University of Virginia Library

PREFACE

For twenty years I have panned the sands of the stream of
Southern life and garnered their golden treasure. Many of the
nuggets rewarding the search have already been displayed in their
natural form;[1] and this now is a coinage of the grains great and
small. The metal is pure, the minting alone may be faulty. The
die is the author's mind, which has been shaped as well by a varied
Northern environment in manhood as by a Southern one in youth.
In the making of coins and of histories, however, locality is of
less moment than are native sagacity, technical training and a
sense of truth and proportion. For these no warrant will hold.
The product must stand or fall by its own quality.

The wide ramifications of negro slavery are sketched in these
pages, but the central concern is with its rise, nature and influence
in the regions of its concentration. In these the plantation régime
prevailed. The characteristic American slave, indeed, was not
only a negro, but a plantation workman; and for the present purpose
a knowledge of the plans and requirements of plantation
industry is no less vital than an understanding of human nature.
While the latter is of course taken for granted, the former has
been elaborated as a principal theme. Slaves were both persons
and property, and as chattels they were investments. This phase
has invited analysis at some length in the two chapters following
those on the plantation régime.

Ante-bellum conditions were sharply different in some respects
from those of colonial times, largely because of legislation enacted
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first decade
of the nineteenth. For this reason the politics of that period of
sharp transition are given attention herein. Otherwise the words
and deeds of public men have been mostly left aside. Polemic
writings also have been little used, for their fuel went so much to

heat that their light upon the living conditions is faint. Reminiscences
are likewise disregarded, for the reason that the lapse of
decades has impaired inevitably the memories of men. The contemporary
records of slaves, masters and witnesses may leave
gaps and have their shortcomings, but the asseverations of politicians,
pamphleteers, and aged survivors are generally unsafe even
in supplement.

On the other hand, the tone of social elements in the Black Belt
of the present is something of a gauge of the temper of generations
past. My sojourn in a National Army Camp in the South
while this book has been going through the press has reënforced
my earlier conviction that Southern racial asperities are mainly
superficial, and that the two great elements are fundamentally in
accord. That the harmony is not a new thing is evinced by the
very tone of the camp. The men of the two races are of course
quartered separately; but it is a daily occurrence for white
Georgian troops to go to the negro companies to seek out their accustomed
friends and compare home news and experiences. The
negroes themselves show the same easy-going, amiable, seriocomic
obedience and the same personal attachments to white men,
as well as the same sturdy light-heartedness and the same love of
laughter and of rhythm, which distinguished their forbears. The
non-commissioned officers among them show a punctilious pride
of place which matches that of the plantation foremen of old;
and the white officers who succeed best in the command of these
companies reflect the planter's admixture of tact with firmness of
control, the planter's patience of instruction, and his crisp though
cordial reciprocation of sentiment. The negroes are not enslaved
but drafted; they dwell not in cabins but in barracks; they
shoulder the rifle, not the hoe; but the visitor to their company
streets in evening hours enters nevertheless a plantation atmosphere.
A hilarious party dashes in pursuit of a fugitive, and
gives him lashes with a belt "moderately laid on." When questioned,
the explanation is given that the victim is "a awnrooly
nigger" whose ways must be mended. In the quiet which follows,
a throng fills the quarter with an old-time unmartial refrain:

As the music pauses there comes through a nearby window the
mention of two bits as a wager, and an earnest adjuration of
"sebben or lebben." The drill which they do by day with splendid
snap is wonderfully out of their minds by night. The grim
realities of war, though a constant theme in the inculcation of
discipline, is as remote in the thought of these men as is the
planet Mars. Yet each of their lieutenants is justly confident that
his platoon will follow whithersoever he may lead. It may be that
the change of African nature by plantation slavery has been exaggerated.
At any rate a generation of freedom has wrought less
transformation in the bulk of the blacks than might casually be
supposed.

Some of the many debts incurred in the prosecution of researches
leading to this book have been acknowledged in my previous
publications, and others are indicated in the footnotes herein.
It remains to say that in stimulus and criticism, as well as in
the revision of proofs while exigent camp duties have engrossed
my main attention, my wife has given great and unflagging aid.