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But if whites quickly interpreted the work habits of their former slaves as conclusive proof of racial degeneration, the newly freed black workers chose to view their introduction to free labor quite differently. What many planters defined as a slowdown was often the freedmen’s refusal to work up to their previous exploitative level. And what many planters viewed as an unwillingness to work and rebellious behavior proved in some instances to be nothing more than a well-earned, albeit brief respite from the rigorous plantation routines that had characterized the freedmen’s previous lives. “No rest, massa, all work, all de time; plenty to eat, but no rest, no repose,” was the way an elderly South Carolina freedman described his life as a slave; he was much happier now, he added, if only for the “chance for [a] little comfort.” How could the planter class, moreover, deny to their former slaves a privilege they had flaunted so often in their presence? If there were “lazy” and “improvident” freedmen, a black clergyman declared, they were simply modeling themselves after the masters and mistresses they had observed for so many years. “They never worked for their own living,” he said of the planters, “and hence their slaves imitate their former owners. Who is to blame?” Slavery itself, another observer noted, had taught that a gentleman was a person who lived without working. “Is it wonderful,” he then asked, “that some of the negroes, who want now to be gentlemen, should have thought of trying this as the easiest way?”20

Even if few ex-slaves had the wherewithal to aspire to be “gentlemen,” they did have certain strong convictions about the perquisites of their new status. What was freedom all about if not the chance to work less than they had as slaves and to have more leisure time for themselves, their families, and their garden plots? As one freedwoman in South Carolina remarked, she had not yet experienced any freedom, for she was working just as hard as ever. When pressed to work harder, a Georgia freedman “indignantly” inquired of his new employer, who happened to be a Northerner, “what the use of being free was, if he had to work harder than when he was a slave.” More often than not, the slowdown was a way for newly freed black men and women to dramatize to themselves the distinction between their former and present positions—to know “de feel of bein’ free.” The inclination to work at their own pace also reflected for many ex-slaves the limited possibilities for achievement as landless agricultural laborers—if freedom could not mean “getting ahead,” it could at the very least mean not working hard.21

While planters preferred to compare how many bales of cotton were produced under slavery and under freedom, their former slaves searched for ways to break away from a dependency and a day-to-day routine that seemed all too familiar. “Missus done keep me in slave times totin’ milk, an’ pickin’ cotton, an’ now de black ’uns is free, … ’pears like we hev tu tote all de milk, an’ pick de cotton, an’ work jes’ de same.”22 Within the closer confinement and supervision of the households, where it proved difficult for blacks to reconcile their new freedom with the demands of domestic service, the quest for personal autonomy and individual worth often took on an even greater urgency than in the fields.

2

AFTER THE WAR, Charles and Etta Stearns, both of them “uncompromising” abolitionists, came to the South, where they acquired ownership of a plantation in Columbia County, Georgia. The name they gave to their place, “Hope On Hope Ever Plantation,” signified their optimism about the transition to free black labor. Within days after their arrival, Etta began to reorder the household. That was when the trouble began. Margaret, the cook, was a woman of considerable independence and sensitivity, outspoken on behalf of her rights and prerogatives, and determined that no person should infringe upon them without her consent.