“Oh, we’ll tell them how to vote, sir; we have means of reaching them; and they’ll follow us sooner than they will their old masters or any white man.”
“Possibly; perhaps even probably. But neither they, nor even you, are familiar with political history, the organization of parties, the antecedents of parties or of leaders; and you are very liable to be deceived. How do we know that, in your ignorance, you will not be tricked into voting the slavery ticket, under some pleasant and deceptive name, rather than the freedom ticket?”
“Mr. Judge, we always knows who’s our friends and who isn’t. We knows the difference between the Union ticket and the Rebel ticket. We may not know all about all the men that’s on it; but we knows the difference between the Union and the Rebel parties. Yes, sir; we knows that much better than you do! Because, sir, some of our people stand behind these men at the table, and hear ’em talk; we see ’em in the house and by the wayside; and we know ’em from skin to core, better than you do or can do, till you live among ’em as long, and see as much of ’em as we have.”
“I have no doubt of your competency to take care of yourselves in Savannah,” said the Chief Justice; “but what your friends at the North are afraid of, is, that your people in the interior will not know how to tell whom to vote for, for the present at least, and that in their bewilderment they will vote just as their old masters tell them they ought.”
“I tell you, Mr. Judge,” said the preacher, “we can reach every colored man in the State; and they would rather trust intelligent men of their own color than any white man. They’ll vote the ticket we tell them is the ticket of our friends; and, as fast as they can, they’ll learn to read and judge for themselves.”
“Sir,” he continued, “the white population of Georgia is five hundred thousand, and, of that number, fifty thousand, or one in ten, can’t read and write. Give us three years to work in, and, among our younger adults, the proportion who can not read and write will be no greater. But, sir, these whites don’t read and write because they don’t want to; our people don’t, because the law and public feeling were against it. The ignorant whites had every chance to learn, but didn’t; we had every chance to remain ignorant, and many of us learned in spite of them.”
Another delegation consisted of blacks from the country, wearing coarse negro clothes instead of broadcloth, less graceful in their bearing, and less cultivated in their talk. Their old masters were abusing them, were whipping those who said they thought they were free, and were doing all they could to retain them in a state of actual, if not also nominal, slavery. Some were endeavoring to earn a living by hauling wood to the country towns, and they complained that their old masters went with cunning stories to the military authorities and contrived to have them stopped. Others had tales of atrocities to tell, whippings and cutting off of ears and the like, for the crimes of going where they pleased and assuming to act as freemen. All the negroes knew that the North had triumphed in the war, and that they were by consequence free; but the white masters didn’t yet seem to understand it. Some of these men appeared patient enough under their wrongs; others bore themselves angrily, and were full of revengeful thoughts. A slave insurrection is not probable; but where whites and negroes are alike unarmed, and the negroes are nearly or quite equal to the white population, there may be such a thing as goading the patient bearer of burdens into revolt. If so, let the masters beware. On the levees of the Mississippi any man can loose the floods of half a continent; but it takes many men to confine them again.
Few of the negroes, and, indeed, few of the whites, spoke of any settled arrangements between the late slaves and the late masters, on the basis of the freedom of the blacks, and their consequent right to wages. Wherever any bargains had been made, they seemed to be such as would virtually establish the Mexican peonage instead of Southern slavery. Negroes were hired at nominal monthly wages, “with board;” and whatever debts they incurred in getting their clothing were to be subsequently “worked out” at the same rates. The result was, of course, certain to be that the masters would encourage the negroes to run in debt; and, this done, would hold them forever by a constantly strengthening chain.[[20]]
I saw none of the negroes, either residing in Savannah or from the country, who had any desire to be colonized away from their present homes. Ask them if they would like to live by themselves, and they would generally say “Yes” (as they did to Secretary Stanton); but further inquiry would always develope the fact that their idea of “living by themselves” was to have the whites removed from what they consider their own country. Admiral Dahlgren’s observation at Charleston (that the negroes couldn’t see what good it did them to make them free, unless they were to have the land to which their slave labor had given all its value), is confirmed here, as it was at Port Royal. The more intelligent negroes generally think it would be better for their people to be freed from contact with the whites; but their idea of accomplishing it is, not to remove the blacks, but to have the whites remove from them. They believe in colonization; but it is in colonization on the lands they have been working. From the bare idea of enforced, or even voluntary, removal to other sections, they utterly revolt.
No one, who saw or conversed with the leading Savannah negroes, would doubt their entire capacity to support themselves. They were all well-dressed, in clothes bought by their own earnings; many of them were living in large and well-furnished houses; some owned their own residences, and not a few had quite handsome incomes. In short, the negro has shown in Savannah, just as in more northern cities, that in proportion as he advanced in intelligence, he advanced also in the arts of money getting, and gathered about him those substantial evidences of prosperity which all governments regard as the best guarantee for the good behavior of the citizen.