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By Root 1307 0

freedmen derived a certain satisfaction from extending a helping hand to those who had once held them in bondage. On the Sea Islands, for example, the success of blacks in working the abandoned plantations made them “objects of attention” to the dispossessed planters, who paid occasional visits to the old places, often to seek material assistance while they waited to reclaim their lands. Some women even went from cabin to cabin among their former slaves, pleading the family’s poverty and eagerly collecting food, silverware, dishes, and a little money. Such donations, a Federal official observed, were made partly out of pity but also to impress upon the owners how well they were managing themselves as free people—“an intense satisfaction if a little boastful.” On one plantation, Jim Cashman welcomed his former master back, offering him the same courtesies and warm hospitality any southern gentleman might extend to a visitor and proudly reciting his achievements.

“The Lord has blessed us since you have been gone. It used to be Mr. Fuller No. 1, now it is Jim Cashman No. 1. Would you like to take a drive through the island Sir? I have a horse and buggy of my own now Sir, and I would like to take you to see my own little lot of land and my new house on it, and I have as fine a crop of cotton Sir, as ever you did see, if you please—and Jim can let you have ten dollars if you want them, Sir.”

The former owner graciously accepted both his hospitality and his assistance. In still another instance, a Georgia freedman amassed some savings from working in a sawmill while at the same time planting cotton in a small lot he had purchased. Upon the death of his former master, he came to the aid of the mistress, who had been left without any land and apparently penniless. He supported her until the woman’s death some two years later. Only when it came to paying the cost of her funeral did local residents balk, saying, “He done his share already,” but her own kind would bury her.74

While serving the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, John William De Forest, a white agent, recalled a former slave who appeared at his office, not to pick up rations for himself, but to make a personal appeal on behalf of the Jacksons, a local white family in dire need of help. Except for the sudden plunge in the fortunes of this family, their plight and incapacity for steady labor, as described by this freedman, resembled the pessimistic white accounts of postwar blacks.

“They’s mighty bad off. He’s in bed, sick—ha’n’t been able to git about this six weeks—and his chil’n’s begging food of my chil’n. They used to own three or four thous’n acres; they was great folks befo’ the war. It’s no use tellin’ them kind to work; they don’t know how to work, and can’t work; somebody’s got to help ’em, Sir. I used to belong to one branch of that family, and so I takes an interest in ’em. I can’t bear to see such folks come down so. It hurts my feelings, Sir.”75

Even compassion had its limits. If some freed slaves manifested sympathy for their broken and impoverished or dead masters and mistresses, there remained those who saw no reason to feel remorse of any kind. “I never had no whitefolks that was good to me,” Annie Hawkins recalled of her bondage in Georgia and Texas. “Old Mistress died soon after the War and we didn’t care either. She didn’t never do nothing to make us love her. We was jest as glad as when old Master died.” On the Sea Islands, the generosity displayed by freedmen and freedwomen went only so far, and they made clear the distinction between serving their former masters and helping them. When a former resident sent word that “she thought some of her Ma’s niggers might come to wait upon her,” none volunteered; instead, some of them went to see her and offered some food, money, and clothes, and the woman in return swallowed her pride and position and agreed to become a dressmaker for the blacks. After the initial gestures of goodwill, moreover, freedmen became concerned lest their generosity be misunderstood and abused. “They say that two come