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By Root 1180 0

on that inevitable day of reckoning. While encamped in the North Carolina countryside, the black regiment to which Henry M. Turner was attached had attracted nearly 700 slaves from the immediate vicinity. “To describe the scene produced by our departure,” he wrote, “would be too solemn, if time and space permitted. Suffice it to say, many were the tears shed, many sorrowful hearts bled.… God alone knows, I was compelled to evade their sight as much as possible, to be relieved of such words as these, ‘Chaplain, what shall I do? where can we go? will you come back?’ ”14

Widespread dismay at the impending departure of the Yankees reflected not only the prevailing uncertainty about freedom but the very real fear that their masters or the entire white community might wreak vengeance on them for any irregular behavior during the brief period of occupation. In a Mississippi town near Vicksburg, a number of slaves had joined with the Yankees to plunder stores and homes, apparently assuming that the soldiers would be around to protect them. But now the troops were moving on, leaving the looters with their newly acquired possessions and all the slaves, regardless of what role they had played in the pillaging, at the mercy of whites who felt betrayed and robbed. With “undisguised amazement,” the blacks watched the soldiers leave, and within hours one of them caught up with the Yankee columns and reported that a number of his people had already been killed. On a plantation near Columbia, South Carolina, the master and mistress waited until the Yankees departed and then vented their anger on a young slave girl who had helped the soldiers to locate the hidden silverware, money, and jewelry. “She’d done wrong I know,” a former slave recalled, “but I hated to see her suffer so awful for it. After de Yankees had gone, de missus and massa had de poor gal hung ’till she die. It was something awful to see.” With similar swiftness, a slaveholder who was reputedly “very good to his Negroes” became so enraged over the behavior of a black that the moment the Yankees left the area he strung him up to the beams of a shed.15

Where slave misbehavior had been particularly “outrageous,” as in northern Louisiana and the adjoining Mississippi counties, the Yankee raiding parties had no sooner returned to their bases than local whites demanded swift and severe retaliation. Not content to leave such matters entirely in the hands of the planters, a newspaper in Alexandria urged that public examples be made of “the ungrateful and vindictive scoundrels” who seized their masters’ property, volunteered information to or acted as guides for the enemy, and “were seen armed or participated in any active demonstration.”

The uppermost thought in every one’s mind before the Yankee invasion of our Parish was, what will be the conduct of the slaves. The most important consideration for all of us now that the invasion has swept by, is what conduct are we to pursue to them? … Some offences have been committed that cannot be atoned for but by death. Others may be safely expiated by the lash or other corporeal punishment. Others may safely be left to the milder discipline of the plantation. The punishment for each proper to its kind, should be inexorably and unflinchingly afflicted.

The newspaper advised whites to scrutinize recent slave conduct and then select a particularly “diabolical” offender for immediate and public punishment. “This will inspire wholesome terror. Its example will be long remembered.” Acknowledging the losses already suffered by some masters and the fear of losing still more, the editor asked the planter class to place the security of the entire white population above any pecuniary considerations: “Here and there the life of a slave forfeited by his crime will entail a loss, but a great and good result will be attained, and those who are instrumental in engraving a wholesome lesson on the minds of this impressionable population will have cause to be thankful hereafter for this suggestion.”16

Requiring little prompting, some slaveholders had