Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [246]
Not all the freedmen who remained with their previous owners felt the same degree of attachment or sense of obligation. But no matter how they viewed the old ties, they were all likely to agree on the absence of realistic alternatives. After assessing their chances elsewhere, even some of the more independent-minded freed slaves might opt for certainties and survival. To dwell too long on other possibilities seemed like an exercise in futility. “Us had no education, no land, no mule, no cow, not a pig, nor a chicken, to set up house keeping,” Violet Guntharpe recalled. “De birds had nests in de air, de foxes had holes in de ground, and de fishes had beds under de great falls, but us colored folks was left widout any place to lay our heads.”77 The decision to stay on the same plantation was never an accurate measure of fidelity nor did it necessarily stem from ignorance or an innate docility. But it could serve as a reliable measurement of disillusionment with “freedom.”
De slaves, where I lived, knowed after de war dat they had abundance of dat somethin’ called freedom, what they could not eat, wear, and sleep in. Yes, sir, they soon found out dat freedom ain’t nothin’, ‘less you is got somethin’ to live on and a place to call home. Dis livin’ on liberty is lak young folks livin’ on love after they gits married. It just don’t work. No, sir, it las’ so long and not a bit longer. Don’t tell me! It sho’ don’t hold good when you has to work, or when you gits hongry.
Some years after the death of his master, this former slave finally achieved his ambition of farming on his own—and that made all the difference. “If a poor man wants to enjoy a little freedom, let him go on de farm and work for hisself. It is sho’ worth somethin’ to be boss, and on de farm you can be boss all you want to.”78
Although postwar hardships in the South affected both races, blacks were sufficiently realistic to recognize that the brunt of the suffering would be borne by those without any land or means of support. Jane Johnson, a former South Carolina slave, voiced the sentiments of thousands of freedmen and freedwomen when she recalled the “hard times” after the war as “de worse kind of slavery.”79 If nothing else, then, the old plantation still symbolized for some ex-slaves a minimal but fairly reliable source of daily sustenance, and that kind of security could easily outweigh other considerations. Regardless of the harshness or benevolence of the former master, if he appeared to be reasonably solvent and provided his blacks with their immediate needs, that might be reason enough to stay with him, at least for a time. Cecelia Chappel, a former Tennessee slave, had little reason to feel any affection for her master and mistress (they had whipped her often and she still had the scars to prove it), but she remained with them for a number of years after emancipation. Despite their uneven temperament, she would recall, “I alius had good clothes en good food en I didn’ know how I’d git dem atter I lef’.” Nor did Daniel Lucas, who had worked for a reputedly harsh master and overseer, choose to join the other slaves on the plantation who quickly scattered after emancipation. “He pays me ten dollars every month, gives me board and my sleeping place just like always, and when I gets sick there he is with the herb medicine for my ailment and I is well again.” Like many former slaves who stayed, he finally left the plantation only when he married.80
What the freedmen saw and heard of those who left immediately after emancipation tended to reinforce the decision many had made to stay where they were. The stragglers who came begging for food, the sight of wagons loaded with the coffins of cholera and smallpox victims, the reports of new murders and drownings, and the stories of migrants subsisting on cornmeal mush, salt water, and pickled horsemeat, using