now de kingdom comin’
An’ de year ob Jubilo!
He six foot one way, two foot tudder
,
An’ he weigh free hundred pound
.
His coat so big, he couldn’t pay de tailor
,
An’ it won’t go half way round
.
He drill so much, dey call him Cap’n
,
An’ he get so drefful tanned
,
I spec’ he try an’ fool dem Yankees
,
For to tink he’s contraband
.
De darkeys feel so berry lonsome
,
Libing in de log house on de lawn
.
Dey move dar tings to massa’s parlor
,
For to keep it while he’s gone
.
Dar’s wine an’ cider in de kitchen
,
An’ de darkeys dey’ll hab some;
I spose dey’ll all be confiscated
,
When de Linkum sojers come
.
De oberseer he make us trouble
,
An’ he dribe us round a spell;
We lock him up in de smoke-house cellar
,
Wid de key trown in de well
.
De whip is lost, de han’cuff broken
,
But de massa’ll hab his pay
.
He’s old enuff, big enuff, ought to know better
Dan to went an’ run away.
15
Nor did the irony of their masters suddenly becoming fugitives seem to escape the slaves. In the newspaper edited by Frederick Douglass, who had himself once been a fugitive, there appeared an advertisement purportedly written by a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, offering a reward for the return of his “runaway master.” Whatever the authenticity of the item, the point could not have been made more graphically.
$500 REWARD.—Rund away from me on the 7th of dis month, my massa Julian Rhett. Massa Rhett am five feet ‘leven inches high, big shoulders, brack hair, curly, shaggy whiskers, low forehead an’ dark face. He make big fuss when he go ’mong de gemmen, he talk very big, an’ use de name ob de Lord all de time. Calls heself “Suddern gemmen,” but I’ spose will try now to pass heself off as a black man or mulatter. Massa Rhett hasa deep scar on his shoulder, from a fight, scratch ’cross de left eye, made by Dinah when he tried to whip her. He neber look people in de face. I more dan spec he will make track for Bergen kounty, in the furrin land of Jersey, whar I ‘magin he hab a few friends.
I will [give] $100 for him if alive, an’ $500 if anybody show [him] dead. If he come back to his kind niggers without much trouble, dis chile will receive him lubbingly.
SAMBO RHETT
Beaufort, S.C., Nov. 9, 1861 16
Before a master fled, he might entrust the plantation or town house to some responsible slave, usually the driver or house servants, in the hope that his property could be kept intact until his return. Such confidence in most instances was not betrayed, with the slaves demonstrating what few masters had willingly conceded them—the ability to look after themselves and the plantation without any whites to advise or direct them. If the able-bodied hands had been removed earlier, however, the only remaining slaves were apt to be “the old and sickly,” the very young, and a few house servants. This could result in a precarious existence, particularly in those regions where the dreaded “paterollers” and Confederate guerrillas were active. In the Mississippi River parishes, the frequency with which the slaves left on abandoned plantations were kidnapped, taken to Texas, and sold finally forced the governor to send troops to curtail such activity and, if possible, to recover the slaves. 17
When white families abandoning the plantations tried to take slaves with them, they often encountered the same resistance that had greeted earlier attempts to remove slaves to safer areas. The classic example occurred early in the war, when the sudden appearance of Union warships at the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina precipitated a mass exodus of planters and their families. Despite pleading, threats, and violence, however, the slaves stubbornly refused to accompany their owners to the mainland, many of them hiding in the swamps and fields rather than be taken. With freedom perhaps only a