IV
No race ever behaved better than the Negroes behaved during the war. Not only were there no massacres and no outbreaks, but even the amount of defection was not large. While the number who entered the Northern Army was considerable,[10] it was not as great as might have been expected when all the facts are taken into account. A respectable number came from the North, while most of the others came from the sections of the South which had already been overrun by the armies of the Union and where mingled persuasion and compulsion were brought to bear.[11] Certainly no one could properly blame them for yielding to the arguments used. Their homes were more or less broken up; organization and discipline were relaxed, and the very means of subsistence had become precarious; while on the other hand they were offered bounties and glittering rewards that drew into the armies hundreds of thousands of other nationalities. The number that must be credited to refugees who left home in the first instance for the purpose of volunteering to fight for freedom is believed by the writer to be not large; personally, he never knew of one. However large the number was, the number of those who might have gone, and yet threw in their lot with their masters and never dreamed of doing otherwise, was far larger. Many a master going off to the war intrusted his wife and children to the care of his servants with as much confidence as if they had been of his own blood. They acted rather like clansmen than like bondmen. Not only did they remain loyal, but they were nearly always faithful to any trust that had been confided to them. They were the faithful guardians of their masters’ homes and families; the trusted agents and the shrewd counsellors of their mistresses. They raised the crops which fed the Confederate armies, and suffered without complaint the privations which came alike to white and black from the exactions of war. On the approach of the enemy, the trusted house servants hid the family silver and valuables, guarded horses and other property, and resisted all temptation to desert or betray. It must, of course, rest always on conjecture; but the writer believes that, had the Negro been allowed to fight for the South, more of them would have volunteered to follow their masters than ever volunteered in the service of the Union. Many went into the field with their masters, where they often displayed not only courage but heroism, and, notwithstanding all temptations, stood by them loyally to the end. As Henry Grady once said, “A thousand torches would have disbanded the Southern Army, but there was not one.”[12]
The inference that has been drawn from this is usually one which is wholly in favor of the colored race. It is, however, rather a tribute to both races. Had slavery at the South been the frightful institution that it has ordinarily been pictured, with the slave-driver and the bloodhound always in the foreground, it is hardly credible that the failure of the Negroes to avail themselves of the opportunities for freedom so frequently offered them would have been so general and the loyalty to their masters have been so devoted.
One other reason is commonly overlooked. The instinct for command of the white race—at least, of that section to which the whites of this country belong—is a wonderful thing: the serene self-confidence which reckons no opposition, but drives straight for the highest place, is impressive. It made the race in the past; it has preserved it in our time. The Negroes knew the courage and constancy of their masters. They had had abundant proof of them for generations, and their masters were now in arms.
The failure of a servile population to rise against their masters in time of war is no new thing. History furnishes many illustrations. Plutarch tells how the besiegers of a certain city offered, not only freedom to the slaves, but added to it the promise of their masters’ property and wives if they would desert them. Yet the offer was rejected with scorn. During the Revolution, freedom on the same terms was offered the slaves in Virginia and the Carolinas by the British, but with little effect, except to inflame the masters to bitterer resistance.[13] The result was the same during the Civil War.