It was the practice of the agents of the Bureau to make frequent tours of their counties, and General Fiske himself was in the habit of running off every few days to visit some important point, where his organizing and conciliatory influence was necessary. Often he would find the planters and the freedmen separated by hedges of animosity and distrust. Usually his first step was to call together as large an audience as could be obtained of both classes, and explain to them the object of the Bureau, and the duty each class owed the other. In nearly every instance, earnestness and common sense prevailed; the freedmen came forward and made contracts with the land-owners, and the land-owners conceded to the freedmen advantages they had refused before.
Sometimes exciting and dramatic scenes occurred at these meetings. “Not long ago,” said General Fiske, “I addressed a mixed audience of three thousand persons at Spring Hill. The meeting was presided over by a black man. Rebel generals and Federal generals sat together on the platform. I made a short speech, and afterwards answered questions for anybody, white or black, that chose to ask them. I had said that the intention of the Bureau was to do justice to all, without respect to color; when there rose up in the audience a tall, well dressed, fine-looking woman, sallow, very pale, and much agitated, and wished to know if she could have justice. Said she, ‘I was owned by a respectable planter in this neighborhood who kept me as his wife for many years. I have borne him five children. Two of them are dead. A short time ago he married another woman, and drove me and my three children off.’ The man was in the audience. Everybody present knew him, and there were a hundred witnesses that could vouch for the truth of the woman’s story. I told her justice should certainly be done in her case. The respectable planter now supports her and her three children.”
I have known many wrongs of this nature to be righted by the Bureau; the late slave-owners learning that instead of making their offspring by bondwomen profitable to them as chattels, in the new order of things they were to be held responsible for their maintenance.
The freedmen’s courts were designed to adjudicate upon cases which could not be safely intrusted to the civil courts.[[16]] They are in reality military courts, and the law by which they are governed is martial law. I found them particularly efficient in Tennessee. The annoying technicalities and legal quibbles by which, in ordinary courts, the truth is so often inextricably embarrassed, were here swept aside, and justice reached with admirable directness. I have watched carefully scores of cases decided by these tribunals, and do not remember one in which substantial justice was not done. No doubt exceptions to this rule occur, but I am satisfied that they are no more frequent than those which occur in common-law courts; and they are insignificant compared with the wholesale wrong to which the unprotected freedman would be subjected in communities where old slave codes and immemorial prejudice deny to him human rights.
The freedmen’s court is no respecter of persons. The proudest aristocrat and the humblest negro stand at its bar on an equal footing. I remember a case in which a member of the Tennessee Legislature was the defendant, and upwards of twenty freedmen hired by him were the plaintiffs. He had voted against the Negro Testimony Bill, which, if it had passed, would have placed his case in a civil court; and now he had the satisfaction of seeing eight of these blacks stand up and testify against him. He admitted that they were faithful and truthful men; and their testimony was so straightforward, I was astonished that he should have waited to have his accounts with them adjusted by the Bureau.
Many difficulties arise from honest misunderstandings between the contracting parties. These are decided by the Bureau according to general rules of equity, and nearly always to the satisfaction of both. I was assured by several of the most experienced officers of the Bureau in Tennessee, that, in cases where contracts were fully understood, they were much less frequently broken by the freedmen than by the whites.
Complaints of assaults upon freedmen, and even upon women and girls, were very common. Here is a simple story of wrong related to me by a girl of fourteen whom I saw, weary and famished and drenched, after she had walked thirty-four miles to obtain the protection of the Bureau, bearing the marks of cruel beatings upon her back.
“My name is Milly Wilson; I live in Wilson County; my mistress’s brother was my father. I have been kept a slave since Emancipation. I worked in de cornfield; I had to hoe and drap corn; I ho’ped gether the corn and shuck it. I had to cuke; and I had spinning to do. I ho’ped sow, hoe, and pick cotton. I had to pick bolls and bring ’em into house, and pick cotton out o’ bolls till chickens crowed for midnight. Dey never give me nothing. I didn’t dare ax ’em for wages; and dey said if I run away dey’d shoot me. My mistress tried to whoop me, but she couldn’t; I’d run from her. Den her son Tom whooped me with a soap-paddle till he broke it. He struck me side of head with his fist, and knocked me down.” (Her face was still discolored by the blow.) “His father said, ‘That’s no way to beat ’em; take ’em down and paddle ’em.’ Dat night I lef’. I told Jennie to tell ’em I’d gone to Murfreesboro’, so dey wouldn’t git on de right track; and I started for Nashville. It wasn’t long till day when I lef’. I walked till sun-up; and laid by de balance part of de day in an old barn. I had nothing to eat, but on’y jist de meat and bread I had for my supper I took and carried with me for de nex’ day. De nex’ night de moon riz. I couldn’t see de moon, but it give light enough so I could see how to walk. Two miles from Triune I found some friends, and dey give me breakfas’. Wednesday mornin’ it was sleetin’, and dey give me a shawl. Thursday I got to Nashville. Now I want to send for my clothes; for it was so dark when I lef’ I couldn’t see to find ’em. I lef’ my clothes, and a skillet and led, and a basket.” The court sent not only for these, but for Master Tom who had paddled her, and for Master Tom’s father who had abetted the outrage and held her enslaved after slavery was abolished. This is a very mild case compared with some that came to my knowledge, too horrible or too disgusting to be narrated.
The freedmen’s affairs in West Tennessee were giving the Bureau daily less and less trouble,—both whites and blacks beginning to learn that contracts were made to be kept, and that their mutual interests depended upon mutual good-will. The most aggravated and embarrassing cases were from Mississippi. The farce of opening the civil courts to the blacks in that State had caused a discontinuance of the freedmen’s courts, and the result was a stampede of wronged and outraged people across the line. During an hour I spent at the Bureau one morning, a stream of these cases kept coming in. The newly organized Mississippi militia, under pretence of searching for arms which the blacks were supposed to have provided for the forthcoming Christmas insurrections, had committed robberies, murders, and other outrages, against these unoffending and unprotected people. The Bureau at Memphis could do nothing but refer these cases to the Assistant-Commissioner at Vicksburg, who could do nothing but refer them to the civil courts, which let them alone. One case I recall, however, in which the officers at Memphis thought they could do something. A colored man, who had been managing a Mississippi plantation under contract for a quarter of the crop, came to Memphis for a redress of grievances. The owner had given him fifteen dollars, and refused to give him anything more for his labor. The cotton was baled, and ready for market. It would soon be in Memphis. “Keep watch of that cotton,” said the agent; “and as soon as it arrives, we will attach it, and you shall have your share.”
While I was there, two negroes came in from Parson Botts’s plantation, in De Soto County, (Mississippi,) bringing guns which they had run off with on the approach of the militia. The wife of one of these men had been beaten over the head with a pistol, and afterwards hung by the neck, to compel her to disclose where the guns were hidden. In this case there was no redress.