The following educational document corresponds with Unit Ten: Freedpeople and the Republican Party in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.

Context
In the decades leading up to the outbreak of the Civil War, Charleston's white elites had become notorious for leading the intellectual defense of slavery. John C. Calhoun was only the best known of a circle of white politicians and intellectuals that based their political reputations on countering the abolitionist sentiment increasingly popular in the North. But even in this city, the citadel of slavery, there were cracks in the power of slaveholders. Since the uncovering of Denmark Vessey's insurrectionary plot in 1822, Charleston whites had been on edge worrying about clashes with African Americans, especially in a region where they were vastly outnumbered. Repression was one solution, but by the late 1840s the city had a large free black population, and depended on the labor of hundreds of slaves who were 'hired out' and enjoyed a degree of independence and mobility. In taverns and grog shops along the waterfront and at illicit trading posts along the lowcountry riverways, slaves and poor whites fraternized, threatening the stability required by slavery. Masters liked to imagine that their slaves were loyal, and would not desert them once the war came, but the reality was that many took the first viable opportunity to escape. In the document below, S. Willard Saxton, brother of Union general Rufus B. Saxton, reports on the intense reactions of Black Charlestonians to the news that Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox.

Black Charleston Reacts to News of the Confederate Surrender

Friday April 14, 1865.—The pen falters and the language fails when they come to tell of the great and glorious doings of this day, one of the most eventful of the war, and one that will be recorded on the page of history as one of the brightest... [continued April 15th]. There was a great meeting in Zion's church, which was crowded, in the forenoon. Senator Wilson, Mr. Garrison, Judge Kelley, of Penn, Theodore Tilton, and Mr. George Thompson, of England,^a were the speakers, and that is enough to make a great and splendid meeting. A large crowd had gathered on Citadel Square, and speakers were sent out to entertain them. Such Abolition talk was then and there held as Charleston never before heard, and there must have been loud amens spoken in the other sphere to the eloquent truths that there found utterance. It was splendid indeed, and filled the heart and eyes full to overflowing. There was great enthusiasm among the immense throng of blacks, and 'white-blacks' and they felt, with justice, that it was their day, and that they had a night to hold up their heads and rejoice with exceeding great joy.