Writing in the early 1900s, Robert M. McGill, a former “Confederate Soldier Boy” recalls slavery in North Georgia.
Note: Robert M. McGill’s diary begins in April 1862. The 463 entries in it will be published here day-by-day with each entry posted 160 years after the original entry.
Slavery in this North Georgia was a very different thing from what it was lower down in the cotton belt, Being raised all our lives among slaves, we boys never thought much about what real slavery meant. I often heard my father say he would never own a slave, because it was not right; and he never did, nor any of his brothers in Georgia, although they were as well able to own them as many who did; but to have talked out against slavery one would have been counted as an enemy to his country, and would hardly have been tolerated.
Men were required to act as patroles, just as they were required to work the public roads. Being divided into squads, we had to go on patrol over a certain territory about every two weeks. If a slave was caught out from home without a pass, the patrols were given authority by law to whip him, give him a pass and send or require him to go home at once, his master being notified afterwards. I never had to patrol but a very few times, and we usually made a kind of frolic out of it, by slipping up to their cabin doors, where we heard many a funny talk. An apple or a potatoe thrown over the door brought the expression, “What dat,” but, taking the hint, they always opened the door good-naturedly and bade us enter. After a laugh and chat with them, and asking if they were all at home, we left them in peace and wended our way, to repeat the same thing at the next cabin door. I am glad to say we never found a single slave away from home without a pass in all the patroling I had to do.
Owners of slaves in that country fed them on good, substantial food, and clothed them with coarse but comfortable clothing. It paid them to do so, just as it pays any man to take good care of such property as horses or cattle. A good, strong, healthy man or woman was worth from $1,000 to $1,500, and a man did not care to run the risk of loosing such a valuable piece of property by negligence, to say nothing of the humane side of the question.
The marriage relationship was not a very binding one, and did not require any license from the courts; yet they usually lived in families, but very often the husband belonged to one man and the wife to another, the husband being permitted to go to the home of his wife once, some times twice a week. We had a neighbor that owned a girl who married a man that lived several miles away. Ten or twelve children were born to this couple, so you see from the prices given above, that this negro girl was quite a little fortune to her owner. One of the very saddest features of slavery was the breaking up of homes without the consent of any of the inmates. Not much slave trading was done in our neighborhood. When there was a marriage in a slave owner’s home, the son or daughter going out from the home, was often given a slave, usually a girl, and so she was separated from her parents, but that was a very different thing from being sold to a slave trader. A slave trader and slave driver was considered a heartless man, and well he deserved the name, for he was heartless; and being heartless, he was usually brutal.
In later years we came to understand more of the awful nature of human slavery, how an aristocracy, not to say an oligarchy, was built up which ruled with an iron hand, caring no more for the poor white man, probably not as much, as for the negro, because the negro was his property; no wonder they sung during the war, “Dixie’s land is a land of cotton; when a poor man dies he’s soon forgotten! Look away, look away,” etc.
Human beings were bought and sold like cattle; often family ties were broken without any regard whatever of the feelings of the persons sold. Don’t misunderstand me; this was the general rule; especially farther South; but, as in all other things, there were noble exceptions; not by any means do I place all slave owners in the heartless class. The exceptions to the general rule in North Georgia were very much in the majority. Very few, if any, were sold to the slave trader.
We realized the awful hideousness of human slavery when it brought on the terrible Civil War, wherein the lives of over a million of men were sacrificed, and the whole land brought to unspeakable suffering and sorrow. And yet, after all this, my mind runs back to the days of my boyhood, after these many years, and I wonder, and again I wonder, if, after all, these colored people did not really live happier lives, these neighbors of ours, than they are living in that same country to-day. I am not, by any means, justifying slavery; I am only musing. These people were kept in ignorance, it being against the law for any one to teach them to read. It is said that “ignorance is bliss.” In their cases it might, to a limited extent, be so. Fairly comfortably clothed, fed with substantial food, living in comfortable homes, and knowing nothing of the turmoils of the outside world; not a care for the future as to this life, their masters looking after that. After the day’s work was done, they usually had the evenings until bedtime to work for themselves, making shuck collars, foot mats, bottom chairs, and do many other things, to make spending money. Again I say, I often wonder if they were really not more happy then than they are to-day, with all the cares and responsibilities which freedom brought ; and yet I know there is no joy that out-weighs the joys of freedom, if rightly appreciated and used.
There were many strong attachments between master and slave. The negro race certainly deserves great credit for many things; how they worked on peaceably and without murmuring, thus supplying food and raiment for the many during the war; the docility manifested; the care they took of the master’s family while the white men were away in the army. I do not believe there is another race under the shining sun that would have acted as they did under like circumstances; and yet there is more prejudice against these people than against any other people on the face of the earth. Why is this so? Above all things, let us be just.
Image is of an unidentified Confederate soldier.