Been in the Storm So Long (48 page)

The uncertainties, the regrets, the anxieties which characterized many of the reactions to emancipation underscored that pervasive sense of dependency—the feeling, as more than one ex-slave recalled, that “we
couldn’t do a thing without the white folks.” Slavery had taught black people to be slaves—“good” slaves and obedient workers. “All de slaves knowed how to do hard work,” observed Thomas Cole, who had run away to enlist in the Union Army, “but dey didn’t know nothin’ ’bout how to ’pend on demselves for de livin’.” Of course, the very logic and survival of the “peculiar institution” had demanded that nothing be done to prepare slaves for the possibility of freedom; on the contrary, they had been taught to feel their incapacity for dealing with its immense responsibilities. Many years before the war, a South Carolina jurist set forth the paternalistic ideal when he advised that each slave should be taught to view his master as “a perfect security from injury. When this is the case, the relation of master and servant becomes little short of that of parent and child.” The testimony of former slaves suggests how effectively some masters had been able to inculcate that ideal and how the legacy of paternalism could paralyze its victims.
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Nor did Federal policies or programs in the immediate aftermath of emancipation address themselves to this problem. Whatever the freedman’s desire or capacity for “living independently,” he would in scores of instances be forced to remain dependent on his former masters. It was precisely through such dependency, a North Carolina planter vowed, that his class of people would be able to reestablish on the plantations what they had ostensibly lost in emancipation, “until in a few years I think every thing will be about as it was.”
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Upon hearing of their freedom, some slaves instinctively deferred to the traditional source of authority, advice, sustenance, and protection—the master himself. Now that they were no longer his slaves, what did he want them to do? Few freed blacks, however, no matter how confused and apprehensive they may have been, were altogether oblivious to the excitement and the anticipation that this event had generated. At the moment of freedom, masses of slaves did not suddenly erupt in a mammoth Jubilee but neither did they all choose to be passive, cowed, or indifferent in the face of their master’s announcement. Outside of the prayer meetings and the annual holiday frolics, plantation life had afforded them few occasions for free expression, at least in the presence of their “white folks.” If only for a few hours or days, then, many newly emancipated slaves dropped their usual defenses, cast off their masks, and gave themselves the rare luxury of acting out feelings they were ordinarily expected to repress.

Once they understood the full import of the master’s words, and even then perhaps only after several minutes of stunned or polite silence, many blacks found they could no longer contain their emotions. More importantly, they felt no need to do so. “That the day I shouted,” was how Richard Carruthers of Texas recalled his emancipation. Booker T. Washington stood next to his mother during the announcement; many years later, he could still vividly recall how she hugged and kissed him, the tears streaming down her face, and her explanation that she had prayed many years for this day but never believed she would live to see it. Freedom took
longer to reach Bexar County, Texas, where the war had hardly touched the lives and routines of the slave. But Felix Haywood, who worked as a sheepherder and cowpuncher, recalled how “everybody went wild” when they learned of freedom. “We all felt like horses and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free.”
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If neither words nor prayers conveyed the appropriate emotions, the newly freed slaves might draw on the traditional spirituals, whose imagery easily befitted an occasion like emancipation. The triumph had come in this world, not in the next. The exuberance and importance of such a moment also inspired updated versions of the spirituals and songs especially composed for the occasion. Out in Bexar County, Felix Haywood heard them sing:

Harriett Gresham, who had belonged to a wealthy planter in South Carolina, remembered hearing the guns at Fort Sumter that inaugurated the war, as well as the song that sounded the death of slavery:

“Guess dey made ’em up,” Annie Harris said of many of the songs she heard in those days, “ ’cause purty soon ev’ybody fo’ miles around was singin’ freedom songs.”
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Although the classic version of the Jubilee featured large masses of people, some newly freed slaves only wanted to be alone at this moment. Neither fear of the master nor deference to his feelings entirely explains this preference. Overwhelmed by what they had just heard, some needed a momentary solitude to reflect on its implications and to convince themselves that it had really happened, while others simply preferred to express themselves with the least amount of inhibition. Lou Smith recalled running off and hiding in the plum orchard, where he kept repeating to himself, “I’se free, I’se free; I ain’t never going back to Miss Jo.” After hearing of his freedom, an elderly Virginia black proceeded to the barn, leaped from one stack of straw to the other, and “screamed and screamed!” Although
confined to bed, Aunt Sissy, a crippled Virginia slave, heard the celebration outside, limped out the door, and then simply stood there praying. “Wouldn’t let nobody tetch her, wouldn’t set down. Stood dere swayin’ fum side to side an’ singin’ over an’ over her favorite hymn.”

Like Aunt Sissy, many slaves viewed their deliverance as a sign of divine intervention. God’s will had been heeded, if belatedly, and in this act lay final proof of His omnipresence. Few expressed it more eloquently than the Virginia black woman who looked upon emancipation as something approaching a miracle. “Isn’t I a free woman now! De Lord can make Heaven out of Hell any time, I do believe.” In addressing his Nashville congregation, a black preacher interpreted emancipation as a result of his people having kept the faith, even when it appeared as though there was no hope and that the Lord had forsaken them.

Even as many slaves reveled in their newly proclaimed freedom, few of them made any attempt to humiliate or unduly antagonize their newly dispossessed owners. Appreciating this fact, some masters and mistresses felt both grateful and immensely relieved. “Whilst glad of having freedom,” Grace Elmore said of her servants, “they have never been more attentive or more respectful than now, and seem to wish to do all in their power to leave a pleasant impression.” That the newly emancipated slaves had largely confined their release of emotion to a few relatively harmless celebrations encouraged some planters to think they could ease through the transition from bondage to freedom with a minimum of concession and change. Once the initial excitement subsided, they fully expected that economic necessity if not the “old ties” and attachment to the “home” would leave their blacks little choice but to carry on much as they had before the war. “We may still hope for a future I think,” a prominent Alabaman confided to his journal. Since on many plantations and farms the day after freedom very much resembled the days that had preceded the
master’s announcement, such confidence appeared to be well founded. Even where a Jubilee atmosphere had prevailed, the blacks were no less appreciative of the immense problems they faced in acting on their new status. Like the other slaves on her Texas plantation, Annie Hawkins had shouted for joy; nevertheless, she recalled, none of them made any move to leave “for fear old Mistress would bring us back or the pateroller would git us.”
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What masters and mistresses perceived as blacks fulfilling obligations learned under the tutelage of slavery might have been viewed differently by the former slaves themselves. In agreeing to stay until the planted crops had been harvested or until their assigned tasks in the household had been completed, many field hands and servants not only confirmed the freedom of choice now available to them but also exhibited a dignity and self-respect commensurate with their new status. Several of Grace Elmore’s servants promised to give sufficient notice before leaving so as to enable their mistress to make other arrangements. The DeSaussure family of Charleston lost every servant but the nurse, and she agreed to stay only “as a favor until they could hire white servants.” Few freed slaves, however, thought it necessary to emulate the attentiveness of a South Carolina woman who prepared to leave the family she had served for thirty-six years; before departing to join her husband and son, she made certain that all the clothes had been washed, she distributed gifts to the white children, and she left two of her children behind to wait on the family.
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Despite the debilitating effects of dependency and the confusion which persisted over the precise nature of their new status, the freedmen were neither helpless, easily manipulated, nor frightened into passivity. Although some still deferred to the advice of the old master, many did not. During slavery, they had often survived only by drawing on their own inner resources, their accumulated experience, and the wisdom of those in their own ranks to whom they looked for leadership and counsel. Upon being told of their freedom, the blacks on many plantations retired to their quarters to discuss the announcement, what if any alternatives were now open to them, and the first steps they should take to test their freedom. On a plantation in Georgia, for example, where the owner had asked his former slaves to remain until they finished the current crop, they discussed his proposal for the next several days before reaching a common decision. “They wasn’t no celebration ’round the place,” William Hutson recalled, “but they wasn’t no work after the Master tells us we is free. Nobody leave the place though. Not ’til in the fall when the work is through.”
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The possibilities that suddenly presented themselves, the kinds of questions that freedom posed, the sheer magnitude of this event in their lives could not always be readily absorbed. Recounting his own escape to freedom, more than two decades before the war, William Wells Brown never forgot the strange sensations he experienced: “The fact that I was a freeman—could walk, talk, eat and sleep as a man, and no one to stand over me with the blood-clotted cowhide—all this made me feel that I was not
myself.” For the newly emancipated blacks, however, most of whom chose to remain in the same regions in which they had been slaves, the problems they faced were far different and more formidable than those which had confronted the fugitives upon reaching the North. Experiencing her first days of freedom, a Mississippi woman voiced that prevailing uncertainty as to how to give meaning to her new status: “I used to think if I could be free I should be the happiest of anybody in the world. But when my master come to me, and says—Lizzie, you is free! it seems like I was in a kind of daze. And when I would wake up in the morning I would think to myself, Is I free? Hasn’t I got to get up before daylight and go into the field to work?”
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The uncertainties plagued both blacks and whites. Under slavery, the boundaries had been clearly established and both parties understood them. But what were the proper boundaries of black freedom? What new forms would the relationship between a former slave and his former master now assume? How would the freed blacks be expected to interact with free whites? Neither the blacks nor the whites were altogether certain, though they might have pronounced views on such matters. Now that black freedom had been generally acknowledged, it needed to be defined. The state legislatures, the courts, and the Federal government offered some direction. But freedom could ultimately be defined only in the day-to-day lives and experiences of the people themselves. “De day of freedom,” a former Tennessee slave recalled, the overseer came out into the fields and told them that they were free. “Free how?” they asked him, and he replied, “Free to work and live for demselves.”
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In the aftermath of emancipation, the newly freed slaves would seek to test that response and answer the question for themselves.