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Whether or not a slave chose to desert his master did not necessarily reflect a personal history of brutal treatment. Alex Huggins, who ran away in 1863 at the age of twelve, recalled no complaints about the way his master and mistress had treated him: “Twa’nt anythin’ wrong about home that made me run away. I’d heard so much talk ’bout freedom I reckon I jus’ wanted to try it, an’ I thought I had to get away from home to have it.” The verbal exchange that took place in late 1861 between a Union soldier and a runaway revealed as vividly what many whites would find so difficult to understand and forgive in their slaves.

“How were you treated, Robert?”

“Pretty well, sar.”

“Did your master give you enough to eat and clothe you comfortably?”

“Pretty well, till dis year. Massa hab no money to spend dis year. Don’t get many clothes dis year.”

“If you had a good master, I suppose you were contented?”

“No, sar.”

“Why not, if you had enough to eat and clothes to wear?”

“Cause I want to be free.”132

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NEITHER THE NUMBER of reported “insurrections” nor an accurate count of the runaways could adequately measure slave resistance and disaffection during the final years of the “peculiar institution.” Equally significant for slaveholders were the kinds of rumors that circulated, the fears that were generated, the outbreaks of “insolence” and “insubordination” which could drive individual families and entire communities to the brink of hysteria, and the various ways in which enslaved blacks—consciously or otherwise—brought anguish and frustration to those who claimed to own them.

Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves perceived on the faces of their “white folks” a growing uneasiness and resignation. The certainty of Confederate victory seemed far less pronounced, the patriotic oratory less believable, and there crept into the conversations of white men and women the apprehension that life as they had known it might never survive this war. No matter how desperately slaveholding families wanted to believe in the faithfulness of their blacks, and despite the patriotic and loyal models they could display and would forever venerate, there persisted an undercurrent of suspicion and fear that could never be successfully repressed and that surfaced with every rumor of an uprising, every case of insubordination, and every report of an escape. “The runaways are numerous and bold,” Kate Stone confided to her diary. “We live on a mine that the Negroes are suspected of an intention to spring on the fourth of next month. The information may be true or false, but they are being well watched in every section where there are any suspects. Our faith is in God.”133

Nor were the fears of white men and women entirely illusory; they could on occasion assume a terrible reality. The war was not even a year old when Mary Chesnut heard that her cousin—Betsey Witherspoon of Society Hill—had been found dead in her bed, although she had been “quite well” the previous night. Two days later, the frightening news reached Mary Chesnut that her cousin had met a violent death. “I broke down; horror and amazement was too much for me. Poor cousin Betsey Witherspoon was murdered! She did not die peacefully in her bed, as we supposed, but was murdered by her own people, her Negroes.” With the arrest of two house servants, the details began to emerge. On the day of the murder, Mrs. Witherspoon’s son (who resided nearby) had charged several of his mother’s slaves with misusing and breaking some of the household china while giving a party in their mistress’s absence, and he promised to return the next day to give them a severe thrashing. Although Mrs. Witherspoon had interceded on their behalf, thinking it “too late to begin discipline now,” that news had not reached the slaves, one of whom allegedly told the others: “Mars’ John more than apt to do what he say he will do, but you all follow what I say and he’ll have something else to think of beside stealing and breaking glass and china. If ole Marster was