Been in the Storm So Long

by Leon F. Litwack

  18. Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 468; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 274; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 99. See also Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 266–67.

  19. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau made since December 1, 1865, 151; 38 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 53, Preliminary Report Touching the Condition and Management of Emancipated Refugees, Made to the Secretary of War by the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, June 30, 1863 (Washington, D.C., 1864), 3–4; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 36; Dennett, The South As It Is, 130. See also National Freedman, I (Sept. 15, 1865), 255–56, III (July 1869), 20; New York Tribune, Dec. 2, 1865.

  20. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 451; Herbert G. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 (New York, 1976), 264–65.

  21. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 4), 183; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 593; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 264–65; National Anti-Slavery Standard, Aug. 19, 1865, as quoted in Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 144n.

  22. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 163–64. See also Reid, After the War, 220–21.

  23. Waterbury, Seven Years Among the Freedmen, 74–75, 76.

  24. Colored Tennessean, Aug. 12, Oct. 14, 1865. For other examples, see Christian Recorder, April 13, 1863; Black Republican, April 15, 22, 29, May 13, 20, 1865; Colored American (Augusta, Ga.), Dec. 30, 1865, Jan. 13, 1866; Colored Tennessean, March 24, 31, 1866; Tennessean, July 18, 1866; New Era (Washington, D.C.), July 28, 1870.

  25. Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 242–43. See also ibid., 56–57, and Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 154–56.

  26. New York Times, Sept. 8, 1865; Fanny Smart to Adam Smart, Feb. 13, 1866, filed with the Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  27. Albert, House of Bondage, 102–17.

  28. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 231, 39. For post-emancipation “reunions” of married partners living on separate places, see, e.g., II and III: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 82, (Part 4), 111; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 158; XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 117, 212; XIV and XV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 286–89, (Part 2), 369; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 661. The question of where a couple would settle sometimes proved difficult to resolve, with the husband or wife not always willing to leave a “secure” plantation for the uncertainty of the road or the place where the other spouse worked. See, e.g., Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 3), 131, and XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 4), 165, 166.

  29. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 213; VII: Miss. Narr., 53–54; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–66], 151–52.

  30. Rawick, (ed.), American Slave, XVI: Tenn. Narr., 19–21; VII: Miss. Narr., 13–15.

  31. Ibid., XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 248–52. See also XIII: Ga. Narr. (Part 3), 117, and Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 533.

  32. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Miss. Narr., 151–55; VI: Ala. Narr., 176–77; V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 118–20. See also VI: Ala. Narr., 102.

  33. For a discussion of the critical role of kinship and familial patterns in the culture of the slaves, see Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom.

  34. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 28–29. On the impact of the various apprenticeship or “binding out” arrangements, see, e.g., Affidavit of Caroline Johnson, April 10, 1866, Freedmen’s Bureau, Georgia, Registers of Letters Received; Wm. H. Beadle to Col. E. Whittlesey, March 10, 1866, and George S. Hawley to Lt. Fred H. Beecher, May 18, 1866, in Records of the Assistant Commissioners, North Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; William Daniel to John A. Needles, May 6, 1865, Papers of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, XI: 1839–1868, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 112–13; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 207–09.

  35. Macrae, Americans at Home, 318. For a discussion of how slaveholders tended to regard marital and family ties, see Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 452–58, 475–76, and Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 341–43.

  36. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 2.

  37. Ibid., XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 423; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 217. For wartime disruptions of families, see Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 84; XVI: Va. Narr., 14; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 22–23, 371–75, 583–84; C. Peter Ripley, “The Black Family in Transition: Louisiana, 1860–1865,” Journal of Southern History, XLI (1975), 369–80.

  38. WPA, Negro in Virginia, 80; Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 344; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 118; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 235–36.

  39. National Freedman, II (May 1866), 143; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 82–63. See also Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 157–58; New York Tribune, April 4, 1865; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 58; Reid, After the War, 126–27; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 415.

  40. 38 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 53, Preliminary Report Touching the Condition and Management of Emancipated Refugees … by the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, 3–4; Rev. Joseph Warren, Extracts from Reports of Superintendents of Freedmen …, First Series, May, 1864 (Vicksburg, 1864), 38, 40–41; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XVIII: Unwritten History, 124; New York Tribune, Sept. 8, 1865; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 158. For other examples of mass marriages, see Haviland, A Woman’s Life-Work, 267; New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 5, 1864; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 33n., 121.

  41. Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for March 4, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; New York Times, March 2, 1867.

  42. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 160–61; Williamson, After Slavery, 307–08; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 44; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 56n.; New York Times, June 3, 1865; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 414, 417–18, 420.

  43. Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 421; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 154–56 (see also 162–63).

  44. New York Times, Nov. 28, 1863. See also Nordhoff, Freedmen of South Carolina, 23; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 33–34; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 320.

  45. Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 228; Reid, After the War, 282n.; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 389.

  46. Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 164; Clinton B. Fisk, Plain Counsels for Freedmen: In Sixteen Brief Lectures (Boston, 1866), 28–35 (serialized in Free Man’s Press, Austin, Texas, Aug. 15, 22, Sept. 5, 12, 1868); Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 85.

  47. George Parliss, Vicksburg, Miss., to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866; Thomas H. Norton, Meridian, Miss., to Maj. A. W. Preston, Aug. 3, 1867; James DeGrey, Clinton, La., to William H. Webster, Sept. 10, 1867; and James DeGrey, Ms. Tri-Monthly Report, Dec. 31, 1867, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi and Louisiana (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 102; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 121–22.

  48. F. W. Loring and C. F. Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South Considered with Reference to Emigration (Boston, 1869), 13, 136; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1370. See also Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 4, 15, 20, 137. See below, Chapter 8, for female labor and contract negotiations.

  49. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIX: God Struck Me Dead, 135; Towne, Letters and Diary, 183–84.

  50. Samuel A. Agnew, Ms. Diary, entry for Jan. 8, 1867, Univ. of North Carolina; A. Marshall to “My Dear Niece,” Jan. 20, 1867, Joseph Belknap Smith Papers, Duke Univ. See also Avary, Dixie after the War, 192; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 63; New York Times, April 29, 1867.

 
51. Fisk, Plain Counsels for Freedmen, 25–35. For women employed in the cotton barns, see, e.g., Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 235–36.

  52. Avary, Dixie after the War, 362.

  53. Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 123–24. See also The Bulletin (Louisville), Sept. 24, 1881.

  54. Ellison, Shadow and Act, 147–48.

  55. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 2), 52; “Narrative of William Wells Brown,” in Osofsky (ed.), Puttin’ On Ole Massa, 217–18.

  56. Stroyer, “My Life in the South,” in Katz (ed.), Five Slave Narratives, 14; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 177; Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 45–46. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 27, and XVIII: Unwritten History, 46.

  57. Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 374; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 97–98; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 71. For other examples, see Stroyer, “My Life in the South,” in Katz (ed.), Five Slave Narratives, 14, and D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 226n.

  58. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 105; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 37; Reid, After the War, 532; Lester, To Be a Slave, 147.

  59. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 3), 120. For other examples of ex-slaves who chose to take their former master’s surname, see II: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 327; IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 192, (Part 3), 5; XI: Ark. Narr. (Part 7), 245.

  60. Ibid., IV: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 192.

  61. Ibid, IX: Ark. Narr. (Part 3), 105; II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 117, 238, 266; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 54. For other examples, see II and III: S.C. Narr. (Part 1), 14, (Part 3), 59–60; IV: Texas Narr. (Part 1), 137, (Part 2), 237; VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 296.

  62. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 49; Quarles, Negro in the Civil War, 288; National Freedman, II (May 1866), 144. For a discussion of naming practices, both in slavery and in freedom, see also Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 443–50; Gutman, Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 185–201, 230–56, and Williamson, After Slavery, 310–11.

  63. D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 226; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 346–47.

  64. Rawick, (ed.), American Slave, XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 351; Rainwater (ed.), “Letters of James Lusk Alcorn,” 207.

  65. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, V: Texas Narr. (Part 4), 149; Christian Recorder, March 17, 1866. See also Friends’ Central Committee for the Relief of the Emancipated Negroes, Letters from Joseph Simpson (London, 1865), 23.

  66. Bertram W. Doyle, The Etiquette of Race Relations in the South: A Study in Social Control (Chicago, 1937), 2, 3, 15, 53, 191; Blassingame (ed.), Slave Testimony, 488; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 22, 26; X: Ark. Narr. (Part 5), 286; II: S.C. Narr. (Part 2), 95; XVIII: Unwritten History, 43, 44; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 28; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 216.

  67. Louis Manigault, “Visit to ‘Gowrie’ and ‘East Hermitage’ Plantations,” March 1867, Manigault Plantation Records, Univ. of North Carolina; Smedes, Memorials of a Southern Planter, 217; Reid, After the War, 568–69.

  68. Christian Recorder, Nov. 18, 1865; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 73; Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 28–29; Macrae, Americans at Home, 311; Andrews, The South since the War, 229. See also Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 48.

  69. New York Times, June 26, 1864; Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 486; Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Oct. 24, 1865, Nov. 8, 1866, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina.

  70. Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home,

  71. “Carleton” to. Boston Journal, Feb. 13, 1865, reprinted in National Freedman, I (April 1, 1865), 83.

  72. Dennett, The South As It Is, 168–69; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 108.

  73. Trowbridge, The South, 238–39.

  74. Evans, Ballots and Fence Rails, 79; Dennett, The South As It Is, 42. See also Reid, After the War, 419–20.

  75. Reid, After the War, 84, 152; Dennett, The South As It Is, 116.

  76. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 79.

  77. Reid, After the War, 386–37, 387n.-88n.; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 251, 282, 322–23, 351; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 79–80; Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for July 13, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for March 31, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Andrews, The South since the War, 186–87; New York Times, Nov. 28, 1863; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XII: Ga. Narr. (Part 1), 325; Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, July 15, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Francis W. Dawson to [Joseph A. Reeks], June 13, 1865, F. W. Dawson Papers, Duke Univ.; Francis D. Richardson to Gen. St. John R. Liddell, July 31, 1866, John R. Liddell and Family Papers, Louisiana State Univ.

  78. Dennett, The South As It Is, 137; Henry W. Ravenel to [Augustin Louis] Taveau, June 27, 1865, A. L. Taveau Papers, Duke Univ.

  79. Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 351; Reid, After the War, 410n.-lln. See also Dennett, The South As It Is, 183.

  80. John Hammond Moore (ed.), The Juhl Letters to the Charleston Courier: A View of the South, 1865–1871 (Athens, Ga., 1974) (Aug. 24, 1865, and Jan. 26, 1866), 29–30, 72; Samuel A. Agnew, Ms. Diary, entry for July 20, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Nov. 8, 1866, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina.

  81. J. H. Young to James W. White, Aug. 5, 1867, White Papers, Univ. of North Carolina.

  82. Gilbert Thomas Stephenson, Race Distinctions in American Law (New York, 1911), 209; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 230; Workingman’s Advocate, July 21, 1866.

  83. Avary, Dixie after the War, 194.

  84. New Orleans Tribune, Jan. 13, Feb. 28, June 25, Aug. 8, 1865; Loyal Georgian, July 6, 1867; Freedman’s Press, July 18, 1868; New York Times, Aug. 17, 1865, March 22, June 2, 1866, April 29, May 18, June 19, 1867; New York Tribune, July 21, Aug. 22, 1865; Reid, After the War, 386n., 421; Andrews, The South since the War, 11; Dennett, The South As It Is, 293; Trowbridge, The South, 352; Alrutheus A. Taylor, The Negro in Tennessee, 1865–1880 (Washington, D.C., 1941), 226–27; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 52. For an example of integrated travel preceding black agitation on the subject, see the protest of a white Virginian after traveling by rail from Pittsburgh to Richmond, as quoted in New York Times, April 16, 1866.

  85. Stephenson, Race Distinctions in American Law, 208–09; American Freedman, I (July 1866), 59; William H. Dixon, New America (2 vols.; London, 1867), II, 330–32; Reid, After the War, 386n., 421; Dennett, The South As It Is, 293; Richmond Enquirer, Sept. 7, 1867, as quoted in Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 52–53.

  86. New Orleans Tribune, May 16, 1867; New York Times, Feb. 25, March 5, 1866; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 53–54; Colored American, Dec. 30, 1865.

  87. Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 232–33; The Confederate Records of the State of Georgia (5 vols.; Atlanta, 1909), IV, 568; Trowbridge, The South, 161. For a denial of discrimination in “lunatic asylums” in New Orleans, see New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 19, 1866.

  88. Loyal Georgian, July 6, 1867; New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 8, 1865; Williamson, After Slavery, 275–76.

  89. New Orleans Tribune, May 5, 1867. For agitation in other cities, see, e.g., Loyal Georgian, July 6, 1867 (Savannah); Christian Recorder, June 2, 1866 (Baltimore); New York Times, July 9, 1867 (Mobile), May 27, 1867 (Nashville).

  90. S. W. Ramsay, Office of the Charleston City Railway Company, Report of the Board of Directors, April 29, 1867, and John S. Riggs to R. K. Scott, May 3, 1867, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; New Orleans Tribune, May 5, 28, 1867; New York Times, Jan. 7, March 27, 28, April 2, 5, May 27, 1867; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 221, 225; Williamson, After Slavery, 281–63.

  91. WPA, Negro i
n Virginia, 241–42; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 52; New York Times, May 1, 4, 8, 1867; New Orleans Tribune, July 8, 1867. For litigation and rulings by Union officers, see New Orleans Tribune, May 8, July 7, 1867; Freedman’s Press, July 18, 1868; National Freedman, I (Dec. 15, 1865), 362; New York Times, April 21, 22, May 18, June 19, July 10, Aug. 21, Sept. 8, 21, 1867.

  92. New Orleans Tribune, Jan. 13, Feb. 28, May 21, June 25, Aug. 8, 20, 25, 29, 31, Sept. 1, 1865, April 30, May 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 1867; New York Times, Nov. 5, 20, 1862, May 8, 16, 1867; J. C. Reid, Superintendent of the New Orleans and Carrollton Railroad Company, New Orleans, to Hon. E. Heath, Mayor of New Orleans, May 5, 1867, Pierre G. T. Beauregard Papers, Louisiana State Univ.

  93. Macrae, Americans at Home, 297.

  94. Trowbridge, The South, 352–53.

  95. Chesnut, Diary from Dixie, 21–22.

  96. New York Times, Sept. 17, 1865; New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 15, 1865; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 56.

  97. De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 132; Christian Recorder, Feb. 24, 1866. Turner’s remarks were also printed in Colored American, Jan. 13, 1866. For similar sentiments, see Christian Recorder, Aug. 27, 1864, Feb. 18, 1865.

  98. Colored American, Jan. 6, 1866.

  99. Avary, Dixie after the War, 377; New York Times, Feb. 4, 1866; Edmund Rhett to Maj. Gen. Scott, Aug. 12, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.

  100. Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 223; Ravenel, Private Journal, 246. For similar expressions of alarm over the stationing of black troops in their vicinity, see Dennett, The South As It Is, 32–33; National Freedman, I (Sept. 15, 1865), 264; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 170; Andrews, War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl, 231–32, 263–64, 338; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 170; Emma E. Holmes, Ms. Diary, entry for April 7, 1865, Univ. of South Carolina; Grace B. Elmore, Ms. Diary, entry for July 13, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Aug. 2, 1865, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina.