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By Root 1270 0

already acted in this spirit. In Rapides Parish, which included the town of Alexandria, John H. Ransdell moved very quickly to reassert his authority after the Yankees departed. “Things are just now beginning to work right,” he informed his absentee neighbor, Governor Thomas O. Moore. “The negroes hated awfully to go to work again. Several have been shot and probably more will have to be.” Less than a month later, he concurred with the governor that the recent Yankee raids had left him thoroughly disillusioned with the blacks. Even when two of the governor’s runaways returned, expressing pleasure at having escaped from the Yankees, Ransdell doubted their story and suspected “deep laid villany at the bottom of it.” In neighboring Mississippi, James Alcorn, a planter in Coahoma County, thought the recent Union raids had “thoroughly demoralized” the slaves, rendering them “no longer of any practical value to this vicinity.” Less than a month later, he informed his wife: “Hadley, Anthony & Bill are very faithful, about ten days since I whipped several in the field house including your filthy, lazy Margaret; it helped them greatly.”17

Nearly a year elapsed before the Union Army returned to these regions, and this time some of the slaves insisted that they be permitted to accompany the soldiers rather than be left behind. Near Alexandria, an elderly slave told a Union correspondent, “Oh, master! since you was here last, we have had dreadful times.” Several other slaves who had gathered around him corroborated his narration of a reign of terror.

We seen stars in the day time. They treated us dreadful bad. They beat us, and they hung us, and starved us.… Why, the day after you left, they jist had us all out in a row and told us they was going to shoot us, and they did hang two of us; and Mr. Pierce, the overseer, knocked one with a fence rail, and he died next day. Oh, Master! we seen stars in de day time. And now we going with you, we go back no mo’!18

Even if such stories were exaggerated for northern consumption, the fact remains that many slaves realistically perceived the degree to which their “freedom” rested on a Yankee presence. Once the troops moved on, despite the assurances of Union officers and regardless of how exemplary black behavior might have been, the status and conditions of labor of the slaves tended in many regions to revert back to what they had been, sometimes with painful consequences for those who insisted upon asserting their freedom or who were thought to have been “spoiled” by the Yankees. “The negroes’ freedom was brought to a close to-day,” a South Carolina white woman reported with relief, noting that as soon as the Yankees moved on, Confederate “scouts” assembled the slaves, told them the Union soldiers had no right to free them, and advised them to return to their usual tasks. Many former slaves recalled precisely that experience. “They tol’ us we were free,” an ex-North Carolina slave testified about the Yankees, but the master “would get cruel to the slaves if they acted like they were free.” Although recognizing that he was free, a former Alabama slave knew better than to claim that freedom in the presence of his master. “Didn’t do to say you was free. When de war was over if a nigger say he was free, dey shot him down. I didn’t say anythin’, but one day I run away.” After Confederate troops briefly reoccupied several parishes in southern Louisiana, James Walkinshaw, an overseer, quickly made it clear to the blacks he supervised that the Yankee invasion had changed nothing. “Don’t contradict me,” he shouted at a slave who protested his order to work harder. “I don’t allow anybody white or black to do that; if you contradict me again, I’ll cut your heart out; the Yankees have spoiled you Niggers but I’ll be even with you.” Apparently the verbal reprimand was not sufficient, for the overseer terminated the incident by stabbing the “spoiled” slave in the breast.19

The racial tensions exacerbated by black behavior during the Yankee invasion persisted long after the troops had moved elsewhere.