18. New York Times, April 14, 1864.
19. Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 41; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 97; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 541; Scarborough, The Overseer, 149. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 2), 310–11.
20. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 95–96.
21. Ibid, XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 248. See also VI: Ala. Narr., 225.
22. Ibid., XVII: Fla. Narr., 103; VII: Miss. Narr., 81; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 64. See also III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 136; V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 204; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 208.
23. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 262. See also VI: Ala. Narr., 239–40.
24. New York Times, March 30, April 4, 1865; New York Tribune, April 4, 1865; Williamson, After Slavery, 47–48. For other post-emancipation celebrations, see New York Times, Jan. 3, 1864 (Norfolk), Jan. 23 and Aug. 1 (Savannah), July 12 (Louisville), 14 (Raleigh), 1865; New York Tribune, Jan. 13 (Key West), July 8 (Mobile), 12 (Raleigh and Columbia), 1865.
25. Rollin, Life and Public Services of Martin R. Delany, 193–95; Williamson, After Slavery, 43–49.
26. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 520–21; Trowbridge, The South, 291; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 308. For similar reactions, see D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 232; LeConte, When the World Ended, 85–86.
27. Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1273–74.
28. Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 216–17; Ella Gertrude (Clanton) Thomas, Ms. Journal, entry for May 8, 1865, Duke Univ.; Williamson, After Slavery, 34.
29. Avary, Dixie after the War, 152; Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 256; Burge, Diary, 112–113.
30. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for May 24, 30, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May, June 15, Aug. 25, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina.
31. Ravenel, Private Journal, 231, 232, 238, 239–40.
32. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 133; Williamson, After Slavery, 33.
33. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 326; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 264, (Part 2), 168.
34. Ibid., IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 3), 115, 29; VII: Okla. Narr., 114; V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 22; Macrae, Americans at Home, 211.
35. Mrs. Laura E. Buttolph to Mrs. Mary Jones, June 30, 1865, in Myers (ed.) Children of Pride, 1279. See also Burge, Diary, 113.
36. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 128; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 348–49. See also XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 133; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 60.
37. Col. J. L. Haynes to Capt. B. F. Henry, July 8, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (hereafter cited as Freedmen’s Bureau), National Archives, Washington, D.C. See also Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 48, and Joe M. Richardson, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1866–1877 (Tallahassee, 1965), 13–14.
38. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau (Washington, D.C., 1866), 9–10, 99, 154. For recollections of such meetings by ex-slaves, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 178; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 37–38; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 34.
39. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 45–46, (Part 3), 70; Ravenel, Private Journal, 213–14.
40. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C Narr. (Part 1), 225; Macrae, Americans at Home, 209; Black Republican, April 29, 1865; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, 1865. See also Christian Recorder, July 1, 1865; Dennett, The South As It Is, 26; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 94; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 47; Williamson, After Slavery, 33.
41. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 179, (Part 3), 12, 78. For similar recollections, see IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 115, 164, (Part 2), 8, 248; VIII and IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 334, (Part 3), 156. For the concern of Federal officials, see 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part IV, 37; House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 146; Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau made since December 1, 1865 (Washington, D.C., 1866), 83.
42. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 293–94; E. Merton Coulter, “Slavery and Freedom in Athens, Georgia, 1860–66,” in Miller and Genovese (eds.), Plantation, Town, and County, 361; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, 1865, Jan. 20, 1866; Dennett, The South As It Is, 121–22.
43. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 60.
44. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 209.
45. Kathryn L. Morgan, “Caddy Buffers: Legends of a Middle Class Negro Family in Philadelphia,” Keystone Folklore Quarterly, XI (Summer 1966), 75.
46. Washington, Up from Slavery, 20; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, TV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 78, (Part 4), 82; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 256, 85.
47. Ibid., VII: Okla. Narr., 282; XVI: Tenn. Narr., 15.
48. Ibid., III: S.C. Narr. (Part 4), 119; V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 138; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 586. Nearly all of the ex-slaves interviewed by the WPA had a vivid and often detailed recollection of the master’s announcement of freedom. See, e.g., Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 82, 161–62, 208, (Part 2), 78, 199, (Part 3), 33, 36, 216, 234, (Part 4), 60, 124; VII: Okla. Narr., 150–51, 169; X: Ark. Narr. (Part 5), 18, (Part 6), 27; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 111; XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 2), 85–86; XVI: Tenn. Narr., 15.
49. Ibid., IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 208, (Part 2), 78, (Part 3), 33; Francis W. Dawson to [Joseph A. Reeks], June 13, 1865, F. W. Dawson Papers, Duke Univ.
50. Ravenel, Private Journal, 219; New Orleans Picayune, as reprinted in Semi-Weekly Louisianian (New Orleans), June 18, 1871; Loyal Georgian (Augusta), March 17, 1866. See also Burge, Diary, 98.
51. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 299; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 255; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 256; VI: Ala. Narr., 41. See also XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 280–81.
52. Ibid., IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 122, (Part 3), 66; XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 2), 85–86.
53. Ibid., VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 14; IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 139, (Part 3), 192. See also II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 314; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 110, 167; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 102; XVI: Ky. Narr., 108.
54. Ravenel, Private Journal, 240; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 186; V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 228. See also IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 71, 162; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 349; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 236; Evans, Ballots and Fence Rails, 74–75; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 226; John William De Forest, A Union Officer in the Reconstruction (eds. James H. Croushore and David M. Potter; New Haven, 1948), 112–13; Perdue et al (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 3–4.
55. Avary, Dixie after the War, 183–85.
56. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVII: Fla. Narr., 130.
57. Ibid., IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 6–8; XI: Mo. Narr., 313–16; III: S. C. Narr. (Part 3), 278; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 278. See also XVIII: Unwritten History, 62, and IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 142.
58. Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 294; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 52, (Part 3), 53, 261; X: Ark. Narr. (Part 6), 27A. See also XVI: Tenn. Narr., 15, and Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 59.
59. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 283; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 141.
60. Josiah Gorgas, Ms. Journal, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina.
61. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 79, 103; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 48; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 296.
62. Avary, Dixie after the War, 181; Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill, 130; A. A. Taylor, The Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia (Washington, D.C., 1926), 73; Sidney Andrews, The South since the War: As Shown by Fourteen
Weeks of Travel and Observation in Georgia and the Carolinas (Boston, 1866), 25; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1278.
63. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 532, 529. For the attempts of former slaveholding families to perform the house labor themselves, see below, Chapter 7.
64. Trowbridge, The South, 187; Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, July 15, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina.
65. Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1294, 1296; Charles S. Johnson, Shadow of the Plantation (Chicago, 1934), 131; Trowbridge, The South, 155–56.
66. Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Edward Lynch to Joseph Glover [c. June 1865], Glover-North Papers, Univ. of South Carolina.
67. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 233. For white families who preferred to retain their former slaves, see, e.g., Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1323; Colored Tennessean (Nashville), Oct. 14, 1865; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 221.
68. New York Tribune, Dec. 8, 1865; Edward Lynch to Joseph Glover [c. June 1865], Univ. of South Carolina. For a discussion of the insurrection panic of 1865, see below, Chapter 8.
69. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 249–50.
70. Towne, Letters and Diary, 34–35; Nordhoff, Freedmen of South Carolina, 7.
71. Eaton, Grant, Lincoln, and the Freedmen, 35; Ella Gertrude (Clanton) Thomas, Ms. Journal, entry for May 17, 1865, Duke Univ.; Colored People to the Governor of Mississippi, Dec. 3, 1865, Petition of the Freedmen of Claiborne County, Miss., filed in the Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House (New York, 1868), 73–74.
72. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 69; Edward Lynch to Joseph Glover [c. June 1865], Univ. of South Carolina; Spencer, Last Ninety Days of the War in North Carolina, 187; Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill, 123.
73. Macrae, Americans at Home, 348. See also Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 142.
74. W. E. Towne to Bvt. Maj. Gen. Rufus Saxton, Aug. 17, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 80.
75. De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 65.
76. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 131, 133; W. E. Towne to Bvt. Maj. Gen. Rufus Saxton, Aug. 17, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Dennett, The South As It Is, 199–200.
77. Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 105; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 189; Macrae, Americans at Home, 317. See also Forten, Journal, 134.
78. Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 109–14.
79. Reid, After the War, 478; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina. For the similar experience of Pierce Butler and his daughter, Frances Leigh, as they returned to their extensive rice plantations in Georgia, see Frances B. Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation since the War (London, 1883), 14–15, 21–22.
80. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 540. A similar experience may be found in Edward Lynch to Joseph Glover [c. June 1865], Univ. of South Carolina.
81. Edward Barnwell Heyward to “Tat” [Catherine Maria Clinch Heyward] [c. 1867], Heyward Family Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 154–55.
82. Avary, Dixie after the War, 341–45.
83. Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 209–11, 328–29; Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 260–75.
84. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 4), 54; Eppes, Through Some Eventful Years, 272; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 138, 147; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries (entry for Feb. 27, 1865), 6; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 273; V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 216; VII: Miss Narr., 94; Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant (eds.), Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales (Cambridge, 1945), 256.
85. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, X: Ark. Narr. (Part 6), 65–66. See also XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 170; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 335; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 209.
86. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 50; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 145.
87. Ibid., V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 109; VI: Ala. Narr., 381; III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 141. See also II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 340, and V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 16.
88. Ibid., II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 142; Andrews (ed.), Women of the South in War Times, 192–93; Eppes, Negro of the Old South, 119. For other examples, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 144–46: VI: Ala. Narr., 219; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 65, 147, (Part 2), 75–76; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 347.
89. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 78; III: S.C. Narr. (Part 4), 119; Armstrong, Old Massa’s People, 315; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 492.
90. Avary, Dixie after the War, 183; Caroline R. Ravenel to D. E. Huger Smith, July 26 [1865], in D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 225. For similar sentiments, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 76, and Pringle, Chronicles of Chicora Wood, 283–84.
91. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 202; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 234; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 29–30. For a classic example of such testimony, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 71–72.
92. W. L. DeRosset to Louis Henry DeRosset, June 20, 1866, DeRosset Family Papers, Univ. of North Carolina.
93. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 200, (Part 2), 133; Washington, Up from Slavery, 21. For other examples, see Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 129; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 211; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 178; IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 241, (Part 2), 211, (Part 3), 257, (Part 4), 82, 172–73; VII: Okla. Narr., 133; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 9, 38, (Part 2), 153; XII and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 50, 181–82, 271, (Part 4), 112; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 661.
94. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 133; XVII: Fla. Narr., 160–61; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 211.
95. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 301; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 22; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 209–10.
96. New York Tribune, April 6, 1865; New York Times, Jan. 17, 1864.
97. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for May 30, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Josiah Gorgas, Ms. Journal, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 133.
98. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for May 30, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 192; Williamson, After Slavery, 37.
99. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 151. See also IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 277.
100. “Narrative of William Wells Brown,” in Osofsky (ed.), Puttin’ On Ole Massa, 220; “Extracts from Letters from Mississippi,” in American Freedman, III (July 1869), 20.
101. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 29.
Chapter Five: How Free Is Free?
1. William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison (eds.), Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867; repr. 1965), 94; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 218.
2. Andrews, The South since the War, 188.
3. Eppes, Negro of the Old South, 121–22, 130, 138–39.
4. Trowbridge, The South, 68; Avary, Dixie after the War, 190. For the same imagery, see also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 227.
5. Coulter, “Slavery and Freedom in Athens, Georgia, 1860–66,” in Miller and Genovese (eds.), Plantation, Town, and County, 360; Cincinnati Enquirer, as quoted in Cleveland Leader, May 22, 1865.
6. Avary, Dixie after the War, 193. For an ex-slave who thought staying with her “white folks” after emancipation
would help to turn her white, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 6.
7. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 165–67.
8. Eppes, Negro of the Old South, 143, 133; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 329; William W. Ball, The State That Forgot: South Carolina’s Surrender to Democracy (Indianapolis, 1932), 129.
9. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 212; Pearson (ed.), Letters from Port Royal, 181; H. G. Spaulding, “Under the Palmetto,” as reprinted in Bruce Jackson (ed.), The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals (Austin, 1967), 71; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 218; Waterbury, Seven Years Among the Freedmen, 76.
10. Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864, 414; New York Times, Nov. 12, 1865; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 10–11; Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for May 24, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina.
11. Reid, After the War, 370; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 170; Williamson, After Slavery, 8; New York Times, Oct. 13, 1862. For similar expressions, see National Freedman, II (Jan. 15, 1866), 22; Miss Emma B. Eveleth to Rev. Samuel Hunt, May 2, 1866, American Missionary Assn. Archives; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 44.
12. H. R. Brinkerhoff to Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, July 8, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 286–89.
13. Reid, After the War, 419–20; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 82. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten Historv. 267.
14. Forten, Journal, 139; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Okla. Narr., 209.
15. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 3), 78; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 532.
16. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 153.
17. Ibid., XIV and XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 76, (Part 2), 351; VII: Okla. Narr., 51. See also National Freedman, II (Jan. 15, 1866), 23.
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