After Slavery: Educator Resources
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Unit One Documents: Giving Meaning to Freedom
- 1. A White Piedmont Farmer Reflects on Black Freedom
- 2. President Johnson offers Amnesty to Former Confederates
- 3. President Andrew Johnson Appoints William W. Holden Provisional Governor of North Carolina
- 4. A Northern Military Officer Advises Former Slaves on Freedom
- 5. A Planter's Vision of Freedom and Free Labor
- 6. Two North Carolina Freedwomen Testify Against Their Former Owner
- 7. A Committee of Freedmen on Edisto Island Reveal their Expectations
- 8. Former Slaves Describe Conditions on a Georgia Plantation
- 9. A Charleston Freedwoman Opens A Bank Account
Unit Two Documents: Freed Slaves Mobilize
- 1. A Wartime Encounter Between Two South Carolina Slaves
- 2. Rev. Henry McNeal Turner Reports on Organizing among Freedpeople in Georgia
- 3. An Unnamed Black Organizer Reports on the Reception for Republican Speakers among Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 4. A Destitute Local Union League President Seeks Aid from the Governor of North Carolina
- 5. John T. Costin Reports on the Difficulties of Organizing
- 6. A Union League Organizer Seeks permission to Bargain on the Behalf of Women and Children
- 7. A Federal Officer Reports that Freedpeople are Organizing Military Companies on the South Carolina Sea Islands
- 8. White Conservatives Complain that the Union Leagues are Organizing Labor Strikes South of Charleston
- 9. A Charleston Newspaper on the 1868 Municipal Elections
Unit Three Documents: Land and Labor
- 1. Rufus Saxton Argues That Land Should Be Set Aside for Freedpeople
- 2. Freedmen's Bureau Report on the Treatment of Plantation Laborers in Gates County, North Carolina
- 3. A Freedpeople's Colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina
- 4. Rufus Saxton's Letter to Northern Planter Edward S. Philbrick
- 5. General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15
- 6. Freedpeople React to the Restoration of Land to their Former Masters
- 7. Planter-Attorney William Whaley Wants to Exclude Blacks from the Land Board
- 8. South Carolina's 'Black Code'
- 9. A Desperate North Carolina Republican Appeals to Governor Holden for Land
- 10. White Confederate Veterans Appeal to South Carolina's Land Commission
- 11. A Freedpeople's 'Co-operative' in Colleton County, South Carolina
Unit Four Documents: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military
- 1. General Rufus Saxton's Report on an Early Engagement by Black Troops
- 2. New Bern's Black Community Negotiates their Terms for Military Service
- 3. North Carolina's 'African Brigade' Raids the State's Interior
- 4. General Saxton Protests against the Forced Enlistment of Freed Slaves
- 5. Clashes between White and Black Union Troops in Charleston
- 6. Georgetown (S. C.) Whites Petition for the Removal of Black Troops
- 7. Contrasting Attitudes toward Union Troops in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 8. Black Troops, White Hostility, and Radicalization in the Upcountry
- 9. Petition from Union County Republicans against Removal of Troops
Unit Five Documents: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation
- 1. A White Texas Farmer Shoots a Freedman
- 2. "The War is Not Over"
- 3. D. F. Caldwell's Ideas for Economic Development in North Carolina
- 4. 1865 North Carolina Constitutional Convention Responds to Freedpeople
- 5. Wade Hampton's Advice to Confederate Veterans
- 6. Judge A. P. Aldrich Removed from the Bench
- 7. Wade Hampton's Advice to Freedpeople
- 8. A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
- 9. Governor Jonathan Worth Argues Against 1867 Call for a Constitutional Convention
- 10. Plato Durham Argues Against the Reconstruction Acts in the 1868 Constitutional Convention
- 11. Dr. Pride Jones Agrees to Help Stop the Ku Klux Klan
Unit Six Documents: Pursuing Citizenship, Justice, and Equality
- 1. N.C. Planter Denying Schoolchildren Use of the Public Roads
- 2. Whites Reclaim an Edisto Church from Freedpeople
- 3. Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
- 4. Charleston Protests against Streetcar Segregation
- 5. Harassment of Freedpeople in the Vicinity of Wilmington
- 6. Columbia Democrats Debate Black Suffrage
- 7. Sawmill Operator Tries to Prevent Employees from Voting the Radical Ticket
- 8. The Difficulty of Obtaining Justice from Local Authorities
- 9. North Carolina Conservatives Attempt to Frame a Union League Official
- 10. Freedpeople Petition for the Removal of a Trial Justice
- 11. Black Workers Petition Governor Scott against Extortion
Unit Seven Documents: Gender and the Politics of Freedom
- 1. The Social and Domestic Price of Free Labor
- 2. A Black Woman Imagines a Differently Gendered Working Class
- 3. A Virginia Freedwoman Critiques the Gendered Nature of Freedom and Free Labor
- 4. A Freedwoman's Civil and Domestic Expectations
- 5. A Husband Shoulders a New, Free-Labor Duty
- 6. The Problems of Family-based Labor
- 7. Soldiering Men
- 8. Clashing Ideas about Gender and Political Rights
- 9. Playing Politics with Gender
- 10. A Black Minister Proposes a Collective Solution to Freedom's Gendered Problems
- 11. A Southern White Woman Reflects on New Circumstances, a New Identity
Unit Eight Documents: Planters, Poor Whites and White Supremacy
- 1. Sidney Andrews on Attitudes among North Carolina's Poor Whites
- 2. J. B. Sitton's Petition for a Presidential Pardon
- 3. North Carolina Constitutional Convention Protects Homesteads
- 4. The Ku Klux Klan Attacks a White Man Assisting Blacks
- 5. Matthew C. Butler - Planters React to Being Ignored by Government
- 6. Belton O'Neall Townsend on 1876 Strategy
- 7. A Description of Wade Hampton's Campaign
- 8. T. D. Gwyn Argues Against the Fence Law
- 9. South Carolina Greenbacker Explains His Opposition to Democrats
Unit Nine Documents: Coercion, Paramilitary Terror, and Resistance
- 1. Ex-Confederate Soldiers Terrorizing Union Men and Freedpeople in North Carolina
- 2. Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
- 3. Hostility to Freedpeople and Federal Authorities in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 4. Former Freedmen's Bureau Official Rufus B. Saxton on Freedpeople's Desire to Acquire Arms
- 5. North Carolina Freedmen Seek Protection from Governor Holden
- 6. Governor Scott is Warned of Impending Clashes in the South Carolina Upcountry
- 7. A. M. E. Pastor S. B. Williams Reports Atrocities to Governor Holden
- 8. Albion W. Tourgée Reports on KKK Violence in North Carolina
- 9. Freedpeople's Testimony on the Effects of Klan Violence
- 10. A Spartanburg Republican Offers President Grant Advice on How to Suppress Paramilitary Violence
- 11. Martin W. Gary's Plan for the Conservative Campaign of 1876
Unit Ten Documents: Freedpeople and the Republican Party
- 1. Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender
- 2. An Appeal for Resources to Organize the South
- 3. A North Carolina Republican Seeks to Clear his Name
- 4. White Moderates Maneuver to Prevent Radical Domination of the Republican Party
- 5. A South Carolina Agitator Falls Foul of Military Authorities
- 6. Blacks Organize against Discrimination in the Republican Party
- 7. North Carolina Conservatives Refuse to Seat a Black Republican Appointee
- 8. Republicans in Tallyho, North Carolina, Protest against Democratic Fraud
- 9. Illiteracy, Competence and the Difficulty of Building a Bi-Racial Party
- 10. Pressures on Freedmen to Vote the Conservative Ticket
- 11. Election Day Street Confrontations in Charleston
- 12. A White Schoolteacher on the 1876 Elections in the South Carolina Lowcountry
- 13. Freedpeople Confront a Black Politician for Having 'Sold Out his Race'
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Exhibit Home8. A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
The following educational document corresponds with Unit Five: Conservatives Respond to Emancipation in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.
Context
Some conservatives saw what was happening in 1867 and realized that their earlier intransigence had caused them to miss opportunities to shape the situation in their favor. In the excerpt below James Hemphill of Chester, South Carolina, explains to his brother in Alabama that as the Reconstruction Acts are being implemented and freedmen registered to vote and organized into the Republican party, he and men like him feel powerless and confused.
A Conservative Realizes the Mistakes of Earlier Policies
. . . A convention of the republican party has been held in Columbia to establish a platform which was quite radical. . . A few white persons were present but it was principally composed of negroes. They are organizing in the state, having lectures among them to disseminate the views of the party. One meeting has bene held here, and there is to be a . . . one tomorrow when I suppose speeches will be made. I have been invited out, but I do not know that I will attend. Nothing will be acceptable to them except perfect equality as to suffrage, office holding etc. . . If the colored people choose to support their own race they can elect them if they please, and adopt any measures, that they may deem best. Our affairs have been sadly mismanaged by the President and our own people.
We ought to have adopted the Constitutional amendment but deluded by the President, the DP, and our Editors and politicians, it was rejected, and for now has befallen us. If our people had gone into the measure unassumingly and resolutely determined to carry them out in good faith, it would have been far better for us... [now] the people are apathetic, uncertain what to do... I am disfranchised myself, but if I had a vote it would certainly be exercised in an effort to restore Government.
Source: James Hemphill [Chester] to Dear Brother [WR Hemphill, Camden, Alabama], August 2, 1867, Duke University Special Collections
Questions to Consider
- What does Hemphill blame Andrew Johnson for?
- What mistakes does Hemphill believe "our people" made during Presidential Reconstruction?
- What is Hemphill's response to black political mobilization?