The following educational document corresponds with Unit Four: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.

Context
Among southern seaport cities, Charleston, South Carolina, had few equals in terms of its importance to the slave system. In purely economic terms, it was rivaled by New Orleans, perhaps by the antebellum period, but by few others: over two centuries nearly three of every four Africans brought to North America as slaves entered through Charleston harbor, and the ships sailing out of the city were heavily laden with cotton, rice and the other staples that afforded its elite lives of splendor and great wealth. But Charleston's importance was not merely economic: in the decades leading up to the outbreak of civil war, this city also developed a reputation as the intellectual home of militant proslavery thought. Its leading men were at the forefront of the secessionist movement in the late 1850s, and the opening shots of the bloody Civil War were fired in the same harbor into which so many slaves had entered North America.

Charleston's capture by Union forces in mid-February 1865—less than two months before the Confederate surrender—inaugurated a period of strain and upheaval. Freedpeople from the countryside began flocking to the city as a refuge from depredations being carried out against them in rural areas, and the town was briefly placed under the guardianship of the 21st U.S. Colored Troops, a regiment made up largely of locally-recruited former slaves. By the early summer, three-way clashes began to develop between the 21st and white troops brought in to assist in the occupation, and between these white regiments (with a reputation for hostility against blacks) and the city's freed population. Members of one of the New York regiments "insulted the colored people everywhere," one observer noted, "stoned them, knocked them down, and cut them." The following letter was written by a native white Charlestonian, who appears to have been pleased when these tensions culminated in a riot in early July 1865.

Clashes between White and Black Union Troops in Charleston

[July 1865]

[Charleston] is in much too sickly a state to bring anyone to it-already I have heard reports of Yellow Fever. I do not believe it is yet an epidemic but have not the smallest doubt it will be so before the Summer is over. The streets are miserably dirty, and smell most offensively. I heard the other day that 240 persons, white and black, but mostly black, had died in one week...

The City is crowded with negros from the country around-they cannot and will not be kept out by the authorities, they say they are free and have a perfect right to go where they please. One was overheard to say she was a free as a buzzard. In Cordesville^a about two weeks ago some gentlemen were out hunting, and in the course of their hunt, they overtook a party of negros enjoying themselves in the same way. The negros were armed with double barrel guns, and had their pack of dogs. This state of things cannot continue long some change must be made. I could tell you many other instances of their insolence appearance, insubordination and insolence but a letter is not a proper place for it.

They may give us a civil gov: civil rule or what else they please,^b but all the black troops and all the negros must be sent out of the city, and those belonging to the plantations must be made to remain there, and until this is done anything will prove utterly unavailing for our peace and quiet. At one time I was opposed to the expelling of all Negros from the City, but now that I know them, I am fully for doing so, except those that may be personally attending on you. A negro is a (blank space) and has not as much gratitude about him as many of the inferior animals-in fact, until this is done our City never will be inhabited by respectable people, or rebuilt. I understand that many persons have come to the city, and after seeing how things go on, have returned in perfect disgust, and declare they will never bring in their families until some change takes place.