Cordovell was representative of the advance of the people of mixed blood in the South. The general status of these people was better in Louisiana than anywhere else in the country, North or South; at the same time their situation was such as to call for special consideration. In Louisiana the "F.M.C." (Free Man of Color) formed a distinct and anomalous class in society.186As a free man he had certain rights, and sometimes his property holdings were very large.187In fact, in New Orleans a few years before the Civil War not less than one-fifth of the taxable property was in the hands of free people of color. At the same time the lot of these people was one of endless humiliation. Among some of them irregular household establishments were regularly maintained by white men, and there were held the "quadroon balls" which in course of time gave the city a distinct notoriety. Above the people of this group, however, was a genuine aristocracy of free people of color who had a long tradition of freedom, being descended from the early colonists, and whose family life was most exemplary. In general they lived to themselves. In fact, it was difficult for them to do otherwise. They were often compelled to have papers filled out by white guardians, and they were not allowed to be visited by slaves or to have companionship with them, even when attending church or walking along the roads. Sometimes free colored men owned their women and children in order that the latter might escape the invidious law against Negroes recently emancipated; or the situation was sometimes turned around, as in Norfolk, Va., where several women owned their husbands. When the name of a free man of color had to appear on any formal document—a deed of conveyance, a marriage-license, a certificate of birth or death, or even in a newspaper report—the initials F.M.C. had to be appended. In Louisiana these people petitioned in vain for the suffrage, and at the outbreak of the Civil War organized and splendidly equipped for the Confederacy two battalions of five hundred men. For these they chose two distinguished white commanders, and the governor accepted their services, only to have to inform them later that the Confederacy objected to the enrolling of Negro soldiers. In Charleston thirty-seven men in a remarkable petition also formally offered their services to the Confederacy.188What most readily found illustration in New Orleans or Charleston was also true to some extent of other centers of free people of color such as Mobile and Baltimore. In general the F.M.C.'s were industrious and they almost monopolized one or two avenues of employment; but as a group they had not yet learned to place themselves upon the broad basis of racial aspiration.
Whatever may have been the situation of special groups, however, it can readily be seen that there were at least some Negroes in the country—a good many in the aggregate—who by 1860 were maintaining a high standard in their ordinary social life. It must not be forgotten that we are dealing with a period when the general standard of American culture was by no means what it is to-day. "Four-fifths of the people of the United States of 1860 lived in the country, and it is perhaps fair to say that half of these dwelt in log houses of one or two rooms. Comforts such as most of us enjoy daily were as good as unknown.... For the workaday world shirtsleeves, heavy brogan boots and shoes, and rough wool hats were the rule."189In Philadelphia, a fairly representative city, there were at this time a considerable number of Negroes of means or professional standing. These people were regularly hospitable; they visited frequently; and they entertained in well furnished parlors with music and refreshments. In a day when many of their people had not yet learned to get beyond showiness in dress, they were temperate and self-restrained, they lived within their incomes, and they retired at a seasonable hour.190
In spite moreover of all the laws and disadvantages that they had to meet the Negroes also made general advance in education. In the South efforts were of course sporadic, but Negroes received some teaching through private or clandestine sources.191More than one slave learned the alphabet while entertaining the son of his master. In Charleston for a long time before the Civil War free Negroes could attend schools especially designed for their benefit and kept by white people or other Negroes. The course of study not infrequently embraced such subjects as physiology, physics, and plane geometry. After John Brown's raid the order went forth that no longer should any colored person teach Negroes. This resulted in a white person's being brought to sit in the classroom, though at the outbreak of the war schools were closed altogether. In the North, in spite of all proscription, conditions were somewhat better. As early as 1850 there were in the public schools in New York 3,393 Negro children, these sustaining about the same proportion to the Negro population that white children sustained to the total white population. Two institutions for the higher education of the Negro were established before the Civil War, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (1854) and Wilberforce University in Ohio (1856). Oberlin moreover was founded in 1833. In 1835 Professor Asa Mahan, of Lane Seminary, was offered the presidency. As he was an Abolitionist he said that he would accept only if Negroes were admitted on equal terms with other students. After a warm session of the trustees the vote was in his favor. Though, before this, individual Negroes had found their way into Northern institutions, it was here at Oberlin that they first received a real welcome. By the outbreak of the war nearly one-third of the students were of the Negro race, and one of the graduates, John M. Langston, was soon to be generally prominent in the affairs of the country.
It has been maintained that in their emphasis on education and on the highest culture possible for the Negro the Abolitionists were mere visionaries who had no practical knowledge whatever of the race's real needs. This was neither true nor just. It was absolutely necessary first of all to establish the Negro's right to enter any field occupied by any other man, and time has vindicated this position. Even in 1850, however, the needs of the majority of the Negro people for advance in their economic life were not overlooked either by the Abolitionists or the Negroes themselves. Said Martin V. Delany: "Our elevation must be the result ofself-efforts, and work of ourown hands. No other human power can accomplish it.... Let our young men and young women prepare themselves for usefulness and business; that the men may enter into merchandise, trading, and other things of importance; the young women may become teachers of various kinds, and otherwise fill places of usefulness. Parents must turn their attention more to the education of their children. We mean, to educate them for useful practical business purposes. Educate them for the store and counting-house—to do everyday practical business. Consult the children's propensities, and direct their education according to their inclinations. It may be that there is too great a desire on the part of parents to give their children a professional education, before the body of the people are ready for it. A people must be a business people and have more to depend upon than mere help in people's houses and hotels, before they are either able to support or capable of properly appreciating the services of professional men among them. This has been one of our great mistakes—we have gone in advance of ourselves. We have commenced at the superstructure of the building, instead of the foundation—at the top instead of the bottom. We should first be mechanics and common tradesmen, and professions as a matter of course would grow out of the wealth made thereby."192
In professional life the Negro had by 1860 made a noteworthy beginning. Already he had been forced to give attention to the law, though as yet little by way of actual practice had been done. In this field Robert Morris, Jr., of Boston, was probably foremost. William C. Nell, of Rochester and Boston, at the time prominent in newspaper work and politics, is now best remembered for his study of the Negro in the early wars of the country. About the middle of the century Samuel Ringgold Ward, author of theAutobiography of a Fugitive Negro, and one of the most eloquent men of the time, was for several years pastor of a white Congregational church in Courtlandville, N.Y.; and Henry Highland Garnett was the pastor of a white congregation in Troy, and well known as a public-spirited citizen as well. Upon James W.C. Pennington the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by Heidelberg, and generally this man had a reputation in England and on the continent of Europe as well as in America. About the same time Bishops Daniel A. Payne and William Paul Quinn were adding to the dignity of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Special interest attaches to the Negro physician. Even in colonial times, though there was much emphasis on the control of diseases by roots or charms, there was at least a beginning in work genuinely scientific. As early as 1792 a Negro named Cæsar had gained such distinction by his knowledge of curative herbs that the Assembly of South Carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity. In the earlier years of the last century James Derham, of New Orleans, became the first regularly recognized Negro physician of whom there is a complete record. Born in Philadelphia in 1762, as a boy he was transferred to a physician for whom he learned to perform minor duties. Afterwards he was sold to a physician in New Orleans who used him as an assistant. Two or three years later he won his freedom, he became familiar with French and Spanish as well as English, and he soon commanded general respect by his learning and skill. About the middle of the century, in New York, James McCune Smith, a graduate of the University of Glasgow, was prominent. He was the author of several scientific papers, a man of wide interests, and universally held in high esteem. "The first real impetus to bring Negroes in considerable numbers into the professional world came from the American Colonization Society, which in the early years flourished in the South as well as the North ... and undertook to prepare professional leaders of their race for the Liberian colony. 'To execute this scheme, leaders of the colonization movement endeavored to educate Negroes in mechanic arts, agriculture, science, and Biblical literature. Especially bright or promising youths were to be given special training as catechists, teachers, preachers, and physicians. Not much was said about what they were doing, but now and then appeared notices of Negroes who had been prepared privately in the South or publicly in the North for service in Liberia. Dr. William Taylor and Dr. Fleet were thus educated in the District of Columbia. In the same way John V. De Grasse, of New York, and Thomas J. White, of Brooklyn, were allowed to complete the medical course at Bowdoin in 1849. In 1854 Dr. De Grasse was admitted as a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society.'"193Martin V. Delany, more than once referred to in these pages, after being refused admission at a number of institutions, was admitted to the medical school at Harvard. He became distinguished for his work in a cholera epidemic in Pittsburgh in 1854. It was of course not until after the Civil War that medical departments were established in connection with some of the new higher institutions of learning for Negro students.
Before 1860 a situation that arose more than once took from Negroes the real credit for inventions. If a slave made an invention he was not permitted to take out a patent, for no slave could make a contract. At the same time the slave's master could not take out a patent for him, for the Government would not recognize the slave as having the legal right to make the assignment to his master. It is certain that Negroes, who did most of the mechanical work in the South before the Civil War, made more than one suggestion for the improvement of machinery. We have already referred to the strong claim put forth by a member of the race for the real credit of the cotton-gin. The honor of being the first Negro to be granted a patent belongs to Henry Blair, of Maryland, who in 1834 received official protection for a corn harvester.
Throughout the century there were numerous attempts at poetical composition, and several booklets were published. Perhaps the most promising was George Horton'sThe Hope of Liberty, which appeared in 1829. Unfortunately, Horton could not get the encouragement that he needed and in course of time settled down to the life of a janitor at the University of North Carolina.194Six years before the war Frances Ellen Watkins (later Mrs. Harper) struck the popular note by readings from herMiscellaneous Poems, which ran through several editions. About the same time William Wells Brown was prominent, though he also worked for several years after the war. He was a man of decided talent and had traveled considerably. He wrote several books dealing with Negro history and biography; and he also treated racial subjects in a novel,Clotel, and in a drama,The Escape. The latter suffers from an excess of moralizing, but several times it flashes out with the quality of genuine drama, especially when it deals with the jealousy of a mistress for a favorite slave and the escape of the latter with her husband. In 1841 the first Negro magazine began to appear, this being issued by the A.M.E. Church. There were numerous autobiographies, that of Frederick Douglass, first appearing in 1845, running through edition after edition. On the stage there was the astonishing success of Ira Aldridge, a tragedian who in his earlier years went to Europe, where he had the advantage of association with Edmund Kean. About 1857 he was commonly regarded as one of the two or three greatest actors in the world. He became a member of several of the continental academies of arts and science, and received many decorations of crosses and medals, the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia being among those who honored him. In the great field of music there was much excellent work both in composition and in the performance on different instruments. Among the free people of color in Louisiana there were several distinguished musicians, some of whom removed to Europe for the sake of greater freedom.195The highest individual achievement was that of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, of Philadelphia. This singer was of the very first rank. Her voice was of remarkable sweetness and had a compass of twenty-seven notes. She sang before many distinguished audiences in both Europe and America and was frequently compared with Jenny Lind, then at the height of her fame.
It is thus evident that honorable achievement on the part of Negroes and general advance in social welfare by no means began with the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1860 eight-ninths of the members of the race were still slaves, but in the face of every possible handicap the one-ninth that was free had entered practically every great field of human endeavor. Many were respected citizens in their communities, and a few had even laid the foundations of wealth. While there was as yet no book of unquestioned genius or scholarship, there was considerable intellectual activity, and only time and a little more freedom from economic pressure were needed for the production of works of the first order of merit.
Footnote 177:(return)This chapter follows closely upon Chapter III, Section 5, and is largely complementary to Chapter VIII.
Footnote 178:(return)Nell:Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, 356.
Footnote 179:(return)Nell, III.
Footnote 180:(return)Senate document 63 of 1842.
Footnote 181:(return)McMaster, VIII, 74.
Footnote 182:(return)Clarke:Condition of the Free Colored People of the United States.
Footnote 183:(return)Nell, 285.
Footnote 184:(return)Bacon:Statistics, 13.
Footnote 185:(return)Delany.
Footnote 186:(return)See "The F.M.C.'s of Louisiana," by P.F. de Gournay,Lippincott's Magazine, April, 1894; and "Black Masters," by Calvin Dill Wilson,North American Review, November, 1905.
Footnote 187:(return)See Stone: "The Negro in the South," inThe South in the Building of the Nation, X, 180.
Footnote 188:(return)Note broadside (Charleston, 1861) accessible in Special Library of Boston Public Library as Document No. 9 in 20th Cab. 3. 7.
Footnote 189:(return)W.E. Dodd:Expansion and Conflict, Volume 3 of "Riverside History of the United States," Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1915, p. 208.
Footnote 190:(return)Turner:The Negro in Pennsylvania, 140.
Footnote 191:(return)For interesting examples see C.G. Woodson:The Education of the Negro prior to 1861.
Footnote 192:(return)The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered, Philadelphia, 1852, P. 45.
Footnote 193:(return)Kelly Miller: "The Background of the Negro Physician,"Journal of Negro History, April, 1916, quoting in part Woodson:The Education of the Negro prior to 1861.
Footnote 194:(return)See "George Moses Horton: Slave Poet," by Stephen B. Weeks,Southern Workman, October, 1914.
Footnote 195:(return)See Washington:The Story of the Negro, II, 276-7.
At the outbreak of the Civil War two great questions affecting the Negro overshadowed all others—his freedom and his employment as a soldier. The North as a whole had no special enthusiasm about the Negro and responded only to Lincoln's call to the duty of saving the Union. Among both officers and men moreover there was great prejudice against the use of the Negro as a soldier, the feeling being that he was disqualified by slavery and ignorance. Privates objected to meeting black men on the same footing as themselves and also felt that the arming of slaves to fight for their former masters would increase the bitterness of the conflict. If many men in the North felt thus, the South was furious at the thought of the Negro as a possible opponent in arms.
The human problem, however, was not long in presenting itself and forcing attention. As soon as the Northern soldiers appeared in the South, thousands of Negroes—men, women, and children—flocked to their camps, feeling only that they were going to their friends. In May, 1861, while in command at Fortress Monroe, Major-General Benjamin F. Butler came into national prominence by his policy of putting to work the men who came within his lines and justifying their retention on the ground that, being of service to the enemy for purposes of war, they were like guns, powder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. On August 30th of this same year Major-General John C. Fremont, in command in Missouri, placed the state under martial law and declared the slaves there emancipated. The administration was embarrassed, Fremont's order was annulled, and he was relieved of his command. On May 9, 1862, Major-General David Hunter, in charge of the Department of the South (South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida) issued his famous order freeing the slaves in his department, and thus brought to general attention the matter of the employment of Negro soldiers in the Union armies. The Confederate government outlawed Hunter, Lincoln annulled his order, and the grace of the nation was again saved; but in the meantime a new situation had arisen. While Brigadier-General John W. Phelps was taking part in the expedition against New Orleans, a large sugar-planter near the city, disgusted with Federal interference with affairs on his plantation, drove all his slaves away, telling them to go to their friends, the Yankees. The Negroes came to Phelps in great numbers, and for the sake of discipline he attempted to organize them into troops. Accordingly he, too, was outlawed by the Confederates, and his act was disavowed by the Union, that was not ready to take this step.
Meanwhile President Lincoln was debating the Emancipation Proclamation. Pressure from radical anti-slavery sources was constantly being brought to bear upon him, and Horace Greeley in his famous editorial, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions," was only one of those who criticized what seemed to be his lack of strength in handling the situation. After McClellan's unsuccessful campaign against Richmond, however, he felt that the freedom of the slaves was a military and moral necessity for its effects upon both the North and the South; and Lee's defeat at Antietam, September 17, 1862, furnished the opportunity for which he had been waiting. Accordingly on September 22nd he issued a preliminary declaration giving notice that on January 1, 1865, he would free all slaves in the states still in rebellion, and asserting as before that the object of the war was the preservation of the Union.
The Proclamation as finally issued January 1st is one of the most important public documents in the history of the United States, ranking only below the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. It full text is as follows:
Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States containing among other things the following, to-wit:That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.That the Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any state, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such state shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such state, and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the date first above mentioned, order and designate as the states and parts of states wherein the people thereof respectively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following to-wit:Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, Ste. Marie, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted parts are, for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and henceforward shall be free, and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.And I further declare and make known that such persons, of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God.In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.Done at the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-seventh.By the President,ABRAHAM LINCOLN.WILLIAM H. SEWARD,Secretary of State.
It will be observed that the Proclamation was merely a war measure resting on the constitutional power of the President. Its effects on the legal status of the slaves gave rise to much discussion; and it is to be noted that it did not apply to what is now West Virginia, to seven counties in Virginia, and to thirteen parishes in Louisiana, which districts had already come under Federal jurisdiction. All questions raised by the measure, however, were finally settled by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and as a matter of fact freedom actually followed the progress of the Union arms from 1863 to 1865.
Meanwhile from the very beginning of the war Negroes were used by the Confederates in making redoubts and in doing other rough work, and even before the Emancipation Proclamation there were many Northern officers who said that definite enlistment was advisable. They felt that such a course would help to destroy slavery and that as the Negroes had so much at stake they should have some share in the overthrow of the rebellion. They said also that the men would be proud to wear the national uniform. Individuals moreover as officers' servants saw much of fighting and won confidence in their ability; and as the war advanced and more and more men were killed the conviction grew that a Negro could stop a bullet as well as a white man and that in any case the use of Negroes for fatigue work would release numbers of other men for the actual fighting.
At last—after a great many men had been killed and the Emancipation Proclamation had changed the status of the Negro—enlistment was decided on. The policy was that Negroes might be non-commissioned men while white men who had seen service would be field and line officers. In general it was expected that only those who had kindly feeling toward the Negro would be used as officers, but in the pressure of military routine this distinction was not always observed. Opinion for the race gained force after the Draft Riot in New York (July, 1863), when Negroes in the city were persecuted by the opponents of conscription. Soon a distinct bureau was established in Washington for the recording of all matters pertaining to Negro troops, a board was organized for the examination of candidates, and recruiting stations were set up in Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee. The Confederates were indignant at the thought of having to meet black men on equal footing, and refused to exchange Negro soldiers for white men. How such action was met by Stanton, Secretary of War, may be seen from the fact that when he learned that three Negro prisoners had been placed in close confinement, he ordered three South Carolina men to be treated likewise, and the Confederate leaders to be informed of his policy.
The economic advantage of enlistment was apparent. It gave work to 187,000 men who had been cast adrift by the war and who had found no place of independent labor. It gave them food, clothing, wages, and protection, but most of all the feeling of self-respect that comes from profitable employment. To the men themselves the year of jubilee had come. At one great step they had crossed the gulf that separates chattels from men and they now had a chance to vindicate their manhood. A common poster of the day represented a Negro soldier bearing the flag, the shackles of a slave being broken, a young Negro boy reading a newspaper, and several children going into a public school. Over all were the words: "All Slaves were made Freemen by Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, January 1st, 1863. Come, then, able-bodied Colored Men, to the nearest United States Camp, and fight for the Stars and Stripes."
To the credit of the men be it said that in their new position they acted with dignity and sobriety. When they picketed lines through which Southern citizens passed, they acted with courtesy at the same time that they did their duty. They captured Southern men without insulting them, and by their own self-respect won the respect of others. Meanwhile their brothers in the South went about the day's work, caring for the widow and the orphan; and a nation that still lynches the Negro has to remember that in all these troublous years deeds of violence against white women and girls were absolutely unknown.
Throughout the country the behavior of the black men under fire was watched with the most intense interest. More and more in the baptism of blood they justified the faith for which their friends had fought for years. At Port Hudson, Fort Wagner, Fort Pillow, and Petersburg their courage was most distinguished. Said the New YorkTimesof the battle at Port Hudson (1863): "General Dwight, at least, must have had the idea not only that they (the Negro troops) were men, but something more than men, from the terrific test to which he put their valor.... Their colors are torn to pieces by shot, and literally bespattered by blood and brains." This was the occasion on which Color-Sergeant Anselmas Planciancois said before a shell blew off his head, "Colonel, I will bring back these colors to you on honor, or report to God the reason why." On June 6 the Negroes again distinguished themselves and won friends by their bravery at Milliken's Bend. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, commanded by Robert Gould Shaw, was conspicuous in the attempt to take Fort Wagner, on Morris Island near Charleston, July 18, 1863. The regiment had marched two days and two nights through swamps and drenching rains in order to be in time for the assault. In the engagement nearly all the officers of the regiment were killed, among them Colonel Shaw. The picturesque deed was that of Sergeant William H. Carney, who seized the regiment's colors from the hands of a falling comrade, planted the flag on the works, and said when borne bleeding and mangled from the field, "Boys, the old flag never touched the ground." Fort Pillow, a position on the Mississippi, about fifty miles above Memphis, was garrisoned by 557 men, 262 of whom were Negroes, when it was attacked April 13, 1864. The fort was finally taken by the Confederates, but the feature of the engagement was the stubborn resistance offered by the Union troops in the face of great odds. In the Mississippi Valley, and in the Department of the South, the Negro had now done excellent work as a soldier. In the spring of 1864 he made his appearance in the Army of the Potomac. In July there was around Richmond and Petersburg considerable skirmishing between the Federal and the Confederate forces. Burnside, commanding a corps composed partly of Negroes, dug under a Confederate fort a trench a hundred and fifty yards long. This was filled with explosives, and on July 30 the match was applied and the famous crater formed. Just before the explosion the Negroes had figured in a gallant charge on the Confederates. The plan was to follow the eruption by a still more formidable assault, in which Burnside wanted to give his Negro troops the lead. A dispute about this and a settlement by lot resulted in the awarding of precedence to a New Hampshire regiment. Said General Grant later of the whole unfortunate episode: "General Burnside wanted to put his colored division in front; I believe if he had done so it would have been a success." After the men of a Negro regiment had charged and taken a battery at Decatur, Ala., in October, 1864, and shown exceptional gallantry under fire, they received an ovation from their white comrades "who by thousands sprang upon the parapets and cheered the regiment as it reëntered the lines."196
When all was over there was in the North a spontaneous recognition of the right of such men to honorable and generous treatment at the hands of the nation, and in Congress there was the feeling that if the South could come back to the Union with its autonomy unimpaired, certainly the Negro soldier should have the rights of citizenship. Before the war closed, however, there was held in Syracuse, N.Y., a convention of Negro men that threw interesting light on the problems and the feeling of the period.197At this gathering John Mercer Langston was temporary chairman, Frederick Douglass, president, and Henry Highland Garnett, of Washington; James W.C. Pennington, of New York; George L. Ruffin, of Boston, and Ebenezer D. Bassett, of Philadelphia, were among the more prominent delegates. There was at the meeting a fear that some of the things that seemed to have been gained by the war might not actually be realized; and as Congress had not yet altered the Constitution so as to abolish slavery, grave question was raised by a recent speech in which no less a man than Seward, Secretary of State, had said: "When the insurgents shall have abandoned their armies and laid down their arms, the war will instantly cease; and all the war measures then existing, including those which affect slavery, will cease also." The convention thanked the President and the Thirty-Seventh Congress for revoking a prohibitory law in regard to the carrying of mails by Negroes, for abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, for recognizing Hayti and Liberia, and for the military order retaliating for the unmilitary treatment accorded Negro soldiers by the Confederate officers; and especially it thanked Senator Sumner "for his noble efforts to cleanse the statute-books of the nation from every stain of inequality against colored men," and General Butler for the stand he had taken early in the war. At the same time it resolved to send a petition to Congress to ask that the rights of the country's Negro patriots in the field be respected, and that the Government cease to set an example to those in arms against it by making invidious distinctions, based upon color, as to pay, labor, and promotion. It begged especially to be saved from supposed friends: "When theAnti-Slavery Standard, representing the American Anti-Slavery Society, denies that the society asks for the enfranchisement of colored men, and theLiberatorapologizes for excluding the colored men of Louisiana from the ballot-box, they injure us more vitally than all the ribald jests of the whole pro-slavery press." Finally the convention insisted that any such things as the right to own real estate, to testify in courts of law, and to sue and be sued, were mere privileges so long as general political liberty was withheld, and asked frankly not only for the formal and complete abolition of slavery in the United States, but also for the elective franchise in all the states then in the Union and in all that might come into the Union thereafter. On the whole this representative gathering showed a very clear conception of the problems facing the Negro and the country in 1864. Its reference to well-known anti-slavery publications shows not only the increasing race consciousness that came through this as through all other wars in which the country has engaged, but also the great drift toward conservatism that had taken place in the North within thirty years.
Whatever might be the questions of the moment, however, about the supreme blessing of freedom there could at last be no doubt. It had been long delayed and had finally come merely as an incident to the war; nevertheless a whole race of people had passed from death unto life. Then, as before and since, they found a parallel for their experiences in the story of the Jews in the Old Testament. They, too, had sojourned in Egypt and crossed the Red Sea. What they could not then see, or only dimly realize, was that they needed faith—faith in God and faith in themselves—for the forty years in the wilderness. They did not yet fully know that He who guided the children of Israel and drove out before them the Amorite and the Hittite, would bring them also to the Promised Land.
To those who led the Negro in these wonderful years—to Robert Gould Shaw, the young colonel of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts, who died leading his men at Fort Wagner; to Norwood Penrose Hallowell, lieutenant-colonel of the Fifty-Fourth and then colonel of the Fifty-Fifth; to his brother, Edward N. Hallowell, who succeeded Shaw when he fell; and to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who commanded the first regiment of freed slaves—no ordinary eulogy can apply. Their names are written in letters of flame and their deeds live after them. On the Shaw Monument in Boston are written these words:
The White OfficersTaking Life and Honor in their Hands—Cast their lot with Men of a Despised Race Unproved in War—and Risked Death as Inciters of a Servile Insurrection if Taken Prisoners, Besides Encountering all the Common Perils of Camp, March, and Battle.The Black Rank and FileVolunteered when Disaster Clouded the Union Cause—Served without Pay for Eighteen Months till Given that of White Troops—Faced Threatened Enslavement if Captured—Were Brave in Action—Patient under Dangerous and Heavy Labors and Cheerful amid Hardships and Privations.TogetherThey Gave to the Nation Undying Proof that Americans of African Descent Possess the Pride, Courage, and Devotion of the Patriot Soldier—One Hundred and Eighty Thousand Such Americans Enlisted under the Union Flag in MDCCCLXIII-MDCCCLXV.
Footnote 196:(return)General Thomas J. Morgan: "The Negroes in the Civil War," in theBaptist Home Mission Monthly, quoted inLiberia, Bulletin 12, February, 1898. General Morgan in October, 1863, became a major in the Fourteenth United States Colored Infantry. He organized the regiment and became its colonel. He also organized the Forty-second and Forty-fourth regiments of colored infantry.
Footnote 197:(return)See Proceedings of the National Convention of Colored Men, held in the city of Syracuse, N.Y., October 4, 5, 6, and 7, 1864, with the Bill of Wrongs and Rights, and the Address to the American People. Boston, 1864.
At the close of the Civil War the United States found itself face to face with one of the gravest social problems of modern times. More and more it became apparent that it was not only the technical question of the restoration of the states to the Union that had to be considered, but the whole adjustment for the future of the lives of three and a half million Negroes and five and a half million white people in the South. In its final analysis the question was one of race, and to add to the difficulties of this problem it is to be regretted that there should have been actually upon the scene politicians and speculators who sought to capitalize for their own gain the public distress.
The South was thoroughly demoralized, and the women who had borne the burden of the war at home were especially bitter. Slave property to the amount of two billions of dollars had been swept away; several of the chief cities had suffered bombardment; the railroads had largely run down; and the confiscation of property was such as to lead to the indemnification of thousands of claimants afterwards. The Negro was not yet settled in new places of abode, and his death rate was appalling. Throughout the first winter after the war the whole South was on the verge of starvation.
Here undoubtedly was a difficult situation—one calling for the highest quality of statesmanship, and of sportsmanship on the part of the vanquished. Many Negroes, freed from the tradition of two hundred and fifty years of slavery, took a holiday; some resolved not to work any more as long as they lived, and some even appropriated to their own use the produce of their neighbors. If they remained on the old plantations, they feared that they might still be considered slaves; on the other hand, if they took to the high road, they might be considered vagrants. If one returned from a Federal camp to claim his wife and children, he might be driven away. "Freedom cried out," and undoubtedly some individuals did foolish things; but serious crime was noticeably absent. On the whole the race bore the blessing of emancipation with remarkable good sense and temper. Returning soldiers paraded, there were some meetings and processions, sometimes a little regalia—and even a little noise; then everybody went home. Unfortunately even so much the white South regarded as insolence.
The example of how the Southmighthave met the situation was afforded by no less a man than Robert E. Lee, about whose unselfishness and standard of conduct as a gentleman there could be no question. One day in Richmond a Negro from the street, intent on asserting his rights, entered a representative church, pushed his way to the communion altar and knelt. The congregation paused, and all fully realized the factors that entered into the situation. Then General Lee rose and knelt beside the Negro; the congregation did likewise, and the tension was over. Furthermore, every one went home spiritually uplifted.
Could the handling of this incident have been multipled a thousand times—could men have realized that mere accidents are fleeting but that principles are eternal—both races would have been spared years of agony, and our Southland would be a far different place to-day. The Negro was at the heart of the problem, but to that problem the South undoubtedly held the key. Of course the cry of "social equality" might have been raised;anythingmight have been said to keep the right thing from being done. In this instance, as in many others, the final question was not what somebody else did, but how one himself could act most nobly.
Unfortunately Lee's method of approach was not to prevail. Passion and prejudice and demagoguery were to have their day, and conservative and broadly patriotic men were to be made to follow leaders whom they could not possibly approve. Sixty years afterwards we still suffer from the KuKlux solution of the problem.
The story of reconstruction has been many times told, and it is not our intention to tell that story again. We must content ourselves by touching upon some of the salient points in the discussion.
Even before the close of the war the National Government had undertaken to handle officially the thousands of Negroes who had crowded to the Federal lines and not less than a million of whom were in the spring of 1865 dependent upon the National Government for support. The Bureau of Refugee Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, created in connection with the War Department by an act of March 3, 1865, was to remain in existence throughout the war and for one year thereafter. Its powers were enlarged July 16, 1866, and its chief work did not end until January 1, 1869, its educational work continuing for a year and a half longer. The Freedmen's Bureau was to have "the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen." Of special importance was the provision in the creating act that gave the freedmen to understand that each male refugee was to be given forty acres with the guarantee of possession for three years. Throughout the existence of the Bureau its chief commissioner was General O.O. Howard. While the principal officers were undoubtedly men of noble purpose, many of the minor officials were just as undoubtedly corrupt and self-seeking. In the winter of 1865-6 one-third of its aid was given to the white people of the South. For Negro pupils the Bureau established altogether 4,239 schools, and these had 9,307 teachers and 247,333 students. Its real achievement has been thus ably summed up: "The greatest success of the Freedmen's Bureau lay in the planting of the free school among Negroes, and the idea of free elementary education among all classes in the South.... For some fifteen million dollars, beside the sum spent before 1865, and the dole of benevolent societies, this bureau set going a system of free labor, established a beginning of peasant proprietorship, secured the recognition of black freedmen before courts of law, and founded the free common school in the South. On the other hand, it failed to begin the establishment of good will between ex-masters and freedmen, to guard its work wholly from paternalistic methods, which discouraged self-reliance, and to carry out to any considerable extent its implied promises to furnish the freedmen with land."198To this tale of its shortcomings must be added also the management of the Freedmen's Bank, which "was morally and practically part of the Freedmen's Bureau, although it had no legal connection with it." This institution made a really remarkable start in the development of thrift among the Negroes, and its failure, involving the loss of the first savings of hundreds of ex-slaves, was as disastrous in its moral as in its immediate financial consequences.
When the Freedmen's Bureau came to an end, it turned its educational interests and some money over to the religious and benevolent societies which had coöperated with it, especially to the American Missionary Association. This society had been organized before the Civil War on an interdenominational and strong anti-slavery basis; but with the withdrawal of general interest the body passed in 1881 into the hands of the Congregational Church. Other prominent agencies were the American Baptist Home Mission Society (also the American Baptist Publication Society), the Freedmen's Aid Society (representing the Northern Methodists), and the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Actual work was begun by the American Missionary Association. In 1861 Lewis Tappan, treasurer of the organization, wrote to General Butler to ask just what aid could be given. The result of the correspondence was that on September 3 of this year Rev. L.C. Lockwood reached Hampton and on September 17 opened the first day school among the freedmen. This school was taught by Mrs. Mary S. Peake, a woman of the race who had had the advantage of a free mother, and whose devotion to the work was such that she soon died. However, she had helped to lay the foundations of Hampton Institute. Soon there was a school at Norfolk, there were two at Newport News, and by January schools at Hilton Head and Beaufort, S.C. Then came the Emancipation Proclamation, throwing wide open the door of the great need. Rev. John Eaton, army chaplain from Ohio, afterwards United States Commissioner of Education, was placed in charge of the instruction of the Negroes, and in one way or another by the close of the war probably as many as one million in the South had learned to read and write. The 83 missionaries and teachers of the Association in 1863 increased to 250 in 1864. At the first day session of the school in Norfolk after the Proclamation there were 350 scholars, with 300 others in the evening. On the third day there were 550 in the day school and 500 others in the evening. The school had to be divided, a part going to another church; the assistants increased in number, and soon the day attendance was 1,200. For such schools the houses on abandoned plantations were used, and even public buildings were called into commission. Afterwards arose the higher institutions, Atlanta, Berea, Fisk, Talladega, Straight, with numerous secondary schools. Similarly the Baptists founded the colleges which, with some changes of name, have become Virginia Union, Hartshorn, Shaw, Benedict, Morehouse, Spelman, Jackson, and Bishop, with numerous affiliated institutions. The Methodists began to operate Clark (in South Atlanta), Claflin, Rust, Wiley, and others; and the Presbyterians, having already founded Lincoln in 1854, now founded Biddle and several seminaries for young women; while the United Presbyterians founded Knoxville. In course of time the distinctively Negro denominations—the A.M.E., the A.M.E.Z., and the C.M.E. (which last represented a withdrawal from the Southern Methodists in 1870)—also helped in the work, and thus, in addition to Wilberforce in Ohio, arose such institutions as Morris Brown University, Livingstone College, and Lane College. In 1867, moreover, the Federal Government crowned its work for the education of the Negro by the establishment at Washington of Howard University.
As these institutions have grown they have naturally developed some differences or special emphasis. Hampton and Atlanta University are now independent; and Berea has had a peculiar history, legislation in Kentucky in 1903 restricting the privileges of the institution to white students. Hampton, in the hands of General Armstrong, placed emphasis on the idea of industrial and practical education which has since become world-famous. In 1871 the Fisk Jubilee Singers began their memorable progress through America and Europe, meeting at first with scorn and sneers, but before long touching the heart of the world with their strange music. Their later success was as remarkable as their mission was unique. Meanwhile Spelman Seminary, in the record of her graduates who have gone as missionaries to Africa, has also developed a glorious tradition.
To those heroic men and women who represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given. Cravath at Fisk, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, and Packard and Giles at Spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving. These people had no enviable task. They were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed. It is true that their idea of education founded on the New England college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were Negroes, were human beings. They had the key to the eternal verities, and time will more and more justify their position.
To the Freedmen's Bureau the South objected because of the political activity of some of its officials. To the schools founded by missionary endeavor it objected primarily on the score of social equality. To both the provisional Southern governments of 1865 replied with the so-called Black Codes. The theory of these remarkable ordinances—most harsh in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—was that even if the Negro was nominally free he was by no means able to take care of himself and needed the tutelage and oversight of the white man. Hence developed what was to be known as a system of "apprenticeship." South Carolina in her act of December 21, 1865, said, "A child, over the age of two years, born of a colored parent, may be bound by the father if he be living in the district, or in case of his death or absence from the district, by the mother, as an apprentice to any respectable white or colored person who is competent to make a contract; a male until he shall attain the age of twenty-one years, and a female until she shall attain the age of eighteen.... Males of the age of twelve years, and females of the age of ten years, shall sign the indenture of apprenticeship, and be bound thereby.... The master shall receive to his own use the profits of the labor of his apprentice." To this Mississippi added: "If any apprentice shall leave the employment of his or her master or mistress, said master or mistress may pursue and recapture said apprentice, and bring him or her before any justice of peace of the county, whose duty it shall be to remand said apprentice to the service of his or her master or mistress; and in the event of a refusal on the part of said apprentice so to return, then said justice shall commit said apprentice to the jail of said county," etc., etc. In general by such legislation the Negro was given the right to sue and be sued, to testify in court concerning Negroes, and to have marriage and the responsibility for children recognized. On the other hand, he could not serve on juries, could not serve in the militia, and could not vote or hold office. He was virtually forbidden to assemble, and his freedom of movement was restricted. Within recent years the Black Codes have been more than once defended as an honest effort to meet a difficult situation, but the old slavery attitude peered through them and gave the impression that those who framed them did not yet know that the old order had passed away.
Meanwhile the South was in a state of panic, and the provisional governor of Mississippi asked of President Johnson permission to organize the local militia. The request was granted and the patrols immediately began to show their hostility to Northern people and the freedmen. In the spring of 1866 there was a serious race riot in Memphis. On July 30, while some Negroes were marching to a political convention in New Orleans, they became engaged in brawls with the white spectators. Shots were exchanged; the police, assisted by the spectators, undertook to arrest the Negroes; the Negroes took refuge in the convention hall; and their pursuers stormed the building and shot down without mercy the Negroes and their white supporters. Altogether not less than forty were killed and not less than one hundred wounded; but not more than a dozen men were killed on the side of the police and the white citizens. General Sheridan, who was in command at New Orleans, characterized the affair as "an absolute massacre ... a murder which the mayor and police of the city perpetrated without the shadow of a necessity."
In the face of such events and tendencies, and influenced to some extent by a careful and illuminating but much criticized report of Carl Schurz, Congress, led by Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, proceeded to pass legislation designed to protect the freedmen and to guarantee to the country the fruits of the war. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution formally abolishing slavery was passed December 18, 1865. In the following March Congress passed over the President's veto the first Civil Rights Bill, guaranteeing to the freedmen all the ordinary rights of citizenship, and it was about the same time that it enlarged the powers of the Freedmen's Bureau. The Fourteenth Amendment (July 28, 1868) denied to the states the power to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; and the Fifteenth Amendment (March 30, 1870) sought to protect the Negro by giving to him the right of suffrage instead of military protection. In 1875 was passed the second Civil Rights act, designed to give Negroes equality of treatment in theaters, railway cars, hotels, etc.; but this the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in 1883.
As a result of this legislation the Negro was placed in positions of responsibility; within the next few years the race sent two senators and thirteen representatives to Congress, and in some of the state legislatures, as in South Carolina, Negroes were decidedly in the majority. The attainments of some of these men were undoubtedly remarkable; the two United States senators, Hiram R. Revels and Blanche K. Bruce, both from Mississippi, were of unquestioned intelligence and ability, and Robert B. Elliott, one of the representatives from South Carolina, attracted unusual attention by his speech in reply to Alexander Stephens on the constitutionality of the Civil Rights bill. At the same time among the Negro legislators there was also considerable ignorance, and there set in an era of extravagance and corruption from which the "carpet-baggers" and the "scalawags" rather than the Negroes themselves reaped the benefit. Accordingly within recent years it has become more and more the fashion to lament the ills of the period, and no representative American historian can now write of reconstruction without a tone of apology. A few points, however, are to be observed. In the first place the ignorance was by no means so vast as has been supposed. Within the four years from 1861 to 1865, thanks to the army schools and missionary agencies, not less than half a million Negroes in the South had learned to read and write. Furthermore, the suffrage was not immediately given to the emancipated Negroes; this was the last rather than the first step in reconstruction. The provisional legislatures formed at the close of the war were composed of white men only; but the experiment failed because of the short-sighted laws that were enacted. If the fruit of the Civil War was not to be lost, if all the sacrifice was not to prove in vain, it became necessary for Congress to see that the overthrow of slavery was final and complete. By the Fourteenth Amendment the Negro was invested with the ordinary rights and dignity of a citizen of the United States. He was not enfranchised, but he could no longer be made the victim of state laws designed merely to keep him in servile subjection. If the Southern states had accepted this amendment, they might undoubtedly have reëntered the Union without further conditions. They refused to do so; they refused to help the National Government in any way whatsoever in its effort to guarantee to the Negro the rights of manhood. Achilles sulked in his tent, and whenever he sulks the world moves on—without him. The alternative finally presented to Congress, if it was not to make an absolute surrender, was either to hold the South indefinitely under military subjection or to place the ballot in the hands of the Negro. The former course was impossible; the latter was chosen, and the Union was really restored—was really saved—by the force of the ballot in the hands of black men.
It has been held that the Negro was primarily to blame for the corruption of the day. Here again it is well to recall the tendencies of the period. The decade succeeding the war was throughout the country one of unparalleled political corruption. The Tweed ring, the Crédit Mobilier, and the "salary grab" were only some of the more outstanding signs of the times. In the South the Negroes were not the real leaders in corruption; they simply followed the men who they supposed were their friends. Surely in the face of such facts as these it is not just to fix upon a people groping to the light the peculiar odium of the corruption that followed in the wake of the war.
And we shall have to leave it to those better informed than we to say to just what extent city and state politics in the South have been cleaned up since the Negro ceased to be a factor. Many of the constitutions framed by the reconstruction governments were really excellent models, and the fact that they were overthrown seems to indicate that some other spoilsmen were abroad. Take North Carolina, for example. In this state in 1868 the reconstruction government by its new constitution introduced the township system so favorably known in the North and West. When in 1875 the South regained control, with all the corruption it found as excellent a form of republican state government as was to be found in any state in the Union. "Every provision which any state enjoyed for the protection of public society from its bad members and bad impulses was either provided or easily procurable under the Constitution of the state."199Yet within a year, in order to annul the power of their opponents in every county in the state, the new party so amended the Constitution as to take away from every county the power of self-government and centralize everything in the legislature. Now was realized an extent of power over elections and election returns so great that no party could wholly clear itself of the idea of corrupt intentions.
At the heart of the whole question of course was race. As a matter of fact much work of genuine statesmanship was accomplished or attempted by the reconstruction governments. For one thing the idea of common school education for all people was now for the first time fully impressed upon the South. The CharlestonNews and Courierof July 11, 1876, formally granted that in the administration of Governor Chamberlain of South Carolina the abuse of the pardoning power had been corrected; the character of the officers appointed by the Executive had improved; the floating indebtedness of the state had been provided for in such a way that the rejection of fraudulent claims was assured and that valid claims were scaled one-half; the tax laws had been so amended as to secure substantial equality in the assessment of property; taxes had been reduced to eleven mills on the dollar; the contingent fund of the executive department had been reduced at a saving in two years of $101,200; legislative expenses had also been reduced so as to save in two years $350,000; legislative contingent expenses had also been handled so as to save $355,000; and the public printing reduced from $300,000 to $50,000 a year. There were, undoubtedly, at first, many corrupt officials, white and black. Before they were through, however, after only a few years of experimenting, the reconstruction governments began to show signs of being quite able to handle the situation; and it seems to have been primarily the fear on the part of the white Souththat they might not failthat prompted the determination to regain power at whatever cost. Just how this was done we are now to see.
Even before the Civil War a secret organization, the Knights of the Golden Circle, had been formed to advance Southern interests. After the war there were various organizations—Men of Justice, Home Guards, Pale Faces, White Brotherhood, White Boys, Council of Safety, etc., and, with headquarters at New Orleans, the thoroughly organized Knights of the White Camelia. All of these had for their general aim the restoration of power to the white men of the South, which aim they endeavored to accomplish by regulating the conduct of the Negroes and their leaders in the Republican organization, the Union League, especially by playing upon the fears and superstitions of the Negroes. In general, especially in the Southeast, everything else was surpassed or superseded by the KuKlux Klan, which originated in Tennessee in the fall of 1865 as an association of young men for amusement, but which soon developed into a union for the purpose of whipping, banishing, terrorizing, and murdering Negroes and Northern white men who encouraged them in the exercise of their political rights. No Republican, no member of the Union League, and no G.A.R. man could become a member. The costume of the Klan was especially designed to strike terror in the uneducated Negroes. Loose-flowing sleeves, hoods in which were apertures for the eyes, nose, and mouth trimmed with red material, horns made of cotton-stuff standing out on the front and sides, high cardboard hats covered with white cloth decorated with stars or pictures of animals, long tongues of red flannel, were all used as occasion demanded. The KuKlux Klan finally extended over the whole South and greatly increased its operations on the cessation of martial law in 1870. As it worked generally at night, with its members in disguise, it was difficult for a grand jury to get evidence on which to frame a bill, and almost impossible to get a jury that would return a verdict for the state. Repeated measures against the order were of little effect until an act of 1870 extended the jurisdiction of the United States courts to all KuKlux cases. Even then for some time the organization continued active.
Naturally there were serious clashes before government was restored to the white South, especially as the KuKlux Klan grew bolder. At Colfax, Grant Parish, Louisiana, in April, 1873, there was a pitched battle in which several white men and more than fifty Negroes were killed; and violence increased as the "red shirt" campaign of 1876 approached.
In connection with the events of this fateful year, and with reference to South Carolina, where the Negro seemed most solidly in power, we recall one episode, that of the Hamburg Massacre. We desire to give this as fully as possible in all its incidents, because we know of nothing that better illustrates the temper of the times, and because a most important matter is regularly ignored or minimized by historians.200
In South Carolina an act providing for the enrollment of the male citizens of the state, who were by the terms of the said act made subject to the performance of militia duty, was passed by the General Assembly and approved by the Governor March 16, 1869. By virtue of this act Negro citizens were regularly enrolled as a part of the National Guard of the State of South Carolina, and as the white men, with very few exceptions, failed or refused to become a part of the said force, the active militia was composed almost wholly of Negro men. The County of Edgefield, of which Hamburg was a part, was one of the military districts of the state under the apportionment of the Adjutant-General, one regiment being allotted to the district. One company of this regiment was in Hamburg. In 1876 it had recently been reorganized with Doc Adams as captain, Lewis Cartledge as first lieutenant, and A.T. Attaway as second lieutenant. The ranks were recruited to the requisite number of men, to whom arms and equipment were duly issued.