Chapter Three: THE PLANTER
How seven per cent of a section within a nation
ruled five million white people and owned
four million black people and sought to make
agriculture equal to industry through the
rule of property without yielding political
power or education to labor
Seven per cent of the total population of
the South in 1860 owned nearly 3 million of
the 3,953,696 slaves. There was nearly as
great a concentration of ownership in the
best agricultural land. This meant that in
a country predominantly agricultural, the
ownership of labor, land and capital was extraordinarily
concentrated. Such peculiar organization of
industry would have to be carefully reconciled
with the new industrial and political democracy
of the nineteenth century if it were to survive.
Of the five million whites who owned no slaves
some were united in interest with the slave
owners. These were overseers, drivers and
dealers in slaves. Others were hirers of white
and black labor, and still others were merchants
and professional men, forming a petty bourgeois
class, and climbing up to the planter class
or falling down from it. The mass of the poor
whites, as we have shown, were economic
outcasts.
Colonial Virginia declared its belief in natural
and inalienable rights, popular sovereignty,
and government for the common good, even before
the Declaration of Independence. But it soon
became the belief of doctrinaires, and not
a single other Southern state enacted these
doctrines of equality until after the Civil
War. The Reconstruction constitutions incorporated
them; but quite logically, South Carolina
repudiated its declaration in 1895.
The domination of property was shown in the
qualifications for office and voting in the
South. Southerners and others in the Constitutional
Convention asked for property qualifications
for the President of the United States, the
federal judges, and Senators. Most Southern
state governments required a property qualification
for the Governor, and in South Carolina, he
must be worth ten thousand pounds. Members
of the legislature must usually be landholders.
Plural voting was allowed as late as 1832.
The requirement of the ownership of freehold
land for officeholders operated to the disadvantage
of merchants and mechanics. In North Carolina,
a man must own 50 acres to vote for Senator,
and in 1828, out of 250 voters at Wilmington,
only 48 had the qualifications to vote for
Senator. Toward the time of the Civil War
many of these property qualifications disappeared.
Into the hands of the slaveholders the political
power of the South was concentrated, by their
social prestige, by property ownership and
also by their extraordinary rule of the counting
of all or at least three-fifths of the Negroes
as part of the basis of representation in
the legislature. It is singular how this "three-fifths"
compromise was used, not only to degrade Negroes
in theory, but in practice to disfranchise
the white South. Nearly all of the Southern
states began with recognizing the white population
as a basis of representation; they afterward favored the black belt by direct legislation
or by counting three-fifths of the slave
population, and then finally by counting the
whole black population; or they established,
as in Virginia and South Carolina, a "mixed"
basis of representation, based on white population
and on property; that is, on land and slaves.
In the distribution of seats in the legislature,
this manipulation of political power appears.
In the older states representatives were assigned arbitrarily to counties, districts
and towns, with little regard to population.
This was for the purpose of putting the control
in the hands of wealthy planters. Variations
from this were the basing of representation
on the white population in one House, and
taxation in the other, or the use of the Federal
proportion; that is, free persons and three-fifths
of the slaves, or Federal proportion and taxation
combined. These were all manipulated so as
to favor the wealthy planters. The commercial
class secured scant representation as compared
with agriculture. "It is a fact that the political
working of the state [of South Carolina] is
in the hands of one hundred and fifty to one
hundred and eighty men. It has taken me six
months to appreciate the entireness of the
fact, though of course I had heard it stated."
In all cases, the slaveholder practically
voted both for himself and his slaves and
it was not until 1850 and particularly after
the war that there were signs of self-assertion
on the part of the poor whites to break this
monopoly of power. Alabama, for instance,
in 1850, based representation in the general
assembly upon the white inhabitants, after
thirty years of counting the whole white and
black population. Thus the Southern planters
had in their hands from 1820 to the Civil
War political power equivalent to one or two
million freemen in the North.
They fought bitterly during the early stages
of Reconstruction to retain this power for
the whites, while at the same time granting
no political power to the blacks. Finally
and up to this day, by making good their efforts
to disfranchise the blacks, the political
heirs of the planters still retain for themselves
this added political representation as a legacy
from slavery, and a power to frustrate all
third party movements.
Thus, the planters who owned from fifty to
one thousand slaves and from one thousand
to ten thousand acres of land came to fill
the whole picture in the South, and literature
and the propaganda which is usually called
history have since exaggerated that picture.
The planter certainly dominated politics and
social life he boasted of his education,
but on the whole, these Southern leaders were
men singularly ignorant of modern conditions
and trends and of their historical background.
All their ideas of gentility and education
went back to the days of European privilege
and caste. They cultivated a surface acquaintance
with literature and they threw Latin quotations
even into Congress. Some few had a cultural
education at Princeton and at Yale, and to
this day Princeton refuses to receive Negro
students, and Yale has admitted a few with
reluctance, as a curious legacy from slavery.
Many Southerners traveled abroad and the fashionable
European world met almost exclusively Americans
from the South and were favorably impressed
by their manners which contrasted with the
gaucherie of the average Northerner. A Southerner
of the upper class could enter a drawing room
and carry on a light conversation and eat
according to the rules, on tables covered
with silver and fine linen. They were "gentlemen"
according to the older and more meager connotation
of the word.
Southern women of the planter class had little
formal education; they were trained in dependence,
with a smattering of French and music; they
affected the latest European styles; were
always described as "beautiful" and of course
must do no work for a living except in the
organization of their households. In this
latter work, they were assisted and even impeded
by more servants than they needed. The temptations
of this sheltered exotic position called the
finer possibilities of womanhood into exercise
only in exceptional cases. It was the woman
on the edge of the inner circles and those
of the struggling poor whites who sought to
enter the ranks of the privileged who showed
superior character.
Most of the planters, like most Americans,
were of humble descent, two or three generations
removed. Jefferson Davis was a grandson of
a poor Welsh immigrant. Yet the Southerner's
assumptions impressed the North and although
most of them were descended from the same
social classes as the Yankees, yet the Yankees
had more recently been reenforced by immigration
and were strenuous, hard-working men, ruthlessly
pushing themselves into the leadership of
the new industry. Such folk not only "love
a lord," but even the fair imitation of one.
The leaders of the South had leisure for good
breeding and high living, and before them
Northern society abased itself and flattered
and fawned over them. Perhaps this, more than
ethical reasons, or even economic advantage,
made the way of the abolitionist hard. In
New York, Saratoga, Philadelphia and Cincinnati,
a slave baron, with his fine raiment, gorgeous
and doll-like women and black flunkies, quite
turned the heads of Northern society. Their
habits of extravagance impressed the nation
for a long period. Much of the waste charged
against Reconstruction arose from the attempt
of the post-war population, white and black,
to imitate the manners of a slave-nurtured
gentility, and this brought furious protest
from former planters; because while planters
spent money filched from the labor of black
slaves, the poor white and black leaders of
Reconstruction spent taxes drawn from recently
impoverished planters.
From an economic point of view, this planter
class had interest in consumption rather than
production. They exploited labor in order
that they themselves should live more grandly
and not mainly for increasing production.
Their taste went to elaborate households,
well- furnished and hospitable; they had much
to eat and drink; they consumed large quantities
of liquor; they gambled and caroused and kept
up the habit of dueling well down into the
nineteenth century. Sexually they were lawless,
protecting elaborately and flattering the
virginity of a small class of women of their
social clan, and keeping at command millions
of poor women of the two laboring groups of
the South.
Sexual chaos was always the possibility of
slavery, not always realized but always possible:
polygamy through the concubinage of black
women to white men; polyandry between black
women and selected men on plantations in order
to improve the human stock of strong and able
workers. The census of 1860 counted 588,352
persons obviously of mixed blood a figure
admittedly below the truth.
"Every man who resides on his plantation may
have his harem, and has every inducement of
custom, and of pecuniary gain [The law declares
that the children of slaves are to follow
the fortunes of the mother. Hence the practice
of planters selling and bequeathing their
own children.], to tempt him to the common
practice. Those who, notwithstanding, keep
their homes undefiled may be considered as
of incorruptible purity."
Mrs. Trollope speaks of the situation of New
Orleans' mulattoes: "Of all the prejudices
I have ever witnessed, this appears to us
the most violent, and the most inveterate.
Quadroon girls, the acknowledged daughters
of wealthy American or Creole fathers, educated
with all the style and accomplishments which
money can procure at New Orleans, and with
all the decorum that care and affection can
give exquisitely beautiful, graceful, gentle,
and amiable, are not admitted, nay, are not
on any terms admissible, into the society
of the Creole families of Louisiana. They
cannot marry; that is to say, no ceremony
can render any union with them legal or binding."
"It is known by almost everybody who has heard
of the man, Richard M. Johnson, a Democratic
Vice-President of the United States, that
he had colored daughters of whom he was proud;
and his was not an exceptional case. Several
Presidents of the United States have been
accused of racial catholicity in sex. And
finally, one cannot forget that bitter word
attributed to a sister of a President of the
United States: "We Southern ladies are complimented
with names of wives; but we are only mistresses
of seraglios."
What the planters wanted was income large
enough to maintain the level of living which
was their ideal. Naturally, only a few of
them had enough for this, and the rest, striving
toward it, were perpetually in debt and querulously
seeking a reason for this indebtedness outside themselves. Since it was beneath the
dignity of a "gentleman" to encumber himself
with the details of his finances, this lordly
excuse enabled the planter to place between
himself and the black slave a series of intermediaries
through whom bitter pressure and exploitation
could be exercised and large crops raised.
For the very reason that the planters did
not give attention to details, there was wide
tendency to commercialize their growing business
of supplying raw materials for an expanding
modern industry. They were the last to comprehend
the revolution through which that industry
was passing and their efforts to increase
income succeeded only at the cost of raping
the land and degrading the laborers.
Theoretically there were many ways of increasing
the income of the planter; practically there
was but one. The planter might sell his crops
at higher prices; he might increase his crop
by intensive farming, or he might reduce the
cost of handling and transporting his crops;
he might increase his crops by making his
laborers work harder and giving them smaller
wages. In practice, the planter, so far as
prices were concerned, was at the mercy of
the market. Merchants and manufacturers
by intelligence and close combination set
the current prices of raw material. Their
power thus exercised over agriculture was
not unlimited but it was so large, so continuous
and so steadily and intelligently exerted
that it gradually reduced agriculture to a
subsidiary industry whose returns scarcely
supported the farmer and his labor.
The Southern planter in the fifties was in
a key position to attempt to break and arrest
the growth of this domination of all industry
by trade and manufacture. But he was too lazy
and self-indulgent to do this and he would
not apply his intelligence to the problem.
His capitalistic rivals of the North were
hard-working, simple-living zealots devoting
their whole energy and intelligence to building
up an industrial system. They quickly monopolized
transport and mines and factories and they
were more than willing to include the big
plantations. But the planter wanted results
without effort. He wanted large income without
corresponding investment and he insisted furiously
upon a system of production which excluded
intelligent labor, machinery, and modern methods.
He toyed with the idea of local manufactures
and ships and railroads. But this entailed
too much work and sacrifice.
The result was that Northern and European
industry set prices for Southern cotton, tobacco
and sugar which left a narrow margin of profit
for the planter. He could retaliate only by
more ruthlessly exploiting his slave labor
so as to get the largest crops at the least
expense. He was therefore not deliberately
cruel to his slaves, but he had to raise cotton
enough to satisfy his pretensions and self-indulgence,
even if it brutalized and commercialized his
slave labor.
Thus slavery was the economic lag of the 16th
century carried over into the 19th century
and bringing by contrast and by friction moral
lapses and political difficulties. It has
been estimated that the Southern states had
in 1860 three billion dollars invested in
slaves, which meant that slaves and land represented
the mass of their capital. Being generally
convinced that Negroes could only labor as
slaves, it was easy for them to become further
persuaded that slaves were better of than
white workers and that the South had a better
labor system than the North, with extraordinary
possibilities in industrial and social development.
The argument went like this: raw material
like cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, together
with other foodstuffs formed the real wealth
of the United States, and were produced by
the Southern states. These crops were sold
all over the world and were in such demand
that the industry of Europe depended upon
them. The trade with Europe must be kept open
so that the South might buy at the lowest
prices such manufactured goods as she wanted,
and she must oppose all Northern attempts
to exalt industry at the expense of agriculture.
The North might argue cogently that industry
and manufacture could build up in the United
States a national economy. Writers on economics
began in Germany and America to elaborate
and insist upon the advantages of such a system;
but the South would have none of it. It
meant not only giving the North a new industrial
prosperity, but doing this at the expense
of England and France; and the Southern planters
preferred Europe to Northern America. They
not only preferred Europe for social reasons
and for economic advantages, but they sensed
that the new power of monopolizing and dis-
tributing capital through a national banking
system, if permitted in the North in an expanding
industry, would make the North an even greater
financial dictator of the South than it was
at the time.
The South voiced for the Southern farmer,
in 1850, words almost identical with those
of the Western farmer, seventy-five years
later. "All industry," declared one Southerner,
"is getting legislative support against
agriculture, and thus the profits are going
to manufacture and trade, and these concentrated
in the North stand against the interests of
the South."
It could not, perhaps, be proven that the
Southern planter, had he been educated in
economics and history, and had he known the
essential trends of the modern world, could
have kept the Industrial Revolution from subordinating
agriculture and reducing it to its present
vassalage to manufacturing. But it is certain
that an enlightened and far-seeing agrarianism
under the peculiar economic circumstances
of the United States during the first half
of the nineteenth century could have essentially
modified the economic trend of the world.
The South with free rich land and cheap labor
had the monopoly of cotton, a material in
universal demand. If the leaders of the South,
while keeping the consumer in mind, had turned
more thoughtfully to the problem of the American
producer, and had guided the production
of cotton and food so as to take every advantage
of new machinery and modern methods in agriculture,
they might have moved forward with manufacture
and been able to secure an approximately large
amount of profit. But this would have involved
yielding to the demands of modern labor: opportunity
for education, legal protection of women and
children, regulation of the hours of work,
steadily increasing wages and the right to
some voice in the administration of the state
if not in the conduct of industry.
The South had but one argument 'against following
modern civilization in this yielding to the
demand of laboring humanity: it insisted on
the efficiency of Negro labor for ordinary
toil and on its essential equality in physical
condition with the average labor of Europe
and America. But in order to maintain its
income without sacrifice or exertion, the
South fell back on a doctrine of racial differences
which it asserted made higher intelligence
and increased efficiency impossible for Negro
labor. Wishing such an excuse for lazy indulgence,
the planter easily found, invented and proved
it. His subservient religious leaders reverted
to the "Curse of Canaan"; his pseudo-scientists
gathered and supplemented all available doctrines
of race inferiority; his scattered schools
and pedantic periodicals repeated these legends,
until for the average planter born after 1840
it was impossible not to believe that all
valid laws in psychology, economics and politics
stopped with the Negro race.
The espousal of the doctrine of Negro inferiority
by the South was primarily because of economic
motives and the inter-connected political
urge necessary to support slave industry;
but to the watching world it sounded like
the carefully thought out result of experience
and reason; and because of this it was singularly
disastrous for modern civilization in science
and religion, in art and government, as well
as in industry. The South could say that the
Negro, even when brought into modern civilization,
could not be civilized, and that, therefore,
he and the other colored peoples of the world
were so far inferior to the whites that the
white world had a right to rule mankind for
their own selfish interests.
Never in modern times has a large section
of a nation so used its combined energies
to the degradation of mankind. The hurt to
the Negro in this era was not only his treatment
in slavery; it was the wound dealt to his
reputation as a human being. Nothing was left;
nothing was sacred; and while the best and
more cultivated and more humane of the planters
did not themselves always repeat the calumny,
they stood by, consenting by silence, while
blatherskites said things about Negroes too
cruelly untrue to be the word of civilized
men. Not only then in the forties and fifties
did the word Negro lose its capital letter,
but African history became the tale of degraded
animals and sub-human savages, where no vestige
of human culture found foothold.
Thus a basis in reason, philanthropy and science
was built up for Negro slavery. Judges on
the bench declared that Negro servitude was
to last, "if the apocalypse be not in error,
until the end of time." The Atlanta Daily
Intelligencer of January 9, 1860, said, "We
can't see for the life of us how anyone understanding
fully the great principle that underlies our
system of involuntary servitude, can discover
any monstrosity in subjecting a Negro to slavery
of a white man. We contend on the contrary
that the monstrosity, or, at least, the unnaturalness
in this matter, consists in finding Negroes
anywhere in white communities not under the
control of the whites. Whenever we see a Negro,
we presuppose a master, and if we see him
in what is commonly called a 'free state,'
we consider him out of his place.
This matter of manumission, or emancipation
'now, thank heaven, less practiced than formerly,'
is a species of false philanthropy, which
we look upon as a cousin-German to Abolitionism bad
for the master, worse for the slave."
Beneath this educational and social propaganda
lay the undoubted evidence of the planter's
own expenses. He saw ignorant and sullen labor
deliberately reducing his profits. In fact,
he always faced the negative attitude of the
general strike. Open revolt of slaves refusal
to work could be met by beating and selling
to the harsher methods of the deep South and
Southwest as punishment. Running away could
be curbed by law and police. But nothing could
stop the dogged slave from doing just as little
and as poor work as possible. All observers
spoke of the fact that the slaves were slow
and churlish; that they wasted material and
malingered at their work. Of course, they
did.
This was not racial but economic. It was the
answer of any group of laborers forced down
to the last ditch. They might be made to work
continuously but no power could make them
work well.
If the European or Northern laborer did not
do his work properly and fast enough, he would
lose the job. The black slave could not lose
his job. If the Northern laborer got sick
or injured, he was discharged, usually without
compensation; the black slave could not be
discharged and had to be given some care in
sicknesses, particularly if he represented
a valuable investment. The Northern and English
employer could select workers in the prime
of life and did not have to pay children
too young to work or adults too old. The slave
owner had to take care of children and old
folk, and while this did not cost much on
a farm or entail any great care, it did seriously
cut down the proportion of his effective laborers,
which could only be balanced by the systematic
labor of women and children. The children
ran loose with only the most general control,
getting their food with the other slaves.
The old folk foraged for themselves. Now and
then they were found dead of neglect, but
usually there was no trouble in their getting
at least food
enough to live and some rude shelter.
The economic difficulties that thus faced
the planter in exploiting the black slave
were curious. Contrary to the trend of his
age, he could not use higher wage to induce
better work or a larger supply of labor. He
could not allow his labor to become intelligent,
although
intelligent labor would greatly increase the
production of wealth. He could not depend
on voluntary immigration unless the immigrants
be slaves, and he must bear the burden of
the old and sick and could only balance this
by child labor and the labor of women.
The use of slave women as day workers naturally
broke up or made impossible the normal Negro
home and this and the slave code led to a
development of which the South was really
ashamed and which it often denied, and yet
perfectly evident: the raising of slaves in
the Border slave states for systematic sale
on the commercialized cotton plantations.
The ability of the slaveholder and landlord
to sequester a large share of the profits
of slave labor depended upon his exploitation
of that labor, rather than upon high prices
for his product in the market. In the world
market, the merchants and manufacturers had
all the advantage of unity, knowledge and
purpose, and could hammer down the price of
raw material. The slaveholder, therefore,
saw Northern merchants and manufacturers
enrich themselves from the results of Southern
agriculture. He was angry and used all of
his great political power to circumvent it.
His only effective economic movement, however,
could take place against the slave. He was
forced, unless willing to take lower profits,
continually to beat down the cost of his slave
labor.
But there was another motive which more and
more strongly as time went on compelled the
planter to cling to slavery. His political
power was based on slavery. With four million
slaves he could balance the votes of 2,400,000
Northern voters, while in the inconceivable
event of their becoming free, their votes
would outnumber those of his Northern opponents,
which was precisely what happened in 1868.
As the economic power of the planter waned,
his political power became more and more indispensable
to the maintenance of his income and profits.
Holding his industrial system secure by this
political domination, the planter turned to
the more systematic exploitation of his black
labor. One method called for more land and
the other for more slaves. Both meant not
only increased crops but increased political
power. It was a temptation that swept greed,
religion, military pride and dreams of empire
to its defense. There were two possibilities.
He might follow the old method of the early
West Indian sugar plantations: work his slaves
without regard to their physical condition,
until they died of over-work or exposure,
and then buy new ones. The difficulty of this,
however, was that the price of slaves, since
the attempt to abolish the slave trade, was
gradually rising. This in the deep South led
to a strong and gradually increasing demand
for the reopening of the African slave trade,
just as modern industry demands cheaper
and cheaper coolie labor in Asia and half-slave
labor in African mines.
The other possibility was to find continual
increments of new, rich land upon which ordinary
slave labor would bring adequate return. This
land the South sought in the Southeast; then
beyond the Mississippi in Louisiana and Texas,
then in Mexico, and finally, it turned its
face in two directions: toward the Northwestern
territories of the United States and toward
the West Indian islands and South America.
The South was drawn toward the West by two
motives: first the possibility that slavery
in Kansas, Colorado, Utah and Nevada would
be at least as profitable as in Missouri,
and secondly to prevent the expansion of free
labor there and its threat to slavery. This
challenge was a counsel of despair in the
face of modern industrial development and
probably the radical South expected defeat
in the West and hoped the consequent resentment
among the slaveholders would set the South
toward a great slave empire in the Caribbean.
Jefferson Davis was ready to reopen the African
slave trade to any future acquisition south
of the Rio Grande.
This brought the South to war with the farmers
and laborers in the North and West, who wanted
free soil but did not want to compete with
slave labor. The fugitive slave law of 1850
vastly extended Federal power so as to nullify
state rights in the North. The Compromise
of 1850 permitted the extension of slavery
into the territories, and the Kansas-Nebraska
Bill, 1854, deprived Congress of the right
to prohibit slavery anywhere. This opened
the entire West to slavery. War followed in
Kansas. Slaveholders went boldly into Kansas,
armed and organized:
"The invaders went in such force that the
scattered and unorganized citizens could make
no resistance and in many places they did
not attempt to vote, seeing the polls surrounded
by crowds of armed men who they knew came
from Missouri to control the election and
the leaders of the invaders kept their men
under control, being anxious to prevent needless
violence, as any serious outbreak would attract
the attention of the country. In some districts
the actual citizens protested against the
election and petitioned the governor to set
it aside and order another.
"We can tell the impertinent scoundrels of
the Tribune that we will continue to lynch
and hang, to tar and feather and drown every
white-livered Abolitionist who dares to pollute
our soil."
from the United States territories by the
Free Soil movement, the' South determined
upon secession with the distinct idea of eventually
expanding into the Caribbean.
There was, however, the opposition in the
Border States. The employers of labor in the
Border States had found a new source of revenue.
They did not like to admit it. They surrounded
it with a certain secrecy, and it was exceedingly
bad taste for any Virginia planter to have
it indicated that he was deliberately raising
slaves for sale; and yet that was a fact.
In no respect are the peculiar psychological
difficulties of the planters better illustrated
than with regard to the interstate slave trade.
The theory was clear and lofty; slaves were
a part of the family "my people," George
Washington called them. Under ordinary circumstances they were never to be alienated, but
supported during good behavior and bad, punished
and corrected for crime and misdemeanor, rewarded
for good conduct. It was the patriarchal clan
translated into modern life, with social,
religious, economic and even blood ties.
This was the theory; but as a matter of fact,
the cotton planters were supplied with laborers
by the Border States. A laboring stock was
deliberately bred for legal sale. A large
number of persons followed the profession
of promoting this sale of slaves. There were
markets and quotations, and the stream of
black labor, moving continuously into the
South, reached yearly into the thousands.
Notwithstanding these perfectly clear and
authenticated facts, the planter persistently
denied them. He denied that there was any
considerable interstate sale of slaves; he
denied that families were broken up; he insisted
that slave auctions were due to death or mischance,
and particularly did he insist that the slave
traders were the least of human beings and
most despised.
This deliberate contradiction of plain facts
constitutes itself a major charge against
slavery and shows how the system often so
affronted the moral sense of the planters
themselves that they tried to hide from it.
They could not face the fact of Negro women
as brood mares and of black children as puppies.
Indeed, while we speak of the planters as
one essentially unvarying group, there is
evidence that the necessities of their economic
organization were continually changing and
deteriorating their morale and pushing forward
ruder, noisier, less cultivated elements than
characterized the Southern gentleman of earlier
days. Certainly, the cursing, brawling, whoring
gamblers who largely represented the South
in the late fifties, evidenced the inevitable
deterioration that overtakes men when their
desire for income and extravagance overwhelms
their respect for human beings. Thus the interstate
slave trade grew and flourished and the demand
for the African slave trade was rapidly becoming
irresistible in the late fifties.
From fifty to eighty thousand slaves went
from the Border States to the lower South
in the last decade of slavery. One planter
frankly said that he "calculated that the
moment a colored baby was born, it was worth
to him $300." So far as possible, the planters
in selling off their slaves avoided the breaking
up of families. But they were facing flat
economic facts. The persons who were buying
slaves in the cotton belt were not buying
families, they were buying workers, and thus
by economic demand families were continually
and regularly broken up; the father was sold
away; the mother and the half-grown children
separated, and sometimes smaller children
were sold. One of the subsequent tragedies
of the system was the frantic efforts, before
and after emancipation, of Negroes hunting
for their relatives throughout the United
States.
A Southerner wrote to Olmsted: "In the states
of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky,
Tennessee and Missouri, as much attention
is paid to the breeding and growth of Negroes
as to that of horses and mules. Further south,
we raise them both for use and for market.
Planters command their girls and women (married
or unmarried) to have children; and I have
known a great many Negro girls to be sold
off because they did not have children. A
breeding woman is worth from one-sixth to
one-fourth more than one that does not breed."
Sexual chaos arose from economic motives.
The deliberate breeding of a strong, big field-hand
stock could be carried out by selecting proper
males, and giving them the run of the likeliest
females. This in many Border States became
a regular policy and fed the slave trade.
Child-bearing was a profitable occupation,
which received every possible encouragement,
and there was not only no bar to illegitimacy,
but an actual premium put upon it. Indeed,
the word was impossible of meaning under the
slave system.
Moncure D. Conway, whose father was a slaveholder
near Fredericksburg, Virginia, wrote: "As
a general thing, the chief pecuniary resource
in the Border States is the breeding of slaves;
and I grieve to say that there is too much
ground for the charges that general licentiousness
among the slaves, for the purpose of a large
increase, is compelled by some masters and
encouraged by many. The period of maternity
is hastened, the average youth of Negro mothers
being nearly three years earlier than that
of any free race, and an old maid is utterly
unknown among the women."
J. E. Cairnes, the English economist, in his
passage with Mr. McHenry on this subject,
computed from reliable data that Virginia,
had bred and exported to the cotton states
between the years of 1840 and 1850 no less
than 100,000 slaves, which at $500 per head
would have yielded her $50,000,000.
The law sometimes forbade the breaking up
of slave families but:
"Not one of these prohibitions, save those
of Louisiana, and they but slightly, in any
way referred to or hampered the owner of unencumbered
slave property: he might sell or pawn or mortgage
or give it away according to profit or whim,
regardless of age or kinship.
"Elsewhere in the typical South - in Virginia,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Arkansas and Texas - there seems to have been
no restriction of any sort against separating
mothers and children or husbands and wives
or selling children of any age. Slavery was,indeed,
a 'peculiar institution.' "
The slave-trading Border States, therefore,
in their own economic interest, frantically
defended slavery, yet opposed the reopening
of the African slave trade to which the Southern
South was becoming more and more attracted.
This slave trade had curious psychological
effects upon the planter. When George Washington
sold a slave to the West Indies for one hogshead
"of best rum" and molasses and sweetmeats,
it was because "this fellow is both a rogue
and a runaway.
Thus tradition grew up that the sale of a
slave from a gentleman's plantation was for
special cause. As time went on and slavery
became systematized and commercialized under
the Cotton Kingdom, this was absolutely untrue.
The "buying or selling of slaves was not viewed
as having any taint of 'hated' slave-trading;
yet it early became a fully credited tradition,
implicitly accepted generation after generation,
that 'all traders were hated.' "
The sacrifices necessary for economic advance,
Southern planters were on the whole too selfish
and too provincial to make. They would not
in any degree curtail consumption in order
to furnish at least part of the necessary
increase of capital and make dependence upon
debt to the North and to Europe less necessary.
They did not socialize the ownership of the
slave on any large scale or educate him in
technique; they did not encourage local and
auxiliary industry or manufacture, and thus
make it possible for their own profit to exploit
white labor and give it an economic foothold.
This would have involved, to be sure, increased
recognition of democracy, and far from
yielding to any such inevitable development,
the South threw itself into the arms of a
reaction at least two centuries out of date.
Governor McDufrle of South Carolina called
the laboring class, bleached or unbleached,
a "dangerous" element in the population.
A curious argument appeared in the Charleston
Mercury of 1861:
"Within ten years past as many as ten thousand
slaves have been drawn away from Charleston
by the attractive prices of the West, and
[white] laborers from abroad have come to
take their places.
These laborers have every disposition to work
above the slave, and if there were opportunity,
would be glad to do so; but without such opportunity
they come into competition with him; they
are necessarily restive to the contact. Already
there is disposition to exclude
him from the trades, from public works, from
drays, and the tables of the hotels; he is
even now excluded to a great extent, and . . .when
more laborers . . . shall come in greater
numbers to the South, they will still more
increase the tendency to exclusion; they will
question the right of masters to employ their
slaves in any work that they may wish for;
they will invoke the aid of legislation; they
will use the elective franchise to that end;
they will acquire the power to determine municipal
elections; they will inexorably use it; and
thus the town of Charleston, at the very heart
of slavery, may become a fortress of democratic
power against it."
The planters entirely misconceived the extent
to which democracy was spreading in the North.
They thought it meant that the laboring class
was going to rule the North for labor's own
economic interests. Even those who saw the
seamy side of slavery were convinced of the
Tightness of the system because they believed
that there were seeds of disaster in the North
against which slavery would be their protection;
"indications that these are already beginning
to be felt or anticipated by prophetic minds,
they think they see in the demands for 'Land
Limitation,' in the anti-rent troubles, in
strikes of workmen, in the distress of emigrants
at the eddies of their current, in diseased
philanthropy, in radical democracy, and in
the progress of socialistic ideas in general.
'The North,' say they, 'has progressed under
the high pressure of unlimited competition;
as the population grows denser, there will
be terrific explosions, disaster, and ruin,
while they will ride quietly and safely at
the anchor of slavery.'
Thus the planters of the South walked straight
into the face of modern economic progress.
The North had yielded to democracy, but only
because democracy was curbed by a dictatorship
of property and investment which left in the
hands of the leaders of industry such economic
power as insured their mastery and their profits.
Less than this they knew perfectly well they
could not yield, and more than this they would
not. They remained masters
of the economic destiny of America.
In the South, on the other hand, the planters
walked in quite the opposite direction, excluding
the poor whites from nearly every economic
foothold with apparently no conception of
the danger of these five million workers who,
in time, overthrew the planters and utterly
submerged them after the Civil War; and the
South was equally determined to regard its
four million slaves as a class of submerged
workers and to this ideal they and their successors
still cling.
Calhoun once said with perfect truth: There
has never yet existed "a wealthy and civilized
society in which one portion of the community
did not, in point of fact, live on the labor
of the other." Governor McDuffie of South Carolina
said: "God forbid that my descendants, in
the remotest generations, should live in any
other than a community having the institution
of domestic slavery."
The South elected to make its fight through
the political power which it possessed because
of slavery and the disfranchisement of the
poor whites. It had in American history chosen
eleven out of sixteen Presidents, seventeen
out of twenty-eight Judges of the Supreme
Court, fourteen out of nineteen Attorneys-General,
twenty-one out of thirty- three Speakers of
the House, eighty out of one hundred thirty-four
Foreign Ministers. It demanded a fugitive
slave law as strong as words could make it
and it was offered constitutional guarantees
which would have made it impossible for the
North to meddle with the organization of the
slave empire.
The South was assured of all the territory
southwest of Missouri and as far as California.
It might even have extended its imperialistic
sway toward the Caribbean without effective
opposition from the North or Europe. The South
had conquered Mexico without help and beyond
lay the rest of Mexico, the West Indies and
South America, open to Southern imperialistic
enterprise. The South dominated the Army and
Navy. It argued that a much larger proportion
of the population could go to war in the South
than in the North. There might, of course,
be danger of slave insurrection in a long
war with actual invasion, but the possibility
of a long war or any war at all Southerners
discounted, and they looked confidently forward
to being either an independent section of
the United States or an independent country
with a stable economic foundation which could
dictate its terms to the modern world on the
basis of a monopoly of cotton, and a large
production of other essential raw materials.
The South was too ignorant to know that their
only chance to establish such economic dictatorship
and place themselves in a key economic position
was through a national economy, in a large
nation where a home market would absorb a
large proportion of the production, and
where agriculture, led by men of vision, could
demand a fair share of profit from industry.
When, therefore, the planters surrendered
this chance and went to war with the machine
to establish agricultural independence, they
lost because of their internal weakness. Their
whole labor class, black and white, went into
economic revolt. The breach could only have
been healed by making the same concessions
to labor that France, England, Germany and
the North had made. There was no time for
such change in the midst of war. Northern
industry must, therefore, after the war, make
the adjustment with labor which Southern agriculture
refused to make. But the loss which agriculture
sustained through the stubbornness of the
planters led to the degradation of agriculture
throughout the modern world.
Due to the stubbornness of the South and the
capitalism of the West, we have had built
up in the world an agriculture with a minimum of machines and new methods, conducted
by ignorant labor and producing raw materials
used by industry equipped with machines
and intelligent labor, and conducted by shrewd
business men. The result has been that a disproportionate
part of the profit of organized work has gone
to industry, while the agricultural laborer
has descended toward slavery. The West, instead
of becoming a country of peasant proprietors
who might have counteracted this result, surrendered itself hand and foot to capitalism
and speculation in land.
The abolition of American slavery started
the transportation of capital from white to
black countries where slavery prevailed, with
the same tremendous and awful consequences
upon the laboring classes of the world which
we see about us today. When raw material could
not be raised in a country like the United
States, it could be raised in the tropics
and semi-tropics under a dictatorship of industry,
commerce and manufacture and with no free
farming class.
The competition of a slave-directed agriculture
in the West Indies and South America, in Africa
and Asia, eventually ruined the economic
efficiency of agriculture in the United States
and in Europe and precipitated the modern
economic degradation of the white farmer,
while it put into the hands of the owners
of the machine such a monopoly of raw material
that their domination of white labor was more
and more complete.
The crisis came in 1860, not so much because
Abraham Lincoln was elected President on a
platform which refused further land for the
expansion of slavery, but because the cotton
crop of 1859 reached the phenomenal height
of five million bales as compared with three
million in 1850. To this was added the threat
of radical abolition as represented by John
Brown. The South feared these social upheavals
but it was spurred to immediate action by
the great cotton crop. Starting with South
Carolina, the Southern cotton-raising and
slave-consuming states were forced out of
the Union.
Their reason for doing this was clearly stated
and reiterated. For a generation, belief in
slavery was the Southern shibboleth:
"A suspicion of heresy on the subject of the
'peculiar institution' was sufficient to declare
the ineligibility of any candidate for office;
nay, more, orthodoxy began to depend upon
the correct attitude toward the doctrine of
'Squatter Sovereignty' and the extreme view
held as to Federal protection of slavery in
the territories."
Jefferson Davis said that the North was "impairing
the security of property and slaves and reducing
those states which held slaves to a condition
of inferiority."
Senator Toombs said that property and slaves
must be entitled to the same protection from
the government as any other property. The
South Carolina convention arraigned the North
for increasing hostility "to the institution
of slavery," and declared for secession because
the North had assumed the right of deciding
upon the propriety of Southern domestic institutions.
Governor R. C. Wickliffe in his message at
the extra session of the legislature of Louisiana
expressed his belief that the election was
"a deliberate design to pervert the powers
of the Government to the immediate injury
and ultimate destruction of the peculiar institution
of the South."
Slidels farewell speech in the Congressional
Globe of February 5, 1861:
"We separate," he said, "because of the hostility
of Lincoln to our institutions. ... If he
were inaugurated without our consent there
would be slave insurrections in the South."
The Alabama Commissioner to Maryland arraigned
the Lincoln government as proposing not "to
recognize the right of the Southern citizens
to property in the labor of African slaves."
The Governor of Alabama arraigned the Republicans
for desiring "the destruction of the institution
of slavery."
In the Southern Congress, at Montgomery on
the 2nd of February, 1861, Senator Wigfall,
from Texas, said that he was fighting for
slavery, and for nothing else. The patent
of nobility is in the color of the skin. He
wanted to live in no country in which a man
who blacked his boots and curried his horse
was his equal. Give Negroes muskets and make
them soldiers, and the next subject introduced
for discussion will be miscegenation. And
finally, Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President
of the Confederacy, stated fully the philosophy
of the new Confederate government: "The new
Constitution has put at rest forever all the
agitating questions relating to our peculiar
institutions - African slavery as it exists
among us - the proper status of the Negro
in our form of civilization. This was the
immediate cause of the late rupture and present
revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had
anticipated this as the rock upon which the
old union would split! He was right. What
was conjecture with him is now a realized
fact. But whether he fully comprehended the
great truth upon which that rock stood and
stands may be doubted. The prevailing ideas
entertained by him and most of the leading
statesmen at the time of the formation of
the old Constitution, were that the enslavement
of the African was in violation of the laws
of nature; that it was wrong in principle,
socially, morally and politically. It was
an evil they knew not well how to deal with,
but the general opinion of the men of that
day was that, some- how or other, in the order
of Providence, the institution would be evanescent
and pass away. . . . Those ideas, however,
were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon
the assumption of the equality of races. This
was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and
the idea of a government built upon it; when
the 'storm came and the winds blew, it fell.'
"Our new government is founded upon exactly
the opposite idea, its foundations are laid,
its cornerstone 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.
This, our new government, is the first in
the history of the world, based upon this
great physical and moral truth. This truth
has been slow in the process of its development,
like all other truths in the various departments
of science. It has been so even amongst us.
Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well,
that this truth was not generally admitted,
even within their day. . . .
"Now they are universally acknowledged. May
we not, therefore, look with confidence to
the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the
truths upon which our system rests. It is
the first government ever instituted upon
principles of strict conformity to nature,
and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing
the materials of human society. Many governments
have been founded upon the principle of certain
classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were
of the same race, and in violation of the
laws of nature. Our system commits no such
violation of nature's laws. The Negro, by
nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is
fitted for that condition which he occupies
in our system. The architect, in the construction
of buildings, lays the foundation with the
proper materials, the granite; then comes
the brick or the marble. The substratum of
our society is made of the material fitted
by nature for it, and by experience we know
that it is best, not only for the superior,
but for the inferior race that it should be
so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the
ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us
to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances,
or to question them. For His own purposes
He has made one race to differ from another,
as He has had 'one star to differ from another
star in glory.' "
The rift between the Southern South and the
Border States was bridged by omission of all
reference to the reopening of the slave trade
and stressing the reality of the Northern
attack upon the institution of slavery itself.
The movement against the slave trade laws
in the Southern South was strong and growing.
In 1854, a grand jury in the Williamsburg
district of South Carolina declared: "As our
unanimous opinion, that the Federal law abolishing
the African Slave Trade is a public grievance.
We hold this trade has been and would be,
if reestablished, a blessing to the American
people and a benefit to the African himself."
Two years later, the Governor of the state
in his annual message argued for a reopening
of the trade and declared: "If we cannot supply
the demand for slave labor, then we must expect
to be supplied with a species of labor we
do not want" (i.e., free white labor). The
movement was forwarded by the commercial conventions.
In 1855, at New Orleans, a resolution for
the repeal of the slave trade laws was introduced
but not reported by committee. In 1856, at
Savannah, the convention refused to debate
the matter of the repeal of the slave trade
laws but appointed a committee. At the convention
at Knoxville, in 1857, a resolution declaring
it inexpedient to reopen the trade was voted
down. At Montgomery, in 1858, a committee
presented an elaborate majority report declaring
it "expedient and proper that the foreign
slave trade should be reopened." After debate,
it was decided that it was inexpedient for
any single state to attempt to reopen the
African slave trade while that state is one
of the United States of America. Finally,
at Vicksburg in 1859, it was voted 40-19,
"that all laws, state or Federal, prohibiting
the African slave trade, ought to be repealed."
Both the provisional and permanent constitutions
of the Confederate states forbade the importation
of Negroes from foreign countries, except
the "slave-holding states or territories of
the United States of America." Nevertheless,
the foreign ministers of the Confederate states
were assured that while the Confederate government
had no power to reopen the slave trade, the
states could, if they wanted to, and that
the ministers were not to discuss any treaties
to prohibit the trade.
Thus the planters led the South into war,
carrying the five million poor whites blindly
with them and standing upon a creed which
opposed the free distribution of government
land; which asked for the expansion of slave
territory, for restricted functions of the
national government, and for the perpetuity
of Negro slavery.
What irritated the planter and made him charge
the North and liberal Europe with hypocrisy,
was the ethical implications of slavery. He
was kept explaining a system of work which
he insisted was no different in essence from
that in vogue in Europe and the North. They
and he were all exploiting labor. He did it
by individual right; they by state law. They
called their labor free, but after all, the
laborer was only free to starve, if he did
not work on their terms. They called his laborer
a slave when his master was responsible for
him from birth to death.
The Southern argument had strong backing in
the commercial North. Lawyer O'Conner of New
York expressed amid applause that calm reasoned
estimate of the Negro in 1859, which pervaded
the North:
"Now, Gentlemen, nature itself has assigned,
his condition of servitude to the Negro. He
has the strength and is fit to work; but nature,
which gave him this strength, denied him both
the intelligence to rule and the will to work.
Both are denied to him. And the same nature
which denied him the will to work, gave him
a master, who should enforce this will, and
make a useful servant of him in a climate
to which he is well adapted for his own benefit
and that of the master who rules him. I assert
that it is no injustice to leave the Negro
in the position into which nature placed him;
to put a master over him; and he is not robbed
of any right, if he is compelled to labor
in return for this, and to supply a just compensation
for his master in return for the labor and
the talents devoted to ruling him and to making
him useful to himself and to society."
What the planter and his Northern apologist
did not readily admit was that this exploitation
of labor reduced it to a wage so low and a
standard of living so pitiable that no modern
industry in agriculture or trade or manufacture
could build upon it; that it made ignorance
compulsory and had to do so in self-defense;
and that it automatically was keeping the
South from entering the great stream of modern
industry where growing intelligence among
workers, a rising standard of living among
the masses, increased personal freedom and
political power, were recognized as absolutely
necessary.
The ethical problem here presented was less
important than the political and far less
than the economic. The Southerners were as
little conscious of the hurt they were inflicting
on human beings as the Northerners were of
their treatment of the insane. It is easy
for men to discount and misunderstand the
suffering or harm done others. Once accustomed
to poverty, to the sight of toil and degradation,
it easily seems normal and natural; once it
is hidden beneath a different color of skin,
a different stature or a different habit of
action and speech, and all consciousness of
inflicting ill disappears.
The Southern planter suffered, not simply
for his economic mistakes - the psychological
effect of slavery upon him was fatal. The
mere fact that a man could be, under the law,
the actual master of the mind and body of
human beings had to have disastrous effects.
It tended to inflate the ego of most planters
beyond all reason; they became arrogant, strutting,
quarrelsome kinglets; they issued com- mands;
they made laws; they shouted their orders;
they expected deference and self-abasement;
they were choleric and easily insulted. Their
"honor" became a vast and awful thing, requiring
wide and insistent deference. Such of them
as were inherently weak and in efficient were
all the more easily angered, jealous and resentful;
while the few who were superior, physically
or mentally, conceived no bounds to their
power and personal prestige. As the world
had long learned, nothing is so calculated
to ruin human nature as absolute power over
human beings.
On the other hand, the possession of such
power did not and could not lead to its continued
tyrannical exercise. The tyrant could be kind
and congenial. He could care for his chattels
like a father; he could grant indulgence and
largess; he could play with power and find
tremendous satisfaction in its benevolent
use.
Thus, economically and morally, the situation
of the planter became intolerable. What was
needed was the force of great public opinion
to make him see his economic mistakes and
the moral debauchery that threatened him.
But here again in the planter class no room
was made for the reformer, the recalcitrant.
The men who dared such thought and act were
driven out or suppressed with a virulent tyranny
reminiscent of the Inquisition and the Reformation.
For these there was the same peculiar way
of escape that lay before the slave. The planter
who could not stand slavery followed the poor
whites who could not stand Negroes, they followed
the Negro who also could not stand slavery,
into the North; and there, removed from immediate
contact with the evils of slavery, the planter
often became the "copperhead," and theoretical
champion of a system which he could not himself
endure.
Frederick Douglass thus summed up the objects
of the white planter: "I understand this policy
to comprehend five cardinal objects. They
are these: 1st, The complete suppression of
all anti-slavery discussion. 2nd, The expatriation
of the entire free people of color from the
United States. 3rd, The unending perpetuation
of slavery in this republic. 4th, The nationalization
of slavery to the extent of making slavery
respected in every state of the Union. 5th,
The extension of slavery over Mexico and the
entire South American states."
This whole system and plan of development
failed, and failed of its own weakness. Unending
effort has gone into painting the claims of
the Old South, its idyllic beauty and social
charm. But the truth is inexorable. With all
its fine men and sacrificing women, its hospitable
homes and graceful manners, the South turned
the most beautiful section of the nation into
a center of poverty and suffering, of drinking,
gambling and brawling; an abode of ignorance
among black and white more abysmal than in
any modern land; and a system of industry
so humanly unjust and economically inefficient
that if it had not committed suicide in civil
war, it would have disintegrated of its own
weight.
With the Civil War, the planters died as a
class. We still talk as though the dominant
social class in the South persisted after
the war. But it did not. It disappeared. Just
how quickly and in what manner the transformation
was made, we do not know. No scientific study
of the submergence of the remainder of the
planter class into the ranks of the poor whites,
and the corresponding rise of a portion of
the poor whites into the dominant portion
of landholders and capitalists, has been made.
Of the names of prominent Southern families
in Congress in 1860, only two appear in 1870,
five in 1880. Of 90 prominent names in 1870,
only four survived in 1880. Men talk today
as though the upper class in the white South
is descended from the slave-holders; yet
we know by plain mathematics that the ancestors
of most of the present Southerners never owned
a slave nor had any real economic part in
slavery. The disaster of war decimated the
planters; the bitter disappointment and frustration
led to a tremendous mortality after the war,
and from 1870 on the planter class merged
their blood so completely with the rising
poor whites that they disappeared as a separate
aristocracy. It is this that explains so many
characteristics of the post-war South: its
lynching and mob law, its murders and cruelty,
its insensibility to the finer things of civilization.
Not spring; from us no agony of birth
Is asked or needed; in a crimson tide
Upon the down-slope of the world We, the elect,
are hurled
In fearful power and brief pride
Burning at last to silence and dark earth.
Not Spring.
James Rorty
Chapter Four: THE GENERAL STRIKE
How the Civil War meant emancipation and how
the black worker won the war by a general
strike which transferred his labor from the
Confederate planter to the Northern invader,
in whose army lines workers began to be organized
as a new labor force
When Edwin Ruffin, white-haired and mad, fired
the first gun at Fort Sumter, he freed the
slaves. It was the last thing he meant to
do but that was because he was so typically
a Southern oligarch. He did not know the real
world about him. He was provincial and lived
apart on his plantation with his servants,
his books and his thoughts. Outside of agriculture,
he jumped at conclusions instead of testing
them by careful research. He knew, for instance,
that the North would not fight. He knew that
Negroes would never revolt.
And so war came. War is murder, force, anarchy
and debt. Its end is evil, despite all incidental
good. Neither North nor South had before 1861
the slightest intention of going to war. The
thought was in many respects ridiculous. They
were not prepared for war. The national army
was small, poorly equipped and without experience.
There was no file from which someone might
draw plans of subjugation.
When Northern armies entered the South they
became armies of emancipation. It was the
last thing they planned to be. The North did
not propose to attack property. It did not
propose to free slaves. This was to be a white
man's war to preserve the Union, and the Union
must be preserved.
Nothing that concerned the amelioration of
the Negro touched the heart of the mass of
Americans nor could the common run of men
realize the political and economic cost of
Negro slavery. When, therefore, the Southern
radicals, backed by political oligarchy and
economic dictatorship in the most extreme
form in which the world had seen it for five
hundred years, precipitated secession, that
part of the North that opposed the plan had
to hunt for a rallying slogan to unite the
majority in the North and in the West, and
if possible, bring the Border States into
an opposing phalanx.
Freedom for slaves furnished no such slogan.
Not one-tenth of the Northern white population
would have fought for any such purpose. Free
soil was a much stronger motive, but it had
no cogency in this contest because the Free
Soilers did not dream of asking free soil
in the South, since that involved the competition
of slaves, or what seemed worse than that,
of free Negroes. On the other hand, the tremendous
economic ideal of keeping this great market
for goods, the United States, together with
all its possibilities of agriculture, manufacture,
trade and profit, appealed to both the West
and the North; and what was then much more
significant, it appealed to the Border States.
"To the flag we are pledged, all its foes
we abhor, And we ain't for the nigger, but
we are for the war."
The Border States wanted the cotton belt in
the Union so that they could sell it their
surplus slaves; but they also wanted to be
in the same union with the North and West,
where the profit of trade was large and increasing.
The duty then of saving the Union became the
great rallying cry of a war which for a long
time made the Border States hesitate and confine
secession to the far South. And yet they all
knew that the only thing that really threatened
the Union was slavery and the only remedy
was Abolition.
If, now, the far South had had trained and
astute leadership, a compromise could have
been made which, so far as slavery was concerned,
would have held the abnormal political power
of the South intact, made the slave system
impregnable for generations, and even given
slavery practical rights throughout the nation.
Both North and South ignored in differing
degrees the interests of the laboring classes.
The North expected patriotism and union to
make white labor fight; the South expected
all white men to defend the slaveholders'
property. Both North and South expected at
most a sharp, quick fight and victory; more
probably the South expected to secede peaceably,
and then outside the Union, to impose terms
which would include national recognition of
slavery, new slave territory and new cheap
slaves. The North expected that after a threat
and demonstration to appease its "honor,"
the South would return with the right of slave
property recognized and protected but geographically
limited.
Both sections ignored the Negro. To the Northern
masses the Negro was a curiosity, a subhuman
minstrel, willingly and naturally a slave,
and treated as well as he deserved to be.
He had not sense enough to revolt and help
Northern armies, even if Northern armies were
trying to emancipate him, which they were
not. The North shrank at the very thought
of encouraging servile insurrection against
the whites. Above all it did not propose to
interfere with property. Negroes on the whole
were considered cowards and inferior beings
whose very presence in America was unfortunate.
The abolitionists, it was true, expected action
on the part of the Negro, but how much, they
could not say. Only John Brown knew just how
revolt had come and would come and he was
dead.
Thus the Negro himself was not seriously considered
by the majority of men, North or South.
And yet from the very beginning, the Negro
occupied the center of the stage because of
very simple physical reasons: the war was
in the South and in the South were 3,953,740
black slaves and 261,918 free Negroes. What
was to be the relation of this mass of workers
to the war? What did the war mean to the Negroes,
and what did the Negroes mean to the war?
There are two theories, both rather overelaborated:
the one that the Negro did nothing but faithfully
serve his master until emancipation was thrust
upon him; the other that the Negro immediately,
just as quickly as the presence of Northern
soldiers made it possible, left serfdom and
took his stand with the army of freedom.
It must be borne in mind that nine-tenths
of the four million black slaves could neither
read nor write, and that the overwhelming
majority of them were isolated on country
plantations. Any mass movement under such
circumstances must materialize slowly and
painfully. What the Negro did was to wait,
look and listen and try to see where his interest
lay. There was no use in seeking refuge in
an army which was not an army of freedom;
and there was no sense in revolting against
armed masters who were conquering the world.
As soon, however, as it became clear that
the Union armies would not or could not return
fugitive slaves, and that the masters with
all their fume and fury were uncertain of
victory, the slave entered upon a general
strike against slavery by the same methods
that he had used during the period of the
fugitive slave. He ran away to the first place
of safety and offered his services to the
Federal Army. So that in this way it was really
true that he served his former master and
served the emancipating army; and it was also
true that this withdrawal and bestowal of
his labor decided the war.
The South counted on Negroes as laborers to
raise food and money crops for civilians and
for the army, and even in a crisis, to be
used for military purposes. Slave revolt was
an ever-present risk, but there was no reason
to think that a short war with the North would
greatly increase this danger. Publicly, the
South repudiated the thought of its slaves
even wanting to be rescued. The New Orleans
Crescent showed "the absurdity of the assertion
of a general stampede of our Negroes." The
London Dispatch was convinced that Negroes
did not want to be free. "As for the slaves
themselves, crushed with the wrongs of Dred
Scott and Uncle Tom -- most provoking -- they
cannot be brought to 'burn with revenge.'
They are spies for their masters. They obstinately
refuse to run away to liberty, outrage and
starvation. They work in the fields as usual
when the planter and overseer are away and
only the white women are left at home."
Early in the war, the South had made careful
calculation of the military value of slaves.
The Alabama Advertiser in 1861 discussed the
slaves as a "Military Element in the South."
It said that "The total white population of
the eleven states now comprising the Confederacy
is 5,000,000, and, therefore, to fill up the
ranks of the proposed army, 600,000, about
ten per cent of the entire white population,
will be required. In any other country than
our own such a draft could not be met, but
the Southern states can furnish that number
of men, and still not leave the material interest
of the country in a suffering condition."
The editor, with fatuous faith, did not for
a moment contemplate any mass movement against
this program on the part of the slaves. "Those
who are incapacitated for bearing arms can
oversee the plantations, and the Negroes can
go on undisturbed in their usual labors. In
the North, the case is different; the men
who join the army of subjugation are the laborers,
the producers and the factory operatives.
Nearly every man from that section, especially
those from the rural districts, leaves some
branch of industry to suffer during his absence.
The institution of slavery in the South alone
enables her to place in the field a force
much larger in proportion to her white population
than the North, or indeed any country which
is dependent entirely on free labor. The institution
is a tower of strength to the South, particularly
at the present crisis, and our enemies will
be likely to find that the 'Moral Cancer'
about which their orators are so fond of prating,
is really one of the most effective weapons
employed against the Union by the South."
Soon the South of necessity was moving out
beyond this plan. It was no longer simply
a question of using the Negroes at home on
the plantation to raise food. They could be
of even more immediate use, as military labor,
to throw up breastworks, transport and prepare
food and act as servants in camp. In the Charleston
Courier of November 22, able-bodied hands
were asked to be sent by their masters to
work upon the defenses. "They would be fed
and properly cared for."
In 1862, in Charleston, after a proclamation
of martial law, the governor and counsel authorized
the procuring of Negro slaves either by the
planter's consent or by impressment "to work
on the fortifications and defenses of Charleston
harbor."
In Mississippi in 1862, permission was granted
the Governor to impress slaves to work in
New Iberia for salt, which was becoming the
Confederacy's most pressing necessity. In
Texas, a thousand Negroes were offered by
planters for work on the public defenses.
By 1864, the matter had passed beyond the
demand for slaves as military laborers and
had come to the place where the South was
seriously considering and openly demanding
the use of Negroes as soldiers. Distinctly
and inevitably, the rigor of the slave system
in the South softened as war proceeded. Slavery
showed in many if not all respects its best
side. The harshness and the cruelty, in part,
had to disappear, since there were left on
the plantations mainly women and children,
with only a few men, and there was a certain
feeling and apprehension in the air on the
part of the whites which led them to capitalize
all the friendship and kindness which had
existed between them and the slaves. No race
could have responded to this so quickly and
thoroughly as the Negroes. They felt pity
and responsibility and also a certain new
undercurrent of independence. Negroes were
still being sold rather ostentatiously in
Charleston and New Orleans, but the long lines
of Virginia Negroes were not marching to the
Southwest. In a certain sense, after the
first few months everybody knew that slavery
was done with; that no matter who won, the
condition of the slave could never be the
same after this disaster of war. And it was,
perhaps, these considerations, more than anything
else, that held the poised arm of the black
man; for no one knew better than the South
what a Negro crazed with cruelty and oppression
and beaten back to the last stand could do
to his oppressor.
The Southerners, therefore, were careful.
Those who had been kind to their slaves assured
them of the bad character of the Yankee and
of their own good intentions.
Thus while the Negroes knew there were Abolitionists
in the North, they did not know their growth,
their power or their intentions and they did
hear on every side that the South was overwhelmingly
victorious on the battlefield. On the other
hand, some of the Negroes sensed what was
beginning to happen. The Negroes of the cities,
the Negroes who were being hired out, the
Negroes of intelligence who could read and
write, all began carefully to watch the unfolding
of the situation. At the first gun of Sumter,
the black mass began not to move but to heave
with nervous tension and watchful waiting.
Even before war was declared, a movement began
across the border. Just before the war large
numbers of fugitive slaves and free Negroes
rushed into the North. It was estimated that
two thousand left North Carolina alone because
of rumors of war.
When W. T. Sherman occupied Port Royal in
October, 1861, he had no idea that he was
beginning emancipation at one of its strategic
points. On the contrary, he was very polite
and said that he had no idea of interfering
with slaves. In the same way, Major General
Dix, on seizing two counties of Virginia,
was careful to order that slavery was not
to be interfered with or slaves to be received
into the line. Burnside went further, and
as he brought his Rhode Island regiment through
Baltimore in June, he courteously returned
two Negroes who tried to run away with him.
They were "supposed to be slaves," although
they may have been free Negroes. On the 4th
of July, Colonel Pryor of Ohio delivered an
address to the people of Virginia in which
he repudiated the accusation that the Northern
army were Abolitionists.
"I desire to assure you that the relation
of master and servant as recognized in your
state shall be respected. Your authority over
that species of property shall not in the
least be interfered with. To this end, I assure
you that those under my command have peremptory
orders to take up and hold any Negroes found
running about the camp without passes from
their masters."
Halleck in Missouri in 1862 refused to let
fugitive slaves enter his lines. Burnside,
Buell, Hooker, Thomas Williams and McClellan
himself, all warned their soldiers against
receiving slaves and most of them permitted
masters to come and remove slaves found within
the lines.
The constant charge of Southern newspapers,
Southern politicians and their Northern sympathizers,
that the war was an abolition war, met with
constant and indignant denial. Loyal newspapers,
orators and preachers, with few exceptions,
while advocating stringent measures for putting
down the Rebellion, carefully disclaimed any
intention of disturbing the "peculiar institution"
of the South. The Secretary of State informed
foreign governments, through our ministers
abroad, that this was not our purpose. President
Lincoln, in his earlier messages, substantially
reiterated the statement. Leading generals,
on entering Southern territory, issued proclamations
to the same effect. One even promised to put
down any slave insurrection "with an iron
hand," while others took vigorous measures
to send back the fugitives who sought refuge
within their lines.
"In the early years of the war, if accounts
do not err, during the entire period McClellan
commanded the Army of the Potomac, 'John Brown's
Body' was a forbidden air among the regimental
bands. The Hutchinsons were driven from Union
camps for singing abolition songs, and in
so far as the Northern army interested itself
at all in the slavery question, it was by
the use of force to return to their Southern
masters fugitives seeking shelter in the Union
lines. While the information they possessed,
especially respecting the roads and means
of communication, should have been of inestimable
service to the Federals, they were not to
be employed as laborers or armed as soldiers.
The North avoided the appearance of a desire
to raise the Negroes from the plane of chattels
to the rank of human beings."
Here was no bid for the cooperation of either
slaves or free Negroes. In the North, Negroes
were not allowed to enlist and often refused
with indignation. "Thus the weakness of the
South temporarily became her strength. Her
servile population, repulsed by Northern pro-
slavery sentiment, remained at home engaged
in agriculture, thus releasing her entire
white population for active service in the
field; while, on the other hand, the military
resources of the North were
necessarily diminished by the demands of labor."
It was as Frederick Douglass said in Boston
in 1865, that the Civil War was begun "in
the interests of slavery on both sides. The
South was fighting to take slavery out of
the Union, and the North fighting to keep
it in the Union; the South fighting to get
it beyond the limits of the United States
Constitution, and the North fighting for the
old guarantees; both despising the Negro,
both insulting the Negro."
It was, therefore, at first by no means clear
to most of the four million Negroes in slavery
what this war might mean to them. They crouched
consciously and moved silently, listening,
hoping and hesitating. The watchfulness of
the South was redoubled. They spread propaganda:
the Yankees were not only not thinking of
setting them free, but if they did anything,
they would sell them into worse slavery in
the West Indies. They would drive them from
even the scant comfort of the plantations
into the highways and purlieus. Moreover,
if they tried to emancipate the slaves, they
would fail because they could not do this
without conquest of the South. The South was
unconquerable.
The South was not slow to spread propaganda
and point to the wretched condition of fugitive
Negroes in order to keep the loyalty of its
indispensable labor force. The Charleston
Daily Courier said February 18, 1863: "A company
of volunteers having left Fayette County for
the field of action, Mr. Nance sent two Negro
boys along to aid the company. Their imaginations
became dazzled with the visions of Elysian
fields in Yankeedom and they went to find
them. But Paradise was nowhere there, and
they again sighed for home. The Yanks, however,
detained them and cut off their ears close
to their heads. These Negroes finally made
their escape and are now at home with Mr.
Nance in Pickens. They are violent haters
of Yankees and their adventures and experiences
are a terror to Negroes of the region, who
learned a lesson from their brethren whose
ears are left in Lincolndom!"
The Charleston Mercury, May 8, 1862, said:
"The Yankees are fortifying Fernandina (Florida)
and have a large number of Negroes engaged
on their works. Whenever the Negroes have
an opportunity, they escape from their oppressors.
They report that they are worked hard, get
little rest and food and no pay."
The Savannah Daily News reports in 1862 that
many stolen Negroes had been recaptured: "The
Yankees had married a number of the women
and were taking them home with them. I have
seen some who refused to go and others who
had been forced off at other times who had
returned."
It was a lovely dress parade of Alphonse and
Gaston until the Negro spoiled it and in a
perfectly logical way. So long as the Union
stood still and talked, the Negro kept quiet
and worked. The moment the Union army moved
into slave territory, the Negro joined it.
Despite all argument and calculation and in
the face of refusals and commands, wherever
the Union armies marched, appeared the fugitive
slaves. It made no difference what the obstacles
were, or the attitudes of the commanders.
It was "like thrusting a walking stick into
an anthill," says one writer. And yet the
army chiefs at first tried to regard it as
an exceptional and temporary matter, a thing
which they could control, when as a matter
of fact it was the meat and kernel of the
war.
Thus as the war went on and the invading armies
came on, the way suddenly cleared for the
onlooking Negro, for his spokesmen in the
North, and for his silent listeners in the
South. Each step, thereafter, came with curious,
logical and inevitable fate. First there were
the fugitive slaves. Slaves had always been
running away to the North, and when the North
grew hostile, on to Canada. It was the safety
valve that kept down the chance of insurrection
in the South to the lowest point. Suddenly,
now, the chance to run away not only increased,
but after preliminary repulse and hesitation,
there was actual encouragement.
Not that the government planned or foresaw
this eventuality; on the contrary, having
repeatedly declared the object of the war
as the preservation of the Union and that
it did not propose to fight for slaves or
touch slavery, it faced a stampede of fugitive
slaves.
Every step the Northern armies took then meant
fugitive slaves. They crossed the Potomac,
and the slaves of northern Virginia began
to pour into the army and into Washington.
They captured Fortress Monroe, and slaves
from Virginia and even North Carolina poured
into the army. They captured Port Royal, and
the masters ran away, leaving droves of black
fugitives in the hands of the Northern army.
They moved down the Mississippi Valley, and
if the slaves did not rush to the army, the
army marched to the slaves. They captured
New Orleans, and captured a great black city
and a state full of slaves.
What was to be done? They tried to send the
slaves back, and even used the soldiers for
recapturing them. This was all well enough
as long as the war was a dress parade. But
when it became real war, and slaves were captured
or received, they could be used as much-needed
laborers and servants by the Northern army.
This but emphasized and made clearer a truth
which ought, to have been recognized from
the very beginning: The Southern worker, black
and white, held the key to the war; and of
the two groups, the black worker raising food
and raw materials held an even more strategic
place than the white. This was so clear a
fact that both sides should have known it.
Fremont in Missouri took the logical action
of freeing slaves of the enemy round about
him by proclamation, and President Lincoln
just as promptly repudiated what he had done.
Even before that, General Butler in Virginia,
commander of the Union forces at Fortress
Monroe, met three slaves walking into his
camp from the Confederate fortifications where
they had been at work. Butler immediately
declared these men "contraband of war" and
put them to work in his own camp. More slaves
followed, accompanied by their wives and children.
The situation here was not quite so logical.
Nevertheless, Butler kept the fugitives and
freed them and let them do what work they
could; and his action was approved by the
Secretary of War.
"On May twenty-sixth, only two days after
the one slave appeared
before Butler, eight Negroes appeared; on
the next day, forty-seven, of all ages and
both sexes. Each day they continued to come
by twenties, thirties and forties until by
July 30th the number had reached nine hundred.
In a very short while the number ran up into
the thousands. The renowned Fortress took
the name of the 'freedom fort' to which the
blacks came by means of a 'mysterious spiritual
telegraph.'
In December, 1861, the Secretary of the Treasury,
Simon Cameron, had written, printed and put
into the mails his first report as Secretary
of War without consultation with the President.
Possibly he knew that his recommendations
would not be approved, but "he recommended
the general arming of Negroes, declaring that
the Federals had as clear a right to employ
slaves taken from the enemy as to use captured
gunpowder." This report was recalled by the
President by telegraph and the statements
of the Secretary were modified. The incident
aroused some unpleasantness in the cabinet.
The published report finally said:
"Persons held by rebels, under such laws,
to service as slaves, may,
however, be justly liberated from their constraint,
and made more valuable in various employments,
through voluntary and compensated service,
than if confiscated as subjects of property."
Transforming itself suddenly from a problem
of abandoned plantations and slaves captured
while being used by the enemy for military
purposes, the movement became a general strike
against the slave system on the part of all
who could find opportunity. The trickling
streams of fugitives swelled to a flood. Once
begun, the general strike of black and white
went madly and relentlessly on like some great
saga.
"Imagine, if you will, a slave population,
springing from antecedent barbarism, rising
up and leaving its ancient bondage, forsaking
its local traditions and all the associations
and attractions of the old plantation life,
coming garbed in rags or in silks, with feet
shod or bleeding, individually or in families
and larger groups, an army of slaves and
fugitives, pushing its way irresistibly toward
an army of fighting men, perpetually on the
defensive and perpetually ready to attack.
The arrival among us of these hordes was like
the oncoming of cities. There was no plan
in this exodus, no Moses to lead it. Unlettered
reason or the mere inarticulate decision of
instinct brought them to us. Often the slaves
met prejudices against their color more bitter
than any they had left behind. But their own
interests were identical, they felt, with
the objects of our armies; a blind terror
stung them, an equally blind hope allured
them, and to us they come."
"Even before the close of 1862, many thousands
of blacks of all ages, ragged, with no possessions,
except the bundles which they carried, had
assembled at Norfolk, Hampton, Alexandria
and Washington. Others, landless, homeless,
helpless, in families and in multitudes, including
a considerable number of wretched white people,
flocked North from Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas
and Missouri. All these were relieved in part
by army rations, irregularly issued, and by
volunteer societies of the North, which gained
their money from churches and individuals
in this country and abroad. In the spring
of 1863, there were swarming crowds of Negroes
and white refugees along the line of defense
made between the armies of the North and South
and reaching from Maryland to Virginia, along
the coast from Norfolk to New Orleans. Soldiers
and missionaries told of their virtues and
vices, their joy and extreme suffering. The
North was moved to an extraordinary degree,
and endless bodies of workers and missionaries
were organized and collected funds for materials.
"Rude barracks were erected at different points
for the temporary shelter of the freedmen;
but as soon as possible the colonies thus
formed were broken up and the people encouraged
to make individual contracts for labor upon
neighboring plantations. In connection with
the colonies, farms were cultivated which
aided to meet the expenses. Hospitals were
established at various points for the sick,
of whom there were great numbers. The separation
of families by the war, and illegitimate birth
in consequence of slavery, left a great number
of children practically in a state of orphanage."
This was the beginning of the swarming of
the slaves, of the quiet but unswerving determination
of increasing numbers no longer to work on
Confederate plantations, and to seek the freedom
of the Northern armies. Wherever the army
marched and in spite of all obstacles came
the rising tide of slaves seeking freedom.
For a long time, their treatment was left
largely to the discretion of the department
managers; some welcomed them, some drove them
away, some organized them for work. Gradually,
the fugitives became organized and formed
a great labor force for the army. Several
thousand were employed as laborers, servants,
and spies.
A special war correspondent of the New York
Tribune writes: "God bless the Negroes,' say
I, with earnest lips. During our entire captivity,
and after our escape, they were ever our firm,
brave, unflinching friends. We never made
an appeal to them they did not answer. They
never hesitated to do us a service at the
risk even of life, and under the most trying
circumstances revealed a devotion and a spirit
of self-sacrifice that was heroic. The magic
word 'Yankee' opened all their hearts, and
elicited the loftiest virtues. They were ignorant,
oppressed, enslaved; but they always cherished
a simple and a beautiful faith in the cause
of the Union and its ultimate triumph, and
never abandoned or turned aside from a man
who sought food
or shelter on his way to Freedom."
This whole move was not dramatic or hysterical,
rather it was like the great unbroken swell
of the ocean before it dashes on the reefs.
The Negroes showed no disposition to strike
the one terrible blow which brought black
men freedom in Haiti and which in all history
has been used by all slaves and justified.
There were some plans for insurrection made
by Union officers:
"The plan is to induce the blacks to make
a simultaneous movement of rising, on the
night of the 1st of August next, over the
entire States in rebellion, to arm themselves
with any and every kind of weapon that may
come to hand, and commence operations by burning
all the railroad and country bridges, and
tear up railroad tracks, and to destroy telegraph
lines, etc., and then take to the woods, swamps,
or the mountains, where they may emerge as
occasion may offer for provisions and for
further depredations. No blood is to be shed
except in self-defense. The corn will be ripe
about the 1st of August and with this and
hogs running in the woods, and by foraging
upon the plantations by night, they can subsist.
This is the plan in substance, and if we can
obtain a concerted movement at the time named
it will doubtless be successful."
Such plans came to naught for the simple reason
that there was an easier way involving freedom
with less risk.
The South preened itself on the absence of
slave violence. Governor Walker of Florida
said in his inaugural in 1865: "Where, in
all the records of the past, does history
present such an instance of steadfast devotion,
unwavering attachment and constancy as was
exhibited by the slaves of the South throughout
the fearful contest that has just ended? The
country invaded, homes desolated, the master
absent in the army or forced to seek safety
in flight and leave the mistress and her helpless
infants unprotected, with every incitement
to insubordination and instigation, to rapine
and murder, no instance of insurrection, and
scarcely one of voluntary desertion has been
recorded."
The changes upon this theme have been rung
by Southern orators many times since. The
statement, of course, is not quite true. Hundreds
of thousands of slaves were very evidently
leaving their masters' homes and plantations.
They did not wreak vengeance on unprotected
women. They found an easier, more effective
and more decent way to freedom. Men go wild
and fight for freedom with bestial ferocity
when they must -- where there is no other way;
but human nature does not deliberately choose
blood -- at least not black human nature. On
the other hand, for every slave that escaped
to the Union army, there were ten left on
the untouched and inaccessible plantations.
Another step was logical and inevitable. The
men who handled a spade for the Northern armies,
the men who fed them, and as spies brought
in information, could also handle a gun and
shoot. Without legal authority and in spite
of it, suddenly the Negro became a soldier.
Later his services as soldier were not only
permitted but were demanded to replace the
tired and rebellious white men of the North.
But as a soldier, the Negro must be free.
The North started out with the idea of fighting
the war without touching slavery. They faced
the fact, after severe fighting, that Negroes
seemed a valuable asset as laborers, and they
therefore declared them "contraband of war."
It was but a step from that to attract and
induce Negro labor to help the Northern armies.
Slaves were urged and invited into the Northern
armies; they became military laborers and
spies; not simply military laborers, but laborers
on the plantations, where the crops went to
help the Federal army or were sold North.
Thus wherever Northern armies appeared, Negro
laborers came, and the North found itself
actually freeing slaves before it had the
slightest intention of doing so, indeed when
it had every intention not to.
The experience of the army with the refugees
and the rise of the departments of Negro affairs
were a most interesting, but unfortunately
little studied, phase of Reconstruction. Yet
it contained in a sense the key to the understanding
of the whole situation. At first, the rush
of the Negroes from the plantations came as
a surprise and was variously interpreted.
The easiest thing to say was that Negroes
were tired of work and wanted to live at the
expense of the government; wanted to travel
and see things and places. But in contradiction
to this was the extent of the movement and
the terrible suffering of the refugees. If
they were seeking peace and quiet, they were
much better off on the plantations than trailing
in the footsteps of the army or squatting
miserably in the camps. They were mistreated
by the soldiers; ridiculed; driven away, and
yet they came. They increased with every campaign,
and as a final gesture, they marched with
Sherman from Atlanta to the sea, and met the
refugees and abandoned human property on the
Sea Islands and the Carolina Coast.
This was not merely the desire to stop work.
It was a strike on a wide basis against the
conditions of work. It was a general strike
that involved directly in the end perhaps
a half million people. They wanted to stop
the economy of the plantation system, and
to do that they left the plantations. At first,
the commanders were disposed to drive them
away, or to give them quasi-freedom and let
them do as they pleased with the nothing that
they possessed. This did not work. Then the
commanders organized relief and afterward,
work. This came to the attention of the country
first in Pierce's "Ten Thousand Clients."
Pierce of Boston had worked with the refugees
in Virginia under Butler, provided them with
food and places to live, and given them jobs
and land to cultivate. He was successful.
He came from there, and, in conjunction with
the Treasury Department, began the work on
a vaster scale at Port Royal. Here he found
the key to the situation. The Negroes were
willing to work and did work, but they wanted
land to work, and they wanted to see and own
the results of their toil. It was here and
in the West and the South that a new vista
opened. Here was a chance to establish an
agrarian democracy in the South: peasant holders
of small properties, eager to work and raise
crops, amenable to suggestion and general
direction. All they needed was honesty in
treatment, and education. Wherever these conditions
were fulfilled, the result was little less
than phenomenal. This was testified to by
Pierce in the Carolinas, by Butler's agents
in North Carolina, by the experiment of the
Sea Islands, by Grant's department of Negro
affairs under Eaton, and by Banks' direction
of Negro labor in Louisiana. It is astonishing
how this army of striking labor furnished
in time 200,000 Federal soldiers whose evident
ability to fight decided the war.
General Butler went from Virginia to New Orleans
to take charge of the city newly captured
in April, 1862. Here was a whole city half
filled with blacks and mulattoes, some of
them wealthy free Negroes and soldiers who
came over from the Confederate side and joined
the Federals.
Perhaps the greatest and most systematic organizing
of fugitives took place in New Orleans. At
first, Butler had issued orders that no slaves
would be received in New Orleans. Many planters
were unable to make slaves work or to support
them, and sent them back of the Federal lines,
planning to reclaim them after the war was
over. Butler emancipated these slaves in spite
of the fact that he knew this was against
Lincoln's policy. As the flood kept coming,
he seized abandoned sugar plantations and
began to work them with Negro labor for the
benefit of the government.
By permission of the War Department, and under
the authority of the Confiscation Act, Butler
organized colonies of fugitives, and regulated
employment. His brother, Colonel Butler, and
others worked plantations, hiring the Negro
labor. The Negroes stood at Butler's right
hand during the trying time of his administration,
and particularly the well-to-do free Negro
group were his strongest allies. He was entertained
at their tables and brought down on himself
the wrath and contempt, not simply of the
South, but even of the North. He received
the black regiment, and kept their black officers,
who never forgot him. Whatever else he might
have been before the war, or proved to be
afterwards, "the colored people of Louisiana
under the proper sense of the good you have
done to the African race in the United States,
beg leave to express to you their gratitude."
From 1862 to 1865, many different systems
of caring for the escaped slaves and their
families in this area were tried. Butler and
his successor, Banks, each sought to provide
for the thousands of destitute freedmen with
medicine, rations and clothing. When General
Banks took command, there was suffering, disease
and death among the 150,000 Negroes. On January
30, 1863, he issued a general order making
labor on public works and elsewhere compulsory
for Negroes who had no means of support.
Just as soon, however, as Banks tried to drive
the freedmen back to the plantations and have
them work under a half-military slave regime,
the plan failed. It failed, not because the
Negroes did not want to work, but because
they were striking against these particular
conditions of work. When, because of wide
protest, he began to look into the matter,
he saw a clear way. He selected Negroes to
go out and look into conditions and to report
on what was needed, and they made a faithful
survey. He set up a little state with its
department of education, with its landholding
and organized work, and after experiment it
ran itself. More and more here and up the
Mississippi Valley, under other commanders
and agents, experiments extended and were
successful.
Further up the Mississippi, a different system
was begun under General Grant. Grant's army
in the West occupied Grand Junction, Mississippi,
by November, 1862. The usual irregular host
of slaves then swarmed in from the surrounding
country. They begged for protection against
recapture, and they, of course, needed food,
clothing and shelter. They could not now be
reenslaved through army aid, yet no provision
had been made by anybody for their sustenance.
A few were employed as teamsters, servants,
cooks and scouts, yet it seemed as though
the vast majority must be left to freeze and
starve, for when the storms came with the
winter months, the weather was of great severity.
Grant determined that Negroes should perform
many of the camp duties ordinarily done by
soldiers; that they should serve as fatigue
men in the departments of the surgeon general,
quartermaster, and commissary, and that they
should help in building roads and earthworks.
The women worked in the camp kitchens and
as nurses in the hospitals. Grant said, "It
was at this point where the first idea of
the Freedmen's Bureau took its origin."
Grant selected as head of his Department of
Negro Affairs, John Eaton, chaplain of the
Twenty-Seventh Ohio Volunteers, who was soon
promoted to the colonelcy of a colored regiment,
and later for many years was a Commissioner
of the United States Bureau of Education.
He was then constituted Chief of Negro Affairs
for the entire district under Grant's jurisdiction.
"I hope I may never be called on again to
witness the horrible scenes I saw in those
first days of the history of the freedmen
in the Mississippi Valley. Assistants were
hard to get, especially the kind that would
do any good in our camps. A detailed soldier
in each camp of a thousand people was the
best that could be done. His duties were so
onerous that he ended by doing nothing. ... In
reviewing the condition of the people at that
time, I am not surprised at the marvelous
stories told by visitors who caught an occasional
glimpse of the misery and wretchedness in
these camps. . . . Our efforts to do anything
for these people, as they herded together
in masses, when founded on any expectation
that they would help themselves, often failed;
they had become so completely broken down
in spirit, through suffering, that it was
almost impossible to arouse them.
"Their condition was appalling. There were
men, women and children in every stage of
disease or decrepitude, often nearly naked,
with flesh torn by the terrible experiences
of their escapes. Sometimes they were intelligent
and eager to help themselves; often they were
bewildered or stupid or possessed by the wildest
notions of what liberty might mean -- expecting
to exchange labor, and obedience to the will
of another, for idleness and freedom from
restraint. Such ignorance and perverted notions
produced a veritable moral chaos. Cringing
deceit, theft, licentiousness -- all the vices
which slavery inevitably fosters -- were hideous
companions of nakedness, famine, and disease.
A few had profited by the misfortunes of the
master and were jubilant in their unwonted
ease and luxury, but these stood in lurid
contrast to the grimmer aspects of the tragedy -- the
women in travail, the helplessness of childhood
and of old age, the horrors of sickness and
of frequent death. Small wonder that men paused
in bewilderment and panic, foreseeing the
demoralization and infection of the Union
soldier and the downfall of the Union cause."
There were new and strange problems of social
contact. The white soldiers, for the most
part, were opposed to serving Negroes in any
manner, and were even unwilling to guard the
camps where they were segregated or protect
them against violence. "To undertake any form
of work for the contrabands, at that time,
was to be forsaken by one's friends and to
pass under a cloud."
There was, however, a clear economic basis
upon which the whole work of relief and order
and subsistence could be placed. All around
Grand Junction were large crops of ungathered
corn and cotton. These were harvested and
sold North and the receipts were placed to
the credit of the government. The army of
fugitives were soon willing to go to work;
men, women and children. Wood was needed by
the river steamers and woodcutters were set
at work. Eaton fixed the wages for this industry
and kept accounts with the workers. He saw
to it that all of them had sufficient food
and clothing, and rough shelter was built
for them. Citizens round about who had not
abandoned their plantations were allowed to
hire labor on the same terms as the government
was using it. Very soon the freedmen became
self-sustaining and gave little trouble. They
began to build themselves comfortable cabins,
and the government constructed hospitals for
the sick. In the case of the sick and dependent,
a tax was laid on the wages of workers. At
first it was thought the laborers would object,
but, on the contrary, they were perfectly
willing and the imposition of the tax compelled
the government to see that wages were promptly
paid. The freedmen freely acknowledged that
they ought to assist in helping bear the burden
of the poor, and were flattered by having
the government ask their help. It was the
reaction of a new labor group, who, for the
first time in their lives, were receiving
money in payment for their work. Five thousand
dollars was raised by this tax for hospitals,
and with this money tools and property were
bought. By wholesale purchase, clothes, household
goods and other articles were secured by the
freedmen at a cost of one-third of what they
might have paid the stores. There was a rigid
system of accounts and monthly reports through
army officials.
In 1864, July 5, Eaton reports: "These freedmen
are now disposed of as follows: In military
service as soldiers, laundresses, cooks, officers, 
servants, and laborers in the various staff
departments, 41,150; in cities on plantations
and in freedmen's villages and cared for,
72,500. Of these 62,300 are entirely self-supporting -- the
same as any industrial class anywhere else  -- as
planters, mechanics, barbers, hackmen, draymen,
etc., conducting enterprises on their own
responsibility or working as hired laborers.
The remaining 10,200 receive subsistence from
the government. 3,000 of them are members
of families whose heads are carrying on plantations
and have under cultivation 4,000 acres of
cotton. They, are to pay the government for
their sustenance from the first income of
the crop. The other 7,200 include the paupers --
that is to say, all Negroes over and
under the self-supporting age, the crippled
and sick in hospital, of the 113,650 and those
engaged in their care. Instead of being unproductive,
this class has now under cultivation 500 acres
of corn, 790 acres of vegetables and 1,500
acres of
cotton, besides working at wood-chopping and
other industries. There are reported in the
aggregate over 100,000 acres of cotton under
cultivation. Of these about 7,000 acres are
leased and cultivated by blacks. Some Negroes
are managing as high as 300 or 400 acres."
The experiment at Davis Bend, Mississippi,
was of especial interest. The place was occupied
in November and December, 1864, and private
interests were displaced and an interesting
socialistic effort made with all the property
under the control of the government. The Bend
was divided into districts with Negro sheriffs
and judges who were allowed to exercise authority
under the general control of the military
officers. Petty theft and idleness were soon
reduced to a minimum and "the community distinctly
demonstrated the capacity of the Negro to
take care of himself and exercise under honest
and competent direction the functions of self-government.
When General Butler returned from Louisiana
and resumed command in Virginia and North
Carolina, he established there a Department
of Negro Affairs, with the territory divided
into districts under superintendents and assistants.
Negroes were encouraged to buy land, build
cabins and form settlements, and a system
of education was established. In North Carolina,
under Chaplain Horace James, the poor, both
black and white, were helped; the refugees
were grouped in small villages and their work
systematized, and enlisted men taught in the
schools, followed by women teachers from the
North. Outside of New Bern, North Carolina,
about two thousand freedmen were settled and
800 houses erected. The department at Port
Royal continued. The Negroes showed their
capacity to organize labor and even to save
and employ a little capital. The government
built 21 houses for the people on Edisto Island.
The carpenters were Negroes under a Negro
foreman. There was another village of improved
houses near Hilton Head.
"Next as to the development of manhood: this
has been shown in the first place in the prevalent
disposition to acquire land. It did not appear
upon our first introduction to these people,
and they did not seem to understand us when
we used to tell them that we wanted them to
own land. But it is now an active desire.
At the recent tax sales, six out of forty-seven
plantations sold were bought by them, comprising
two thousand five hundred and ninety-five
acres, sold for twenty-one hundred and forty-five
dollars. In other cases, the Negroes had authorized
the superintendent to bid for them, but the
land was reserved by the United States. One
of the purchases was that made by Harry, noted
above. The other five were made by the Negroes
on the plantations, combining the funds they
had saved from the sale of their pigs, chickens
and eggs, and from the payments made to them
for work, -- they then dividing off the tract
peaceably among themselves. On one of these,
where Kit, before mentioned, is the leading
spirit, there are twenty-three fieldhands.
They have planted and are cultivating sixty-three
acres of cotton, fifty of corn, six of potatoes,
with as many more to be planted, four and
a half of cowpeas, three of peanuts, and one
and a half of rice. These facts are most significant."
Under General Saxton in South Carolina, the
Negroes began to buy land which was sold for
non-payment of taxes. Saxton established regulations
for the cultivation of several abandoned Sea
Islands and appointed local superintendents.
"By the payment of moderate wages, and just
and fair dealing with them, I produced for
the government over a half million dollars'
worth of cotton, besides a large amount of
food beyond the needs of the laborers. These
island lands were cultivated in this way for
two years, 1862 and 1863, under my supervision,
and during that time I had about 15,000 colored
freedmen of all ages in my charge. About 9,000
of these were engaged on productive labor
which relieved the government of the support
of all except newly-arrived refugees from
the enemy's lines and the old and infirm who
had no relations to depend upon. The increase
of industry and thrift of the freedmen was
illustrated by their conduct in South Carolina
before the organization of the Freedmen's
Bureau by the decreasing government expenditure
for their support. The expense in the department
of the South in 1863 was $41,544, but the
monthly expense of that year was steadily
reduced, until in December it was less than
$1,000."
Into this fairly successful land and labor
control was precipitated a vast and unexpected
flood of refugees from previously untouched
strongholds of slavery. Sherman made his march
to the sea from Atlanta, cutting the cotton
kingdom in two as Grant had invaded it along
the Mississippi.
"The first intimation given me that many of
the freedmen would be brought hither from
Savannah came in the form of a request from
the General that I would 'call at once to
plan the reception of seven hundred who would
be at the wharf in an hour.' This was Christmas
day, and at 4 p.m., we had seven hundred, mainly
women, old men and children before us. A canvass
since made shows that half of them had traveled
from Macon, Atlanta and even Chattanooga.
They were all utterly destitute of blankets,
stockings or shoes; and among the seven hundred
there were not fifty articles in the shape
of pots or kettles, or other utensils for
cooking, no axes, very few coverings for many
heads, and children wrapped in the only article
not worn in some form by the parents." Frantic
appeals went out for the mass of Negro refugees
who followed him.
A few days after Sherman entered Savannah,
Secretary of War Stanton came in person from
Washington. He examined the condition of the
liberated Negroes found in that city. He assembled
twenty of those who were deemed their leaders.
Among them were barbers, pilots and sailors,
some ministers, and others who had been overseers
on cotton and rice plantations. Mr. Stanton
and General Sherman gave them a hearing.
As a result of this investigation into the
perplexing problems as to what to do with
the growing masses of unemployed Negroes and
their families, General Sherman issued his
epoch-making Sea Island Circular, January
18, 1865. In this paper, the islands from
Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields
along the rivers for thirty miles back from
the sea and the country bordering the St.
John's River, Florida, were reserved for the
settlement of the Negroes made free by the
acts of war and the proclamation of the President.
General Rufus Saxton was appointed Inspector
of Settlements and Plantations and was required
to make proper allotments and give possessory
titles and defend them until Congress should
confirm his actions. It was a bold move. Thousands
of Negro families were distributed under
this circular, and the freed people regarded
themselves for more than six months as in
permanent possession of these abandoned lands.
Taxes on the freedmen furnished most of the
funds to run these first experiments. On all
plantations, whether owned or leased, where
freedmen were employed, a tax of one cent
per pound on cotton and a proportional amount
on all other products was to be collected
as a contribution in support of the helpless
among the freed people. A similar tax, varying
with the value of the property, was levied
by the government upon all leased plantations
in lieu of rent.
Saxton testified: "General Sherman's Special
Field Order No. 15 ordered their colonization
on forty-acre tracts, and in accordance with
which it is estimated some forty thousand
were provided with homes. Public meetings
were held, and every exertion used by those
whose duty it was to execute this order to
encourage emigration to the Sea Islands, and
the faith of the government was solemnly pledged
to maintain them in possession. The greatest
success attended the experiment, and although
the planting season was very far advanced
before the transportation to carry the colonists
to the Sea Islands could be obtained, and
the people were destitute of animals and had
but few agricultural implements and the greatest
difficulty in procuring seeds, yet they went
out, worked with energy and diligence to clear
up the ground run to waste by three years'
neglect; and thousands of acres were planted
and provisions enough were raised for those
who were located in season to plant, besides
a large amount of sea island cotton for market.
The seizure of some 549,000 acres of abandoned
land, in accordance with the act of Congress
and orders from the head of the bureau for
the freedman and refugees, still further strengthened
these ignorant people in the conviction that
they were to have the lands of their late
masters; and, with the other reasons before
stated, caused a great unwillingness on the
part of the freedmen to make any contracts
whatever. But this refusal arises from no
desire on their part to avoid labor, but from
the causes above stated. . . .
"To test the question of their forethought
and prove that some of the race at least thought
of the future, I established in October, 1864,
a savings bank for the freedmen of Beaufort
district and vicinity. More than $240,000
had been deposited in this bank by freedmen
since its establishment. I consider that the
industrial problem has been satisfactorily
solved at Port Royal, and that, in common
with other races, the Negro has industry,
prudence, forethought, and ability to calculate
results. Many of them have managed plantations
for themselves, and show an industry and sagacity
that will compare favorably in their results, making
due allowances, with those of white men."
Eventually, General Saxton settled nearly
30,000 Negroes on the Sea Islands and adjacent
plantations and 17,000 were self-supporting
within a year. While 12,000 or 13,000 were
still receiving rations, it was distinctly
understood that they and their farms would
be held responsible for the payment. In other
such cases, the government had found that
such a debt was a "safe and short one."
Negroes worked fewer hours and had more time
for self-expression. Exports were less than
during slavery. At that time the Negroes were
mere machines run with as little loss as possible
to the single end of making money for their
masters. Now, as it was in the West Indies,
emancipation had enlarged the Negro's purchasing
power, but instead of producing solely for
export, he was producing to consume. His standard
of living was rising.
Along with this work of the army, the Treasury
Department of the United States Government
was bestirring itself. The Secretary of the
Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, early in 1862,
had his attention called to the accumulation
of cotton on the abandoned Sea Islands and
plantations, and was sure there was an opportunity
to raise more. He, therefore, began the organization
of freedmen for cotton raising, and his successor,
William Pitt Fessenden, inaugurated more extensive
plans for the freedmen in all parts of the
South, appointing agents and organizing freedmen's
home colonies.
On June 7, 1862, Congress held portions of
the states in rebellion responsible for a
direct tax upon the lands of the nation, and
in addition Congress passed an act authorizing
the Secretary of the Treasury to appoint special
agents to take charge of captured and abandoned
property. Military officers turned over to
the Treasury Department such property, and
the plantations around Port Royal and Beaufort
were disposed of at tax sales. Some were purchased
by Negroes, but the greater number went to
Northerners. In the same way in North Carolina,
some turpentine farms were let to Negroes,
who managed them, or to whites who employed
Negroes. In 1863, September 11, the whole
Southern region was divided by the Treasury
Department into five special agencies, each
with a supervising agent for the supervision
of abandoned property and labor.
Early in 1863, General Lorenzo Thomas, the
adjutant general of the army, was organizing
colored troops along the Mississippi River.
After consulting various treasury agents and
department commanders, including General Grant,
and having also the approval of Mr. Lincoln,
he issued from Milliken's Bend, Louisiana,
April 15th, a lengthy series of instruction
covering the territory bordering the Mississippi
and including all the inhabitants.
He appointed three commissioners, Messrs.
Field, Shickle and Livermore, to lease plantations
and care for the employees. He sought to encourage
private enterprises instead of government
colonies; but he fixed the wages of able-bodied
men over fifteen years of age at $7 per month,
for able-bodied women $5 per month, for children
twelve to fifteen years, half price. He laid
a tax for revenue of $2 per 400 pounds of
cotton, and five cents per bushel on corn
and potatoes.
This plan naturally did not work well, for
the lessees of plantations proved to be for
the most part adventurers and speculators.
Of course such men took advantage of the ignorant
people. The commissioners themselves seem
to have done more for the lessees than for
the laborers; and, in fact, the wages were
from the beginning so fixed as to benefit
and enrich the employer. Two dollars per month
was charged against each of the employed,
ostensibly for medical attendance, but to
most plantations thus leased no physician
or medicine ever came, and there were other
attendant cruelties which avarice contrived.
On fifteen plantations leased by the Negroes
themselves in this region there was notable
success, and also a few other instances in
which humanity and good sense reigned; the
contracts were generally carried out. Here
the Negroes were contented and grateful, and
were able to lay by small gains. This plantation
arrangement along the Mississippi under the
commissioners as well as the management of
numerous infirmary camps passed, about the
close of 1863, from the War to the Treasury
Department. A new commission or agency with
Mr. W. P. Mellon of the treasury at the head
established more careful and complete regulations
than those of General Thomas. This time it
was done decidedly in the interest of the
laborers.
July 2, 1864, an Act of Congress authorized
the treasury agents to seize and lease for
one year all captured and abandoned estates
and to provide for the welfare of former slaves.
Property was declared abandoned when the lawful
owner was opposed to paying the revenue. The
Secretary of the Treasury, Fessenden, therefore
issued a new series of regulations relating
to freedmen and abandoned property. The rebellious
States were divided into seven districts,
with a general agent and special agents. Certain
tracts of land in each district were set apart
for the exclusive use and working of the freedmen.
These reservations were called Freedmen Labor
Colonies, and were under the direction of
the superintendents. Schools were established,
both in the Home Colonies and in the labor
colonies. This new system went into operation
the winter of 1864-1865, and worked well along
the Atlantic Coast and Mississippi Valley.
In the Department of the Gulf, however, there
was discord between the treasury agents and
the military authorities, and among the treasury
officials themselves. The treasury agents,
in many cases, became corrupt, but these regulations
remained in force until the Freedmen's Bureau
was organized in 1865.
By 1865, there was strong testimony as to
the efficiency of the Negro worker. "The question
of the freedmen being self-supporting no longer
agitated the minds of careful observers."
Carl Schurz felt warranted in 1865 in asserting:
"Many freedmen not single individuals, but
whole 'plantation gangs', are working well;
others are not. The difference in their efficiency
coincides in a great measure with a certain
difference in the conditions under which they
live. The conclusion lies near, that if the
conditions under which they work well become
general, their efficiency as free laborers
will become general also, aside from individual
exceptions. Certain it is, that by far the
larger portion of the work done in the South
is done by freedmen!"
Whitelaw Reid said in 1865: "Whoever has read
what I have written about the cotton fields
of St. Helena will need no assurance that
-- another cardinal sin of the slave, his
laziness 'inborn and ineradicable,' as we
were always told by his master -- is likewise
disappearing under the stimulus of freedom
and necessity. Dishonesty and indolence, then,
were the creation of slavery, not the necessary
and constitutional faults of the Negro character."
"Returning from St. Helena in 1865, Doctor
Richard Fuller was asked what he thought of
the experiment of free labor, as exhibited
among his former slaves, and how it contrasted
with the old order of things. 'I never saw
St. Helena look so well,' was his instant
reply; 'never saw as much land there under
cultivation -- never saw the same general evidences
of prosperity, and never saw Negroes themselves
appearing so well or so contented.' Others
noticed, however, that the islands about Beaufort
were in a better condition than those nearer
the encampments of the United States soldiers.
Wherever poultry could be profitably peddled
in the camps, cotton had not been grown, nor
had the Negroes developed, so readily, into
industrious and orderly
communities." Similar testimony came from
the Mississippi Valley and the West, and from
Border States like Virginia and North Carolina.
To the aid of the government, and even before
the government took definite organized hold,
came religious and benevolent organizations.
The first was the American Missionary Association,
which grew out of the organization for the
defense of the Negroes who rebelled and captured
the slave ship Amistad and brought it into
Connecticut in 1837. When this association
heard from Butler and Pierce, it responded
promptly and had several representatives at
Hampton and South Carolina before the end
of the year 1861. They extended their work
in 1862-1863, establishing missions down
the Atlantic Coast, and in Missouri, and along
the Mississippi. By 1864, they had reached
the Negroes in nearly all the Southern States.
The reports of Pierce, Dupont and Sherman
aroused the whole North. Churches and missionary
societies responded. The Friends contributed.
The work of the Northern benevolent societies
began to be felt, and money, clothing and,
finally, men and women as helpers and teachers
came to the various centers.
"The scope of our work was greatly enlarged
by the arrival of white refugees -- a movement
which later assumed very large proportions.
As time went on Cairo (Illinois) became the
center of our activities in this direction.
It was the most northerly of any of our camps,
and served as the portal through which thousands
of poor whites and Negroes were sent into
the loyal states as fast as opportunities
offered for providing them with homes and
employment. Many of these became permanent
residents; some were sent home by Union soldiers
to carry on the work in the shop or on the
farm which the war had interrupted. It became
necessary to have a superintendent at Cairo
and facilities for organizing the bands of
refugees who were sent North by the army.
There was an increasing demand for work."
New organizations arose, and an educational
commission was organized in Boston, suggested
by the reports of Pierce, and worked chiefly
in South Carolina. Afterward, it became the
New England Freedmen's Aid Society and worked
in all the Southern States. February 22, 1862,
the National Freedmen's Relief Association
was formed in New York City. During the first
year, it worked on the Atlantic Coast, and
then broadened to the whole South. The Port
Royal Relief Committee of Philadelphia, later
known as the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief
Association, the National Freedmen's Relief
Association of the District of Columbia, the
Contraband Relief Association of Cincinnati,
afterward called the Western Freedmen's Commission,
the Women's Aid Association of Philadelphia
and the Friends' Associations, all arose and
worked. The number increased and extended
into the Northwest. The Christian Commission,
organized for the benefit of soldiers, turned
its attention to Negroes. In England, at Manchester
and London, were Freedmen's Aid Societies
which raised funds; and funds were received
from France and Ireland.
Naturally, there was much rivalry and duplication
of work. A union of effort was suggested in
1862 by the Secretary of the Treasury and
accomplished March 22, 1865, when the American
Freedmen's Union Commission was incorporated,
with branches in the chief cities. Among its
officers were Chief Justice Chase and William
Lloyd Garrison. In 1861, two large voluntary
organizations to reduce suffering and mortality
among the freedmen were formed. The Western
Sanitary Commission at St. Louis, and the
United States Sanitary Commission at Washington,
with branches in leading cities, then began
to relieve the distress of the freedmen. Hospitals
were improved, supplies distributed, and Yeatman's
plan for labor devised. Destitute white refugees
were helped to a large extent. But even then,
all of these efforts reached but a small portion
of the mass of people freed from slavery.
Late in 1863, President Yeatman of the Western
Sanitary Commission visited the freedmen in
the Mississippi Valley. He saw the abuses
of the leasing system and suggested a plan
for organizing free labor and leasing plantations.
It provided for a bureau established by the
government to take charge of leasing land,
to secure justice and freedom to the freedmen;
hospital farms and homes for the young and
aged were to be established; schools with
compulsory attendance were to be opened. Yeatman
accompanied Mellon, the agent of the department,
to Vicksburg in order to inaugurate the plan
and carry it into effect. His plan was adopted
by Mellon, and was, on the whole, the most
satisfactory.
Thus, confusion and lack of system were the
natural result of the general strike. Yet,
the Negroes had accomplished their first aim
in those parts of the South dominated by the
Federal army. They had largely escaped from
the plantation discipline, were receiving
wages as free laborers, and had protection
from violence and justice in some sort of
court.
About 20,000 of them were in the District
of Columbia; 100,000 in Virginia; 50,000 in
North Carolina; 50,000 in South Carolina,
and as many more each in Georgia and Louisiana.
The Valley of the Mississippi was filled with
settlers under the Treasury Department and
the army. Here were nearly 500,000 former
slaves. But there were 3,500,000 more. These
Negroes needed only the assurance that they
would be freed and the opportunity of joining
the Northern army. In larger and larger numbers,
they filtered into the armies of the North.
And in just the proportion that the Northern
armies became in earnest, and proposed actually
to force the South to stay in the Union, and
not to make simply a demonstration, in just
such proportion the Negroes became valuable
as laborers, and doubly valuable as withdrawing
labor from the South. After the first foolish
year when the South woke up to the fact that
there was going to be a real, long war, and
the North realized just what war meant in
blood and money, the whole relation of the
North to the Negro and the Negro to the North
changed.
The position of the Negro was strategic. His
was the only appeal which would bring sympathy
from Europe, despite strong economic bonds
with the South, and prevent recognition of
a Southern nation built on slavery. The free
Negroes in the North, together with the Abolitionists,
were clamoring. To them a war against the
South simply had to be a war against slavery.
Gradually, Abolitionists no longer need fear
the mob. Disgruntled leaders of church and
state began to talk of freedom. Slowly but
surely an economic dispute and a political
test of strength took on the aspects of a
great moral crusade.
The Negro became in the first year contraband
of war; that is, property belonging to the
enemy and valuable to the invader. And in
addition to that, he became, as the South
quickly saw, the key to Southern resistance.
Either these four million laborers remained
quietly at work to raise food for the fighters,
or the fighter starved. Simultaneously, when
the dream of the North for man-power produced
riots, the only additional troops that the
North could depend on were 200,000 Negroes,
for without them, as Lincoln said, the North
could not have won the war.
But this slow, stubborn mutiny of the Negro
slave was not merely a matter of 200,000 black
soldiers and perhaps 300,000 other black laborers,
servants, spies and helpers. Back of this
half million stood 3 1/2 million more. Without
their labor the South would starve. With arms
in their hands, Negroes would form a fighting
force which could replace every single Northern
white soldier fighting listlessly and against
his will with a black man fighting for freedom.
This action of the slaves was followed by
the disaffection of the poor whites. So long
as the planters' war seemed successful, "there
was little active opposition by the poorer
whites; but the conscription and other burdens
to support a slaveowners' war became very
severe; the whites not interested in that
cause became recalcitrant, some went into
active opposition; and at last it was more
desertion and disunion than anything else
that brought about the final overthrow."
Phillips says that white mechanics in 1861
demanded that the permanent Confederate Constitution
exclude Negroes from employment "except agricultural
domestic service, so as to reserve the trades
for white artisans." Beyond this, of course,
was a more subtle reason that, as the years
went on, very carefully developed and encouraged
for a time the racial aspect of slavery. Before
the war, there had been intermingling of white
and black blood and some white planters openly
recognized their colored sons, daughters and
cousins and took them under their special
protection. As slavery hardened, the racial
basis was emphasized; but it was not until
war time that it became the fashion to pat
the disfranchised poor white man on the back
and tell him after all he was white and that
he and the planters had a common object in
keeping the white man superior. This virus
increased bitterness and relentless hatred,
and after the war it became a chief ingredient
in the division of the working class in the
Southern States.
At the same time during the war even the race
argument did not keep the Southern fighters
from noticing with anger that the big slaveholders
were escaping military service; that it was
a "rich man's war and the poor man's fight."
The exemption of owners of twenty Negroes
from military service especially rankled;
and the wholesale withdrawal of the slaveholding
class from actual fighting which this rule
made possible, gave rise to intense and growing
dissatisfaction.
It was necessary during these critical times
to insist more than usual that slavery was
a fine thing for the poor white. Except for
slavery, it was said : " 'The poor would occupy
the position in society that the slaves do -- as
the poor in the North and in Europe do,' for
there must be a menial class in society and
in 'every civilized country on the globe,
besides the Confederate states, the poor are
the inferiors and menials of the rich.' Slavery
was a greater blessing to the non-slaveholding
poor than to the owners of slaves, and since
it gave the poor a start in society that it
would take them generations to work out, they
should thank God for it and fight and die
for it as they would for their 'own liberty
and the dearest birthright of freemen.'
But the poor whites were losing faith. They
saw that poverty was fighting the war, not
wealth.
"Those who could stay out of the army under
color of the law were likely to be advocates
of a more numerous and powerful army. . . . Not
so with many of those who were not favored
with position and wealth. They grudgingly
took up arms and condemned the law which had
snatched them from their homes. . . . The
only difference was the circumstance of position
and wealth, and perhaps these were just the
things that had caused heartburnings in more
peaceful times.
"The sentiments of thousands in the upland
countries, who had little interest in the
war and who were not accustomed to rigid centralized
control, was probably well expressed in the
following epistle addressed to President Davis
by a conscript. . . .
". . . 'It is with intense and multifariously
proud satisfaction that he [the conscript]
gazes for the last time upon our holy flag -- that
symbol and sign of an adored trinity, cotton,
niggers and chivalry.' This attitude of the
poor whites had in it as much fear and jealousy
of Negroes as disaffection with slave barons.
Economic rivalry with blacks became a new
and living threat as the blacks became laborers
and soldiers in a conquering Northern army.
If the Negro was to be free where would the
poor white be? Why should he fight against
the blacks and his victorious friends? The
poor white not only began to desert and run
away; but thousands followed the Negro into
the Northern camps.
Meantime, with perplexed and laggard steps,
the United States Government followed the
footsteps of the black slave. It made no difference
how much Abraham Lincoln might protest that
this was not a war against slavery, or ask
General McDowell "if it would not be well
to allow the armies to bring back those fugitive
slaves which have crossed the Potomac with
our troops" (a communication which was marked
"secret"). It was in vain that Lincoln rushed
entreaties and then commands to Fremont in
Missouri, not to emancipate the slaves of
rebels, and then had to hasten similar orders
to Hunter in South Carolina. The slave, despite
every effort, was becoming the center of war.
Lincoln, with his uncanny insight, began to
see it. He began to talk about compensation
for emancipated slaves, and Congress, following
almost too quickly, passed the Confiscation
Act in August, 1861, freeing slaves which
were actually used in war by the enemy. Lincoln
then suggested that provision be made for
colonization of such slaves. He simply could
not envisage free Negroes in the United States.
What would become of them? What would they
do? Meantime, the slave kept looming. New
Orleans was captured and the whole black population
of Louisiana began streaming toward it. When
Vicksburg fell, the center of perhaps the
vastest Negro population in North America
was tapped. They rushed into the Union lines.
Still Lincoln held off and watched symptoms.
Greeley's "Prayer of Twenty Millions" received
the curt answer, less than a year before Emancipation,
that the war was not to abolish slavery, and
if Lincoln could hold the country together
and keep slavery, he would do it.
But he could not, and he had no sooner said
this than he began to realize that he could not.
In June, 1862, slavery was abolished
in the territories. Compensation with possible
colonization was planned for the District
of Columbia. Representatives and Senators
from the Border States were brought together
to talk about extending this plan to their
states, but they hesitated.
In August, Lincoln faced the truth, front
forward; and that truth
was not simply that Negroes ought to be free;
it was that thousands of them were already
free, and that either the power which slaves
put into the hands of the South was to be
taken from it, or the North could not win
the war. Either the Negro was to be allowed
to fight, or the draft itself would not bring
enough white men into the army to keep up
the war.
More than that, unless the North faced the
world with the moral strength of declaring
openly that they were fighting for the emancipation
of slaves, they would probably find that the
world would recognize the South as a separate
nation; that ports would be opened; that trade
would begin, and that despite all the military
advantage of the North, the war would be lost.
In August, 1862, Lincoln discussed Emancipation
as a military measure; in September, he issued
his preliminary proclamation; on January 1,
1863, he declared that the slaves of all persons
in rebellion were "henceforward and forever
free."
The guns at Sumter, the marching armies, the
fugitive slaves, the fugitives as "contrabands,"
spies, servants and laborers; the Negro as
soldier, as citizen, as voter -- these steps
came from 1861 to 1868 with regular beat that
was almost rhythmic. It was the price of the
disaster of war, and it was a price that
few Americans at first dreamed of paying or
wanted to pay. The North was not Abolitionist.
It was overwhelmingly in favor of Negro slavery,
so long as this did not interfere with Northern
moneymaking. But, on the other hand, there
was a minority of the North who hated slavery
with perfect hatred; who wanted no union with
slaveholders; who fought for freedom and treated
Negroes as men. As the Abolition-democracy
gained in prestige and in power, they appeared
as prophets, and led by statesmen, they
began to guide the nation out of the morass
into which it had fallen. They and their black
friends and the new freedmen became gradually
the leaders of a Reconstruction of Democracy
in the United States, while marching millions
sang the noblest war-song of the ages to the
tune of "John Brown's Body":
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming
of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored, He hath loosed
the fateful lightning of his terrible swift
sword, His Truth is marching on!
[Singing: "Ooooo"]
Music by Benjamin Moore
