Some Thoughts on Florida’s Standards for African American History

African American laborers in cotton fields; Source: Florida Memory, Image Number RC04733 (Public Domain)

I have read Florida’s State Academic Standards – Social Studies, 2023, specifically, the “strand” for African American History. (In the Standards, a strand and its sub-strands detail the subject matter that is to be taught to students.) These have been the subject of some controversy.

I have some issues with the standards, but not about the now hot-button topic of the “benefit” of skilled craftsmanship for enslaved people. My concerns center on race and the use of the Declaration of Independence in defining the concepts of liberty, equality, and rights. I amlorida, not an educator or historian, but I do think this will be of interest.

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First, a word from our founders. This is from the iconic Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 

The Declaration was referenced by then US Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi in his Farewell Address to the Senate on January 21, 1861. Davis explained why his state was leaving the Union to join what would become the Confederate States of America:

It… {is the} belief that {under the Lincoln administration} we are to be deprived… of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision {to secede from the Union}. 

She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.

{We believe} That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made…They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment made against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do–to stir up insurrection among our slaves?

Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the Prince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother country? 

When our Constitution was formed… we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they {Negroes} were not put upon the footing of equality with white men–not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths.

Jefferson Davis – who became the President of the Confederacy – believed that the Declaration of Independence was a sacred document.  The claims of contemporaries like Abraham Lincoln and others – that the Declaration included the Negro when saying all men were created equal – must have seemed like blasphemy to him. 

At the least, Davis believed that Lincoln and others misunderstood the meaning of the Declaration, the intentions of the founders, and the social structures of the founders’ times. The founders did not put Negroes on equal footing with white men, thought Davis. Heck, they didn’t even make Negroes equal to (white) paupers or convicts! 

The key point to understand is that the racial applicability of liberty, equality and inalienable rights was contested prior to the Civil War. Make no mistake, many Europeans/whites did believe that Africans were included in the family of “all men.” And that informed the abolition of slavery in the Northern or “free” states. But Southerners in general, and many Northerners, strongly disagreed with that. 

This slavery-affirming viewpoint was codified and canonized in the famous Dred Scott decision of 1857. In a case concerning the institution of slavery, the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling which stated:

In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument.

It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted. But the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken.

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a profit could be made by it. 

This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race… And in no nation was this opinion firmly fixed or more uniformly acted upon than by the English Government and English people. They not only seized them on the coast of Africa, and sold them or held them in slavery for their own use; but they took them as ordinary articles of merchandise to every country where they could make a profit on them, and were far more extensively engaged in this commerce, than any other nation in the world.”

This idea that Africans were “beings of an inferior order… so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” – which we today call white supremacy – was not an outlier.  It was not considered aberrant or “wrong.” It was endemic. And by virtue of that Supreme Court ruling, it was literally the law of the land.

Against this backdrop of historical fact, what do we make of the Florida standards concerning African American history?

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Here’s one of my problems with the Florida standards: they don’t address the fact that the Declaration’s notions of liberty, equality, and rights were contested and controversial when it came to issues of race.

So, for example: one of the sub-strands, numbered “SS.912.AA.2.7,” instructs: “Analyze the contributions of founding principles of liberty, justice and equality in the quest to end slavery.”  This wording seems to presume that the “founding principles” of the United States were such that they could only contribute to “the quest to end slavery.” Or that principles unrelated to liberty, equality, and rights (such as racial supremacy) are not important in studying the black experience. Those presumptions are false, as the words of the 1856 Supreme Court and Jefferson Davis would indicate, and the lived experience of enslaved people would illustrate.

The Standards should say: “Analyze how different interpretations of the founding principles of liberty, justice and equality either supported slavery, or, served to end it.” This would lead to a more complete, balanced, and correct review and understanding of how Europeans in the United States practically applied the aspirational values of the founders.

If the Standards’ writers are in fact trying to create the impression that the founding principles could only be, or must only be, interpreted as anti-slavery, then they are being deliberately ahistorical.

Or take the example of SS.912.AA.2.10: Evaluate the Abolitionist Movement and its leaders and how they contributed in different ways to eliminate slavery.  That’s a fair route of inquiry. But there is no corresponding call for the evaluation of the “Slavery as a Positive Good” argument and other rationales for maintaining slavery. What we have here is the yin without them yang… incompleteness.

To be sure, I am all for the study of anti-slavery, Abolitionism, anti-racism, and the like. But history is not about picking favorites. Emphasizing these ideas, and not the intellectual, emotional, and cultural underpinnings of pro-slavery, can only lead to the incomplete and incorrect understanding of how slavery endured and thrived. Pro-slavery views directly impacted the black experience, arguably much more so than anti-slavery and other related beliefs (90% of African Americans were enslaved when the Civil War began).  Emphasizing one set of views, and not the others, is bad history.

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Why is this happening? I don’t know, but I can speculate. In the political (conservative) climate that green-housed these standards, acknowledging white supremacist ideology among the founders is politically incorrect. It smacks of Project 1619. And it does not escape me that this strand never uses the term “white supremacy,” and uses the term “racism” just once, when talking about Reconstruction… it’s as if those were dirty words.

Additionally, the writers might be fearful of any class instruction that would make some students embarrassed, uncomfortable or guilty. Acknowledging white supremacy might do that, if only unintentionally.

So, they adopted the strategy of ignoring or deemphasizing certain aspects of our history, while emphasizing others that make for a positive spin. Basically, they are whitewashing history by the way they teach it. 

They claim this is objective history, but it’s not. What we have is an approach to history that makes supremacist views almost ephemeral by refusing to focus on them. Meanwhile presentist views about what liberty, equality and rights meant in the past are made to seem practically pre-destined and inevitable. Not a good look, Florida.

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I would add one more point, which I know is controversial. In historical instruction, there is this idea that the facts should be objectively stated. And I agree with that.

But it’s not enough. Notions of racial supremacy did exist and do exist, and it’s not enough to make the objective statement that they existed. Otherwise, students who hear of these things will not know if they are right or wrong. And if they don’t hear that these notions are wrong, they might think it’s OK to have those views themselves. I think that in the case of the institution of slavery, condemnation is appropriate. Such condemnation should not be avoided for fear of being “subjective.”

The writers of the Standards are trying to avoid being, let’s use the word, judgmental. They don’t want to say that the founders had views which were “bad.” What they do, or posit, or simply imply, is that the “founding principles,” for example, led to the “quest to end slavery.” (Even as they did not lead to the end of slavery itself.) Such references to the principles makes us “feel” good about them, even if the instruction does not subjectively state that they are good.

With this, they can avoid having to say that racial supremacy was subjectively bad. The framing is that the founding principles were inherently anti-slavery and pro-racial equality (which is not true); and that slavery was counter to those values. (Jeff Davis and the 1857 Supreme Court, among many others, would not agree). The expected outcome is the conclusion or feeling among students that founding principles were good for Americans in general and even African Americans, even though the vast majority of black folks remained in captivity.

To repeat an earlier point: many African Americans did in fact benefit those principles. Specifically, they benefitted in the North, where slavery was abolished before the Civil War.  But those principles, whatever their actual nature or practical (not aspirational) value, did not end slavery in the South; and as mentioned earlier, 90% of African Americans were enslaved when the Civil War began. Meanwhile, the end of slavery was contingent on the United States’ victory in their war to preserve the Union.

These instructional/pedagogical gymnastics would not be necessary if standards writers could just (a) admit that racial supremacist belief was a cornerstone (certainly not the only one) of the early portion of the American experiment; (b) acknowledge that those beliefs are counter to the values we have today.

But many people simply refuse to do that. They want to believe and say that America was right from the start, possessed of purity of value, possessed of values that mirror those we have today.  The fact is, many of our current values were not present at the nation’s founding. They are the culmination of values that have evolved over time and will continue to evolve.  And as Americans have evolved, in large part, they have progressed. 

I close by noting that when citing founding principles, the Standards fail to note the founding principle of revolution against injustice. The pushback against injustice did not stop in the 18^th century, but has become a part of our nature.  Our present day understanding of equality, liberty, inalienable rights, and justice exist because of the progress we have made in becoming a better people, in crafting a more perfect Union. That’s a lesson worth teaching. 

Monuments to Fredrick Douglass

I did a search for monuments to Frederick Douglass, and was surprised to see the sheer number of them. I need to do some clean-up to the text in this blog entry, but I thought that readers might be interested in seeing this right now. I will finish editing the wording in a few days.

From Wiki: A statue of Frederick Douglass sculpted by Sidney W. Edwards, sometimes called the Frederick Douglass Monument, was installed in Rochester, New York in 1899 after it was commissioned by the African-American activist John W. Thompson. According to Visualising Slavery: Art Across the African Diaspora, it was the first statue in the United States that memorialized a specific African-American person.

Per the Maryland Office of Tourism: FREDERICK DOUGLASS STATUE AT MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY; the eight-foot tall bronze cast of Frederick Douglass, completed in 1956, stands in front of Holmes Hall on the campus of Morgan State University on the main historic academic quad. Artist James E. Lewis, chair of the Art Department, was chosen to design and sculpt the monument. Morgan State is a historically black university.

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From NYC Parks: Frederick Douglass Memorial, located in Central Park North and Frederick Douglass Boulevard; dedicated September 20, 2011

Frederick Douglass Memorial; Location: Easton, MD; Year: 2011. Famed abolitionist, orator, and former slave, Frederick Douglass stands before the Talbot County Courthouse in Easton, MD. Douglass was born 5 miles from the site and was incarcerated in the courthouse as a youth.

From Wiki: Frederick Douglass is a 2013 bronze sculpture depicting the American abolitionist and politician of the same name by Steven Weitzman, installed in the United States Capitol Visitor Center‘s Emancipation Hall, in Washington, D.C., as part of the National Statuary Hall Collection.

From Wiki: Frederick Douglass is a public artwork in front of the Hornbake Library at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. The statue memorializes African-American abolitionist, suffragist, and labor leader Frederick Douglass. It was unveiled in 2015. The statue was designed by sculptor Andrew Edwards.

The Frederick Douglass Sculpture on West Chester University’s Campus in Pennsylvania. According to The WC Press, Douglass gave his last public address, before he passed away, at the University. The cane in the statue is based on a staff that was given to Douglass by Abraham Lincoln. Installed the 2010s.

Fredrick Douglass monument at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Hillsdale College was founded in 1844 by abolitionists known as Free Will Baptists. Douglass spoke at the college on Jan. 21, 1863. The monument was installed on-campus in 2017.

Statues of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass at the National Harbor in Prince George’s County, MD. Installation date unknown.

Monument to Frederick Douglass at the Maryland State House. Installed in 2020.

Douglass famously said during the Civil War, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on the earth or under the earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.” He recruited black men to join the US military during the Civil War, and met with Abraham Lincoln twice during that conflict. 

“Yankees have horns”: Fake stories white Southerners told enslaved people about white Northerners

Enslaved people escape bondage to seek freedom behind Union lines during the Civil War.
Image: On to Liberty, Theodor Kaufmann, oil painting, 1867; see here for a higher resolution image. (Highly recommended)
Image Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Accession Number: 1982.443.3, Gift of Erving and Joyce Wolf, in memory of Diane R. Wolf, 1982

During the Civil War, tens of thousands of bondspeople fled their enslavers to seek freedom behind Union lines. To stem the Black Exodus, slave owners created fake stories about Northerners to make enslaved people afraid of them.

Author Glenn David Brasher writes about encounters between African Americans and Union men (soldiers, reporters, others) during the Peninsula campaign in Virginia, circa April-May 1862, in his book The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans & the Fight for Freedom. The Peninsula Campaign was a series of battles that took place in southeastern Virginia from April-June 1862. Brasher’s text (pages 136-7) highlights the concoctions and fabrications that were told about whites in the North:

“The Negroes have been told the most absurd stories about our [Northerners] designs against them,” a newspaper correspondent claimed, “that we would put them into wagons and drive them, and the like.” The Boston Daily Journal noted that masters told their slaves that “the object of the war on the part of the North is to steal the slaves of the South and sell them.”​

The Philadelphia Enquirer reported from Williamsburg that “the slaves in this vicinity were told to beware of the horrible Yankees, who had very small bodies, but with great large heads, with front teeth like horses, and were known to eat human flesh.”​

Union Pvt. Wilbur Fisk encountered a free black who said that “the rebels told him to burn his house and follow them, for the Yankees would destroy him, and all he had.” Farther up the Peninsula, at Eltham’s Landing, Massachusetts soldier Walter Eames talked with a black man who claimed that his master had sent “droves” of his slaves to work on the fortifications at Yorktown and that they were told “that if the Yankees come here they would be beaten by them, have their throats cut, be sold to Cuba and ill treated in every possible way.” Eames also encountered a female slave who told him “that her master used to show the slaves pictures of the Yankees harnessing the Negroes to wagons, and when they failed to work, cutting off their ears, etc.”​

The Philadelphia Press correspondent encountered a slave owner named Parsley who use stories of cruel Yankees to successfully convince his slaves to hide from Union troops. When one Union soldier asked Williamsburg slave Eliza Baker how she liked the Yankees, she replied, “I don’t know sir, I ain’t seen none.” When the soldier pointed out that he was a Northern, she replied, “you can’t be, cause Mrs. Whiting told us the Yankees have horns.” The soldier had Baker take him to her mistress, and he scolded the owner for spreading such lies.​

Parsley’s frightened slaves and Eliza Baker’s response to the Union soldier suggested that owners may have had success at creating negative preconceptions of Yankees in the minds of some blacks, but many claimed to have never believed such tales. They “appeared confident,” the National Anti-Slavery Standard reported, that blacks would not “suffer from us, and might possibly benefit.” An elderly woman interviewed by the Principia assured Northerners “that she never had any fears that the Yankees would harm her.” Fisk recalled that the free black who was told of the Union soldiers would kill him “manifested as much inward satisfaction at seeing us, as if he had suddenly recognized an old friend.”

US Colored Troops as Veterans; Happy Veterans Day, 11/11/2018

Negro members of the Grand Army of the Republic, a Civil War veterans organization, parading, New York City, May 30, 1912
Image Source: Library of Congress; Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-132913; see more information about the photo here.

Happy Veterans Day! In this post I am showing images of African American Civil War veterans. These are wonderful images of the men who helped to save the Union and destroy slavery. The photograph above features African American Civil War veterans, and family and friends, marching in a Grand Army of the Republic parade in New York in the early twentieth century. The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was an organization of United States (Union) veterans of the Civil War, including men from the Army, Navy, Marines and Revenue Cutter Service. Wikipedia discusses the GAR:

After the end of American Civil War, organizations were formed for veterans to network and maintain connections with each other. Many of the veterans used their shared experiences as a basis for fellowship. Groups of men began joining together, first for camaraderie and later for political power. Emerging as most influential among the various organizations was the Grand Army of the Republic, founded on April 6, 1866, on the principles of “Fraternity, Charity and Loyalty,” in Decatur, Illinois, by Benjamin F. Stephenson.

The GAR initially grew and prospered as a de facto political arm of the Republican Party during the heated political contests of the Reconstruction era. The commemoration of Union veterans, black and white, immediately became entwined with partisan politics. The GAR promoted voting rights for black veterans, as many veterans recognized their demonstrated patriotism. Black veterans, who enthusiastically embraced the message of equality, shunned black veterans’ organizations in preference for racially inclusive groups. But when the Republican Party’s commitment to reform in the South gradually decreased, the GAR’s mission became ill-defined and the organization floundered. The GAR almost disappeared in the early 1870s, and many divisions ceased to exist.

In the 1880s, the organization revived under new leadership that provided a platform for renewed growth, by advocating federal pensions for veterans. As the organization revived, black veterans joined in significant numbers and organized local posts.

Grand Army of the Republic, New York Post 160, Cazenovia, New York (near Syracuse), circa 1900
Image Source: blog.syracuse.com; collection of Angelo Scarlato

This is a wonderful photograph of an integrated GAR post. The post, New York post number 160, was located in Cazenovia, New York, which is near Syracuse. The picture was taken around 1900, roughly 35 years after the end of the war. The image of these black and white soldiers, with its staging of a black man holding the American flag in the center of the shot, has a poignancy which reaches over a hundred years of time, and touches me today.

These men might not have known each other during the war, because Union regiments were segregated. Although, during the course of the war, different soldiers from different regiments often fought alongside each other at particular sites. But GAR units like this one might have been the first opportunity for black and white soldiers to meet, greet, and perhaps, become friends.

The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) show “History Detectives” devoted a program segment to a discussion of the photo, the GAR, and race in the Civil War. A transcript of the segment, which aired in July 2007, is here. Thanks to the blog Syracuse.com for providing the link and the photograph, and additional information.

Image Description: G.A.R. Post (Civil War veterans. Photoprint) 1935; perhaps in the Washington, DC or southern Maryland area; Addison Scurlock, photographer
Image and Description Source: Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Local Number: 618ps0229581-01pg.tif (AC scan no.), Box 68

Image Description: Photograph of a reunion of Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R) members, ca. 1910 in Norfolk, Virginia; the first image is a close-up of the second image. This is believed to have been taken at the West Point Cemetery. This was a cemetery for African Americans and was the resting place for many black soldiers from the Civil War the Spanish American War. It is also the home of a monument to those soldiers.
Image Source: from a LocalWiki entry for Hampton Roads, West Point Cemetery. Original source was the University of Virginia Library, Special Collections.

Image Description: “August 28, 1949 – Joseph Clovese, G.A.R. Veteran, 105 Years Old At The 83rd And Final G.A.R. Encampment In Indianapolis, Indiana.”
Image Source: from War History Online via Pinterest

Image Description: “Members from the Grand Army of the Republic, Samuel Walker Post No. 365, at Lawrence, Kansas. The Grand Army of the Republic was organized at the end of the Civil War by veterans of the Union Army. Six African-American GAR posts were established throughout Kansas and were located in the cities of Lawrence, Fort Scott, Topeka, Atchison, Kansas City, and Leavenworth.”

Image and Description Source: The Wichita Eagle, content courtesy of Kansas State Historical Society

Contraband Art: the White View of the Black Exodus

Figure 1: “Contraband, Changing Quarters” In this image, a determined-looking slave exercises his agency and escapes from his master in the Confederate army to seek freedom with the Union army. Presumably, the fine white stallion belongs to his master; so the Union has gotten two properties for the price of one. The cap, I guess, is a fashion statement.
Image Source: The Philadelphia Print Shop, section on Civil War images of Blacks / “Contraband”

First and foremost, you must understand this: Civil War era northerners were intrigued, perhaps even fascinated, by the very idea of “contrabands”: human property that was “confiscated” from Confederates, and given asylum from bondage, in return for supporting the Union war effort. That intrigue and fascination played out in the art of the era, as shown in this post.

Some background is in order. The official Union policy at the start of the war was to do nothing to slavery where it stood. The goal of the Union was to end secession, not to end slavery. Men like Abraham Lincoln were uncompromising that slavery not spread into the territories west of the Mississippi River, but they believed that free persons in the slave states had the right to keep chattel property.

Figure 2: An enslaved person caricature with an impish grin says “I’se de INNOCENT CAUSE Ob All Dis War Trouble”
Image Description: This Civil War era envelope image shows an African American enslaved person slyly casting himself as the “innocent cause of all this war trouble.” Many African Americans no doubt agreed with this, but most likely, this reflects the sentiment of the illustrator and many white northerners. But the exigencies of war would transform the Negro from a mere trickster into a freedom seeker that the Union would embrace as “contraband.”
Image Source: Indiana State Library, Civil War Envelope Exhibit

Enslaved people had a different idea. They immediately saw the conflict between Union and Confederacy as an opportunity for freedom. In March 1861 – several weeks before the attack on Fort Sumter ignited the Civil War – two groups of slaves fled bondage and sought refuge at Fort Pickens, a Union occupied ports in northwest Florida. Their hopes for freedom were dashed. First Lieutenant A. J. Slemmer, a commander at the fort, reported to his superiors that “(o)n the morning of the 12th… four negroes (runaways) came to the fort entertaining the idea that we were placed here to protect them and grant them their freedom. I did what I could to teach them the contrary. In the afternoon I took them to Pensacola and delivered them to the city marshal to be returned to their owners. That same night four more made their appearance. They were also turned over to the authorities next morning.”

But just two months later, another group of runaway slaves got a different reception. On May 23, 1861, Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory fled bondage and sought asylum at a Union occupied fort outside of Hampton, Virginia, named Fort Monroe. Per Union policy, the fort’s commander, General Benjamin Franklin Butler, should have returned them to their master. But he reasoned that because the slaves were property that was used by Confederate insurrectionists, it was within his rights to confiscate that property and use it for the Union’s purposes. This was the beginning of the Union’s contraband policy. The Lincoln administration, and then legislation passed by the Congress and signed by Lincoln, gave official sanction to the contraband policy. Soon, all across the Confederate States, the Union was enabling the freedom of former slaves.

Figure 3: The Fort Monroe Three: Runaway slaves Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory meet with Union General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe, Virginia, May 1861, seeking freedom from bondage. Butler will decide that this “contraband property” should be confiscated from the Confederates, and re-purposed for Union use.
Image Source: From The New York Public Library Digital Collections

This new policy created a sensation among northerners. Recollect that less than 2% of people living in the free states were of African descent. Millions of northern white Americans went their entire lives without ever seeing a real live African-American, much less a slave. What they did know of slaves was through a popular culture that commonly depicted slaves in a negative way, by, for example, using caricatures that exaggerated and “animalized” their appearance.

What were northerners thinking and feeling about this contraband policy? They might have thought about their Yankee ingenuity, in making what Southerners thought to be a strength – the unencumbered use of slave labor – into a weakness; and also, in finding a way to legally use enslaved peoples for the Union’s war aims. They might have thought about the irony, and the justice, of slaves gaining freedom just at the time when their masters needed them the most. Meanwhile, some northerners – such as Frederick Douglass – wondered why African Americans were called by a name that reinforced the idea of human beings as property.

Many white northerners no doubt wondered, just who were these people, anyway? Who were these people with dark skin, whom very few northerners had ever seen, but were at the crux of the divisions that caused the war, and were now being seen as being as a important to the Union’s success? They might also have wondered how the slaves felt about all of this… what did the slaves feel about their masters, the Union, and “freedom?”

And then there was the ultimate question: what did it mean for the Union to ask the support of, and give their support to, a class of people who were seen as ignorant, inferior, docile (when under control of their enslavers) yet savage (when uncontrolled), perhaps sub-human, but surely degraded?

These types of questions informed the popular art of the Civil War and post-war eras, the vast majority of which was produced by white men. Let’s take a look at some of those works:

Figure 4: Front of a Civil War era envelope, titled “One of the F. F. V’s after his Contraband. General Butler “can’t see it.” Image Reference is to General Benjamin Butler; see text in the blog entry. F.F.V is short for ‘First Families of Virginia,’ a name given to the state’s elite class
Image Source: Encyclopedia Virginia; entry titled “Escaped Slaves at Fort Monroe”; image courtesy of the Virginia Historical Society

During the Civil War era, illustrated envelopes were a kind of social media. People used the mails to send printed envelopes which had artistic, political, or social content. During 1861 and 1862 – that is, after the contraband policy started, but before the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 – several printers made envelopes which addressed the “contraband” Issue.

The image above portrays a Virginia enslaver, bloodhound in hand, going after his runaway. The groveling bondsman is protected at the point of a sword by Union General Benjamin Butler. Butler, as mentioned above, originated the contraband policy at Fort Monroe. The image is based on an actual event: a Confederate officer, under flag of truce, met with Butler at the fort to retrieve a runaway slave. Butler responded that the slave would be returned, if the Confederate officer would take an oath of loyalty to the Union. Which, of course, the officer did not do.

Figure 5: The (Fort) Monroe Doctrine, 1861. From the Library of Congress description: On May 27, 1861, Benjamin Butler, commander of the Union army in Virginia and North Carolina, decreed that slaves who fled to Union lines were legitimate “contraband of war,” and were not subject to return to their Confederate owners. The declaration precipitated scores of escapes to Union lines around Fortress Monroe, Butler’s headquarters in Virginia. In this crudely drawn caricature, a slave stands before the Union fort taunting his plantation master. The planter (right) waves his whip and cries, “Come back you black rascal.” The slave replies, “Can’t come back nohow massa Dis chile’s contraban”
Image Source:  Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-36161; above image is from the Virginia Memory website.

Portraits of African American Civil War Veterans from the Library of Congress

Unidentified African American Civil War veteran in Grand Army of the Republic uniform with two children, probably his grandchildren.
Created / Published: Goodman and Springer, photographer, Mt. Pleasant, Pa., ca. 1900
SOURCE: Library of Congress; https://www.loc.gov/item/2018652209/

The Library of Congress has a great archive of photographs which includes these wonderful portraits of African American Civil War veterans. These men are shown wearing clothing and accoutrements of the Grand Army of the Republic, or G. A. R. The G. A. R. was a nation-wide organization for Union veterans of the Civil War.

The Struggle of Black Civil War Veterans: “We will not allow n****** to come among us and brag about having been in the yankee army”

African American soldiers faced trials and tribulations during the Civil War. But the struggle did not end there.
Source: From Civil War Journeys; original source was not identified

There was much animus towards southern African Americans among white southerners after the Civil War. Something as simple as an African American’s pride in his military service could become a flashpoint for violence. Consider this case, from post-war Virginia:

Freedmen’s Bureau Agent at Brentsville, Virginia, to the Freedmen’s Bureau Superintendent of the 10th District of Virginia

Prince W^m Co. V^a  Brentsville  Jan’y. 15″ 1866.

Sir:  I have the honor to inform you that a dastardly outrage was committed in this place yesterday, (Sunday,) within sight of my office, the circumstances of which are as follows.

A freedman named James Cook was conceived to be “impudent,” by a white man named John Cornwell; whereupon the whiteman cursed him and threatened him.  The freedman, being alarmed, started away, and was followed and threatened with “you d——d black yankee son of a b——h I will kill you”; and was fired upon with a pistol, the ball passing through his clothes.  He was then caught by the white man, and beaten with the but of a revolver, and dragged to the door of the Jail near where the affair occurred, where he was loosened and escaped.

He came to me soon after, bleeding from a deep cut over the eye, and reported the above, which was substantiated to me as fact by several witnesses.  I have heard both sides of the case fully, and the only charge that is brought against the freedman is “impudence”; and while being pounced upon as a “d——d Yankee,” and cursed and called all manner of names, this “impudence” consisted in the sole offense of saying, that he had been in the union army and was proud of it.  No other “impudence” was charged against him.

I know the freedman well, and know him to be uncommonly intelligent, inoffensive, and respectful.  He is an old grey-headed man, and has been a slave of the commonwealth attorney of this co. a long time.  He has the reputation I have given him among the citizens here, and has rented a farm near here for the coming season.  As an evidence of his pacific disposition, he had a revolver which was sold him by the Government, on his discharge from the army, which he did not draw, or threaten to use during the assault; choosing, in this instance at least, to suffer wrong rather than to do wrong.

To show you the state of feeling here among many people, (not all) in regard to such a transaction, Dr. C. H. Lambert, the practicing physician of this place, followed the freedman to me, and said, that “Subdued and miserable as we are, we will not allow niggers to come among us and brag about having been in the yankee army.  It is as much as we can do to tolerate it in white men.”  He thought “It would be a good lesson to the niggers” &c. &c.  I have heard many similar, and some more violent remarks, on this, and other subjects connected with the freedmen.

I would not convey the impression however, that there is the slightest danger to any white man, from these vile and cowardly devils.  But where there are enough of them together, they glory in the conquest of a “nigger.”  They hold an insane malice against the freedman, from which he must be protected, or he is worse off than when he was a slave.

Marcus. S. Hopkins.

Source: Excerpt from 1″ Lieut. Marcus. S. Hopkins to Maj. James Johnson, 15 Jan. 1866, H-59 1866, Registered Letters Received, series 3798, VA Assistant Commissioner, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, Record Group 105, National Archives.

And this is certainly related to the above: These are the only monuments to African American Union soldiers that were installed below the Mason-Dixon Line prior to 1990 (the movie Glory was released 1989):

Colored Soldiers Monument, Kentucky

Monument to the 56th USCT Infantry, Missouri

Monument to the Colored Union Soldiers, North Carolina

West Point Monument, Norfolk, Virginia

Civil War Monument at Lincoln Cemetery in Portsmouth, Virginia
Source for photographs: see here.

Three monuments are in former Confederate states, two are in Border (Union slave) states. By contrast there are hundreds of monuments to Confederate soldiers spread throughout the former Confederate and Border states by 1990. Note that the two Virginia monuments are in African American cemeteries.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “When Dey Listed Colored Soldiers”

From the 1901 book Candle-Lightin’ Time by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, photographer Leigh Richmond Miner, and illustrator Margaret Armstrong. The book is available at Archive.org.

Paul Laurence Dunbar was an African-American poet who gained national prominence in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. Born in 1872, he was raised in Dayton, Ohio, where he was the lone black student in his high school. His father was an escaped slave from Kentucky who served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War.

In 1901, Dunbar published Candle-Lightin’ Time. The book was an artistic calloboration, featuring poems by Dunbar, photographs by Leigh Richmond Miner of the Hampton Institute Camera Club, and illustrated decorations by Margaret Armstrong. The work includes an ode to African American Civil War soldiers titled When Dey Listed Colored Soldiers, which is presented further below along with photographs from the book. The poem was no doubt inspired by his father.

The poem is interesting in that, while centering on the suffering and loss of a black mother for her son, it also speaks to the suffering of a white Confederate family. The poem’s narrator is the mother of a black Union soldier, but also, has a slave master who served in the Confederacy, along with the master’s son. Both master and son would feel the pain and anguish of war. In this, the slave mother and her mistress would share a bond that transcended race, section, and politics.

Candle-Lightin’ Time features other, non-Civil War content and makes for a fine read not only for its poetry but for its photographs.

Dunbar died in Dayton, Ohio at the age of 33 from tuberculosis.

When Dey Listed Colored Soldiers

Dey was talkin’ in de cabin, dey was talkin’ in de hall;
But I listened kin’ o’ keerless, not a-t’inkin’ ’bout it all;
An’ on Sunday, too, I noticed, dey was whisp’rin’ mighty much,
Stan’in’ all erroun’ de roadside w’en dey let us out o’ chu’ch.
But I did n’t t’ink erbout it ‘twell de middle of de week,
An’ my ‘Lias come to see me, an’ somehow he couldn’t speak.
Den I seed all in a minute whut he’d come to see me for; –
Dey had ‘listed colo’ed sojers, an’ my ‘Lias gwine to wah.

Oh, I hugged him, an’ I kissed him, an’ I baiged him not to go;
But he tol’ me dat his conscience, hit was callin’ to him so,
An’ he could n’t baih to lingah w’en he had a chanst to fight
For de freedom dey had gin him an’ de glory of de right.
So he kissed me, an’ he lef’ me, w’en I’d p’omised to be true;
An’ dey put a knapsack on him, an’ a coat all colo’ed blue.
So I gin him pap’s ol’ Bible, f’om de bottom of de draw’, –
W’en dey ‘listed colo’ed sojers an’ my ‘Lias went to wah.

But I t’ought of all de weary miles dat he would have to tramp,
An’ I could n’t be contented w’en dey tuk him to de camp.
W’y, my hea’t nigh broke wid grievin’ twell I seed him on de street;
Den I felt lak I could go an’ th’ow my body at his feet.
For his buttons was a-shinin’, an’ his face was shinin’, too,
An’ he looked so strong an’ mighty in his coat o’ sojer blue,
Dat I hollahed, “Step up, manny,” dough my th’oat was so’ an’ raw,-
W’en dey ‘listed colo’ed sojers an’ my ‘Lias went to wah.

Ol’ Mis’ cried w’en mastah lef’ huh, young Miss mou’ned huh brothah Ned,
An’ I did n’t know dey feelin’s is de ve’y wo’ds dey said
W’en I tol’ ’em I was so’y. Dey had done gin up dey all;
But dey only seem mo’ proudah dat dey men had hyeahd de call.
Bofe my mastahs went in gray suits, an’ I loved de Yankee blue,
But I t’ought dat I could sorrer for de losin’ of ’em too;
But I could n’t, for I did n’t know de ha’f o’ whut I saw,
‘Twell dey ‘listed colo’ed sojers an’ my ‘Lias went to wah.

Mastah Jack come home all sickly; he was broke for life, dey said;
An’ dey lef’ my po’ young mastah some’r’s on de roadside, – dead.
W’en de women cried an’ mou’ned ’em, I could feel it thoo an’ thoo,
For I had a loved un fightin’ in de way o’ dangah, too.
Den dey tol’ me dey had laid him some’r’s way down souf to res’,
Wid de flag dat he had fit for shinin’ daih acrost his breas’.
Well, I cried, but den I reckon dat’s what Gawd had called him for
W’en dey ‘listed colo’ed sojers an’ my ‘Lias went to wah.

 

---

This video excerpt, from the 1990 video “The Eyes of the Poet,” features Herbert Woodward Martin performing the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Dr. Martin, University of Dayton professor emeritus, is an acclaimed scholar and interpreter of Dunbar’s works.
University of Dayton; Published on Oct 14, 2014

Richard Brown gets 40 acres… for a while, at least.

Land Order for Richard Brown, April 1, 1865: “permission is hereby granted to Richard Brown to take possession of and occupy forty acres of land,” situated in St. Andrews Parish, Island of James, South Carolina, Berkley District.
Image Source: National Archives, Labor Contracts M1910, roll 62; from the Archive’s Freedmen’s Bureau records.

In 1865, US General William Tecumseh Sherman issued Field Order 15. As discussed in the New Georgia Encyclopedia,

On January 16, 1865, during the Civil War (1861-65), Union general William T. Sherman issued Field Order No. 15, calling for the redistribution of confiscated Southern land to freedmen in forty-acre plots. The order was rescinded later that same year, and much of the land was returned to the original white owners.

William T. Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John’s River in Florida, including Georgia’s Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed black families in forty-acre segments.

Sherman’s order came on the heels of his successful March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah and just prior to his march northward into South Carolina. Radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress, like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, for some time had pushed for land redistribution in order to break the back of Southern slaveholders’ power. Feeling pressure from within his own party, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln sent his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, to Savannah in order to facilitate a conversation with Sherman over what to do with Southern planters’ lands.

On January 12 Sherman and Stanton met with twenty black leaders of the Savannah community, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, to discuss the question of emancipation. Lincoln approved Field Order No. 15 before Sherman issued it just four days after meeting with the black leaders. From Sherman’s perspective the most important priority in issuing the directive was military expediency. It served as a means of providing for the thousands of black refugees who had been following his army since its invasion of Georgia. He could not afford to support or protect these refugees while on campaign.

Details from Sherman’s meeting with the African American leaders of the Savannah are here. In that meeting, the leaders are asked to “State in what manner you think you can take care of yourselves, and how can you best assist the Government in maintaining your freedom.” The leaders respond that the “way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor–that is, by the labor of the women and children and old men; and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare.”

Richard Brown was one of those fortunate freedmen who received 40 acres, as shown by the above certificate. The land was in St. Andrew’s Parish, SC.  (Until the late 19th century, the South Carolina Lowcountry was divided into parishes which in turn were subdivided several “districts”; the Berkley and Charleston Districts were in St. Andrew.) The land was on James Island, which is south of Charleston on the other side of Charleston Harbor, from one of the Heyward plantations. The owner, whom I believe to be Charles Heyward, had several plantations. This website identifies several of the 491 enslaved people who were freed from his plantations in July 1865.

Brown’s certificate from the Office of the Superintendent of Freedmen. It is numbered as  No. 118, indicating that a good number of persons had already gotten land before him.

Brown’s claim to the land did not last. As noted by Libby Coleman in her article Flashback: When the U.S. Promised Former Slaves 40 Acres and a Mule: