American Experience; Reconstruction: The Second Civil War; Interview with Dana D. Nelson, Historian, University of Kentucky, part 1 of 2

you just heard cameo appearance comes from a family that had originally cells in south carolina that had taken up residence in philadelphia during the revolutionary war and returns to philadelphia after the revolution just because they liked philadelphia so much and that they maintain their southern plantations and hollers and connections there were people moved in philadelphia during the warm summer months ago rattner plantations during months and so should pierce grew up in a world that circulated between north and south he stood in line on to some of the largest plantations in the south the second largest plantation in georgia alone and so he was he was a man who knew very promptly and in both worlds

and so on and they were certainly i'm in the south they were among the last of the county georgia plantations in particular the sea island rights and patients were some of the most fertile lands in georgia and the people who own those plantations were among the wealthiest in the united states that you mentioned that youre actually going away and tears just pierced his mother so names and

i just hung first they were not terribly they were always kind of strapped for money and so knowing that he was going to have all the confidence and an aristocrat and even before he actually had access all that money and it wasn't really until a couple years after we married and we came directly into the man south side yeah it has been yeah you threw the ball or family deeper and its history started

in south carolina and started its investments in race culture in south carolina where the land wasn't nearly as productive and nor were their techniques it wasn't until the late eighteenth century early nineteenth century women rice pledges began to realize the advantage of trying on those skills and techniques of west african slaves they were wearing too to develop new techniques and more efficient techniques for rice cultivation so right around that time many of them began investing and the georgia winter much more rules of the combination of the new technologies that came from west africa is more fertile landscape these very wealthy indeed some on that you believe the only premium land and they thought we knew from another factor contributing to the butler plantations successful as the cut in military discipline that pierces grandfather ran the plantation so he

was notorious among his fellow cyclists are running and what his neighbors considered to be a very tight ship as slaves weren't allowed ever after plantation were left unseen visitors from the island nation so it made it very close a very close like that would be a very close very close social and work worlds and stand ins because of that that social isolation and here's his grandfather was able to exercise a kind of task discipline over there and the other one is successful in cultivating recently made on a trip that you just went to control an hour later is my prepping for the civil war this is that ten years after his divorce

an example and i love this story because you know everyone thinks of countless as the one who has the dramatic where it's clear from the light that pierce who's living at it is that he had a certain search for prominent saw an insurgent coalition or gambling both at the card table and stock market and economy crashed and on and so it was that was right about at the time of an economic crisis a nineteen fifty seven once the one admitting that it meant that he had to sell this happened these slaves on plantations so on this is a dramatic event in us history is one of the single was one of the largest single plantation slave auctions in united states history even the year tribune's that report and cover this monumental sale signs

plenty of money to live off of the slaves sold actually for much higher than they had even expect that the average price of each human being at that sale was around seven hundred and seventy one and at such an amazing timing if you like the god of irony you have to appreciate the fact that he manages to make a profit off of slaves on plantations two years before he would have been forced to or just if you speak german city and she is well oh oh

yeah that that the butler is an enormously interesting example of on the next politics of united states' history period campbell who was british and the united states an idealistic appalachians and usually ones one must also by necessity be an abolitionist and somehow it didn't occur to her to pay attention to the fact that the man that she greets neighbors in line to inherit one of the largest plantations in one of the largest slave silence in the united states and pierced listed virtually pro slavery i think in a very and reflective fairly air in a way an answer was like mixing water and while and so so that to enhance your daughter's do you want me to go into

so here's and eighteen thirty six to zeppelin and their daughters and three cents and enter their second daughter frances than she would call and two years later in nineteen thirty eight and by this time pierce thinks it's time to take them down to the plantations and so fanny and beautiful trying to do one seemed to stand together get to why was was working hard to keep your mind open she had personally heard from the family wanted an avalanche cycle appears his grandfather the band and so she leaves the family story is that the slaves were kept you know an excellent clean orders and while taking care of medical attention and given their portions of fruit

and iran she got them there and was dismayed by what she can she thought the essential living conditions though she thought that the infirmary store though that excuses for a measly attempts at health care she got their rations were dismayed they were living on you know basically a couple cups of breaks a day second the estuaries and and so to speak picked as his friends and was often inclined to do she kicked the series it's about she worked very harsh to persuade the overseer and her husband to improve the conditions of the slaves they don't appreciate the advice and that she was stepping over plates and being a nuisance in general allen and she did try to spend some time you find crammed she ordered orange a lemon trees and on land we're done making walking paths that you so much time listening to the complaints

of the slaves and and and threatening to homicides or widen their circle of friends what she found that most of the disney pierson and his larger family who all agree that she should never be allowed to return to the patients again that she was later that residence and making thirty nine she worries about the effect that being around slaves and having this kind of unconscious writes the command will have on her daughter's she's most liberated us airlines too is two years old haunts in her surroundings than that syria's president activists we're it's the youngest daughter very much like her father becomes an

unthinking and reflective light of this trap and this is very much a confederacy throughout the civil war aman has a very hard time as the surviving in philadelphia because of perceptions very much against people who help americans to i think to keep quiet about their sympathy for the most part only in philadelphia headed back south and says the reluctance of the war was over and now tour time they defended the confederacy singing listen people in south carolina

was declared its secession from union pierce and fan made a trip down to georgia alone and peers made it very clear that taking bandstand including again and started to fight them because we need the state and they came back to philadelphia and when they came back because of these busts own pierce was briefly arrested in an unhealthy in jail as it is for this out eventually he was released there was no evidence that he was doing such thing but it was very upsetting for the family wants their and finland are unnerved by that event and its worst and now there's something about an ally with years in jail and the very desperate things very evident when he joins the marines and clicking on us it

has been i mean not only saw a sherman's order as the end of his property building and the possible and in south carolina there was ever a moment when your sweet have decided not to like not have quite have the land but he saw it not only is the possible ending

of his family's plantation since naacp in georgia and they saw it as the only way that you can hit that he was a very proud member and he was devastated by the family it seems to me that everyone in their family higher higher susceptibility toward depression it's clear that that here it's on the general assessment was that he began behaving erratically challenge someone to a duel over economic now it's thirty percent very good you'd

think he was reading the bullet wounds correctly that there wasn't enough there's also in a long political leadership in washington to hold to that don't have the right to property it says is one of the most fundamental rights in united states history we're going for a ride and i think he understood in an unread fairly clearly that that was something that wouldn't find median force that is right to property would win out over any claims to rights and freedoms and entitlements the only three african americans but i don't know exactly what kind of information packets that i mean i you know i think he understood it along and i think i think he was probably getting very mixed and confused

reports like everyone he understood that everything was up for grabs down there and and understood that the best way to exercise his clients to his lands was to be president to be they're exercising this is how to be there exercising his physical habitation of those lands an anvil in hindi and you're like i've really be understood very clearly that the best way to exercise control says it exercises claimed to be victims of his deeds and hands and indeed members of this family setting up vast again and has once again where they suddenly their rightful control over inhabitants of the violence must have been the longest time it's announced

the lands have been cultivated for four years and even though the cardinals what happens if you don't mean every year so the lands were in shambles in the houses have been going on all the furniture was gone they their houses weren't real disarray and complaints about to rain on our inability to run a household in the way that she was accustomed to running one train so they really have to make due and the interesting thing is that many of those louis freeh triple a hassle materials they came back for them they had been saved by their former slaves or the region as well that the newly freed people were we're very careful

with their former owners possessions such as they have access to during the course of the war and uncertainty about letters and in particular how that there's evidence of these former slaves loyalty to their own and he held it up as evidence that they had always treated them well and in fact that the newly freed people when in fact they want to be free from the possession the bottlers but that is that these are people not and technically hands were exercising their integrity unit community senses and the united states returning vets of people didn't they had belonged and so you know like so much in the other family i think the truth really depends and terry stanton perspective that they're attending mystery truth from different angles but yes it's true that the

mainstay of his fortunes tied up in him there in that land among it certainly would have bankrupted and not the first thought it was entirely too common to back down under those circumstances you know more than his family fortune i think his family on her he felt was tied up at some kind of successful reclamation of power back on the georgia and saints and so i think it was unthinkable that it's not to go back and make commitments to reclaim power and patients don't know that they could do i suppose they could let it go but i can imagine i can't it with so much family honor bound up in the end the only thing that landed million of those people i can imagine that they win they knew they would have not gone so

well for you with one thing you write songs as well the virus enters a postal worker took a great deal of pride in seeing themselves as goodman's has been on screens which is partly why it's so devastating appears to be accused of such now incidents by an encounter with jesus of the plantation and thirty eight i think that the real story is that he is a little more complicated than pearce was very much an absentee plantation owner on more

so than many of its neighbors who lived that are more more back up and do this again and pierce was was much more an absence the plantation owner and much more so than any of his neighbors too often live year round on their plantations were a young child's humans to georgia this summer ryan singer on the coast that involve with philadelphia didn't say in philadelphia for one or two or three years in a row so pearce was a radical levin and so much managerial responsibility to talk to its overseers and history shows is for not on an apple in the records once wanted to be remembered as being so it's it seems that you know given the kind of on her medic social environment the plantation on that pearce carried out his grandfather's basic wish that this let's not be allowed visitation rights and other

plantations and get it that combined with sometimes barely gets by overseers meant that the state signed a fairly tough line on the plantations it's also true that rice cultivation has one of the most demanding and dangerous tasks for insights to have to take on and it's one of the reasons that the plantations didn't do well outside world because really could pay people to do that kind of difficult labor and once they have to start paying people for it in a serious way that plantations were going to be interesting and it sounds heartbreaking because you have to do to see now in the wire which is you know really i think what led to such an unhealthy conditions for all the people in the region didn't like rivers fine art used to do in the

us he's been with his wife but i did

you know there's like plantation records i don't really know definitively like this note it's more than i can describe basically what he planned to do you know why i think where says overall huang ming returned to the southwest to re exert some control or sweeney and the whole world had changed it the most neutral analogy that i can imagine would be to imagine what it would be like if you woke up one morning and the law probably and that that that you you have to re imagine how do everything is that each year and so there's a we'll see why the

senate might describe it for an audience to imagine waking up one morning and i know that a lot of gravity and then you knew how to re imagine maine every interaction physical space in the chain and that law was gone and i think there's an instance i imagining that all of the same loss of pain and the world were really everything was up for grabs in anyway that really is if we just look at the moment so without knowing all the history that comes after it in a way that is very rich with possibility for all been freed africa now it's owned and so they can pierce were a little disappointed with their

reception on hampton plantation because the status of the forces are disappointed that they've actually shown they've been told that they would be about forty acres the family and when you're sitting back with animated batman along is going to continue to be his but as you can imagine they're less than happy in here is made what he thought was a generous arrangement with his three former slaves we realize that they are they have crops under cultivation and he told them that they could keep those that twenty years an industry and he's been very tense and they agreed to do it because they needed food and conditions were really desperate for light read african americans and south in the civil war and so so gradually pierce's plan was to have all of his relationship with his former slaves find something that would probably look and work life separate business plan includes his

announcement would later say women's tournament in her for it you have the freedom to you that i have read interviews and what's more i own this land and you're going to say you think that's my son her mind as i think honesty is really going to be very much a return to the kind for people stability that they cite is the cornerstone of the gridlock and so they would say oh hello are saying that paris is very very disappointed by what he found lying in portland that's the land's been in devastated the housing

wasn't to plantations seemed like a great adventure the scenes of the scenes you have treated it as though it was a great adventure she talks as she describes the terrible conditions on her trip down at the following germans paso its desolation and reports it's been burned out fields and burnout and of course they can't find decent accommodations they're on the train tracks and go nuts so they are deported to cross the river because the bridge has been blown out the whole backwards in a train car from another part of the trial they say and miserable accommodations on the way out but she says not the end of all this it just felt like a great adventure in and say he's describing himself or something like robinson crusoe surrounded by three hundred friday so so there seems to have been energized by that challenge in a way that her father i don't think was a good father became increasingly more

joanna just find that by the kinds of challenges that face his ideal which would be reclaimed land in the grand people's later on i don't think it was really until her father die in sixty seven that on the seriousness of the town's register ban and she she understood as the final challenge before that once her father died and she became determined to make a go at the plantation visitor there's just a real change in the register from her letters to her family and to the record it so that is yet i just want to

do this for us for certain almost like a physical scene surveying her arrival to this unique and dairymen will if you see it as a lot of awesome friedman here and you know she describes in her going down there were instant savings new tv is characterizing the thistles as benji were just talking about residents on the plantations you know i i don't have as much to say about the arrival soon as i do now know and she's developed an actor how how much you my health is affecting economy and beautiful it is that oh yeah i mean it was paralysis deliveries of places hey mike

pretty miserable and that no the years that they're trying to bring this after his purchase ok great i think that yes when they first get their kids for our band slater descriptions of this is being an adventure i think i'm cheating was at least temporarily head with the difficulty and the physical difficulty of what they were encountering an end that material loss plantations and an inch and they were trying to move the goods that she had purchased at the reports hampton plantation huge rainstorm is there are not the river so

all bets are on some water in and damage is finally breaks down in tears and it's one of the few moments in her own records where she indulges in the pleasure of a good cry and it doesn't last for long and may need anybody who's read her will remember that one of the very first things she does it says about a quarter of our really on the mantle which you can imagine was a physical relief for her because she'd not been able to display that under in warren in philadelphia's city hall in hampton and what she would consider to be any social comforts of people who sympathized with her politically so you know even with wet mattresses she was able to heal so she hikes and political breathing space on the plantations that she had missed three years it's part

of the day he said you know that this year that pairs return and delayed her journey is consumed to fix up the house for her before she got there and it was taking longer than you thought it was going to take and she found that in ways she didn't care she wanted to be there and she loved those plantations and i think she lived alone this sense of familial ownership and also very awkward and she was a sense that she could be a help mate for hand and went with her mother that her heart and so the plantation was

it the happy world her view she says at the end of one line just been complaining about how hard everything is physically but she says you know i'm happy i can make myself useful and work hard here and teach you basically she felt that the work that she did it such a great fact that she became very proud of her ability to get things done as well as just loving were built the land routes surrounding geography the vegetation is evident throughout all reports on this oh i think that's extraordinary or new story notes that it's easy to find yourself impatient with family and some number are obvious devotion white aristocratic supremacy

and that really give you something about what she was hearing it's extraordinary this one nine year old and it turned out a colored girl she's so young and she began taking so this single young woman going down into the heart of the former confederacy where some of the most stringent standards of truman had long range to singlehandedly ryan well it was snow the second largest plantation in georgia and it's it's an it was an education and an end to do a business success a heated she records after seven years year's crops that she had the highest yield to any of her neighbors and she was so fiercely proud he was so proud of her ability to contract successfully with laborers and to run their plantations and an and she

was extraordinarily and she did you want like a ceo she was very single minded she was very determined and pray while she was washing dishes and we can return soon plantations after her others that the very first order of business is to hammer out labor contracts with all the people who were living there when she saw us workforce and that isn't the legal requirement not only detail by the force of the emancipation proclamation but also necessitated by the oversight of britain's peril and so she was negotiating with people through were experimenting with

their newfound freedom freedom who were determined to highlight that they like to work under conditions that they thought of their own to work with a schedule that they found and reasonable they all had saturday on and so families determined to reassert the rye plantation master plan and all these people are determined to set limits of their own and it's very very proud of her so that she wouldn't you think in their condition and so basically managed to i think fans most important insight in this negotiation with each of these workers was to understand that they needed to be her and so she tells ray scornfully but in a way that at least

makes you understand that if she can do that compassion she couldn't business interests that she sat silently in the city each of them a solid conditions in and explained to them why she wouldn't even leave their conditions and listen to them your response to that what's they're disappointed about reiterated her unwillingness depend on the conditions and finally one afternoon listen and have never looked at it and i don't know that they're all things that would include some of these contracts and she made no concessions that he thought he was contacting more than three hundred migrants and so he was spending hours going through this with each person from morning until my after this episode she result that

she herself would never do this again so she passed that negotiation on to other reasons and then she herself would not repeat this yearly ritual of negotiating the contract would use these workers say oh well be on the plantations were of course i'm no longer confined to plantations and had been able to communicate with any number of people who have come into the south after during american civil war to finance the three people that you haven't had to go about representing their interest and there was one man in particular to the scandal was a very

powerful figure in the local black community it's very carefully very wisely advising people not to sign contracts that were satisfactory to them because they've broken they could be channeled was advising them what were what what they could fairly ask for note that these people had been slaves and allowed to ask for anything so now saying in the search you can ask for it no time off so you can ask for cash no another day of that we got you can say i know i'm not going to work under dangerous conditions so they were actually very savvy political editor advice from people like tim and scandal and then coming to fan to turn exercise in the us their suggestions all

right it's been