106. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 219–20. See also Capt. William A. Poillon to Brig. Gen. Wager Swayne, Nov. 1865, and Lt. George Parliss to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Alabama and Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
107. Williamson, After Slavery, 87, 91; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 57–58, 62; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 74–77; Horace James to the Secretaries of the American Missionary Association, Oct. 20, 1865, American Missionary Assn. Archives. For the work of the Bureau, see also Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard (2 vols.; New York, 1907); “Of the Dawn of Freedom,” in W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago, 1903), 13–40; Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather; Abbott, The Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina; Howard A. White, The Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970).
108. Andrews, The South since the War, 23–24; Christian Recorder, Dec. 1, 1866. For critical observations of Bureau personnel and their treatment of the freedmen, see letters and affidavits from Bacchus Brinson (colored), Augusta, Ga., March 21, 1866, Berry Chalman (freedman), Augusta, Ga., May 24, 1866, William Davis and others (freedmen), March 31, 1866, Margaret J. McMurry (white), Marietta, Ga., Oct. 25, 1866, and M. V. Jordan, Miller Co., Ga., Oct. 27, 1866, in Freedmen’s Bureau (Registers of Letters Received), Georgia. See also black testimony on the Bureau in Christian Recorder, Aug. 12, 1865, May 26, June 9, 1866, and Trowbridge, The South, 465.
109. On black Bureau agents, see, e.g., the letters and reports of Martin R. Delany and B. F. Randolph, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), and of J. J. Wright, Records of the Subdivision of Beaufort, South Carolina, Freedmen’s Bureau.
110. New Orleans Tribune, Dec. 14, 23, 1865.
111. De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 39, 41–42. See also Dennett, The South As It Is, 109–10, 221.
112. New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 31, 1867; De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 29–30. For typical cases handled by a Bureau agent, see, e.g., Reports of J. J. Wright, Records of the Subdivision of Beaufort, South Carolina, and the Tri-Monthly Reports of James DeGrey, as submitted to William H. Webster, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Louisiana (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Dennett, The South As It Is, 125–26; and De Forest, Union Officer in the Reconstruction, 28–36.
113. Dennett, The South As It Is, 73–74. See also the testimony of Lorenzo Ivy in Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 80.
114. Christian Recorder, June 23, 1866; Affidavit of Bacchus Brinson, Augusta, Ga., March 21, 1866, Freedmen’s Bureau (Registers of Letters Received), Georgia; Amos McCollough to Gen. O. O. Howard, May 6, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, North Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
115. 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen [Jan. 3, 1867], 113, 116; Capt. Randolph Stoops to Capt. George L. Childs, July 15, 1865, and Statement of Frederick Nicholas and Miner Poindexter of Columbia, Fluvanna Co., Virginia, June 28, 1865, Brock Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library.
116. Lt. George Parliss to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866, Capt. J. H. Weber to Col. Samuel Thomas, July 1, 1865, Maj. George D. Reynolds to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, Oct. 5, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
117. New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 31, 1867; Lt. C. W. Clarke to Col. Samuel Thomas, June 29, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
118. New Orleans Tribune, Aug. 31, Oct. 22, 1865.
Chapter Eight: Back to Work: The New Dependency
1. Henry Lee Swint, The Northern Teacher in the South, 1862–1870 (Nashville, 1941), 89.
2. Christian Recorder, Sept. 30, 1865.
3. Nordhoff, Freedmen of South Carolina, 7–8.
4. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 237; Towne, Letters and Diary, 31; New Orleans Tribune, Oct. 11, Nov. 21, 1865.
5. Lt. Edward M. Stoeber to Bvt. Maj. Taylor, July 24, 1865; “Memorandum of Extracts from Speech by Major Delany, African, at the Brick Church, St. Helena Island, South Carolina, Sunday, July 23, 1865,” submitted by Lt. Alexander Whyte, Jr., to Col. Charles H. Howard, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau. For the speech’s repercussions, see also W. E. Towne to Bvt. Maj. Gen. Saxton, Aug. 17, 1865, in the same records.
6. Loyal Georgian, Jan. 20, 1866.
7. New York Times, April 30, 1865; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 53, Preliminary Report … by the American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission, June 30, 1863, 6–7. For favorable views of black labor, see also, e.g., W. E. Towne to Bvt. Maj. Gen. Saxton, Aug. 17, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; A. C. Voris to Maj. George A. Hicks, Oct. 21, 1865, Brock Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part 1, 117–18, Part II, 5, 13, 42, 43, 182, 247; Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 8–9, 10; Reid, After the War, 569–70; Trowbridge, The South, 138, 162, 581; Colored Tennessean, March 24, 1866; Christian Recorder, Aug. 19, Sept. 30, 1865; New York Times, April 8, Oct. 1, Nov. 12, 1865.
8. Trowbridge, The South, 150. See also ibid., 288; Reid, After the War, 385; and New York Times, Oct. 6, 1866.
9. Reid, After the War, 385; Trowbridge, The South, 230n.-31n.; Swint (ed.), Dear Ones at Home, 233.
10. New Orleans Tribune, July 16, 1865.
11. Williamson, After Slavery, 102.
12. Scarborough, The Overseer, 153; New York Times, June 21, 1863. See also Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VIII: Ark. Narr. (Part 1), 71.
13. New York Times, March 19, 1864. For wartime articulation of demands by black laborers, see also Towne, Letters and Diary, 24; New York Times, Oct. 14, 1862, June 21, 1863; Annette Koch to Christian D. Koch, June 27, 1863, Koch Papers, Louisiana State Univ.; Sitterson, Sugar Country, 209; Scarborough, The Overseer, 155; LeConte, ’Ware Sherman, 56; Ravenel, Private Journal, 215, 216; Knox, Camp-fire and Cotton Field, 374.
14. Hepworth, Whip, Hoe, and Sword, 29–30. For a similar incident, resulting in the dismissal of the overseer, see New York Times, Oct. 17, 1863.
15. Towne, Letters and Diary, 24; Pearson (ed.), Letters from Port Royal, 250, 300–01, 303–04.
16. Patrick, Fall of Richmond, 118–19; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, XI: Mo. Narr., 115; VII: Okla. Narr., 184–85.
17. Jones, Heroines of Dixie, 119–20; Jervey and Ravenel, Two Diaries, 13.
18. Ravenel, Private Journal, 212, 214–18; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1284.
19. Trowbridge, The South, 428.
20. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 109; Jonathan Worth to Col. Whittlesey, Nov. 23, 1865, in J. G. De Roulhac Hamilton (ed.), The Correspondence of Jonathan Worth (2 vols.; Raleigh, 1909), I, 451; Letters from Joseph Simpson (May 16, 1865), 12. See also Margaret L. Montgomery, “Alabama Freedmen: Some Reconstruction Documents,” Phylon, XIII (1952), 245; Trowbridge, The South, 495; National Freedman, I (Aug. 15, 1865), 226.
21. Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Aug. 2, 1865, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1241, 1371, 1405, 1412.
22. For examples of these concerns, see 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 54, 56; Loyal Georgian, Jan. 27, 1866; Wiley, Southern Negroes, 231–33; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 79, 82; Dennett, The South As It Is, 254–55.
23. New Orleans Tribune, Nov. 30, 1864, Jan. 28, 29, Feb. 2, March 1, 8, July 16, 1865. See also Richard H. Cain in Christian Recorder, June 17, 1865.
24. Christian Recorder, March 25, 1865; Evans, Ballots and Fence Rails, 68–69.
25. Patrick, Fall of Richmond, 125.
26. McPherso
n, Negro’s Civil War, 294; Maj. George D. Reynolds to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, Oct. 5, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau. For additional evidence of freedmen’s land expectations, see Capt. William A. Poillon to Brig. Gen. Wager Swayne, Nov. 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Alabama (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Bvt. Brig. Gen. Alvin C. Voris to Maj. George A. Hicks, Oct. 7, 1865, Brock Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library; 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen [Jan. 3, 1867], 4; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 394; J. S. Fullerton, Report of the Administration of Freedmen’s Affairs in Louisiana (Washington, D.C., 1865), 2; Dennett, The South As It Is, 188–89.
27. Andrews, The South since the War, 97–98; Thomas Smith to Capt. J. H. Weber, Nov. 3, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Letters from Joseph Simpson (May 29, 1865), 13; Manuel Gottlieb, “The Land Question in Georgia During Reconstruction,” Science and Society, III (1939), 360.
28. D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 234; Elias Horry Deas to Anne Deas, Aug. 12, 1865, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Josiah Gorgas, Ms. Journal, entry for Aug. 30, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Samuel A. Agnew, Ms. Diary, entry for Nov. 3, 1865, Univ. of North Carolina; Petition of 18 Planters, Pineville, Charleston District, Sept. 1, 1865, Trenholm Papers, Univ. of North Carolina; Donald MacRae to Julia MacRae, Sept. 4, 1865, MacRae Papers, Duke Univ.; Ravenel, Private Journal, 258; Oliphant et al. (eds.), Letters of William Gilmore Simms, IV, 528, 560; Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 27–28; Gottlieb, “The Land Question in Georgia During Reconstruction,” 359; Savannah Writers’ Project, Savannah River Plantations (Savannah, 1947), 324; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 150–51; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 207; Andrews, The South since the War, 232–33.
29. The text of the meeting with the black ministers may be found in National Freedman, I (April 1, 1865), 98–101, and in New York Tribune, Feb. 13, 1865. On Sherman’s Order No. 15 and the land policy of the Freedmen’s Bureau, see Williamson, After Slavery, 59–63; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 104–05; and the testimony of Gen. Rufus Saxton in 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 221.
30. Trowbridge, The South, 151; Edward Barnwell Heyward to Catherine Maria Clinch Heyward, May 5, 1867, Heyward Family Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Reid, After the War, 564, 59. For similar sentiments, see Dennett, The South As It Is, 341–42, and 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part III, 77.
31. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 191, Part III, 31; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, IV and V: Texas Narr. (Part 2), 179, (Part 3), 78; XIV: N.C. Narr. (Part 1), 219; Perdue et al. (eds.), Weevils in the Wheat, 291.
32. Bradford, Harriet Tubman, 102; Eppes, Negro of the Old South, 133.
33. Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VI: Ala. Narr., 314–15; Maj. George D. Reynolds to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, Oct. 5, 1865, and Capt. William A. Poillon to Brig. Gen. Wager Swayne, Nov. 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi and Alabama (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 4–5; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 218. For instructions to Bureau agents regarding the land expectations of blacks, see also Freedmen’s Bureau, 34, 95, 135, 147, 162–63, 309, 367–68.
34. Black Republican, April 15, 1865; Christian Recorder, Aug. 26, 1865. See also Colored Tennessean, Oct. 14, 1865.
35. W. E. Towne to Bvt. Maj. Gen. Saxton, Aug. 17, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Armstrong, Old Massa’s People, 334–35; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, III: S.C. Narr. (Part 3), 45; Williamson, After Slavery, 166; Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 200–01, 214–15; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 73, 75–76, 79–81.
36. New York Times, May 12, 1867; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 219–20; Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 447–48; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 74–75.
37. 39 Cong., 2 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 6, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen [Jan. 3, 1867], 120; Rawick (ed.), American Slave, VII: Miss. Narr., 97–98, 147; Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 60; Richardson, Negro in the Reconstruction of Florida, 76; Dennett, The South As It Is, 73.
38. E. Merton Coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 1865–1877 (Baton Rouge, 1947), 109; Gottlieb, “The Land Question in Georgia During Reconstruction,” 364; New Orleans Tribune, April 19, May 6, 1865; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 95, 203; “Petition from Colored Citizens of Roanoke Island,” enclosed in Bvt. Maj. Daniel Hart to Commanding Officer, Post of Goldsboro, N.C., Dec. 28, 1867, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, North Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
39. Dennett, The South As It Is, 248–51; Gottlieb, “The Land Question in Georgia During Reconstruction,” 364.
40. Botume, First Days Amongst the Contrabands, 195–99; Armstrong and Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students, 181; Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, II, 238–39; Andrews, The South since the War, 212; Ames, From a New England Woman’s Diary in Dixie, 95–103.
41. Ames, From a New England Woman’s Diary in Dixie, 98, 99–103; McFeely, Yankee Stepfather, 156–57.
42. New York Times, Oct. 10, 12, 13, 19, 1867; New Era, July 7, 1870; WPA, Negro in Virginia, 218. For a similar confrontation in Hampton, Virginia, see National Freedman, I (Sept. 15, 1865), 267–68, and New York Tribune, Aug. 25, 1865.
43. Avary, Dixie after the War, 345; Lt. Erastus W. Everson to Bvt. Maj. Henry W. Smith, Jan. 30, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Ravenel, Private Journal, 271–72; New York Times, Feb. 5, 1866; Trowbridge, The South, 539–40. See also Williamson, After Slavery, 82–85.
44. Dennett, The South As It Is, 291; William Heyward to James Gregorie, June 4, 1868, Gregorie-Elliott Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1308–09; Trowbridge, The South, 393. For agreements among planters not to sell or rent lands to blacks, see Douglas G. Manning to Mrs. John L. Manning, Dec. 25, 1865, Williams-Chesnut-Manning Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; South Carolina Leader, Dec. 16, 1865; 39 Cong., 1 Sess., House Exec. Doc. 70, Freedmen’s Bureau, 371; Andrews, The South since the War, 206; New York Times, Jan. 27, 29, 1866; Taylor, Negro in the Reconstruction of Virginia, 106–07. See also Dennett, The South As It Is, 344–45, and Reid, After the War, 564–65.
45. Allen S. Izard to Mrs. William Mason Smith, Sept. 15, 1865, in D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 231.
46. 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Exec. Doc. 27, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau [1865–1866], 36–37.
47. Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 140. See also the contracts cited in note 49.
48. Williamson, After Slavery, 97; H. A. Moore, Jr., to Maj. Gen Scott, April 19, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
49. Contracts between Joseph Glover and freedmen, Aug. 13, 1865, to Jan. 1, 1866, and Jan. 1, 1866, to Jan. 1, 1867, Glover-North Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Contracts between Elias Horry Deas and freedmen, Sept. 7, 1865, and March 3, 1866, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina; Felix Shank to Capt. M. Whalen (Freedmen’s Bureau agent), July 14, 1868, including contract with freedman, Feb. 5, 1868, and Contracts between A. J. and J. W. Shank and Enos (freedman) and Augustus (freedman), Jan. 5, 1867, Joseph Belknap Smith Papers, Duke Univ.; “Form of Contracts between planters and freedmen, as substantially adopted by the Darlington meeting, revised and adopted by the mass meeting of Sumter, Kershaw and Clarendon planters, Dec. 21, 1865, and approved by Maj. Gen. Saxton, of the Freedmen’s Bureau,” in 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 241–42; “A Freedmen’s Contract, 1865,” in Easterby (ed.),
South Carolina Rice Plantation, 354–55; “Terms of Agreement between Charles and E. B. Heyward, Esqrs., and certain labourers,” June 5, 1865, in Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 139–40; Dennett, The South As It Is, 281–83; Lt. C. W. Clarke to Col. Samuel Thomas, June 29, 1865, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Rogers, Thomas County, 1865–1900, 30–31; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 136; Loring and Atkinson, Cotton Culture and the South, 28.
50. H. A. Moore, Jr., to Maj. Gen Scott, April 19, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, South Carolina (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau; Rollin, Martin R. Delany, 261–62.
51. Trowbridge, The South, 386. On hours of labor, see contracts cited in note 49.
52. Trowbridge, The South, 367–68; Lt. George Parliss to Lt. Stuart Eldridge, April 9, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioners, Mississippi (Letters Received), Freedmen’s Bureau.
53. Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 33, 56; Trowbridge, The South, 430; Dennett, The South As It Is, 291; Pierce, The Negroes at Port Royal, 9; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 157; “Visit to ‘Gowrie’ and ‘East Hermitage’ Plantations,” March 1867, Manigault Plantation Records, Univ. of North Carolina. For contract provisions regarding the driver or black foreman, see also Elias H. Deas contract with freedmen, March 3, 1866, Deas Papers, Univ. of South Carolina, and 39 Cong., 1 Sess., Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, Part II, 241–42.
54. Trowbridge, The South, 391; Reid, After the War, 490. The estimates of compensation rates are based on the archival records and published reports of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the accounts of postwar travelers in the South (especially Sidney Andrews, John R. Dennett, J. T. Trowbridge, and Whitelaw Reid), and the black press.
55. Dennett, The South As It Is, 321–22; Reid, After the War, 526; Report of the General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas for 1864, 31. On compensation by shares, see, e.g., the Glover and Deas contracts with freedmen cited in note 49; John H. Bills, Ms. Diary, entry for Dec. 31, 1866, Univ. of North Carolina; Dr. Ethelred Philips to Dr. James J. Philips, Jan. 21, 1866, James J. Philips Collection, Univ. of North Carolina; Myers (ed.), Children of Pride, 1363; Easterby (ed.), South Carolina Rice Plantation, 210, 216; D. E. H. Smith (ed.), Mason Smith Family Letters, 264; Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 139; and the archival records and published reports of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Although domestic servants were often paid on a daily or weekly basis, some contracts compensated them with a share of the proceeds from sale of the crop. See, e.g., Williamson, After Slavery, 159, and Wharton, Negro in Mississippi, 126–27.
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