• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1315 0

to be deprived of the necessary disciplinary powers, to be subject to their “insolence,” to be forced to endure their work slowdowns and other manifestations of independence, to be compelled to deal with them as equals was to demand too much, even as the price of military defeat. “We can’t feel towards them as you do,” a young South Carolina planter tried to explain to a northern visitor. “I suppose we ought to, but ’t is n’t possible for us. They’ve always been our owned servants, and we’ve been used to having them mind us without a word of objection, and we can’t bear anything else from them now. If that’s wrong, we’re to be pitied sooner than blamed, for it’s something we can’t help.” Although discouraged by the postwar conduct of his former slaves, he could not conceive of doing without them. “I never did a day’s work in my life, and don’t know how to begin.”53

Realizing how dependent they remained on black labor, those who had once held slaves concluded that the freed blacks needed them more urgently now than ever before. To make this absolutely clear, the planter class devised a rationale as familiar and elaborate as the argument they had used to justify slavery. What they wished to demonstrate, however, seemed so obvious to them as to require little proof—that the Negro as a free person could neither survive nor be a serviceable worker unless he remained under their care and protection. “The Negro stands as much in need of a master to guide him as a child does,” a Virginia planter explained. “When I look at my servants, I feel weighing upon me all the responsibilities of a parent.… The Negro will always need the care of someone superior to him, and unless in one form or another it is extended to him, the race will first become pauper and then disappear.” Along similar lines, the provisional governor of South Carolina, no doubt with his conquerors in mind, asked the obvious question: “If all the children in New York City were turned loose to provide for themselves, how many would live, prosper, and do well? The negroes are as improvident as children, and require the guardian protection of some one almost as much as they do.”54

To retain the laborers he needed so badly, “old massa” once again cast himself in the familiar role of the beneficent protector, exercising a parental and providential vigilance over a helpless, childlike, and easily misled race. He could do no less for those who had been accustomed to look to him for direction and sustenance. “They are the descendants in a great degree of the woman who nursed me,” a Maryland congressman declared. “They … look upon me as their protector. I am in truth their only friend. Am I to turn them off as outcasts on the world? I have been my whole life engaged in their protection. I have an affection for them, and have a duty to perform for them.… They have labored for me, it is true, but they have in turn received from me quite as much as they have given me.” Consistent with their view that slavery had been the best possible condition for a people unable to look after themselves, the former masters viewed emancipation as an unfortunate if not tragic consequence of the war. But the Negro, they emphasized, should not be held responsible. “It is not their fault they are free,” the new governor of Florida asserted; “they had nothing to do with it; that was brought about by ‘the results and operations of the war.’ ”55

Although revealing an abysmal ignorance of black attitudes and actions, the argument that Negroes had nothing to do with their freedom would be repeated in many different forms, the principle itself would be written into several of the new state constitutions, and it reflected an abiding faith in the black laborer if only left in the hands of those who knew him best. “The negro isn’t to blame for his freedom,” a Georgia planter told a northern reporter. “He served us faithfully all through the war, and I sincerely believe very few planters have any desire to see him injured. We know his ways; and if you give us time, I think we shall be able to get him back