Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [151]
In observing the black regiment he commanded, almost all of them former slaves, Colonel Higginson expressed surprise over the absence of any feelings of affection or revenge toward their former masters and mistresses. On one occasion, during a raid in Florida, a black sergeant had pointed out to him the spot where whites had hanged his brother for leading a band of runaway slaves. What impressed Higginson was the sergeant’s remarkable composure and self-control as he related the story. “He spoke of it as a historic matter,” Higginson recalled, “without any bearing on the present issue.” None of his men, he noticed, ever spoke nostalgically about slavery times but neither did they evince in his presenee any desire to seek a violent revenge on their former owners. Rather, they tended in their conversations to discriminate between various types of slaveholders, with some of them claiming to have had “kind” owners who had bestowed occasional favors upon them. But that in no way lessened their hatred of the institution of slavery. “It was not the individuals,” wrote Higginson, “but the ownership, of which they complained. That they saw to be a wrong which no special kindnesses could right.”69
But if Higginson detected no mood of vengeance, other whites were less certain. While the North engaged in a furious debate over what to do with the South and the Confederate leaders, more than one curious northern visitor thought to ask the freedmen they encountered what kind of punishment should be meted out to their former masters. The question itself made many blacks visibly uncomfortable, as though torn between what they really felt and what they thought the white reporters wanted to hear. Not being certain, many chose obfuscation. Although a few openly declared that hanging would be “too good” for their masters, the general response was that the Yankees should settle this question. If any slaveholders were to be punished, few if any of their former slaves wished to be around for the event, either to carry it out or to witness it. The same ex-slave who thought hanging was “too good” for his master rejected the invitation (no doubt made in jest) of a Union officer to inflict the punishment himself. “Oh, no, can’t do it,” he replied, “can’t do it—can’t see massa suffer. Don’t want to see him suffer.” With similar expressions of horror, a group of South Carolina blacks responded to a Yankee soldier who had promised to return their master to them for any action they deemed appropriate.
“Oh! don’t massa, don’t bring him here; we no want to see him nebber more,” shouted a chorus of women.
“But what shall we do with him?”
“Do what you please,” said the chorus.
“Shall we hang him?”
“If you want, massa”—somewhat thoughtfully.
“But shall we bring him here and hang him?”
Chorus—much excited and shriller than ever—“no, no, don’t fetch him here, we no want to see him nebber more again.”
Since these freedmen were also occupying and working the land of their absent master, their reaction made considerable sense.70
As for punishing Confederate leaders, blacks may have sung about hanging Jeff Davis to a crab-apple tree but a black preacher came closer to capturing popular feelings: “O Lord, shake Jeff Davis ober de mouf ob Hell, but O Lord, doan’ drap him in!” Except for the confiscation of land, most freedmen saw little to gain by the punishment of ex-Confederate leaders; on the contrary, some feared that an aroused white populace would surely visit its rage on the most vulnerable targets—the newly freed slaves. Gertrude Thomas, a white resident of Augusta, Georgia, had only to watch the cheering blacks running down the street, all of them eager for a glimpse of Jefferson Davis as a prisoner, to wish at that moment she could have destroyed the whole motley