Been in the Storm So Long_ The Aftermath of Slavery - Leon F. Litwack [92]
Since the outbreak of the war, white families had tried to frighten their slaves about the consequences of Yankee occupation, warning them to expect atrocities, forced labor, and military conscription. Since some slaves had come to expect anything of white men and women, the terrifying images of Yankee white devils might have seemed entirely plausible. But the slave’s perception of his master and mistress, based on years of close observation, and the information he gathered from a variety of alternative sources provided ample grounds for skepticism if not outright disbelief. Even with a limited access to the news, many slaves dismissed the atrocity stories because they simply made no sense. “Massa can’t come dat over we,” a Georgia slave told a Union officer; “we know’d a heap better. What for de Yankees want to hurt black men? Massa hates de Yankees, and he’s no fren’ ter we; so we am de Yankee bi’s fren’s.” After hearing those direful predictions of a Yankee hell, Aunt Sally, a Virginia slave, assumed a “darky” countenance and assured her mistress that there was nothing to fear from the enemy soldiers. “I done tell her what’d dey go to do to an ol’ good-for-nuffin nigger like me. Dey wouldn’t hab no use for me, I’se thinkin’. I’ll stay by de stuff.” The same master who warned his slaves about the Yankees, moreover, might have also boasted of the invincibility of Confederate arms, assuring them that the war would be brief and victorious. Why should they place any more confidence in their master’s word now than they had before? “They told her a heap more’n she believed,” a Louisiana freedwoman remarked after the war.34 And if the Yankees brought with them a promise of freedom, as everyone seemed to concede, why should the slaves fear them?
The first glimpse usually convinced even the more skeptical slaves, if not their masters, that the Yankees, in physical appearance at least, were less than the monsters they had been warned to expect. “Why dey’s folks,” one slave shouted with delight, as she ran down the road to greet them. Not knowing what he might see, Abram Harris, a former South Carolina slave, remembered his surprise at discovering that the Yankees were “jes lak my white folks.” Still not entirely convinced, Mittie Freeman, who had been a slave in Mississippi, recalled how she refused to come down from a tree until the Union soldier had removed his hat to show her he had no horns. Lingering suspicions of white men, whether Yankees or Confederates, were not always so easily set aside. Although anxious to celebrate their freedom, Gus Askew and his friends preferred not to do so in the presence of the Yankees. “We went on away from the so’jers and had a good time ’mongst ourselves, like we always done when there wasn’t any cotton pickin’.” The slaves were sometimes more restrained in their welcomes if their master or mistress happened to be present, and that may also account for the indifference with which some disappointed Yankees thought they had been received. “On our way up from Carrollton,” a Massachusetts soldier wrote, “one [slave] got the woodpile between him and the whites, and then vigorously waved his hat in welcome. It was our only welcome.”35
If the Yankees’ physical appearance seemed reassuring, the promise of freedom they had come to symbolize overcame for scores of slaves any doubts or suspicions. Without the slightest hesitation, many of them flocked to the roadsides, waved their hats and bonnets, greeted the soldiers with shouts of “God bress you; I is glad to see you,” threw their arms about in jubilation, stretched out their hands to touch them, even tried to hug them. “Massa say dis bery mornin’, ‘De damn Yankees nebber get up to here!’ ” a slave in the Teche country of Louisiana shouted at the passing troops,