University of Mississippi eGrove Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Is This Freedom? Government Exploitation Of Contraband Laborers In Virginia, South Carolina, And Washington, D. During The American Civil War Kristin Leigh Bouldin University of Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Bouldin, Kristin Leigh, "Is This Freedom? Government Exploitation Of Contraband Laborers In Virginia, South Carolina, And Washington, D. During The American Civil War" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations.edu/etd/630 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at eGrove.
It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact egrove@olemiss. “IS THIS FREEDOM?” GOVERNMENT EXPLOITATION OF CONTRABAND LABORERS IN VIRGINIA, SOUTH CAROLINA, AND WASHINGTON, D. DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History The University of Mississippi by KRISTIN LEIGH BOULDIN May 2014 Copyright Kristin L.
Bouldin 2014 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT This thesis covers the exploitation of contraband laborers during the American Civil War in the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, the South Carolina Sea Islands, and Washington, D. In addition, it analyzes the actions of Union military commanders charged with care of the contrabands, and the failure of the federal government to create a uniform policy outlining how military officials should treat the contrabands. The thesis covers abuses ranging from failure to pay wages to a lack of medical care to the construction of disease-ridden camps to the impressment of contrabands for labor or military enlistment. It argues that military commanders in all three regions, despite numerous differences, including a military campaign in Virginia, leasing in South Carolina, and a lack of farmland in Washington, mistreated contraband laborers in order to reduce government relief expenditures, avoid dependency, instill an ideology of self- reliance, and focus resources on the war effort.
The federal government, meanwhile, did little to stop such abuses or create a policy banning the mistreatment of contrabands. The thesis examines each region chronologically and provides comparative analysis throughout. As the evidentiary base, it uses letters of military officers, newspapers, military reports, correspondence, and other records, petitions sent to Congress and the President, letters from missionaries, aid workers lessees, and other Northern observers, and letters and petitions written by the contrabands themselves. The research for this thesis was completed at the University of Virginia, Duke University, the University of North Carolina, The College of William and Mary, the Library of Virginia, the Library of Congress, and the National Archives in Washington, D.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………………. 12 CHAPTER II ………………………………………………………………………………… 39 CHAPTER III ………………………………………………………………………………. 88 VITA ………………………………………………………………………………………… 92 iii INTRODUCTION By late 1863, nine-year-old Carter Holmes should have had reason to celebrate. He had escaped slavery and found freedom within the Union lines at Washington, D.
However, instead of placing him in school so he could obtain the education denied him in slavery, military authorities too concerned about dependency and making the contrabands work apprenticed him to a Maryland man who agreed to provide food, clothing, and schooling in return for Holmes’s labor. Government authorities failed to ensure the man’s compliance and he brutally abused Holmes for three years before the boy finally ran away from an employer no better than a slave master.1 This unfortunate incident was not a unique case during the Civil War. Throughout the war, military authorities defrauded, mistreated, exploited, and physically abused contrabands, who they often saw as a hindrance to the larger war effort and a drain on scarce government resources. At the start of the war, military authorities focused on the Fugitive Slave Act and the maintenance of loyalty from the Border States and refused to accept contrabands into the lines.2 Even after Congress changed federal policy and ordered the army to accept fugitives, according to historian James Oakes, the Union army was overwhelmed by emancipation and was unprepared for the large numbers of freedmen who entered its camps and Congress, while 1 Ira Berlin, Steven F.
Reidy, and Leslie S., Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation 1861-1867, Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States, Series I, Volume II, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Upper South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 259. 1 ordering the army to accept contrabands, did little to ensure humane treatment or prevent abuse, allowing military authorities to make their own decisions regarding the welfare of the contrabands.3 In addition, military authorities focused on instituting a system of free labor and ensuring the contrabands worked while, according to historian Louis Gerteis, trying to prevent “violent and fundamental changes in the society and economy of the crumbling Confederacy,” which resulted in a system of plantation labor quite similar to the slavery the contrabands had escaped.4 Even worse, army authorities failed to address overcrowding and disease within the contraband camps, which they saw as temporary employment depots rather than permanent refugee camps. Such abuse led to devastating outbreaks of smallpox and other diseases that killed thousands of contrabands before they had a chance to truly experience freedom. As James Oakes writes, “The contrabands-sometimes frozen, often starving- got sick and died in the very process that was supposed to free them.”5 This paper will examine mistreatment and abuse of contrabands by army officers in the field and the failure of governmental authorities to create a uniform policy to address such abuse in three very different regions of the South: the Hampton Roads region of eastern Virginia, the South Carolina Sea Islands, and the Union capital in Washington, D.
Across the country during the Civil War, slaves ran to Union lines seeking freedom and protection from their owners. According to Ira Berlin, slaves “struggled to secure their liberty, reconstitute their families, and create institutions befitting a free people” by escaping slavery and 3 James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865 (New York: W. Norton and Company, 2013), 139, 396, 420; Gene Dattel, Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of Economic Power (Lanham, MD: Ivan R. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks 1861-1865 (Westport: CT, Greenwood Press, 1973), 5.
5 Oakes, Freedom National, 428. 2 fleeing to Union lines.6 Furthermore, according to Oakes, slaves recognized that the Union military represented a “counter-state” that protected freedom in the South and remained beyond the reach of slaveholders.7 Such information passed quickly amongst the slave population, causing thousands of slaves to flee to what they saw as an army of liberation.8 Especially after the Emancipation Proclamation, when the freedom of slaves fleeing to Union lines was officially recognized, slaves believed that freedom was guaranteed if they reached the Union army and were willing to work for wages.9 These trends would hold true across all three regions, as slaves recognized that they could find freedom for themselves and their families by reaching Union lines. In Virginia, the first contrabands ran to Union lines and military authorities haltingly developed a policy of hiring contrabands for military labor while also instituting a policy of farm labor on the limited number of abandoned plantations in the region.10 In the South Carolina Sea Islands, meanwhile, all of the local whites ran away, leaving behind cotton plantations and thousands of slaves, which led to land sales and plantation leasing, allowing northern businessmen to abuse and mistreat contraband laborers in addition to exploitation by government authorities., on the other hand, contrabands worked almost exclusively for the government, but military authorities did little to address conditions at the overcrowded contraband camps, which were plagued with disease and rampant destitution throughout the war.12 During the Civil War, military authorities focused on enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, 6 Berlin, ed., Freedom: The Upper South, 1. 7 Oakes, Freedom National, 89.
10 Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 20, 41. 11 Oakes, Freedom National, 197-199., Freedom: The Upper South, 244, 247-251. 3 instituting a system of free labor rather than dependence on government charity, and avoiding the removal of resources from the larger war effort. As a result, they mistreated, exploited, and abused contrabands while federal authorities more focused on winning the war did little or nothing to create a uniform policy that would end such abuses.
The historiography on the topic of contrabands during the Civil War emerged relatively recently. Early histories either tended to ignore the contrabands entirely or, according to Gerteis, created racist arguments claiming that “antislavery men sought to destroy the social and economic order of the South” and portraying African-Americans as objects of white actions and decisions.13 In a typical example of the period, Edgar W. Knight, writing in 1918, argued that Northern teachers who came to the South to educate contrabands were “despicable” and that their abolitionist ideas would only harm race relations.14 Such arguments lasted until the 1960s and 1970s, when the Civil Rights Movement prompted historians to examine the “long-neglected Negro.”15 In his work, Louis Gerteis analyzes federal contraband policy in Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi and gives vivid detail of the conditions faced by contrabands, but still portrays white officials and the government as the main actors and contrabands as passive recipients of federal decisions.16 Willie Lee Rose’s 1964 work also echoes these trends, as she focuses almost completely on the actions of Northern missionaries in the South Carolina Sea Islands and how their decisions affected the contrabands, who are also portrayed as passive rather than active participants in the free labor experiment.17 13 Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 3. Butchart, Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861- 1876 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), x.
15 Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman, 3. 17 Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (London, Oxford University Press, 1964). 4 It would take until the 1980s for works to emerge that truly focused on the contrabands and how they worked to gain their own freedom and livelihoods despite government neglect. In 1979, Leon Litwack’s work explored the end of slavery from the perspective of the contrabands, and included material about the camps and how contrabands struggled to earn a living despite horrid conditions.
He argues that the “camps soon became overcrowded, disease took a heavy toll, the promised wages were often not paid, and many slaves came to feel they had been defrauded” but also that the “slaves themselves undermined the authority of the planter class” and tried their best to remain independent despite abuse and neglect by army authorities.18 James Oakes, meanwhile, in his recent work, focuses on federal policy and the antislavery legacy of the Republican Party stretching back through the 1850s, but also includes copious detail on contrabands and their contributions to their own freedom, and how policies passed in Washington failed to correct horrendous conditions in the camps, as unprepared army officers often made their own decisions with little federal guidance. He argues that slaves running to Union lines forced the government to create a contraband policy, clearly indicating his focus on the contrabands as active participants in their own freedom.19 This trend is reflected in another recent work by Jim Downs, who argues that army authorities saw contrabands as a burden and failed to provide proper medical care, resulting in thousands of deaths from disease in the camps, which could have been prevented with proper medical intervention.20 He also focuses on the contrabands themselves and how they attempted to maintain a living despite the deadly conditions in the camps. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), 130, 133, 137. 19 Oakes, Freedom National, 166, 105, 416.
20 Jim Downs, Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4.