The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

CHAPTER XIV

THE CURSE OF SLAVERY TO THE WHITE, AND ITS BLESSING TO THE NEGRO

The master got the curse and the negro the blessing of slavery.

We set out by mentioning how certain ants have been injured by becoming masters. Before this they were doubtless the equals of any non-slaveholding tribe in self-maintenance. Now they “are waited upon and fed by their slaves, and when the slaves are taken away the masters perish miserably.”[139] It did not become so bad as this with human slaveholders; but the consequent disadvantage was very great, as we shall now exemplify with some detail. We shall throughout keep to the average and typical man and woman. And for brevity’s sake, we shall not look beyond the domestic and agricultural spheres, because when the reader has learned what slavery did in these, he can of himself easily add the little required to make complete statement of its entire effect.

In non-slave communities baby is tended only by mother and near relatives. Though petted and indulged, it is steadily constrained into more obedience to those who tend it. In due time the child is taking care of itself in many things, and is also doing light chores. Until the parental roof has been left he or she has every day something to do. What we may call the open-air home-work is done by the boys, and the inside by the girls. But in the old south baby commenced its life as a slaveholder with a nurse that it learned to command by inarticulate cries and signs before it could talk. And to the end, as grandfather or grandmother, self-service in many common things, as is usual with all other people, was never learned, but great expertness in getting these things done by slaves was learned instead.

I was only fifteen years old in 1851, when I entered the sophomore class in Princeton College, never having been out of the south before. Of course much of my time at first was consumed in observing and thinking over many sights very novel and strange to me. I came in August. Soon afterwards I saw them saving their Indian corn. In the south we “pulled” the fodder, and some weeks later we “pulled” the corn, leaving the stripped stalks standing. But the New Jersey farmers, without removing the blades or the ears, cut the stalks down, put them up in stacks, and after a while hauled them to the barn. This was such a wonder that I described it minutely in a letter to my mother. The next great surprise that I had was to note the lady of the family and her daughters doing everything in and about the house, which I used to see at home only the negroes do. They were marvellously more expert and neat in despatch than the negroes. Their easy and, as it seemed, effortless way of getting through their daily employment grew upon me steadily. What I intently observed in those times and reflected over much subsequently, I have had a recent experience to refresh and enforce. In the summer of 1902 two ladies from Pennsylvania took a house in Atlanta next to mine. They had never before been in the south. I found out these lonely strangers at once, and was soon seeing much of them. They kept no servant. The two did all the household tasks. The younger washed the clothes. This is something which but few city southern ladies, except those whose ancestors were not slaveholders, have ever consented to do. The laundry of even the poorest families in our towns is nearly always the care of a negro washerwoman. Although their work was every day punctually done by my two new-found friends, and their house always the tidiest, like the New Jersey ladies of my boyhood at Princeton, they were never flustered nor worried, but were always pleasant and agreeable.

Plainly they lived in far more ease and comfort than the native housekeepers. There are two classes of the latter. In one is the woman who is greatly plagued by the waste, dishonesty, and eye-service of her negro cook and housemaid, and always in craven fear that she will wake up some morning to know that they have taken French leave. In the other class is the woman who often must, with the help only of her children, do everything at home. What a laborious, fatiguing botch they make of it! Their day-dream all the year round is to find that needle in a haystack, a servant who will take no more than the established holidays and always come in time to get breakfast.

I sorrow for these present housekeepers of the south. They all know by heart and often retell to their children the tales of their mothers and grandmothers,—how, early in the morning, the affectionate and faithful nurses stole the children out of the room, without waking papa and mamma; how the cook and the waiters, not superintended, had the best of breakfasts ready at the right time; how at this meal there was happy reunion of the family beginning a new day, the children bathed and in their clean clothes, each one pretty as a picture and sweet as a pink; and how all the affairs of the household under the magic touch of angel servants were fitly despatched without trouble or worry to mamma, until the day ended by the nurses’ bathing the little tots again, putting them to bed, and mammy’s getting them to sleep by telling “The Tar Baby” or some other adventure of Brer Rabbit over and over as often as sleepily called for, or by singing sweet lullabies. With this vision of a real fairyland in which their ancestors lived not so very long ago, how can any one of these mothers of the new south contentedly make herself the only nurse, cook, and house servant of her family? For many a year yet, to do every day the drudgery of all three will be the extreme of discomfort and sore trial to her. We must give her loving words and sympathy without ceasing, and trust her to the slow but sure healing of inevitable necessity.

This lamentable condition of our southern woman is due, as plainly appears, to the miseducation given their ancestors by slavery. Slavery went forty years ago; but it left the negro, and the dependence of these women upon her as their only servant. It is indispensable that they cut loose completely from this dependence. Their resolve should be firm and unwavering that they will learn to minister to themselves and their dear ones, and teach the blessed art to their children; as their northern sisters have always done. I would have them here receptively contemplate, as a part of the new lesson which they must learn, this true and enchanting picture of a New England home:

“There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sits sewing every afternoon among her daughters, as if nothing had ever been done, or were to be done,—she and her girls, in some long-forgotten forepart of the day did up the work, and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you would see them, it is done up. The old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking utensils never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and ironing is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.”[140]