Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [46]
Fearing imminent removal or sale, some slaves chose to escape. The moment her master ordered all the house servants into wagons, a Virginia slave went into hiding. Thomas Pritchard, a carpenter, disappeared while the master and a slave broker were discussing the terms of his sale. Some slaves had heard rumors that they were about to be conscripted for military service or put to work on Confederate fortifications. “They’s jest takin’ me, sir,” Tom Jackson of Virginia explained, “an’ I run off.” Some were eager to locate their families or join the slaves from their plantation who had already escaped. “All of our friends were ober here,” a runaway explained. Isaac Tatnall, who had been hired out, fled when his master refused to pay him his share of the wages. “Last month,” Tatnall remarked, “master took him all, but he lost by dat, cause dis month I runned away, and he’s lost $1,880.”129
The uncontrolled rage of their masters, often for no easily ascertainable reason other than the imminent loss of the war, hastened the departure of many slaves. “They does it to spite us,” a runaway woman testified, “ ’cause you come here. Dey spites us now ’cause de Yankees come.” This woman had just escaped with two of her children, leaving behind her eldest son whom the master had just “licked” almost to death because he suspected him of wanting to join the Yankees. Stories of recent beatings ran through the testimony of numerous newly arrived refugees. “Master whipped me two or three weeks ago,” a freedwoman declared, “because I let the cows from the bog road into the yard. Struck me and knocked me down with his fist. Left Monday night, and walked all the way. I am free; come here to be protected; was not safe to stay.” On the morning of his escape, a Georgia slave noted, he had been promised a whipping, but “when de time came dis chile was about five miles from dar, and he nebber stopped until las night.” Among the slaves who fled after harsh treatment were those who felt compelled to contain their anger rather than risk the consequences of direct retaliation. “They didn’t do something and run,” a former slave suggested. “They run before they did it, ’cause they knew that if they struck a white man there wasn’t going to be a nigger.”130
Although specific provocations helped to sustain the steady movement toward the Union lines, the overriding consideration remained the prospect of freedom and the pride that a slave took in expediting his or her own liberation. “I wants to be free,” a South Carolina runaway kept repeating. “I came in from the plantation and don’t want to go back; I don’t want to go back; I don’t want to be a slave again.” The intensity of this feeling even induced elderly slaves to make the perilous trek, refusing to postpone any longer that dream that had eluded them for a lifetime. “Ise eighty-eight year old,” one refugee told the Yankees. “Too ole for come? Mas’r joking. Neber too ole for leave de land o’ bondage.” Near Vicksburg, where slaves had been deserting in substantial numbers, a planter went out to the quarters and asked the “patriarch” among his slaves, “Uncle Si, I don’t suppose you are going off to those hateful Yankees, too, are you?” “O no, marster,” he replied, “I’se gwine to stay right here with you.” When the planter visited the quarters the next morning, he found that every one of his slaves had left that night, including Uncle Si and his wife. Searching the nearby woods for them, he came across Uncle Si, bending over the prostrate body of his wife, weeping. The planter wondered why he had subjected her to such a difficult and now fatal journey. “I couldn’t help it, marster,” the old man replied; “but then, you see, she