Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [303]
Resilient though they were, the hopes of the freedmen could withstand only so many shocks. When the governor of Florida told them, “The President will not give you one foot of land, nor a mule, nor a hog, nor a cow, nor even a knife or fork or spoon,” he could be dismissed as a mouthpiece of planters who stood to lose the most from a confiscation scheme. When a Bureau officer told some Georgia blacks essentially the same thing, one disbelieving freedman remarked, “Dat’s no Yank; dat just some reb dey dressed in blue clothes and brought him here to lie to us.” But the denials began to assume a substance that could no longer be ignored. On May 29, 1865, President Andrew Johnson announced his Proclamation of Amnesty, whereby most former Confederates were to be pardoned and recover any of their lands which might have been confiscated or occupied. That had to be taken seriously—as seriously as the Federal officers who now prepared to implement the order. In some communities, the news coincided with a rumor, said to have been circulated by planters, that the President had revoked the Emancipation Proclamation. To many freedmen, contemplating what would happen to the lands they had worked and expected to own, that was no rumor at all. “Amnesty for the persons, no amnesty for the property,” the New Orleans Tribune cried. “It is enough for the republic to spare the life of the rebels—without restoring to them their plantations and palaces.” Under Johnson’s magnanimous pardoning policy, any faint hope of a land division collapsed, along with the promising wartime precedents. Rather than confirm the settlers in possession of the land they had cultivated and on which they had erected their homes, the government now proposed to return the plantations to those for whom they had previously labored as slaves. Not satisfied with having their lands returned, some of the owners displayed their own brands of “insolence” and “ingratitude” by claiming damages for any alterations made by the black settlers and by suing them for “back rents” for the use of the land.38
The freedmen found themselves incredulous at this apparent betrayal of expectations and trust. At first, some of them could not believe or fully grasp the implications of the restoration. When a Bureau officer addressed the freedmen in one South Carolina community, the blacks came in their best clothes and in high spirits, obviously expecting a very different kind of announcement. “If the general don’t tell them cuffees they’re to have their share o’ our land and hosses and everything else,” a local planter warned, “you’ll see a hell of a row today.” No “row” took place but the faces of the assembled freedmen, after being told there would be no land division, said it all. The more Federal officers tried to explain and defend the decision, the less sense it made to the black audiences and the less able they were to contain their rage. “Damn such freedom as that,” a Georgia black declared after a Bureau agent had addressed them.39
Where substantial numbers of freedmen had settled on abandoned lands, as in the Sea Islands, the disappointment was bound to be felt most keenly. Appreciating that fact, General O. O. Howard, who headed the Freedmen’s Bureau and may have been second only to Lincoln in the esteem of the ex-slaves, decided to pay a personal visit to Edisto Island to inform the settlers that they must give up the lands they had been cultivating as their own. Perhaps only Howard could possibly make them