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By Root 1342 0

the elderly rice planter who had taken up residence in Charleston. Disgusted with the familiarity, deficiencies, and insolence of the black waiters, he gave up boarding at a local hotel and resolved to cook his own meals. Although he kept an old Irish chambermaid to tidy his room, Heyward learned to do his own shopping, washing, and cooking. After a month, he claimed “perfect success” and hailed his achievement as a personal victory. “A part of the satisfaction,” he confessed, “is, that I am perfectly independent of having Negroes about me; if I cannot have them as they used to be, I have no desire to see them except in the field.”43

Few took up the challenge more diligently than the Andrews family in Washington, Georgia. Of the twenty-five servants who had formerly been their slaves, only five remained, and two of these were too ill to work. Young Eliza Andrews found herself cleaning the downstairs with her sister, while her mother washed the dishes. At first, it all seemed quite strange. “It is very different from having a servant always at hand to attend to your smallest need,” Miss Andrews confided to her journal, “but I can’t say that I altogether regret the change; in fact, I had a very merry time over my work.” To this proud young Georgia woman, the menial tasks she now performed were nothing less than a challenge to her race and sex.

I don’t think I shall mind working at all when I get used to it. Everybody else is doing housework, and it is so funny to compare our experiences. Father says this is what has made the Anglo-Saxon race great; they are not afraid of work, and when put to the test, never shirk anything that they know has got to be done, no matter how disagreeable.44

Whatever the enthusiasm that marked these work experiences, few white men or women who had once owned slaves could overcome the feeling that they were demeaning themselves in performing the tasks thought to be fit only for black hands. Having reassured herself that southern white womanhood had more than met the test, Eliza Andrews wondered why young ladies like herself should be placed in the predicament of performing labor that was clearly unworthy of them.

[I]t does seem to me a waste of time for people who are capable of doing something better to spend their time sweeping and dusting while scores of lazy negroes that are fit for nothing else are lying around idle. Dr. Calhoun suggested that it would be a good idea to import some of those man-apes from Africa and teach them to take the place of the negroes, but Henry said that just as soon as we had got them tamed, and taught them to be of some use, those crazy fanatics at the North would insist on coming down here to emancipate them.45

If some white women initially derived satisfaction from domestic labor, steady exposure to that kind of work took its inevitable toll, not only in physical and mental exhaustion but in frayed temperaments. After failing to iron some items properly, Julia LeGrand confessed to feeling “anything but spiritual-minded. I got angry with my irons which would smut my muslins, and then got angry with myself for having been angry—finally divided the blame, giving a part to Julie Ann for running away and leaving me to do her work …” The more the women worked, the more they came to resent these new demands on their time and the less able they were to enjoy the usual pastimes of “ladies.” When Eliza Andrews attended the “charming” party to which she had been invited, she found herself “too tired” to enjoy or partake of the dancing. And when she retired that night, she was too exhausted to sleep, her legs “ached as if they had been in the stocks,” and she wondered how long she could maintain this grueling pace. “[W]hen I become more accustomed to hard work, I hope it won’t be so bad. I think it is an advantage to clean up the house ourselves, sometimes, for we do it so much better than the negroes.” The next few days, however, hardly reassured her. The morning after the party, Eliza arose long before her accustomed hour and helped to clean the house. When guests