Been in the Storm So Long

by Leon F. Litwack

  27. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 85; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 159; New York Tribune, July 25, 1865.

  28. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 102; VII: Miss. Narr., 154–55; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 14–16. See also Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 14, 33–35.

  29. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 6–7; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 207–08; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 36–37. See also Dennett, The South As It Is, 229, and Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 209–10.

  30. New York Times, Nov. 28, 1863; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, X: Ark. Narr. (Part 5), 17, 18; C. W. Clarke to Col. Samuel Thomas, June 29, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  31. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 266; New York Tribune, Nov. 10, 1865. See also New York Times, Aug. 5, 1864, Sept. 29, 1865.

  32. Williamson, After Slavery, 110; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 56. See also Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 384. On the postwar black conventions, see below, Chapter 10.

  33. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 300; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 75–78; Trowbridge, The South, 460. On interstate migration patterns, see Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 107; Williamson, After Slavery, 108–09; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 75–76; Kolchin, First Freedom, 20–21; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 130–31; Moore (ed.), The Juhl Letters, 143. In mid-1866, Oliver O. Howard, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, authorized transportation for delegates elected by the freedmen of Roanoke Island to visit plantations in Texas and explore employment opportunities there. If the investigation justified migration, freedmen in “the large and destitute settlements” would then be induced to move. O. O. Howard to Bvt. Maj. Gen. J. Robinson, Aug. 22, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, North Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  34. Reid, After the War, 562–63; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XI: Mo. Narr., 117; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 90–91.

  35. Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 109; Kolchin, First Freedom, 12–19, 22–23.

  36. Andrews, The South since the War, 350–62.

  37. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 133. See also Macrae, Americans at Home, 324.

  38. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 124; V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 39; Trowbridge, The South, 155–56; Weymouth T. Jordan, Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation (University, Ala., 1948), 160; Ephraim M. Anderson, Memoirs: Historical and Personal (St. Louis, 1868), 364; George Parliss to Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau. See also National Freedman, I (Nov. 15, 1865), 327; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 262.

  39. Loyal Georgian, March 3, 1866; Reid, After the War, 69; New York Times, Sept. 2, 1865.

  40. New York Times, Dec. 10, 1865.

  41. Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 9, 13–14; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 126–27, 128; Williamson, After Slavery, 38, 159–62; Taylor, Negro in Tennessee, 141–42; The Union (New Orleans), July 14, 1863.

  42. Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy, 313–14. With the end of the war, the need to reconstruct shattered railroad tracks and build new lines produced immediate opportunities for freedmen to leave the fields for work that would be more remunerative. See, e.g., Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 13–14, 17; New York Times, Feb. 24, 1867; Reid, After the War, 331; Capt. J. H. Weber to Col. Samuel Thomas, July 1, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 114; Taylor, Negro in Tennessee, 152–53; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 125.

  43. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVI: Va. Narr., 7–8, 55–56.

  44. Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 106–07; Kolchin, First Freedom, 10; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 32–34; Williamson, After Slavery, 108; Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864, 363–64; New York Times, Aug. 6, 1865.

  45. Josiah Gorgas, Ms. Journal, entry for June 2, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Kolchin, First Freedom, 10.

  46. Ravenel, Private Journal, 244; Margaret L. Montgomery (ed.), “Alabama Freedmen: Some Reconstruction Documents,” Phylon, XIII (3rd Quarter 1952), 145; Kolchin, First Freedom, 7; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1263, 1292; New York Times, July 17, 1865; Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Capt. William A. Poillon to Brig. Gen. Wager Swayne, Nov. 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Alabama (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  47. Baton Rouge Advocate, Feb. 21, 1866, quoted in Dennett, The South As It Is, 343–44; Memphis Daily Avalanche, March 15, 1866, quoted in Holmes, “The Underlying Causes of the Memphis Race Riot of 1866,” 203n. See also New York Times, Sept. 1, 1865; 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; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 53; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 33–34.

  48. Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; New York Times, Sept. 2, 1865; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for June 15, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina.

  49. Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 235.

  50. Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, July, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina.

  51. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 231.

  52. Loyal Georgian, April 10, 1867; Christian Recorder, Dec. 16, 1865; Black Republican, April 29, 1865. For similar advice, see Colored Tennessean, Oct. 14, 1865.

  53. New York Tribune, June 12, 17, 27, July 16, Aug. 8, 1865; New York Times, June 15, 1865; New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 26, 1865.

  54. Christian Recorder, July 21, 1866. See also, e.g., ibid., June 10, July 8, 1865; New Orleans Tribune, July 8, 1865; New York Times, June 11, 1865, July 29, 1866; The Union, April 9, 1864.

  55. New York Times, July 7, 1865; Henry Crocheron et al. to Gen. Swayne, Nov. 24, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Alabama (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Christian Recorder, June 10, 1865. For a black protest meeting in Selma, Ala., see New York Times, Nov. 12, 1865.

  56. Kolchin, First Freedom, 7; New Orleans Tribune, July 22, 26, 29, 1865; 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen, 129; New York Times, Oct. 28, 1865.

  57. The Union, April 9, 1864; New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 18, 1864, July 16, 26, 1865; New York Times, Feb. 2, 1863, Sept. 28, Nov. 13, 1865; New York Tribune, June 12, 1865; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 51; 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen, 129.

  58. Christian Recorder, July 1, 1865; National Freedman, I (Aug. 15, 1865), 200; New York Times, June 25, July 16, 1865; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 8; New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 12, 1865.

  59. Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 53; Kolchin, First Freedom, 7.

  60. Seleg G. Wright to Rev. George Whipple, April 1, 7, 1864; “An Officer of the U.S.A.” [apparently S. G. Wright], April 4, 1864, Ms. article intended for release to newspaper, American Missionary Assn. Archives; Christian Recorder, July 1, 1865. See also “Abstract of a Report of a Visit to Natchez,” in Warren, Extracts from Reports of Superintendents of Freedmen.

  61. New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 8, 1865.

  62. Prince Murell et al., Tuscaloosa, Ala., Dec. 17, 1865; C. P. Head et
al., Vicksburg, to Brig. Gen. Samuel Thomas, April 17, 1866; Jim Leigh et al., Tuscumbia, Ala., Nov. 27, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Alabama and Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  63. Trowbridge, The South, 453–54; New York Times, Aug. 6, 1865 (quoting the Petersburg Daily Index). See also New York Times, June 16, Aug. 6, 1865, Dec. 4, 1866; Ravenel, Private Journal, 238–39; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 127; Williamson, After Slavery, 162; Charles H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850–1925 (New York, 1927), 218.

  64. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 277.

  65. See, e.g., ibid., IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 280, (Part 2), 142, (Part 4), 77; VI: Ala. Narr., 280–81, 420; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 63–64; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 177, (Part 4), 172; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 99.

  66. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 65.

  67. Lt. Col. H. R. Brinkerhoff to Maj. Gen. O. O. Howard, July 8, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 288; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 2), 41.

  68. Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905), 272; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 407; III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 265–66. For movement back to the plantations, see also Trowbridge, The South, 251–52; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 13; Capt. J. H. Weber to Col. Samuel Thomas, July 1, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1296; Williamson, After Slavery, 40–41.

  69. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 407; Trowbridge, The South, 537–68.

  70. Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 22; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 531; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 80. See also Avary, Dixie after the War, 185–86; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 216; Trowbridge, The South, 491–92.

  71. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 26.

  72. Andrews, The South since the War, 25; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 213.

  73. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 105; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 178. See also V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 32.

  74. Ibid., VII: Miss. Narr., 173; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 88; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 228–29.

  75. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 300; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 64. For similar recollections, see, e.g., II and III: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 334–35, (Part 2), 263, (Part 3), 236–37, (Part 4), 80; IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 3, (Part 2), 128, 161–62, (Part 3), 130, (Part 4), 72; VII: Okla. Narr., 340; Miss. Narr., 154; XII and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 263, (Part 3), 39; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 172, 239; XVII: Fla. Narr., 376.

  76. Ibid., VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 14, 189; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 65.

  77. Ibid., II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 216. For variations of this theme, see also IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 64–65, (Part 2), 128, (Part 3), 161, 164, (Part 4), 25; XII and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 70–71, (Part 3), 301; XIV and XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 136–37, 294, (Part 2), 103.

  78. Ibid., II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 5–6.

  79. Ibid., III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 51. For recollections of “hard times,” especially in the first winter of freedom, see also VI: Ala. Narr., 226; VII: Okla. Narr., 294; VIII and X: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 6, 161, (Part 5), 124; XIV and XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 186, (Part 2), 268.

  80. Ibid., XVI: Tenn. Narr., 6; VII: Okla. Narr., 202.

  81. Ibid., VII: Miss. Narr., 39–41.

  82. Ibid., XII and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 29, (Part 2), 8; VII: Miss. Narr., 41.

  83. Ibid., VI: Ala. Narr., 405–06; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 82–63, VII: Okla. Narr., 51.

  84. Williamson, After Slavery, 36–37; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for End of May 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 167.

  85. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 335–38.

  86. Mrs. William Mason Smith to Mrs. Edward L. Cottenet, July 12, 1865, in D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 221.

  87. Isabella A. Soustan to “Master Man” [probably George C. Taylor], July 10, 1865, George C. Taylor Collection, Univ. of North Carolina.

  88. Alice Dabney to “My Dear Old Master” [Thomas Dabney], Feb. 10, 1867, in Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 234–35. Susan Dabney Smedes, the daughter of Thomas Dabney, added that the letter had been written “with Alice’s own hand.”

  89. Jake to “Mas William” [William D. Simpson], Feb. 5, 1867, Simpson Papers, Univ. of North Carolina.

  90. Cincinnati Commercial, reprinted in New York Tribune, Aug. 22, 1865, as a “letter dictated by a servant.” For other reprints of the letter, see “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master: Written just as he dictated it,” in Lydia Maria Child (ed.), The Freedmen’s Book (Boston, 1865), 265–67, and Carter G. Woodson (ed.), The Mind of the Negro as Reflected in Letters Written During the Crisis 1800–1860 (Washington, D.C., 1926), 537–39.

  Chapter Seven: Back to Work: The Old Compulsions

  1. South Carolina Leader, Dec. 16, 1865.

  2. W. L. DeRosset to Louis Henry DeRosset, June 20, 1866, DeRosset Family Papers, Univ. of North Carolina.

  3. Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Aug. 2, 1865, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Trowbridge, The South, 390–91.

  4. Ravenel, Private Journal, 269; William Henry Stiles to Elizabeth Anne Mackay, Sept. 22, 1865, Mackay-Stiles Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Kolchin, First Freedom, 23.

  5. Donald MacRae to Julia MacRae, Sept. 4, 1865, MacRae Papers, Duke Univ.; Dennett, The South As It Is, 83–84

  6. Ibid., 26.

  7. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 50; IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 3), 156; Abraham to “My Dear Master” [Joseph Glover], May 15, 1865, and John W. Burbidge to Joseph Glover, June 26, 1865, Glover-North Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Knox, Camp-fire and Cotton Field, 374.

  8. Rev. John Hamilton Cornish, Ms. Diary, entry for June 19, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XI: Mo. Narr., 272–73.

  9. Knox, Camp-fire and Cotton Field, 337; New York Times, Feb. 12, 1865; Bell I. Wiley, “Vicissitudes of Early Reconstruction Farming in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” Journal of Southern History, III (1937), 451–52.

  10. Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 5, 6, 9, 11, 22, 106, 109–10; Trowbridge, The South, 391, 392; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1309; New York Times, April 12, 1867; Kolchin, First Freedom, 9; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 330. Most of the volume by Loring and Atkinson consists of responses by cotton planters to a circular asking for “detailed facts and opinions relative to the labor, the methods of cotton culture, and the general condition and capacities of the South.”

  11. Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 10.

  12. Ibid, 8; Edward Barnwell Heyward to “Tat” [Catherine Maria Clinch Heyward], May 5, 1867, Heyward Family Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; William E. Bayley to Commanding Officer, July 3, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  13. Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 4, 110. See also William Henry Stiles to Elizabeth Anne Mackay, Sept. 22, 1865, Mackay-Stiles Collection, and Samuel A. Agnew, Ms. Diary, entry for July 24, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; George Parliss to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Wilmer Shields to William Newton Mercer, July 10, 1866, Mercer Papers, Louisiana State Univ.
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br />   14. Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 24–26, 57.

  15. Wiley, “Vicissitudes of Early Reconstruction Farming in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” 449–50; Avary, Dixie after the War, 189–90. See also Wilmer Shields to William Newton Mercer, Sept. 20, 1865, Mercer Papers, Louisiana State Univ.

  16. Reid, After the War, 460–64.

  17. Jordan, Hugh Davis and His Alabama Plantation, 151–62. Similar frustrations are described in Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Oct. 20, 1866, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina.

  18. Andrews, The South since the War, 22; Mary C. Simms Oliphant, Alfred Taylor Odell, and T. C. Duncan Eaves (eds.), The Letters of William Gilmore Simms (5 vols.; Columbia, S.C., 1952–56), IV, 557, 567, 602; W. W. Bateman to John L. Manning, Aug. 2, 1865, Williams-Chesnut-Manning Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; John Moore to Mrs. Joseph R. Snyder, Oct. 11, 1866, Kean-Prescott Papers, Univ. of North Carolina; Trowbridge, The South, 118–19; Dennett, The South As It Is, 42, 78, 191; Reid, After the War, 164–65, 186, 298, 318; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 2, “Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana,” in Message of the President of the United States, 16–17, 27; National Freedman, I (Aug. 15, 1865), 224; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 100–01.

  19. Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 4, 6, 13.

  20. New York Times, Dec 31, 1861; Christian Recorder, June 17, 1865; Macrae, Americans at Home, 324.

  21. Dennett, The South As It Is, 191; Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 55.

  22. Waterbury, Seven Years Among the Freedmen, 71.

  23. Charles Stearns, The Black Man of the South, and the Rebels (New York, 1872), 43–46.

  24. Williamson, After Slavery, 51; Eppes, Negro of the Old South, 115–17; Eppes, Through Some Eventful Years, 282–83.

  25. William Henry Stiles to Elizabeth Anne Mackay, Sept. 22, 1865, Mackay-Stiles Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 52; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for July 17, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina.