University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VI

CONFUSING MOVEMENTS

THE Civil War waged largely in the South
started the most exciting movement of the
Negroes hitherto known. The invading Union
forces drove the masters before them, leaving
the slaves and sometimes poor whites to escape
where they would or to remain in helpless condition
to constitute a problem for the northern
army.[1] Many poor whites of the border States
went with the Confederacy, not always because
they wanted to enter the war, but to choose what
they considered the lesser of two evils. The
slaves soon realized a community of interests
with the Union forces sent, as they thought, to
deliver them from thralldom. At first, it was
difficult to determine a fixed policy for dealing
with these fugitives. To drive them away was
an easy matter, but this did not solve the problem.
General Rutler's action at Fortress Monroe
in 1861, however, anticipated the policy
finally adopted by the Union forces.[2] Hearing
that three fugitive slaves who were received into

his lines were to have been employed in building
fortifications for the Confederate army, he declared
them seized as contraband of war rather
than declare them actually free as did General
Fremont[3] and General Hunter.[4] He then gave
them employment for wages and rations and
appropriated to the support of the unemployed
a portion of the earnings of the laborers. This
policy was followed by General Wood, Butler's
successor, and by General Banks in New Orleans.

An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives
was carried out by E. S. Pierce and General
Rufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina.
Seeing the situation in another light, however,
General Halleck in charge in the West excluded
slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did General
Dix in Virginia. But Halleck, in his instructions
to General McCullum, February,
1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work
to pay for food and clothing.[5] Other commanders,
like General McCook and General
Johnson, permitted the slave hunters to enter
their lines and take their slaves upon identification,[6]
ignoring the confiscation act of August,
1861, which was construed by some as justifying
the retention of such refugees. Officers of a
different attitude, however, soon began to protest

against the returning of fugitive slaves.
General Grant, also, while admitting the binding
force of General Halleck's order, refused to
grant permits to those in search of fugitives
seeking asylum within his lines and at the capture
of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of
all blacks who had been used by the Confederates
in building fortifications.[7]

Lincoln finally urged the necessity for withholding
fugitive slaves from the enemy, believing
that there could be in it no danger of servile
insurrection and that the Confederacy would
thereby be weakened.[8] As this opinion soon developed
into a conviction that official action was
necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862,
provided that slaves be protected against the
claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in
this direction, the Federal Government gradually
reached the position of withdrawing Negro
labor from the Confederate territory. Finally
the United States Government adopted the policy
of withholding from the Confederates, slaves
received with the understanding that their masters
were in rebellion against the United States.
With this as a settled policy then, the United
States Government had to work out some
scheme for the remaking of these fugitives coming
into its camps.

In some of these cases the fugitives found

themselves among men more hostile to them
than their masters were, for many of the Union
soldiers of the border States were slaveholders
themselves and northern soldiers did not understand
that they were fighting to free Negroes.
The condition in which they were on arriving,
moreover, was a new problem for the army.
Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some
afflicted with disease, and some wounded in their
efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail,
the helplessness of childhood and of old
age, the horrors of sickness and of frequent
deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had
any conception of the significance of liberty,
thinking that it meant idleness and freedom
from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance
there developed such undesirable habits
as deceit, theft and licentiousness to aggravate
the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11]

In the East large numbers of these refugees
were concentrated at Washington, Alexandria,
Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and
Fort Norfolk. There were smaller groups of
them at Yorktown, Suffolk and Portsmouth.[12]

Some of them were conducted from these camps
into York, Columbia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh
and Philadelphia, and by water to New York
and Boston, from which they went to various
parts seeking labor. Some collected in groups
as in the case of those at Five Points in New
York.[13] Large numbers of them from Virginia assembled
in Washington in 1862 in Duff Green's
Row on Capitol Hill where they were organized
as a camp, out of which came a contraband
school, after being moved to the McClellan Barracks.[14]
Then there was in the District of Columbia
another group known as Freedmen's village
on Arlington Heights. It was said that, in
1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from
the plantations to the District of Columbia.[15]
It happened here too as in most cases of this
migration that the Negroes were on hand before
the officials grappling with many other problems
could determine exactly what could or should
be done with them. The camps near Washington
fortunately became centers for the employment
of contrabands in the city. Those repairing
to Fortress Monroe were distributed as
laborers among the farmers of that vicinity.[16]
In some of these camps, and especially in those
of the West, the refugees were finally sent out
to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases
of the contrabands assembled with the Union
army at first at Grand Junction and later at
Memphis.[17]

There were three types of these camp communities
which attracted attention as places for
free labor experimentation. These were at Port
Royal, on the Mississippi in the neighborhood of
Vicksburg, and in Lower Louisiana and Virginia.
The first trial of free labor of blacks on
a large scale in a slave State was made in Port
Royal.[18] The experiment was generally successful.
By industry, thrift and orderly conduct
the Negroes showed their appreciation for their
new opportunities. In the Mississippi section
invaded by the northern army, General Thomas
opened what he called Infirmary Farms which
he leased to Negroes on certain terms which
they usually met successfully. The same plan,
however, was not so successful in the Lower
Mississippi section.[19] The failure in this section
was doubtless due to the inferior type of
blacks in the lower cotton belt where Negroes
had been more brutalized by slavery.

In some cases, these refugees experienced

many hardships. It was charged that they were
worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all
their wages except what was given them for
rations and a scanty pittance, wholly insufficient
to purchase necessary clothing and provide
for their families.[20] Not a few of the refugees
for these reasons applied for permission to return
to their masters and sometimes such permission
was granted; for, although under military
authority, they were by order of Congress
to be considered as freemen. These voluntary
slaves, of course, were few and the authorities
were not thereby impressed with the thought
that Negroes would prefer to be slaves, should
they be treated as freemen rather than as
brutes.[21]

It became increasingly difficult, however, to
handle this problem. In the first place, it was
not an easy matter to find soldiers well disposed
to serve the Negroes in any manner whatever
and the officers of the army had no desire to
force them to render such services since those
thus engaged suffered a sort of social ostracism.
The same condition obtained in the case of
caring for those afflicted with disease, until
there was issued a specific regulation placing
the contraband sick in charge of the army surgeons.[22]
What the situation in the Mississippi

Valley was during these months has been well
described by an observer, saying: "I hope I may
never be called on again to witness the horrible
scenes I saw in those first days of history of the
freedmen in the Mississippi Valley. Assistants
were hard to find, especially the kind that would
do any good in the camps. A detailed soldier
in each camp of a thousand people was the best
that could be done and his duties were so onerous
that he ended by doing nothing. In reviewing
the condition of the people at that time,
I am not surprised at the marvelous stories told
by visitors who caught an occasional glimpse of
the misery and wretchedness in these camps.
Our efforts to do anything for these people, as
they herded together in masses, when founded
on any expectation that they would help themselves,
often failed; they had become so completely
broken down in spirit, through suffering,
that it was almost impossible to arouse them."[23]

A few sympathetic officers and especially the
chaplains undertook to relieve the urgent cases
of distress. They could do little, however, to
handle all the problems of the unusual situation
until they engaged the attention of the higher
officers of the army and the federal functionaries
in Washington. After some delay this
was finally done and special officers were detailed

to take charge of the contrabands. The
Negroes were assembled in camps and employed
according to instructions from the Secretary of
War as teamsters, laborers and the like on forts
and railroads. Some were put to picking, ginning,
baling and removing cotton on plantations
abandoned by their masters. General Grant, as
early as 1862, was making further use of them
as fatigue men in the department of the surgeon-general,
the quartermaster and the commissary.
He believed then that such Negroes
as did well in these more humble positions
should be made citizens and soldiers.[24] As a
matter of fact out of this very suggestion came
the policy of arming the Negroes, the first regiment
of whom was recruited under orders issued
by General Hunter at Port Royal, South
Carolina in 1862. As the arming of the slave
to participate in this war did not generally
please the white people who considered the
struggle a war between civilized groups, this
policy could not offer general relief to the congested
contraband camps.[25]

A better system of handling the fugitives was
finally worked out, however, with a general
superintendent at the head of each department,
supported by a number of competent assistants.
More explicit instructions were given as to the
manner of dealing with the situation. It was to

be the duty of the superintendent of contrabands,
says the order, to organize them into
working parties in saving the cotton, as pioneers
on railroads and steamboats, and in any way
where their services could be made available.
Where labor was performed for private individuals
they were charged in accordance with
the orders of the commander of the department.
In case they were directed to save abandoned
crops of cotton for the benefit of the United
States Government, the officer selling such crops
would turn over to the superintendent of contrabands
the proceeds of the sale, which together
with other earnings were used for clothing
and feeding the Negroes. Clothing sent by
philanthropic persons to these camps was received
and distributed by the superintendent.
In no case, however, were Negroes to be forced
into the service of the United States Government
or to be enticed away from their homes
except when it became a military necessity.[26]

Some order out of the chaos eventually developed,
for as John Eaton, one of the workers
in the West, reported: "There was no promiscuous
intermingling. Families were established
by themselves. Every man took care of
his own wife and children." "One of the most
touching features of our Work," says he, "was

the eagerness with which colored men and
women availed themselves of the opportunities
offered them to legalize unions already formed,
some of which had been in existence for a long
time."[27] "Chaplain A. S. Fiske on one occasion
married in about an hour one hundred and nineteen
couples at one service, chiefly those who
had long lived together." Letters from the
Virginia camps and from those of Port Royal
indicate that this favorable condition generally
obtained.[28]

This unusual problem in spite of additional
effort, however, would not readily admit of solution.
Benevolent workers of the North, therefore,
began to minister to the needs of these unfortunate
blacks. They sent considerable sums
of money, increasing quantities of clothing and
even some of their most devoted men and women
to toil among them as social workers and teachers.[29]
These efforts also took organized form
in various parts of the North under the direction
of The Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief
Association, The Tract Society, The American
Missionary Association, Pennsylvania Friends
Freedmen's Relief Association, Old School
Presbyterian Mission, The Reformed Presbyterian
Mission, The New England Freedmen's

Aid Committee, The New England Freedmen's
Aid Society, The New England Freedmen's Mission,
The Washington Christian Union, The
Universalists of Maine, The New York Freedmen's
Relief Association, The Hartford Relief
Society, The National Freedmen's Relief Association
of the District of Columbia, and finally
the Freedmen's Bureau.[30]

As an outlet to the congested grouping of Negroes
and poor whites in the war camps it was
arranged to send a number of them to the loyal
States as fast as there presented themselves opportunities
for finding homes and employment.
Cairo, Illinois, in the West, became the center of
such activities extending its ramifications into
all parts of the invaded southern territory.
Some of the refugees permanently settled in the
North, taking up the work abandoned by the
northern soldiers who went to war.[31] It was
soon found necessary to appoint a superintendent
of such affairs at Cairo, for there were those
who, desiring to lead a straggling life, had to be
restrained from crime by military surveillance
and regulations requiring labor for self-support.
Exactly how many whites and blacks were thus
aided to reach northern communities cannot be
determined but in view of the frequent mention
of their movements by travellers the number

must have been considerable. In some cases, as
in Lawrence, Kansas, there were assembled
enough freedmen to constitute a distinct
group.[32] Speaking of this settlement the editor
of the Alton Telegraph said in 1862 that although
they amounted to many hundreds not
one, that he could learn of, had been a public
charge. They readily found employment at fair
wages, and soon made themselves comfortable.[33]

There was a little apprehension that the North
would be overrun by such blacks. Some had no
such fear, however, for the reason that the census
did not indicate such a movement. Many
slaves were freed in the North prior to 1860,
yet with all the emigration from the slave States
to the North there were then in all the Northern
States but 226,152 free blacks, while there were
in the slave States 261,918, an excess of 35,766
in the slave States. Frederick Starr believed
that during the Civil War there might be an influx
for a few months but it would not continue.[34]
They would return when sure that they
would be free. Starr thought that, if necessary,
these refugees might be used in building the
much desired Pacific Railroad to divert them
from the North.[35]

There was little ground for this apprehension,
in fact, if their readjustment and development
in the contraband camps could be considered
an indication of what the Negroes would
eventually do. Taking all things into consideration,
most unbiased observers felt that blacks
in the camps deserved well of their benefactors.[36]
According to Levi Coffin, these contrabands
were, in 1864, disposed of as follows:
"In military services as soldiers, laundresses,
cooks, officers' servants and laborers in the
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on
plantations and in freedmen's villages and
cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 were entirely
self-supporting, just as any industrial class anywhere
else, as planters, mechanics, barbers,
hackmen and draymen, conducting enterprises
on their own responsibility or working as hired
laborers." The remaining 10,200 received subsistence
from the government. 3,000 of these
were members of families whose heads were
carrying on plantations, and had undertaken
cultivation of 4,000 acres of cotton, pledging
themselves to pay the government for their subsistence
from the first income of the crop. The
other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Negroes
over and under the self-supporting age,
the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class,
however, instead of being unproductive, had
then under cultivation 500 acres of corn, 790

acres of vegetables, and; 1,500 acres of cotton,
besides working at wood chopping and other industries.
There were reported in the aggregate
over 100,000 acres of cotton under cultivation,
7,000 acres of which were leased and cultivated
by blacks. Some Negroes were managing as
many as 300 or 400 acres each.[37] Statistics
showing exactly how much the numbers of contrabands
in the various branches of the service
increased are wanting, but in view of the fact
that the few thousand soldiers here given increased
to about 200,000 before the close of the
Civil War, the other numbers must have been
considerable, if they all grew the least proportionately.

Much industry was shown among these refugees.
Under this new system they acquired
the idea of ownership, and of the security of
wages and learned to see the fundamental difference
between freedom and slavery. Some
Yankees, however, seeing that they did less
work than did laborers in the North, considered
them lazy, but the lack of industry was customary
in the South and a river should not be
expected to rise higher than its source. One of
their superintendents said that they worked well
without being urged, that there was among
them a public opinion against idleness, which
answered for discipline, and that those put to
work with soldiers labored longer and did the

nicer parts. "In natural tact and the faculty of
getting a livelihood," says the same writer, "the
contrabands are inferior to the Yankees, but
quite equal to the mass of southern population."[38]
The Negroes also showed capacity to
organize labor and use capital in the promotion
of enterprises. Many of them purchased land
and cultivated it to great profit both to the community
and to themselves. Others entered the
service of the government as mechanics and
contractors, from the employment of which some
of them realized handsome incomes.

The more important development, however,
was that of manhood. This was best observed
in their growing consciousness of rights, and
their readiness to defend them, even when encroached
upon by members of the white race.
They quickly learned to appreciate freedom and
exhibited evidences of manhood in their desire
for the comforts and conveniences of life. They
readily purchased articles of furniture within
their means, bringing their home equipment up
to the standard of that of persons similarly circumstanced.
The indisposition to labor was
overcome "in a healthy nature by instinct and
motives of superior forces, such as love of life,
the desire to be clothed and fed, the sense of
security derived from provision for the future,
the feeling of self-respect, the love of family
and children and the convictions of duty."[39]

These enterprises, begun in doubt, soon
ceased to be a bare hope or possibility. They
became during the war a fruition and a consummation,
in that they produced Negroes "who
would work for a living and fight for freedom."
They were, therefore, considered
" adapted to civil society." They had "shown
capacity for knowledge, for free industry, for
subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly
fortitude, for social and family relations, for
religious culture and aspiration. These qualities,"
said the observer, "when stirred, and sustained
by the incitements and rewards of a just
society, and combining with the currents of our
continental civilization, will, under the guidance
of a benevolent Providence which forgets
neither them nor us, make them a constantly
progressive race; and secure them ever after
from the calamity of another enslavement, and
ourselves from the worst calamity of being
their oppressors."[40]

It is clear that these smaller numbers of Negroes
under favorable conditions could be easily
adjusted to a new environment. When, however,
all Negroes were declared free there set
in a confused migration which was much more
of a problem. The first thing the Negro did
after realizing that he was free was to roam
over the country to put his freedom to a test.
To do this, according to many writers, he frequently

changed his name, residence, employment
and wife, sometimes carrying wit him
from the plantation the fruits of his own labor.
Many of them easily acquired a dog and a gun
and were disposed to devote their time to the
chase until the assistance in the form of mules
and land expected from the government materialized.
Their emancipation, therefore, was
interpreted not only as freedom from slavery
but from responsibility.[41] Where they were
going they did not know but the towns and cities
became very attractive to them.

Speaking of this upheaval in Virginia, Eckenrode
says that many of them roamed over the
country without restraint.[42] "Released from
their accustomed bonds," says Hall, "and filled
with a pleasing, if not vague, sense of uncontrolled
freedom, they flocked to the cities with
little hope of obtaining remunerative work.
Wagon loads of them were brought in from the
country by the soldiers and dumped down to
shift for themselves."[43] Referring to the proclamation
of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson asserts
that their most general and universal response
was to pick up and leave the home place
to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. The
lure of the city was strong to the blacks, appealing
to their social natures, to their inherent love

for a crowd."[44] Davis maintains that thousands
of the 70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the
Federal military camps and into towns upon
realizing that they were free.[45] According to
Ficklen, the exodus of the slaves from the neighboring
plantations of Louisiana into Baton
Rouge, Carrollton and New Orleans was so
great as to strain the resources of the Federal
authorities to support them. Ten thousand
poured into New Orleans alone.[46] Fleming
records that upon leaving their homes the blacks
collected in gangs at the cross roads, in the villages
and towns, especially near the military
posts. The towns were filled with crowds of
blacks who left their homes with absolutely nothing,
"thinking that the government would care
for them, or more probably, not thinking at
all".[47]

The portrayal of these writers of this phase
of Reconstruction history contains a general
truth, but in some cases the picture is overdrawn.
The student of history must bear in
mind that practically all of our histories of that
period are based altogether on the testimony
of prejudiced whites and are written from their
point of view. Some of these writers have
aimed to exaggerate the vagrancy of the blacks

to justify the radical procedure of the whites in
dealing with it. The Negroes did wander about
thoughtlessly, believing that this was the most
effective way to enjoy their freedom. But nothing
else could be expected from a class who had
never felt anything but the heel of oppression.
History shows that such vagrancy has always
followed the immediate emancipation of a large
number of slaves. Many Negroes who flocked
to the towns and army camps, moreover, had
like their masters and poor whites seen their
homes broken up or destroyed by the invading
Union armies. Whites who had never learned
to work were also roaming and in some cases
constituted marauding bands.[48]

There was, moreover, an actual drain of laborers
to the lower and more productive lands
in Mississippi and Louisiana.[49] This developed
later into a more considerable movement toward
the Southwest just after the Civil War, the exodus
being from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama
and Mississippi to Louisiana, Arkansas
and Texas. Here was the pioneering spirit, a
going to the land of more economic opportunities.
This slow movement continued from about
1865 to 1875, when the development of the
numerous railway systems gave rise to land
speculators who induced whites and blacks to go
west and southwest. It was a migration of individuals,

but it was reported that as many as
35,000 Negroes were then persuaded to leave
South Carolina and Georgia for Arkansas and
Texas.[50]

The usual charge that the Negro is naturally
migratory is not true. This impression is often
received by persons who hear of the thousands
of Negroes who move from one place to another
from year to year because of the desire to improve
their unhappy condition. In this there is
no tendency to migrate but an urgent need to
escape undesirable conditions. In fact, one of
the American Negroes' greatest shortcomings
is that they are not sufficiently pioneering. Statistics
show that the whites have more inclination
to move from State to State than the Negro.
To prove this assertion,[51] Professor William O.
Scroggs has shown that, in 1910, 16.6 per cent
of the Negroes had moved to some other State
than that in which they were born, while during
the same period 22.4 per cent of the whites had
done the same.[52]

The South, however, was not disposed to look
at the vagrancy of the ex-slaves so philosophically.
That section had been devastated by

war and to rebuild these waste places reliable
labor was necessary. Legislatures of the slave
States, therefore, immediately after the close
of the war, granted the Negro nominal freedom
but enacted measures of vagrancy and labor so
as to reduce the Negro again almost to the status
of a slave. White magistrates were given
wide discretion in adjudging Negroes vagrants.[53]
Negroes had to sign contracts to work.
If without what was considered a just cause the
Negro left the employ of a planter, the former
could be arrested and forced to work and in
some sections with ball and chain. If the employer
did not care to take him back he could
be hired out by the county or confined in jail.
Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina had
further drastic features. By local ordinance
in Louisiana every Negro had to be in the service
of some white person, and by special laws
of South Carolina and Mississippi the Negro became
subject to a master almost in the same
sense in which he was prior to emancipation.[54]
These laws, of course, convinced the government
of the United States that the South had
not yet decided to let slavery go and for that
reason military rule and Congressional Reconstruction
followed. In this respect the South
did itself a great injury, for many of the provisions
of the black codes, especially the vagrancy
laws, were unnecessary. Most Negroes soon
realized that freedom did not mean relief from
responsibility and they quickly settled down to
work after a rather protracted and exciting
holiday.[55]

During the last year of and immediately after
the Civil War there set in another movement,
not of a large number of Negroes but of the intelligent
class who had during years of residence
in the North enjoyed such advantages of contact
and education as to make them desirable
and useful as leaders in the Reconstruction of
the South and the remaking of the race. In
their tirades against the Carpet-bag politicians
who handled the Reconstruction situation so
much to the dissatisfaction of the southern
whites, historians often forget to mention also
that a large number of the Negro leaders who
participated in that drama were also natives or
residents of Northern States.

Three motives impelled these blacks to go
South. Some had found northern communities
so hostile as to impede their progress, many
wanted to rejoin relatives from whom they had
been separated by their flight from the land of
slavery, and others were moved by the spirit of
adventure to enter a new field ripe with all sorts
of opportunities. This movement, together with
that of migration to large urban communities,
largely accounts for the depopulation and the

consequent decline of certain colored communities
in the North after 1865.

Some of the Negroes who returned to the
South became men of national prominence.
William J. Simmons, who prior to the Civil War
was carried from South Carolina to Pennsylvania,
returned to do religious and educational
work in Kentucky. Bishop James W. Hood, of
the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church,
went from Connecticut to North Carolina to engage
in similar work. Honorable R. T. Greener,
the first Negro graduate of Harvard, went from
Philadelphia to teach in the District of Columbia
and later to be a professor in the University
of South Carolina. F. L. Cardoza, educated at
the University of Edinburgh, returned to South
Carolina and became State Treasurer. R. B.
Elliot, born in Boston and educated in England,
settled in South Carolina from which he was
sent to Congress.

John M. Langston was taken to Ohio and educated
but came back to Virginia his native State
from which he was elected to Congress. J. T.
White left Indiana to enter politics in Arkansas,
becoming State Senator and later commissioner
of public works and internal improvements.
Judge Mifflin Wister Gibbs, a native of Philadelphia,
purposely settled in Arkansas where he
served as city judge and Register of United
States Land Office. T. Morris Chester, of Pittsburgh,
finally made his way to Louisiana where

he served with distinction as a lawyer and held
the position of Brigadier-General in charge of
the Louisiana State Guards under the Kellogg
government. Joseph Carter Corbin, who was
taken from Virginia to be educated at Chillicothe,
Ohio, went later to Arkansas where he
served as chief clerk in the post office at Little
Rock and later as State Superintendent of
Schools. Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback,
who moved north for education and opportunity,
returned to enter politics in Louisiana,
which honored him with several important positions
among which was that of Acting Governor.