June 1865, in the aftermath

Ruins of Millwood Plantation, Columbia, South Carolina
(family home of Wade Hampton II, father of Gen. Wade Hampton III)
destroyed by fire during Sherman's occupation in February 1865

"New York Herald today quotes General Sherman, who says, 'Columbia was burnt by Hampton's sheer stupidity.' But then, who burnt everything before they got to Columbia and after the Sherman army left it? We came down, for three days' travel, on a road laid bare by Sherman's torches. There were nothing but smoking ruins left in Sherman's track. That I saw with my own eyes–no living thing left, no house left for man or beast. They who burnt the countryside for a belt of forty miles—did they not burn the town? Hampton's stupidity is an afterthought. This Herald announces that Jeff Davis will be hung at once—not so much for treason as for his assassination of Lincoln. 'Stanton,' the Herald says, 'has all the papers in his hands to convict him.'
The Yankees here say: 'The black man must go—as the red man has gone. This is a white man's country.'
The negroes want to run with the hare but hunt with the hounds. They are charming in their profession to us but declare that they are to be paid in lands and mules for having been slaves—by those blessed Yankees.
'They were so faithful to us—why should the Yankees reward them?'
'It would be by way of punishing the rebels only.'"

1 June 1865, South Carolina

"Went to the Hermitage yesterday (our plantation). Saw no change–not a soul absent from his or her post. I said, 'Good colored folks, when are you going to kick off the traces and be free?'
In their furious emotional way they swore devotion to us to their dying day.
All the same, the minute they see an opening to better themselves they will move on.
William, my husband's foster brother, came up.
'Well, William, what do you want?'
'Only to look at you, Marster—it does me good.' No doubt it paid. Both parties, white and black, talked beautifully."

April 1865, in the aftermath

"Mrs Huger says, 'In Richmond a too grateful and affectionate, fat, greasy negro barber threw his arms around a Yankee general and hugged in a close embrace. The Yankee freed himself and shot him dead.'"

19 March 1864, Richmond, "the toy boy"

"C. C. also told us of a new toy—Fitz Lee's new-found joy—a little negro boy. This toy, when wound up, danced Ethiopian minstrel fashion. Fitz Lee sings corn-shucking tunes and the toy boy dances. C. C. has already made the little black boy two suits of clothes. He is the delight of Richmond salons and is so much handled his dress soon grows shabby."

The scent of freedom

"I taught him to read as soon as I could read myself—perched on his knife board. He won't look at me now. He looks over my head—he scents freedom in the air. He was always very ambitious. I do not think he ever troubled books much. But then as my father said, Dick, standing in front of his sideboard, had heard of all subjects of heaven or earth discussed—and by the best heads in our world.
He is proud, too, in his way. Hetty his wife complained the other menservants were so fine in their livery.
'Nonsense, old woman—a butler never demeans himself to wear livery. He is always in plain clothes.' Somewhere he picked up on that.
He is the first negro that I have felt a change in. They go about in their black masks, not a ripple or an emotion showing—and yet on all other subjects except the war they are the most excitable all races. Now, Dick might make a very respectable Egyptian sphinx, so inscrutably silent is he."

Regarding slavery and race

"Reading Mrs Stowe or Redpath's John Brown,* one feels utterly confounded at the atrocity of African slavery. We look upon the miserable black race as crushed to earth, habitually knocked down, as John Brown says, 'by an iron shovel or anything that comes handy.' At home we see them, the idlest, laziest, fattest, most comfortably contented peasantry that ever cumbered the earth—and we forget there is anything wrong in slavery at all.
I daresay the truth lies between the two extremes."

*The Public Life of Capt. John Brown (1860) by antislavery journalist James Redpath.

June 1862, the concerns of Molly

"Molly all in tears because I asked her if she were going to turn against me.
No, she would follow me to the ends of the earth—that is, she would if it warn't for her children. But this is the reason she was out. Jonathan is her father, and he is driver, headman of the colored people (she never says 'negroes'—the only 'nigger' is the devil—that's her idea). Overseer and Claiborne, head of the plows, connive to cheat master 'outin everything. Marster—the best marster the lord ever send.' So much lying, cheating, on a plantation—no wonder she came back outer sorts. 'Overseer's wife gotten so fat on yo' substance she can't git through the little gate—have to open the wagon gate for her. Sometimes of Sundays two hams is put on their table—de 'oman sho' to die of fat.'
So Molly and I are reconciled, and she is as good and as attentive as ever. All the same, she was awfully stuck up when she first came back."

10 June 1862

"I see one new light breaking in upon the black question.
Even my [house slave] Molly speaks scornfully when she alludes to 'them white people.' She says there is salt enough on the plantation. Master had the [salt] sent to the coast, three days journey—'but we don't git enough. There is plenty of bread—and all the people has fine fat hogs, but you see our people n'usen to salt as much as they choose—and now they will grumble.'
When I told J.C. that Molly was full of airs since her late trip home, he made answer. 'Tell her to go to the devil—she or anybody else on the plantation who is dissatisfied. Let them go. It is bother enough to feed and clothe them now.'
It was a blow. When he went over to the plantation, he came back charmed with their loyalty to them—their affection for him&c&c&c."

13 March 1862, upon re-reading Uncle Tom's Cabin

"These negro women have a chance here women have nowhere else. They can redeem themselves. The 'impropers.' They can marry decently—and nothing is remembered against them, these colored ladies. It is not a nice topic, but Mrs [Harriet Beecher] Stowe revels in it. How delightfully pharisaic a feeling it must be, to rise superior and fancy we are so degraded as to defend and like to live with such degraded creatures around us. Such men as Legare [Legree] and his women.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
author of Uncle Tom's Cabin,
published 1851 in newspaper installments,
then in 1852 as a two-volume book

The best way to take negroes to your heart is to get as far away from them as possible. As far as I can see, Southern women do all that missionaries could to prevent and alleviate the evils. The social evil has not been suppressed in England or New England, London or Boston. And they expect more virtue from a plantation African than they can practice with all their high moral surroundings—light, education, training, and supports....
There are true, graceful, beautiful mothers of angelic Evas—North as well as South, I daresay. The Northern men and women who came here have always been hardest, for they expect an African to work and behave as a white man. We do not....
Topsys I have known—but none that were beauties—or ill-used. Evas are mostly in the heaven of Mrs Stowe's imagination. People can't love things dirty, ugly, repulsive, simply because they ought, but they can be good to them—at a distance. You see, I cannot rise very high. I can only judge what I see."

November 1861, the complexities of color

"Martha Adamson is a beautiful mulatress. That is, as good-looking as they ever are to me. I have never seen a mule as handsome as a horse—and I know I never will—no matter how I lament and sympathize with its undeserved mule condition. She is a trained sempstress and 'hired her own time,' as they call it. That is, the owner pays the doctor bill, finds food and clothing, &c. The slave pays his master five dollars a month, more or less, and makes a dollar a day if he pleases.
Martha, to the amazement of everybody, married a coal black negro, son of Dick the barber—that Dick who was set free fifty years ago or more for faithful services rendered Mr Chesnut's grandfather.
When asked in words such as these: 'How could she? She is so nearly white—how could she marry that horrid negro? It is positively shocking!'—answer: 'She inherits the taste of her white father—her mother was black.'
'How coarse you are.'
The son of this marriage, a bright boy called John, is grown—reads and writes—&c&c. The aforesaid Martha is now a widow. Her husband was free though black.
Last night there was a row. John beat a white man who was at his mother's. Poor Martha drinks. John had forbidden Mr T___ to bring whiskey to the house, and he found him seated at the table with his mother, both drunk. So he beat him all the way home to his own house. Verdict of the community: 'Served him right.' [House slave] Maria's word: 'White people say, "Well done! Go it, John—give it to him!"'"