Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [126]
Before setting out to make a new life for himself, William Colbert, a former Alabama slave, looked back for a last time at the old plantation on which he had spent more than twenty years. He had no reason to regret his decision to leave. The bondage he had endured had been harsh, reflecting the temperament of a master who had never hesitated to whip his slaves severely. “All de niggers ’roun’ hated to be bought by him kaze he wuz so mean,” Colbert recalled. “When he wuz too tired to whup us he had de overseer do it; and de overseer wuz meaner dan de massa.” The arrival of the Yankees had not materially affected their lives. After a few days of looting, the soldiers had suddenly left “an’ we neber seed ’em since.” After the war, the blacks only gradually left and the plantation slowly deteriorated. Many years later, reflecting on his experience, Colbert captured with particular vividness the ambivalence that had necessarily characterized a slave’s attachment to his master. His recollections were tinged neither with romantic nostalgia nor with abject hatred. Whatever bitterness he still felt may have been dissipated both by the passage of time and by the knowledge that Jim Hodison, his former master, had come to learn in his own way the dimensions of human tragedy. And that was an experience William Colbert could easily share with him.
De massa had three boys to go to war, but dere wuzn’t one to come home. All the chillun he had wuz killed. Massa, he los’ all his money and de house soon begin droppin’ away to nothin’. Us niggers one by one lef de ole place and de las’ time I seed de home plantation I wuz a standin’ on a hill. I looked back on it for de las’ time through a patch of scrub pines and it look’ so lonely. Dere warn’t but one person in sight, de massa. He was a-settin’ in a wicker chair in de yard lookin’ out ober a small field of cotton and cawn. Dere wuz fo’ crosses in de graveyard in de side lawn where he wuz a-settin’. De fo’th one wuz his wife. I lost my ole woman too 37 years ago, and all dis time, I’s been a carrin’ on like de massa—all alone.123
After the war, Savilla Burrell left the plantation near Jackson’s Creek, South Carolina, on which she had been raised as a slave. Not until many years later did she return to visit her old master, Tom Still, in his final days. Sitting there by his side, trying to keep the flies off him, she could clearly see the lines of sorrow “plowed on dat old face” and she recalled that time when he had looked so impressive as a captain in the Confederate cavalry. “It come into my ’membrance de song of Moses: ‘de Lord had triumphed glorily and de hoss and his rider have been throwed into de sea.’ ”124
Chapter Four
SLAVES NO MORE
Slavery chain done broke at last!
Broke at last! Broke at last!
Slavery chain done broke at last!
Gonna praise God till I die!
Way up in that valley,
Pray-in’ on my knees,
Tell-in’ God a-bout my troubles,
And to help me if He please.
I did tell him how I suffer,
In the dungeon and the chain;
And the days I went with head bowed down,
An’ my broken flesh and pain.
I did know my Jesus heard me,
’Cause the spirit spoke to me,
An’ said, “Rise, my chile, your children
An’ you too shall be free.”
I done ’p’int one mighty captain
For to marshal all my hosts;
An’ to bring my bleeding ones to me,
An’ not one shall be lost.
Now no more weary trav’lin’,
’Cause my Jesus set me free,
An’ there’s no more auction block for me
Since He give me liberty.1
ON THE NIGHT of April 2, 1865, Confederate troops abandoned Richmond. The sudden decision caught Robert Lumpkin, the well-known dealer in slaves, with a recently acquired shipment which he had not yet managed to sell. Desperately, he tried to remove them by the same train that would