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By Root 1381 0

of manner” surprised and hurt Edward Barnwell Heyward “most of all” when he arrived to take over the Combahee rice plantations in South Carolina he had only recently inherited from his father. Only a year before, he had seen these people at the plantation to which they had been removed during the war, and they had seemed faithful and content. But now, as he wrote his wife, “Oh! what a change. It would kill my Father and worries me more than I expected or rather the condition of the Negroes on that place is worse than I expected. It is very evident they are disappointed at my coming there. They were in hopes of … having the place to themselves.” Not only did they refuse at first to come out of their cabins but when they did deign to speak with him, the old deference had given way to a provoking familiarity. “If I could meet with impudence, accompanied with intelligence,” Heyward told his wife, “it would not be so bad but to find the brutish rice field hands familiar, is perfectly disgusting. I have seen nothing like it before …”81

Rather than manifest any feelings of remorse or hatred for their former masters, many of the newly freed slaves would have been perfectly content never to see them again. Nowhere was this feeling more pervasive, of course, than on those lands they had been working and claiming as their own. The night before Captain Thomas Pinckney returned to El Dorado, his plantation fronting the Santee River in South Carolina, he stayed at the home of a neighbor who had overseen the property in his absence. His report was less than reassuring. “Your negroes sacked your house, stripped it of furniture, bric-a-brac, heirlooms, and divided these among themselves. They got it into their heads that the property of whites belongs to them; and went about taking possession with utmost determination and insolence. Nearly all houses here have been served the same way.” Proceeding to his plantation the next day, Pinckney could immediately sense how much the times had changed. Where he had once been welcomed by crowds of slaves shouting, “Howdy do, Marster! Howdy do, Boss!” only silence now greeted him. None of his former slaves was in sight. In the house, he found a solitary servant, and she seemed pleased to see him. But she claimed to know nothing about where the others had hidden themselves. The dinner hour passed but still none of the blacks ventured forward. Finally, the exasperated planter told his servant that he would come back in the morning and expected to see every one of his former slaves.

When Pinckney returned, he was armed. Since he had often carried a gun as a huntsman, he thought he could do so now “without betraying distrust” or causing any undue alarm among his men. But even as he armed himself, he tried to deny the necessity for doing so.

Indeed, I felt no fear or distrust; these were my own servants, between whom and myself the kindest feelings had always existed. They had been carefully and conscientiously trained by my parents; I had grown up with some of them. They had been glad to see me from the time that, as a little boy, I accompanied my mother when she made Saturday afternoon rounds of the quarters, carrying a bowl of sugar, and followed by her little handmaidens bearing other things coloured people liked. At every cabin that she found swept and cleaned, she left a present as an encouragement to tidiness. I could not realise a need of going protected among my own people, whom I could only remember as respectful, happy and affectionate.

After telling the servant to summon the men, he waited for them under the trees. Slowly, they began to appear, and Pinckney could see only sullen and defiant faces, none of them showing the slightest trace of that “old-time cordiality.” No longer, as he quickly noted, did they address him as “Marster” but instead made a point of referring to him as “you” or “Cap’n.” That was not all he noticed. His former slaves, too, had brought their guns. “Men, I know you are free,” he told them. “I do not wish to interfere with your freedom. But I want my old hands