The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

Before I have my readers to look at the actual facts I want to say a preliminary word. The parent was enjoined by Solomon not to spare the rod. The rod was permitted to the master of the apprentice, the school-teacher, the drill officer, and others. It was often used with great severity. As we see from the Decameron husbands were wont to correct their wives by beating them with sticks. Whipping on the bare back was a common execution of the judgment of a criminal court. Our insubordinate convicts are strapped. The usual punishment of a slave’s disobedience was to whip him. A switch was not generally used, because by reason of his thick and tough skin and lower nervous development—to use a common expression—it would not hurt him. It was a familiar thing to me in my childhood to hear some negro tell of the use of a switch on him by women or feeble men, how the blows could scarcely be felt, and yet with what outcry and clamor he pretended that each one gave him great pain. The cowhide, but far more frequently the whip, took the place of the switch. The former was more and more discredited, because it could seldom be laid on hard enough without cutting the skin. The whip had a flat lash at the end, with which, as the strap or paddle now used on our convicts, a stinging blow could be hit that would not draw blood.

An ordinary correction of a negro did not cause him as much pain as your child, with his far superior sensitiveness, receives when you give him the rod. Large and heavy as the overseer’s whip looked, the negro, with his high degree of insensibility to physical pain inherited from his African ancestors, who for a hundred generations or more had bestowed upon one another all kinds of corporal torture, cared far less for it than the abolitionist who insisted on making him merely a black white man, could ever understand. How little of both mental and corporal suffering the lash causes the average negro is strikingly shown by the fact that ever since his emancipation, when he is detected in a serious offence, he is prone to propose that he be whipped instead of being carried to court. If his offer is accepted he strips off his clothes with alacrity, exclaims the conventional “O, Lordy!” under every fall of the whip; and when the contract number of lashes has been given he goes away with the look and air of one who has just learned that he has drawn a lottery prize of thousands; and his nearest and dearest, his wife and children, all his sweethearts, congratulate him cordially, and the entire negro community rate him as rarely fortunate. This is enough here of the lash; but a word or two more will be appropriate when we give the chain-gang attention.

“Run, nigger, run, patroller get you.”

The riotous merriment of this air can be fully appreciated only by one who has heard Cuffee sing it at the quarters while picking his banjo. It completely confutes the charge often made that the patrol law was a cruel one. To the negro, the execution of that law was more of fun and frolic than punishment. Let this air, and all the others to which the slaves used to dance, be meditated by those, if there are such, who incline to believe that Professor DuBois has really detected, as he seriously contends, in the negro melodies of the old south deep sorrow over slavery. If miserable conditions give character to musical expression, the songs, if any, that now come forth spontaneously from the mass of southern negroes—that is, from those of the lower class, which class will be described later herein—ought to be sadder than the tears of Simonides.

My reader who has his memory stored with the raw-head and bloody bones fiction of abolitionists who had never set foot on an inch of slave territory, probably thinks of bloodhounds, and wonders if I will be frank enough to mention them. He has been made to believe that runaway slaves often had the flesh torn from their bones by these dogs. I witnessed several chases of runaways, and in every one, when the negro was overtaken by the dogs, he was in a tree far above their reach. Think about it, and bring it home to yourself. Put yourself in the runaway’s place, you would surely understand as well as a common house cat does how to avoid pursuing dogs. Negro dogs, as they were called, were bred to be far more slow than fox dogs. The tricks of the runaway would put the latter at fault so often that they could hardly ever catch him. Further, the packs of negro dogs were usually too small to overpower a stout negro. He was often armed with a scythe-blade for use if overtaken where he could not find a tree. When he could keep ahead no longer he preferred taking refuge to fighting with the dogs. He knew he could kill or disable only the few that would rush in recklessly, and that the others would stay too far from him to be hurt and yet keep him at bay. He was now going to be caught, and he would think it better not to provoke the ire of the owners by killing or injuring their dogs.

The negro hunted the ’possum and ’coon by night and the hare—the rabbit, as everybody called it—on Sundays, half-holidays, and Christmas, either with his young master or without him, and always with the dogs; which he thus learned to control. A negro woman cooked the corn-bread and pot-liquor, with which they were fed by her or some other slave. They were always waiting near when the slaves ate by day in the fields or at all hours of night in their cabins, and many a bit was thrown to them. Usually there was the greatest friendship between the dogs on the plantation, those intended for chasing runaways included, and the negroes. It was great entertainment for a negro, at the command of his master, to give the young negro dogs a race, as it was called. These races were frequent, and they were the entire training of the dogs for their business. A hunting dog when lost will track his master. And many a runaway was caught by dogs which he was in the habit of feeding and hunting with. The average negro of those days, prowling so much at night as he did, necessarily became a most expert dog-tamer. How often I have been diverted with this sight! A strange negro, coming on some errand, intrepidly opens the front gate and enters the yard of a dwelling. A savage dog dashes forward. Just as the dog couches near for his spring, the negro, by a very quick movement, takes off his hat and extends it to the dog. The latter turns his eyes away from the negro, looks at the old, soiled wool hat, smells it, and then retires, nonplussed.

As a general rule a negro was safe from the bite of dogs. Running away was not frequent. The almost insuperable difficulty of final escape from the dogs prevented it. And it was in practice a most mild means of prevention. I suppose that I knew and heard of the catching of some twenty odd slaves in the contiguous parts of Oglethorpe, Wilkes, Taliaferro, and Greene counties, which constituted the locality with which I was familiar, and in not a single case was one injured by the bloodhounds. The dogs that are now turned loose after our convicts are of far more savage temper than were the negro dogs of the old south; and consequently the human game, when come up with, is more prompt to go up a tree than was the old slave.

There was much less lack of food and raiment among the slaves than among the class known as the white trash. It was considered a business blunder not to keep them supplied always with more food than they wanted. They were in better physical condition than the average white laborer now shows.

And they were not worked hard. Even in the longest days of the year, when the battle with the grass was fiercest, at night the quarters were resonant with mirth, song, and dancing as soon as the mules had been watered, stabled, and fed.

The foregoing is a report, from my observation on the spot, of “all the tragic evils of slavery” to the negro in the south. I have been at pains to make it as true as can be. I purpose to follow it now with a like report of all the gladsome blessings to him of his freedom.