American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900

by H. W. Brands

  The shiftless five—if that was indeed their number—could cite reasons for not working. An informant explained to Trowbridge the employment practices of a white landowning neighbor. “He goes by the name of ‘Honest M—’ all through the country,” Trowbridge explained, adding parenthetically, “I omit names, for he”—Trowbridge’s source—“told me that not only his property but his life depended upon the good-will of his neighbors.” Trowbridge continued, of “Honest M”:

  Honesty appeared to be a virtue to be exercised only towards white people; it was too good to be thrown away on niggers. This M has four hundred sheep, seventy milch cows, fifteen horses, ten mules, and forty hogs, all of which were saved from the Yankees when they raided through the country, by an old negro who run them off across a swamp. Honest M has never given that negro five cents. Another of his slaves had a cow of his own from which he raised a fine pair of oxen; Honest M lays claim to those oxen and sells them. A slave-woman that belonged to him had a cow she had raised from a calf; Honest M takes that, and adds it to his herd. He promised his niggers a share of the crops this year; but he has sold the cotton, and locked up the corn, and never given one of them a dollar. And all this time he thinks he is honest; he thinks Northern capitalists treat free laborers this way.

  Trowbridge’s informant was a Northerner who had come south seeking opportunity after the war (which was another reason he had to be careful of his neighbors’ opinions). He had rented one of M’s two plantations, as M lacked the capital to run both himself. “But he gave me notice at the start that he should take all the niggers from my plantation, and that I must look out for my own help.” When the Northerner, however, in company with M, went to take possession of his rented property, all the freedmen were there.

  “How’s this?” he asked the owner. “I thought these people were going with you.”

  M explained that he couldn’t persuade them to work for him. He said he had offered twenty-five dollars a month, plus board and medical attention, but they wouldn’t come.

  The Northerner hesitantly asked if he might try to employ them. M said he was welcome to try. After M left, the Northerner called the freedmen around. He afterward told Trowbridge what happened.

  Said I: “Mr. M offers you twenty-five dollars a month. That is more than I can afford to pay, and I think you’d better hire to him.” They looked stolid; they couldn’t see it; they didn’t want to work for him at any price.

  Then I said, “If you won’t work for him, will you work for me?” I never saw faces light up so in my life. “Yes, master! Yes, master!” “But,” said I, “ten dollars a month is all I can afford to pay.” That made no difference, they said; they’d rather work for ten dollars, and be sure of their pay, than for twenty-five dollars, and be cheated out of it.

  The Northerner concluded his story happily. “They went right to work with a will. I won’t ask men to do any better than they have been doing. They are having their Christmas frolic right now, and it’s as merry a Christmas as ever you saw!”14

  ANOTHER OF TROWBRIDGE’S interviews revealed something else he considered significant about attitudes in the South. Among his interlocutors was “a very intelligent young man of Chambers County” in Alabama. This young man, the son of a planter, had fought with the Confederate army but been taken prisoner and sent to Pennsylvania. At the end of the war, having heard that everything he might have expected to own back in Alabama had been destroyed, confiscated, or stolen, he decided to stay in Pennsylvania. “I had never done a stroke of labor in my life, and it came hard to me at first. But I soon got used to it.” He worked on a farm for six dollars a month, then in a store for eighteen. He impressed his employer, who promoted him steadily till he was earning fifty dollars a month. “I had been a wild boy before the war,” he told Trowbridge. “I had plenty of money with no restrictions upon my spending it. But I tell you, I was never so happy in my life as when I was at work for my living in that store. My employer liked me, and trusted me, and I liked the people.”

  In time he returned home on a visit, which was how Trowbridge came to meet him. Things weren’t going well. “My relations and neighbors are very much incensed against me because I tell them plainly what I think of the Yankees. I know now that we were all in the wrong, and that the North was right, about the war; and I tell them so. I have met with the most insulting treatment on this account. They feel the bitterest animosity against the government, and denounce and abuse the Yankees, and call me a Yankee, as the worst name they can give me.” Trowbridge asked how widespread this view was. The young man said it was overwhelming. “There are fifteen hundred voting men in the county, and all but about a hundred and eighty feel and talk the way I tell you. They can’t be reconciled.… Those who are able are preparing to emigrate. A fund has already been raised to send agents to select lands for them in Mexico.”

  Trowbridge asked if the young man hadn’t encountered similar animosity in the North toward the South. He said he had, but only a little. “And there was this difference: In the North it is only a few ignorant people, of the poorer class, who hate the South. I believe the mass of the Northern people, while they hate treason and rebellion, have only kind feelings toward the Southern people. But with us it is the wealthy and influential class that hates the North, while only the poor whites and negroes have any loyalty at heart.”

  An Alabama planter registered despair rather than hatred. “The country is ruined,” he told Trowbridge. “The prosperity of our people passed away with the institution of slavery. I shall never try to make another fortune. I made one, and lost it in a minute. I had a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in niggers. I am now sixty years old. I’ll bet a suit of clothes against a dime, there’ll be no cotton crop raised this year.”

  This man predicted that blacks would find their freedom a mixed blessing. “Some few niggers go on, and do well, just as before; but they’re might scarce.” Others, especially the aged and infirm, would long for the security of the old days, when they could count on a roof over their heads and food on their tables. Already the reaction was setting in. “A nigger drayman came to me the other day and asked me to buy him. He said, ‘I want a master. When I had a master, I had nothing to do but to eat and drink and sleep, besides my work. Now I have to work and think too.’ When I said the law wouldn’t allow me to buy him, he looked very much discouraged.” (Commenting on the exchange, Trowbridge wrote, “I heard of a few such cases as this drayman’s, but they were far less common than one would have expected.”)15

  JOURDON ANDERSON HAD been the slave of Colonel P. H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee. Upon emancipation he went to Nashville before heading north for Ohio, where he received a letter from his old master. “I got your letter and was glad to find you had not forgotten Jourdon,” he responded (with the help of a literate friend), “and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can.” Jourdon said he had felt uneasy about the colonel since they had parted. “I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this for harboring Rebs.… I suppose they never heard about your going to Col. Martin’s to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable.” Jourdon said he had no hard feelings, “although you shot at me twice before I left you.” He sent his regards to the whole family. “Give my love to them.… I would have come back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.”

  Jourdon explained that he was prospering in Ohio. “I get $25 a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy (the folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the children—Milly, Jane and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher.” Yet Jourdon couldn’t deny sometimes feeling homesick, and he couldn’t rule out a return to the old plantation. “If you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my a
dvantage to move back again.”

  His wife had some doubts. “Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some kind of proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly.” They had decided what sort of proof they required. “I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At $25 a month for me, and $2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to $11,680. Add to this the interest for the time our wages has been kept back and deduct what you paid for our clothing and three doctor’s visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams Express, in care of V. Winters, esq., Dayton, Ohio.”

  Considering the matter further, Jourdon added another request. “Please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve and die, if it comes to that, than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters.” And one other thing: “You will please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.”

  Jourdon suspected he might not be hearing from the colonel again. So he reiterated his regards for all at the old place. “Tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this.… Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.”16

  THE CONFUSION IN the labor system that first season led to the adoption of general policies in various states. These “black codes,” as they came to be called, were swiftly criticized as attempts to reimpose slavery in all but name. The criticism wasn’t wrong but was somewhat misleading. In certain respects the black codes were liberal documents, at least by contrast to what had gone before in the slave states. Because slaves were construed as property, they had lacked the most basic civil and human rights. The black codes sought to define some of these rights for the freedmen. “All freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes may sue and be sued, implead and be impleaded, in all the courts of law and equity of the State,” the Mississippi code declared. “Freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes shall be competent in civil cases, when a party or parties to the suit, either plaintiff or plaintiffs, defendant or defendants; also in cases where freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes is or are either plaintiff or plaintiffs, defendant or defendants, and a white person or white persons is or are the opposing party or parties.” The rights of the former slaves extended to criminal cases as well. “It shall be lawful for any freedman, free negro or mulatto, to charge any white person, freedman, free negro, or mulatto, by affidavit, with any criminal offense against his or her person or property, and upon such affidavit the proper process shall be issued and executed as if said affidavit was made by a white person.”

  The black codes constructed family law for African Americans. “All freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes may intermarry with each other, in the same manner and under the same regulations that are provided by law for white persons,” the Mississippi code declared. “All freemen, free negroes, and mulattoes who do now and have heretofore lived and cohabited together as husband and wife shall be taken and held in law as legally married, and the issue shall be taken and held as legitimate for all purposes.” South Carolina was more succinct—and implicitly more eloquent in marking the difference between the era of slavery and that of freedom. “The relation of husband and wife among persons of color is established,” the South Carolina code stated. “The relation of parent and child among persons of color is recognized.”17

  On these points the black codes were a signal advance for African Americans. To be able to marry and have the union recognized in law, to know that one’s children weren’t liable to be snatched away at the whim of others, were precious rights, and made all the more precious by their absence just months before. To be able to sue and testify in court, to be able to bring criminal charges against anyone, were foundation stones of participation in civil society.

  Yet there was, of course, more to the black codes than empowerment of former slaves. Slavery had been a system of labor relations, but it was also a system of social control. Slavery specified what black men and women (and children) could and couldn’t do, where they could and couldn’t go, with whom they could and couldn’t associate. Many whites had difficulty imagining a society in which such controls were absent. They feared a footloose population of blacks roaming the countryside and deliberately or inadvertently fomenting trouble, from petty crimes to grand felonies. They assumed that since blacks had had to be coerced into working under slavery, they would have to be coerced into working under freedom. This was necessary for the survival of the Southern economy, which had been built on black labor, but it was also necessary for the welfare of blacks, who didn’t know enough to care for themselves.

  The black codes went to great lengths to describe and proscribe vagrancy. “All persons who have not some fixed and known place of abode, and some lawful and reputable employment; those who have not some visible and known means of a fair, reputable, and honest livelihood; all common prostitutes; those who are found wandering from place to place, vending, bartering, or peddling any articles or commodities, without a license from the district judge or other proper authority; all common gamblers, persons who lead idle or disorderly lives, or keep or frequent disorderly or disreputable houses or places; those who, not having sufficient means of support, are able to work, and do not work … shall be deemed vagrants,” said South Carolina. (The proscribed vagrant class also included “fortune-tellers, sturdy beggars, common drunkards, those who hunt game of any description, or fish on the land of others,” as well as unlicensed performers of “any tragedy, interlude, comedy, farce, play, or any other similar entertainment, exhibition of the circus, sleight of hand, wax-works, or … any concert or musical entertainment.”) The definition of vagrancy applied to persons of any race, but the penalty was specified only for persons of color. That penalty was imprisonment and hard labor for up to twelve months. But partly because the lawmakers and their constituents didn’t want to pay for the upkeep of prisoners and partly because the point of the statute was to ensure a supply of workers for the farms of the South, provision was made for the privatization of punishment. “The defendant, if sentenced to hard labor, after conviction may … be hired, for such wages as can be obtained for his services, to any owner or lessee of a farm for the term of the hard labor to which he was sentenced, or be hired for the same labor on the streets, public roads, or public buildings.”18

  Proscribing vagrancy was neither new nor unique to the South. Northern states had been doing it for years, and, upon the emergence of city-based manufacturing, several were stiffening their statutes. But the Southern codes went beyond outlawing vagrancy to specifying terms of employment. “Every freedman, free negro, and mulatto shall, on the second Monday of January, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six, and annually thereafter, have a lawful home or employment, and shall have written evidence thereof,” the Mississippi law declared. The evidence of a home should be a license or statement from a mayor or police board; the evidence of employment should be a contract. Length of service under labor contracts would be agreed upon by the employers and workers (officially styled “masters” and “servants” under South Carolina law) but would typically be a year. (“The period of service shall be expressed in the contract,” the South Carolina law said; “but if it not be expressed it shall be until the twenty-fifth day of December next after the commencement of the service.”) Failure to sign a contract would make a black person a vagrant and subject to the criminal sanctions for vagrancy. Failure to complete a signed contract would do the same and more. “If the laborer shall quit the service of the employer before expiration of his term of service, without good cause,” the Mississippi law stipulated, “he shall forfeit his wages for that year up to the
time of quitting.”19

  Predictably, the reaction to the black codes diverged dramatically. A North Carolina planter considered them useful guides to the self-improvement of the former slaves. “If they cannot (as they never can) occupy the places of legislators, judges, teachers, &c., they may be useful as tillers of the soil, as handicraftsmen, as servants in various situations, and be happy in their domestic and family relations.… It is our Christian duty to encourage them to these ends.” Governor Benjamin G. Humphreys of Mississippi considered his state’s code humane and just. If anything, it erred on the side of liberality in the legal privileges accorded blacks. But this was a small price to pay for the greater good. “The question of admitting negro testimony for the protection of their persons and property sinks into insignificance by the side of the other great question of guarding them and the State against the evils that may arise from their sudden emancipation.” What were these evils? “The answer is patent to all—vagrancy and pauperism, and their inevitable concomitant crime and misery.”20

  The former slaves took a decidedly different view. A group of Mississippi freedmen petitioned Humphreys in complaint of the code. “We do not want to be hunted by negro runners and their hounds unless we are guilty of a criminal crime,” they said. The new law would punish honest and hardworking African Americans, upon whom the future of the state depended. “If every one of us colored people were removed from the state of Mississippi, our superiors would soon find out who were their supporters. We the laborers have enriched them, and it is as much impossible for them to live without us as it is for we to be removed from them.”21