Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [281]
If the Black Codes had not been the edicts of legislatures dominated by ex-Confederate leaders, they might not have suffered the fate of nullification. The problem lay not so much in specific provisions as in what the total product came to symbolize to the victorious North—white southern intransigence and unrepentance in the face of military defeat. But the suspension of the Codes in no way diminished the need to reactivate and control black labor. Almost every Federal official recognized that necessity, and Union commanders moved quickly to expel former plantation hands from the towns and cities, to comply with the requests of planters to force their blacks to work, and to punish freedmen for disobedience, theft, vagrancy, and erratic labor.90 “Their idea of freedom,” the provost marshal of Bolivar County, Mississippi, said of the recently freed slaves, “is that they are under no control; can work when they please, and go where they wish.… It is my desire to apply the Punishments used in the Army of the United States, for offences of the Negroes, and to make them do their duty.” Empowered to settle disputes between employers and laborers, the provost marshals invariably sustained the authority of the planters. In Louisiana, for example, plantation laborers testified to the hopelessness of appealing any grievances they might have to the nearest Federal official:
Q. Have you any white friend, in your parish, who will support your claims or take your defense?
A. We have no white friends there.
Q. Have you any colored friend who could do so?
A. No colored man has any thing to say; none has any influence.
Q. Is not the Provost Marshal a protector for your people?
A. Whenever a new Provost Marshal comes he gives us justice for a fortnight or so; then he becomes acquainted with planters, takes dinners with them, receives presents; and then we no longer have any rights, or very little.91
If Union officers eschewed the whip as an instrument of slavery, they did not hesitate to employ familiar military punishments to deal with “disorderly” blacks. “What’s good enough for soldiers is good enough for Niggers,” a sergeant told a Florida woman who had expressed shock over seeing her “negligent” servant hung up by the thumbs. Upon witnessing a similar punishment meted out to two laborers he had reported for loitering on the job, a South Carolina planter heard them plead to be flogged instead. But if Yankee “justice” dismayed or surprised some native whites, a Mississippi hotelkeeper marveled at the way the local provost marshal had dealt with a “sassy” black who refused to work. “We’ve got a Provo’ in our town,” he boasted, “that settles their hash mighty quick. He’s a downright high-toned man, that Provo’, if he is a Yankee.… He tucked him [the black] up, guv him twenty lashes, and rubbed him down right smart with salt, for having no visible means of support.” That evening, the black victim returned quite willingly to his job.92
Since the early days of occupation, Federal authorities had shared with planters a concern over how to keep the ex-slaves in the fields and impress upon them the necessity of labor. “The Yankees preach nothing but cotton, cotton,” a Sea Islands slave exclaimed, voicing the dismay of many blacks over how quickly their liberators returned them to the familiar routines. Soon after the troops occupied a region, Union officers confronted the problem of what to do with the “contrabands” pouring into their camps. Although many of them were conscripted for military service and labor, the vast majority found themselves working on abandoned and confiscated plantations. The Federal government supervised some of these plantations,