Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [122]
In the literature and folklore of slavery, the driver enjoyed at best a mixed reputation, usually reflecting the ways in which he exerted his power to exact labor and mete out punishments. If the “Uncle Toms” came to dominate the legend of the house slave, the black “Simon Legrees” seemed to prevail in the characterization of the driver. Henry Cheatam, a former Mississippi slave, recalled the driver as “de meanest debil dat eber libbed on de Lawd’s green earth. I promise myself when I growed up dat I was agoin’ to kill dat nigger iffen it was de las’ thing I eber done.” To make matters worse, that driver along with the mistress ran the plantation after the death of the master in the war. In a song overheard by Colonel Thomas Higginson, some of his black troops improvised verses that reflected the prevailing image of the driver. And as with the house slave, sufficient examples abounded to make it quite plausible.
O, de ole nigger-driver!
O, gwine away!
Fust ting my mammy tell me,
O, gwine away!
Tell me ’bout de nigger-driver,
O, gwine away!
Nigger-driver second devil,
O, gwine away!
Best ting for do he driver,
O, gwine away!
Knock he down and spoil he labor,
O, gwine away!
After the war, on those plantations where the driver had a reputation for cruelty, the freedmen demanded his removal before they would consent to work.115
If a master maintained confidence in any of his slaves, outside of a few of the venerable “uncles” and “aunties,” he most likely trusted the driver. He had personally chosen this man for his loyalty, competence, and dependability, believing him capable of managing the plantation in his absence. But the master also selected a driver who commanded the respect and obedience of the slaves, and this leadership role was apt to create conflicting loyalties. When the Yankees arrived, numerous drivers exercised leadership and influence in ways few masters had dared to contemplate. On one of the Allston plantations, Jesse Belflowers, the much-harassed overseer, traced the prevailing disorder and the misconduct of the slaves to the driver. He “is not behaveing write,” Belflowers reported, “he doant talk write before the People.” Not far from this scene, Confederate scouts captured and hanged a driver for his “treachery.” When a number of slaves fled a Georgia plantation to join General Sherman’s army, “the leading spirit” as well as the youngest of the group was the driver, described by one Union officer as a “very quick and manly fellow, a model, physically.” Not only did some drivers desert to the Yankees, but they were likely as well to take other slaves with them, and in several instances the driver directed the seizure of deserted plantations and helped to wreak vengeance on masters and overseers. A South Carolina planter and his son were shot and seriously wounded while riding in their carriage near the plantation; the band of blacks who ambushed them had been “led on by his Driver.” After blacks had seized one of his plantations, Charles Manigault accused the driver of aspiring to be “lord & master of everything there.”
Frederick (the Driver) was ringleader, & at the head of all the iniquity committed there. He encouraged all the Negroes to believe that the Farm, and everything on it, now since Emancipation, belonged solely to him, & that their former owners had now no rights, or control there whatever.
No less dismayed, Edmund Ruffin described the exodus of blacks from his son’s plantation, Marlbourne, along with the decision of those who remained to refuse to work. “My former black overseer,