Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [14]
To have believed anything less would have been not only impolitic but subversive of the very institution on which the Confederacy claimed to rest. The “corner-stone” of the new government, affirmed Vice-President Alexander Stephens in March 1861, “rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.” Wherever he traveled in the South, an English visitor observed in 1861, he found absolute confidence that this subordination would be maintained. To resolve any doubts, a slaveholder might choose to parade some of his more obsequious specimens before the curious visitor, favor them with some humorous and familiar remarks, and then ply them with the obvious questions. In making his response, the slave usually had little difficulty in discerning what was expected of him. “Are you happy?” the slave is asked. “Yas, sar,” he replies without hesitation. “Show how you’re happy,” the slaveholder demands. As if he had acted out this scenario many times before, the slave rubs his stomach and grins with delight, “Yummy! yummy! plenty belly full!” and the satisfied slaveholder turns to the visitor and remarks, “That’s what I call a real happy feelosophical chap. I guess you’ve got a lot in your country can’t pat their stomachs and say, ‘yummy, yummy, plenty belly full!’ ”30
With few exceptions, the southern press expounded this kind of confidence, secure in the belief that “there was never a period in the history of the country when there was more perfect order and quiet among the servile classes.” In the Confederate Congress, a Virginian boasted that the slaves’ loyalty was “never more conspicuous, their obedience never more childlike.” In the eyes of some slaveholders, of course, that observation might have prompted more alarm than relief. Rather than face up to such implications, however, the press and southern leaders made the most out of conspicuous examples of black support for the Confederacy, dutifully parading every such act as additional testimony to the beneficence of slavery and the attachment of slaves to their “white folks.” When a slave became the first subscriber to the Confederate war loan in Port Gibson, Mississippi, for example, the local newspaper exulted: “The feeling at the South can be learned from this little incident. The negroes are ready to fight for their people, and they are ready to give money as well as their lives to the cause of their masters.”31
If slaves deemed it politic to proffer their support and services, particularly in the early stages of the war, free blacks moved with an even greater sense of urgency to protest their loyalty and allay the suspicions of a white society which had always found them to be an anomaly and source of danger. In the decade preceding the outbreak of war, the more than 182,000 free blacks had faced growing harassment, increased surveillance, and demands for still further restrictions on their freedom. To identify with the white community in this time of crisis might hopefully serve to neutralize that opposition and improve their precarious position in southern society. In New Orleans and Charleston, where small colored elites had established churches, schools, and benevolent associations, the efforts to identify with whites were more conspicuous, their aloofness from the slaves was more pronounced, and their