The houses of the servants, while far beyond those left behind in the “Dark Continent,” and comfortable for the most part, were certainly not the sort in which a high moral life could be taught. Consisting often of only two rooms, sometimes three, the problem of sleeping-quarters in them seemed a secondary consideration. And while few planters of the olden days would admit less than a real interest in the morals of their servants, practically none provided the means of safeguarding them properly in the homes furnished. Yet it must be said that these quarters were generally better than those which the Negroes have provided for themselves “since freedom.”
We turn now to the old plantation as the patriarchal family, with its valuable educative features in moral training and home-making. “The Big House” was the name given by the Negroes to the master’s home, whether a log house or a stately mansion. The servants’ quarters on the large plantation were often in the form of a village, with its streets, one or many, as the inhabitants required. Each house had its garden, its “hen-house,” and generally its pig-sty; with its fruit trees, serving both for shade and for food. Other features of the village, the day nursery, etc.—have been mentioned. The system of life was co-operative. With the exception of the garden truck, the supplies came from the plantation storehouses and the flocks and herds. Fish from the nearby streams, wild game, and native fruits of field and forest, furnished additional food for all alike.
“The lives of Whites and Blacks,” as Professor Phillips writes, “were partly segregate, partly intertwined. If any special links were needed, the children supplied them. The white ones, hardly knowing their mothers from their ‘mammies’ or their uncles by blood from their ‘uncles’ by courtesy, had the freedom of the kitchen and the cabins; and the black ones were their playmates in the shaded, sunny yard, the livelong day. Together they were regaled with folklore in the quarters; with the Bible and fairy stories in the “Big House”; with pastry in the kitchen; with grapes at the scuppernong vineyard; with melons at the spring-house; and with peaches in the orchard. The half-grown boys were likewise as undiscriminating among themselves as the dogs with which they chased rabbits by day and ’possums by night. Indeed, when the fork in the road of life was reached, the white youths found something to envy in the freedom of their fellows’ feet from the cramping weight of shoes, and the freedom of their minds from the restraints of school. With the approach of maturity, came routine and responsibility for the whites; routine alone for the generality of the blacks. Some of the males of each race grew into ruffians, others into gentlemen in the literal sense; some of the females into viragoes, others into gentlewomen; but most of both races and sexes merely became plain, wholesome folk of a somewhat distinctive plantation type.
In amusements there was the same mingling and separation. Never a fox-hunt or a rabbit-chase, but some bell-voiced Negroes were on hand to “whoop-up the dogs,” and, with canny knowledge of the habits of wild things, to guide the hunters, dogs and humans, to likely lairs. Something like this was true of every outdoor sport. If the Negroes gave a dance, the White were there to look on and applaud. If there was a festivity at the “Big House,” there were sure to be some favorites from the quarters to see and help. Who, that has heard them, can ever forget the impromptu concerts swelling up from the quarters on moonlight nights? Starting often with a single voice from the stoop of a cabin, and traveling from house to house, until the combined voices swelled upward and outward as a great, exquisite organ filling all space—it was, in very truth, a human organ of God’s fashioning. The memory brings melody.
Every step by the way was development from the savagery, often cannibalism, of African inheritance, to the awakening kindliness due to others, and the reverence for life as such. There were quarreling and fighting to be prevented or stopped. Punishment was often inflicted for such outbreaks. In some cases, the masters resorted to athletics as both a training in self-control and a means of working off surplus energy. Wrestling, boxing, racing and the like were practiced under the eye of the master, who acted as judge of the contest, and knew how to teach the contestants to compose ruffled feelings. Whether at work or at play, the old system was a school of training, under average conditions worth while; under the best conditions most valuable.
Some of the tribes of Africa had already developed agriculture to a degree. The American life immeasurably improved both method and purpose. And what a wholly new conception of family and social life was born in them! Polygamy had been too universally fashionable in the old land to admit the ties of family. No fondling there of little ones, no rejoicing in the growing lives; only the interest in the chattel, to be sold if the child be a girl, if a boy, all ties gone with the mother’s dried breast.
But, in the new life, love, long starved, re-awakened in tremendous force. High human emotions were developed, released and expanded under ever increasing kindly relations, growing more and more into affectionate attachment which was tried by shot and shell, by hunger and thirst, and not found wanting. This a South Carolinian wrote in 1852, a few years before the testing time of war: “Experience and observation fully satisfy me that the first law of slavery is that of kindness from master to slave. With that ... slavery becomes a family relation, next, in its attachments, to that of parent and child.” The Negro did not write that—not many could—; but nearly all learned to live it.
Conditions differing from those of the Negro in slavery existed, even during the period of slavery, among a constantly growing number of free Negroes who formed a distinct class both North and South. While a very few free Negroes came into the colonies from the Islands, and, in the early period, a larger number at the expiration of the indentured service, this class was formed either by the purchase of themselves by the Negroes, or through their manumission by generous or grateful masters. Typical of the first, is “the deed signed by Robert Daniell of South Carolina, in 1759, granting freedom to his slave, David Wilson, in consideration of his faithful service, and of £600 currency in hand paid.” Illustrative of the second, is “the will of Thomas Stanford of New Jersey, in 1722, directing that, upon the death of the testator’s wife, his negro man should have his freedom if, in the opinion of three neighbors named, he had behaved well.”
It is to be noted, too, that the democratic philosophy of the Revolutionary period, inevitably and immediately producing the abolition movement, stimulated very greatly private manumissions throughout the colonies, which persisted, in spite of reaction, to the very end of slavery. Thus Philip Graham, of Maryland, made a deed in 1787, by which his slaves were converted into servants for terms, and in which he recited, as the reason, his conviction that “the holding of his fellowmen in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the golden law of God and the inalienable right of mankind, as well as to every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in America.” About the same time, Richard Randolph, of the Roanoke family, wrote to his guardian, “With regard to the division of the estate, I want only to say that I want not a single Negro for other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power.”
So many were the manumissions of which these are typical, that, by 1790, there were more than 35,000 freedmen in the South. And while the reasons assigned were changed in the Nineteenth Century, liberations on a large scale were made. A unique sample was that of John McDonogh, the most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, who made a bargain with his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by their overtime work on Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh’s own service, and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw upon this fund upon approved occasions; but, since the contract was with the whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash, the others must draw theirs pro rata, thereby postponing the common day of liberation. Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule; and, after some delay in embarkation, they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with their late master’s benediction. In concluding his public narration, McDonogh wrote: “They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more virtuous people does not exist in any country.”