The First Emancipation (Part 1 of 2); The Negro in America

My speaker was on the faculty of the history department at the university Crago until about 1960 since 1960. He's been a Smith College where he now teaches in both southern and America a little history. Very pleased to present to you Professor Stanley Alford. I would argue that in the last analysis the history of the American Negro is still largely on record. Some of my colleagues might be annoyed if this comment. But this is a point I would like to make. What is missing is not so much information about what the Negro did or what he said at some particular point in history or the role he played in one or another historical event but rather I think what's missing is a sense of what it was like to be a Negro in the United States from the antebellum years up to the present time. We miss in most Negro history the special quality of Negro experience.

We tend in a very real sense to see all historical events even those in which the Negro played a crucial role in the civil war is certainly one of those pretty much through white eyes so to speak. This lack of perception on the part of most Americans is neither unusual nor especially malicious until relatively recently by relatively recently I'd say the last 40 or 50 years native born Americans were almost equally insensitive to the special flavor of immigrant experience. It was fully recognized among people who wrote about immigrants that first generation immigrants played a major role in building the nation I recall this sort of stuff in high school textbooks. When I was a youngster they did all sorts of important work.

One knew the names of famous members of various immigrant groups and due recognition was given to their accomplishments. But American culture as a whole had very little sense of what it was like to emigrate to a foreign land and to raise one's children as citizens of an adopted country. It was extremely difficult for most native born Americans living say around the turn of the century roughly around one thousand two thousand nine hundred three the progressive era in particular to share immigrant experience to see American life as a first generation immigrant might say. Furthermore there was a strong tendency on the part of Americans of that generation by this I mean Americans have been born in this country and usually whose ancestors had been in the country for quite a while. There was a strong tendency for this group to see the immigrant as a passive rather than

active element in American life. He's acted upon he was Americanize that word comes up again and again. But he had relatively little impact on the culture of his adopted land. All right two generations of novelists and historians have been measurably Shoppe and our sense of what it meant to change one's nationality but to grow up in one of the great foreign neighborhoods of New York or Chicago or Milwaukee or for that matter of almost any major American city today the experience of the immigrant and of his children is something most literate Americans can understand and appreciate. Whether their ancestors arrived in this country 50 years ago or two hundred fifty years ago it's become part of our cultural heritage. We see it on television we get it in all sorts of it's in novels it's in it's in plays it's it's all around us. You can't avoid it if you have any degree of sensitivity at all. And you haven't been able to

avoid it you might say for roughly a generation now I think it's safe to predict that within the next decade or so as the nigger community moves increasingly into the center of American life the country as a whole become more and more aware of the inequality of his particular experience. The current generation of Negro writers already have made it have made us much more conscious than we were a generation of go of what it means to be a Negro in the United States. Inevitably these new insights will be used to deepen and broaden our understanding of Negro experience over the past four or five generations certainly over the past not stick to the four or five generations back to the Civil War. And in the process I would argue to deepen our understanding of American history as a whole. Now it's not possible to predict exactly what changes will occur in our view of our

history. Once we become fully conscious of Negro experience as a as a major part of that history at least is an important part of that history. But this morning this morning I would like to try an experiment. I'd like to consider a very familiar period of America's past roughly the years the period from 1861 to 1876 the Civil War and Reconstruction. I'd like to consider this period from an unfamiliar angle. What I'd like to do is to consider the events of the shears as they might have appeared to a literate and articulate negro someone for example like Frederick Douglass the negro abolitionist and writer a man whose primary concern was not the preservation of the Union or the political sense and success of the Republican Party but rather the freedom and the welfare of the Negro

people. In short taking full account of the dangers of distortion and there will be distortion talk this morning. I'd like to focus our attention on the experience of the negro during the Civil War and Reconstruction to make him the center of the story. In a sense to view all events from his particular angle of vanity but the negro the starting point of any account of the Civil War and of reconstruction must of necessity be slavery in 1861 over four million negroes were the property of white masters and of this four million three and a half million lived within what would become the borders of the Confederacy. There within the states that would go with the Confederacy. Now the first question I'd like to raise is what did it mean to be a slave in the antebellum South. What was American slavery like.

This is a question that historians have been arguing about for well over a hundred years and the argument still continues in part the very complexity of the American slave system makes it difficult to generalize the historians are not simply being reasonable. It made an enormous amount of difference for the individual slaves whether it was a field hand on a Mississippi plantation whether it worked on one of the rice plantations and George or whether it was a house servant in Virginia whether he was a single slave of a farmer in Arkansas or whether he was a self-employed stevedore in Charleston. In short the very term slavery is is somewhat misleading and one has to read as many accounts as possible to get some sense of the complexity of of the experience.

But for it also made it a great deal of difference and this has been a perennial problem. It also made a great deal of difference. I would kind of master you had it was one thing to be a slave on a plantation known by the son of a junior planter who was also the son of a Virginia planter and back on into Thomas Jefferson. In short someone out of out of a aristocratic tradition with a real sense of noblesse oblige treating his his his people as he would put it or to be the property of an up and coming Texas planter who was out to make his fortune and would push his labor force just as hard as he possibly could. Still for all the complexity there are a few generalizations that we can make about American slavery that I think will help us understand its impact on the negro and also to understand the full implications of a mancipation for the

slaves the great bulk of American Negroes as a simple statistical fact work this field over half of them on plantations with twenty or more slaves. Certain things are fairly clear. They work long hours they worked hard they had very little time for themselves. By and large and here I think I would disagree with Professor stamp who's written a book on the subject. I think they were reasonably well cared for and assuming they did their work and caused no trouble and these are crucial assumptions they were not generally abused severely abused that they weren't abused because they were valuable property. They also weren't abused because the white community took a very dim view of someone

with a reputation for mistreating his people as they put it. It was rather like beating one's children. What I'm saying here is that if you look for the real cruelty of American slavery you ought not to look for it in terms of physical abuse you'll find. But I think if you concentrate on this you get into a hopeless argument. Also I think you miss the real impact of the system. By and large the average field hand again assuming he did his work was not badly treated or badly taken care of although he's kept at a course at a very minimum level as far as his general living standards are concerned. However and this is important despite the high property value of the slave and the pressure of public opinion to treat him decently and I'm dealing with the masses at this point the system placed an enormous power in the hands

of the master. For one thing you could buy or sell a slave at will. There was absolutely no check except public opinion and this wasn't too strong a check on separating husband or wife or even separating a mother and a very young child slave marriage in the slave family had no status under American law whatsoever. Now there's a tendency for Americans often perhaps a little less so now than a few years ago to just assume that this is in the nature of the system it is in under other slave systems particularly Latin America. It was illegal to separate a husband and wife. It was illegal to separate a mother and a young child. No the right to separate families gave the master enormous power over slaves and I would argue had serious implications for the moral status of the negro in the eyes

of society. He tended to be an individual without connections that the society recognizes. Perhaps we'll have a chance to go back into that a little later. Now as far as punishment was concerned there were a few limitations on the master's right to coerce or to punish his slaves. The negro a Negro could not test could not test for any who could not testify white against a white man in court. There had to be a white witness if a planter was to be convicted of abusing his slaves. Moreover public opinion as Frederick Douglass would point out was not especially effective if the individual involved was given to say it is him. Especially if you lived on an isolated frontier community. Again this was not the only alternative. In most Latin American countries it was possible to appeal to the courts and in some instances if you could

prove it and the testimony of fellow slaves was adequate if you could prove abuse the master would either lose you or he would be forced to sell you to another another master whom you could chose. Now this might not sit well I think you can see I don't like to say this might not strike us as important. I think you can see the importance of something like this. The slaves had a certain amount of leverage on the system although it is still very much a slave. Perhaps the most important characteristic of American slavery is there was practically no hope of becoming free unless the man who owned you was willing to go to great trouble in order to arrange. There was certainly no possibility of being menu mid without the full cooperation of your master. Why. Well for one thing a slave had no time with which he could use to earn money

unless his master great. Again this seems automatic. It was in Latin America. The law provided as many as 30 35 days a year actually work up and counting Sundays many as 70 or 80 days a year that belonged to the negro in which he worked for himself. Under the American system of slavery the slaves had no legal claim to his own earnings. He had no right to hold property. Again he seems logical but again the Latin Americans following Roman law allowed a slave to have property. Not only could he have property but he could accumulate it to the point especially in certain nations like Cuba where he could buy himself. Here the procedure was interesting. Cuba was probably the best example you could go to court have your price declare. In short the the the court would fix your price and when you could accumulate enough money to meet that price you were free men.

It wasn't a bargaining relationship. One problem we'll see and for American slaves to buy their freedom is those who are energetic enough to do it work stream leave valuable in the price would go up in a market situation the man was capable of by buying his freedom. Faced of course the highest price. Finally in the United States the community discouraged Manumission and made life extremely difficult for those negroes who had won their freedom. Slavery in American culture tended very strongly to be a permanent rather than a temporary status. The assumption was when you saw a negro that he was a slave if he wasn't a slave he was something of an anomaly. And on the eve of the Civil War the South was actually trying to persuade the Negroes to choose maskers and short to go back into slavery which they argued was the natural arrangement

for American Negroes American Slave Law taken as a whole in the rough survey that I was so designed deliberately or otherwise as to encourage the absolute pendants of the slave on the goodwill of his master. And this I think is crucial. Moreover the daily etiquette and usage of plantation life was such that the utter helplessness and dependence of the slave was made unmistakably clear. Even on plantations where stable marriages were encouraged and there were a few that took the the north and the abolitionists charge that you you're not you're not allowing slaves to have a normal family life and took this seriously even on plantations where stable marriages were encouraged. The slave father had no real authority over his wife or his children. He was responsible neither for their behavior nor for their welfare.

He wasn't really a father except in the simple biological sense there was only one man on the plantation whom the system allowed to be a father in the true sense of the word and that was the master. And if you think of a southern plantation I think this is pretty clear. It was even customary to call an adult male negro boy until he was old enough and decrepit enough to receive the honorary title of uncle. The Southern reluctance to use the term Mr has as a an ancient tradition behind the title this this is the crudest kind of symbolism and it was spelled out with great care. The slave moreover had little or no insensitive I know it's an incentive I'm sorry to show initiative or independence since he couldn't hold property or hope to buy his freedom. There was no way to significantly change his status

by his own efforts. Too much independence on his part of any kind usually would bring a sharp rebuke or punishment from either the overseer or the master. The reason was quite simple. An overly independent slave was but that potentially dangerous. Now the easiest thing for the individual caught in the system to do was simply to obey orders to live day by day and to let the master worry about the future which I think is a fairly good description of the reaction of the typical slick. Now occasionally plantation slaves rebelled against the Master's authority but their rebellions inevitably failed. Generally speaking I would argue that the typical slave rebellion even on a very local scale was simply an emotional outburst that had no chance whatsoever of changing the system.

A slave might murder an overseer or burn down his master's house lots of examples of both. But the whole system was designed to inhibit anything approaching an organized group that even on the most limited scale from the earliest childhood the slave was instilled with a sense of fear and all for the power and authority of his master and the white community which supported the master in a setting such as this affective leadership organization and sustained opposition even if it were physically possible which it really was was psychologically extremely difficult to even escape. And there are many descriptions of slaves who have a state but even escape was so difficult with the exception of a few of the border states that it was rarely attempted and succeeded only in a handful of cases like this. Quick glance from

now you get some idea what it must be and what it must do then to harvest it. If you ask prices that I say anything here to try to make it all the way up to about the middle of a pile before you can count on any kind of drills for it was of the wildest kind of venture and only the the rarest kind of individual was capable of risking. As a matter of fact the simplest and most common form of rebellion was aggressive stupid. The one way you could beat the system was just to be as stupid as you could possibly manage to get away with B. And the Southerners recognized that this was a form of rebellion but it was extremely difficult to deal with and so a kind of dense stupidity with flashes of shrewdness

became the typical image of the negro slave. Now the only feasible way of escaping from the full coercions of Southern slavery was to leave the plantation. Remember I'm describing the situation I described. Held I think only for a plantation with the least about 15 or 20 slaves. Now the slaves who lived in the city was in a much better position to protect himself as a human being to bargain with the system so to speak. This was especially true in the case of skilled workers who could exchange real diligence on the job for one kind of special privilege or another. In short if you were in a position if you were working in a factory if you were working in factory working at any job that was not field work that they couldn't simply be coerced if you were a carpenter if you were a mason if you owned any of a group of a number of the various trades.

The master had out the man who owned you or who was hiring you and somebody says I've had a vested interest in treating you well. You could bark. You could work hard in exchange for hard work. You could receive all sorts of special privileges in some instances slave mechanics were allowed to hire themselves out and to manage their own affairs in exchange for a regular payment to their own. This may have been economic coercion but the individual involved had much much more independence much more leeway than a plantation slave could ever dream of. And as a result I think was a very different kind of human being. It was difficult however to translate this sort of privileged position into the status of full freedom. The community as I've already mentioned discouraged Manumission and the more energetic and skilled the slave became the greater is value and the less willing his owner

would become to part with him for a reasonable sum. A man could spend a lifetime buying himself his wife and his children and even if he succeeded the status of free negro was hardly one to be envied either in the North Koreans South the entire white community cooperated in keeping him ignorant helpless and completely dependent. It was no wonder therefore that the average Southerner was convinced the negro was by its very nature childlike irresponsible docile and if kindly treated loyal Alright so much then for the character of American slavery. On the eve of the Civil War. Now the problem I would like to deal with now is what kind of impact could a war have on a system as monolithic it stays. What could war mean to slavery.

What would war mean to the individual who was a victim of the system. Now at first the war had no effect whatsoever on Southern slavery. Lincoln desperately anxious to avoid any unnecessary provocation of the slaveholding border states such as Maryland Missouri Kentucky Tennessee insisted at the outbreak of war that slavery was not an issue at the federal government had no intention of tampering with the South's peculiar institution. Moreover he kept his work during the summer of 1861 all runaway slaves were returned to the Confederate lines regularly Confederate and union officers would meet under a flag of truce and I group of slaves who had escaped behind the union rights would be returned to the Confederate officers this didn't go on very long but it did go on during

the summer of 61. McClellan operating in West Virginia promised the citizens of that area that union troops would assist them in quelling any slave disturbance. There was almost a pathological fear in the north of a Serb uprising as it was called which would turn the well I think Lincoln was afraid that would turn the loyalties of wavering States and wavering citizens to the south. In the summer of 61 Fremont ordered the emancipation of all slaves in Missouri belonging to confederate masters. Lincoln revoked the Euler flatly no question. It was not time for him that's a patient. This was not the reason that the war was being fought. Now the political logic of Lincoln's position I think in

retrospect is unassailable. The combined population of the Confederate States was about 9 million of whom three and a half million were slaves. The combined population of the states that remained in the union was about 21 million of whom only about a half million were slaves. However at least three and a half or four million people within that twenty one million In other words three and a half or four million people living in the north lived in slave holding areas and even a larger number were utterly opposed to an abolitionist roar. If Lincoln could hold the loyalty of the border states the white population of the Union would be four times that of the Confederacy. Roughly about 21 million to about five and a half

million the figures are rough because in the border states it's hard to make a sensible division. But if he lost the support of this probe his population advantage would be cut roughly to 2 to 1 which would have a measurably increase the difficulty of subduing the south. This man that Southern man par when the war opened was pretty much limited to the manpower in the 11 Confederate states with of course some volunteers from Tennessee and Kentucky and well from Kentucky and even in some cases from Indiana and Ohio. But Lincoln could have lost the border states he could have lost the loyalty of the areas and in those southern Illinois Indiana and Ohio. And if he had the chances of winning the war I would argue it would have been nil. Now the abolitionists big linking to reconsider his position but he remained firm

throughout 1861. On the face of it then the war had nothing to do with slavery although if you look at the situation this is obviously ridiculous. Now despite the effort to define the war as a war to preserve the Union not to emancipate the slaves or to change its status in any way. The first cracks in the seemingly monolithic slave system in the South began to appear. The more worldly among the slaves specially those in cities small farms gradually came to understand that the war had something to do with them. This is quite early. Increasingly slaves living close to the Union lines or working on Confederate intrenchments attempted to escape gradually. And this was the real pressure. Federal officers

union officers grew thoroughly sick and tired of watching fowls of slaves digging Confederate intrenchments and the notion of having to after they escaped your lines having to round them up and to send them back to go back to work on federal trench means a was a little more than they could stand. Moreover as the casualty list began to grow even the most conservative citizens in the border states had to agree that there wasn't much sense in return and escaped slaves so they could help the Confederate army where the Confederates were using enormous numbers of slaves as service forces. Once it was clear what happened is is exactly your own informal decision. What happened is the union officers just decided they were not going to return the slaves and the rumor began to spread south and increasing numbers of negroes began to slip into Union lines and they were put to work working on

federal entrenchments what seemed like a sensible thing to do. Now a new kind of logic began to make itself felt within the federal government. It became increasingly clear in late 1861 that negro manpower represented a major factor in Confederate strength. For one thing the presence of three and a half million slaves enabled the south to mobilize a large proportion of its able bodied men and to release Southern soldiers from the drudgery of digging trenches and movies. But although Lincoln refused to consider a general act of emancipation beginning in the early spring of eight hundred sixty two slaves were actually encouraged to flee to Union lines and were openly welcomed. Soon negro trench diggers Teamsters were almost as common a sight in the Union

army as they were in the Confederate army. What had happened is by the early spring of 62 the border states were pretty much committed and it was now possible to think in terms of the given strength of the Confederacy namely the slaves in the white population rather than the potential strength which might conceivably if it included the border states. Moreover as Grant and Sherman began to move down the Mississippi Valley this would be in the spring of 62 when Butler occupied New Orleans this would be April of 62. And as the union blockading fleet began to establish itself all along the southern coast the opportunities too was for a slave to escape increased enormously. In 1860 a slave living along the coast of Georgia or South Carolina had almost no chance of escape. Now all he

had to do was steal a canoe or hollow out a log and paddle down almost any river until he reached a federal blockading vessel. By the late summer of 1862 thousands of slaves had done just that and the South began to experience a labor shortage that grew increasingly more serious every day. Now in the mean time here I have to trust your memory of this. The general date. In the mean time the summer of 62 Lincoln had begun to move a long way from his early position that the war was not to effect slavery in any way by the summer of 62 we had agreed with his cabinet that emancipation was inevitable and after the victory. Well let's say the drawn battle of Antietam it was defined as a victory. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued now as

most of you probably know the Emancipation Proclamation was a great disappointment. Many abolitionists to many Europeans who were sympathetic to the Northern cause since the only slaves who were granted their freedom with those who were already under Confederate control as a war measure however it made eminently good sense. It was now the official policy of the federal government to deny the south the advantage of slave manpower wherever it had the power to do so. The flow of negroes into the Federal lines continue to increase and rumors of emancipation and freedom gradually spread from plantation to plantation. For the first time the slave system was being challenged in a way that it did. It's certainly never been challenged in American history. Now what effect did all this have on the great bulk of negroes who still remain in slavery.

It didn't lead to open rebellion as some had figured those slaves who remained on the plantations caused relatively little trouble. As a matter of fact one of the Great Southern legends is of the slaves were in fact remained loyal throughout the war. The system however was no longer quite as monolithic as it once had been. The overwhelming authority of the master was being challenged by an even greater power. Lincoln in the Yankee army and stories you find these stories and in various firsthand accounts these stories were spreading throughout the slave population. The world was changing and if a man had the courage a little luck he could conceivably change his whole life for the first time in the entire history of American slavery. Personally I have an initiative on the part of a slave could really make a difference and I think this is the first

stage of true emancipation. Now there are numerous examples of what this opportunity to act on their own meant to various southern negroes. But I would like to describe one case which was widely reported in the Northern press in the late summer of 860 to a young negro a harbor pilot by the name of Robert Small was smuggled his wife his brother his brother's wife and their child abroad aboard a small steamer called the plantar steamers captain was on shore sleeping off the after effects of an all night drinking bout. Smalls who is the son of his master's mammy was hardly a typical slave. He'd been given all sorts of privileges including his training as a harbor pilot and no one thought to question his loyalty. Before the war I would argue southern confidence in young Robert would

probably have been justified but the possibility of being a free man changed all of this Smalls maneuver the planter out of the way from the dock stared into the channel beside Fort Sumpter and then proceeded to act gaily confused when the officer in command of the major main battery at Sumter ordered him to heave to. By the time the Confederate batteries opened fire he was almost out of range and racing desperately for the federal blockading fleet riding at anchor off Charleston Harbor. Congress voted small $6000 in prize money. He would eventually become the captain of the platter which was used throughout the war to transport troops. Well this is a special kind of success story and I would like to it's been told by many. You can find it in many books but I

would like to suggest that we consider it not so much as an example of here is an example of a heroic negro action but consider in terms of of what initiative could now mean for someone who was to start with a man of as it turned out high intelligence and great courage. The short is to the point is there was nothing you could possibly have done before the war that would have won him this kind of recognition or this kind of opportunity. Also the point is that for Smalls emancipation was not a free gift it was something that he earned very much the hard way. Now by the late summer of 62 southern slavery was still a going system but it was beginning to crumble. The second phase of its collapse began in the winter of 62 and 63. And once again the primary pressure was military necessity

in July. Hundred sixty two. Congress deeply disappointed by McClellan's failure to take Richmond passed a law which gave the president permission to enlist escaped slaves in the Union Army. Lincoln had been reluctant to use this power for fear of a hostile reaction on the border states and in some sections of the Midwest as well because as he saw art Americans were still unprepared to see negroes in uniform. Various experiments and training negroes who had escaped to the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia would discouraged by the new administration by the late fall however Lincoln changed his mind. The Emancipation Proclamation had a ready been announced and would go into effect on January 1st 1863. Why not use the former slaves to further weaken the Confederacy. The plan was to raise and train a number of Negro regiments and sea

islands. These troops would then be used to raid the entire stretch of southern coastline destroying property carrying off other slaves and forcing the Confederates to use badly needed troops for guard duty. Thomas Wentworth Higginson A Boston abolitionist was given command of a newly organized negro regiment and despite the assurances of most of the regular army officers including Sherman that you could never turn a Negro into a soldier. He proceeded to train his regiment with great care and as it turned out great success to everyone's surprise they wanted to march in maneuver with surprising skill and by the red middle of January you can see his regiment was able to carry out a successful raid up the St. Mary's River between Georgia and Florida. Moreover his negro noncommissioned officers almost all former slaves were urging him to extend his operations into the various regions from which they themselves had come.

Higginson success and splendid showing of the 50 force Massachusetts Regiment of a regiment of Northern Negroes which had been raised and trained by Andrew ended northern reluctance to use the former slave as a soldier and by the late summer of 63 negro regiments were being organized wherever sufficient men was available. Now from the point of view of the northern war effort the implications of every negro in response are quite clear. Not only would the South lose the services of her most vigorous slaves but they would be added to the manpower resources of our enemies. By the summer of 1864 one hundred thousand negroes would be under arms and when one realizes the total Confederate Army of this at this time numbered just a little over two hundred thousand one has some sense of the magnitude of the South's loss for practical purposes the entire advantage of falling three and a half million

slaves had been completely cancelled out by the summer of 1864. In a desperate last minute effort to halt further losses and to beef up the depleted ranks of the Confederate Army's Liam self proposed the negroes be enlisted in the Confederate army and promise their freedom if they would serve low. This was an amazing reversal. The war ended before the experiment could be tried. But it's clear that months before APA Mannix the south recognized that slavery was jumped. All right so much for the Union war effort but what did army service mean to the negro especially the man who had been born and raised on a plantation. Now I would suggest that this was a very special kind of emancipation something far more profound for the individual who experienced it than simply being set free. The first step normally involved is taking the initiative and escaping to

the Union lines. Occasionally at great personal risk the next step would involve his being carefully trained to do the one thing that had been absolutely to boo in southern society namely using violence against a white man. Moreover once having actually done this I don't think he would ever be quite the same as in some instances former slaves were given an opportunity to serve as noncommissioned officers to command men and to accept real responsibility. It's difficult to assess the full impact of this experience a century after it took place. But I think it was no accidents a bit some of the most effective rank and file negro political leaders in the reconstruction governments were former Union veterans. The first phase of our story ends with Lee's surrender and the emancipation of the negroes who had not already escaped to the federal mines

who had not already been liberated by the Union Army. This is what most historians mean when they use the term on the ends page. I've already broadened the term to include the gradual crumbling of the slave regime which preceded full legal emancipation. And now I'd like to broaden it still further conclude the process by which the average slave made the difficult transition from both physical and psychological dependence on his master to something approaching full independence. The adjustment was easiest for those who had joined the Union Army or at least had left the plantation of their own volition. For those who waited for the war to end freedom came as something of a shock. Some were afraid to leave the home plantation. Most of them however wandered about the countryside or flocked to the town.

This would be of course the spring of 1865. It seemed for a while that the entire Negro population of the South was in motion. Every night was a big celebration this is been described in many books. Soon the absence of regular routine in the master's supervision began to take its toll and large numbers of negroes became ill. Many die by June of 65 Southerners were freely predicting that the entire Negro population would probably die off in a natter of months. Found this in an editorial after editorial. The South was still convinced that these people were utterly incapable of taking care of themselves with a few exceptions of course but very few. Within a month however the initial shock and wore off and most of the former slaves were back at work either on their old plantation or on a new one.

Lack of food pressure from the Freedmen's Bureau an agency set up by the federal government to assist the newly emancipated negroes ended what we might call the initial testing period the freedmen as they were called were now convinced that they were in fact free. The next phase seems to have been an effort to spell out in detail precisely what freedom meant. Most slaves refused to work in gangs if they could possibly avoid it. They try to work out some sort of system that would enable them to work without direct supervision. At first many of them believed they would be given land by the federal government this is the 40 acres and the mule story. And as a matter of fact this was not an entirely farfetched notion since during the war deserted plantations had been turned over to slaves to be cultivated. When it became apparent however that they would not receive land from the government. The freedman tried to

write it and finally settled for an arrangement by which they farmed it on a one third or one half a share the crop basis. This would eventually lead to a system of virtual peonage but now I'm jumping ahead about 15 years after reconstruction but the initial impulse was toward an arrangement that would enable him to work as individuals rather than as guests. And I think the process by which this this experience separated them from control by dependence on the master is important. Another item in reconstruction experience that most You're probably familiar with a great surge of interest in education especially in learning to read the negro was deeply impressed by the magic of the written word to read and to write. It was in a sense to be free. Unfortunately it took time to set up schools to exploit this

desperate urge for knowledge and learning proved more difficult than many had imagined. But over the next few years as a permanent school system was established the freedmen developed a touching loyalty to book learning and the public schools. When Reconstruction ended they'd fight desperately to keep it. Even after all sorts of all even after the radical governments were clearly a thing of the past there was also a great surge of interest in organizing churches and religious meetings. Now to most white observers whether from the north of the South the while preaching and emotionalism of Negro religion sieved see appeared almost ludicrous. These people however missed the full significance of what was taking place. For the first time negroes were able to organize a religious group even a prayer without white supervision. Here was an

opportunity to express religious feeling. No matter how it's traffic without the inhibiting presence of the Master or some other member of the white community opportunity opportunity to preach and to experience see the power of the spoken word. It was a rare experience for individuals who had never before had. It was in fact a kind of liberation. And I think the loyalty of the negro the latter part of the 1000 century to evangelical religion was no x. What I'm trying to do here is to describe a very familiar experience but to try to see it from a somewhat different point of view what it means to be able to set up a church for the first time what does it mean to be able to preach without anyone looking over your shoulder. The more aggressive Friedman especially the veterans Kerry the process of testing still further and try to establish

themselves as independent farmers. If they could buy land or shopkeepers or skilled mechanics they tended as you probably have gathered in your reading to clash with poor whites who resented their efforts to move into areas that had never been opened to negroes. A few began to talk of receiving the franchise especially those who could read low or who own property. This is early reconstruction and here this was not such a wild demand since Lincoln had suggested it just before his assassination. He proposed it. I propose the franchise for negroes with property who could read or write who had served in the Army as a kind of reward for talent. Also as a source of potential Republican voters. Now the process of testing led to inevitable reaction on the part of the side they were unwilling to accept the negro as even a potential

serious difficulties. The inevitable difficulties of working out a new arrangement new working arrangement tended to increase tension by still further. And once the Southerners regain control of their state governments which they did in the early fall of 65 they began passing the Black Codes designed to redefine the negro status. Now don't go into the full details of the codes. But what they involve with the strictest kind of vagrancy laws laws which outlawed assemblies. Laws which penalize you severely for refusing to or for not complying with the contract laws which required you to have an annual contract with a master with the owner of a plantation. Laws which made it illegal for a negro to engage in any work except farming or personal service.

Laws which made it illegal for a negro to rent land except in towns. Some of these laws represented a serious effort to deal with a real problem. Others were merely from Dick. As it turned out none were enforced by the federal government refused to allow the South to enforce these laws so that when the testing phase was over I would say 8 or 10 months after legal emancipation the freedmen had made some limited but permanent gains. They had learned to take the initiative in their own interest. They learned to organize churches to attend schools to lease land they had learned to appeal to a higher authority the Freedmen's Bureau. I despite the hostility of the white community. They'd had their first experience with group activity. The real movement however towards full independence didn't began until the passage of the military reconstruction acts in March

1867 and the beginning of Radical Reconstruction. Those of you who teach know that the arguments among historians over the precise nature of his story of reconstruction the argument is a long and bitter. You can make a case for either side. You can point out that the radical governments the carpetbag governments if you will established wrote good constitutions established a public school system and provided social services that the South would not previously have. The governments were expensive Kasia corrupt. Ah but they did for the negro what and for the way what had never been done before in history. On the other hand you can point to the enormous debts that these southern governments acquired. You can appoint to the you can point to the generally literacy

of many of the officials. You can appoint two. You can point to widespread corruption among the leaders both Negro and white. However no matter what you say about reconstruction. No matter what effect it had on the South as a whole the fact remains that it offered the Negro a major opportunity to become a full fledged human being. Here you have the universal problem of all revolutions and reconstruction was a kind of limited revolution. What's good for a community as a whole may not necessarily be good for a single group within the community. Or to put it another way the best interests of one group may not be the best interests of the entire community. What did reconstruction mean for the Negro. Well very briefly I would like to point out a few things. It gave him his first

opportunity. For one thing to experience real political activity. And like religion it was both an exciting and liberating experience. Although it may not have appeared that way to the average white observer when the military reconstruction and acts were passed in the Negro receive the vote there was real fear in Republican circles that he might vote with his former master planners in South Carolina rounds of the leadership of Wade Hampton trying to actually try to win over the Negro vote. They insisted that his former master was his best friend. They had all sorts of meetings they held great barbecues and he goes attended listened politely but voted. As it turned out with the Republican Party the southern argument was that the Republican carpetbaggers misled the negroes with all sorts of mumbo jumbo including midnight meetings odes all

sorts of special prayed that the poor ignorant negro was marching to the polls and voted like cattle. I think these people missed the point. What the carpetbaggers again I'll use the term What the what the radical Republicans did was to give the negro his first taste of mass action. The excitement of large meetings the ritual of the opportunity for the articulate among the Negro community to address their fellow freedmen. This was something that New Negro had experienced again in the entire course of American history. There was the further excitement of organizing and politicking among your friends. What I'm suggesting is that what looked to the white community as a rather hopeless example of an illiterate population trying to engage in politics in fact represented a real political

experience for the negroes who engaged in a political experience not unlike that that we've seen in some of the underdeveloped countries messy but nonetheless I would argue are of real importance for the individuals involved. All right my final point. Another thing that reconstruction did was to open up opportunities for political leadership far beyond anything the negro had ever known or would know in this country until the present generation. One thing that you can try experiment you can try especially if you teach this subject is every textbook will give you a long list of the number of negroes sometimes illiterate who served in office. The assumption is what kind of a system would put these untrained unqualified people in positions of responsibility. Reverse the argument for just sec. Twenty eight negro certain the House of Representatives two in the Senate and hundreds in

state constitutional conventions and state legislatures. And as local officials as a number in state executive offices all the way up to the rank of lieutenant governor some served well and some badly. But on the whole they were surprisingly competent group. What reconstruction did was to draw the most competent man in the Negro community into politics. People like Robert Smalls were able to build themselves substantial followings in their home states in his case South Carolina and he was eventually able to get himself elected to Congress. The result was to give the most talented people in the community a vested interest in maintaining the political and sprayed core of the community. He as as primitive as it was. These people work constantly to keep their political organization strong and active. It taught people to use politics for their own interests which I think is a necessary

first step to effective citizenship. But the end of reconstruction the negro was still economically and politically dependent on the white community. But psychologically I would argue he was a free man. The years from 1876 to 1917 would mark something of a decline as the South gradually worked out a new racial etiquette. Jim Crow and a new status for the former slave. But the first crucial breakthrough had already occurred. Thank you. Maybe for everyone that's a little hard. Yes that's the reason given for saying it was not the slaves. Of the North was breaking. Here we get into civil war days.

The North was breaking the contract which was the the South had slavery when it went into the Union. It was understood that slavery would not be tampered with. The Republican Party was now beginning to tamper with it. Therefore the South was going to was released from its its commitments and the argument the War Between The States argument is that they had a perfect legal right to do this they were not rebels this is the important point. They were not rebels and the Northern argument which is it doesn't have any any great moral status either when you think about it is they were trying to. Well they were trying to break the contract. Literally the union and this would mean the destruction of the country as we've known it. And this was what the war was all about. It was not about the slave was not about that. This is kind of of. I mean both sides the south recognize perfectly well that the thing it's driven them into the induced recession is their fear

that eventually a Republican majority will turn to abolition. Many northerners did serious but seriously believe that the war would not lead to the abolition of slavery. They were reluctant to see the union broken up. Many others did however say that that Lincoln had succeeded in persuading the doctor returned the other with the about slavery how are you there what are they willing to work out. All right Phillips insisted that slavery would disappear in all 10 15 20 years. I don't see it. I think a Southern commitment to slavery I think it would have disappeared it had to disappear but I don't think it was going to disappear easily. I think the Southern commit commitment to slavery was was so desperate they lost 20 percent of their male population in I'm sorry of of their adult male population in an effort to preserve it now of course once you get involved in a war you fight almost after you lose your sense of the commitment.

But the South simply the average Southerner simply could not conceive of Southern society with all the negroes free until the fact was there. He didn't adjust until the thing was done. Yes you might even agree. They will be on the ground. Ricky Ray. I know you believe me. I have I have this I have this fear you know I have this feeling about the Underground Railroad. I don't think in here I I disagree with a number of people I don't think it was a major escape hatch. I think the number of Negroes that got out by way of the Underground Railroad were fairly limited. I think what it was on the other hand was an opportunity for northerners to protest against slavery in a very fundamental literally beat to witness

to to actually take the sort of action that set them against the community. It's against the law to assist a negative slave. I will assist you. Now I think the importance from my point of view is that if you had anything to do with helping a future just like you had committed yourself against slavery in a very profound way. And I think the Underground Railroad was more important from this point of view than in terms of the numbers of negroes who were actually assisted to escape to the north. No I'm not trying to run down these are the risks in the end certainly the the power of either the negro or the individuals who assisted him. But numbers were so were so limited it was such a difficult thing to carry off. Also the people who generally did escape tended to come from the border states. One of the things that the Southerners always complained about is the negroes who escaped often with those who were in the best position

Willis followed quite logically I mean these were the kinds of individuals who had moved far enough so they were interested in moving further and becoming free men. But as a major escape hatch escape valve for the system I don't see it. Yes you're right. It would this wouldn't hold because what the abolitionists are doing is stirring up the north literally convincing them that this is immoral This is an immoral institution affecting the status of the slaves. It probably made it worse. I think the southerners are probably justified in saying that they were harsher on the slave after the abolitionist movement than before. I don't think the the the the difference is perceptible in any significant way. But you're less apt to be to be relaxed in treating here your negroes after the abolitionist movement you have

just named. This is a big effect on the safety system on the toilet. There's nothing to say that some of the effects of the same system on the same old will be done the population kind of means all of you to keep resisting and essentially you'll be with me and I'll duck the today. But very briefly I'm perfect. Very briefly I will say this I'm already committed on this point. I think slavery was enormously coercive and I think it did terrible damage to the individuals involved. I have argued in my book that conceivably on some of the plantation the individuals involved were not unlike what the Southerners thought they were in

other words they were helpless. They were dependent. They were in many cases childlike not just how childlike or dependent a helpless is always an open question but I think this was a very coercive system. Now might the point of my lecture I think was to try to give you some sense of how the system broke down. I don't think it broke down just a mancipation these people are afraid. I think there was a process of breaking down that occurred that involved the war and then also involve reconstruction not to reverse the thing and take up the the problem of the master. This kind of power can affect a person in different way. I think it could certainly turn him into a a sadist. It could also make him a very paternalistic sort of individual. By and large I think the ideal type for a Southern planter was paternalist the man it was convinced that these people were his

responsibility. That they couldn't possibly live on their own. That to turn them loose was as a slave owner said again and again was literally to destroy that he could be a fairly kindly saint. As long as the authority of the system was not challenge now there was always ambivalence. You could be kindly but on the other hand what happens when someone breaks the rules and the rules are very rigid. Then you convince yourself that punishment is absolutely essential for his own welfare. But there was always this guy who was always sneaking suspicion on the part of this of many Southern planters that that that maybe it was all a fraud that maybe maybe these people were just playing games with you and he was never served and so there's a kind of insecurity and this I think tended to make them quite rigid in maintaining let's

say they were the rules of the system. Well the etiquette might say of a plantation life the absolute insistence that that or that a slave not be uppity. Did you maybe you're with your little baby about the reaction or the value of the home of the kid next to the reason why not to day. In day in very. Violent over the rebellion way. At least did he give you a hand with the emotional outburst. He seemed to divine the lark and you know back. Down Franklin who knows that there is another view that effect the history's out done to me and that in fact the Southern white responded to it. The fear and dead heat his reaction. We became really good natured as a white

mind with it was one of millions of militancy here you go. Did you get to survive the militant movement organization loses it will lose out. In fact. Very far away with it. Will you do. If you hear I think the problem of affectional is one we're going to have to spell out what I'm what I'm suggesting is the kind of long term consistent opposition that might conceivably have changed the system was extremely difficult for the Negro to maintain his status of slavery that the way he tended to rebel was was to. It's the difference between organized workers and unorganized workers if I can use that analogy the way you tend to rebel is you explode given a situation that's pressing

now. The explosion brings instant and often vicious retaliation from the people in authority. What you do build up in the self is a sense of all right now. They're fine up to a point. The minute they they they get difficult you've got to smash them down. Now this does build up a kind of this does build up for a militancy on the part of the white community. But I do think that the I do think the tendency you have a half acres negro slave revolts for example I think is misleading. I think the tendency to picture the nigger community as constantly planning various kinds of almost uprising is making demands on this group that's above and beyond human reason that granted the kind of coercive situation that we're in. I think it's extremely difficult for them to react in anything approaching an

organized fashion and their reactions were inevitably do I think this is the reason one of the arguments why didn't the negro or rebel during the Civil War he was an ideal opportunity. But I think he did in occasional individual explosions. But I think that the New York community as a whole had learned from long and bitter experience. Well I didn't even reach that point I think that the Negro community as a whole had been sufficiently repressed and limited that the chance of any kind of organized action was pretty much ruled out in advance. And the only image I would I would like to avoid is the image of a community just waiting for its waiting for a chance because I don't think this was so. I think it was too fragmented it was too hot it was too demoralized for this. Now this doesn't mean the individuals were happy with the system at all but it's one thing to be unhappy it's another

thing to be able to to focus that on happiness in any kind of calculated protest or rebellion against overwhelming power. Yes. Well. Then you know I. Recall. A. Very. Old. Phrase by. Gabriel. For. All of. History. You know I was there. Revolver or maybe it's your first bite of. The Gabriel and the Denmark beezy rebellions are carefully calculated conspiracies carried out by Negroes living in towns who have an enormous amount of independence I think this is important. Nat Turner is another thing that Turner has has it is a

sort of fanatical on undirected quality about it a kind of profit arises and it is the the thing was doomed from the beginning as far as the slave conspiracies A-hole were concerned. I have reservations. I tend to think that the south saw conspiracies often when in other words they would see conspiracies in an almost any kind of of any kind of assertion of independence. Again I rather doubt that the that this culture would sustain anything like a systematic conspiracy unless the individuals involved were living in in urban communities where they could get together when they could talk with a work where they had a certain amount of knowledge of what was going on.