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By Root 1059 0

with him when he was a child. ‘Mars’ Billy’ had begged for mercy in the case of others when the overseer or master was thrashing them. The sorrow in the slave quarter was only second to that in the ‘big house.’ ” When two of the master’s sons subsequently returned home with severe wounds, the slaves were anxious to assist them, some volunteering to sit up through the night to attend them. To Washington, there was nothing strange or contradictory about such behavior; the slaves had simply demonstrated their “kindly and generous nature” and refused to betray a trust. On the plantation in Alabama where she labored under a tyrannical master and mistress, a young black woman who had been separated by sale from three of her own four children grieved over the death of the master’s son. “Marster Ben, deir son, were good, and it used to hurt him to see us ’bused. When de war came Marster Ben went—no, der ole man didn’t go—an’ he were killed dere. When he died, I cried.… He were a kind chile. But de oders, oh, dear.”13

Whatever the degree of empathy slaves could muster for the bereavement of their “white folks,” the uncertainty it introduced into their own lives could hardly be ignored. With the death of her master, Anna Johnson recalled, the mistress went to live with her parents and the plantation was sold “and us wid it.” Pauline Grice remembered that her mistress eventually recovered from the death of her son “but she am de diff’rent woman.” If only as a matter of self-interest, then, slaves were likely to view each new casualty list with considerable trepidation. Rather than unite blacks and whites in a common grief, news of the death of a master or a son might unsettle the remaining family members to the point of violent hysteria, with the slaves as the most accessible and logical targets upon whom they could turn their wrath. No sooner had the two sons of Annie Row’s master enlisted than his behavior became even more volatile. “Marster Charley cuss everything and every body and us watch out and keep out of his way.” The day he received news of the death of one of his sons proved to be particularly memorable:

Missy starts cryin’ and de Marster jumps up and starts cussin’ de War and him picks up de hot poker and say, “Free de nigger, will dey? I free dem.” And he hit my mammy on de neck and she starts moanin’ and cryin’ and draps to de floor. Dere ’twas, de Missy a-mournin’, my mammy a-moanin’ and de Marster a-cussin’ loud as him can. Him takes de gun offen de rack and starts for de field whar de niggers am a-workin’. My sister and I sees that and we’uns starts runnin’ and screamin’, ’cause we’uns has brothers and sisters in de field.

Before the war, Mattie Curtis recalled, her mistress had been “purty good” but the war turned her into “a debil iffen dar eber wus one,” and after hearing of the death of her son she whipped the slaves “till she shore nuff wore out.”14

The temperaments of white slaveholding families fluctuated even more violently than usual, reflecting not only the casualty lists but news of military setbacks, the wartime privations, the reports of slave disaffection, and the familiar problems associated with running a plantation. Every slave was subject to the day-to-day whims of those who owned him, and even the kindest masters and mistresses had their bad days. “Dere was good white folks, sah, as well as bad,” an elderly freedman remarked, after being asked his opinion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “but when they was bad, Lord-a-mercy, you never saw a book, sah, that come up to what slavery was.” If the Civil War could in some instances drive the plantation whites and blacks closer together, revealing a mutual dependency and sympathy, the shocks of war and invasion, coupled with the fears of emancipation, were as likely to bring out the very worst in the human character. “You see,” a Virginia freedman explained, “the masters, soon as they found out they couldn’t keep their slaves, began to treat them about as bad as could be. Then, because I made use of this remark, that I didn’t think we colored folks ought