Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [306]
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WHEN THE POSTWAR southern legislatures adopted measures to compel blacks to contract with an employer or face arrest as vagrants, they had merely written into law what the Union Army and the Freedmen’s Bureau had already demanded of the freed slaves. Despite the virtual abrogation of the Black Codes, the contract system remained very much intact. In South Carolina, for example, the Union commander voided the Codes but simultaneously ordered freedmen to contract in the next ten days or leave the plantations on which they lived. The Codes had contained clauses which offended northern standards of justice and fairness. The contract, on the other hand, was a much-venerated instrument of law which enjoyed high standing both in the North and in the South. Embodying as it did a voluntary agreement between two parties, in which the terms and conditions were spelled out, the contract suggested what the Codes had not—impartiality, equality before the law, and the traditional American virtues of give-and-take and compromise.
Federal authorities introduced the contract into wartime labor relations in the South as a way of protecting the newly freed slaves, easing the transition from slave to free labor, and compelling former owners to recognize emancipation and compensate their workers. Drawn up initially by Union Army officers and Freedmen’s Bureau agents, the contract also came to be accepted as the most expedient way to get the blacks back to the fields, to regulate the quality of their labor, and to ensure a stable working force for the highly seasonal agriculture of the South. With often the noblest of intentions, then, the Freedmen’s Bureau, from the moment of its inception, urged the ex-slaves to sign contracts, assured them they would be treated fairly, and warned them of the consequences of noncompliance. “Your contracts were explained to you, and their sacredness impressed upon you, again and again,” the Bureau commissioner for Mississippi told the freedmen. “If you do not have some occupation you will be treated as vagrants, and made to labor on public works.”46
The planters were in such perfect agreement about what they expected of their freed black laborers that they often used the same language in the contracts. By affixing his signature to the agreement, the freedman invariably promised to render “perfect obedience,” to be “prompt and faithful” in the performance of his duties, and to maintain a proper demeanor. On the Heyward plantations in South Carolina, the laborers not only recognized the “lawful authority” of the employer and his agents but agreed to conduct themselves “in such manner as to gain the good will of those to whom we must always look for protection.”47 Few employers went so far as the South Carolina planter who bound his blacks to be “strictly as my slaves” in obeying his instructions. Nor did many think it necessary to adopt the proviso which another planter insisted upon—that the freedmen always address him as “master.” But few would have dissented from the spirit that had inspired such stipulations. It made little difference to H. A. Moore, a South Carolina planter, if his freedmen addressed him and his wife as “Mr. & Mrs. Moore” or simply as “Massa Maurice & Miss Bettie,” but they were always to “speak politely to us.”48
Lest the freedman be in any way tempted to compromise his “perfect obedience,” most contracts barred him from possessing “deadly weapons” or “ardent spirits,” and the employer reserved the right to enter the freedman’s cabin at any time. During working hours, moreover, the laborer agreed to have no visitors and to obtain his employer’s permission before leaving the plantation for any reason (numerous contracts required such permission