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1234 An American Dilemma
® Sir George Campbell, traveling in the South in the ’seventies, listened to many old
slave breeders who told him about the same story:
. . the slaves were not worked out like omnibus horses; in fact, the capital sunk
in slaves was so heavy, and produce had become so cheap, that the principal source of
profit was what was called the ‘increase’ of the slaves—the breeding them for the
market or for new plantations opened in the more Western States. As in breeding-
farms for other kinds of stock, the human stock was carefully, and, on the whole, kindly
treated; and although the selling off the young stock as it became fit for the market
was a barbarous process, still, the family relations being so weak, as 1 have described,
those who remained did not feel it so much as we should; and 1 think it may be said
that the relations between the masters and the slaves were generally not unkindly.
One old gentlemen in Carolina dwelt much on the kindness and success with which he
had treated his slaves, adding as the proof and the moral that they had doubled in twenty
years,” {yVhitc and Black in the United States [1879], PP* 1 40-1 41.)
^ Large numbers of ex-slaves lapsed into temporary vagrancy at the end of the Civil
War. They, naturally, wanted to test their new freedom. Not without reason, they also
feared re-enslavement. The general upheaval and the curtailment of production during
and after the War were also responsible for the vagrancy. The hope which was never
fulfilled, that the federal government would provide them with land of their own, also
contributed to the unrest. “This belief is seriously interfering with the willingness of
the freedmen to make contracts for the coming year,” reported General Grant to the
President in 1865.® Many of them regarded steady employment with a white plantation
owner as slavery. Heavy work and slavery then appeared to them as pretty synonymous
concepts:
Mammy don’t you cook no mo’,
You’s free! You’s free!
Rooster don’t you crow no mo’,
You’s free! You’s free!
or hen, don’t you lay no mo’ eggs,
You’s free! You’s free!
Ol’ pig, don’t you grunt no mo’,
You’s free! You’s free!
OJ’ cow, don’t you give no mo’ milk,
You’s free! You’s free!
Ain’t got to slave no mo’,
We’s free! We’s free!**
Such a reaction was by no means general. The accounts of it probably have been
exaggerated considerably,*^ because of the need to rationalize the system which was then
being built up to keep the Negro worker in his place. In comparison with Southern
whites, especially upper class whites and white women of all classes, Negroes were
probably never characterized by unusual laziness. It was only by comparison with the
continuous labor under slavery, and aided by forced unemployment, that Negroes
suddenly appeared lazy. If Negroes ever manifested an unusual unwillingness to work,
•Cited by Hilary A. Herbert, IVhy the Solid South? (1890), p. 17.
^ Cited by Federal Writers^ Project, The Negro in Virginia (1940), p. 210.
Ibid,, pp. 223-224.
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