Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [12]
Where overseers were employed, the absence of the master also disrupted the prevailing structure of authority. No longer able to play the overseer against the master, deriving what advantages they could from that division of power, slaves found themselves at the mercy of men who could finally rule them with an unrestrained hand. Andy Anderson, for example, recalled his experience on a cotton plantation in Texas, working for a master, Jack Haley, who was so “kind to his cullud folks” that neighbors referred to them as “de petted niggers.” When the war broke out, Haley enlisted in the Army and hired a man named Delbridge to oversee the plantation.
After dat, de hell start to pop, ’cause de first thing Delbridge do is cut de rations.… He half starve us niggers and he want mo’ work and he start de whippin’s. I guesses he starts to educate ’em. I guess dat Delbridge go to hell when he died, but I don’t see how de debbil could stand him.
Unsuccessful in an escape attempt, Anderson was severely whipped and then sold, but when his old master returned from military service, he promptly admonished and fired the overseer.23
The enhanced authority of the overseer was as likely to disrupt as to secure a plantation. While the master remained away, slaves were even more sensitive to any action by an overseer that appeared to breach the normal limits of his authority. No longer able to appeal their differences with him to the master, the slaves on some plantations took matters into their own hands. After her master left for the war, Ida Henry recalled, the overseer tried to impress the slaves with his new importance and power. He worked them overtime and meted out harsh punishment to anyone who failed to meet his expectations, until “one day de slaves caught him and one held him whilst another knocked him in de head and killed him.” On three large Louisiana plantations, near the mouth of the Red River, the slaves responded to the food shortage and a newly ordered reduction in rations by dividing up among themselves the hogs and poultry. When advised by the absent owner to punish these slaves, the overseers wisely refused on the grounds of personal safety.24
As an incentive to maintain order and maximize production, some masters chose to delegate authority in their absence to the slaves themselves. Andrew Goodman, who had worked on a Texas plantation, recalled not knowing “what the war was ’bout.” But he readily appreciated its impact the day his master assembled the sixty-six slaves and told them of his plans to enlist in the Army, discharge the overseer, and leave the place in Goodman’s hands. The master remained away for four years. Appreciating the confidence placed in them, the slaves left in charge of a plantation—often the same slaves who had been drivers or foremen—generally fulfilled the master’s expectations, and in some instances even exceeded them. “I done the bes’ I could,” a former Alabama slave recalled, “but they was troublous times. We was afraid to talk of the war, ’cose they hung three men for talkin’ of it, jest below here.” With both the master and overseer absent, some slaves exulted in the greater degree of independence they enjoyed. The fact of a black “master,” however, could prove to be a mixed blessing, with some drivers fulfilling their owner’s expectations by maintaining a severe regime. When a former coachman took charge of a plantation in Alabama, one of the slaves recalled, “he made de niggers wuk harder dan Ole Marster did.”25
Neither the expedient of a black driver nor an overseer necessarily resolved the dilemma posed by the absence of the master. To judge by the lamentations that abounded in the journals, diaries, and letters of women left