Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [116]
They [her friends] talked of Negroes who flocked to the Yankees and showed them where the silver and valuables were hid by the white people; lady’s maids dressing themselves in their mistress’s gowns before their very faces and walking off. Before this, everyone has told me how kind and faithful and considerate the Negroes had been. I am sure, after hearing these tales, the fidelity of my own servants shines out brilliantly. I had taken it too much as a matter of course.97
From the outset of the war, the character of the slaves’ affections for their “white folks” had been a common topic of conversation and speculation. With the steady advance of the Union Army, particularly after 1863, the conversations turned increasingly gloomy as the behavior of the slaves became increasingly inexplicable. Previous assumptions needed to be reexamined, and new answers were required for the old questions. What lay behind the professions of fidelity? What lurked beneath the slaves’ apparent indifference? How genuine was their attachment to the master and his family? How far could they be trusted? The answers did not come easily. After observing the conduct of the slaves in his region, Henry W. Ravenel found two “exhibitions of character” he had never anticipated. On many plantations “where there was really kind treatment & mutual attachment,” the coming of the Yankees suddenly snapped the old ties. At the same time, numerous slaves resisted the temptations placed before them and remained, in his view, docile and submissive. With the blacks exhibiting such contradictory tendencies, Ravenel seemed to suggest the utter impossibility of calculating their loyalty.98
The “defections” were bad enough. But the “betrayals” within the plantation and Big House proved even more troubling, in part because they were more brazen, might be committed in the presence of the white family, and often involved the most trusted blacks. Even on the places where most slaves remained loyal, the fact that only one did not might spell the difference between a family keeping or losing its most valuable possessions. “All of our servants remained faithful except the cook,” a North Carolina woman wrote, but it was the cook who told the Union soldiers where the meat was hidden. On the plantation of Joseph Howell, the Yankees held “a court of inquiry,” questioned each slave individually about the location of the master’s valuables, and then went directly to the spot where they had been hidden. “Must have been a Judas ’mongst us,” recalled Henry D. Jenkins, who had been a slave there.99
For the white families, as they came to understand more fully the explosive potential of each of their slaves, such experiences were both bewildering and humiliating. How were the stalwart defenders of the “peculiar institution” to evaluate the behavior of those “petted and trusted” slaves in Virginia who burned the overseer’s house and deserted their aged, bedridden mistress after stripping the woman of her clothing? No less perplexed had to be the Confederate officer in South Carolina, the owner of several plantations, who found himself a prisoner of his own slaves, the very same slaves whose virtues and fidelity he had only recently praised. Manifesting their delight over this turnabout, they even improvised some verses while taking him to the nearest Union camp.
O Massa a rebel, we row him to prison.
Hallelujah.
Massa no whip us any more.
Hallelujah.
We have no massa, now; we free.
Hallelujah.
We have the Yankees, who no run away.
Hallelujah.
O! all our old massas run away.
Hallelujah.
Of massa going to prison now.
Hallelujah.
Stories such as these confirmed the increasingly gloomy talk about the fragile nature of the black man’s affections for his “white folks.” Were these truly the same individuals they had known so intimately as slaves, who had assured them of their loyalty, who had repeatedly denied any desire to be free? Little wonder that some whites simply threw up their hands in utter