A Long Text Without Links But Some Formatting

FROM SLAVES TO CONTRABANDS TO FREEMEN
 
BOX 3: FOLDER 2 (7?)
Slaves and War:
90 I) Butler Hanged-The Negro Freed-On Paper-1863. 1861-1865.
O> Dark Artillery; Or, How To Make The Contrabands Useful. 1861-1865.
 
BOX 4: FOLDER 3: American Civil War Caricatures
KKK
51) Out On Parole-Scene-A Southern Forest. 1868.
 
 
 
 
Civilization, in its career, may often be traced in the nomenclatures of successive periods. These people were first called contrabands at Fortress Monroe; but at Port Royal, where they were next introduced to us in any considerable number, they were generally referred to as freedmen. These terms are milestones in our progress; and they are yet to be lost in the better and more comprehensive designation of citizens, or, when discrimination is convenient, citizens of African descent.      
 
The capture of Hilton Head and Bay Point by the navy, November 7th, 1861, was followed by the immediate military occupation of the Sea Islands. In the latter part of December, the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, whose fore sight as a statesman and humane disposition naturally turned his thoughts to the subject, deputed a special agent to visit this district for the purpose of reporting upon the condition of the negroes who had been abandoned by the white population, and of suggesting some plan for the organization of their labor and the promotion of their general well being. The agent, leaving New York January 13th, 1862, reached that city again on his way to Washington on the 13th of February, having in the mean time visited a large number of the plantations, and talked familiarly with the negroes in their cabins. The results of his observations, in relation to the condition of the people, their capacities and wishes, the culture of their crops, and the best mode of administration, on the whole favorable, were embodied in a report. The plan proposed by him recommended the appointment of superintendents to act as guides of the negroes and as local magistrates, with an adequate corps of teachers. It was accepted by the Secretary with a full indorsement, and its execution intrusted to the same agent. The agent presented the subject to several members of Congress, with whom he had a personal acquaintance, but, though they listened respectfully, they seemed either to dread the magnitude of the social question, or to feel that it was not one with which they as legislators were called upon immediately to deal. The Secretary himself, and Mr. Olmstcd, then connected with the Sanitary Commission, alone seemed to grasp it, and to see the necessity of’ immediate action. It is doubtful if any member of the Cabinet, except Mr. Chase, took then any interest in the enterprise, though it has since been fostered by the Secretary of War. At the suggestion of the Secretary, the President appointed an interview with the agent. Mr. Lincoln, who was then chafing under a prospective bereavement, listened for a few moments, and then said, somewhat impatiently, that he did not think he ought to be troubled with such details,­that there seemed to be an itching to get negroes into our lines; to which the agent replied, that these negroes were within them by the invitation of no one, being domiciled there before we commenced occupation. The President then      
 
 
 
wrote and handed to the agent the following card: ­ “1 shall he obliged if the Sec. of the Treasury will in his discretion give Mr. Pierce such instructions in regard to Port Royal contrabands as may seem judicious. “A. LINCOLN. “Feb. 15, 1862.”  
 
 
 
      The President, so history must write it, approached the great question slowly and reluctantly; and in February, 1862, he little dreamed of the proclamations he was to issue in the September and January following. Perhaps that slowness and reluctance were well, for thereby it was given to this people to work out their own salvation, rather than to be saved by any chief or prophet.       Notwithstanding the plan of superintendents was accepted, there were no funds wherewith to pay them. At this stage the “ Educational Commission,” organized in Boston on the 7th of Febinary, and the “Freedmen’s Relief As sociation,” organized in New York on the 20th of the same month, gallantly volunteered to pay both superintendents and teachers, and did so until July 1st, when the Government, having derived a fund from the sale of confiscated cotton left in the territory by the Rebels, undertook the payment of the superintendents, the two societies, together with another organized in Philadelphia on the 3d of March, and called the “Port Royal Relief Committee,” providing for the support of the teachers.      
 
‘When these voluntary associations sprang into being to save an enterprise which otherwise must have failed, no authoritative assurance had been given as to the legal condition of the negroes. The Secretary, in a letter to the agent, had said, that, after being received into our service, they could not, without great injustice, be restored to their masters, and should therefore be fit d to become self-supporting citizens. The President was reported to have said freely, in private, that negroes who were within       VOL. XII.   20 our lines, and had been employed by the Government, should be protected in their freedom. No official assurance of this had, however, been given.; and its absence disturbed the societies in their formation.
 
 
 
 
. But the societies, on reflection, wisely determined to do what they could to prepare them to become self-supporting citizens, in the belief, that, when they had become such, no Government could ever be found base enough to turn its back upon them. These associations, it should be stated, have been man aged by persons of much consideration in their respective communities, of unostentatious philanthropy, but of energetic and practical benevolence, hardly one of whom has ever filled or been a candidate for a political office.     
 
 
 
.       On the morning of the 3d of March, 1862, the first’ delegation of superintendents and teachers, fifty-three in all, of whom twelve were women, left the harbor of New York, on board the United States steam-transport Atlantic, arriving at Beaufort on the 9th. It was a voyage never to be forgotten. The enterprise was new and stran~e, and it was not easy to predict its future. Success or defeat might be in store for us and we could only trust in God that our strength would be equal to our responsibilities. As the colonists approached the shores of South Carolina, they were addressed by the agent in charge, who told them the little he had learned of their duties, enjoined patience and humanity, impressed on them the greatness of their work, the results of which were to cheer or dishearten good men, to settle, perhaps, one way or the other, the social problem of the age, ­ assuring them that never did a vessel bear a colony on a nobler mission, not even the Mayflower, when she conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, that it would be a poorly written history which should omit their individual names, and that, if faithful to their trust, there would come to them the highest of all recognitions ever accorded to angels or to men, in this life or the next, ­“ Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.”     
 
 
 
Notwithstanding our work was commenced six weeks too late, and other hiiidrances occurred, detailed in the second report of the agent, some eight thousand acres of esculents, ­ a fair supply of food, ­ and some four thousand five huyidred acres of cotton (after a deduction for over estimates) were planted. This was done upon one hundred and eighty-nine plantations, on which were nine thousand and fifty people, of whom four thousand four hundred and twenty-nine were fieldhands, made up of men, women, and children, and equivalent, in the usual classification and estimate of the productive capacity of laborers, to three thousand eight hundred and five and onehalf full hands. The cotton crop produced will not exceed sixty-five thousand pounds of ginned cotton.
 
 
 
It is fitting here that I should bear my testimony to the superintendents and teachers commissioned by the associations. There was as high a purpose and devotion among them as in any colony that ever went forth to bear the evangel of civilization. Among them were some of the choicest young men of New England, fresh from Harvard, Yale, and Brown, from the divinity-schools of Andover and Cambridge, ­ men of practical talent and experience. There were some of whom the world was scarce worthy, and to whom, whether they are amon~ the living or the dead, I delight to pay the tribute of my respect and admiration.      
 
Four of the original delegation have died.
 
 
On the first of July, 1862, the adininistration of affairs at Port Royal having been transferred frein the Treasury to the War Departuient, the charge of the freedmen passed into the hands of BrigadierGeneral Rufus Saxton, a native of Massachusetts, who in childhood had breathed the free air of the valley of the Connecticut, a man of sincere and humane nature and under his wise arid benevolent care they still remain. The Sea Islands, and also Pernandina and St. Augustine in Florida, are within our lines iii the Department of the South, and some sixteen or eighteen thousand negroes are supposed to be under his jurisdiction.       The negroes of the Sea Islands, when found by us, had become an abject race, more docile and submissive than those of any other locality. The native African was of a fierce and mettlesome temper, sullen and untamable. The master was obliged to abate something of the      
 
 
301  
 
usual rigor in dealing with the imported slaves. A tax-commissioner, now at Port
 
 
The slave is unknown to all, even to himself, while the bondage lasts. Nature is ever a kind mother. She soothes us with her deceits, not in surgery alone, when the sufferer, else writhing in pain, is transported with the sweet delirium, but she withholds from the spirit the sight of her divinity until her opportunity has come. Not even Tocqueville ur Olmsted, much less the master, can measure the capacities and possibilities of the slave, until the slave himself is transmuted to a man.  
 
 
 
      But the features in the present condition of the freedmen bearing directly on the solution of the social problem deserve most consideration.       And, first, as to education. There are more than thirty schools in the territory, conducted by as many as forty or fortyfive teachers, who are commissioned by the three associations in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and by the American Missionary Association. They have an average attendance of two thou sand pupils, and are more or less frequented by an additional thousand. The ages of the scholars range in the main from eight to twelve years. They did not know even their letters prior to a year ago last March, except those who were being taught in the single school at Beaufort already referred to, which had been going on for a few weeks.
 
 
. The eagerness for knowledge and the facility of acquisition displayed in the beginning had not abated.       On the 25th of March 1 visited a school at the Central Baptist Church on St. Helena Island, built in 1855, shaded by lofty live-oak trees, with the long, pendu lous moss everywhere hanging from their wide-spreadin~ branches, and surround e(l by the gravestones of the former proprietors, which bear the ever-recurring names of Fripp and Chaplin. This school was opened in September last, but man v of the pupils had received some instruction before. One hundred and thirty one children were present on my first visit, an(h one hundred and forty-five on my second, which was a few days later. Like most of the schools on the pIanta~ tions, it opened at noon and chased a~ ~iO4  2Ysc Ireeclme at Port Royal.  [September,  
 
fisree o’clock, leaving the forenoon for the children to work in the field or perform other service in which they could be useful. One class, of twelve pupils, read page 70th in Willson’s Reader, on “Going Away.” They had not read the passage hefore, and they went through it with little spellin~ or hesitation. They had recited the first thirty pages of Towle’s Speller, and the multiplicationtable as high as fives, and were commencing the sixes. A few of the scholars, the youngest, or those who had come latest to the school, were learning the alphabet. At the close of the school, they recited in concert the Psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd,” requiring prompting at the beginning of some of the verses. They sang with much spirit hymns which had heen taught them by the teachers, as, ­ also, ­ “My country, ‘t is of thee, Sweet land of liberty”;  
 
“Sound the loud timbrel “; also, Whittier’s new song, written expressly for this school, the closing stanzas of which are,­ “The very oaks are greener clad, The waters brighter smile; Oh, never shone a day so glad On sweet St. helen’s Isle!  
 
“For none in all the world before Were ever glad as we, ­ We ‘re free on Carolina’s shore, We ‘re all at home and free  
 
      Never has tha.t pure Muse, which has sung only of truth and right, as the highest beauty and noblest art, been consecrated to a better service than to write the songs of praise for these little children, chattels no longer, whom the Sayiour, were he now to walk on earth, would bless as his own.       The prevalent song, however, heard in every school, in church, and by the way-side, is that of” John Brown,” which very much amuses our white soldiers, particularly when the singers roll out, ­ The children also sang their own songs, as, ­ “Jn do mornin’ when I rise, Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh? ~ In do mornin’ when I rise, Tell my Jesus, Huddy oh? 
 
 
 
The teacher was instructing her pupils in some dates and facts which have had much to do with our history. The questions and answers, in which all the pupils joined, were these : ­ “Where were slaves first brought to this country ?“       “Viromnia.” “‘When ?“  
 
1620.”       “Who brought them?”       “Dutchmen.”       “Who came the same year to Plymouth, Massachusetts?” Pilrrims.” a       “ Did they bring slaves? “No.” A teacher in Beaufort put these qius tions, to Which answers were given in a loud tone by the whole school: ­ “What country do you live in?” “United States.” “XAThat State ? “South Carolina.” “What island?” “Port Royal.” “What town?” “Beaufort.” “Who is your Governor?” “General Saxton.” “Who is your President?” “AbrAham Lincoln.” “What has he done for you?” “He ‘s freed us.”     
 
 
 
. There is, besides, at Beaufort an industrial school, which meets two afternoons in a week, and is conducted by a lady from New York, with some dozen ladies to assist her. There were present, the afternoon I visited it, one hundred and thirteen girls from six to twenty years of age, all plying the needle, some with pieces of patchwork, and others with aprons, pillow cases, or handkerchiefs. Though I have never been on the school-committee, I accepted invitations to address the schools on these visits, and particularly plied the pupils with questions, so as to catch the tone of their minds and I have rarely heard children answer with more readiness and spirit. We had a dialogue substantially as follows : ­ “Children, what are you going to do when you grow up?”  
 
“Going to work, Sir.” “ On what?” “Cotton and corn, Sir.” \Vhat are you going to do with the       1863.1      Tile Freedmen at Port Royal.  
 
“Eat it.”       “What are you going to do with the cotton?” “ Sell it.”       “What are you going to do with the money you get for it?” One boy answered in advance of the rest, ­ “Put it in my pocket, Sir.”       “That won’t do. What ‘s better than that?       “Buy clothes, Sir.”       “What else will you buy?”       “Shoes, Sir.”       “What else are you going to do with your money?”       There was some hesitation at this point. Then the question was put, ­ “What are you going to do Sundays?” “Going to meeting.” “What are you going to do ther&?” “Going to sing.” “ XVhat else?” ‘‘ Hear the parson.” “Who ‘s going to pay him?” One boy said, ­“ Government pays him”; but the rest answered,­ “We ‘s pays him.”       “Well, when you grow up, you ‘11 probably get married, as other people do, and you ‘11 have your little children now, what will you do with them?” There was a titter at this question; but the general response came, ­ “Send ‘em to school, Sir.” “Well, who ‘11 pay the teacher?” “We ‘s pays him.”       One who listens to such answers can hardly think that there is any natural incapacity in these children to acquire with maturity of years the ideas and habits of good citizens.       The children are cheerful, and, in most of the schools, well-behaved, except that it is not easy to keep them from whispering and talking. They are joyous, and you can see the boys after school playing the soldier, with corn stalks for guns. The memory is very susceptible in them, ­ too much so, perhaps, as it is ahead of the reasoning faculty.     
 
 
 
      Next as to industry. The laborers, during their first year under the new system, have acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages, and have come to see that labor and slavery are not the same thing. The notion that they were to raise no more cotton has passed away, since work upon it is found to be remunerative, and connected with the proprietorship of land. House -servants, who were at first particularly set against it, now generally prefer it.
 
 
 
A superintendent on St. Helena Island said, that, if he were going to carry on any work, he should not want better laborers.
 
 
The work has heen greatly deranged by the draft, some features of which have not been very skilfully arranged, and by the fitfulness with which the laborers have been treated by the military authorities. The work both upon the cotton and the corn is done only by the women, children, and disabled men. It has been suggested that field-work does not become women in the new condition; and so it may seem to some persons of just sympathies who have not yet learned that no honest work is dishonorable in man or woman. But this matter may be left to regulate itself. Field-work, as an occupation, may not be consistent with the finest feminine culture or the most complete womanliness; but it in no way conflicts with virtue, self-respect, and social development. Women work in the field in Switzerland, the freest country of Eu rope; and we may look with pride on the triumphs of this generation, when the American negroes become the peers of the Swiss peasantry. Better a woman with the hoe than without it, when she is not yet fitted for the needle or the book.     
 
 
The instinct for land ­ to have one spot on earth where a man may stand, and whence no human being can of right drive him ­ is one of the most conservative elements of our nature; and a people who have it in any fair degree will never be nomads or vagabonds.       This developing manhood is further seen in their growing consciousness of rights, and their readiness to defend themselves, even when assailed by white men.
 
 
.       Another evidence of developing manhoo(l appears in their desire for the comforts and conveniences of household life. The Philadelphia society, for the purpose of maintaining reasonable prices, has a store on St. Helena Island, which is under the charge of Friend Hunn, of the good fellowship of William Penn.. . . there is also a great demand for plates, knives, forks, tin ware, and better clothing, including even hoop-skirts
 
 
. What a market the South would open under the new system! It would set all the mills and workshops astir. Four millions of people would become purchasers of all the various articles of manufacture and commerce, in place of the few coarse, simple necessaries, laid in for them in gross by the planters. Here ]5 the solution of the vexed industrial question~ The indisposition to labor is overcome in a healthy nature by instincts and motives of superior force, such as the love of life, the desire to be well clothed and fed, the sense of security derived from provision for the future, the feeling of selfresl)ect, the love of family and children, and the convictions of (luty. These all exist in the negro, in a state of greater or l~ss development. To give one or two examples. One man brought Captain looper seventy (lollars in silver, to keep for him, which. he had obtained from selling pigs and chickens, ­ thus providing for the future. Soldiers of Colonel Higginson’s re~iment, having confidence in the same officer, intrusted him, when they were paid off, with seven hundred dollars, to be transmitted by him to their wives, and this besides what they had sent home in other ways,­showing the family-feeling to be etive and strong in them. They have also the social and religious inspirations to labor. Thus, early in our occupation of Hilton Head, they took up, of their own accord, a collection to pay for the candles for their evening meetings, feeling that it was not right for the Government longer to provide them. The result was a contribution of two dollars and forty-eight cents. They had just fled from their masters, and had received only a small pittance of wages, and this little sum was not unlike the two mites which the widow cast into the treasury. Another collection was taken, last June, in the church on St. Helena Island, upon the suggestion of the pastor that they should share in the expenses of worship. Fifty-two dol lars was the result, ­ not a K d collection for some of our Northern churches. 1 have seen these people where they are said to be lowest, and sad indeed are some features of their lot, yet with all earnestness and confidence I enter my protest against the wicked satire of Carlyle.     
 
There are some vices charged upon these people, or a portion of them, an(l truth requires that nothing be withheld. There is said to be a good deal of petty pilfering among them, although they are faithful to trusts. This is the natural growth of the old system, and is quite       312   The Freedmen at Port Royal.   [September,  
 
likely to accompany the transition state. Besides, the present disturbed and unorganized condition of things is not favorable to the rigid virtues. But inferences from this must not be pressed too far. When I was a private soldier in Virginia, as one of a three-months’ regiment, we used to hide from each other our little comforts and delicacies, even our dishes and clothing, or they were sure to disappear. But we should have ridiculed an adventurous thinker upon the character istics of races and classes, who should have leaped therefrom to the conclusion that all white men or all soldiers are thieves.