theft, and sensuality. Before the war closed, when it was thought that the negroes would be emancipated, all of us appre hended a repetition of the scenes of San Domingo; but nothing of the kind has occurred. The negroes have been quiet and orderly, under very strong temptations to be otherwise; temptations not originating with themselves, but with a class of very bad men who came among them, and who endeavored to foster ill blood between the races for their own aggrandizement. But those men had little brains and less principle, and the negroes soon saw through them. If they had been like members of the internationale, or of the commune - earnest fanatics I think they would have done much harm; but I think their power is [1871] very much at an end, and the result has been very different from what we feared. The negroes have been orderly and quiet, for the main part, to a wonderful degree. On the other hand, the conduct of the whites has been very different from what experience and analogy might have induced us to expect. Those people suddenly having been liberated, given the power to vote, to sit upon juries, and to hold office, it was very natural to suppose that the whites, as a mass, would have a feeling of the strongest animosity toward them. But it has not been so; and, as a general rule, (of course there are exceptional cases,) the two races, in their intercourse with each other, have acted in a manner which no former experience would have led us to anticipate. I think that the negroes generally are going to their old masters, and their old masters are treating them with kindness and even-handed justice. [2] There were negro women there, I know two; one of them has been treated most kindly throughout her life by an old aunt of mine; she raised the cry, "Now is the time to burn," and a night or two after that the fire was set. She cried out, "Now is the time to burn." A number did that. I recollect one girl there who had been treated just as a white girl a bright mulatto, and still living with her old owner to this day. No person suspected such a feeling in her. And she said what she would delight in would be to be in hell, to have a churn-paddle, and churn the whites to all eternity. Petty Crimes among the Blacks Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony, p. 230. Statement of Gen. [1871] I THINK the average in our jail [in Montgomery County] is about forty blacks to three or five whites. Our law firm does almost all the criminal practice there; there are three of us in the firm. I am satisfied that in the State of Alabama there have been two white men shot by negroes where there has been one negro shot by a white man. . . I could safely say that there are two outrages by the blacks to one by the whites. We cannot raise a turkey, chicken, or a hog. Planters of Montgomery, who before the war used to raise bacon at 5 cents a pound, have actually had to kill their shoats, and in some instances, every sow they had, in consequence of the stealing by the negroes; and we now have to pay 25 cents for bacon. We dare not turn stock out at all. One man, within a mile of Montgomery, had either three out of five or five out of seven cows killed. The Quadroons of Louisiana Shreveport Southwestern, April 15, 1868, in House Misc. Doc. no. 154. 41 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 127. The negro radical leaders throughout Reconstruction were mostly of mixed blood; the quadroons of Louislana were a distinct class. [1868] THE radicals, after using every effort to prevail on the quadroons of the State to vote for the constitution without much success, have turned against them, and are now denouncing them for everything that is bad. A radical. . thus writes. about them: "It is not extraordinary that the only danger to the ratification of this Louisiana constitution, which guarantees the fullest and most perfect equality, civil and political, and before the law, should come from colored men. Yet such is the fact. A pernicious and pestiferous class in this community, a fungus production of slavery, called quadroon society, puffed up with the conceit of their heretofore anomalous condition, and fancying it really a condescension on their part to stoop to the colored race and own themselves a part of it, demanded as the price of their condescension all the offices, all the honors, and all the emoluments. "This miserable quadroon faction, the emasculated offspring of lustful fathers and concubine mothers, have a record behind them sufficiently black to sink a nobler people beneath its accumulated infamy. They, as a class, were the most bitter and rampant secessionists in the South, and were the most resolute and implacable foes to the freedom of their own people, who were of their own flesh and blood. And they, as a class, to-day more bitterly deplore the liberation of the slaves than any other class. And was it in their power, no class would make greater sacrifice for or more exultantly rejoice over the restoration of slavery than themselves." Blacks Do Not Like Mulattoes [1871] Ku Klux Report, South Carolina testimony, p. 1433. JIM WALLER, the county commissioner, a leading negro, says he will never vote for a mulatto again. . . A very excellent man, . . Loomis, a northern clergyman, came to Chester. He was a preacher and teacher from some society. He built them a church at his own expense, or at the expense of the society. He appeared to be an educated man. . . He devoted his time to teaching and preaching to the negroes, and built them a church; but they did not like him on the ground that he paid too much attention to the mulattoes; that in the schools he would make mulattoes hear the negroes' lessons, favoring the mulattoes. They would not go to hear him preach, or went very little, because he was white; but they would go to hear a negro, and I know there was a strong prejudice against him because he favored the mulattoes. The Rights of Black Women (1) House Misc. Doc. no. 154, 41 Cong., 2 Sess., p. 288. In the early period of Reconstruction there was a tendency toward the emancipation of black women from the heavier work. It was not so at the close of the period. (2) Ku Klux Report, Alabama testimony, p. 445. Statement of P. M. Dox, a New Yorker. [1869] [1] IT was reported that he was to meet the colored people at the house of the agent of the Freedmen's Bureau at midnight, and to make a speech to them. He did come, as we heard, and about two o'clock in the morning several hundred of those persons collected to hear him. He is reported to have advised them that when negro women were acting in the capacity of servants, their husbands should not allow them to do so any longer; that the white women must work for themselves; that the black women were not to act as washers, ironers, cooks; that their husbands ought to support them in the same style as white people of the same class support their wives, and a whole lot of stuff of that kind. I do not believe that Mr. Brewster made use of any such language. Still it had its effect, and the result was that a great many of those women actually quit their employment. [2] In 1866 or 1867, I could not get my colored servant woman to milk my cow when it rained; she would not do it; she thought that thing was "played out," and that I must go and milk the cow myself. And, when there would be a guest at my house I could not get my servant to black his boots as the custom had been; I had to black them myself. Most of the menial service I performed at that time myself, because I had to do so. "Proof of 'Publicanism" [1874] Wallace, Carpet Bag Rule in Florida, p. 300. Ar Chattahoochee, in Gadsden county, Stearns and Martin had a cartload of guns brought to a public meeting to be used against Purman and his followers. They had fed the freedmen on so much bad whisky that they came near getting themselves killed. The freedmen became uncontrollable and commenced shooting indiscriminately in every direction, routing Stearns, Martin and Purman, 1 and running them away from the meeting. Purman returned later in the evening and called a lot of colored women together, and after giving each of them some money, he said to them that he was a good "Publican," and wanted supper; and to further assure them that he was a good "Publican," told them that he did not want to sleep with any white person, but wanted to sleep with the blackest person in the neighborhood. John D. Harris, a Methodist preacher, was along as one of Purman's canvassers, and it looked as though he had been "dipped" three or four times, and so Purman selected him to sleep with. This action on the part of Purman had its desired effect, as most of the freedmen spoke out and declared him to be a good "Publican," and he had no more trouble in that part of the country. Kissing Negro Babies for Votes [1868] Wallace, Carpet Bag Rule in Florida, p. 63. BILLINGS, now the candidate of his faction for Governor, began to stump the state. . . One freedman while on his dying bed, and conscious of his approaching death, gave the only five dollars he had to be sent to Saunders and Richards at Washington. Billings would hold his meetings on large plantations in the night time, so as to get all the old men and women out, as they generally controlled the younger class. In order to deeply impress the people with the justness of his cause and of his unblemished Republicanism, he would have all the little colored children brought out to the meetings, and would ask the name of each, and then take them up and kiss them. A little soap and water would not have done some of them any harm. When he would kiss the children you could hear on all sides from the freedmen words like these: "I will vote ebery day for that man." "I will die for that man." "That man is a good 'publican." Billings hearing these words would shout to them, "Jesus Christ was a Republican." So attached were these people to Billings that they introduced a sign among themselves which was the given name of Billings. When one 1. Carpetbag candidates. |