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'
South Carolina Curriculum Standards
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Exhibit Home2. Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
The following educational document corresponds with Unit Nine: Coercion, Paramilitary Terror, and Resistance in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.
Context
In some places in the South Carolina interior, whites sought to formally reestablish the 'slave patrols' that had operated before the war. As the document below suggests, these efforts included compelling freedpeople to carry 'passes' signed by their employers when they wanted to travel the roads. But this was not all that ex-slaves had to contend with: individual employers—with their authority reinforced by organized bands of armed men—did their best to retain the prerogatives for punishment and discipline that they had exercised under slavery. Freedwomen, in particular, faced a difficult new situation: now that they no longer bore children who could be owned as property, employers tried to turn them off as unproductive laborers.
In the early months after the war this violence was supplemented by the less focused brutality of gangs of 'bushwhackers,' but in time some of the coercive functions evident in the revived patrols would become regularized in the new, all-white state militias set up under the Benjamin F. Perry administration in South Carolina and the Holden and Worth administrations that governed North Carolina. Made up in large part of Confederate veterans and frequently led, on a local level, by prominent men of property, these efforts brought the armed power of the state to bear on attempts at undermining freedpeople's claim to freedom.
These selected entries from the journal of Col. James C. Beecher —who during the war was a commander of a black regiment and after it an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau— give us some sense of the range of atrocities carried out by whites. All are from the summer and fall of 1865. Throughout this period, Beecher was stationed in the South Carolina interior west of Charleston.
Early Outrages against Freedpeople in South Carolina
Aug 13 [freedwomen 'Silvy' and 'Pocohontas' complain that] Silvy was tied up by the thumbs on 12th from 3am to 3pm [by planter James Wiggins, St. George's Parish, Colleton county]; Pocahontas complains of the same for beating her and her young child with a stick.
Aug 17 [freedwoman Jane Cumming complains of getting 50 lashes with a switch, planter's wife beat her first, on back, face and arms.]
Aug 24 [Planter] states that Jane is an audacious creature...came in my absence to the house and insulted my wife who ordered her off and struck her. Says Col. Huntville told him to kill any man who came on the place to make trouble... Says Jane is mighty saucy and won't obey orders.
Sept 8 [Freedman] Jerry on Westley Williams place...complains that Wiggins shot at him twice, with pistol shows mark of ball on shoulder and shirt sleeve. I has wife on Wiggins place. W[iggins] sent for me by his step son. I went. W[iggins] jumped up and said he had good mind to shoot me. Set his dogs on me. I got out into road - W[iggins] got up a club. I ran. He fired twice. touched my cap and shoulder...
Sept 19 [Complaint about outrage on freed boy, Stephen] "repeatedly beaten [by planter Ben Cummings] until he left. Threatened to shoot him... All complain that Cummings gives no rations."
Sept 25 Cato. f.m. [freedman] from plantation of Capt George L. Patrick, 2 miles from Midway, 3 m from Bamberg, says P[atrick] gave notice that all freed persons must have tickets. That an armed patrol is mustered on muster ground. That the patrol rides every night. That the orders are, if any colored person [overwritten: 'man'] is found without ticket, he shall be reported twice. The third time he shall receive 75-150 lashes. Says on his plantation is revolver 2 bar. [double-barrelled] shot gun and 1 Rifle hunting.
On Mrs. Falk's place & William Patrick['s] are arms. Dr Carrie has 2 bar [double-barrelled] gun. None of the people have turned in guns. Kit fm [freedman] Mrs. Falks, Eden fm [freedman] Wm Patrick says also that the only food issued is peck of cornmeal & 2 qts. salt.
Sept 29 After crop laid by women to spin clothing - men to cut R. R. [railroad] caps. Complains that a patrol came Saturday night called the name of one Chloe & Alfred Clarissy - also Alfred and Jinny Denny. Chloe wasn't home. We answered to our names. They just took us out and said we must march to Barnwell Court house. They took us out in the road. Stripped us of our clothes and whipped us 25 lashes. Said we must clear new ground and make fence. Whipped us on bare back. Mr. Love says he didn't know anything about it. David Jimmison and David Whitston. Whole party of whites stood by to see it done.
Oct 9 Thomas Ashe f.m. [freedman] Richd Ashe plantation [near Allendale]. Says left last Tuesday came long Barnwell to look for gun, I give it to him [.] 3 Rebs had doub bar [double-barreled] guns loaded. He kicked up a row. One of these men drew gun on me. Said they would kill me. Took 2 little children from the place. Says that at B. C. H. [Barnwell Court House] no man can open his mouth. Mrs. Fogler-Walter Brooks places whipped colored people for dollars a head. I told corporal of white men having guns. He wouldn't go after them. Said negroes were not allowed to have them.
Oct 15 Frank f.m. [freedman] on Henry Huttals place. I was in the field at 12 [noon] with the others-on Monday 9th inst. breaking corn. They was just going to dinner. There was 25 white men, all had guns. Old Whitston, Glover, Jos. Bellinger, William Patrick Jr., Old Mr. Kloy, Dr. Roach. Fellow says he was Yankee soldier named brown. Had corporals chevrons.a Men came out of the woods. mounted. I was standing with my back to the bay. didn't see them till they fired. I run. Said they would keep me til I told who had the gun Capt Gates give them &c[.] I was the only man working. They said I caught me, put me under guard. Said they hadn't begun to punish me. The guard got asleep. I got away Tuesday morning. My leg was broke last Jan. I started for Summerville. Got tired. I got into Ridgeville Wednesday. Mose, Weaver & Isham are at Ridgeville Old Christina's Kit is at Georges. Women are on the place. don't think the women had been troubled. The scouts said they could attend to the women any time. would go through the men first. Frank has ball in left arm not yet extracted
Oct 28 Charity, Barnwell Dist on plantation of Mr Royal says Corp or Sergt is there to punish them because they refused to call Royal's daughter missus...[Julie Ann testifies] tied my hands behind me and hoisted me up so I could only touch my toes Don't know how long. Mr Royal now threatens he will shoot me down...has been whipping a sister of Bessy...said he was old and hadn't long to live but he would kill some of us before he died.
Nov 2 Adam testifies three white men known to him caught him going home on road, stripped him and whipped him three hours with straps; "They said they didn't allow any free niggers to pass on the road. They said Green Schouler was licked and reported and got no satisfaction and I could do the same. Says they beat the wife of Jake Wiggin and threatened his life. Says they ran off one of the colored girls from the place."
aAlmost certainly these are southern whites intentionally dressed in Union military uniform to deceive freedpeople. This occurred fairly frequently in the period immediately after the war.
Source: Col. James C. Beecher Journal, Special Collections Library, Duke University
Questions to Consider
- Who can freedpeople look to for protection against the abuses detailed here? What evidence do we have in these entries of the attitudes of federal officers?
- Why might whites want to limit black mobility through a system of 'tickets' and 'patrols'? Is this attempt at curtailing movement compatible with the new order northerners have pledged to bring into the South? How can northern aims and southern white objectives be reconciled?
- In the entry for September 29th, Beecher details a confrontation over the terms of labor. What seems to be at the root of the differences between freedpeople and their employers?
- Imagine yourself as an agent of the Freedmen's Bureau being presented with these complaints. Write a short letter to leading Bureau officials in Washington D.C. recommending a strategy for curtailing abuse.