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69. Thompson, An Englishman in the American Civil War, 94; John Houston Bills, Ms. Diary, entries for Jan. 10, 14, May 18, 27, June 1, 3, 5, 8, 16, Aug. 21, 29, Oct. 8, 17, 1863 (incl. “Memoranda 1863: List of Servants Carried Off by Federal Army and Value”), Feb. 10, 11, July 11, 1864, Univ. of North Carolina.
70. Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1241, 1243, 1247.
71. Okar to Gustave Lauve, June 26, 1863, Gustave Lauve Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 183. See also Wiley, Southern Negroes, 12; Bettersworth (ed.), Mississippi in the Confederacy, 240; Williamson, After Slavery, 24. For slaves who returned only to leave again, see, e.g., Wilmer Shields to William N. Mercer, June 10, 1865, Mercer Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region, 297; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 211.
72. Stone, Brokenburn, 185; John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entries for Sept. 22, 24, 1863, Univ. of North Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1263; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 202; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 145; Ruffin, Diary, II, 409–10; Stone, Brokenburn, 179. See also Rainwater (ed.), “Letters of James Lusk Alcorn,” 201; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 207; Whittington (ed.), “Concerning the Loyalty of Slaves in North Carolina in 1863,” 501. Edmund Ruffin, Jr., offered amnesty “for the past insubordination” to his returning slaves, “provided their future conduct should be good, as it had been generally previously.” Ruffin, Diary, II, 367–68.
73. Ravenel, Private Journal, 251; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 16–17, 106–08; New York Times, Nov. 20, 1861; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 11, 33–34; Christian Recorder, Nov. 30, 1861. Few towns were sacked as thoroughly as Beaufort. Although an estimated 3,000 slaves helped to level Jackson, Mississippi, that was a joint operation with Union troops; in nearby Yazoo City, however, the blacks themselves burned down fourteen houses and the courthouse, and the proliferation of arson attempts elsewhere, some of them spectacularly successful, gave rise to new fears of a general insurrection. Silver (ed.), Mississippi in the Confederacy, 268–69; Harvey Wish, “Slave Disloyalty under the Confederacy,” Journal of Negro History, XXIII (1938), 444; Williamson, After Slavery, 51.
74. Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 12; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 193, 218; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 208. See also Ruffin, Diary, II, 598; Ravenel, Private Journal, 216; Leland (ed.), “Middleton Correspondence, 1861–1865,” 106; Ada Sterling, A Belle of the Fifties: Memoirs of Mrs. Clay, of Alabama (New York, 1905), 182; Stone, Brokenburn, 210; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 188, 189; Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina.
75. Ravenel, Private Journal, 217; Leland (ed.), “Middleton Correspondence, 1861–1865,” 107; Stone, Brokenburn, 193, 203; Williamson, After Slavery, 5–6. See also Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 11, 12, 33, 35, 37; Dawson, Confederate Girl’s Diary, 178; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 187; New York Times, Dec. 21, 1862; Whittington (ed.), “Concerning the Loyalty of Slaves in North Louisiana in 1863,” 492; Jones (ed.), When Sherman Came, 268.
76. John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entry for Feb. 11, 1864, Univ. of North Carolina; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 208–10, 328; Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 268–69. For comparable scenes, see, e.g., Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, May 5, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Edward Lynch to Joseph Glover [June 1865], Glover-North Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Avary, Dixie after the War, 341–42.
77. Towne, Letters and Diary, 34; New York Times, Nov. 20, 1861, Nov. 16, 20, Dec. 21, 1862; Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 269; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 212.
78. Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 213; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 605; New York Times, Dec. 29, 1863; Christian Recorder, Nov. 26, 1862. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 163; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 119; XVI: Tenn. Narr., 12.
79. Samuel A. Agnew, Ms. Diary, entries for Oct. 31, Nov. 1, 1862, Univ. of North Carolina; Louisa T. Lovell to Capt. Joseph Lovell, Feb. 7, 1864, Quitman Papers, Univ. of North Carolina. See also Sitterson, Sugar Country, 214.
80. Sitterson, Sugar Country, 212; Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864, 376–77; Jones (ed.), Heroines of Dixie, 118; Emily Caroline Douglas, Ms. Autobiography, 168, Louisiana State Univ.
81. New York Times, Dec. 1, 1862, Oct. 30, 1864; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVII: Fla. Narr., 246; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 220; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 74; Scarborough, The Overseer, 153–54. See also Clayton Jones, “Mississippi Agriculture,” Journal of Mississippi History, XXIV (April 1962), 138; Sitterson, “The McCollams: A Planter Family of the Old and New South,” in Miller and Genovese (eds.), Plantation, Town, and County, 296; Ruffin, Diary, II, 317, 320; Ravenel, Private Journal, 211–12; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 36; Stone, Brokenburn, 175; Savannah Writers’ Project, Savannah River Plantations (Savannah, 1947), 324; John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entries from Jan. 10, 1863, to Dec. 14, 1864, Univ. of North Carolina.
82. For a discussion of the overseer under slavery, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 12–21, and Scarborough, The Overseer.
83. Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864, 377; New York Times, Oct. 26, 1862 (the dispatch was written by the New Orleans correspondent of the Times on Oct. 16).
84. Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 264–65.
85. Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 213, 218, 328–29. See also Scarborough, The Overseer, 163–64.
86. Joseph LeConte, ’Ware Sherman: A Journal of Three Months’ Personal Experience in the Last Days of the Confederacy (Berkeley, Calif., 1938), 133–34; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Leland (ed.), “Middleton Correspondence, 1861–1865,” 100–01; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 53.
87. Wish, “Slave Disloyalty under the Confederacy,” 444; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 81; Christian Recorder, May 28, 1864; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 162; Dawson, Confederate Girl’s Diary, 185. For other examples, see Stone, Brokenburn, 205; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 114.
88. Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 36; LeGrand, Journal, 130; Scarborough, The Overseer, 154–55; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 209–10.
89. Ruffin, Diary, II, 318; New York Times, Oct. 17, 1863; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1248; Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 114; Rogers, History of Georgetown County, 422; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 216; Williamson, After Slavery, 46, 51–52.
90. Alexander F. Pugh, Ms. Plantation Diary, entry for Nov. 5, 1862, A. F. Pugh Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; Scarborough, The Overseer, 153; Williamson, After Slavery, 52; Messner, “Black Violence and White Response: Louisiana, 1862,” 22.
91. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 532; Ravenel, Private Journal, 218, 223.
92. W. McKee Evans, Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstruction on the Lower Cape Fear (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), 76; Stone, Brokenburn, 197.
93. Typical examples may be found in Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entries for March 4, 11, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Everard Green Baker, Ms. Diary, entry for Dec. 26, 1862, Univ. of North Carolina; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 22; Stone, Brokenburn, 298; LeConte, ’Ware Sherman, 32; Avary, Dixie after the War, 196; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1218–19; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 207–08; New York Tribune, March 23, 1865; Simkins and Patton, Women of the Confederacy, 164–65; Jones (ed.), When Sherman Came, 68, 134.
94. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 528.
95. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 70; Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865, 296–97; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 194–95; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 11–12. For other examples, see Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Jones (ed.), When
Sherman Came, 21; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XTV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 250.
96. Washington, Up from Slavery, 19; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 170; VII: Okla. Narr., 337–38; Trowbridge, The South, 391; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for March 31, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina.
97. Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Dawson, Confederate Girl’s Diary, 212; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 544. Two months earlier, on May 2, 1865, Mary Chesnut had noted in her diary: “The fidelity of the Negroes is the principal topic everywhere. There seems not a single case of a Negro who betrayed his master …” Ibid., 527–28.
98. Ravenel, Private Journal, 221. See also LeConte, ’Ware Sherman, 105–06, 125.
99. Andrews (ed.), Women of the South in War Times, 239; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 26. For similar examples of slave “betrayal,” see Ella Gertrude (Clanton) Thomas, Ms. Journal, entry for Dec. 12, 1864, Duke Univ.; Robert Philip Howell, Ms. Memoirs [17], Univ. of North Carolina; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 35; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 194; Andrews (ed.), Women of the South in War Times, 263–64; Jones (ed.), When Sherman Came, 21–22, 235, 243; Bettersworth (ed.), Mississippi in the Confederacy, 210; Johns, Life with the Forty-ninth Massachusetts Volunteers, 191; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S. C. Narr. (Part 1), 69, (Part 2), 329–30; V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 245; VI: Ala. Narr., 78–79; VII: Okla. Narr., 211; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 76; Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword, 142–44.
100. New York Times, July 29, 1863, Dec. 12, 1861; Catherine Barbara Broun, Ms. Diary, entry for May 1, 1864, Univ. of North Carolina.
101. Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword, 144–45; Stone, Brokenburn, 209.
102. Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 197; House (ed.), “Deterioration of a Georgia Rice Plantation During Four Years of Civil War,” 107; Ella Gertrude (Clanton) Thomas, Ms. Journal, entry for Dec. 12, 1864, Duke Univ.
103. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 503; Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 236; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May 1865, Univ. of South Carolina. See also Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 35.
104. Bell I. Wiley, The Plain People of the Confederacy (Baton Rouge, 1944), 83; Robert Philip Howell, Ms. Memoirs [17–18], Univ. of North Carolina; Bryant (ed.), “A Yankee Soldier Looks at the Negro,” 145; John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entry for May 18, 1865; House (ed.), “Deterioration of a Georgia Rice Plantation During Four Years of Civil War,” 102; “Visit to ‘Gowrie’ and ‘East Hermitage’ Plantations,” March 1867, Manigault Plantation Records, Univ. of North Carolina. See also Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 190, and Stone, Brokenburn, 193, 195, 198, 199, 203, 208–09, 363.
105. Mrs. Elizabeth Jane Beach to her parents, July 29, 1864, in Smith (ed.), “The Yankees in New Albany,” 46; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 321–22.
106. Avary, Dixie after the War, 190; Lillian A. Pereyra, James Lusk Alcorn: Persistent Whig (Baton Rouge, 1966), 79.
107. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 221; II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 225. For a discussion of the house servant in slavery, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 328–65.
108. Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 198; Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 253; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 73. For house servants who “behaved outrageously,” see also Okar to Gustave Lauve, June 26, 1863, Gustave Lauve Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entry for Aug. 21, 29, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Louisa T. Lovell to Capt. Joseph Lovell, Feb. 7, 1864, Quitman Papers, Univ. of North Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1248; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 192; Stone, Brokenburn, 173, 176; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 207; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 354; Jones (ed.), When Sherman Came, 130.
109. Richmond Examiner, quoted in Frank Moore (ed.), The Rebellion Record (11 vols.; New York, 1861–68), IV, Part IV, 101–02; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 344. See also Ravenel, Private Journal, 218, 221, 251, 269–70, and Leland (ed.), “Middleton Correspondence,” 100.
110. House (ed.), “Deterioration of a Georgia Rice Plantation During Four Years of Civil War,” 102; LeGrand, Journal, 263; Dennett, The South As It Is, 261–63. On June 19, 1862, Edmund Ruffin made this entry in his diary: “Why this property & Marlbourne should be especially losers of slaves, cannot be understood, for nowhere were they better cared for, or better managed & treated, according to their condition of slavery.” Diary, II, 346.
111. Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 427; Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 9.
112. Murray, Proud Shoes, 159–60.
113. “Narrative of William Wells Brown,” in Osofsky (ed.), Puttin’ On Ole Massa, 212; Philip S. Foner (ed.), The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass (4 vols.; New York, 1950–55), 1, 157; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (3rd English ed.; Wortley, 1846), 40, 99.
114. Scarborough, The Overseer, 16–19, 82–84, 93–94; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 365–88; E. L. Pierce, The Negroes at Port Royal (Boston, 1862), 8–10; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 132–33; S. H. Boineau to Charles Heyward, Nov. 24, 1864, Univ. of South Carolina.
115. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 66; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 219. For the fate of the driver in the postwar period, see below, Chapter 8.
116. Jesse Belflowers to Adele Petigru Allston, Oct. 19, 1864, in Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 310; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 17–18; Hitchcock, Marching with Sherman, 69–70; D. E. K. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 237; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 387; Ruffin, Diary, II, 317.
117. John H. Ransdell to Gov. Thomas O. Moore, May 24, 1863, in Whittington (ed.), “Concerning the Loyalty of Slaves in North Louisiana in 1863,” 493; Louis Manigault to Charles Manigault, Nov. 24, 1861, South Carolina Dept. of Archives and History, Columbia; Pierce, Negroes at Port Royal, 8–10; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 20, 80–81.
118. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 251, 253–55.
119. Stone, Brokenburn, 171; Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina.
120. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 143n.; New York Times, April 2, 1865; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 99; Hitchcock, Marching with Sherman, 121–23.
121. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 112.
122. “Visit to ‘Gowrie’ and ‘East Hermitage’ Plantations,” March 23, 1867, Manigault Plantation Records, Univ. of North Carolina.
123. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 81–82.
124. Ibid., II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 151.
Chapter Four: Slaves No More
1. Irwin Silber (ed.), Soldier Songs and Home-Front Ballads of the Civil War (New York, 1964), 41; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 212; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 117.
2. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 164–65, 201.
3. John B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk’s Diary at the Confederate States Capital (2 vols.; Philadelphia, 1866; repr. in one volume, ed. Earl Schenck Miers, 1958), 528–30; Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1866, 294; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 90; Rembert W. Patrick, The Fall of Richmond (Baton Rouge, 1960), 41–58; Jones (ed.), Heroines of Dixie, 398; Putnam, Richmond During the Confederacy, 363–64.
4. Christian Recorder, April 8, 15, 22, 1865; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVI: Va. Narr., 35–37; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 103, 145–46. See also New York Tribune, April 6, 1865.
5. Christian Recorder, April 22, 1865. See also Black Republican, May 20, 1865; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 212; Jones, Rebel War Clerk’s Diary, 530.
6. Putnam, Richmond During the Confederacy, 367; Patrick, Fall of Richmond, 68–69; Phoebe Yates Pember, A Southern Woman’s Story: Life in Confederate Richmond (Jackson, Tenn., 1959), 135.
7. New York Times, April 11, 1865; McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 67–68; Patrick, Fall of Richmond, 115.
See also Christian Recorder, April 22, 1865.
8. Hope R. Daggett to Rev. George Whipple, April 1865; Mary E. Watson to Rev. George Whipple, May 1, 1865; Miss Frances Littlefield to Rev. George Whipple, May 1, 1865, American Missionary Assn. Archives.
9. Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 414–15.
10. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 205, 210; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVI: Va. Narr., 3, 5–6; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 36–39.
11. Patrick, Fall of Richmond, 117–18; New York Times, April 30, 1865.
12. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 266.
13. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVII: Fla. Narr., 103. See also XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 97–98. For a description of a plantation near Huntsville, Alabama, where both slaves and the master disclaimed any knowledge of emancipation, see Franklin (ed.), Diary of James T. Ayers, 26–29. The Emancipation Proclamation, formally declared on January 1, 1863, applied only to those states (or portions thereof) “this day in rebellion against the United States.” The loyal border slave states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware) and Tennessee were thereby excluded from its provisions, along with thirteen Federal-occupied parishes in Louisiana (including New Orleans), forty-eight counties in West Virginia, and seven counties in Virginia which were “for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.” Wherever Union troops were in command, however, slaves generally assumed they were free.
14. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; New York Times, Dec. 30, 1861; Christian Recorder, May 6, 1865.
15. New York Times, June 2, 1863; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S. C. Narr. (Part 2), 329–30; Jones (ed.), When Sherman Came, 235–36.
16. “Look to the Future,” Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria), June 3, 1863, quoted in Whittington (ed.), “Concerning the Loyalty of Slaves in North Louisiana in 1863,” 489–90.
17. Whittington (ed.), “Concerning the Loyalty of Slaves in North Louisiana in 1863,” 494, 500, 501; Rainwater (ed.), “Letters of James Lusk Alcorn,” 201, 202.