Freedmen thought that they had a moral right to the land. This sentiment is expressed in a statement issued by freedmen in Virginia in protest against their removal from a contraband camp there in 1866: “We has a right to the land where we are located. Our wives, our children, our husbands, has been sold over and over again to purchase the lands we now locates upon; for that reason we have a divine right to the land.... And den didn’t we clear the land, and raise de crops ob corn, ob cotton, ob tobacco, ob rice, ob sugar, ob everything? And den didn’t dem large cities in de North grown up on de cotton and de sugar and de rice dat we made? ... I say dey has grown rich, and my people is poor.”24
Emancipation would usher in a new economic order as compensation for their years of involuntary work on the land, they believed. A black preacher in Florida told a group of fieldhands, “It’s de white man’s turn ter labor now... whites would no longer own all the land, fur de Gouvernment is gwine ter gie ter ev‘ry nigger forty acres of lan’ an’ a mule.”25 One confident Georgian offered to sell to his former master his share of the plantation that he expected to receive after the Federal redistribution.26 Eli Coleman told his reviewer in the 1930s that “it looks like the Government would have give us part of our Maser’s land cause everything he had or owned the slaves made it for him.”27 Agreeing with this view, William Coleman remarked, “They should have give us part of Maser’s land as us poor old slaves we made what our Masers had.”28
While it appeared initially that the government would grant land to freed blacks in the South, for the masses of them, this never happened. As early as January 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman responded to the large numbers of freedmen who flocked to his lines by designating all the Sea Islands south of Charleston and all abandoned rice fields along rivers up to thirty feet deep as areas for black settlement. Black families were to be settled on 40-acre plots and given “possessory title.”29 Given Sherman’s negative racial attitude and the fact that he allowed his white soldiers on at least one occasion to kill black recruits, it is ironic that he would issue an order granting land to freedmen. Apparently, Sherman hoped by such an order to get rid of the thousands of blacks who followed his army, to keep black males out of the Union army, and to grievously injure the morale and material fortunes of his enemies. Southern whites, he reasoned, would be humiliated and publicly insulted by the very thought that their former slaves would own their land.30 What could better demonstrate the powerlessness of Southern whites before their enemy?
Special Field Orders No. 15 thereafter was the principal topic of conversation in black communities throughout the South. For example, blacks in Savannah held a meeting on February 2,1865, at the Second African Baptist Church attended by General Rufus Saxton, whom Sherman had placed in charge of the land distribution program, and his staff. The meeting attracted so much interest that the building was packed to capacity, and hundreds of freedmen were turned away. When Saxton said, “I have come to tell you what the President of the United States has done for you,” the audience responded with emotion, “God bless Massa Linkum.” Hymns were sung, tears were shed, prayers and thanks were given to God, and men began preparing for a life on their own land.31 Once assured of the legality of General Sherman’s Special Field Orders No. 15, General Saxton, an assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau, proceeded to implement the Bureau’s program of land redistribution. These early government policies were never carried out because President Andrew Johnson’s Amnesty Proclamation of May 1865 pardoned former Confederates and restored all their property rights to them, except the right to own slaves.
In October 1865, Johnson instructed General Howard to inform Sea Islands blacks that they would have to return the land they occupied to white planters. Howard, who considered himself a friend of blacks and fully understood the importance they attached to land ownership, reluctantly obeyed Johnson’s order. When he told freedmen that they must give up their land, some of them wept, protesting, “Why do you take away our lands? You take them from us who have always been true, always true to the Government! You give them to our all-time enemies! That is not right.” Union soldiers forced them to leave or stay on and work for their former masters.32 But they were not removed without a fight. Sea Islands blacks and freedmen throughout the South, determined to hold onto land whatever the cost, battled with plantation owners and local and Federal law enforcement officials. For example, a dozen or more freedmen were living on Celey Smith’s farm in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, where they had built homes and were supporting themselves by their crops. They met the sheriff with loaded muskets when he came to oust them and informed him that they would “yield possession only to the U.S. Government.” In spite of sheriffs, deeds, or writs, black settlers in Norfolk County, Virginia, also refused to give up their land. Ultimately, Governor Gilbert Walker instructed county officers to intervene as the freedmen fought a pitched battle with county agents until overcome by superior numbers. Moreover, near Richmond, 500 freedmen armed themselves and defied authorities to put them off the land. Federal forces forced them to vacate and then burned to the ground the houses that they had built.33
Although black women played a significant role in the struggle to hold onto the property of white slaveowners, it has largely gone undocumented. In South Carolina’s Low Country, for instance, Charlotte and Sarah, two among more than 260 former slaves who had occupied and cultivated the Georgetown plantation Weehaw for over a year on their own, opposed the owner when he returned in 1866. Charlotte, Sarah, and Fallertree attacked him and tried to take control of the plantation. Charlotte’s role in the attack must have been especially egregious, for while Sarah and Fallertree received lesser sentences, Charlotte was sentenced to thirty days in the Georgetown jail. A critical part in the defense of Keithfield plantation against restoration was also played by eight or ten freedwomen, who in March 1865 drove away the white overseer. As a consequence, the 150 freed people were able to work the plantation on their own for the remainder of the year.34
This luxury came to an end at the beginning of the new year, when Keithfield’s absentee owner, a widow, asked a neighboring planter to help her retake control. The neighbor was no other than Francis Parker Sr., probably the white man most hated by blacks in the region. During the war, Parker had served as the local Confederate provost marshal and had helped carry out the public execution of recaptured fugitive slaves. He hired Dennis Hazel, the former slave driver, as overseer. With the employment of these two men, the potential for conflict escalated. There was absolutely no way that the freedmen and women would relinquish Keithfield without a battle, especially with Parker and Hazel as their antagonists. Thus, when Parker sent his son and Hazel to the plantation to resume control, the work gang turned their tools—“Axes hatchets hoes and poles”—into weapons and attacked Hazel, threatening to kill him.35
Hazel was fortunate to escape with his life but returned to the plantation a few hours later with Parker’s son and two soldiers. They would have been better off not to have appeared, for the blacks assaulted them with their tools and pelted them with bricks and stones. Armed with heavy clubs, Sukey and Becky entered the fray. Aided by Jim, they exhorted their fellow laborers to join the fight, “declaring that the time was come and they must yield their lives if necessary—that a life was lost but once.” Eight to ten “infuriated women” now swelled the crowd. Among this group were Charlotte Simons, Susan Lands, Clarissa Simons, Sallie Mayzck, Quahuba, and Magdalen Moultrie, armed with heavy clubs and hoes and backed by four or five men. They focused their attack on Hazel, and, as a result, the soldiers’ efforts to defend the slave driver from their blows were “entirely ineffectual.” The women continued to beat Hazel, Parker, and the two soldiers. Parker, followed by Hazel, made the only escape he could, by jumping into the river and swimming away “under a shower of missiles.” The soldiers, bloodied and disarmed, made their own escape by foot.36
The incident was settled a few days later when an armed guard of U.S. so
ldiers arrested several of the ringleaders. Not wanting to acknowledge the leadership capabilities of women—and particularly black women—local authorities charged three of the freedmen with inciting the women to violence. Five of the women served sentences in the local jail. Although Freedmen’s Bureau officials tried to play down incidents such as the one at Keithfield plantation and insisted that they were aberrations, they happened throughout the South on a frequent basis.37 The freed blacks were determined to hold onto land that they believed rightfully belonged to them, whatever the cost. Possession of land represented economic independence.
Unfortunately for most freedmen, the Federal government would not support a full-scale plan to confiscate the land of Southern white plantation owners and redistribute it. Although some white Republicans, such as Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania and Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, two champions of black rights, supported such a move, a majority of their party did not. Most Republicans believed that a more practical way to promote the economic interests of freedmen was through the ballot box. In their estimation, there were few things that former slaves could not accomplish with political power, and thus they concentrated most of their efforts on acquiring the vote for freedmen. Moreover, far too many Republicans, black and white, believed that the right to own property was sacred; therefore, supporting any plan to redistribute the property of Southern white plantation owners to blacks could set a dangerous precedent.38 The New York Times underscored this view when it warned, “An attempt to justify the confiscation of Southern land under the pretense of doing justice to the Freedmen, strikes at the root of all property rights.”39
Since Southern whites realized that the best course to keep freedmen in an economically dependent position was to deny them the acquisition of land, they mounted a determined campaign to make it extremely difficult for most blacks to either rent, lease, or own land. Accordingly, in 1865, Mississippi prohibited “any Freedman, Free Negro or mulatto” from renting or leasing “any land or tenements” except within the limits of “incorporated titles or towns” where local authorities could control and oversee “such rental and lease agreements.” 40 Furthermore, many white landowners in various parts of the lower South refused to sell or lease them land.41 Whitelaw Reid noted during his travels that in many sections of the Mississippi Valley if a white man or woman sold land to a black, he or she might be physically attacked. He added, “Every effort will be made” to prevent negroes from acquiring lands, “even the renting of small tracts to them is held to be unpatriotic and unworthy of a good citizen.”42 Another contemporary who toured the South noted that whites preferred to let a “no-account white man” have a plantation rather than rent it to negroes.43 And yet another contemporary remarked, “In some parts of the country there is a social prejudice against selling to them; that is, in localities where white people prevail, they do not always like to have negroes coming among them.”44 Of course, whites were not reluctant to use force against those blacks defiant enough to attempt to either purchase or rent land. For example, in the early part of 1869, the New Orleans Tribune reported the murder of three black men who dared to live by themselves on rented land.45
In spite of these obstacles, a small number of freed people became property owners during the 1860s and the 1870s. Most accomplished this feat as a consequence of their own efforts. For example, A. M. Moore recalled that he and his brother saved their money and “bought and paid for 500 acres of land after emancipation.”46 William “Red” Taylor was able to acquire 150 acres of land through his own efforts,47 and Tob Davis pointed out that his father went to work and “in two yeahs, he had ‘nough money to pay down on a piece of land, an’ weuns moves onto it.”48 In 1866, moreover, one black man in Norfolk County, Virginia, was able to purchase 1,000 acres at a total cost of $10,000; and in 1868 another black Virginian, Tom Sukins of Charlotte County, purchased 1,500 acres of farmland at $2 per acre.49 Many former slaves pooled their meager resources and formed cooperatives. Blacks in Hampton, Virginia, established Lincoln’s Land Association under the direction of a local Baptist minister and acquired several hundred acres that was worked collectively by a group of families.50 Several freedmen in Charleston, South Carolina, formed a society for buying land and building homes of their own. At a sale they bought a plantation of 600 acres on Remley’s Point, opposite the city, for which they agreed to pay $6,000 or $10 per acre.51 In addition, several discharged black soldiers invested their bonuses and back pay individually in small farms or collectively in plantations. One regiment stationed in Louisiana accumulated $50,000 for this purpose.52
A few former slaves were able to acquire land through the assistance of Federal authorities and former plantation owners. Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act in 1866, which set aside land for freed persons. As a consequence, by 1869, although much of the property available was of poor quality, about 4,000 persons had applied to take advantage of the act. In an effort to guarantee a workforce and relieve themselves of some Federal taxes, a few planters divided their lands among their former slaves and gave their lifelong workers homes and a few acres for their own. The following case noted by a Freedmen’s Bureau agent is an example: “Some of the old aristocratic planters are acting splendidly toward their former slaves.” One rich planter who owned over 5,000 acres of land had “bestowed a certain number of acres to each of his former slaves who are now working for him.”53 Moreover, Laura Thompson recalled that “Master Strader gave our Father some land and a shack, and he farmed and gave the Master about half what he made to pay for the land.”54 Amy Else remembered that “most all the old generation stayed on and bought farms from Marster. He let them pay him out by the year.”55 An even smaller number of owners handed over land to their former slaves with no strings attached. Although his master did not give him anything when emancipation came, Lewis Mundy noted, “I remember the Bowans give their slaves eighty acres.”56 And John Sneed’s mother’s former master “willed every last one of his slaves something.” His mother got “two cows, a pair of horses an’ wagon an’ 70 acres of land.”57
A small number who had been slaves to Native Americans were able to acquire land. Treaties that the U.S. government signed with the Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws in 1866 all had provisions regarding land for freedmen. Richard Franklin’s mother, who had been a slave under the Creeks, was accorded 160 acres of land near Canada at the end of the Civil War.58 Mollie Barber’s family members, who also had been held by the Creeks, received sixty acres.59 Chaney McNair remembered that “after the war was over we colored folks all had to go back to prove up; tell where you come from, who you belong to, you know, so we get our share of land.” McNair returned to the Cherokee nation in 1866 and “drawed some money once and some land too.”60 Moreover, Irena Blocker recalled that when the McCarty family proved that Patsy Rogers and her mother had been stolen as slaves, the Choctaw Nation provided both women with forty acres and also awarded each one of their descendants forty acres.61
Unfortunately, some freedmen became victims of false sales. In Albemarle County, Virginia, for example, an elderly black man who could neither read nor write purchased some land and a shack from a white man, who allegedly gave the old man a deed. Not long thereafter, the county sheriff visited the black man’s shack and informed him that he had to vacate the premises since the property was not legally his. The freedman implored the sheriff to examine the deed, but the “deed” read: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so have I lifted fifty dollars out of this old nigger’s pocket.”62 Jack and Rosa Maddox bought a piece of land and were doing well for three years. However, upon the death of the man who had owned it, “We found out the place didn’t b’long to us. The children of the first wife of the man who sold us the land took it away from us.”63
FORMER SLAVES PLANTING SWEET POTATOES, EDISTO ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1862.
Courtesy of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History
Al
though the masses of former slaves in rural and urban areas of the Deep South remained landless, there was an increase in the number of black landowners. The value of their holdings also increased significantly after the war. Blacks accomplished this remarkable feat despite the generally hostile attitudes of whites, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups, and the refusal of some whites to sell them land. It is also significant because it took place despite economic problems such as general indebtedness among freedmen, scarcity of money and capital, and “unsettled conditions.”64
Since most freedmen lacked the resources to buy even a small farm or a town lot, the vast majority of them found it easier to acquire a few personal items. Black men and women purchased horses, mules, cattle, wagons, carts, plows, machinery, tools, furniture, and clothing, and sometimes carriages, watches, and jewelry. In 1865 in Augusta, Georgia, one observer was surprised to discover that freedmen and women were anxious to begin the ascent toward property ownership: “A Government sale of horses and mules brought large numbers to the city to-day.” He went on to point out that freedmen comprised about two-thirds of the 10,000 persons who attended, and they bought a good deal of property at this sale. Mississippi and Georgia, the two Deep South states with the largest antebellum slave (and among the smallest free black) population, led all states in the total number of property owners by 1870. Mississippi had 23,665, and Georgia had 17,739. Some 63,846 freedmen and women had become property owners in the other states of the Lower South with $100 worth or more, for a regional total of one family in five.65
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