Freedmen

1
Freedmen
2
Review

• Lincoln adopts concilatory position
• Johnson takes over after assassination
• Takes lenient position
• Overrides Congress (Radicals looking for sweeping
  changes)
• 1865 election brings ex-Confederates to Congress

3
Review

• Congress refuses to accept new Southern
  goverments
• Moderates driven toward Radical Republicans
• Sense of having lost war gains

4
Review

• Begun after elections in 1866
• Reconstruction Act of 1867
• Requirements
• Allow blacks to vote
• Pass 14th Amendment
• Institute military governments

5
Freedmen after slavery

• Jourdan Anderson (now in Ohio)
• Letter to master back in Tennessee
• Written in 1865

6

• Sir I got your letter and was glad to find you
  had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me
  to come back and live with you again, promising
  to do better for me than anybody else can. I have
  often felt uneasy about you. I thought the
  Yankees would have hung you long before this for
  harboring Rebs they found at your house. I
  suppose they never heard about your going to Col.
  Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left
  by his company in their stable. Although you shot
  at me twice before I left you, I did not want to
  hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are
  still living. It would do me good to go back to
  the dear old home again and see Miss Mary and
  Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee.
  Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we
  will meet in the better world, if not in this. I
  would have gone back to see you all when I was
  working in the Nashville hospital, but one of the
  neighbors told me Henry intended to shoot me if
  he ever got a chance.

7
I want to know particularly what the good chance
is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably
well here I get 25 a month, with victuals and
clothing have a comfortable home for Mandy (the
folks here call her Mrs. Anderson), and the
children, Milly, Jane and Grundy, go to school
and are learning well the teacher says Grundy
has a head for a preacher. They go to
Sunday-School, and Mandy and me attend church
regularly. We are kindly treated sometimes we
overhear others saying, "The colored people were
slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt
when they hear such remarks, but I tell them it
was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Col.
Anderson. Many darkies would have been proud, as
I used to was, to call you master. Now, if you
will write and say what wages you will give me, I
will be better able to decide whether it would be
to my advantage to move back again.
8

• As to my freedom, which you say I can have,
  there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I
  got my free- papers in 1864 from the Provost-
  Marshal- General of the Department of Nashville.
  Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without
  some proof that you are sincerely disposed to
  treat us justly and kindly- - and we have
  concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to
  send us our wages for the time we served you.
  This will make us forget and forgive old scores,
  and rely on your justice and friendship in the
  future. I served you faithfully for thirty- two
  years and Mandy twenty years. At 25 a month for
  me, and 2 a week for Mandy, our earnings would
  amount to 11,680. Add to this the interest for
  the time our wages has been kept back and deduct
  what you paid for our clothing and three doctor's
  visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and
  the balance will show what we are in justice
  entitled to.

9

• Please send the money by Adams Express, in care
  of V. Winters, esq, Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to
  pay us for faithful labors in the past we can
  have little faith in your promises in the future.
  We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to
  the wrongs which you and your fathers have done
  to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you
  for generations without recompense. Here I draw
  my wages every Saturday night, but in Tennessee
  there was never any pay day for the Negroes any
  more than for the horses and cows. Surely there
  will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud
  the laborer of his hire.

10

• In answering this letter please state if there
  would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who
  are now grown up and both good- looking girls.
  You know how it was with Matilda and Catherine. I
  would rather stay here and starve and die if it
  comes to that than have my girls brought to shame
  by the violence and wickedness of their young
  masters. You will also please state if there has
  been any schools opened for the colored children
  in your neighborhood, the great desire of my life
  now is to give my children an education, and have
  them form virtuous habits. ltgtP.S. -- Say howdy to
  George Carter, and thank him for taking the
  pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
  From your old servant, Jourdon Anderson

11
Freedmen after war

• Lacked capital
• Owned no land, equipment
• No cash in South
• Restitution never paid
• Lacked education
• 5 literacy rate in 1865

12
Freedmen after war

• How to build up wealth when none exists?
• Many blacks on the road
• Agriculture requires settled population
• Speech by Bailey Wyatt in Virginia, 1866

13

• "We now as a people desires to be elevated, and
  we desires to do all we can to be educated, and
  we hope our friends will aid us all they can. I
  may state to all our friends and to all our
  enemies that we has a right to the land where we
  are located. Why? I'll tell you. Our wives, our
  children, our husbands, has been sold over and
  over again to purchase the lands we now locates
  upon. For that reason we have a divine right to
  the land. And then didn't we clear the lands and
  raise the crops of corn and of cotton and of
  tobacco and of rice and of sugar and of
  everything? And then didn't them large cities in
  the North grow up on the cotton and the sugars
  and the rice that we made? Yes, I appeal to the
  South and to the North, if I hasn't spoken the
  words of the truth. I say they have grown rich,
  and my people are poor."

14
Freedmens Bureau

• Organized bank
• Small loans
• Collapsed 1874
• Organized schools
• Literacy rate in 1870 15
• In 1880 20
• In 1900 30

15
Ned Cobb

• "My daddy, when he had the opportunity, never
  did send me to school long enough to learn to
  read. If he sent his children he'd have to
  supplement the teacher's salary, but if he don't
  send his children it don't cost him nothin', and
  there's nothin' said. None of my brothers and
  sisters, not one by name, got a good book
  learning, and all I can do, I can put down on
  paper some little old figures but I can't add 'em
  up."

16
New Economic Structure

• Land seizures rejected
• 40 acres and a mule
• Sharecropping
• Tenant farming
• Terms prevent independence
• Compromise for both sides
• Blacks desired ownership
• Whites needed agricultural workers

17
Elections in 1868

• Johnson almost impeached
• Grant (Republican) v. Seymour (Dem)
• Black voting rights a major issue
• Allowed in South
• Over 1/3 states in North reject
• Racism and violence

18
Quotes

• "semi-barbarous race of blacks who are polygamist
  and destined to subject white women to their
  unbridled lust."
• Dem. Vice-Presidential candidate
• Whites are "becoming the new negroes."
• Dem. Elected senator in Georgia

19
Elections in 1868

• "Waving the bloody shirt"
• Arkansas 200 blacks killed
• Louisiana 1000 killed (mainly black)
• Intimidation worked in many areas

20
1868 Election

• Republican victory, largely owing to black vote
• Grant elected
• Black voting rights can now be addressed

21
U.S. Grant

• Served as President from 1869-77
• Wished to preserve gains of war
• Urged KKK Act in 1871

22
States re-admitted

• Tennessee (1866)
• Florida, N S Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana,
  Arkansas (1868)
• Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia (1870)

23
Radical Republican govts

• Resentment over Negro Rule
• Never actually happened
• Two Senators, 15 Congressmen
• South Carolina w/ black majority
• Louisiana governor black

24
Black politicans

• Hiram Revels
• Senator from Mississippi
• Born free black
• First of six blacks to serve in Senate

25
15th Amendment

• Prevents legislating against right to vote
• Section 1. The right of citizens of the United
  States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by
  the United States or by any State on account of
  race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
• Section 2. The Congress shall have power to
  enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

26
15th Amendment

• Subverted in practice
• Property requirements
• Poll tax
• Literacy tests
• Grandfather clause
• Civil Rights Act of 1965 finally establishes
  rights