• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1947 0

and cheering crowds, or perhaps just plain for fun, and the peculiar institution had meant nothing much to them one way or the other. Yet here they were, in what they considered to be the South, and there were colored folk all about them; and it began to seem that in the great fight to put down disunion these colored folk were allies, pathetically eager to help, very useful on occasion. Company E of the 33rd Illinois remembered a tour of duty in Missouri when a collection of rifles and a handful of Confederate recruits had been rounded up on somebody’s plantation. Unable to think of anything better, the company commander had equipped the plantation’s slaves with the rifles and had them march the captives back to camp, only to draw a stiff reprimand from army authorities, who castigated him for doing “what the President of the United States had not seen fit to do — liberate and arm the slaves.” The prisoners had been released and the slaves had been sent back to servitude, and Company E still felt that there was something about the deal that was not quite right.5

Runaway slaves would come into camp, and the men would try to hide them — moved, apparently, by nothing much more than sympathy for men who had found every man’s hand against them. It was official policy at that time to return all fugitives to their lawful owners, and in most detachments the policy was enforced. Little by little the soldiers began to feel that returning fugitive slaves was helping the rebellion; they objected to it, and some outfits were brought almost to mutiny by the orders, although under ordinary circumstances the men were as ready as any to draw the color line. Slowly but surely the idea began to dawn: these slaves are on our side, and in a state where people keep both Union and Confederate flags and display the one which on any given day seems most likely to be advantageous, these men with dark skins are the ones we can count on as friendly.

Not that the colored people got much out of it. The soldiers felt themselves to be immeasurably superior to all people whose skins were not white, and they had much pride of race. The 77th Illinois laughed at a group of officers who, touched by feelings of romance on a moonlight evening, went to the handsomest mansion in town, stood beneath its windows, and sang sentimental serenades very prettily (encouraged by handkerchiefs and scarves waving from opened windows) until their wind gave out; after which a colored maid came to the front door, thanked them for their effort, and said she was “sorry de white folks weren’t at home to hear it.” A Wisconsin soldier moodily confessed in a letter home: “The black folks are awful good, poor miserable things that they are. The boys talk to them fearful and treat them most any way and yet they can’t talk two minutes but tears come to their eyes and they throw their arms up and praise de Lord for de coming of de Lincoln soldiers.” This same Wisconsin boy admitted that he was greatly surprised to find that none of these slaves had ever heard any of Stephen Foster’s “colored” songs.6

It was the beginning of wisdom, perhaps. For this was not the land of Old Black Joe and My Old Kentucky Home, with gay darkies picturesquely melancholy over long shadows dropping on the plantation lawn, Uncle Ned hanging up the shovels and the hoe after a life of faithful service, Nelly Gray gone down the river to the tune of quavering male quartet vocalizing, Swanee River curling lazily south with the romantic sadness of a faint tug at the heartstrings. This was not minstrel-show land, after all. These midwestern soldiers had grown up knowing only the stage Negro — the big-mouthed, grinning, perpetually carefree Sambo who loved watermelons and possum, had peculiar gifts for wielding the razor (always on other Sambos, who did not much mind being slashed, having been born for it), and who liked to eat fried chicken and drink more gin than he could properly manage. Mr. Bones was out of his depth here, and there were emotional values under the surface that Stephen Foster had not quite touched;