CHAPTER VITHE OLD-TIME NEGRO
That the “old-time Negro” is passing away is one of the common sayings all over the South, where once he was as well known as the cotton-plant and the oak tree. Indeed, he has become so rare that even now when a gray and wrinkled survivor is found he is regarded as an exceptional character, and he will soon be as extinct as the dodo. That he will leave a gap which can hardly be filled is as certain as that the old-time cavalier or the foster-father of romance has left his gap.
The “new issue” at which the old-time Negro, who had been the servant and the associate of gentlemen, once turned up his nose from his well-secured position, and of which he spoke in terms of scornful reprobation, has, with the passing of time, pushed him from his stool, and is no longer the “new issue,” but the general type that prevails commonly—the Negro withhis problem; a problem which it may, as has been well said by Mr. Root, take all the wisdom, all the forbearance, and all the resolution of the white race to solve.
Some of the “Afro-Americans,” with the veneer of a so-called education, to judge from recent works written by certain of them, presume to look down somewhat scornfully on this notable development of their race, and assume a fine scorn of the relation which once existed all over the South between the old-time Southerner and the old-time darky, and which still exists where the latter still survives.
They do not consider that large numbers of this class held positions of responsibility and trust, which they discharged with a fidelity and success that is the strongest proof of the potentiality of the race. They do not reckon that warm friendship which existed between master and servant, and which more than any other one thing gives promise of future and abiding friendship between the races when left to settle their relations without outside interference.
One going through the South now—even through those parts where the old-time darky was once the regular and ordinary picture—unless he should happen to drift into some secludedregion so far out of the sweep of the current that its life has been caught as in an eddy, would never know what the old life had been, and what the old-time Negroes were in that life. Their memory is still cherished in the hearts of those to whom they stood in a relation which cannot be explained to and cannot be understood by those who did not know it as a vital part of their home-life. Even these will soon have passed from the stage, and in another decade or two the story of that relation, whose roots were struck deep in the sacredest relations of life, will be only a tradition kept alive for a generation or two, but gradually fading until it is quite blurred out by time.
Curiously, whatever the Southerners may think of slavery—and there were many who reprobated its existence—whatever they may think of “the Negro” of to-day, there is scarcely one who knew the Negro in his old relation who does not speak of him with sympathy and think of him with tenderness. The writer has known men begin to discuss new conditions fiercely, and on falling to talking of the past, drift into reminiscences of old servants and turn away to wipe their eyes. And not the least part of the bitterness of the South overthe Negro question as it has existed grows out of resentment at the destruction of what was once a relation of warm friendship and tender sympathy.
Of African slavery it may be said that whatever its merits and demerits, it divided this country into two sections, with opposing interests, and finally plunged it into a vast and terrible war. This is condemnation enough.
One need not be an advocate of slavery because he upsets ideas that have no foundation whatever in truth and sets forth facts that can be substantiated by the experience of thousands who knew them at first hand.
It is well known by those who knew the old plantation-life that there were marked divisions between the Negroes. There were among them what might almost be termed different orders. These were graded by the various relations in which the individuals stood to the “white folks”—that is, to the master and mistress and their family.
The house-servants represented a class quite distinct from and quite above the “field-hands,”of whom they were wont to speak scornfully as “cornfield niggers,” while among the former were degrees as clearly defined as ever existed in an English gentleman’s house, where the housekeeper and the butler held themselves above the rest of the servants, only admitting to occasional fellowship the lady’s maid.
Among the first in station were the mammy, the butler, the body-servant, the carriage-driver, the ladies’ maids, the cook, and the gardener, with, after an interval, the “boys” who were attached to one or the other position as assistants and were in training for the places when the elders should fail. Among the “field-hands” was, first, the “head man.”[58]
The “head man” was the equal of any other servant—a rank due, perhaps, partly to his authority and partly to the character that brought him this authority. He was the foreman, or assistant superintendent of the plantation. He carried the keys; he called the hands to work; directed them, and was, to some extent, in authority over them. Such a one I knew, mightyin word and act, who towered above the hands he led, a “head man,” indeed.
A somewhat inaccurate idea prevails of the Southern plantation life, due, possibly, to the highly colored pictures that have been painted of it in books of a romantic order, in which the romance much outweighed the ha’penny-worth of verisimilitude. The current idea is that a Southern plantation was generally a great estate, teeming with black slaves who groaned under the lash of the drivers and at night were scourged to their dungeons, while their masters revelled in ill-used luxury and steeped themselves in licentiousness, not stopping at times to “traffic in their own flesh and blood.”
It may be well to say in the outset that nothing could be further from the truth.
There were great estates, but they were not numerous. There were, possibly, a score of persons in Virginia who owned over three hundred slaves, and ten or a dozen who owned over five hundred. Such estates were kept up in a certain style which almost always accompanies large wealth. But the great majority of the plantations in Virginia, and, so far as my reading and observation have gone, elsewhere, however extensive were the lands, weremodest and simple, and the relation between masters and servants was one of close personal acquaintance and friendliness, beginning at the cradle and scarcely ending at the grave.
At the outbreak of the war, while the number of the white population of the Southern States was about thirteen millions, the number of slave-owners and slave-hirers, including those who owned or hired but one slave, was, perhaps, less than half a million; that is, of the adult whites, men and women, estimating them as one-fifth each of the population, less than one in ten owned or hired slaves.[59]
Thus, while slavery on the great plantations, where the slaves numbered several hundreds, was liable to such abuses as spring readily from absenteeism, on most of the plantations the slaves and the masters were necessarily brought into fairly close contact, and the result of this contact was the relation of friendship which has been the wonder and the mystification of those who considered slavery the sum of all the villainies.
The chief idea that prevails as to the relation is taken from a work of fiction which, as a political pamphlet written under the stress of deep feeling, whatever truth it had as basis, certainly does not present a true picture.
Work was parcelled out among the “hands,”the “hands” being divided into sections: pough-hands, drivers, hoe-hands, etc.
Their homes were known as “the quarters.” On the larger plantations they were divided by streets.
On the plantation which the writer knew best, there were several double-cabins on the quarters-hill and three or four facing on the backyard. In one of the latter was a room which was the joy of his heart, and which, after forty years, is still touched with a light more radiant than many a palace apartment he has seen. It was known as “Unc’ Balla’s room,” and its occupant was so great a man to me that in his own field I have never known his superior. “Uncle Balla” was the carriage-driver, and not from Jehu down was ever one who, in the writer’s mind, could equal him in handling the reins. He was the guide, philosopher, and friend of my boyhood. And no better, saner, or more right-minded guide ever lived.
In that room were “chists,” which I even now think of with an indrawing of the breath, as I imagine their precious and unexplored contents. Verily, they must have held golden ingots! Then, there was his cobbler’s bench, for he was a harness-maker and cobbler—and hiscooper’s bench, for he made the noggins and piggins and pails for the milkmaids and housewives, deriving therefrom a little income. And when it came to horses! As I have sat and heard the learned at races and horse-shows air their knowledge, I have often been filled with a sudden longing that Uncle Balla were there to show what real knowledge was.
He lived for thirty years after the war in a little house on the edge of the plantation, and when he began to fail he was brought home, where he could be better looked after. At the end, his funeral services were conducted from the front portico and he was followed to the grave by white and black.
Each cabin had, or might have had, its little yard and garden, and each family had its chicken-house and yard.
On the larger plantations, where the Negroes numbered two hundred or more, nearly everything was made by them, so that such an estate was a little world in itself, substantially self-supporting. On our place, while the spinning and weaving and the carpentry-work were done on the place, most of the cloth for clothing and the shoes were bought in town in the spring and autumn, and the tailor and cobbler keptthem in order. In purchasing the shoes, each person brought his measure, a stick the exact length of his foot. This stick had certain marks or notches on it, and the Negro kept a duplicate, by which to identify his shoes when they arrived.
No servants or retainers of any race ever identified themselves more fully with their masters. The relation was rather that of retainers than of slaves. It began in the infancy of both master and servant, grew with their growth, and continued through life. Such a relation does not now, so far as I know, exist, except in the isolated instances of old families who have survived all the chances and changes with the old family servants still hanging on. Certainly, I think, it did not exist anywhere else, unless, perhaps, on the country estates of the gentry in England and, possibly, in parts of France and Germany.
This relation in the South was not exceptional. It was the general, if not the universal rule. The servants were “my servants” or “my people”; the masters were to the servants, “mymaster andmymistis,” or “my whitefolks.” Both pride and affection spoke in that claim.
In fact, the ties of pride were such that it was often remarked that the affection of the slaves was stronger toward the whites than toward their own offspring. This fact, which cannot be successfully disputed, has been referred by Professor Shaler to a survival of a tribal instinct which preponderated over the family instinct. Others may possibly refer it to the fact that the family instinct was, owing to the very nature of the institution of slavery, not allowed to take deep root. Whatever the cause, it does not appear even now to have taken much root, at least, according to the standard of the Anglo-Saxon, a race whose history is founded upon the family instinct.
The family ties among the Negroes often appear to be scarcely as strong now as they were under the institution of slavery. Marital fidelity is, if we are to believe those who have had good opportunities of observation, not as common now as it was then. The instances of desertion of husbands, of wives, of parents, or children would possibly offset any division that took place under that institution.
A number of old Negroes whom I haveknown have been abandoned by nearly all of their children. Often, when they grow up, they leave them with scarcely less unconcern than do any order of the lower animals.
The oldest son of our dining-room servant went off at the time of one of Sheridan’s raids and was never heard of again until some twenty years after the war, when it was learned that he was a fisherman on the lower James, and although he lived, and may be living yet, within a hundred miles of his old home, where his father and mother lived, he never took the trouble even to communicate with them once. The next son went off to the South after the war, and the only time that he ever wrote home, so far as I know, was when he wrote to ascertain his age, in order that he might qualify to vote. The same may be said of many others.
The Mammy was, perhaps, the most important of the servants, as she was also the closest intimate of the family. She was, indeed, an actual member of the household. She was usually selected in her youth to be the companion of the children by reason of her being the child of some favored servant and, as such, likely to possess sense, amiability, judgment, and thequalities which gave promise of character and efficiency. So she grew up in intercourse with the girls of the family, and when they married she became, in turn, the nurse and assistant to the old mammy, and then the mammy of her young mistress’s children, and, after, of their children.
She has never been adequately described. Chiefly, I fancy, because it was impossible to describe her as she was.
Who may picture a mother? We may dab and dab at it, but when we have done our best we know that we have stuck on a little paint, and the eternal verity stands forth like the eternal verity of the Holy Mother, outside our conception, only to be apprehended in our highest moments, and never to be truly pictured by pen or pencil.
So, no one can describe what the Mammy was, and only those can apprehend her who were rocked on her generous bosom, slept on her bed, fed at her table, were directed and controlled by her, watched by her unsleeping eye, and led by her precept in the way of truth, justice, and humanity.
She was far more than a servant. She was a member of the family in high standing andof unquestioned influence. She was her mistress’s coadjutress and her wise adviser, and where the children were concerned, she was next to her in authority.
My father’s mammy, old Krenda, was said to have been an African princess, and whether there was any other foundation for the idea than her commanding presence and character, I know not; but these were unquestionable. Her aphorisms have been handed down in the family since her time. Among them was one which has a smack of the old times and at least indicates that she had not visited some modern cities: “Good manners will cyah you whar money won’t.”
I remember my mammy well, though she died when I was a child. Her name was Lydia, and she was the daughter of old Betty, who had been my great-grandmother’s maid. Betty used to read to her mistress during the latter years of her life when she was blind. Lydia had been my mother’s mammy before she was mine and my brother’s, and she had the authority and prestige of having been such.
After forty-five years, I recall with mingled affection and awe my mammy’s dignity, force, and kindness; her snowy bed, where I was putto sleep in the little up-stairs room, sealed with pictures from the illustrated papers and with fashion-plates, in which her artistic feeling found its vent; I recall also the delicious “biscuit-bread” she made, which we thought better than that of all the cooks and bakers in the world. In one corner stood her tea-table, with her “tea-things,” her tea and white sugar.
I remember, too, the exercise of her authority, and recall, at least two “good whippings” that she gave me.
One curious recollection that remains is of a discussion between her and one of her young mistresses on the subject of slavery, in which the latter fell back on what is, possibly, one of the strongest arguments of the slave-holder, the Bible, and asserted that God had put each of them in their places. It may be left to the reader to say which had the better of the argument. The interest of the matter now is rather academic than practical.
A few days before my mammy’s death she made her will, dividing her “things,” for such wills were as strictly observed as if they had been admitted to probate. Among her bequests her feather-bed and pillows were left to my elder brother. She made my mother bring apen and write his name on the bed and pillows. And these pillows are now in his rectory.
It was from our mammies that we learned those delightful stories of “Brer Fox” and “Brer Hyah,” which the children of a later generation have learned through the magic pen of “Uncle Remus.” It was from them also that we learned many of the lessons of morality and truth.
Next to the mammy in point of dignity was, of right, the butler. He held much the same position that is held by the butler in English houses. He was a person in authority, and he looked that every inch. He had his ideas, and they usually prevailed. He was the governor of the young children, the mentor of the young men, and their counsellor even after they had grown up.
Some of my readers may have seen in some hotel a Negro head-waiter who was a model of dignity and of grave authority—a field-marshal in ebony—doing the honors of his dining-room like a court chamberlain, and ruling his subordinates with the authority of a benignant despot. Such a one was probably some gentleman’s butler, who had risen by his abilities to be the chief of the dining-room.
More than one such character rises before me from the past, and the stories of their authority are a part of the traditional record of every family. The most imposing one that I personally remember was “Uncle Tom,” the butler of a cousin, whose stateliness impressed my childhood’s fancy in a way which has never been effaced. I have seen monarchs less impressive. His authority was so well recognized that he used to be called in to make the children take their physic.
It was said that one of the children, who is now a matron of great dignity and a grandmother, once, in an awed whisper, asked her grandmother, who was the mistress of “Uncle Tom” and of several hundred other servants, “Gran’ma, is you feared o’ Unc’ Tom?” And her grandmother, who told the story, used to add: “And you know the truth is, I am.”
It was a cousin of hers, Mrs. Carter, of Shirley, who used to say that when she invited company she always had to break it to Clarissy, her maid.
In truth, whatever limitation there was on the unstinted hospitality of the South was due to the fact that the servants were always considered in such matters.
This awe of the butler in his grandeur often did not pass away with youth. He both demanded and received his due respect even from grown members of the family. Of one that I knew it is told now by gray-headed men how, on occasion, long after they were grown, he would correct their manners, even at table, by a little rap on the head and a whispered reproof, as he leaned over them to place a dish. And I never knew one who did not retain his position of influence and exercise his right of admonition.
I have known butlers to take upon themselves the responsibility of saying what young gentlemen should be admitted as visitors at the house, and to whom the ladies should be denied. In fact, every wise young man used to be at pains to make friends with the old servants, for they were a sagacious class and their influence in the household was not inconsiderable. They had an intuitive knowledge, which amounted to an instinct, for “winnowing the grain from the chaff,” and they knew a “gent’man” at sight. Their acute and caustic comments have wrecked the chances of many an aspiring young suitor who failed to meet with their approval.
There is a universal belief that the Negroes under slavery had no education. I have seen it stated a number of times that it was made a crime by law, in every State of the South, to teach one to read. Such a statement is not true.[60]Teaching them was not encouraged, generally, and such laws existed at one time in four of the States of the South; but they did not exist in Virginia. Several of our Negroes could read, and if it was not the same on most of the plantations, it was at least the same on those of which I had any knowledge. My great-grandmother’s maid used, I have heard, to read to her regularly, and in our family the ladies used to teach the girls as much as they would learn. But apart from book-learning, they had,especially the house-servants, the education which comes from daily association with people of culture, and it was an education not to be despised. Some gentlemen carried on a correspondence about home affairs with their butlers during their absence from home. For instance, I recall hearing that when Mr. Abel P. Upshur was Secretary of the Navy, some gentlemen were at his house, and were discussing at table some public matter, when the butler gave them the latest news about it, saying that he had that morning received a letter from his master.
There is an idea that the Negroes were in the state of excitement and agonized expectancy of freedom that the Anglo-Saxon race felt it would have been in under similar circumstances. Much is made, at certain kinds of meetings, of the great part which they contributed toward saving the Union. Discussion of this may be set aside as bordering on the controversial. But it may not be outside of this phase of the matter, and it will throw some light on it to state briefly what was the attitude of the Negro slave population toward the quarrel between the North and the South.
The total number of Negro enlistments andreënlistments on the Federal side was between 189,000 and 190,000. When it is considered that this embraced all the soldier element of the Negroes in the North and of the refugee element in the South, who were induced to enter the army, either by persuasion of bounties or under stress of compulsion, whether of military draft or of “belly-pinching,” the number does not appear large. After midsummer, 1863, the North occupied the States of Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, half of Virginia, of Tennessee, of Louisiana, of Arkansas, of Mississippi, and considerable portions of the Carolinas and Alabamas. That is, she occupied a third, and nearer a half, of the entire slave-holding territory of the South, while the penetration of her raiding parties into the regions occupied by the Southern troops furnished, at times, opportunity to, possibly, a fourth of the young men of that section to escape from bondage had they been moved by the passion of freedom. It is at once a refutation of the charge of the cruelty of slavery, so commonly accepted, and an evidence of the easy-going amiability and docility of the Negro race that, under all the excitement and through all the opportunities and temptationssurrounding them, they should not only have remained faithful to their masters, but that the stress of the time should have appeared to weld the bond between them.
That there was a wild and adventurous element among them is well known. It was to be expected, and was an element in whom the instincts of wild life in the jungle and the forests survived. Every large plantation had one or more who had the runaway spirit keenly alive. There were several on our place. They ran away when they were crossed in love or in any other desire of their hearts. They ran away if they were whipped, and, as they were the shirkers and loafers on the plantations, if anyone was whipped, it was likely to be one of them. Yet, curiously enough, if a runaway was caught and was whipped, he was very unlikely to run off again until the spirit seized him, when nothing on earth could stop him.[61]
One other class was likely to furnish the elementthat went off, and this was the “pampered class.” House-servants were more likely to go than field-hands. Their ears were somehow more attuned to the song of the siren.[62]
Against those who availed themselves of the opportunities offered them to escape from the bondage of domestic slavery may be put the great body of the Negro race who, whether from inability to grasp the vastness of the boon of liberty held out to them, or from fear of the ills they knew not of, or from sheer content with a life where the toil was not drudgery and the flesh-pots overbalanced the idea of freedom, not only held fast to their masters, but took sides with them with a quickened feeling and a deepened affection. For every one who fled to freedom, possibly one hundred stood by their masters’ wives and children.
Doubtless there were many—possibly, the most of them—who remained from sheer inertia or fear to leave. But a far larger number identified themselves with their masters, andthis union was not one of lip-service, but of sentiment, of heart and soul.
In truth, they were infected with the same spirit and ardor that filled the whites, and had the South called for volunteers from the Negroes, I question not that they could have gotten half a million men.[63]
A story is told of one of the old Negroes who belonged to the family into which General Scott married. He went to the war to take care of one of his young masters. He had no doubt whatever as to the justice of the cause, but General Scott was to his mind the embodiment of war and carnage, and the General had espoused the other side. This disturbed him greatly, and one night he was heard praying down outside the camp. After praying for everyone, he prayed: “And O Lord, please to convut Marse Lieutenan’ Gen’l Scott and turn him f’om de urrer o’ he ways.”
The devotion of slaves to their masters in time of war is no new thing under the sun. The fact that their masters are in arms has always, no doubt, borne its part in the phenomenon. But it does not wholly account for the absolutedevotion of the Negroes. It is to the eternal credit at once of the Whites and of the Negroes that, during these four years of war, when the white men of the South were absent in the field they could intrust their homes, their wives, their children, all they possessed, to the guardianship and care of their slaves, with absolute confidence in their fidelity. And this trust was never violated. The Negroes were their faithful guardians, their sympathizing friends, and their shrewd advisers, guarding their property, enduring necessary denial with cheerfulness, and identifying themselves with their masters’ fortunes with the devotion, not of slaves, but of clansmen.
The devotion of the body-servants to their masters in the field is too well known almost to need mention, and what is said of them in this paper is owing rather to the feeling that the statement of the fact is a debt due to the class from which these came rather than to thinking it necessary to enlighten the reader.
When the Southern men went into the field there was always a contest among the Negroes as to who should accompany them. Usually, the choice of the young men would be for some of the younger men among the servants, whilethe choice of the family would be for some of the older and more staid members of the household, who would be prudent, and so, more likely to take better care of their masters. And thus there was much heart-burning among the younger Negroes, who were almost as eager for adventure as their masters.
Of all the thousands of Negroes who went out as servants with their masters, I have never heard of one who deserted to the North, and I have known of many who had abundant opportunity to do so. Some were captured, but escaped; others apparently deserted, but returned laden with spoils.
My father’s body-servant, Ralph Woodson, served with him throughout the entire war. While at Petersburg, where the armies were within a mile of each other, he was punished for getting drunk and he ran away. But instead of making for the Union lines and surrendering to a Union picket, which he could easily have done, he started for home, sixty miles away. He was, however, arrested as a straggler or runaway, and my father, hearing of him, sent and brought him back to camp, where he remained to the end.
An even more notable instance which hascome to my knowledge was that of Simon, the servant of a friend of mine. He disappeared from camp during the Spottsylvania campaign, and just when his master had given him up he reappeared with a sack full of all sorts of things, useful for the mess, which he declared “dem gent’mens on the other side had gin him.” He had borrowed of the Egyptians.
The letters and annals of the time are full of references to the singular, but then well-known fact, that while the people of the South gave their sons joyfully to the cause, they were most unwilling to allow their Negroes to go. The reason for this has been much misapprehended. It has been generally supposed outside that it was because they were afraid to lose their property. Nothing could be more unfounded. They were afraid their servants might be hurt or suffer some harm.
Fathers who wrote their sons to be always at the post of honor, would give them explicit directions how to keep their servants out of danger. The war in some way was concerned with the perpetuation of slavery, and it was felt that it was not just to expose slaves to danger when such was the case.
Something of this same feeling played itspart in the decision not to enlist Negroes in the army of the Confederacy.
In the field they showed both courage and sagacity, and many are the instances in which, when their masters were wounded and left on the field, they hunted for them through scenes which tested men’s courage as much as the battle itself. The records of the time are full of such instances.
When the war closed and the Negroes were set free, the feeling between them and their old masters was never warmer, the bonds of friendship were never more close. The devotion which the Negro had shown during the long struggle had created a profound impression on the minds of the Southern whites. Even between the Negroes and poorer whites, who had always been rather at enmity, a better feeling had grown up. The close of the war had accomplished what all the emancipation proclamations could not effect. Their masters universally informed their servants that they were free.
I remember my father’s return from Appomattox.For days he had been watched for. Appomattox was less than a hundred miles from our home. The news of the surrender had come to us first through one of the wagon-drivers, who told it weeping. I seem to see the return now—my father on his gray horse, with his body-servant, Ralph, behind him. I remember the way in which, as he slipped from his horse, he put his hand over his face to hide his tears, and his groan, “I never expected to come home so.” All were weeping. A few minutes later he came out on the porch and said: “Ralph, you are free; take the saddles off and turn the horses out.”
He had carried a silver half-dollar all through the war, saving it till the last pinch. This had come when he reached the river on his way home. The ferryman had declined to take Confederate money, and he paid him his half-dollar to ferry him across.
Such was the end of slavery, the institution which had divided this country in twain, and finally had convulsed it and brought on a terrible war.
When the end of slavery came there was, doubtless, some heart-burning, but the transition was accomplished without an outbreak, andwell-nigh without one act of harshness or even of rudeness.
If there was jubilation among the Negroes on the plantation it was not known to the Whites. In fact the Negroes were rather mystified. The sudden coming of that for which they had possibly hoped, with the loom of the unknown future, had sobered at least the elders. Their owners, almost without exception, conveyed to them the information of their freedom, which thus had a more comprehensible security than could have been given by the acts of Congress, or the orders of military authorities.
In some cases the old Negroes sought and held long conferences with their mistresses or masters in which the whole matter was canvassed.
In every instance the assurance was given them that they should live on the old plantations, if they wished to do so and were still willing to work and would obey orders.
As was natural, the Negroes, in the first flush of freedom, left the estates and went off “for themselves,” as the phrase ran.[64]They flockedeither to the cities, or to the nearest centre where a garrison of Union troops was posted, and where rations were distributed partly as a measure of necessity and partly from a philanthropic sentiment which had more or less ground for its existence. But after a time, many of them returned to work. Those of them who had anything shared what they had with their masters. Some of them brought eggs and chickens; others saved a part of the rations given by the Government.
It is no part of my intention in this paper to go generally into the relation of the two races since the emancipation of the Negroes. Certain phases of this relation have been dealt with by me elsewhere. While it is easy to see what mistakes have been made in dealing with the subject, no one can tell with any assurance how a different system might have worked out. All we can say, with absolute certainty, is that hardly any other system could have been more disastrous than the one which was adopted.
One fact, I think, cannot be soundly controverted—that the estrangement of the Negro from the white race in the South is the greatest misfortune that has befallen the former in hishistory, not excepting his ravishment from his native land.
The old-time Negro has almost quite passed from the earth, as have his old master and his old mistress. A few still remain, like the last leaves on the tree, but in no long time they, too, will have disappeared. But so long as he survives, the old family feeling of affection will remain in the hearts of those who knew him. Every week or two the newspapers contain the mention of the passing from the stage of one or more of those whose place in some old family made them notable in their lives and caused them to be followed to the grave by as sincere mourners among the whites as among the blacks. But how many of them pass without any other notice than the unfeigned mourning of those whom they loved and served so faithfully!
No Southerner, whatever his feelings of antagonism may be to the Negro race, ever meets an old Negro man or woman without that feeling rising in his breast which one experiences when he meets some old friend of his youth on whom Time has laid his chastening hand.
Nor has the old feeling by any means died out in the breast of the old Negro himself. Only as the whites look on the young blacks with some disapproval, so the old Negro regards the younger generation of whites as inferior to the generation he knew.
Not long since a friend in Richmond told me the following story: A friend of his in that city invited him in the shooting season to go down to his father’s place to shoot partridges. The house had been burned down, but old Robin was still living there, and had told him not long before that there were a good many birds on the place. Accordingly, the two gentlemen one morning took their guns and dogs and drove down to the old Ball plantation, where they arrived about sunrise. Old Robin was cutting wood in front of his cabin, and my friend began to shout for him: “Oh, Robin! Oh, Robin!” The old fellow stopped, and coming to the brow of the hill above them, called: “Who dat know me so much bettuh den I know him?”
“Come down here!” called his master.
When the old fellow discovered who it was he was delighted.
“Yes, suh,” said he; “dyah’s plenty of budsdown here on de branch. I sees ’em eve’y evenin’ most when I comes down atter my cow. You go ’long and kill ’em and I’ll take keer of yo’ horse for yo’ and tell Mandy to hev some snack for yo’ ’bout twelve o’clock.”
Just as he was leaving, he stopped, and leaning out of the wagon, said: “Marse Gus, don’t yo’ shoot any ole hyahs down dere. I takes my gun down wid me when I goes down atter my cow. Dem buds flies too fas’ for me, but I kin manage to shoot a ole hyah if I ketch one settin’ in de baid.”
The promise was given and was kept by the hunters until they were about to stop for lunch. Just then a fine hare jumped up in front of Marse Gus, and gave him a fair shot. In his ardor he fired at it and knocked it over. At that moment old Robin was heard calling to them to come on up to the house as “snack was ready.”
“There!” said Gus, as he picked up the hare, “now I’ve gone and killed this hare, and that old man will never forgive me.”
“Take it and give it to him for his wife,” said his friend.
“Oh, no!” he said, “you don’t know old Robin; he will never forgive me.”
“Well, put it down in the bottom of your game-bag; he will never know the difference,” said his friend. And this was shamelessly done.
They were greeted by the old man cheerfully, with “You must have got plenty of buds, I heard you shoot so much?”
“Oh, yes, we had very good luck!” said the huntsmen.
“You didn’t shoot any ole hyahs?” he inquired confidently.
The silence aroused his suspicion, and, turning, he shot a keen glance at his master, which took in the well-filled game-bag.
“What you got in dem game-pockets to make ’em look so big? You certain’y ain’ shoot as many buds as dat in dis time?”
Gus, convicted, poked his hand into his bag and drew out the rabbit.
“Here, Uncle Robin,” he said in some confusion, “this is the only one I shot. I want you to take it and give it to Mandy.”
But the old man declined. “Nor, I don’ want it and Mandy don’ want it,” he said, half-scornfully; “you done shoot it and now yo’ better keep it.”
He stalked on up the hill in silence. Suddenly, stopping, he turned back.
“Well, well,” he said, “times certain’y is changed! Marse Gus, yo’ pa wouldn’t ’a’ told me a lie for a mule, let ’lone a’ ole hyah.”
The character of the old-time Negro can hardly be better illustrated than by the case of an old friend of mine, John Dabney, to whom I, in common with nearly all my acquaintances in Richmond, used to be greatly indebted, for he was the best caterer I ever knew. John Dabney was, in his boyhood, a race-rider for a noted Virginia turfman, Major William R. Johnson, but, possibly because of his gifts as a cook, he soon grew too fat for that “lean and hungry” calling, and in time he became a celebrated cook and caterer. He belonged to a lady in the adjoining county to my native county, and, prior to the war, he bought himself from his mistress, as was not infrequently done by clever Negroes. When the war closed, he still owed his mistress several hundred dollars on account of this debt, and as soon as he was able to raise the sum he sent it to her. She promptly returned it, telling him that he was free and would have been free anyhow and that he owed her nothing. On this, John Dabney took the money, went to his oldhome and insisted on her receiving it, saying that his old master had brought him up to pay his debts, and that this was a just debt which he proposed to pay. And pay it he did.
The instances are not rare in which old family servants who have worked under the new conditions more successfully than their former owners, have shown the old feeling by rendering them such acts of kindness as could only have sprung from a deep and abiding affection.
Whoever goes to the White House will find at the door of the executive offices an elderly and very stout Negro door-keeper, with perfect manners, a step as soft as the fall of the leaf, and an aplomb which nothing can disturb. His name is Arthur Simmons, and, until toward the close of the war, he was a gentleman’s servant in North Carolina; then he came North. He is, possibly, the oldest employee in the White House, having been appointed by General Grant during his first term, and having held his position, with the exception of a single term—that of General Harrison—to the present time. It is said that Mr. Cleveland’s first appointment after his return to office was that of Arthur Simmons to his old post. Possibly, Mr. Cleveland had heard this story of him: Once,Arthur, having learned that his old mistress had expressed a desire to see the President of the United States, invited her to Washington, met her at the station, saw to her comfort while in the city, arranged an interview with the President for her, and then escorted her back to take her train home.
On a part of the old plantation which I have attempted to describe has lived for the past thirty years, free of rent, the leading Negro politician in the upper end of Hanover County. His wife, Hannah, was my mother’s old maid, who, after the war, as before it, served us with a fidelity and zeal of which I can give no conception. It may, however, illustrate it to state that, although she lived a mile and a quarter from the house and had to cross a creek, through which, in times of high water, she occasionally had to wade almost to her waist, she for thirty years did not miss being at her post in the morning more than a half-score times.
Hannah has gone to her long home, and it may throw some light on the old relation between mistress and servant to say that on the occasion of the golden wedding of her old master and mistress, as Hannah was at that time too ill to leave her home, they took all the presentsin the carriage and carried them over to show them to her. Indeed, Hannah’s last thought was of her old mistress. She died suddenly one morning, and just before her death she said to her husband, “Open the do’, it’s Miss ——.” The door was opened, but the mistress was not there, except to Hannah’s dying gaze. To her, she was standing by her bedside, and her last words were addressed to her.
It is a continual cause of surprise among those who do not know the South intimately that Southerners should be so fond of the old Negroes and yet should be so intolerant of things which Northerners would regard with indifference. It is a matter which can hardly be explained, but if anyone goes and lives at the South, he will quickly find himself falling into Southern ways. Let one go on the plantations where the politician is absent and the “bloody-shirt” newspaper is unknown, and he will find something of the old relation still existing.
I have seen a young man (who happened to be a lieutenant in a volunteer company) kiss his old mammy on the parade ground in sight of the whole regiment.
Some years ago, while General Fitzhugh Leewas Governor of Virginia, a wedding took place in the executive mansion at Richmond. At the last moment, when the company were assembled and all had taken their places, waiting for the bride to appear, it was discovered that mammy Celia, the bride’s mammy, had not come in, and no less a person than General Lee, the Governor of Virginia, went and fetched her in on his arm to take her place beside the mother of the bride.
Unhappily, whatever the future may produce, the teachings of doctrinaires and injudicious friends have lost the Negroes of the present generation their manners and cost them much of the friendship of the Whites.
None of us knows what relation the future may produce between the two races in the South, but possibly when the self-righteous shall be fewer than they are now and the teachings which have estranged the races shall become more sane, the great Anglo-Saxon race, which is dominant, and the Negro race, which is amiable, if not subservient, will adjust their differences more in accordance with the laws whichmust eventually prevail, and the old feeling of kindliness, which seems, under the stress of antagonism, to be dying away, will once more reassert itself.