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The negroes about Charleston have a natural inclination for military tactics, and hundreds of ragged urchins, as well as old daddies and mammies, may be seen following the fife and drum on parade days. "Then I suppose you've a home anywhere, and a master nowhere, old man?" said the Captain, shaking him by the hand, as one who had worn out his slavery to be disowned in the winter of life.
Instead, along the curbs of the market, sat barelegged negro boys, some of them selling papers to those who wanted them, and some sandwiched in between baskets of popcorn and peanuts. There was a marked scarcity of the progressive, intrusive white boy. Old negro mammies passed to and fro with the day's provisions.
Every morning the mammies and nurses with their charges were seated in a long, shining row on a part of the veranda where there was most passing and repassing, holding a sort of baby show, the social consequence of each one depending upon the rank of the family who employed her, and the dress of the children in her charge.
The 'mammies' at once grouped themselves upon the main-hatch, as near the quarter-deck and officers' cabins as possible. I can hardly understand how Englishmen take a pleasure in 'chaffing' these grotesque beings, who usually reply with some gross, outrageous insolence.
It was a giant beech tree, all of two hundred and fifty years old, and around its base ran a broken wooden bench, where pretty girls of Fairfield had listened to their sweethearts, where children destined to be generals and judges had played with their black mammies, where gray-haired judges and generals had come back to think over the fights that were fought out.
"You gennlemen kin'ly correc' me or bear out what Ah say. Leavin' aside all argument whether they is sech things as Voodoos, Ah guess any of you gennlemen from the South will remember Aunt Belle Agassiz and Tom Blue. Ah guess yo' mammies all done tole 'bout the African Voodoos, an' how ebery now an' den one of 'em crops up still.
Kentucky and Slavery The early settlers from Virginia brought their slaves with them, and when the State was established, no one thought of abolishing the institution of slavery. The melodious voices of the blacks could be heard in the clearing grounds and the “black mammies” and the little pickaninnies were familiar objects about every well-to-do home.
To be sure, it was an experience which the other mammies, as "good membahs of de chutch," regarded as unholy; one which they congratulated themselves would never lie on their consciences, and of which poor Mammy was to die unshriven in their minds; for she never became a "sister," so far as I ever learned. But to us this experience was fruitful of many happy hours.
"There are no mammies these days," she had said in reply to Dudley's remonstrances, "and I can't trust him with one of the new negroes I really can't. Why, I saw one slap a baby once." So she bathed and dressed him in the mornings and rocked him to sleep at midday and at dark, and in the brightness of the forenoon gave him an airing on the piazza that overlooked the back garden.
Better fit you went off home and asked your dear mammies to put 'ee to bed early. Because there's not only the walk to St Martin's an' back which is six mile but when you've passed the doctor for bandy legs or weak eyesight, you may be started on duty that very night. I ben't allowed to say more just now," he added with a fine air of official reticence.
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