Mr. McLean told me that he had three brothers in the Federal army. His brother was doorkeeper of the Maryland assembly, and his uncle a member during the stormy sessions held at Frederick, when that body hotly discussed, for many days, the question as to whether Maryland should secede.
SOCIAL EQUALITY BETWEEN THE RACES
[J. L. Underwood.]
When the men of the writer’s generation see or read of the growing sensitiveness in all parts of the country, at the North and South, as to negro social equality, there rush up memories from the days of slavery that make the present jealousy to some extent ridiculous. As to religious equality, the slaves joined the churches of their own choice. In the cities there were some churches composed entirely of negro slaves and nearly all had white preachers. The country has had few if any preachers more eloquent and accomplished than Dr. Giradeau, who in late years was professor in the Presbyterian Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C. He spent all of his ministry up to the breaking out of the war as pastor of one of these negro churches in Charleston.
In the country towns and villages seats were provided for the negroes to attend the 11 o’clock and night services of the whites. They shared in the ordinances and communed from the same plate and cup in perfect Christian equality with the whites. In the afternoon the house was turned over to their exclusive use and the white pastor was required to preach to them and worthy preachers from among themselves were always encouraged. It always appeared to the writer, all through his boyhood days, that the white preachers preached better sermons to the negroes than they did to the whites. The negro was thus blessed with the most thorough and efficient evangelist work ever done for the benighted. The negroes trained under it have been the salt of the earth to their 305 race in their churches since the war. In those days in the South the white evangelist Phillip rode in the wagon with the Ethiopian and taught him, and both were blessed. When the lamented good old deacon Alex. Smith, of Thomasville, Ga., was ordained a deacon, one of the ordaining elders was his negro slave. At Bainbridge, Ga., Rev. Jesse Davis officiated as a member of the Presbytery ordaining to the ministry his slave, Ben. Munson. What a calamity that this close brotherly association in religious matters should have been so rudely broken in many directions by the politics of the wild reconstruction which was forced on the South.
At home some features of the life amounted to more than social equality. There was “mammy,” for instance, the good old negro nurse, housekeeper, hospital matron, superintending cook, boss of the whole family, and what not. She was father’s friend to counsel and cheer him, and she was mother’s staff and companion. To us children she was just everything. Those strong old arms supported us in babyhood and dandled us and fondled us in childhood. Her old bosom was a city of refuge from even the pursuing father and mother. How quietly peach-tree switches dropped from parental hands when Mammy begged for us. Mammy’s cabin was the white children’s paradise. Well does the writer remember that when his mother had to take a trip for her health away from home, he and a sister a little older than himself were left in the home of a neighboring kindred to be cared for. Kinsfolk did very well till night approached, then our poor little hearts sighed for home and we ran away to Mammy Cynthia and remained in her cabin and slept in her arms in her nice clean bed until mother’s return. The most cruel work done by the reconstruction politics was to enforce the orders of the carpet-baggers and scalawags in compelling these “mammies” to forsake their old “missus” and old homes. Many of them never could be tempted or forced to leave the old home.
Then there was “Daddy Jacob,” the nabob of the farm. Like “mammy” he was given just enough work to keep 306 up appearances and keep him in practice. But it was usually special work, like presiding at the gin or hauling with the two-ox wagon. Many a meal has the little white boy eaten from old daddy’s dinner bucket or from the blue-edged plates in his cabin.
Then there was “Mandy,” the young girl given by the parents to her young white mistress near her age. Mandy caught Miss Mary’s manners, fell heir to her dresses and bonnets, waited on the table, joined the children in their sports, and felt that she was about as good as anybody. And she was, until the devil came along with the bayonets and brought the monster curse to the negro, the “Yankee school marm.” These women were deluded, blind guides of the blind Africans. Reconstruction work has left the negro women, especially the young ones, the most giddy, most idle and aimless and the least virtuous of any set of women in any civilized country. The white Yankee school teachers sent down South by the thousands, forty years ago, sowed the seed of false notions of life and duty and opportunity, and the country is now afflicted with the harvest.
“Jere” was the negro boy companion of young “Mars Henry.” He and Mars Henry played marbles together, fished or swam the millpond, searched the woods for chinquapins or hickory nuts. They rode on the same lever at the old gin and leaped into the lint room together to pack back the loose cotton, and then mounted the mules and rode them to the barn. But the ’possum hunt was the glory of Henry and Jere’s united life. After supper, in which Henry had swapped biscuit from the table for Jere’s pork and roasted potatoes or sweet ash cake, they would put a few potatoes in their pockets, gather an axe, whistle up old “Tige,” the dog, and were soon away in the woods. When the game was captured, and a failure was a rare thing, with the nocturnal Nimrods, a small short hickory pole was split and the tail of the ’possum inserted in the crack and soon each boy had a ’possum pole on his shoulder. But a boy gets sleepy quickly. Worn out with their ramble they would rake up a pile of leaves on the south side of a big log, kindle a fire near 307 their feet and put the potatoes to roasting. “Tige” knew what it all meant and he enjoyed the camping too. He would lie next to the ’possums so that he could keep an eye on them. (The writer’s Tige had but one eye.) A ’possum is the meekest of all animals, when you get his tail in a vice and a dog in three feet of him. Jere would lie next to Tige, close enough to get some of his warmth, and Mars Henry would lie close to Jere. With their feet to the fire they got a few hours of the sweetest sleep the world ever gave. It was Mars Henry’s active, rollicking, rough and tumble open-air life with Jere that gave such vigor, in camp and on the march, to the Confederate soldier.