Been in the Storm So Long (24 page)

The fact that black men had played a significant role in liberating their enslaved brethren and preserving the Union would remain a source of considerable pride, even as it led them to expect much of the future. Once the war ended, the black soldier expected that a grateful nation would accord him and his people the rights of American citizens. He had demonstrated his loyalty. He had fought for his country’s survival. On the battlefields of the South—at Port Hudson, Battery Wagner, Milliken’s Bend, Olustee, and Petersburg—he had disproved those widely held notions about his inability to handle firearms or meet the test of fire. What more could white Americans expect of him? Like any victor, was he not entitled to share in the triumph? If he expected much of the United States, it was because he had served its citizens well. Reflecting upon the role of blacks in the war, Thomas Long, a former slave and a private in the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, suggested to the men of his regiment that they had faced and surmounted obstacles almost unprecedented in the history of warfare—the test of enemy fire and the suspicions and hostility of their own comrades.

Whatever happened to them after the war, Private Long declared, the memory of their participation in that conflict would be handed down to future generations of black people. “Suppose,” he speculated, “you had kept your freedom witout enlisting in dis army; your chilen might have grown up free and been well cultivated so as to be equal to any business, but it would have been always flung in dere faces—‘Your fader never fought for he own freedom’—and what could dey answer? Neber can say that to dis African Race any more.”
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That black men managed to win the respect of white America only by fighting and killing white men was an ironic commentary on the ways in which American culture (like many others) measured success, manliness, and fitness for citizenship. “Nobly done, First Regiment of Louisiana Native Guard!” a New York newspaper proclaimed after the assault on Port Hudson. “That heap of six hundred corpses, lying there dark and grim and silent before and within the works, is a better proclamation of freedom than President Lincoln’s.” Some seventy years after the Civil War, W. E. B. Du Bois suggested that it may have required “a finer type of courage” for the slave to have worked faithfully while the nation battled over his destiny than for him to have plunged a bayonet into the bowels of a complete stranger. But the black man, Du Bois noted, could prove his manhood only as a soldier. When he had argued his case with petitions, speeches, and conventions, scarcely a white man had listened to him. When he had toiled to increase the nation’s wealth, the white man had compensated him with barely enough for his subsistence. When he had offered to protect the women and children of his master, many white men had considered him a fool. But when the black man “rose and fought and killed,” Du Bois observed, “the whole nation with one voice proclaimed him a man and brother.” Nothing else, Du Bois was convinced, had made emancipation or black citizenship conceivable but the record of the black soldier.
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Recognizing his former master among the prisoners he was guarding, a black soldier greeted him effusively, “Hello, massa; bottom rail top dis time!” Observing black soldiers with rifles and bayonets demanding to verify the passes of white men and women, a Confederate soldier returning
home after a prisoner exchange could hardly believe his eyes. “And our own niggers, too,” he exclaimed. “If I could have my way, I’d have a rope around every nigger’s neck, and hang ’em, or dam up this Mississippi River with them. Only eight or ten miles from this river slaves are working for their masters as happily as ever.” Both scenes, each of them incredible in its own way, pointed up much of the confusion into which a rigidly hierarchical society had been thrown. Nor would that confusion of roles end with the war itself. “I goes back to my mastah and he treated me like his brother,” recalled Albert Jones, who had spent more than three years in the Union Army. “Guess he wuz scared of me ’cause I had so much ammunition on me.”
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Whether by guarding prisoners, marching through the South as an army of occupation, or engaging Confederate troops in combat, the black soldier represented a sudden, dramatic, and far-reaching reversal of traditional roles—as spectacular as any in the history of the country. What made this reversal even more manifest, however, was the conduct of the slaves on the plantations and farms that lay in the path of the advancing Union Army. Once the Yankees made their presence felt, or earlier, at the first sound of distant guns, the ties that bound a slave to his master and mistress, including loyalties and mutual affections that had endured for decades, would face their most critical test.

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FTER SEARCHING
the slave quarters, the overseer solved the mystery of the missing ammunition. Ishmael had been accumulating shot and powder with the intention, as he confessed, to desert to the enemy. That had been the first indication of trouble on the Manigault rice plantations, located in coastal Georgia along the Savannah River. The war was in its seventh month, the slaves had been “working well and cheerfully,” and no desertions had been reported. But the Yankees were moving into the Sea Islands, black field hands had reportedly sacked the town of Beaufort, and a panicky Savannah feared imminent attack. Equally ominous were the reports of “murmuring” and disaffection among the slaves working the Savannah River plantations. “We had no trouble with our own Negroes,” Louis Manigault noted, “but from clear indications it was manifest that some of them were preparing to run away, using as a pretext their fear of the Yankees.” In the months that followed, Manigault, like so many plantation managers, came to discover that the always arduous task of controlling enslaved workers took on new dimensions under wartime conditions. His own slaves would teach him that much and more.

Seeking to minimize potential slave defections, Manigault conferred with his overseer, William Capers, a “remarkable” man and “perfect Gentleman” in whom he had complete confidence. The previous overseer had foolishly placed himself “on a par with the Negroes,” participating in their
prayer meetings and “breaking down long established discipline.” Capers was not so easily misled. He claimed to know the Negro character, arguing that “if a Man put his confidence in a Negro He was simply a Damned Fool.” Only by understanding and acting upon that proven proposition, he believed, had he achieved success in managing slaves. In late 1861, convinced that “all was not quite correct” among the Manigault slaves, he advised that those most likely to cause trouble be removed to a safer area. Manigault agreed, and the two men soon learned how accurately they had appraised the character of some of those selected. That night, three of them attempted to escape; they were quickly apprehended and forcibly removed in handcuffs. The remaining seven “came very willingly.”

Despite these precautions, trouble persisted on the Manigault plantations. On February 21, 1862, Jack Savage, the head carpenter, ran away. That came as no surprise to Manigault, who said he epitomized the “bad Negro.” “We always considered him a most dangerous character & bad example to the others.… I think Jack Savage was the worst Negro I have ever known. I have for two years past looked upon him as one capable of committing murder or burning down this dwelling, or doing any act.” At the same time, he was “quite smart” and “our best plantation Carpenter,” and that presumably was why he had been retained. Savage did not flee to the Yankees; instead, he secluded himself in the nearby swamplands, where other neighborhood runaways soon joined him, including Charles Lucas, a Manigault slave (“one of our Prime Hands”) who had been entrusted with the plantation stock and who had recently been punished after the mysterious disappearance of some choice hogs. “His next step,” Manigault guessed, “was to follow the animals which he had most probably killed himself, and sent to the retreat where he expected soon to follow.” Shortly after this incident, Manigault sold a large portion of the livestock. “This was,” he explained, “through fear of their being all stolen some night by our Negroes.” On August 16, 1863, nearly eighteen months after his escape, Jack Savage returned to the plantation, “looking half starved and wretched in the extreme,” but acting with such impertinence that Capers suspected he would soon flee again. With Manigault’s approval, Capers quickly sold him in Savannah for $1,800, despite Savage’s attempt to depress that price: “It would have provoked you,” the overseer wrote, “to have heard Jack’s lies of his inability &c.” That same month, Charlie Lucas was apprehended.

While trying to anticipate runaways among the field hands, Manigault also had to deal with defections among his household servants. The disappearance of “his Woman ‘Dolly’ ” must have particularly perplexed him, as the description which he posted in the Augusta and Charleston police stations indicates:

At a loss for a plausible explanation, Manigault finally concluded that she had been “enticed off by some White Man.” Although such defections annoyed Manigault, he found even more incredible the strange behavior of Hector, who for nearly thirty years had been his “favorite Boat Hand” and “a Negro We all of us esteemed highly.” He had been a good worker, a trusted slave, “always spoiled both by my Father and Myself, greatly indulged,” and “my constant companion when previous to my marriage I would be quite alone upon the plantation.” And yet, he was “the very first to murmur” and “give trouble” after the outbreak of the war. Only after considerable personal anguish did Manigault agree to remove him to Charleston; there was no question in his mind but that Hector “would have hastened to the embrace of his Northern Brethren, could he have foreseen the least prospect of a successful escape.”

The wartime experience with his slaves unsettled Manigault. The unexpected behavior of Hector proved to be “only One of the numerous instances of ingratitude evinced in the African character.” In the end, he would no longer harbor any illusions about the depth of slave fidelity. “This war has taught us the perfect impossibility of placing the least confidence in any Negro. In too numerous instances those we esteemed the most have been the first to desert us.”

When Manigault paid his last wartime visit to his Georgia properties, the sound of cannon fire could be heard in the distance. He thought the slaves still seemed pleased to see him. More than two years would elapse before he would see any of them again; meanwhile, on Christmas Eve 1864, Yankee troops left a trail of destruction as they moved through the largely abandoned Savannah River plantations.
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