“Our Domestic Trials with Freedmen and Others”: A White South Carolinian's Diary of African-American “Exhibitions of Freedom,” 1865–80

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 111-133
Author(s):  
Jeffery Strickland
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
German Immigrants ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Lutheran Church ◽  
Edge Field ◽  
German American ◽  
Labor System ◽  
The Village

In October 1865, Jacob Schirmer returned to Charleston, South Carolina, after more than three years refuge from the Civil War in the village of Edge-field, South Carolina. Schirmer had brought his slaves with him to Edgefield, but they did not return to Charleston with him, choosing instead to “realize their Freedom” (diary entry for October 28, 1865). Schirmer, a German American, kept a regular diary from 1826 until his death in 1880. Following the Civil War, though, he also commenced a separate journal — “Our Domestic Trials with Freedmen and Others” — in which he recorded his dealings with domestic workers in the free labor system. He hired three domestic servants: a female cook and washer, a male butler, and a male gardener. For the next twenty-five years, Schirmer struggled with the transition from slavery to freedom. “Our Domestic Trials” documents not only Schirmer's reaction to the revolutionary social changes of the era but also offers a telling picture of the ways in which African Americans responded to their newfound freedom and their determination to maintain that freedom.Jacob Schirmer was born in 1803 into a well-known German-American family in Charleston. Schirmer's grandfather was Jacob Sass, a reputable Charleston cabinetmaker. Schirmer operated a successful coopering (barrel making) business, and he owned eight buildings in Charleston. He served as president of the Corporation of St. John's Lutheran Church and as treasurer of the German Friendly Society. It does not appear that Schirmer was active in politics, nor was he a member of the German rifle clubs in Charleston (probably because they were formed by German immigrants in the 1850s).

Secession and War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Kelso
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Critical Step ◽  
Early Experiences

In this chapter, John Russell Kelso narrates the events that occurred between April and July 1861 as the Civil War broke out. He recalls how his school closed a few weeks earlier than usual following the intense excitement generated by the firing upon Fort Sumpter by the secessionists of South Carolina. He considers his decision to stand by the Union as it prepared to fight the Confederate States to be the most critical step of his life. During a grand meeting called in their town, addressed by Peter Wilkes and other speakers from Springfield, Missouri. Kelso joined with others to form military companies called Home Guards. He was the first man to volunteer into this service. Kelso shares his early experiences as a Union soldier fighting the Confederate rebels.

scholarly journals GLOBAL SETTLEMENT: THE FATE OF LOCALITY IN RELATION TO MODERN SOCIAL LIFE IN DAGESTAN

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-782
Author(s):  
Ekaterina L. Kapustina
Keyword(s):  
Labor Migration ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Global Village ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Village ◽  
Physical Locality

The article performs the current discussion of such categories as local and global in modern anthropology and suggests the option of using categories for the modern sociocultural reality of Dagestan society. The positions of leading researchers, deconstructing the concepts of “locality” and “community”, offering an alternative view of a traditional society rooted in a particular place, are demonstrated. Deterritorized societies in the face of significant social changes in the world (migration, including transnational and translocal, as well as the process of globalization) are becoming a new form of social interaction, where physical locality gives way to other categories linking people into relevant communities. In relation to the Dagestan realities, it is proposed to consider local deterritized societies through the prism of the conceptual metaphor “global village”. The factors contributing to the formation of such deterritorialized communities are shown. It is also shown the example of such a community - the village of Bezhta situated on the bordeland with the Republic of Georgia. A look at the complex of physical localities united by belonging to this mountain village (the village itself, resettlement villages on the plain of Dagestan, families located outside the republic in labor migration and living a translocal life, and also to a lesser extent the village of Chantliskuri in Georgia) as version of the "global village".

scholarly journals MASLENITSA ("BUTTER WEEK") IN THE FOLK CALENDAR OF THE BESERMEN: TEMPORAL, SPATIAL AND NUTRITIONAL PARAMETERS

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 697-710
Author(s):  
Elena Vasilyevna Popova
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Public Event ◽  
Nutritional Parameters ◽  
Village Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Spatial Parameters ◽  
Time Parameters ◽  
The Village

The article deals with food, time and space parameters of the Beserman Maslenitsa ("butter week, crepe week") rite Machencha / Machincha in the folk calendar and their transformation in the modern rite. The time parameters of the holiday were limited by the week of the Maslenitsa, the last week before the Great Lent, which regulated the beginning and end of the ceremony, some types of works, forms of entertainment and meals. Spatial parameters of the ritual, as well as the movement (sledging) had a producing character, aimed at obtaining a good harvest (flax), and are associated with women's crafts. During the Maslenitsa days, the objects of the landscape - mountain, street, village center - were the places of festive sledgings, festivities and meetings. Maslenitsa rituals reflected the social changes of some residents and honours of members of the village community, family, social and age groups in their new status - newlyweds, young women, girls and boys of marriageable age. Meals, visits to relatives and festive walk rounds of the village's youth were part of the celebration. The main dish of the festival were small flatcakes named taban' made of yeast dough. Modern Maslenitsa as a public event refers to the holiday «Farewell of the Russian winter», with changes of the spatial, temporal and nutritional parameters of the traditional rite. The article is based on field materials and observation of the modern rite.

scholarly journals Deserters, Spies and Kumanists»: Some Episodes from the Peasants’ Everyday Life in Perm Province in the Second Half of 1919

TECHNOLOGOS ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-122
Author(s):  
Dolgova Anzhela
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Thing ◽  
The Village

The article is devoted to the history of the peasants’ everyday life in 1919. The basis is archival documents presenting four criminal cases: two murders, torture and malfeasance. Using comparative historical and typological methods the author showed how peasants from different districts of Perm province reacted to the events in the village. A causal analysis of the links between historical events made it possible to identify the general patterns of the considered social phenomena and processes among the peasantry. The history of everyday life is relevant to this day. It is impossible to study historical facts without addressing this topic. The peasantry constituted the majority of the country's population, and therefore was a kind of indicator of the ongoing internal political changes in the country. The life of the peasants in each region of the country had its own characteristics. It depended on the natural and climatic conditions, the standard of living, and the social composition of the population. The civil war showed that interference in the life of peasants could change their social appearance. The war imbalanced the life of the village for a long time, destroyed social ties, and led to senseless human casualties. The cited archival documents, in a way, are the episodes from peasants’ life in a certain period of time. As long as the author's goal was to convey the era of war the documents are given in the form in which they have survived to this day: with the preservation of spelling, punctuation and style. Due to the absence of editorial revision in them a picture of complex relationship in the village opens up the tragic events unfold with the forced participation of peasants. It becomes clear what the norm was for them and what was the main thing in their life - justice or legality. The peasants’ attitude towards life and death had been changed during the Civil War. Life lost its value, and death began to be perceived as something ordinary and inevitable.

“Dem Was Hard Times, Sho’ Nuff”

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Peter Irons
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Civil War ◽  
New Deal ◽  
White Men ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Hard Times

This chapter is almost entirely in the words of two very different groups of people: the first is four White men, all distinguished in state and federal offices, who defended slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War; the second is composed of thirteen former slaves, in accounts of their lives recorded and transcribed in the 1930s by a New Deal agency, the Federal Writers Project. The four slavery defenders are John Calhoun of South Carolina, a former vice president, who predicted an eventual breakup of the Union over slavery; George Fitzhugh, a lawyer who claimed that Black slaves were “happy” and well-cared-for by their masters; Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, who resigned from the Senate in 1861 to become president of the Confederacy; and Alexander Stephens of Georgia, who served as Davis’s vice president. Countering the myth of the “happy slave,” its victims recounted the brutality they endured, the breakup of slave families by selling wives from husbands and children from parents, and the “breeding” of “big black bucks” with multiple women to produce more slaves.

“I had never had a dancing lesson in my life, but somehow, I knew I could train those other children, and I did.”

2020 ◽  
pp. 7-16
Author(s):  
Sharon Skeel
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
German Immigrants ◽  
Piano Lessons ◽  
The Us

Catherine Littlefield’s great-grandparents, Gottlieb and Catherine Doebele, are German immigrants who settle in Philadelphia in the 1850s and raise six children. Gottlieb dies from injuries sustained while serving with a German regiment in the Civil War, and Catherine Doebele becomes a surrogate parent to her granddaughter, Caroline Doebele, after the girl’s parents divorce. Catherine Doebele (Grandma Doebele) is very religious and disapproves of Caroline’s early interest in dancing but provides her with piano lessons instead. James H. Littlefield, born and raised in Maine, serves in the US Cavalry and later takes a job with the PRR-YMCA in Philadelphia. He loves music and theater and meets Caroline. They marry in 1904.

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