave, Henry Bibb recalled, he had come to realize the folly of openly resisting the white man. “The only weapon of self defence that I could use successfully, was that of deception.” With considerable relish, a former Tennessee slave remembered the death of a particularly cruel mistress. The slaves on the plantation did what was expected of them when one of their “white folks” died; they solemnly filed into the Big House to pay their final respects, covering their faces with their hands as if to hide their tears and stifle their sobs. Once they were outside, however, the slaves made their feelings known to each other. “Old God damn son-of-a-bitch,” one of them murmured, “she gone on down to hell.”37

  During the Civil War, when the master’s temperament often experienced violent fluctuations, the slave had even more urgent reason to adhere to the time-tested imperatives: that he never appear to be too well informed, that he remain circumspect in his views, that he mask any feelings of hostility, that he feign stupidity at the right moment, that he “act the nigger” when the situation demanded it and punctuate his responses to whites with the proper comic mannerisms and facial expressions—the shuffling of the feet, the scratching of the head, the grin denoting incomprehension. The black man who invokes the “darky act,” Ralph Ellison has suggested, is not so much “a ‘smart-man-playing-dumb’ as a weak man who knows the nature of his oppressors’ weakness.… [H]is mask of meekness conceals the wisdom of one who has learned the secret of saying the ‘yes’ which accomplishes the expressive ‘no.’ ” Although some slaves may well have internalized the ritual of deference, few whites could know for certain and that was a problem that would plague them throughout the war. “Oh, yes, massa!” a Virginia slave responded in 1863 when asked by a northern clergyman if she had heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, “we all knows about it; only we darsn’t let on. We pretends not to know. I said to my ole massa, ‘What’s this Massa Lincoln is going to do to the poor nigger? I hear he is going to cut ’em up awful bad. How is it, massa?’ I just pretended foolish, sort of.” At the first opportunity, this slave fled to the Union lines.38

  When questioned about the Civil War, as with any other subject the slave usually shaped his response to the tone of the question and the requirements of the occasion. He would tell his white listeners what he thought they wanted to hear. In the presence of southern whites, the slave was apt to proclaim his loyalty to the Confederacy (or to his “white folks” and the state in which he lived) in much the same way that he had denied on so many occasions (especially to northern visitors) the desire to be free. “The Yankees will be whipped,” a South Carolina slave recalled assuring his master and mistress repeatedly, even as he prayed and believed otherwise. Whether in the presence of Southerners or Yankees, on the other hand, the slave might find it more politic to seek refuge in a pretense of ignorance or in evasiveness. “Why, you see, master,” an elderly Louisiana slave told a Union reporter in 1863, “ ’taint for an old nigger like me to know anything ’bout politics.” When the reporter pressed him to indicate whether he favored the Confederacy or the Union, the slave maintained his “ineffable smile” for a moment, and then with a mock gravity replied, “I’m on de Lord’s side, and He’ll work out His salvation; bress de Lord.” Framing his response with equal care, an elderly Georgia black told a Union officer who had questioned him about the war, “Well, Sir, what I think about it, is this—it’s mighty distressin’ this war, but it ’pears to me like the right thing couldn’t be done without it.”39

  While military fortunes fluctuated with every skirmish and battle, so did the slaves’ responses to the war, with many of them adopting a “wait and see” attitude and refusing to commit themselves irretrievably to either side. In 1862, for example, a correspondent traveling with the Union Army asked a Missouri slave if he favored the Union. “Oh! yes, massa,” he replied, “when you’s about we is.” When asked what he would do if the Confederate troops returned, the slave quickly responded, “[W]e’s good secesh then. Can’t allow de white folks to git head niggers in dat way.” The reporter went away impressed with how this slave perceived his role in the conflict. “These Missouri niggers know a great deal more than the white folks give them credit for, and whether Missouri goes for the confederacy or the Union, her slaves have learned a lesson too much to ever be useful as slaves.… The darkeys understand the whole question and the game played.”40

  The evasive stance assumed by slaves reflected not only their perception of reality but an initial confusion about the war and the issues over which it was being fought. How much of the war news a master thought advisable to share with his slaves varied considerably, and in some regions what one observer called “a stratum of ignorance” prevailed. The Georgia slave who in November 1864 had still not heard of the Emancipation Proclamation was by no means unique. “De white folks nebber talk ’fore black men,” he explained; “dey mighty free from dat.” Even if whites chose to be candid with their slaves, they were apt to find that anything they revealed about the war was greeted with suspicion. “I do not speak of the war to them,” Mary Chesnut noted in November 1861; “on that subject, they do not believe a word you say.” Perhaps more whites than blacks ultimately believed the rumors of Yankee atrocities; at least, the direful warnings voiced by slave owners would have little apparent effect on the steady stream of blacks to the Union lines. Nor did the master’s confident talk about the progress of the war necessarily survive slave scrutiny. “I know pappy say dem Yankees gwine win, ’cause dey alius marchin’ to de South, but none de South soldiers marches to de North,” William Davis recalled. “He didn’t say dat to de white folks, but he sho’ say it to us.”41

  When the war began to turn against the Confederacy, even slaves with limited access to the news could sense it. In some regions, in fact, slaveholders had their hands full trying to reassure the blacks that the retreating Confederate soldiers were not, as had been rumored, wantonly murdering slaves rather than see them freed. But the attempts to communicate with their slaves on such subjects often became an exercise in futility. “Would I kill you, or let anybody else kill you?” a South Carolina mistress asked her butler. He remained apprehensive. “We know you won’t own up to anything against your side,” he replied. “You never tell us anything that you can help.” The white woman threw up her hands in exasperation, concluding that nothing more was to be expected of a slave who had been �
��a pampered menial” for twenty years. “His insolence has always been intolerable.”42

  That slaves should have doubted what their masters and mistresses told them reflected more than an intuitive skepticism. Despite their relative isolation and the prevailing degree of illiteracy, slaves over the years had devised various methods by which to keep themselves informed, not only of doings in the household but in the outside world. The servants enjoyed the most advantageous position, overhearing the conversations of the white folks while ostensibly preoccupied with their domestic duties, and then passing the information and gossip along to the slave quarters. “No, massa, we’se can’t read, but we’se can listen,” a South Carolina slave explained, after coming over to the Yankees.43

  Within the master’s house, numerous slaves formed their initial impressions of the war, why it was being fought, and how it might affect their own lives. Dora Franks, for example, who claimed to have been well treated in the Mississippi household in which she worked, overheard her master and mistress discuss the war: “He say he feared all de slaves ’ud be took away. She say if dat was true she feel lak jumpin’ in de well. I hate to hear her say dat, but from dat minute I started prayin’ for freedom.” From the vantage of the house slave, news about the war sometimes consisted of overhearing angry outbursts and harangues by the whites, punctuated with wild talk about abolitionists seizing the South, Yankees coming to kill “us all,” a war “to free the niggers,” and how the Confederates intended to send “de damn yaller bellied Yankees” reeling back to the North. Despite such bombast, proximity to the conversations of whites usually helped to clarify the war issues and keep the slaves abreast of the military situation.44