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By Root 1181 0

freed slaves were apt to have some different notions about how matters now stood. Although as slaves they had been subject to the arbitrary powers and caprice of their owners, even then many of them had managed to establish a line of toleration beyond which few masters or overseers might wish to move; and as freedmen, they sought to achieve a sense of personal autonomy while widening the area of maneuverability. No matter how many of them still worked for the same “white folks” and still depended on white men for support and protection, few were unaffected by the change in their legal status. Even if the aspiration of ex-slaves to eradicate the old dependency was but barely realized, the vast majority of them, according to the testimony of two black leaders in July 1865, “knew pretty well in what respects their present differed from their former situation. They all knew they were their own men.”6

The crucial difference could not be measured by the amount of compensation they now received but involved a different perception of themselves and their relationship to whites. The freedmen on the Sneed plantation, near Austin, Texas, expressed no desire to leave the place on which they had labored as slaves but they had every intention of moving out of their slave quarters. On the plantation of Joseph Glover in South Carolina, a slave named Abraham had served with considerable distinction during the war, managing the place in his master’s absence and even berating “the bad behaviour of some of the people.” With the advent of freedom, Abraham informed his former master that he neither wished nor intended to leave but would await his return “to hear what proposal you may make.” No less ready to assert her new status was a black woman named Rose, who worked as a servant on a plantation in Louisiana and also performed the duties of midwife, attending both the slaves and several “white ladies” in the neighborhood. For assisting the white women, she had been paid ten dollars each time, half of which her mistress had retained. With freedom, her new employer promised her the entire ten dollars. “Didn’t you say the black people are free?” she asked him. When he agreed, she inquired, “White people are free, too, ain’t they?” When he again replied in the affirmative, Rose both asked and demanded, “Then why shouldn’t you pay me ten dollars every time I ’tend upon the black folks on the plantation?” None of these instances constituted startling or even dramatic manifestations of independence, any more than the action of some Alabama slaves who chose to stay with “massa” but demanded and secured the right to celebrate each year the anniversary of their freedom. (“Every 19th of June he would let us clean off a place and fix a platform and have dancing and eating out there in the field.”) But in each case, if only symbolically, the freedmen had made their point; they had acted on their freedom, they had asserted their individual worth, and they had no doubt derived considerable personal satisfaction and pride from doing so.7

To remain on the same farm or plantation, to work for the old master or for any white man, was not necessarily to forfeit, postpone, or compromise their freedom. No matter how each ex-slave chose to express this fact, many of them insisted that it be understood and acknowledged, even at the cost of severing the relationship altogether. “Whose servant are you?” the Reverend John Hamilton Cornish, an Episcopalian minister in Aiken, South Carolina, demanded to know of his former slave after reprimanding her for using profane language in his presence. “My own servant,” she replied. Seeking clarification, he asked her if she intended to remain with him. “I am willing to live with you as I have always done, & know you will pay me proper wages,” she replied. Not satisfied with that answer, the minister insisted, “If you remain with me, you will be my servant, & conduct yourself accordingly, & will receive just what you have been accustomed to receive. Nothing more.” If this had been calculated to impress her with his undiminished