Been in the Storm So Long

by Leon F. Litwack

  76. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 86–97. For accounts of slave prices during the war, see also Ruffin, Diary, II, 353, 466; Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 62; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 167–69; and Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 130–31.

  77. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 195; XVI: Va. Narr., 6; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 39; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 497.

  78. Montgomery Advertiser, quoted in Douglass’ Monthly, IV (Sept. 1861), 526; ibid., IV (July 1861), 481.

  79. James H. Brewer, The Confederate Negro: Virginia’s Craftsmen and Military Laborers, 1861–1865 (Durham, N.C., 1969); Wiley, Southern Negroes, 110–15; Coulter, Confederate States of America, 258; Charles B. Dew, Ironmaker to the Confederacy: Joseph R. Anderson and the Tredegar Iron Works (New Haven, 1966), 250; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 193; Ruffin, Diary, II, 20; New York Times, Feb. 11, 1864.

  80. Richmond Examiner, quoted in New York Times, Oct. 16, 1864. For the efforts to mobilize black manpower for the Confederate war effort, see Brewer, Confederate Negro, 6–11, 139–40; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 114–22; Coulter, Confederate States of America, 258–59; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 81–82; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 218; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 132–33; Johns, Florida During the Civil War, 151; Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy, 56–57, 254–55; Ravenel, Private Journal, 46, 50, 96.

  81. Wiley (ed.), Letters of Warren Akin, 33; Coulter, Confederate States of America, 259. For an owner who willingly sent her carriage driver for service on fortifications, see Mary Ann Cobb to F. W. C. Cook, July 12, 1864, in Coleman (ed.), Athens, 1861–1865, 94–95.

  82. Brewer, Confederate Negro, 153–55; “Diary of Benjamin L. C. Wailes,” quoted in Bettersworth (ed.), Mississippi in the Confederacy, 225–26. For conditions among the black military laborers, see also Wiley, Southern Negroes, 123–31; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 169–70; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 133; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 325; New York Times, Sept. 6, 1863; New York Tribune, Jan. 26, 1865.

  83. Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 132; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 124–25, 131–33; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 275; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 325.

  84. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 132; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 4), 182.

  85. Jacob Stroyer, “My Life in the South,” in William Loren Katz (ed.), Five Slave Narratives (New York, 1969), 35–36, 81–97.

  86. Stephen Moore to Rachel Moore, July 8, 1862, Thomas J. Moore Papers, Univ. of South Carolina. For the life of the body servant, see also Armstrong, Old Massa’s People, 282–91; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 193; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 167; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 583; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 154–55; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 188–39; VI: Ala. Narr., 313–14; VII: Miss. Narr., 27–28; XII and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 107–08, 325–26, (Part 3), 272; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 134–42.

  87. Armstrong, Old Massa’s People, 281; John F. Stegeman, These Men She Gave: The Civil War Diary of Athens, Georgia (Athens, Ga., 1964), 39–40; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S. C. Narr. (Part 3), 154. See also Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for Oct. 14, 1862, Univ. of South Carolina.

  88. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 193; Armstrong, Old Massa’s People, 288–89, 295–99; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S. C. Narr. (Part 4), 3; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 181; VII: Miss. Narr., 28; XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 2), 326; XTV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 115–16; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 196; Putnam, Richmond During the Confederacy, 178–79; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 143–45.

  89. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 278; Spencer B. King, Jr. (ed.), Rebel Lawyer: Letters of Theodorick W. Montfort, 1861–1862 (Athens, Ga., 1965), 69, 77; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 141. See also New York Times, Sept. 30, 1862, Sept. 16, 1863, and Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 168.

  90. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 143n.; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 188–89.

  91. Montgomery Weekly Mail, Sept. 2, 1863, as quoted in Durden, The Gray and the Black, 32.

  92. Joseph T. Wilson, The Black Phalanx: A History of the Negro Soldiers of the United States in the Wars of 1775–1812, 1861-’65 (Hartford, 1888), 482; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 147–48n.; Gerald M. Capers, Occupied City: New Orleans under the Federals, 1862–1865 (Lexington, Ky., 1965), 216–17; John W. Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 1860–1880 (Chicago, 1973), 33–34; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 38; James M. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War (New York, 1965), 23–24.

  93. McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 24; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 39; Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm: Negro Troops in the Union Army, 1861–1865 (New York, 1956), 67, 142.

  94. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 203–04; New Orleans Tribune, Nov. 3, 1864. For the debate on slave enlistments, see Durden, The Gray and the Black, especially 29–100.

  95. Durden, The Gray and the Black, 89, 95, 118–19; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 156–57; McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 244. See also Fremantle, Three Months in the Southern States, 282n.; Wiley (ed.), Letters of Warren Akin, 32–33; Ravenel, Private Journal, 201; New York Times, Sept. 12, 1863; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 152, 154–57; Coulter, Confederate States of America, 267–68; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 170–71; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 133–34.

  96. Durden, The Gray and the Black, 76; Wiley (ed.), Letters of Warren Akin, 117; Brooks and Lefler (eds.), Papers of Walter Clark, I, 140.

  97. Durden, The Gray and the Black, 202–03; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 158–59; John S. Wise, The End of an Era (Boston, 1902), 394–95.

  98. New York Tribune, April 4, 1865; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 456.

  99. Richmond Examiner, Feb. 27, 1865, quoted in New York Times, March 5, 1865.

  100. New York Times, Jan. 1, 1865; Hitchcock, Marching with Sherman, 128; Milo M. Quaife (ed.), From the Cannon’s Mouth: The Civil War Letters of General Alpheus S. Williams (Detroit, 1959), 371.

  101. Durden, The Gray and the Black, 44; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 160–61; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865 (New York, 1971), 278–79; Trowbridge, The South: A Tour, 208. For periodic reports of black “soldiers” in the Confederate Army, see New York Times, Aug. 17, 1861, Oct. 27, 1862, March 1, 14, May 14, 1863, March 23, 1865.

  102. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 134; XVI: Tenn. Narr., 12–13.

  103. Douglass’ Monthly, IV (June 1861), 477; New York Times, May 21, Dec. 15, 1861; House (ed.), “Deterioration of a Georgia Rice Plantation,” 101; Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region, 296; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 162.

  104. Douglass’ Monthly, IV (June 1861), 477; New York Times, May 11, 21, June 1, Dec. 15, 1861; Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 295–97; “Diary of Benjamin L. C. Wailes,” in Bettersworth (ed.), Mississippi in the Confederacy, 234–35; Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region, 296–97; Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (New York, 1943), 363–65; Aptheker, “Notes on Slave Conspiracies in Confederate Mississippi,” Journal of Negro History, XXIX (Jan. 1944), 75; Harvey Wish, “Slave Disloyalty under the Confederacy,” Journal of Negro History, XXIII (Oct. 1938), 443; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 162; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 127; Ruffin, Diary, II, 35.

  105. Cassville (Ga.) Standard, quoted in New York Times, May 31, 1861; Ruffin, Diary, II, 35; Nancy and D. Willard to Micajah Wilkinson, May 28, 1861, Micajah Wilkinson Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 82.

  106. Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for Sept. 29, 1862, Univ. of South Carolina; Aptheker, “Notes on Slave Conspiracies in Confederate Mississippi,” 77.

  107. Julia LeGrand, The Journal of Julia LeGrand (eds. Kate M. Rowland and Mrs. Morris E. Croxall; Richmond, 1911), 58–59. On Jan. 1, 1863, she wrote: “The long expected negro dinner did not come off.” Ibid., 61. For rumors of a general insurrection, see also Wish
, “Slave Disloyalty under the Confederacy,” 445–46; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 82–83.

  108. New York Times, Jan. 25, 1863; L. G. C. [Causey] to her husband [R. J. Causey], Nov. 19, 1863, R. J. Causey Papers, Louisiana State Univ.

  109. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 68; Aptheker, “Notes on Slave Conspiracies in Confederate Mississippi,” 78–79; Elijah P. Marrs, Life and History of the Rev. Elijah P. Marrs (Louisville, 1885), quoted in McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 206–07. For a conspiracy by slaves near Laurinburg, North Carolina, to force themselves into the Union lines, see David P. Conyngham, Sherman’s March Through the South (New York, 1865), 355.

  110. “Memorial to the Senate and House of Representatives of Georgia,” Proceedings of the Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia, Assembled at Augusta, January 10th, 1866 (Augusta, 1866), 18. For punishments meted out to suspected insurrectionists, see Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 162–63; Sydnor, A Gentleman of the Old Natchez Region, 296–97; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 68, 82; Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 365–67; New York Times, Oct. 21, 1862, Oct. 29, 1863; John D. Winters, The Civil War in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1963), 307; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 127.

  111. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 248.

  112. Ibid., 248; Christian Recorder (Philadelphia), June 28, 1862; Anglo-African, Sept. 21, 1861.

  113. Susan R. Jervey and Charlotte St. J. Ravenel, Two Diaries: From Middle St. John’s, Berkeley, South Carolina, February–May, 1865 (St. John’s Hunting Club, 1921; copy in South Caroliniana Library, Univ. of South Carolina), 7, 18; Durden, The Gray and the Black, 56. See also William G. Eliot, The Story of Archer Alexander: From Slavery to Freedom, March 30, 1863 (Boston, 1885), 46; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 359; Ruffin, Diary, II, 409–10; Charles E. Cauthen (ed.), Family Letters of the Three Wade Hamptons, 1782–1901 (Columbia, S.C., 1953), 102; Nordhoff, Freedmen of South Carolina, 12; Oscar O. Winther (ed.), With Sherman to the Sea: The Civil War Letters, Diaries & Reminiscences of Theodore F. Upson (Bloomington, Ind., 1958), 73; John W. Hanson, Historical Sketch of the Old Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers (Boston, 1866), 162; John Beatty, The Citizen-Soldier; or Memoirs of a Volunteer (Cincinnati, 1879), 132; New York Times, June 13, 1861, Nov. 3, 1862, May 9, 11, 1863, March 7, 1864, March 16, 1865; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 76–77; Wish, “Slave Disloyalty under the Confederacy,” 446–47; Allan Nevins, The War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864 (New York, 1971), 415. For blacks as Union spies, see, e.g., WPA, Negro in Virginia, 199–200, and McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 147–49.

  114. McPherson, Negro’s Civil War, 150–53; John V. Hadley, Seven Months a Prisoner; or Thirty-six Days in the Woods (Indianapolis, 1868), 84; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 21.

  115. James M. Guthrie, Camp-Fires of the Afro-American (Cincinnati [1899]), 306–16; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 71–74; Joel Williamson, After Slavery: The Negro in South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1861–1877 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1965), 6–7; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for May 14, 1862, Univ. of South Carolina. For the subsequent testimony of Smalls before the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission in 1863, see Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 373–79.

  116. New York Times, June 2, 1861; Friends’ Central Committee for the Relief of the Emancipated Negroes, Letters from Joseph Simpson (London, 1865), 23.

  117. Douglass’ Monthly, IV (July 1861), 487; New York Times, May 27, 1861; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 188–89; Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction (Indianapolis, 1964), 13–15; Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861–1865 (West-port, Conn., 1973), 11–17; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 175–76; Nevins, War for the Union: The Organized War, 1863–1864, 421–23; C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), 25–39.

  118. Simkins and Patton, Women of the Confederacy, 163; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 9–10; New York Times, Nov. 20, 1861, May 7, 1864; Bettersworth, Confederate Mississippi, 164; Bragg, Louisiana in the Confederacy, 210; Blassingame, Black New Orleans, 26, 28; Johns, Florida During the Civil War, 63; Douglass’ Monthly, IV (Dec. 1861), 565–66; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 78.

  119. Douglass’ Monthly, IV (Sep. 1861), 526; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 178–80; Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 111; Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 270; A. O. Howell, Jan. 19 and Feb. 6, 1864, American Missionary Assn. Archives; James E. Glazier to his parents, Feb. 28, 1862, Glazier Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; Ephraim M. Anderson, Memoirs: Historical and Personal (St. Louis, 1868), 364; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 957, 959; J. H. Easterby (ed.), The South Carolina Rice Plantation: As Revealed in the Papers of Robert F. W. Allston (Chicago, 1945), 289–90; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 449–54, 456, 545–46; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 276; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 169; Williamson, After Slavery, 6; New York Times, June 15, Oct. 27, Dec. 18, 1861, Jan. 14, 19, Feb. 9, Oct. 26, Dec. 16, 1862, March 9, June 26, July 12, Aug. 8, Nov. 10, 1863, May 7, 1864, March 2, 1865.

  120. Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 62; New York Times, Dec. 20, 1861, Nov. 15, 1862, May 7, 1864; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 545; Winters, Civil War in Louisiana, 163, Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 11–12.

  121. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 92–93; Letters from Joseph Simpson, 22; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 71, 246; Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 270–71; Stone, Brokenburn, 202; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 251; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 128; New York Times, Dec. 26, 1861, Jan. 21, Feb. 9, Oct. 19, Nov. 29, 1862, June 14, 17, July 3, 12, 1863, July 17, 1864, April 2, 17, 1865; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 450–51.

  122. Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 929–30, 934–35, 935, 939–40.

  123. Rogers, History of Georgetown County, 406–07.

  124. Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 199–200, 289–90, 291–92, 292–93. Having reached similar conclusions about defecting slaves, Edmund Ruffin could rationalize his son’s decision to sell twenty-nine of those who had remained. “These were the fragments of sundry families, of which the other members had gone off in the several previous elopements—& who were therein active participators, as all the adults who remained were passive, knowing well the intentions of the others, & keeping their secret.” Ruffin, Diary, II, 353.

  125. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 138–39, 140; New York Times, Dec. 12, 1862; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 64; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 110. See also Ravenel, Private Journal, 115–16.

  126. Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 247; Thompson, An Englishman in the American Civil War, 104; Ray Allen Billington (ed.), The Journal of Charlotte L. Forten (New York, 1953), 160.

  127. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 83; Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 360–61.

  128. John Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen: Reminiscences of the Civil War (New York, 1907; repr. 1969), 2; Emily Caroline Douglas, Ms. Autobiography, c. 1904, [167–68], Louisiana State Univ.; New York Times, Dec. 18, 1861. See also Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 173–74, 359.

  129. Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 42; New York Times, June 16, 1861, Jan. 14, April 6, Dec. 16, 1862. See also Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 699–702, and Albert, House of Bondage, 114–15.

  130. Towne, Letters and Diary, 24; Letters from Joseph Simpson, 26; P. J. Staudenraus (ed.), “A War Correspondent’s View of St. Augustine and Fernandina: 1863,” Florida Historical Quarterly, XLI (July 1962), 64; Julius Lester, To Be a Slave (New York, 1968), 29. See also Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 110–11; Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 268; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 139; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 169; XVIII: Unwritten History, 173.

  131. New York Times, Dec. 18, 1861; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 174; Albert, House of Bondage, 134–35.

  132. Rawick (ed.), A
merican Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 450; Douglass’ Monthly, IV (Dec. 1861), 564.

  133. Stone, Brokenburn, 28.

  134. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 138, 139–40, 145–48, 151–52, 154, 176, 264–65.

  135. Wise, End of an Era, 74; Speech of James McDowell, Jr. (of Rockbridge) in the House of Delegates of Virginia, on the Slave Question (Richmond, 1832), reprinted in Eric Foner (ed.), Nat Turner (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), 113. On January 4, 1862, Edmund Ruffin confided his recollections of the Nat Turner insurrection to his diary. Diary, II, 207–09.

  136. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 38, 292–93.

  137. Jones (ed.), Heroines of Dixie, 118.

  138. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 189.

  Chapter Two: Black Liberators

  1. Report of the Proceedings of a Meeting Held at Concert Hall, Philadelphia, on Tuesday Evening, November 3, 1863, to Take into Consideration the Condition of the Freed People of the South (Philadelphia, 1863), 22.

  2. George H. Hepworth, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword; or, The Gulf-Department in ’63 (Boston, 1864), 179.

  3. W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935), 110.

  4. Christian Recorder, April 23, May 28, 1864.

  5. Douglass’ Monthly, III (May 1861), 451.

  6. Wiley, Southern Negroes, 301; New York Times, Oct. 18, 1862.

  7. Roy P. Basler (ed.), The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols.; New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), V, 423; V. Jacque Voegeli, Free but Not Equal: The Midwest and the Negro During the Civil War (Chicago, 1967), 99; Bell I. Wiley, The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis, 1951), 120.

  8. William C. Bryant II (ed.), “A Yankee Soldier Looks at the Negro,” Civil War History, VII (1961), 144.