Mr. Hill returned to the Provost: “I shall come or send for the old man tomorrow,” he said. “Meanwhile, he must be cared for.” The Provost was indifferent. This was one of many cases. “If you do not provide food and shelter for that negro,” he was sharply assured, “I shall report you to the authorities at Washington.” The Provost promised and sent two orderlies to attend to the matter. Next morning the master was back. The old man was dead. He had been put in the scale-house, an open shed. There, instead of in his old home surrounded by friends who loved him, Uncle John had breathed his last.
From many other stories, companions in pathos, I choose Mammy Lisbeth’s. Her son went with the Yankee army. She grieved for him till her mistress’ heart ached. The mistress returned one day from a visit to find Lisbeth much excited. “Law, Miss, I done hyerd f’om my chile!” “How, Mammy?” “A Yankee soldier come by an’ I ax ’im is he seed my son whar he been goin’ ’long? An’ I tell ’im all ’bout how my chile look. An’ he say he done been seen ’im. An’ I say, ‘Law, mister, ain’t my chile gwi come home?’ An’ he gimme de answer: ‘He can’t come ef he ain’ got no money.’ An’ I answer, ‘Law, marster, I got a fi’-dollar gol’ piece my ole miss dat’s done dade gimme long time ago. Does you know any safe passin’?’ An’ he answer, jes ez kin’, how he gwine datter way hisse’f, an’ he’ll kyar it. I run in de house an’ got dat fi’-dollar gol’ piece an’ gi’ to ’im. An’ now my chile’s comin’ home, Miss! my chile’s comin’ home! He say, ‘In ’bout two weeks, you go to de kyars evvy day an’ look fuh im.’” Her mistress had not the heart to tell her the man had robbed her. Never before had a white man robbed her; it was second nature to trust the white face.
“It is heart-breaking,” her mistress wrote, “to see how she watches for him. She is at the depot every day, scanning the face of every coloured passenger getting off. I’ve been to the Bureau making inquiries. The Agent says if he could catch the rascal, the robber, he would string him up by the thumbs, but her description fits any strolling private. He says: ‘Any woman who would trust a stranger so with her money deserves to be fooled. I wouldn’t trouble about it, Madam!’ Yankees do not understand our coloured people and us. How can I help being troubled by anything that troubles Mammy Lisbeth?”
Here is another old letter: “Cousin mine: I came home from school a few days ago. Railroads all broken up and it took several days to make the journey in the carriage, stopping over-night along the route. At most houses, there was hardly anything to offer but shelter, but hospitality was perfect. Only cornbread and sassafras tea at one place; no servants to render attention; silver gone; family portraits punctured with bayonets; furniture and mirrors broken. Reaching home, found everything strange because of great change in domestic regime. Our cook, who has reigned in our kitchen for thirty years, is in Richmond, coining money out of a restaurant. Most of our servants have gone to the city. Our old butler and Mammy abide. I think it would have killed me had Mammy gone!
“I cannot tell you how it oppressed me to miss the familiar black faces I have loved all my life, and to feel that our negroes cared so little for us, and left at the first invitation. I have something strange to tell you. Mammy has been free since before I was born. I never knew till now. I was utterly wretched, and exclaimed: ‘Well, Mammy, I reckon you’ll go too!’ She took it as a deadly insult; I had to humble myself. While she was mad, the secret burst out: ‘Ef I’d wanted to go, I could ha’ gone long time ago. No Yankees sot me free! My marster sot me free.’ She showed me her manumission papers in grandfather’s hand, which she has worn for I don’t know how long, in a little oil-silk bag around her neck, never caring to use them. Domestic cares are making me gray! But I get some fun trying to do things I never did before, while Mammy scolds me for ‘demeaning’ myself.” There was honour in the “gritty” way the Southern housewife adapted herself to the situation, humour in the way spoiled maidens played the part of milkmaid or of Bridget.
“Do you know how to make lightbread?” one of our friends inquired, and proceeded to brag of her new accomplishments, adding: “I had never gotten a meal in my life until the morning after the Yankees passed, when I woke to find not a single servant on the place. There was a lone cow left. I essayed to milk her, but retired in dire confusion. I couldn’t make the milk go in the pail to save my life! It squirted in my face and eyes and all over my hair. The cow switched her tail around and cut my countenance, made demonstrations with her hind feet, and I retired. One of my daughters sat on the milking-stool and milked away as if she had been born to it.”
“The first meal I got,” another friend wrote, “my sons cooked. They learned how in the army. I thought the house was coming down while they were beating the biscuit! They drove me from the kitchen. ‘We don’t hate the Yankees for thrashing us,’ they said, ‘but God knows we hate them for turning our women into hewers of wood and drawers of water.’ Now, I’m as good a cook as my boys. Can do everything domestic except kill a chicken. I turn the chicken loose every time.”
“I write in a merry vein,” was another recital, “because it is no good to write in any other. But I have the heart-break over things. I see this big plantation, once so beautifully kept up, going to rack and ruin. I see the negroes I trained so carefully deteriorating every day. We suffer from theft, are humiliated by impertinence; and cannot help ourselves. Negroes call upon me daily for services that I, in Christian duty, must render whether I am able or not. And I cannot call upon them for one thing but I must pay twice over—and I have nothing to pay with. This is the first rule in their lesson of freedom—to get all they can out of white folks and give as little as possible in return.”
Letters teemed with experiences like this: “We went to sleep one night with a plantation full of negroes, and woke to find not one on the place—every servant gone to Sherman in Atlanta. Negroes are camped out all around that city. We had thought there was a strong bond of affection on their side as well as ours! We have ministered to them in sickness, infancy, and age. But poor creatures! they don’t know what freedom is, and they are crazy. They think it the opening of the door of Heaven. Some put me in mind of birds born and raised in a cage and suddenly turned loose and helpless; others, of hawks, minks and weasels, released to do mischief.
“We heard that there was much suffering in the camps; presently our negroes were all back, some ill from exposure. Maum Lucindy sent word for us to send for her, she was sick. Without a vehicle or team on the place, it looked like an impossible proposition, but my little boys patched up the relics of an old cart, borrowed the only steer in the neighbourhood, and got Maum Lucindy back. The raiders swept us clean of everything. We are unable to feed ourselves. How we shall feed and clothe the negroes when we cannot make them work, I do not know.”