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 Home3. Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
The following educational document corresponds with Unit Six: Pursuing Citizenship: Justice & Equality in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.
Context
Between the end of the war and the inauguration of Radical Reconstruction in 1867, federal authorities and military officials struggled to assert control over local institutions in which ex-Confederates continued to wield considerable power. Often they used this authority in flagrant attempts to resubjugate blacks, now formally emancipated but in many places lacking the power or the support to enforce change. Across the Carolinas, Freedmen's Bureau agents received frequent reports that blacks were being held on trivial charges, or even on the mere whim of influential whites, and confined in horrible conditions. The report below, from northeastern North Carolina, offers poignant evidence that the end of slavery did not necessarily bring immediate change to freedpeople's conditions.
Report on Conditions in a North Carolina Jail
The first thing that came to my notice was the condition of the County Jail which I found to be horrible indeed. I found incarcerated within its walls, eight Colored men half starved and nearly suffocated on account of the lack of air and the stench of accumulated filth. Upon investigation I ascertained that four of them had been in confinement for over six weeks, for language muttered which their former masters termed insulting, the rest were Charged with having been engaged in Cotton stealing.
I took possession of the keys of the jail and discharged them on the following grounds,
1st That mere words uttered constitute no offence...
2nd That the parties were imprisoned without legal proof.
3rd That no right exists to confine [any] human being in so filthy a place.
The building was of brick, and the windows being half shut down, the heat of itself was hardly endurable. And upon opening the door the [putrid] air was [so] dense that one could feel it sensibly. Instead of cleansing the wards in which the prisoners were confined each day as required by law, not even the excrement had been removed for four or five days, and there being no mineral the floor was [wet] and slimy[.] Instead of wholesome food, being furnished them three times a day, they were not even fed once a day, and were then compelled to eat stinking fish, which with the excessive heat made them require much water, drink was not supplied them, and the poor wretches could be heard by the passers by crying for water.
As is the usual case with men who have been guilty of barbarity, no one was responsible. The sheriff it was said was sick and had been Confined to his house for some weeks, and the Jailor, was a "new man", and had had charge for a day or two only, and the responsibility was so shifted from one to the other, that it became a difficult question to determine where the responsibility lay, unless with the Sheriff who has had the assurance to present a bill of Jails Fees, of about [$60.00] for me to [cash]...
There is about Twenty five thousand Colored people in this district a great portion of which have not heard that they were free, except from inauthentic sources, and on some of the Plantations, I find slavery nearly in status quo antebellum.
Source: Excerpt from "Report of Lieutenant Perminan on Sub-District of Weldon, included in Report of Lt. Col. Dexter H. Clapp, 38th USCT" [Freedmen's Bureau Headquarters, Raleigh], October 13, 1865, M1909 The Records of the Field Offices, Miscellaneous Record.
Questions to Consider
- What are the charges upon which the men in question have been imprisoned? What are the grounds upon which Lieutenant Perminan has the men released?
- Judging from this document, what are the major challenges to be overcome in enforcing emancipation in outlying rural areas?
- If you were the local Freedmen's Bureau agent, what measures would you adopt to ensure that injustices like the one described here are not repeated? What kinds of resources would you require to implement these measures?
- Who should be held responsible for the situation in the Weldon jail? What would be a suitable punishment?