Mrs. Jewett, of Stony Creek, saw her negro man walking behind the Yankee Army with her husband’s suit of clothes done up in a red silk handkerchief and slung on a stick over his shoulder. Her two mulatto nurse-girls laid down their charges, attired themselves in her best apparel and went; her seamstress stopped sewing, jumped on a horse behind a soldier who invited her, and away she rode.
As victorious armies went through the country, they told the negroes, “You are free!” Negroes accepted the tidings in different ways. Old Aunt Hannah was not sure but that the assurance was an insult. “Law, marster!” she said, “I ain’ no free nigger! I is got a marster an’ mistiss! Dee right dar in de great house. Ef you don’ b’lieve me, you go dar an’ see.” “You’re a d—d fool!” he cried and rode on. “Sambo, you’re free!” Some negroes picked up the master’s saddle, flung it on the master’s horse, jumped on his back and rode away with the Yankees. After every Yankee army swarmed a great black crowd on foot, men, women, and children. They had to be fed and cared for; they wearied their deliverers.
Yankees told my father’s negroes they were free, but they did not accept the statement until “Ole Marster” made it. I remember the night. They were called together in the back yard—a great green space with blossomy altheas and fruit-trees and tall oaks around, and the scent of honeysuckles and Sweet Betseys making the air fragrant. He stood on the porch beside a table with a candle on it. I, at his knee, looked up at him and out on the sea of uplifted black faces. Some carried pine torches. He read from a paper, I do not know what, perhaps the emancipation proclamation. They listened silently. Then he spoke, his voice trembling:
“You do not belong to me any more. You are free. You have been like my own children. I have never felt that you were slaves. I have felt that you were charges put into my hands by God and that I had to render account to Him of how I raised you, how I treated you. I want you all to do well. You will have to work, if not for me, for somebody else. Heretofore, you have worked for me and I have supported you, fed you, clothed you, given you comfortable homes, paid your doctors’ bills, bought your medicines, taken care of your babies before they could take care of themselves; when you were sick, your mistress and I have nursed you; we have laid your dead away. I don’t think anybody else can have the same feeling for you that she and I have. I have been trying to think out a plan for paying wages or a part of the crop that would suit us all; but I haven’t finished thinking it out. I want to know what you think. Now, you can stay just as you have been staying and work just as you have been working, and we will plan together what is best. Or, you can go. My crops must be worked, and I want to know what arrangements to make. Ben! Dick! Moses! Abram! line up, everybody out there. As you pass this porch, tell me if you mean to stay; you needn’t promise for longer than this year, you know. If you want to go somewhere else, say so—and no hard thoughts!”
The long line passed. One and all they said: “I gwi stay wid you, Marster.” A few put it in different words. Uncle Andrew, the dean of the body, with wool as white as snow, a widower who went sparking every Sunday in my grandfather’s coat and my grandfather’s silk hat, said: “Law, Marster! I ain’ got nowhar tuh go ef I was gwine!” Some wiped their eyes, and my father had tears in his.
Next morning, old Uncle Eph, Andrew’s mate, was missing; his aged wife was in great distress. She came to my father reproachfully: “Marster,” she said, “I wish you wouldn’ put all dat foolishness ’bout freedom in Eph’s hade. He so ole I dunno what gwi become uh him ’long de road. When I wake up dis mo’nin’, he done tied all his close up in his hankercher and done lit out.” In a few days he returned, the butt of the quarters for many a day. “I jes wanter see whut it feel lak tuh be free,” he said, “an’ I wanter to go back to Ole Marster’s plantation whar I was born. It don’ look de same dar, an’ I done see nuff uh freedom.”
Presently my father was making out contracts and explaining them over and over; he would sign his name, the negro would make his mark, the witnesses sign; and the bond for a year’s work and wages or part of the crop, was complete. At first, contracts had to be ratified by a Freedmen’s Bureau agent, who charged master and servant each fifty cents or more. After one of our neighbours told his negroes they were free, they all promised to stay, as had ours. Next morning all but two were gone. In a few days all returned. The Bureau Agent had made them come back.
Many negroes leaving home fared worse than Uncle Eph. After the fall of Richmond, Mr. Hill, who had been a high official of the Confederacy, went back to his plantation, where he found but three negroes remaining, the rest having departed for Washington, the negro heaven. One of these, a man of seventy, said he must go, too. His ex-master could not dissuade him. He was comfortably quartered and Mr. Hill told him he would be cared for the rest of his life. Nothing would do but he must sell his chickens and his little crop of tobacco to one of the other negroes and go. Mr. Hill gave him provisions for ten days, had the wagon hitched up and sent him to Culpeper, where he was to take the train. On Culpeper’s outskirts was the usual collection of negroes, snack-house, bad whiskey, gambling, and kindred evils. Here Uncle John stopped. He had started with $15 cash. In less than a week his money was gone and he was thrown out on the common.
Mr. Hill, summoned before the Provost-Marshal on the charge of having driven Uncle John off, said: “The man sitting out there in my buggy can tell you whether I did that.” The testimony of the black witness was conclusive, the Provost dismissed the case. Mr. Hill went to the commons.
Lying in the sun, stone-blind, was Uncle John. He raised his head and listened. “Mistuh, fuh Gawd’s sake, please do suppin fuh me!” “Old man, why are you here?” “Lemme hear dat voice again!” “Uncle John!” “Bless de Lawd, Marster! you done come. Marster, a ’oman robbed me uf all I had an’ den th’owed me out. Fuh Gawd’s sake, take me home!” “I will have you cared for tonight, and tomorrow I will come in the wagon for you.” “Lawd, Marster, I sho is glad I gwine home! I kin res’ easy in my min’, now I know I gwine home!”