The men all claim this privilege to beat their wives, and the women freely concede it. In fact they seem to have less affection for a man, unless he occasionally establishes his superiority by whipping them. The men actually believe that a woman loves her husband all the better for an occasional beating; and certainly the facts would seem to warrant their theory. I have known cases in which the whole force was aroused at night by the noise in some cabin, where a man was beating his wife—she resisting, screaming, threatening, and finally seizing a knife and rushing after him. Next morning I have seen such couples as loving and bright as though their honeymoon was just beginning.
Sometimes, however, their quarrels become serious. I saw one case in which an overseer was aroused in the night by a repentant husband, who said he’d been whipping his wife a little and he was afeard he’d a most done killed her. She was badly bruised, and for a week or more she required medical attention. In another case, on the same plantation, a man’s wife in a fit of jealousy attacked his sweetheart. The latter proved the stronger, and absolutely cut the wife’s head open with a hoe, so that for weeks she was unable to go into the field. But, in the main, they are surprisingly orderly, and cases of serious violence among them are quite rare.
CHAPTER LII.
Labor Experiments and Prospects.
The officers of a negro regiment at Natchez spent the month of March in mustering it out of the service. First the muster-out rolls gave interminable delays; then every body waited for the mustering officer; then on the paymaster; and, meantime, the camp was inundated by a flood of planters and speculators seeking to contract for hands.
One Surgeon Dayton, late of our volunteer service, son of the late United States Minister to France, had leased a plantation over on Black River. He wanted hands badly, but they wouldn’t leave the Mississippi River. And the truth was, he didn’t blame them very greatly. All his neighbors were the old set; mad at him as a Northerner, and mad at the negroes as freedmen. It wasn’t very pleasant for him and he supposed it wouldn’t be very pleasant for the negroes. But, nevertheless, he must have some hands if he could get them; and he was trying to get an influential sergeant who would be able to carry a dozen or two wherever he went.
Colonel Wallace, late of an Illinois cavalry regiment,[[80]] was another. He wanted hands for some plantation in which he was interested, but he had about made up his mind that it would cost more than they were worth, to get them.
“Fact is, gentlemen,” I heard an officer wearing the United States uniform say to planters, asking about the chances for hands, when the regiment was disbanded; “Fact is, you had better make your bargains with us than with the niggers. We control ’em; and we don’t mean to take ’em to anybody’s plantation without being paid for it.” And, in truth, quite a number of officers were bargaining all the time with the negro-seeking planters for their valuable influence. Some insisted on a considerable share of the crop in return for taking a specified number of negroes to the place. Others preferred a fixed salary of two, three, or indeed, as high as five or six thousand dollars a year, for their services—not as overseers, for they knew absolutely nothing of cotton culture—but simply in preserving order on the plantations and retaining the confidence of the negro.[[81]] After making their own bargain on the most favorable terms they could secure, it became their duty to persuade the negroes that this was the identical place they had been looking for, all the time, in their search for a good home.
In most cases they knew nothing whatever about the homes which they thus recommended; had never seen them, and had never heard of the proprietors until they proved themselves adventurers by making these extravagant offers. In other cases they knew that these men were dishonest and unprincipled; and yet they encouraged their confiding subordinates to bind themselves to such men for a year, in remote regions, where there was little hope for protection from the Freedman’s Bureau or from civil officers. “Why didn’t you warn the sergeant against that man with whom he has contracted?” said the colonel of the regiment, one day to the adjutant. “You had yourself found that the man didn’t keep his promises, and couldn’t be depended on.” The adjutant blushed, stammered, and explained: “I expect to stay in this country myself, and I didn’t want to be making enemies of such men!”
This flunkeyism of Northern men, who “expected to stay in this country and didn’t want to make enemies,” was manifest everywhere. For a genuine toady, commend me to a Northern adventurer, or “runner,” in the cotton-growing regions. Through the winter of 1865-’66, the South was full of them, looking for cotton-lands, soliciting custom for Northern business houses, collecting old debts. They never spoke of Rebels, but with great caution called them Confederates. The National armies became, in their mouths, “the Federals.” They were always profound admirers of General Lee, the “second Washington of Virginia;” they grew enthusiastic over Stonewall Jackson; and, if it became necessary to speak kindly of any Northern officers, they always, with delicate appreciation of the proprieties, selected McClellan. If they were found out to be Northerners, they were anxious to have it understood that, at any rate, they were not Yankees; and were pretty sure to intimate that if they had any hatred a little more intense than that which good Christians ought to cherish toward the devil, it was evoked by the doings or the presence of these Yankees aforesaid.
Day after day, the camp of the negro regiment was filled with Mississippi or Louisiana planters. It was refreshing to see with what careful consideration and scrupulous politeness they approached the “niggers.” Here was no longer “hatred of the upstarts,” “war of races,” “unconquerable antagonism.” The negro was king. Men fawned upon him; took him to the sutler’s shop and treated him; carried pockets full of tobacco to bestow upon him; carefully explained to him the varied delights of their respective plantations. Women came too—with coach and coachman—drove into the camp, went out among the negroes, and with sweet smiles and honeyed words sought to persuade them that such and such plantations would be the very home they were looking for. Sambo listened, took the tobacco, drank the whisky, grinned ample return for every smile, and——cogitated. Scarcely an old planter got a negro, unless by some bargain with the officers. Half of them made no engagements at all; and, in a week after their discharge, the streets of Natchez were full of ragged, hungry negroes who had spent all their money and lost all their clothes; and were anxious to contract for a year’s work with the first planter who came along.