Historical voices

Every bale of that cotton is yours, till you are paid for your work out of it, and the Freedman’s Bureau will see that it pays you.

This very preacher had more than once been dragged from the pulpit and given forty lashes for presuming to repeat passages of the Bible, and talk about them to the slaves.

Perhaps most of them are too ignorant to comprehend religious matters—but it is on white, not black, shoulders that the sin for their ignorance rests.

Perhaps they do rise from their knees to steal—even white church members have been known to do the same.

You just tell him exactly what you want done, and he’ll be very apt to do just about that thing.

If, by any chance, some house servant does tell you of the thefts of a hand, it will only be after exacting innumerable promises that you will never, never, on any account, tell how you found it out.

It is very rarely, indeed, that one negro will expose another.

I’ll never give in to the new-fangled notions again.

He was a model of muscular strength, and had a fine intelligent face; though there were lines about it that spoke of high temper and a very strong will of his own.

Men of middle age, often of considerable intelligence, professed their utter inability to learn the alphabet.

Even here, the proportion of young men and women who could spell out simple sentences was not more than one or two in a hundred.

They preferred a white teacher, if possible, but were willing to take one of their own color, if no white one could be obtained.

Elsewhere, however, I saw plantations where the negroes asked the proprietors to reserve out of their wages enough to hire a teacher for their children.

So long as they doubted his ability to pay them, they were suspicious and watchful; captious as to the quality of the flour and meal furnished them; severely critical on the pork, and perfect almanacs as to the approach of pay-day.

All regarded him either as an adventurous swindler, without any money at all, or as a Crœsus, made of money.

After the new planter had once secured their confidence, nothing seemed more characteristic of the negroes than their constant desire to screw a little higher wages out of him; or, in one way or another, to make him turn over to them his…

With all this muster of servants, the two much waited-on white men lived no better than the average of Northern day-laborers.

The praises of this class of Southern slaves have always been loudly sung by their owners, but the good cooks and rare housekeepers have certainly disappeared.

Still, the main motive, under the stimulus of which pretty steady work was secured, was always that “at fust ob next month, Mass’r —— (the proprietor) will be ’long wid greenbacks enuff to shingle a house for us.

If they got all the land cleared off in time for planting, they were to quit for a day, go off to the lake across the swamp in a body and have a big fish-fry.

I observed, however, that when he thought they were not getting on fast enough, he always found it necessary to offer some reward in addition to their regular wages, to revive their drooping energies.

Here were hands, not first class, but men, women, and children, who had under unusually unfavorable circumstances, cleared off and prepared for planting, an average of nearly thirteen acres to the hand.

I never saw hands more cheerful or contented than some managed on this last plan were.

Even in gangs, not half of them could be depended on for steady work, except under the eye of the overseer or driver; but, with his direction, they labored cheerfully and steadily.