THE WHITE VIEW OF EMANCIPATION. 39 



times when every " nigger " obeyed orders without dreaming of re- 

 sistance or demur, and without expecting any pay. They consider 

 themselves robbed by Emancipation, and would like their " property " 

 back again or its value in some equivalent. It goes against the grain 

 with many of them to bargain with their late chattels for service, 

 and be sued if they do not fulfill their contracts. Their instincts, 

 their training, their habits, are shocked by this, just as yours would 

 be if your horse cited you before a co'art and compelled you to show 

 cause for not paying him ten dollars per month for last year's 

 , service. 



Then the very general complaint that " we can't control our labor " 

 has a very real foundation. Under the old regime, the slaves had 

 their holidays and theii- easy times ; but, when the Cotton-fields had 

 been filled with grass during three or four rainy weeks in May, 

 wherein little could be done, all hands were called out at daylight 

 so soon as the soil was fit for plowing, and kept hard at work all 

 the bright hours till the crop was "laid by." Again, when the 

 jiicking season commenced, all hands — men, women, and children — 

 were called into the fields, and kept at work from daylight till dark, 

 till the crop was secured. If any lagged or shirked, the whip speedily 

 brought them to their bearings. All this is changed by Emancipa- 

 tion. Men talk of so many hours to the day's work; women and 

 children are apt to shun field-work; so a given "foi-ce" — say twenty 

 families — will not pick so much cotton in the month as they did ten 

 years ago. And nearly every negro aspires to be the master of his 

 own time, and either rent land or work it on shares, in preference 

 to hiring out by the month or season. Perhaps this is best for all 

 concerned; but it sadly dwarfs the planter's consequence, and in 

 most cases his profits also. He does n't like it : can you wonder? 



And the change bears much harder on his wife. She had her 

 labors and her cares under the old system : she was no idler, no 

 trifler ; her duty and her interest combined to render her physician- 

 in-ordinary and head-nurse to her Black dependents ; and she often 

 gave anxious days and nights to a struggle with disease at a slave's 

 bedside. But cooking, washing, and other house-work, she was 

 never bred to ; and the fall of Slavery threw them all upon her at 

 a moment's notice, requiring her at once to do them and to learn 

 how. Even when ex-slaves remained with her as hii-ed servants, 

 they were no longer docile and obedient as of old, when it was an 

 envied privilege to serve in the big house rather than plow or pick 



