“The Servants … Could Not Be Conveniently Stored Away”

2021 ◽  
pp. 60-88
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Noyalas
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Union Soldiers

This chapter focuses on 1862, with a particular emphasis on how Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign impacted enslaved people and free blacks. Throughout the spring of 1862, enslaved people, estimated in the thousands, sought refuge with Union forces. However, as this chapter illustrates, taking sanctuary with Union troops did not mean that the Valley’s African Americans were passive participants. This chapter highlights the various ways freedom seekers supported Union operations in the Valley throughout 1862. Simultaneously, the chapter also illustrates that the desire for survival at times trumped the desire for freedom and prompted some freedom seekers to return to enslavers. Although incidents such as these have been used by advocates of the Lost Cause to perpetuate the “happy slave” myth, this chapter discusses the complexities of life for African Americans and how what some interpreted as loyalty to enslavers was in fact an enslaved person’s loyalty to themselves. Finally, this chapter examines how some Union soldiers, due to interactions with enslaved people in 1862, became more open to transforming the war to preserve the Union into one that also eradicated slavery.

Memory Making on Parade

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-72
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Black Communities ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Union Soldiers

This chapter clarifies that black communities experienced emancipation traditions in different ways. Given the large proportion of blacks in Natchez, and the region’s well-established free black community, it seemed probable that Natchez would experience a robust emancipation tradition. That was not the case. The grand 1867 Fourth of July parade in Natchez organized by the Union League drew a large crowd of African Americans, suggesting the beginnings of a bold emancipation tradition. Instead, public emancipation celebrations dwindled. By the time of the 1871 Decoration Day observance, leaders stressed reconciliation and a tribute to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, a far different message heard only four years earlier. The erosion of a black emancipation tradition resulted from the unusually close ties that existed between Natchez free blacks and white elites, and the fear among free blacks that it was in their best political interests to suppress such traditions.

Race and the Visions of John Lafayette Girardeau

2018 ◽  
pp. 47-62
Author(s):  
Otis W. Pickett
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
White Supremacist ◽  
The Public ◽  
Ecclesiastical Reform ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Coping With Death

This chapter focuses on John Lafayette Girardeau, a Presbyterian leader who, after the Civil War, simultaneously worked to shape churchly reform and Lost Cause religiosity. Girardeau's postbellum ecclesiastical reform in ordaining African Americans and pushing for their ecclesiastical equality places him among emancipationists. However, his work on the battlefield as a Confederate chaplain, his aid to the public in coping with death and destruction after the Civil War, and his service as pastor of an integrated church places him in the reconciliationist camp. Meanwhile, his work as a defender of the Lost Cause, which helped justify the racial violence perpetuated by Lost Cause adherents, places him within the emerging norms of a white supremacist vision. Ultimately, Girardeau's life and world presents a much more complex picture than his missionary activity, representative Calvinism, efforts toward ecclesiastical reform, or Lost Cause ideology reveal.

Republicans of Color

2019 ◽  
pp. 122-165
Author(s):  
Paul J. Polgar
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Black Education ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
The Public ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Reform Project ◽  
American Experiment ◽  
Revolutionary Ideology

The genesis of the first movement abolitionist reform project stemmed from a central dilemma bequeathed to abolitionists by the American Revolution. The same natural rights Revolutionary ideology that aided the first abolition movement also presented slaves as the very antithesis of the independent, virtuous citizenry necessary to uphold representative government and maintain the American experiment in republicanism, making emancipation a problematic process. Out of their quest to solve this paradox, abolition society members and their free black collaborators constructed a reform agenda of societal environmentalism. Based on free black socioeconomic uplift and the application of the early republic's educational mores to free blacks, societal environmentalism aimed to inculcate republican virtue in former slaves. Black education and citizenship would help to defeat white prejudice and convince the public that African Americans were worthy of emancipation. Through these reformist initiatives, first movement abolitionists sought to prove black capacity for freedom by integrating African Americans into the American republic and making them virtuous and independent citizens, fully capable of productively exercising their liberty within greater white society.

William Johnson's Hypothesis: A Free Black Man and the Problem of Legal Knowledge in the Antebellum United States South

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly Welch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Free Black ◽  
The Law ◽  
Black Man ◽  
Case Basis

This essay uses the diary of free black barber and Natchez, Mississippi, businessman William T. Johnson as a means to explore the extent to which one black man in the antebellum U.S. South knew the law; how he came to know it; and what role he saw it play in his life and community. In recent years, scholars have paid increasing attention to black Americans' engagement with the legal system in the pre-Civil War U.S. South and have undermined the notion that black people were legal outsiders. In particular, they have shown that African Americans in the slave South were legal actors in their own right and were legally savvy. Yet what does it mean when scholars say that free blacks and slaves knew how to use the law? This essay uses Johnson's diary to demystify the phrase “to know the law” and shows that we speak of “knowing the law,” we speak of a remarkably complex and uneven phenomenon, one best mapped on a case-to-case basis. Understanding what it meant “to know the law” sometimes requires examining an individual's personal theory or hypothesis of what law does for them.

“The Effect Was Immediate”

2021 ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Noyalas
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Free Black ◽  
Shenandoah Valley ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Black Man

This chapter focuses on how the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans reacted to John Brown’s raid and how enslavers in the region responded. Although throngs of enslaved people and free blacks from the Shenandoah Valley did not join Brown’s army of liberation in large numbers as Brown had hoped, this chapter illustrates that once the Valley’s enslaved learned of Brown’s attempt to strike a blow against slavery they employed various methods of resistance including arson and killing livestock to show their support for Brown’s actions, unnerving enslavers. This chapter examines the efforts of not only whites in the Valley to prevent Brown’s attack from sparking a broader insurrection through an increase in slave patrols but also enslavers’ attempts to downplay the events of Brown’s raid, advancing the notion that enslaved people in the Shenandoah Valley did not support Brown and remained loyal to their enslavers. At the epicenter of this particular discussion is the story of Heyward Shepherd, a free black man who became the raid’s first casualty.

“Picture Makers”

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-152
Author(s):  
Susan T. Falck
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
African American Men ◽  
Lost Cause ◽  
Photographic Images ◽  
White Southerners ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Women And Children

This chapter examines the photographs shot by Henry C. Norman and amateur photographer Mary Britton Conner of Natchez African Americans in the postwar era. Norman, a highly-skilled white photographer, created hundreds of magnificent portraits of African-American men, women and children, leaving a priceless record of how these people wanted to be remembered. At a time when American popular culture frequently ridiculed African Americans, Norman’s portraits gave his black customers a means to define themselves in the face of negative racist stereotypes. The images shot by Conner reveal the social climate of early twentieth century Natchez as seen through the eyes of a prominent white woman raised in an environment suffused in Lost Cause romanticism and Jim Crow racism. In stark contrast to the narrative visible in Norman’s portraits of black consumers, Conner’s photographic images reflect the depth of white southerners’ nostalgia for antebellum notions of race, dependency and paternalism.

Lick Creek, Indiana

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Orange County ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Underground Railroad ◽  
Northwest Ordinance ◽  
Northwest Territory ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the relationship of Quakers and free Blacks in Lick Creek to the Underground Railroad. The Lick Creek settlement once existed in the southeast corner of Paoli Township, Orange County, in southern Indiana. In 1817, freeborn African Americans came to the area and purchased land in what later became the Lick Creek settlement. Blacks also came accompanying Quakers fleeing persecution in North Carolina. With the opening of frontier lands for settlement, free Blacks, encouraged by the antislavery provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, joined the country's westward passage to the Northwest Territory. This chapter first provides a background on Quakers and free Blacks at Lick Creek before focusing on William Paul Quinn's arrival in Indiana, where he built AME churches that became an important focal point of the Lick Creek community. It then considers the antislavery efforts of free Blacks, Quakers, and citizens of conscience working on the Underground Railroad on behalf of escaped slaves. It also discusses the participation of Indiana's Blacks in the Civil War.

“Freedom to Slaves!”

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-113
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Noyalas
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Free Blacks ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Shenandoah Valley ◽  
Emancipation Proclamation

This chapter’s central focus is how the Valley’s African Americans responded to the Emancipation Proclamation and Union general Robert H. Milroy’s enforcement of it in the northern Shenandoah Valley during the first six months of 1863. Additionally, this chapter focuses on the important roles filled by African Americans, such as Lee Jenkins, in General Milroy’s espionage operations. Furthermore, the chapter examines the fate of African Americans following General Milroy’s defeat at the Second Battle of Winchester. While untold numbers of African Americans escaped north into Pennsylvania, some of whom were seized by Confederates as they moved into the Keystone State, several hundred African Americans were captured by Confederate general Richard Ewell’s command near Stephenson’s Depot, north of Winchester, among them Lee Jenkins, who ultimately committed suicide to avoid enslavement. Through Jenkins’ story this chapter also explores the difficult decisions free blacks such as Jenkins confronted when seized by Confederates and impressed.

“To Call on All the Blacks”

2021 ◽  
pp. 45-59
Author(s):  
Jonathan A. Noyalas
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Late Spring ◽  
First Year ◽  
Shenandoah Valley ◽  
Harpers Ferry ◽  
Union Policy ◽  
Union Soldiers

Chapter 3 closely examines the experiences of the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans during the Civil War’s first year. Initially, enslaved people believed that Union general Robert Patterson’s army, which entered the northern Shenandoah Valley in the late spring of 1861, might liberate them. However, as this chapter shows, the Valley’s enslaved learned that Patterson enforced Union policy at the conflict’s outset, which precluded Union soldiers from aiding enslaved people flee enslavers. Despite Patterson seizing freedom seekers and either returning them to enslavers or locking them up in the jail in Martinsburg, those who desired freedom remained undaunted. Freedom seekers hoped that offering something of value to Patterson, either labor or services as spies, might soften Patterson’s position, but it did not. Additionally, this chapter examines the efforts of some soldiers in Patterson’s army to defy his orders and aid freedom seekers. Finally, this chapter highlights the reaction of the Valley’s enslaved population to passage of the First Confiscation Act and the stories of enslaved people who fled to Harpers Ferry in late 1861 and early 1862, seeking refuge with Patterson’s replacement in the Shenandoah Valley, General Nathaniel P. Banks.

scholarly journals After #Charlottesville: Interrogating our Racist Past in the Trump Era

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Travis Boyce
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
College Campuses ◽  
Lost Cause

In wake of the violent and deadly events in Charlottesville and President Donald Trump’s response in which he effectively defended the Neo-Nazis and Confederate monuments, it’s important that college students understand the Lost Cause movement, the building of Confederate monuments and how college campuses are affected.  In preparation for the fall 2017 semester, I revised my AFS 310 African Americans and U.S. Education syllabus in which I devoted the first five weeks of the semester to interrogating the aftermath of Charlottesville and this nation’s Confederate legacies on college campuses.  Centering the unit’s theme on “The Lost Cause and the Collegiate Idea,” this article will discuss in depth the unit I taught as well as student assessment and outcomes upon completion of the unit. 

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