African Americans:
"Besides the white people, Traumfest is blessed with the negro, that true child of the sun who is found everywhere at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but is not so often seen in the higher mountains excepting in the larger villages. He prefers to linger near the cotton-line, the mountains being too sparsely settled to satisfy his gregarious instincts. Most of the Negroes here are descended from slaves brought up on the plantation in the immediate neighborhood. They are good, and for the most part as industrious at least as the white people, and when you know them personally and intimately, you cannot help loving them. They believe in ghosts and signs and a hereafter, they are afraid of the comet and they have good appetites. Many of them bear picturesque names bestowed upon them by the white people and yet more remarkable ones of their own selection, their feeling for rhythm alone often guides them in their choice; hence the delightful name, Greeenville Female Seminary Simms, proudly worn by a young girl of Traumfest." (Morley,Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, 1913 pp.12-13) "By far the most interesting characters among them are the few survivors of the old regime, who are really proud of their slavery and the fact that they learned how to work and how to behave. Among them is Aunt Hootie, whose full name she will proudly tell you in a sort of rhythmical chant, this is it--'Anna Maria, Lucy Lus, Lucifier, Mary Ann, Markalina, Gallahottie, Waters Mooney. Aunt Hootie for short.' Waters and Mooney were acquired by two excursions into matrimony, but the other names were bestowed at the baptismal font. Aunt Hootie is pious. When she comes to visit, which is generally about dinner-time, she graciously accepts an invitation to stay, never omitting reverently to 'make a beginning', as grace before meat is expressed in the mountains. Aunt Hootie's 'beginning' is simple, but to the point; folding her hands and composing her features she reverently remarks 'Oh Lord, thou knowest I need this', and proceeds to verify the assertion." (Morley,Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, 1913 , p. 14) "If you live in the South you will doubtless some day bake a fat 'possum, that is to say, you will bake it, figuratively speaking, for the actual task must be performed by a generous, genial black cook who loves 'possum. She bakes it con amore, and with sweet potatoes. The memory of one's first 'possum dinner lingers like a happy dream. After eating it, one does not wonder at or blame the negro for spending night after night in the woods--to the detriment of his day's work--in hilarious quest of the fat 'possum sitting among the persimmons--the fatiguing, happy and exciting hunt to have the sequel of 'baked 'possum and sweet taters". "Baked 'possum is the Christmas goose of the epicurean negro, and as the season moves on, the voice of the 'possum dog is heard in the woods assisting in the preparations for that season of high living and neglect of work which is the negro's perequisite, inherited by him from the days of slavery. 'Christmas' about Traumfest does not mean a niggardly twenty-fifth of December; it means that, and all the days following, until sunset at New Year's Day. To be fair, however, one must add that in these modern, trying times, the week-long holiday is very much interrupted by daily labor. It is a fiction more than a fact, yet it no doubt adds a certain feeling of festivity to the day's work, a feeling that one is somehow having an extra good time, though it might be hard to tell just where to put your finger on it." (Morley,Margaret. The Carolina Mountains, 1913 , pp. 77-78, 114) "Around a turn of the road I passed out of the woods into a clearing a mile or two long, cluttered with log cabins. It was a Negro settlement. As I neared the first house, a small cabin with a lean-to and one window beside the chimney, my ears were greeted with a fierce hubbub, half a dozen voices combining in a dread cacophony, above which a child's voice and a woman's voice rose shrilly. 'I'll skin yo' alive!' I heard just as I came to the open door. 'Good morning,' I interrupted incisively. "The racket miraculously died, 'Mo'nin', suh. Yassuh, we's all well, 'ceptin' fo' de fightin'. Mighty ornery passel o' chillun, suh! Books! Huh! No, suh; I ain' got no money fo' no books. I's a po' widow woman, an' I has to mek a libbin' fo' dese chilluns at de washtub. Co'se my husban' he wu'ks in de limekiln--uh--uh--my oldes' son, I mean.' "I did not smile. Perhaps it was her oldest son; Maria had an enviable reputation for veracity among her white neighbors. And Maria took a book -- two books. .... "The squire's is a great old rambling house, built piece by piece, yet modernized with piazzas and plenty of paint-- a house set in a fine old oak grove, and backed by spacious barns; for the squire owns broad acres of river bottom, and his horses and diary cattle and hogs have taken prizes at the country fair--not that the squire bends his back so much in the fields now; his day for that is past: he is a public-service man, and he has a son-in-law to superintend the blacks. "Almost it seemed we were back in ante bellum days; for there were Negro house servants and Negro field hands, Negro boys and girls and mammies, Negro minstrels and Negro jollity. There was a young Negro butler and a fat, jolly old Auntie Dede for cook. A Negro boy tended the fires, a Negro girl was ready at beck and call for errands; and during the evening could be heard back in the kitchen and long dining-hall, the scraping of the fiddle and the shuffling of feet, with bursts of laughter and railery, where the servants, all of one hue, were making merry." (1921, Spalding, Arthur W. The Hills O' Ca'liny. Pp. 71-74)
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"The negro problem is commonly discussed philosophically and without heat, but there is always discovered, underneath, the determination that the negro shall never again get the legislative upper hand. And the gentleman from South Carolina who has an upland farm, and is heartily glad slavery is gone, and wants the negro educated, when it comes to ascendency in politics--such as the State once experienced--asks you what you would do yourself. This is not the place to enter upon the politico-social questions, but the writer may note one impression gathered from much friendly and agreeable conversation. It is that the Southern whites misapprehend and make a scarecrow of 'social equality'. When, during the war, it was a question at the North of giving the colored people of the Northern States the ballot, the argument against it used to be stated in the form of a question, 'Do you want your daughter to marry a negro?' Well, the negro has his political rights in the North, and there has come no change in the social conditions whatever. And there is no doubt that the social conditions would remain exactly as they are at the South if the negro enjoyed all the civil rights which the Constitution tries to give him. The most sensible view of this whole question was taken by an intelligent colored man, whose brother was formerly a representative in Congress. 'Social equality,' he said in effect, 'is a humbug. We do not expect it, we do not want it. It does not exist among the blacks themselves. We have our own social degrees, and choose our own associates. We simply want the ordinary civil rights, under which we can live and make our way in peace and amity. This is necessary to our self-respect, and if we have not self-respect, it is not to be supposed that the race can improve. I'll tell you what I mean. My wife is a modest, intelligent woman of good manners, and she is always neat and tastefully dressed. Now, if she goes to take the cars, she is not permitted to go into a clean car with decent people, but is ordered into one that is repellant and is forced into company that any refined woman would shrink from. But along comes a flauntingly-dressed woman of known disreputable character, whom my wife would be disgraced to know, and she takes any place that money will buy. It is this sort of thing that hurts." (1888, Warner, Charles D., On Horseback, pp 122, 123.)
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"The evening gayety of the town [Asheville] was well distributed. When we descended to the Court House Square, a great crowd had collected, black, white and yellow, about a high platform upon which four glaring torches lighted up the novel scene, and those who could read might decipher this legend on a standard at the back of the stage: HAPPY JOHN - one of the slaves of Wade Hampton - Come and See Him! "Happy John, who occupied the platform with Mary, a 'bright' yellow girl, took the comical view of his race, which was greatly enjoyed by his audience. His face was blackened to the proper color of the stage-darky, and he wore a flaming suit of calico, the trousers and coat striped longitudinally according to Punch's idea of 'Uncle Sam', the coat a swallow-tail bound and faced with scarlet, and a bell-crowned white hat. This conceit of a colored Yankee seemed to tickle all colors in the audience amazingly. Mary, the 'bright' woman (this is the universal designation of the light mulatto), was a pleasing but bold yellow girl, who wore a natty cap trimmed with scarlet, and had the assured or pert manner of all traveling sawdust performers. "'Oh, yes," exclaimed a bright woman in the crowd, "Happy John was sure enough one of Wade Hampton's slaves, and he's right good looking when he's not blackened up." "Happy John sustained the promise of his name, by spontaneous gayety and enjoyment of the fleeting moment; he had a glib tongue and a ready, rude wit and talked to his audience with a delicious mingling of impudence, deference, and patronage commenting upon them generally, administering advice and correction in a strain of humor that kept his hearers in a pleased excitement. He handled the banjo and the guitar alternately, and talked all the time when he was not singing. Mary (how much harder featured and brazen a woman is in such a position than a man of the same calibre!) sang, in an untutored treble, songs of sentiment often risque in solo and in company with John, but with a cold, indifferent air, in contrast to the rollicking enjoyment of her comrade. The favorite song, which the crowd compelled her to repeat, touches lightly the uncertainties of love, expresed in the falsetto pathetic refrain:--"Mary's gone away wid de coon." All this, with the moon, the soft summer night, the mixed crowd of darkies and whites, the stump eloquence of Happy John, the singing, the laughter, the flaring torches, made a wild scene. The entertainment was quite free, with a 'collection' occasionally during the performance. "What most impressed us, however, was the turning to account by Happy John of the 'nigger' side of the black man as a means of low comedy, and the enjoyment of it by all the people of color. They appeared to appreciate as highly as anybody the comic element in themselves, and Happy John had emphasized it by deepening his natural color and exaggerating the 'nigger' peculiarities. I presume none of them analyzed the nature of his infectious gayety, nor thought of the pathos that lay so close to it, in the fact of his recent slavery, and the distinction of being one of Wade Hampton's niggers, and the melancholy mirth of this light-hearted race's burlesque of itself. "A performance followed which called forth the appreciation of the crowd more than the wit of Happy John or the faded songs of the yellow girl. John took two sweet-cakes and broke each in fine pieces into a saucer, and after sugaring and eulogizing the dry messes, called for two small darky volunteers from the audience to come up on the platform and devour them. He offered a prize of fifteen cents to the one who should first eat the contents of his dish, not using his hands, and hold up the saucer empty in token of his victory. The cake was tempting, and the fifteen cents irresistible, and a couple of boys in ragged shirts and short trousers and a suspender apiece came up shamefacedly to enter for the prize. Each one grasped his saucer in both hands, and with face over the dish awaited the word 'go', which John gave and started off the contest with a banjo accompaniment. To pick up with the mouth the dry cake and choke it down was not so easy as the boys apprehended, but they went into the task with all their might, gobbling and swallowing as if they loved cake, occasionally rolling an eye to the saucer of the contestant to see the relative progress, John strumming, ironically encouraging, and the crowd roaring. As the combat deepened and the contestants strangled and stuffed and sputtered, the crowd went into spasms of laughter. The smallest boy won by a few seconds, holding up his empty saucer, with mouth stuffed, vigorously trying to swallow, like a chicken with his throat clogged with dry meal, and utterly unable to speak. The impartial John praised the victor in mock heroics, but said that the trial was so even that he would divide the prize, ten cents to one and five to the other--a stroke of justice that greatly increased his popularity. And then he dismissed the assembly. saying that he had promised the mayor to do so early, because he did not wish to run an opposition to the political meeting going on in the court-house. (1888, Warner, Charles D., On Horseback, pp.115-119) |
| Slavery
"Slaves, I was often told, were 'unprofitable property' in the mountains, except as they increase and improve in salable value. Two men, on different occasions, in mentioning the sources of revenue of the farmers in their respective districts, spoke of the sale of negroes in the same sentence with that of cattle and swine. 'A nigger,' said one of them, ' that would n't bring over $300, seven years ago, will fetch $1000 in cash, quick this year; but now, hogs, they aint worth so much as they used to be; there's so many of 'em driven through here from Tennessee, they've brought the price down.' "Of the people who get their living entirely by agriculture, few own negroes; the slaveholders being chiefly professional men, shop-keepers, and men in office, who are also land owners, and give a divided attention to farming. "The disadvantages attendant upon slave-labor are more obvious where slaves are employed in small numbers together, because the proportion of the labor of the agricultural establishment which requires discretion and trustiness on the part of the laborer or vigilant superintendence, and 'driving' ...is much smaller on a farm than on a plantation. A man can compel the uninterrupted labor of a gang of fifty cotton-hoers almost as absolutely as he can that of a gang of five, and it takes scarcely more superintendence to make sure of the proper feeding of thirty mules, when they are collected in their stable, than of three. For this reason the bad economy of slavery is more obvious to the unthinking people, where it exists in the mild and segregated form in which it is found, when found at all, in those highland districts, than in the large properties of the cotton and sugar districts. The direct moral evils of slavery, however, are less--even less proportionately to the number of slaves, because the slaves being of necessity less closely superintended, and their labor being directed to a greater variety of employments, their habits more resemble those of ordinary free laborers, they exercise more responsibility, and both in soul and intellect they are more elevated; and this may be said generally of the Northern or farming (slaves) as compared with those of the Southern of planting Slave States. "The condition of a slave, however, must always carry with it the strongest temptations to falsehood and eye-service, and slavery, in its mildest character, must be prejudicial to the morals and to the prosperity of the country in which it exists. How this appears in the highland region I can easily show. "In a valley of unusual breadth and fertility, where the farmers were wealthier and the slaves more numerous than usual, I came...upon a herd of uncommonly fine cattle, as they were being turned out of a field by a negro woman. She had given herself the trouble to let down but two of the seven bars of the fence and they were obliged to leap over a barrier at least four feet high. Last of all came, very unwillingly, a handsome heifer, heavy with calf; the woman urged her with a cudgel and she jumped, but lodging on her belly...she lay bent, and as it seemed, helplessly hung upon the top bar. I was about to dismount to help her, when the woman struck her severely, and with a painful effort she boggled over. I spent the night at the best farm, and with the best educated man I met in all the mountain region--this, indeed, was rather below the mountain district proper in a valley of the eastern Piedmont region. He spoke with some pride of the improvement in the quality of the stock and agriculture of the neighbor- hood, and asked if I had not seen some fine cattle during the afternoon. I replied that I had, and at the same time mentioned the incident I have just related. 'Ha! yes,' said he, 'that's just a piece of nigger- work. She ought to have had fifty given her right off. But a nigger always will be lazy and careless.' "'But,' said his son, a young man of eighteen, 'niggers can be made to do right.' "'No, they can not,' returned the father, 'they can never be trusted to do right. I never had a nigger that would even plow to suit me unless while I was standing right over him. And who wants to spend all his life in scolding?' Then to me, 'If I could get such hired men as you can in New York, I'd never have another nigger on my place; but the white men here who will labor, are not a bit better than negroes. You have got to stand right over them all the time, just the same; and then, if I should ask one of my white men to go and take care of your horse, he'd be very apt to tell me to do it myself, or if he obeyed, he would take pains to do so in some way that would make me sorry I asked him; then if I should scold him, he would ask me if I thought he was a nigger, and refuse to work for me any more.' "Wherever there are slaves, I have found that farmers universally testify that white laborers adopt their careless habits, and that they are even more indifferent than negroes to the interests of their employers. Southerners sometimes deny that 'slavery degrades labor,' or prevent industry among the free, and I have been shown individual instances of hard-working white men to prove this. Perhaps it would be more strictly correct to say that slavery breeds unfaithful, meretricious, inexact, and non-persistent habits of working. This influence of slavery extends to the mountains, although the people are much more industrious than those of the low lands." (Olmsted, Frederick Law, Journey in the Back Country: 1853-1854 , 1860, pp. 252-255) "The mountains proper are free not only from foreigners but from negroes as well. There are many blacks in the larger valleys and towns, but throughout most of Appalachia the population is almost exclusively white.... "In many mountain settlements negroes are not allowed to tarry. It has been assumed that this prejudice against colored folk had its origin far back in the time when 'poor whites' found themselves thrust aside by competition with slave labor. This is an error. Our mountaineers never had to compete with slavery. Few of them knew anything about it except from hearsay. Their dislike of negroes is simply an instinctive racial antipathy, plus a contempt for anyone who submits to servile conditions. A neighbor in the Smokies said to me; 'I b'lieve in treatin' niggers squar. The Bible says they're human--leastways some says it does--and so there'd orter be a place for them. But it's some place else--not around me!' That is the whole thing in a nutshell." (Kephart, Horace. Our Southern Highlanders, 1913, pp.379-380)
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| Slavery - Opinions on
"A negro woman assisted in preparing breakfast. (She had been employed in the field labor the night before.) Both young ladies were at the table. The squire observed to me that he supposed we could buy hands very cheap in New York. I said we could hire them there at moderate wages. he asked if we could n't buy as many as we wanted by sending to Ireland for them and paying their passage. He had supposed we could buy them and hold them as slaves for a term of years by paying the freight on them. When I had corrected him, he said, a little hesitatingly, 'You don't have no black slaves in New York?' "'No, sir.' "'There's niggers there, aint there, only they're all free?; "'Yes, sir.' "'Well, how do they get along so?' "'So far as I know, the most of them live pretty comfortably.' (I have changed my standard of comfort lately, and am inclined to believe that the majority of the negroes at the North live more comfortably than the majority of the whites at the South.) "'I wouldn't like that,' said the old lady. 'I would n't like to live where niggers was free, they are bad enough when they are slaves: it's hard enough to get along with them here, they're so bad. I reckon that niggers are the meanest critters on earth; they are so mean and nasty.' (She expressed disgust and indignation very strong in her face.) 'If they was to think themselves equal to we, I don't think white folks could abide it--they're such vile saucy things.' A negro woman and two boys [Negro men] were in the room as she said this...." [Olmsted stops for the next night in a humble home well away from the road he had traveled that day.] "...I said, in answer to their inquiry, that I had found the people of this part of the country remarkably friendly and sociable. The old man said he had 'always heard this was so, and it was nat'ral it should be. There warn't no niggers here; where there was niggers, people could n't help getting a cross habit of speaking.' He asked if New York were not a Free state, and how I liked that. I answered. He said he'd always wished there had n't been any niggers here (the old woman called out from the other room that she wished so, too), but he would n't like to have them free. As they had got them here, he did n't think there was any better way of getting along with them than that they had. There were very few in the district, but where they came from there were more niggers than whites. They had had three themselves; when they decided to move up here into the mountains, the niggers didn't want to come with them, and they sold them to a speculator. "I asked if it were possible they would prefer to be sold to a trader, who might take them off and sell them to a cotton planter. "'O yes, they had a great fear of the mountains; they would rather, they said, be sent to a cotton farm or a rice or sugar farm--anything else; so we sold them to the first nigger speculator that come along.' The old woman called out again, that she wished they had n't, for after all they was a great help to her, and it was very hard sometimes to do all the work she had to do, alone. 'Those Yorkers did n't like slaves neither,' she continued, coming into the room, 'they said they cound n't bear to have 'm do anything for 'em, they was so shacklin and lazy, but one of the gals married a man who owned a heap of niggers, for all that.' "The ... man informed me that 'the United States had lately annexed a new country called Nebrisky. It was large enough to make thirteen States, and they had had a great commotion as to whether it should be Free or Slave States. The people here all wanted it to be Slave States because they might want to move out there, and a fellow might get a nigger and have to sell him. If a man moved into a Free State, he'd have to sell his niggers; if he did n't they'd be free as soon as he took 'em in. He did n't think that was right; a man ought to be able to take his property wherever he pleased.' "I replied that it would be a great deal better place for non-slaveholders to move to, if slaves were excluded, to which he made no reply. (Olmsted, Frederick Law, Journey in the Back Country: 1853-1854 , 1860, pp. 265-270). "While I stopped under a tree near a house [in Murphy, NC] as a heavy rain cloud was passing, a white man came out, and after greeting me with a single word, began calling: 'Duke, Clary, Tom, Joe,' etc, finally collecting seven little negroes and three white children; 'Just look a here! Here's a reg'lar nigger dog; have it to ketch niggers when they run away, or don't behave.' (He got a piece of bread and threw it to Jude.) 'There! did you see that! See what teeth she's got, she'd just snap a nigger's leg off. If you don't mind I'll get one--you Jule, if I hear you crying any more, I'll get this gentleman to send me one. See how strong its jaws be; he says all he's got to do when a nigger don't behave, is just to say the word, and it'll snap a nigger's head right off, just as easy as you'd take a chicken's head off with an axe.' (The niggers look with dismay at Jude, who is watching them very closely expecting some more bread. The white children laugh foolishly.) (Olmsted, Frederick Law, Journey in the Back Country: 1853-1854 , 1860, pp. 276-277)
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