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By Root 1505 0

It required only a minor incident—an order to wash the dishes in a different way—to bring to the surface her feelings about the new arrangements and her new mistress. Planting herself in the middle of the room, facing Etta Stearns, Margaret made it clear that she was “gwine to be cook ob dis ere house, and Ise want no white woman to trouble me. You white folks spose, cause you white, and we all black, that us dunno noffin, and you knows eberyting.” Removing her yellow turban from her head, and waving it in her hands, she declared in a voice loud enough to reach the more than attentive black laborers outside:

Now missus, youse one bery good white woman, come down from de great North, to teach poor we to read, and sich as that; but we done claned dishes all our days, long before ye Yankees heard tell of us, and now does ye suppose I gwine to give up all my rights to ye, just cause youse a Yankee white woman? Does ye know missus that we’s free now? Yas, free we is, and us ant gwine to get down to ye, any more than to them ar rebs.

Upon hearing “this harangue,” the overseer rushed in, seized Margaret by the neck of her dress, and dragged her out unceremoniously, while exclaiming, “Shut up, you damn black wench, or I’ll beat your brains out.” Turning to his employers, he remarked, “Never mind her, Mrs. Stearns; these niggers have no more sense or manners than a mule; but I’ll teach her not to insult white people.” When Margaret subsequently returned to the house, she was “mild as a lamb” and washed the dishes as ordered but when told the next day to clean the cupboards, rebellion flared again. “Black folks don’t work on Sunday,” she announced. Etta Stearns cleaned the cupboards.23

The refusal to take any more “foolishment off of white folks” (native whites and Yankees alike) reflected the determination of many freedmen and freedwomen to stake out a larger degree of personal autonomy for themselves. Families accustomed to servants and absolute obedience often had to look no further than to their own households to Observe the strange, ominous, sometimes shocking manifestations of black freedom. How was any family to know when a long-time black faithful had reached the breaking point, and as a free person no longer felt obliged to contain the rage and resentment within her? “You betta do it yourself,” a Charleston servant suddenly told her mistress after being ordered to scour some pots and kettles. “Ain’t you smarter an me? You think you is—Wy you no scour fo you-self.” On the Pine Hill plantation in Leon County, Florida, Emeline had served as the cook for many years; the white family thought of her as “a great pet,” a favorite of the children, and a faithful worker. On May 20, 1865, around dinnertime, the mistress’s daughter searched for Emeline (“who has always professed to love me dearly”) in her accustomed place in the kitchen but failed to find her. Hastening to Emeline’s house, she found her dressed in her best Sunday clothes, preparing to attend an emancipation picnic sponsored by three regiments of black soldiers stationed nearby. When reminded of her kitchen obligations and the expected guests for dinner, the long-time servant retorted, “Take dem [storeroom and pantry] keys back ter yer Mother an’ tell her I don’t never ’spects ter cook no more, not while I lives—tell her I’se free, bless de Lord! Tell her if she want any dinner she kin cook it herself.” Admittedly “hurt and dazed” by this encounter, the white woman left silently. “They are free, I thought; free to do as they please. Never before had I had a word of impudence from any of our black folks but they are not ours any longer.… I have learned a lesson today: we must not expect too much of ‘free negroes.’ ”24

Although such outbursts from servants were rare, many white families might have preferred them to the more subtle transformation by which their once faithful domestics became unrecognizable men and women. After five months with his freed slaves, a Georgia planter found them “obviously changing in character every day.” Even Frances Butler Leigh, who