At times it was unlawful to buy corn or other grain for shipment and sale in another part of the state or in other states. The military authorities in charge of the railroads sometimes prohibited the shipment of grain or supplies away from the regions where the armies were likely to camp or to march. In December, 1862, it was enacted that no one except the producer or miller should sell corn without a license from the judge of probate, which license limited the sale to one county for one year at a profit of not more than 20 per cent.[564] However, in 1863 the legislature authorized T. B. Bethea of Montgomery to sell corn bought in Marengo County in any market in the state.[565]
Distress was produced in south Alabama by General Pemberton’s order prohibiting shipment by private individuals from Mississippi to Alabama on the railways.[566]
In each state and later in each congressional district there were price commissioners appointed, whose duty it was to fix schedules of prices at which the articles of common use and necessity were to be sold by the owners or paid for by the government when impressed. These prices were fixed for the whole state, were usually for a term of three months, and were often below the real market value. Consequently this had no effect except to make the people hide their supplies from the government.[567] Prices necessarily varied greatly in the different sections of the state, and what was a reasonable value in central Alabama was unreasonably low in north Alabama or at Mobile. In 1863 a Confederate quartermaster in north Alabama insisted that the price commissioners must raise their prices or he would be unable to buy for the army. He wrote that wool and woollen and leather goods sold at Mobile in December, 1863, for from three to five times as much as the scheduled prices of November 1, 1863. Prices in north Alabama, he added, must be made higher than in south Alabama because there was barely enough in that section for the people themselves to live on.[568]
For months after the end of the war the inhabitants of the hill and mountain districts of north Alabama and of the pine barrens of south Alabama were on the verge of starvation, and a number of deaths actually occurred. The Black Belt fared better, and recovered more quickly from the devastation of the armies.
Sec. 5. The Negro during the War
Military Uses of Negroes
The large non-combatant negro population was not wholly a source of military and economic weakness to the state. In many respects it was a source of strength to the military authorities, who employed negroes in various capacities, thus relieving whites for military service. They were employed as teamsters, cooks, nurses, and attendants in the hospitals, laborers on the fortifications at Mobile, Montgomery, and Selma, around the ordnance factories at Selma, in the salt works of Clarke County, and at the nitre works of central and southern Alabama. Half as many whites could be released for war as there were negroes employed in military industries. The negroes employed by the authorities were usually chosen because trustworthy, and they were as devoted Confederates as the whites, all in all, perhaps, more so. They were efficient and faithful, and rarely deserted to the enemy or allowed themselves to be captured, though many opportunities were offered in north Alabama.[569]
After the secession of the state and before the formation of the Confederacy numerous offers of the services of negro men were made by their masters. The legislature passed an act to regulate the use of men so proffered.[570] Where the negroes were employed in great numbers by the government they worked under the supervision, not of a government overseer, but of one appointed by the master who supported the negroes, and who was paid or promised pay for their work. In the early part of the war the white soldiers wanted to fight, but not to dig trenches, cook, drive teams, or play in the band. Congress authorized, in 1862, the employment of negroes as musicians in the army, and the enlistment of four cooks, who might be colored, for each company.[571] In the same year the state legislature authorized the governor to impress negroes to work on the fortifications.[572] The state government impressed numbers of negroes as laborers in the various state industries, such as nitre and salt working, building railroads, and hauling the tax-in-kind. The legislature, in August, 1863, declared that negroes ought to be placed in all possible positions in the workshops and as laborers, and the white men thus released should be sent to the army.[573]
Most of the impressment of blacks was done by the Confederate government. The Confederate Impressment Act of March 26, 1863, provided that no farm slave should be impressed before December 1. On February 17, 1864, free negroes were made liable to service in the army as laborers and teamsters. Before the passage of this act free negroes had often been hired as substitutes, and sent to the army as soldiers in place of those who preferred the comforts of home.[574] Bishop-General Polk made a general impressment of negroes in north Alabama to work on the defences in his department, and many protests were made by the owners. A public meeting was held in April, 1864, in Talladega County to protest against further impressment of negroes. This county, in December, 1862, sent 90 negroes to the fortifications; in January, 1863, 120 more were sent; in February, 1863, 160; in March, 1863, 160; and so on. Talladega was one of the counties that had to furnish supplies to the destitute mountain counties, and the loss of labor was severely felt. Randolph and other north Alabama counties made similar protests. From north Alabama 2500 negroes were taken at one time to work on the fortifications in the Tennessee valley; this frequently occurred. Central and south Alabama and southeast Mississippi furnished many negroes to work on the fortifications at Selma, Montgomery, and Mobile. After Farragut passed the forts at Mobile, 4500 negroes were at once set to throwing up earthworks and soon had the city in safety.[575] The lines of earthworks then made by the negroes still stretch for miles around the city, through the pine woods, almost as well defined as when thrown up.
When the crack regiments of young men from the black counties went to Virginia, early in 1861, nearly every soldier had with him a negro servant who faithfully took care of his “young master” and performed the rough tasks that fell to the soldier—splitting wood, digging ditches about the camp, hauling, and building. The Third Alabama regiment of infantry, one of the best, left Alabama a thousand strong in rank and file and several hundred strong in negro servants. Two years later there were no negro servants; they had been sent home when their masters were killed, or because they were needed at home, or they had been sold and “eaten up” by the youngsters, who now had to do their own work.[576] Only the officers kept body-servants after the first year or two. These servants were always faithful, even unto death. The old Confederate soldiers have pleasant recollections of the devotion of the faithful black who “fought, bled, and died” with him for four years in dreary camp and on bloody battle-field. The old soldier-servants who survive tell with pride of the times when with “young master” and “Mass Bob Lee” they “fowt the Yankees in Virginny” or at “Ilun 10.” Many a bullet was sent into the northern lines by the slaves secretly using the white soldiers’ guns. When capture was imminent, the negro servant would take watches, papers, and other valuables of the master, and, making his way through the enemy’s lines, return to the old home with messages and directions from his master, then in prison. In battle the slave was close at hand to aid his master when wounded or exhausted. With a pine torch at night he searched among the wounded and dead for his master. Finding him wounded, he cared for him faithfully, bore him to hospital or friendly house, or carried him a long journey home. Finding him dead, the devoted slave performed the last duties and alone often buried his master, and then went sadly home to break the news. Sometimes he managed to carry home his master’s body, that it might lie among kindred in the family burying-ground. If he could not do that, he carried to his mistress his master’s sword, horse, trinkets, and often his last message.[577]