Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [298]
The sheer novelty of free black labor introduced complexities and nuances into the issues that traditionally separated employers and workers. The proposed compensation mattered less to some freedmen than what form it would take (crop shares or cash), when it would be paid (monthly or after completion of the crop), and the often arbitrary nature of the employer’s deductions (for the provisions he supplied and the fines he levied for negligent work). Of equally vital concern to the freedman might be the kinds of crops he could now grow (the old staples or food), the quality of the provisions he received, the availability of schools for his children, the right to unrestricted travel, and freedom from verbal and physical abuse. Inseparable from all these considerations, and for many the most crucial, was the degree of personal autonomy he could now enjoy.22 The only way to keep the ex-slaves on the plantations without compromising their freedom, the New Orleans Tribune boldly suggested, was not simply to compensate them but to make them full partners in the management and in the crop yields; freedom implied the abolition of both “slaves” and “masters,” the “democratization” of the plantations, and the opportunity for blacks to control their own crops, lands, and lives. Unless “the necessary step” was taken to free the workingman, the newspaper concluded, emancipation would remain “a mockery and a sham.” By “the necessary step,” the editor envisioned the free colored community of New Orleans investing their money in land and managing that land in partnership with the former slaves, who would perform the labor.23
Early in the postwar period, at least, that ultimate question of who controlled the crops and the lands remained unresolved in the minds of many freedmen. After noting that planters now intended to pay their ex-slaves with crop shares, Henry M. Turner, the outspoken black clergyman, refused to applaud their action; instead, he dismissed the proposal as an “ingenious trickery … designed to keep the old master fat doing nothing, making the Yankees believe ‘dis old nigga no wants to leave massa,’ and for the purpose of fizzling them out of all their claims upon the real estate.” Rather than settle for compensation in wages or shares, the freedmen in some areas were already insisting that the crops they had planted in 1865, if not the land itself, rightfully belonged to them. “Some of them,” wrote the police chief in Duplin County, North Carolina, “are declaring they intend to have lands, even if they shed blood to obtain them. Some of them are demanding all of the crop they have raised on the former master’s lands, and in some cases, so obstinate are they in these demands, that I have had to arrest them before they would come to terms.”24
With emancipation, many former slaves obviously sensed a new power and evinced a determination to test it. The mere offer of compensation would not assure the employers of a stable and contented labor force. To pay them for their labor, after all, did not resolve all fundamental questions about authority, autonomy, and control of the land. Whether provoked by a wage dispute or some other grievance, freedmen continued to leave the old places, sometimes en masse. Still more remained and worked indifferently, reserving any enthusiasm they might have for their own individual garden plots. Looking at those small gardens, which they had tended and cherished as slaves, many freedmen had heard enough to imagine them expanded into forty-acre farms. That remained the most exciting prospect of all, exceeding in importance and in emotional investment any question of wages.
Shortly after the fall of Richmond, the scene acted out on the nearby Rosewood plantation posed