A south-side view of slavery; or, three months in the south in 1854.

Front matter

f UNITED STATES OP AMERICA, i

THREE MONTHS AT THE SOUTH,

NEHEMIAH ADAMS, D. D.

Contents

rAOE

Inteoductoey Statement, ....... 3

Chaptee

Chapter I. Feelings And Expectations On Going To The

SOUTH.

It was well said by Rev. John Newton, of London, that Job and his friends might have continued their dispute to the present time, if they had lived so long, unless God had interposed to settle the controversy.

Good men, conscientiously persuaded of the truth and importance of their respective partial views of a great subject, pleading for God, and therefore convinced, each of them, that the Most High is on his side, cannot yield one to the other without doing violence to their consciences.

Some new development, some providential disclosure, must be made to withdraw their thoughts from the issue which, they insist, is the only one of which the subject is capable ; otherwise, that which was mere contrariety of opinion grows to alienation and strife, of which no one sees the end.

He who proposes to write or speak at the present time on the subject which has so long tried the patience of good men as the subject of slavery has done, is justi fied in asking attention only by the conviction which it is supposed he feels that he can afford some help.

The writer has lately spent three months at the south for the health of an invalid. Few professional men at the north had less connection with the south by ties of any kind than he, when the providence of God made it necessary to become for a while a stranger in a strange land. He was too much absorbed by private circumstances to think of entering at all into a deliberate consideration of any important subject of a public nature ; yet for this very reason, perhaps, the mind was better prepared to receive dispassionately the impressions which were to be made upon it. The impressions thus made, and the reflections which spontaneously arose, the writer here submits, not as a partisan, but as a Christian ; not as a northerner, but as an American ; not as a politician, but as a lover and friend of the colored race. Having unexpectedly experienced help and relief in some degree in contemplating the subject, perhaps others may be assisted by noticing the process through which it was derived. To give information about slavery, to depict scenes at the south, to add any thing to the almost numberless discussions of the subject, is not the object of this book.

I will relate the impressions and expectations with which I went to the south ; the manner in which things appeared to me in connection with slavery in Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia ; the correction or confirmation of my northern opinions and feelings ; the conclusions to which I was led ; the way in which our language and whole manner toward the south have impressed me ; and the duty which it seems to me, as members of the Union, we at the north owe to the subject of slavery and lo tlie south, and with the south to the colored race. I shall not draw upon fictitious scenes and feelings, but shall give such statements as I would desire to receive from a friend to whom I should put the question, " What am I to believe ? How am I to feel and act ? "

In the few instances in which I do not speak from personal observation, I shall quote from men whom, in many places at home and abroad, I have learned to respect very highly for their intellectual, moral, and social qualities — I mean physicians. Associated with all classes at all times, knowing things not generally observed, and being removed by their profession from any extensive connection with slavery as a means of wealth, they have seemed to me unusually qualified to testify on the subject, and their opinions I have found to be eminently just and fair.

Very early in my visit at the south, agreeable impressions were made upon me, which soon began to be interspersed with impressions of a different kind in looking at slavery. The reader will bear this in mind, and not suppose, at any one point in the narrative, that I am giving results not to be qualified by subsequent statements. The feelings awakened by each new disclosure or train of reflection are stated without waiting for any thing which may follow.

Just before leaving home, several things had prepared me to feel a special interest in going to the south.

The last thinor which I did out of doors before leaving Boston was, to sign the remonstrance of the New England clergymen against the extension of slavery into the contemplated territories of Nebraska and Kansas. I had assisted in framing that remonstrance. The last thing Avhich I happened to do late at night before I began my journey was, to provide something for a freed slave on his way to Liberia, who was endeavoring to raise several thousand dollars to redeem his wife and children from bondage. My conversations relating to this slave and his family had filled me with new but by no means strange distress, and the thought of looking slavery in the face, of seeing the things which had so frequently disturbed my self-possession, was by no means plea>ant. To the anticipation of all the afflictive sights which I should behold there was added the old despair of seeing any way of relieving this fearful evil, while the unavailing desire to find it, excited by the actual sight of wrongs and woe, I feared would make my residence at the south painful.

Behind the tables at the hotel in New York, on my way south, stood a row of black waiters — no unusual sight to me, indeed ; but with my thoughts of the south and the slaves, it assumed new mterest. I connected them in my thoughts with the slaves. They seemed like straggling cinders at no great distance from the burning house which I was about to see. New sympathy for the slave v/as excited by their visages. If these who are free wear such dreary looks as my own thoughts imparted to them, how fearful must be the faces of the bondmen ! I felt that I was in the entrance way to the home of a race who would excite in me only sorrow.

On board the steamship from New York to Savannah, white faces took the place of the black complexion Avhich had become identified with serving men. We belong

10 a slave State, was the obvious reason given for tlii? substitution. Free negroes could not be received at the southern port ; slaves belonging to the steamer could not be trusted at New York ; hence those white servants, whose faces, to an eye which retained the recent impression of shining black skin, looked paler than ever.

We had been three days in a southern steamer, and had sailed by Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and had seen no slave. The sight was yet in reserve ; curiosity, sympathy, pity, the Avhole assemblage of northern fancies and feelings which gather together at the mention of a slave, were " all hands on deck" as we entered Savannah River. Chmate now ceased to be the only object of interest connected with the south. There lay the rice plantations ; but where were the slaves ? Some feeling of dread was mingled with curiosity. Cowper's lines, learned and declaimed so often in boyhood, came to mind : —

*' for a lodge in some vast ■wilderness," &c.,

" I would not have a slave to till my ground," &c.,

with the poet's enumeration of cruelties and horrors. The anticipation of hearing those groans which three millions of our fellow-countrymen are represented in our Fourth of July orations, and which I had myself in such an oration many years ago represented, as sending up to Heaven day and night, and the clanking of those chains which on such occasions are said to be minglinoj with John Adams's category of joyful noises forever to usher in the nation's birthday, and the confident expectation of seeing at the landing, or in passing tlirough the market-place, a figure like the common touching vignette of a naked negro on one knee, with manacled hands raised imploringly and saying, " Am I not a man and brother ? " had made the thought of reaching the south increasingly painful.

" So you are going south/' said a good friend in Boston. " Well," he continued, " you will, I suppose, have your feelings of humanity strongly appealed to many a time." I felt afraid to trust myself in scenes such as I had heard described ; yet, as we came near Savannah, there was a natural impatience to see and feel the direful object of so much anticipation.

Within five miles of Savannah the steamer ran ^ground, in the early fog of a warm day ; and as the tide was ebbing, there seemed to be for the time no relief, except as the agents in the city might learn our situation through their spyglasses, or a passing boat report us. The Florida steamer came alongside, took off some passengers for Florida, and left us with our paddle wheels out of water, and not even a slave to pity and help us, and to be an object of pity, from me at least, in return.

A steam tug returning from the mouth of the river came alongside about noon, and took the passengers and their baggage to the city.

On board this tug I looked for the first time in my life upon a slave. All hands on board were slaves. As the boat labored up the stream, I had leisure to indulge my eyes and thoughts in looking at them. Two, with unquestionable marks of servitude in their whole appearance, were talking together in the stern of the boat, the broad brims of their old black hats flapping in the wind over their faces, hiding partly the glances which they gave me as they noticed my interested looks at tliem. One of them whispered covertly to the other, and both smiled with a kindly look. It was a different look from that which you receive in a prison yard, where shame and pain steal out in quick, uneasy glances. I felt impelled to speak with them, but was not yet sufficiently at home.

In the growth of the human mind, fancy takes the lead of observation, and through life it is always running ahead of it. Who has not been greatly amused, sometimes provoked, and sometimes, perhaps, been made an object of mirth, at the preconceived notions which he had formed of an individual, or place, or coming event ? Who has not sometimes prudently kept his fancies to himself? Taking four hundred ministers of my denomination in Massachusetts, and knowing how we all converse, and preach, and pray about slavery, and noticing since my return from the south the questions which are put, and the remarks which are made upon the answers, it will be safe to assert that on going south I had at least the average amount of information and ignorance with regard to the subject. Some may affect to wonder even at the little which has now been disclosed of my secret fancies. I should have done the same in the case of another ; for the credulity or simplicity of a friend, when expressed or exposed, generally raises self-satisfied feelings in the most of us. Our southern friends, on first witnessing our snow storms, sleigh rides, and the gathering of our ice crops, are full as simple as we are in a first visit among them. We "suffer fools gladly, seeing" that we ourselves "are wise." Some intelligent men at the south, who have never seen Lowell, will speak of our " operatives " in a way to excite quite as much mirth as their northern visitors occa sion. We both need forbearance and charity one from the other.

How to say enough of preconceived notions respecting slavery, so as to compare subsequent impressions with them, and yet not enough to give southern friends room to exult and say that we all have false and exaggerated notions about slavery, is somewhat difficult. At the risk of disagreeable imputations, and with a desire to be honest and ingenuous, I will merely add, that there was one thing which I felt sure that I should see on landing, viz., the whole black population cowed down. This best expresses in a word my expectation. " I am a slave," will be indented on the faces, limbs, and actions of the bondmen. Hopeless w^oe, entreating yet despairing, will frequently greet me. How could it be otherwise, if slavery be such as our books, and sermons, and lectures, and newspaper articles represent? nay, if southern papers themselves, especially their advertisements, are to be relied upon as sources of correct impressions ?

Chapter II. Ariiiva.l And First Impressions

The steam tug reached the landing, and the slaves were all about us. One thing immediately surprised me ; they were aU in good humor, and some of them in a broad laugh. The delivery of every trunk from the tug to the wharf was the occasion of some hit, or repartee, and every burden was borne with a jolly word, grimace, or motion. The lifting of one leg in laughing seemed as natural as a Frenchman's shrug. I asked one of them to place a trunk with a lot of baggage ; it was done; up went the hand to the hat — "Any thing more, please sir ? " What a contrast, I involuntarily said to myself, to that troop at the Albany landing on our Westem Railroad ! and on those piles of boards, and on the roofs of the sheds, and at the piers, in New York ! I began to like these slaves. I began to laugh with them. It was irresistible. Who could have convinced me, an hour before, that slaves could have any other effect upon me than to make me feel sad ? One fellow, in all the hurry and bustle of landing us, could not help relating how, in jumping on board, his boot was caught between two planks, and "pulled clean off; " and how " dis ole feller went clean over into de wotter," with a shout, as though it was a merry adventure.

One thing seemed clear; they were not so much 2 cowed down as I expected. Perhaps, however, they were a fortunate set. I rode away, expecting soon to have some of my disagreeable anticipations verified.

In pursuance of the plan indicated in the beginning, I shall now relate the impressions which were involuntarily made upon me while residing in some of the slave States. As before mentioned, I was making no deliberate investigations, and had no theory to maintain ; but the things which daily passed before me led to reflections and conclusions, which will appear, some of them, as we proceed, but more especially in the review. Should these pages meet the eyes of any to whom the things here described are perfectly familiar, they will read them with forbearance, and remember that the writer's object is not to give descriptions, but just to relate those things which led him to certain reflections and conclusions ; these conclusions alone, so far as they may be useful, constituting the purpose of the book.

All things being arranged at your resting-place, the first impulse is to see how the land lies, settle certain landmarks, and, above all things, find the post-office.

The city of Savannah abounds in parks, as they are called — squares, fenced in, with trees. Young children and infants were there, with very respectable colored nurses — young women, with bandanna and plaid cambric turbans, and superior in genteel appearance to any similar class, as a whole, in any of our cities. They could not be slaves. Are they slaves ? " Certainly," says the friend at your side ; " they each belong to some master or mistress."

In behalf of a score of mothers of my acquaintance, and of some fathers, I looked with covetous feelings upon the relation which I saw existed between these nurses and children. These women seemed not to have the air and manner of hirelings in the care and treatment of the children ; their conversation with them, the degree of seemingly maternal feeling which was infused into their whole deportment, could not fail to strike a casual observer.

Then these are slaves. Their care of the children, even if it be slave labor, is certainly equal to that which is free.

" But that was a freeman who just passed us ? "

" No ; he is Mr. W.'s servant, near us."

" He a slave ? " Such a rhetorical lifting of the arm, such a line of grace as the hand described in descending easily from the hat to the side, such a glow of good feeling on recognizing neighbor B., with a supplementary act of respect to the stranger with him, were wholly foreign from my notions of a slave. " Where are your real slaves, such as we read of ? "

" These are about a fair sample."

" But they seem to me like your best quotations of cotton; where are your <ord., mid. fair to fair, damaged, and poor'?"

Our fancies with regard to the condition of the slaves proceed from our northern repugnance to slavery, stimulated by many things that we read. The every-day life, the whole picture of society at the south, is not presented to us so frequently — indeed it cannot be, nor can it strike the mind as strongly — as slave auctions and separations of families, fugitives hiding in dismal swamps, and other things which appeal to our sensibilities. Whatever else may be true of slavery, these things, we say, are indisputable ; and they furnish materials for the fancy to build into a world of woe.

Without supposing that I had yet seen slavery, it was nevertheless true that a load was lifted from my mind by the first superficial look at the slaves in the city.

It was as though I had been let down by necessity into a cavern which I had peopled with disagreeable sights, and, on reaching bottom, found daylight streaming in, and the place cheerful.

A better-looking, happier, more courteous set of people I had never seen, than those colored men, women, and children whom I met the first few days of my stay in Savannah. It had a singular effect on my spirits. They all seemed glad to see me. I was tempted with some vain feelings, as though they meant to pay me some special respect. It was all the more grateful, because for months sickness and death had covered almost every thing, even the faces of friends at home, with sadness to my eye, and my spirits had drooped. But to be met and accosted with such extremely civil, benevolent looks, to see so many faces break into pleasant smiles in going by, made one feel that he was not alone in the world, even in a land of strangers.

How such unaffected politeness could have been learned under the lash I did not understand. It conflicted with my notions of slavery. I could not have dreamed that these people had been "down trodden,'* " their very manhood crushed out of them," " the galling yoke of slavery breaking every human feeling, and reducing them to the level of brutes." It was one of the pleasures of taking a walk to be greeted by all my colored friends. I felt that I had taken a whole new race of my fellow-men by the hand. I took care to notice each of them, and get his full smile and salutation ; many a time I would gladly have stopped and paid a good price for a certain " good morning," courtesy, and bow ; it was worth more than gold ; its charm consisted in its being unbought, unconstrained, for I was an entire stranger. Timidity, a feeling of necessity, the leer of obliged deference, I nowhere saw; but the artless, free, and easy manner which burdened spirits never wear. It was difficult to pass the colored people in the streets without a SBoile awakened by the magnetism of their smiles. Let any one at the north, afflicted with depression of spirits, drop down among these negroes, walk these streets, form a passing acquaintance with some of them, and unless he is a hopeless case, he will find himself in moods of cheerfulness never awakened surely by the countenances of the whites in any strange place. Involuntary servitude did not present itself to my eye or thoughts during the two weeks which I spent in Savannah, except as I read advertisements in the papers of slaves for sale.

How the appearance of the colored people in villages and plantation districts would compare with that of city household servants, was a question which was reserved for future observation.

ftO A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVERY.

Chapter III

NEW VIEWS OF THE RELATIONS. OF THE SLAVES.

The gentleman at whose house I was guest commanded the military battalion. The parade day occurred during my visit. Three bands came successively within an hour in the morning to salute him. These bands were composed of slaves, so called ; but never did military bands suggest the idea of involuntary servitude less, or feel servitude of any kind for the time less, than these black warriors. They approached with their quickstep tunes, formed in front of the dwelling, faced the street, (a respectful manoeuvre, unlike our salutes, which make us all face the music,) performed their salute, and marched off in good style. Their personal appearance was in several instances very striking. One of the bass drummers was a fine specimen of the human frame, his points set off by his tight military dress, while a pair of green periscopic spectacles gave an additional touch to his looks. There was nothing grotesque in their appearance, nothing corresponding to Ethiopic minstrelsy in our northern caricatures; any mihtary company at the north would have feelings of respect for their looks and performances.

Going out with a friend to see the hne formed, he asked me to accept a cane for the walk. On declining, I was pressed to take it by the remark that I surely f would if I would read the inscription : " From tlie live oak of the frigate Constitution, presented," &c. What had Georgians to do with that frigate, I said to myself, the frigate which was the pride and boast of us Massachusetts boys in the war ?

The thought of our family of States came over me, our States like the sea, " its waves many, its waters one,'* each claiming the frigate Constitution as hers, "gallant Hull " hers, our whole naval renown hers. Cords of love stronger than death holds us together ; when the attempt to break our Union begins to draw upon these secret bands, they will be found invincible. Petulant, angry members of the household will frequently threaten, like passionate children, to leave the house. Let them try. They will find secret weaknesses and childlike relentings interfering with their sturdy anger, and tears will start unbidden in better moments.

As the line was forming on " the Bay," the tender of a locomotive happened to be di-awn along on trucks, between the spectators and the military, on its way to the railroad station. The name of the engine and tender, in large letters, on the tender, was NEW HAMP- SHIRE. My New England feelings arose and glowed within me. It was weak, perhaps, to feel any thing Hke a tear, even of pleasure ; but the sudden presentation of a proud New England name, the momentary commingling there in Georgia of north and south, the kind blending of Nebraska and Anti-Nebraska in that accidental meeting, the easy, home feeling with wliich the New Hampshire took the liberty to pass along in the midst of the pageant, and many other similar thoughts and feelings, made me reflect what a death it would be if our Union should suffer fratricide or suicide.

The commander of the military on this occasion, though still justly claiming to be a young man, was an officer in the U. S. Artillery on the north-eastern frontier during our trouble respecting the boundary question. Maine and Georgia were the same country to him. Should the north ever need Georgia soldiers to battle against a common foe, the hands of one w^ho has no superior in all that constitutes a Christian lady will, with the old southern patriotism, tie his sash for him as she did on that morning of the parade.

The tender (but let no one play upon the word from the eflfect of the cumbersome thing on my feehngs) being out of the way, the bands wheeled into marching order, and the battalion went to the parade ground to the music of those colored men, affording a northerner some novel and pleasant thoughts. It was one of the last things which I had expected to see — the soldiers of the south following the music made by such men, their step enlivened, their spirits cheered by them. It was good and pleasant to see them in that unity, the proverbial love of music in the colored race being permitted to gratify itself in discoursing martial sounds to their masters.

When I awoke the next morning, I found that a slight frost had touched some of my northernmost fancies about the slaves. I knew that I had much yet to learn ; but I had thus far seen things which had never been related to me, and I took into my reckoning terms which I had w^holly neglected in trying to work out at home the problem of human happiness at the south.

If it be less romantic, it is more instructive, to see the fire department of a southern city composed of colored men in their company uniforms, parading, and ii:

times of service working, with all the enthusiasm of Philadelphia or Boston firemen. Thus it is given to the colored population of some cities and towns at the south to protect the dwellings and stores of the city against fire — the dwelUngs and property of men who, as slave owners, are regarded by many at the north with feelings of commiseration, chiefly from being exposed, as we imagine, to the msurrectionary impulses of an oppressed people. To organize that people into a protective force, to give them the largest liberty at times when general consternation and confusion would afford them the best opportunities to execute seditionary and murderous purposes, certainly gave me, as a northerner, occasion to think that whatever is true theoretically, and whatever else may be practically true, with regard to slavery, the relations and feelings between the white and colored people at the south were not wholly as I had imagined them to be. These two instances of confidence and kindness gave me feelings of affection for the blacks and respect for their masters. Not a word had been said to me about slavery ; my eyes taught me that some practical things in the system are wholly different from my anticipations. " I saw it, and received instruction."

24 A SOUTH-SIDE VIEW OF SLAVEET.

Chapter IV. Fayorable Appearances In Southern Society And In Slavery

When we find ourselves to have been under wrong impressions, and begin to have our notions corrected, our disposition is to reach an opposite extreme, and to see things in a light Avhose glare is as false as the previous twilight. I resolved to watch my feehngs in this respect, and take the true gauge of this subject.

Section I. — Good Order

The streets of southern cities and towns immediately struck me as being remarkably quiet in the evening and at night.

" What is the cause of so much quiet ? " I said to a friend.

"Our colored people are mostly at home. After eight o'clock they cannot be abroad without a written pass, which they must show on being challenged, or go to the guard house. The master must pay fifty cents for a release. White policemen in cities, and in towns patrols of white citizens, walk the streets at night."

Here I received my first impression of interference with the personal liberty of the colored people. The white servants, if there be any, the boys, the apprentices, the few Irish, have liberty ; the colored men are under restraint.

But though I saw that this was a feature of slavery, I did not conclude that it would be well to dissolve the Union in order to abolish it. Apart from the question of slavery, it was easy to see that to keep such a part of the population out of the streets after a reasonable hour at night, preventing their unrestrained, promiscuous roving, is a great protection to them, as well as to the public peace. In attending evening worship, in visiting at any hour, a written pass is freely given ; so that, after all, the bondage is theoretical, but still it is bondage. Is it an illustration, I asked myself, of other things in slavery, which are theoretically usurpations, but practically benevolent ?

From the numbers in the streets, though not great, you would not suspect that the blacks are restricted at night ; yet I do not remember one instance of rudeness or unsuitable behavior among them in any place. Around the drinking saloons there were white men and boys whose appearance and behavior reminded me of " liberty and pursuit of happiness " in similar places at the north ; but there were no colored men there : the slaves are generally free as to street brawls and oj^en drunkenness. I called to mind a place at the north whose streets every evening, and especially on Sabbath evenings, are a nuisance. If that place could enforce a law forbidding certain youths to be in the streets after a certain hour without a pass from their employers, it would do much to raise them to an equahty in good manners with their more respectable colored fellow-men at the south. I had occasion to pity some white southerners, as they issued late at night from a drinking-place, in being deprived of the wholesome restraint laid upon the colored population. The moral and religious character of the colored people at the south owes very much to this restraint.