Enfranchisement of the freedmen was resisted on two main grounds: first, the tendency of the measure to bring the freedmen into conflict with the old master-class and the white people of the South generally; second, their unfitness, by reason of their ignorance, servility and degradation, to exercise over the destinies of the nation so great a power as the ballot.
“We’ve set them free! By Heaven, that’s enough! Let them go to work and prove themselves!” So spake the North, anxious to get back to “business as usual.”
But deep down in the land there was a mighty stirring. Words had been said that could not be recalled—henceforth, and forever free.
There were no stories of killings, massacre or rape by the freed blacks. Whitelaw Reid, touring the South, reported: “The Negroes everywhere are quiet, respectful and peaceful; they are the only group at work.” And the Alexandria Gazette said “the Negroes generally behave themselves respectfully toward the whites.”
At first there was much roaming about. Husbands set out to find wives; and wives, idle, sat on the flat ground, believing they would come. Mothers who had never set foot off the plantation, struck out across the country to find their children; and children—like dirty, scared, brown animals—swarmed aimlessly. There was sickness and death. Freedman’s Aid Societies floundered around in a vacuum, well-intentioned, doling out relief here and there; but what the black man needed was a place where he could stand—a tiny, little part of the great earth and a tool in his right hand.
William Freeland, master of Freelands, sat on his high-pillared porch staring at the unkempt, tangled yard. Weeds and briers choking everything—shrubbery, close-fisted, intricately branched, suffocating the rambler. In the fields beyond, nothing was growing save long grass, thistles and fierce suckers; and over the pond a scum had gathered, frothing and buoyed with its own gases.
Though past sixty when the war began, William Freeland, ashamed that Maryland was undecided, had gone to Richmond and volunteered. He had cut a fine figure riding away on his horse—his well-tailored gray uniform setting off the iron gray of his hair. The ladies of Richmond had leaned from their windows, fluttering lace handkerchiefs. They would not have recognized him when he came back to Freelands. His hair was thinned and white, his uniform a tattered, filthy rag; the bony nag he rode could scarcely make it to the old sycamore.
But the house still stood. It had not been pillaged or burned. His land had not been plowed with cannon; it was not soaked with blood. Suddenly the spring evening was cold, and he shuddered. Involuntarily his hand reached toward the bell. Then it fell back. No one would answer. Old Sue was in the kitchen, but she was too deaf to hear.
He would have to get some help on the place. The thought of paying wages to the ungrateful blacks filled him with rage. The cause of all the suffering and woe, they had turned on their masters, running after Yankees. Some of them had even shot white men! Gall bit into his soul as he remembered the strutting colored soldiers in Richmond.
The sound of a cart coming up the drive broke into his gloomy meditation. The master frowned. A side road led around to the back. Peddlers’ carts had no place on the drive. Then he remembered. This was probably the man he was expecting—impudent upstart! His hand shook, but he braced himself. He had promised to listen to him.