CHAPTER XVIII.
Immediately after the Rebellion ceased, the freedmen throughout the South, desiring no doubt to be fully satisfied that they were actually free and their own masters, and could go where they pleased, left their homes in the country and took up their abode in the cities and towns. This, as a matter of course, threw them out of business, and large numbers could be seen idly lolling about the steps of the court house, town hall, or other county buildings, or listlessly wandering through the streets. That they were able to do this seemed to them positive evidence that they were really free. It was not long, however, before they began to discover that they could not live without work, and that the only labor that they understood was in the country on the plantations. Consequently they returned to the farms, and in many instances to their former masters. Yet the old love for visiting the cities and towns remained, and they became habituated to leaving their work on Saturdays, and going to the place nearest to them. This caused Saturday to be called “nigger day,” in most of the Southern States.
On these occasions they sell their cotton or other produce, do their trading, generally having two jugs, one for the molasses, the other for the whiskey, as indispensible to the visit. The store-keepers get ready on Saturday morning, putting their brightest and most gaudy-colored goods in the windows or on the front of their counters. Jew shops put their hawkers at their doors, and the drinking saloons, billiard saloons, and other places of entertainment, kept for their especial accommodation, either by men of their own race or by whites, are all got ready for an extra run.
Being on a visit to the State of Alabama, for a while, I had a fair opportunity of seeing the colored people in that section under various circumstances. It was in the autumn and I was at Huntsville. The principal business houses of the city are situated upon a square which surrounds the court house, and at an early hour in the morning this is filled with colored people of all classes and shades. On Saturdays there are often fully two thousand of them in the streets at one time. At noon the throng was greatest, and up to that time fresh wagon-loads of men, women, and children, were continually arriving. They came not only in wagons, but on horses, and mules, and on foot. Their dress and general appearance were very dissimilar. Some were dressed in a queer looking garment made of pieces of old army blankets, a few were apparelled in faded military overcoats, which were liberally supplied with patches of other material. The women, unlike their husbands and other male relations, were dressed in finery of every conceivable fashion. All of them were decked out with many-colored ribbons. They wore pinchbeck jewelry in large quantities. A few of the young girls displayed some little taste in the arrangement of their dress; and some of them wore expensive clothes. These, however, were “city niggers,” and found but little favor in the eyes of the country girls. As the farmers arrived they hitched their tumble-down wagons and bony mules near the court house, and then proceeded to dispose of the cotton and other products which they had brought to town.
While the men are selling their effects, the women go about from store to store, looking at the many gaudy articles of wearing apparel which cunning shop-keepers have spread out to tempt their fancy. As soon as “the crop” is disposed of, and a negro farmer has money in his pocket, his first act is to pay the merchant from whom he obtained his supplies during the year. They are improvident and ignorant sometimes, but it must be said, to their credit, that as a class they always pay their debts, the moment they are in a position to do so. The country would not be so destitute if a larger number of white men followed their example in this respect. When they have settled up all their accounts, and arranged for future bills, they go and hunt up their wives, who are generally on the look-out. They then proceed to a dining saloon, call for an expensive meal, always finishing with pies, puddings, or preserves, and often with all three. When they have satisfied their appetites, they go first to the dry-goods stores. Here, as in other shops, they are met by obsequious white men, who conduct them at once to a back or side room, with which most of the stores are supplied. At first I could not fathom the mystery of this ceremony. After diligent inquiry, however, I discovered that, since the war, unprincipled store-keepers, some of them northern men, have established the custom of giving the country negroes, who come to buy, as much whiskey as they wish to drink. This is done in the back rooms I have mentioned, and when the unfortunate black men and women are deprived of half their wits by the vile stuff which is served out to them, they are induced to purchase all sorts of useless and expensive goods.
In their soberest moments average colored women have a passion for bright, colored dresses which amounts almost to madness, and, on such occasions as I have mentioned, they never stop buying until their money is exhausted. Their husbands have little or no control over them, and are obliged, whether they will or not, to see most of their hard earnings squandered upon an unserviceable jacket, or flimsy bonnet, or many-colored shawl. I saw one black woman spend upward of thirty dollars on millinery goods. As she received her bundle from the cringing clerk she said, with a laugh:
“I ’clare to the Lord I’se done gone busted my old man, sure.”
“Never mind,” said the clerk, “he can work for more.”
“To be sure,” answered the woman, and then flounced out of the store.