Dixie After the War Part 15

When this is true, the tie between white and black is yet strong, sweet and tender, like the tie of blood. The venerable "uncles" and "aunties"

with their courtly manners, their good warm hearts, their love for the whites, are swiftly pa.s.sing away, and their like will not be seen again.

They were America's black pearl; and America had as good reason to be proud of her faithful and efficient serving-cla.s.s as of her Anglo-Saxons.

They were needed; they filled an honourable and worthy place and filled it well.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MRS. ANDREW PICKENS CALHOUN

Daughter of General Duff Green, of Georgia, and daughter-in-law of John C.

Calhoun, the statesman, of South Carolina.

This picture was taken when Mrs. Calhoun was 71 years of age.]

This is not to justify slavery. Slavery was forced upon this country over Colonial protests, particularly from Southern sections fearing negroisation of territory; the slave-trade was profitable to the English Crown; our forefathers, coming into independence, faced a problem of awful magnitude in the light of Santo Domingo horrors; New England's slave-s.h.i.+ps and Eli Whitney's cotton-gin complicated it; it is curious to read in the proceedings of the Sixth Congress how Mr. John Brown, of Rhode Island, urged that this Nation should not be deprived of a right, enjoyed by every civilised country, of bringing slaves from Africa[14]--particularly as transference to a Christian land was a benefit to Africans, a belief held by many who believed that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Through kindliness of temperament on both sides and the clan feeling fostered by the old plantation life of the South, the white man and the negro made the best they could of an evil thing. But the world has now well learned that a superior race cannot afford to take an inferior into such close company as slavery implies. For the service of the bond-slave the master ever pays to the uttermost in things precious as service, imparting refinements, ideals, standards, morals, manners, graces; in the end he pays that which he considers more precious than service; he pays his blood, and in more ways than one.

BACK TO VOODOOISM

CHAPTER XVII

BACK TO VOODOOISM

The average master and mistress of the old South were missionaries without the name. Religious instruction was a feature of the negro quarters on the Southern plantation--the social settlements for Africans in America.

Masters and mistresses, if themselves religious, usually held Sabbath services and Sunday schools for blacks. Some delegated this task, employing preachers and teachers. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was the first rice planter to introduce systematic religious instruction among negroes on the Santee, influenced thereto by Bishop Capers. He subscribed to the Methodist Episcopal Mission for them, and a minister came every week to catechise the children and every Sabbath to preach at the negro church which Mr. Pinckney, with the a.s.sistance of his neighbours, established for the blacks on his own and neighbouring plantations. Soon fifty chapels on his model sprang up along the seaboard. In the Methodist churchyard in Columbia, a modest monument marks the grave of Bishop Capers, "Founder of the Mission to the Slaves." Nearby sleeps Rev. William Martin, who was a distinguished preacher to whites and a faithful missionary to blacks. In Zion Presbyterian Church, Charleston, built largely through the efforts of Mr. Robert Adger, no less a preacher than Rev. Dr. Girardeau ministered to negroes. The South entrusted the spiritual care of her negroes to her best and ablest, and what she did for them is interwoven with all her history. You will hear to-day how the great clock on top of the church on Mr. Plowden Weston's plantation kept time for plantations up and down the Waccamaw. In that chapel, Rev. Mr.

Glenrie and an English catechist diligently taught the blacks. After Sherman's visit to Columbia, Trinity (Episcopal) Church had no Communion service; the sacred vessels of precious metals belonging to the negro chapel on the Hampton place were borrowed for Trinity's white congregation.

The rule where negroes were not so numerous as to require separate churches was for both races to wors.h.i.+p in one building. Slavery usages were modelled on manorial customs in England, where a section of church or chapel is set apart for the peasantry, another for gentry and n.o.bility.

The gallery, or some other section of our churches, was reserved for servants, who thus had the same religious teaching we had; there being more of them, they were often in larger evidence than whites at wors.h.i.+p.

After whites communed, they received the Sacrament from the same hands at the same altar. Their names were on our church rolls. Our pastors often officiated at their funerals; sometimes an old "exhorter" of their own colour did this; sometimes our pastors married them, but this ceremony was not infrequently performed by their masters.

The Old African Church, of Richmond, was once that city's largest auditorium. In it great meetings were held by whites, and famous speakers and artists (Adelina Patti for one) were heard. One of Mr. Davis' last addresses as President was made there. The regular congregation was black and their pastor was Rev. Robert Ryland, D. D., President of Richmond College; "Brother Ryland," they called him. He taught them with utmost conscientiousness; they loved him and he them. When called upon for the marriage ceremony, he would go to the home of their owners, and marry them in the "white folks' house" or on the lawn before a company of whites and blacks. Then, as fee, a large iced cake would be presented to him by a groomsman with great pomp.

After the war, the old church was pulled down, and a new one erected by the negroes with a.s.sistance of whites North and South. Then they wrote Dr.

Ryland, who had gone to Kentucky, asking him to return and dedicate it. He answered affectionately, saying he appreciated greatly this evidence of their regard and that nothing would give him greater pleasure, but he was too poor to come; he would be with them in spirit. They replied that the question of expense was none of his business; it was theirs. He wrote that they must apply the sum thus set aside to current expenses, to meet which it would be needed. They answered that they would be hurt if he did not come; they wanted no one else to dedicate their church. So he came, stopping at Mr. Maury's.

He was greatly touched when he met his old friends, the congregation receiving him standing. So much feeling was displayed on their part, such deep emotion experienced on his, that he had to retire to the study before he could command himself sufficiently to preach.

In religious life, after the war, the negro's and the white man's path parted quickly. Negro galleries in white churches soon stood empty.

Negroes were being taught that they ought to sit cheek by jowl in the same pews with whites or stay away from white churches.

With freedom, the negro, _en ma.s.se_, relapsed promptly into the voodooism of Africa. Emotional extravaganzas, which for the sake of his health and sanity, if for nothing else, had been held in check by his owners, were indulged without restraint. It was as if a force long repressed burst forth. "Moans," "shouts" and "trance meetings" could be heard for miles.

It was weird. I have sat many a night in the window of our house on the big plantation and listened to shouting, jumping, stamping, dancing, in a cabin over a mile distant; in the gray dawn, negroes would come creeping back, exhausted, and unfit for duty.

In some localities, devil-dancing, as imported from Africa centuries ago, still continues. I have heard of one place in South Carolina where wors.h.i.+ppers throw the trance-smitten into a creek, as the only measure sufficiently heroic to bring them out of coma. Devil-wors.h.i.+p was rife in Louisiana just after the war.

One of my negro friends tells me: "Soon atter de war, dar wuz a trance-meetin' in dis neighbourhood dat lasted a week. De cook at marster's would git a answer jes befo' dinner dat ef he didn' bring a part uv evvything he cooked to de meetin', 'de Lawd would s.n.a.t.c.h de breath outen his body.' He brung it. Young gals dee'd be layin' 'roun' in trances. A gal would come to meetin' w'arin' a jacket a white lady gin 'er. One uh de gals in a trance would say: 'De Lawd say if sich an' sich a one don' pull dat jacket off, he gwi s.n.a.t.c.h de breath out dar body.' One ole man broke dat meetin' up. Two uv his gran'sons was lyin' out in a trance. He come down dar, wid a han'-full uh hickory switches an' laid de licks on dem gran'chillun. Evvybody took out an' run. Dat broke de meetin'

up.

"Endurin' slavery, dar marsters wouldn' 'low n.i.g.g.e.rs tuh do all dat foolishness. When freedom come, dee lis'n to bad advice an' lef' de white folks' chu'ches an' go to doin' all sorts uh nawnsense. Now dee done learnt better again. Dee goin' back sorter to de white folks' chu'ches.

Heap uh Pristopals lak dar use tuh be. In Furginny, Bishop Randolph come 'roun' an' confirm all our cla.s.ses. An' de Baptis'es dee talk 'bout takin'

de cullud Baptis'es under dar watch-keer. An' all our folks dee done learnt heap better an' all what I been tellin' you. I don' want you tuh put dat in no book lessen you say we-all done improved."

Southern men who stand at the head of educational movements for negroes, state that they have advanced greatly in a religious sense, their own educated ministry contributing to this end. Among those old half-voodoo shouters and dreamers of dreams were negroes of exalted Christian character and true piety, and, industrially, of far more worth to society than the average educated product. I have known sensible negroes who believed that they "travelled" to heaven and to h.e.l.l.[15]

It has been urged that darkness would have been quickly turned to light had Southern masters and mistresses performed their full duty in the spiritual instruction of their slaves. To change the fibre of a race is not a thing quickly done even where undivided and intense effort is bent in this direction. The negro, as he came here from Africa, changed much more quickly for the better in every respect than under freedom he could have done. It has been charged that we had laws against teaching negroes to read. I never heard of them until after the war. All of us tried to teach darkeys to read, and nothing was ever done to anybody about it. If there were such laws, we paid no attention to them, and they were framed for the negroes' and our protection against fanatics.[16]

I have treated this subject to show the swing back to savagery the instant the master-hand was removed; one cause of demoralisation in field and kitchen; the superst.i.tious, volatile, inflammable material upon which political sharpers played without scruple.

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU

Federal authorities had a terrific problem to deal with in four millions of slaves suddenly let loose. Military commanders found themselves between the devil and the deep sea.

Varied instructions were given to bring order out of chaos. "Freedmen that will use any disrespectful language to their former masters will be severely punished," is part of a ukase issued by Captain Nunan, at Milledgeville, in fervent if distracted effort for the general weal. By action if not by order, some others settled the matter this way: "Former masters that will use any disrespectful language to their former slaves will be severely punished"; as witness the case where a venerable lady, bearing in her own and that of her husband two of the proudest names in her State, was marched through the streets to answer before a military tribunal the charge of having used offensive language to her cook.

With hordes of negroes pilfering and pillaging, new rulers had an elephant on their hands. No vagrant laws enacted by Southern Legislatures in 1865-6 surpa.s.sed in severity many of the early military mandates with penalties for infraction. The strongest argument in palliation of the reconstruction acts is found in these laws which were construed into an attempt to re-enslave the negro. The South had no vagrant cla.s.s before the war and was provided with no laws to meet conditions of vagrancy which followed emanc.i.p.ation with overwhelming force.

Comparing these laws with New England's, we find that in many respects the former were modelled on the latter, from which the words "ball and chain,"

"master and mistress" and the apprentice system, which Mr. Blaine declared so heinous, might well have been borrowed, though New England never faced so grave a vagrancy problem as that which confronted the South.

Negroes flocked to cities, thick as blackbirds. Federal commanders issued orders: "Keep negroes from the cities." "The Government is feeding too many idlers." "Make them stay on the plantations." "Impress upon them the necessity of making a crop, or famine is imminent throughout the South."

"Do not let the young and able-bodied desert their children, sick, and aged." As well call to order the wild things of the woods! In various places something like the old "patter-roller" system of slavery was adopted by the Federals, wandering negroes being required to show pa.s.ses from employers, saying why they were abroad.

General Schofield's Code for the Government of Freedmen in North Carolina (May, 1865) says: "Former masters are const.i.tuted guardians of minors in the absence of parents or other near relatives capable of supporting them." The Radicals made great capital out of a similar provision in Southern vagrancy laws.

Accounts of confusion worse confounded wrung this from the "New York Times" (May 17, 1865): "The horse-stealing, lemonade and cake-vending phase of freedom is destined to brief existence. The negro misunderstands the motives which made the most laborious, hard-working people on the face of the globe clamour for his emanc.i.p.ation. You are free, Sambo, but you must work. Be virtuous, too, O Dinah! 'Whew! Gor Almighty! bress my soul!'"

The "Chicago Times" (July 7, 1865) gives a Western view: "There is chance in this country for philanthropy, a good opening for abolitionists. It is to relieve twenty-eight millions of whites held in cruel bondage by four million blacks, a bondage which r.e.t.a.r.ds our growth, distracts our thoughts, absorbs our efforts, drives us to war, ruptures our government, disturbs our tranquillity, and threatens direfully our future. There never was such a race of slaves as we; there never was another people ground so completely in the dust as this nation. Our negro masters crack their whips over our legislators and our religion."

The Freedmen's Bureau was created March 3, 1865, for the care and supervision of negroes in Federal lines. Branches were rapidly established throughout the South and invested with almost unlimited powers in matters concerning freedmen. An agency's efficiency depended upon the agent's personality. If he were discreet and self-respecting, its influence was wholesome; if he were the reverse, it was a curse. If he were inclined to peculate, the agency gave opportunity; if he were cruel--well, negroes who were hung up by the thumbs, or well annointed with mola.s.ses and tied out where flies could find them had opinions.

I recall two stories which show how wide a divergence there might be between the operations of two stations. A planter went to the agent in his vicinity and said: "Captain, I don't know what to do with the darkeys on my place. They will not work, and are committing depredations on myself and neighbours." The agent went out and addressed the negroes: "Men, what makes you think you can live without work? The Government is not going to support any people in idleness on account of their complexions. I shall not issue food to another of you. I have charged this planter to bring before me any case of stealing. If you stay on this plantation, you are to work for the owner."

In a week, the planter reported that they still refused to labour or to leave; property was disappearing, wanton damage was being done; but it was impossible to spot thieves and vandals. The agent, a man of war, went up in a hurry, and his language made the air blue! "If I come again," was his parting salutation, "I'll bring my cannon, and if you don't hoe, plow, or do whatever is required, I'll blow you all to pieces!" They went to work.