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Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Georgia: Notes

Claiming Freedom: Race, Kinship, and Land in Nineteenth-Century Georgia
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table of contents
  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. List of Illustrations
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Introduction: Claiming Freedom in the Lowcountry
  9. 1: The Slave’s Dream
    1. The Hurt of this Hurt World
    2. The Illusion of Isolation
    3. Memory and (DIS)Remembering
  10. 2: War and Freedom
    1. Marginal Spaces of Freedom
    2. Gender, War, and Freedom
    3. Less than Forty Acres
    4. The Ogeechee Troubles
  11. 3: “Full and Fair Compensation”
    1. Free Labor Ideology and Liminal Spaces of Freedom
    2. Women of Freedom
    3. Claiming Freedom for Themselves
  12. 4: The State of Freedom is the State of Self-Reliance
    1. Kinship and Land in the Lowcountry
    2. Landownership and Women’s Community Networks
    3. The Town of Burroughs
  13. Conclusion
  14. Appendix
  15. Notes
  16. Bibliography
  17. Index

Page 101 →Notes

Introduction

  1. 1. Rosanna Williams of Tatemville and Ophelia Baker of Sandfly, in Georgia Writers Project, Drums and Shadows, 71, 91.
  2. 2. Michael Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 42.
  3. 3. Karen Christensen and David Levinson, eds., Encyclopedia of Community, 228.
  4. 4. Georgia Gazette, April 13, 1768, John Stirk; Georgia Gazette, July 13, 1774, James Read; and Georgia Gazette, March 29, 1775, James Mossman, in Lathan Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements, 29, 53, 62; see entries for Georgia in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database, accessible at www.slavevoyages.org; Maria Diedrich, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Carl Pederson, eds., Black Imagination and the Middle Passage, 5–10; see also John Thornton, Africa and Africans.
  5. 5. Georgia Gazette, July 13, 1774, James Read, in Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements, 53; Elizabeth Donnan, Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade, vol. 4, 612–63; Lempster, James, Peter, Fanny, and Silvia, mentioned later in the introduction, successfully ran away from James Read’s plantation. See entries for Georgia in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database, accessible at www.slavevoyages.org.
  6. 6. Inward Slave Manifests, Savannah, Bureau of Customs, RG 36, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 612–63. Donnan provides regional documentation that includes listings of slave vessels, merchant or agent’s name, owner of vessel, and where the vessel was built. Shipbuilding emerged as a significant industry in Savannah with West Indian linkages. See also Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice, chap. 1–2.
  7. 7. Inward Slave Manifests, Savannah, Bureau of Customs, RG 36, NARA; Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 612–63.
  8. 8. Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 612–63.
  9. 9. Inward Slave Manifests, Savannah, Bureau of Customs, RG 36, NARA; Donnan, Documents, vol. 4, 612–63; see entries for Georgia in The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Voyages Database, accessible at www.slavevoyages.org.
  10. 10. Savannah Georgia Gazette, November 19, 1766.
  11. 11. Georgia Gazette, March 7, 1765, Elizabeth Anderson, in Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements, 10.
  12. 12. Anthony Balcomb, “The Power of Narrative: Constituting Reality through Storytelling,” in Memory, Orality, and the Past, 49–53; Forrest D. Colburn, Everyday Forms of Resistance, 27–29; William F. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story; Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Page 102 →Slavery; Dwight N. Hopkins and George C. L. Cummings, Cut Loose Your Stammering Tongue.
  13. 13. Georgia Gazette, December 10, 1789, David Leion [sic]. Ben and Nancy were twenty-five years old; Nancy was blind in her right eye. See the case of Betty in the Georgia Gazette, December 22, 1788, Benjamin Gobert; the case of Patra, Mary, and Judy in the Georgia Gazette, January 29, 1789, J. M. Delarocque; and the case of Patty and Daniel in the Georgia Gazette, May 21, 1789, Peter Henry Morel, in Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements, 161–62, 172.
  14. 14. Georgia Gazette, May 21, 1789, Peter Henry Morel, in Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements, 166.
  15. 15. Michael Mullin, Africa in America, 290.
  16. 16. Inward Slave Manifests, Savannah, Bureau of Customs, RG 36, NAB, Washington D.C.; Donnan, Documents, 612–63; Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect; Ambrose Gonzalez, Black Border; Albert H. Stoddard, “Origin, Dialect, Beliefs.”
  17. 17. Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance, White Law, xi; Colburn, Everyday Forms of Resistance, 27–29.
  18. 18. Ira Berlin, “Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society; Barbara Jeanne Fields, Slavery and Freedom.
  19. 19. Peter J. Parish, Slavery, 1–3.
  20. 20. David Williams, I Freed Myself, 9.
  21. 21. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom; Eric Foner, Reconstruction.
  22. 22. John David Smith, When Did Southern Segregation Begin?, 4.
  23. 23. Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet; Donald Grant, The Way It Was in the South.
  24. 24. Government Records and Documents: Record Group 105, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.
  25. 25. See Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk.

Chapter 1: The Slave’s Dream

  1. 1. Chris J. Magoc, So Glorious a Landscape, 54.
  2. 2. Toni Morrison, Beloved.
  3. 3. Gervase Phillips, “Slave Resistance in the Antebellum South.”
  4. 4. William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days 460–61; Daniel Heyward, Seed From Madagascar, 19–36; Douglas C. Wilms, “The Development of Rice Culture in 18th Century Georgia,” 53. The scholarship on slavery has had multiple revisions and reinterpretations since the publication of Ulrich B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (1936). Phillips believed that race determined behavior and that slaves were childlike, lazy, and happy with their enslavement. According to Phillips, resistance was insignificant. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts (1943); Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution (1956); and John Blassingame, The Slave Community (1972) established definitive opposing paradigms to Phillips’s interpretation of slavery. See also Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom; Thomas L. Webber, Deep Like the Rivers; George P. Rawick, From Sundown to Sunup; and Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside. A recent study that has placed the economic interests of enslaved African Americans above community and cultural interests has diminished the impact of slavery and American institutional oppression on postwar economic advancement. See Dylan Penningroth, The Claims of Kinfolk, which argues that African American economic Page 103 →interests under girded social relationships and social claims to property. See also Richard V. Burks, “A Conception of Ideology for Historians,” and Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture, chapter one.
  5. 5. Heyward, Seed From Madagascar, 19–36; Wilms, “Development of Rice Culture,” 53.
  6. 6. Gwen McKee, ed., A Guide to the Georgia Coast; Kenneth K. Krakow, Georgia Place Names, 120, 199–200.
  7. 7. McKee, ed., A Guide to the Georgia Coast; Karen Christensen and David Levinson, eds., Encyclopedia of Community, vol. 4, 1473.
  8. 8. United States Population Census, 1790.
  9. 9. Records of the Chatham County Superior Court (RCCSC), Deed Book 4F, Arthur Heyward, 157.
  10. 10. Ibid.
  11. 11. Account Book of Stephen Habersham, Grove Plantation Near Savannah, June 1858–July 11, 1864, M432, roll 89, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
  12. 12. Francis H. MacLeod Estate, File 398, 1864, Records of the Chatham County Probate Court (RCCPC), Savannah, Georgia.
  13. 13. RCCSC, Deed Book 3X, John Cheves, 199–200.
  14. 14. Ibid.
  15. 15. Ibid.
  16. 16. S.G. McLendon, History of the Public Domain of Georgia, 40–43; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C., 1870), Table 1.
  17. 17. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistics of Population (Washington, D.C., 1870), Table 1.
  18. 18. Ibid.
  19. 19. Malcolm Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 106–25.
  20. 20. John Solomon Otto, “Slavery in a Coastal Community,” 462; Mart A. Stewart, “What Nature Suffers to Groe,” 31–33.
  21. 21. Records of the Glynn County Courthouse (RGCC), DB 10, 142–51, October 1, 1774; Stephen Berry, “More Alluring at a Distance”; Otto, “Slavery in a Coastal Community,” 461–64; George Alexander Heard, “St. Simon’s Island during the War between the States”; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 106–7; W. W. Hazzard, St. Simon’s Island Georgia, Brunswick, and Vicinity. St. Simons Island lies eighteen miles east of Brunswick, Georgia, and is approximately thirteen miles long and two miles wide. Jekyll Island lies south of St. Simons, is ten miles long, and consists of 11,000 acres.
  22. 22. RGCC, DB ABEF, 366ff; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 107; William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, chapter 7.
  23. 23. RGCC, DB 10, 142–51, October 1, 1774; Berry, “More Alluring at a Distance”; Otto, “Slavery in a Coastal Community,” 461–64; Heard, “St. Simon’s Island during the War between the States”; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 106–7; Hazzard, St. Simon’s Island Georgia, Brunswick, and Vicinity.
  24. 24. RGCC, DB ABEF, 366ff; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 107; William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, chapter 7.
  25. 25. Albert V. House, ed., Planter Management, 57; see also Sam B. Hilliard, “Antebellum Tidewater Rice Culture in South Carolina and Georgia,” 97–104.
  26. 26. House, Planter Management, 57.
  27. 27. Darien Gazette, June 29, 1824.
  28. 28. Page 104 →John P. Legare, “An Account of an Agricultural Excursion into Southern Georgia.”
  29. 29. Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture, chapter 1.
  30. 30. Mary R. Bullard, Robert Stafford of Cumberland Island; John E. Ehrenhard and Mary R. Bullard, Stafford Plantation.
  31. 31. Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader.
  32. 32. Inward Slave Manifests, Savannah, Records of the Customs Bureau, RG 36, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Melville Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, chapter 2; Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect; see also Roswell King to Pierce Butler, May 13, 1803, Butler Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, which references the purchase of Ibo and Angola slaves from the Savannah firm Mein and Mackay.
  33. 33. Anthony Balcomb, “The Power of Narrative,” 49–53. Narratives have been central to the study of slavery. See, for example, William F. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story; Frances Smith Foster, Witnessing Slavery; and Dwight N. Hopkins and George C. L. Cummings, Cut Loose Your Stammering Tongue. During the early twentieth century, historians did not regard slave narratives as proper historical sources for the study of slavery. The first systematic publication of slave narratives occurred during World War 2. The two principal collections of slave narratives are Benjamin Botkin ed., Lay My Burden Down, and the Fisk collection, Unwritten History of Slavery. The perspective of the enslaved remained absent from the historiography of slavery until the appearance of Blassingame’s The Slave Community in 1972.
  34. 34. Philip D. Morgan, “Work and Culture”; Thomas F. Armstrong, “From Task Labor to Free Labor.”
  35. 35. Account Book of Stephen Habersham, Grove Plantation near Savannah, June 1858–July 11, 1864, M432, roll 89, Georgia Historical Society (hereafter cited as GHS), Savannah, Georgia; Frances A. Kemble and Frances A. Butler Leigh, Principles and Privilege, 245–61; Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 235, 238, 242, 246; Leslie Owens, This Specie of Property, 21. For a discussion of enslaved African American children, see Wilma King, Stolen Childhood, and Marie Jenkins Schwarz, Born in Bondage.
  36. 36. Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 32, 169, 175–77, 184. See also Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness.
  37. 37. Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 32, 169, 175–77, 184.
  38. 38. George P. Rawick, The American Slave, 179; Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 79, 81, 99, 185; William Mein to Pierce Butler, May 24, 1803, Butler Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 132; Robert Hayden, “Middle Passage.”
  39. 39. Kemble and Leigh, Principles and Privilege, 238–62. Kemble describes Sophy as “pretty with a refined face”; Sophy was the wife of the driver, Morris, (239–40). Pierce Butler to Roswell King Jr., March 17, 1839. Roswell King Jr. to Pierce Butler, March 23, 1839, Butler Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; William Dusinberre, Them Dark Days, 248–49. For a discussion of enslaved women’s response to sexual exploitation, see Melton A. McLaurin, Celia, a Slave; Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
  40. 40. Brent, Incidents; Catherine Clinton, “‘Southern Dishonor,’” 52; Hélène Lecaudey, “Behind the Mask,” 262. See also Thelma Jennings, “‘Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty’”; Stephanie M. H. Camp, “The Pleasures of Resistance.”
  41. 41. Roswell King to Pierce Butler, February 12 and 26, 1815, Butler Family Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania; John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, Page 105 →42–43; Mary Frances Berry, Black Resistance, chapters 4–5; Cornelia Walker Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, 135. For a discussion of the migration of black Seminoles to the Bahamas following the first Seminole War, see Rosalyn Howard, Black Seminoles in the Bahamas.
  42. 42. J. Lorand Matory, “The Illusion of Isolation.”
  43. 43. Rev. C. C. Jones to Mr. Charles C. Jones Jr., Montevideo, Monday, November 17, 1856, and Mr. Charles C. Jones Jr. to Mrs. Mary Jones, in Robert Manson Myers, Children of Pride, 263–64, 266; Account Book of Stephen Habersham, Grove Plantation Near Savannah, June 1858–July 11, 1864, M432, roll 89, GHS.
  44. 44. James Postell, Kelvin Grove Plantation Book, 1853, Margaret Davis Cate Collection, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries. Nanny, age forty-five, appeared on the list as a three-quarter hand. Jane and Sarah were in their twenties; Hester was nineteen; Hamit’s age was unknown. According to Ralph Flanders, ginning was more challenging than fieldwork or picking cotton. Ginning exposed slaves to dust and lint for several hours. Ralph Flanders, Plantation Slavery in Georgia, 85; Daina L. Ramey, “She Do a Heap of Work.”
  45. 45. Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 30; Dylan Penningroth, “Slavery, Freedom, and Social Claims to Property”; Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work; Morgan, “Work and Culture,” 565–66; Philip D. Morgan, “The Ownership of Property by Slaves in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Low Country,” 399–401; Arnold to Dr. Heber Chase, October 13, 1836, in Richard H. Shryock, ed., Letters to Richard D. Arnold, 13.
  46. 46. Frank W. Klingberg, The Southern Claims Commission, 65–72.
  47. 47. Penningroth, Claims of Kinfolk, 90–91.
  48. 48. Wilson Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 14; Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 25.
  49. 49. Sandy Austin, Claim No. 20636, Southern Claims Commission (SCC), “Approved Claims,” Liberty County, Georgia, M1658, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, RG 217, NARA. Austin asserted, “I am 70 years of age. I live on Joseph LeCont’s plantation. I am a regular Farmer. I lived from the 1st of April 1861 to the 1st of June 1865 right where I live now. I was born on the plantation that I now live on. At the beginning of the rebellion, I was a slave and made free by the Yankee army, when they came to our relief. I continued right on farming on my old master’s land and gave him one-third of all that I raised, I worked when a slave for my master by the task in that way I saved time to work for myself. I commenced raising poultry and hogs first and for many years before I bought the mare. I bought the mare when a colt about 15 years before the raid. I raised other mare which the Yankee took from me from the march. I got my hogs and poultry in the same year and by raising and selling the increase.”
  50. 50. Sambo Jefferson, Claim No. 17020, SCC, “Approved Claims,” Chatham County, Georgia, M1658, RG 217, NARA. According to Jefferson, he had enough rails to fence five acres—split pine, middling size. They had been in use two or three years; the fence was ten rails high. Sherman used these rails for campfires. Jefferson asserted that these fence rails belonged to him; “that was one of the conditions of the lease that I should fence the land.” All the other property was of his own raising. See also, Samuel Elliott, Claim No. 21448, “Approved Claims,” Liberty County, Georgia, M1658, RG 217, NARA. Elliott’s property included 15 stock hogs, 7 cattle, 210 pounds clean rice, 30 ducks, and a wagon and harness. See, Ira Page 106 →Berlin et al., Freedom: A Documentary History …, series 1, vol. 1, The Destruction of Slavery, 149–50.
  51. 51. Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work, 51. James Anderson, Claim No. 18546, SCC, “Approved Claims,” Liberty County, Georgia, M1658, RG 217, NARA. Anderson claimed $248 in property. Testimony of John Crawford, Testimony of Clarinda Lowe, James Anderson, Claim No. 18546, SCC, “Approved Claims,” Liberty County, Georgia, M1658, RG 217, NARA; Richard LeCounte, Claim No. 20672, SCC, “Approved Claims,” Liberty County, Georgia, M1658, RG 217, NARA. Richard claimed $137 in property, which included cattle, hogs, corn, rice, and potatoes.
  52. 52. Adam LeCounte, Claim No. 18545, Liberty County, SCC, 1877–1883, RG 217, NARA.: “I worked 30 or 40 years by the task. I got this horse about a month before the Yankees came. Hercules LeCounte, Claim No. 20667, Liberty County, SCC, RG 217. Joshua LeCounte, Claim No. 20675: “I bought it selling rice, poultry, and hogs.” Hercules LeCounte was a slave of John LeCounte. He worked for himself after the task was done. He was seventy years old at the time of his deposition. He had owned property for many years. Hercules claimed property valued at $310, which included cows, pigs, fowl, rice, corn, potatoes, a mare, and clothing. Joshua LeCounte was a slave in Liberty County. He was fifty years old at the time of deposition on July 26, 1874. He was a farmer who resided on LeCounte’s plantation. His property included a mare, fowl, ducks, and rice. His claim totaled $172.
  53. 53. White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 24–25.
  54. 54. Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 38–39; Will of William Page, February 6, 1827, Margaret Davis Cate Collection, Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, Georgia.
  55. 55. Linda Roberts, Claim No. 21467, Charles C. Jones Jr. to William Paine, August 19, 1876, William Wiseham Paine Papers, GHS; Betty Wood, Women’s Work, Men’s Work, 85–88.
  56. 56. Rachel Norman, Claim No. 21416, Liberty County, SCC, Settled Claims, 1877–1883, RG 217, NARA. The property was removed to camp at Midway church and used by the army stationed there on December 20, 1864. Rachel was fifty years old at the time of her deposition.
  57. 57. Moses Stikes and Binah Butler, Claim No. 17563, Chatham County, SCC, Settled Claims 1877–1883, RG 217, NARA.
  58. 58. Ibid. SCC, Approved Claims 1871–1880, Georgia, M1658, Records of the Accounting Officers of the Department of the Treasury, Record Group 217 (Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), 5–18.
  59. 59. Michael Gomez makes a very cogent argument for viewing the history of Africans along the South Carolina-Georgia continuum as more complicated than previously understood. According to Gomez, study can no longer be limited to the Gullah language and handicrafts. See Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks and Gomez, Black Crescent. In clear defiance of the 1808 ban on the slave trade, American ships continued to import slaves with impunity. In 1841 the United States dispatched a naval unit, the U.S. African Squadron, to patrol the west coast of Africa. One of the main tasks of the squadron was to enforce the antislaving laws by apprehending American slave vessels. From 1841 to 1863, fifty American ships were taken into custody for slaving. Only one officer ever served a prison term commensurate with the sentence prescribed by law. The extensive antislaving legislation and the efforts of the African Squadron were circumvented by the lenient sentencing of U.S. courts. In spite of consistent overwhelming evidence of guilt, the majority of ship officers brought to trial were exonerated of criminal charges. The failure of the courts to adequately punish flagrant Page 107 →lawbreakers allowed the continuation of American participation in the illegal transatlantic slave trade. Robert Vinson, “The Law as Law-Breaker”; W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, Appendix D.
  60. 60. Will Coleman, “‘Coming through ’Ligion,’” 66–67.
  61. 61. Allen D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America, 321; Michael A. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 696; Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, 24. For an excellent study of Gullah’s linkages with the Caribbean, see Frederic G. Cassidy, “The Place of Gullah”; Ian F. Hancock, “Gullah and Barbadian”; and John P. Thomas Jr., “The Barbadians in Early South Carolina.” See also Turner’s classic study Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect; Ambrose Gonzales, Black Border; and Albert H. Stoddard, “Origin, Dialect, Beliefs, and Characteristics of the Negroes of the South Carolina and Georgia Coasts.”
  62. 62. See Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit; Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’ On; Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past; Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion.
  63. 63. Lucy to Charles C. Jones, December 30, 1850, in John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony, 90–91; Andrew to Rev. Charles C. Jones, September 10, 1852, Maybank, in Robert Starobin, ed., Blacks in Bondage, 52. Andrew’s daughter, Dinah, joined the Baptist church established for slaves at Sunbury.
  64. 64. Moses Roper to Thomas Price, London, June 27, 1836, in Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony, 23.
  65. 65. Liberator, February 4, 1837; Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony, 124–25.
  66. 66. John Mbiti, Introduction to African Religion.
  67. 67. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 696; Gomez, Black Crescent, 143–84; Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 59–87.
  68. 68. Ivor Wilks, “Salih Bilali of Massina,” p. 145 in Philip D. Curtin, ed., Africa Remembered; Austin, African Muslims; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 692; Gomez, Black Crescent, 143–84; Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks, 59–87. By 1800 West Africa had undergone significant changes caused by the transatlantic slave trade. These changes can be analyzed in four phases: 1) the emergence of British West African settlements, 1787–1865; 2) French colonial activity in West Africa; 3) Islamic revolutions in the western and central Sudan, which led to the emergence of the Fulani Empire (1795–1809) and the disintegration of the Alafin of Oyo in 1817; and 4) Ashanti expansion caused by their invasion of the coastal states along the Gold Coast, 1824.
  69. 69. Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 178–83; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 697; Annette I. Kashif, “Africanisms upon the Land,” 21. Ben Sullivan’s father’s name was Belali, a direct indication of Salih Bilali’s desire to pass on his Islamic identity; Stuckey, Slave Culture, chapter four.
  70. 70. Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 178–79; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 697. Daphne had a light complexion and wore one ring in his ear, Sullivan believed, as a talisman. Salih Bilali, while claiming to possess a Qur’an, could not write Arabic coherently.
  71. 71. Georgia Writer’s Project, Drums and Shadows, 178–79.
  72. 72. Ibid. Okra resided on the Couper plantation, the same plantation as Salih Bilali. According to Sullivan, he built a twelve-by-fourteen-foot home with a flat roof made from bush and palmetto. Couper made him pull it down. Leland Ferguson, Uncommon Ground, 75; Gomez, Black Crescent, 154.
  73. 73. Page 108 →Austin, African Muslims, 268; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 699; Joseph H. Greenberg, “The Decipherment of the ‘Ben-Ali Diary’ a Preliminary Statement.” Thomas Astley, in vol. 2 of his Collection of Voyages and Travels (1745), gives extracts from various explorers. Their abstracts of Islamic practices in Senegal and the Gambia region provide insights into the practices of slaves on Sapelo Island. Francis Moore, in his travels, stated that the Fuli “are much like the Arabs, whose language is taught in their schools.… They are generally more skilled in the Arabic than the Europeans in Latin; for most of them speak it, though they have a vulgar tongue of their own, called Fuli.… Their humanity extends to all, but they are doubly kind to their own race.” Another traveler stated, “At Day-break, Noon, and at Sunset” they say their prayers.”
  74. 74. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 699. Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, chapter thirteen; Parrish, Slave Songs, 26–27; Mae Ruth Green, “Sapelo Island Families,” Liberty Bell Family No. 102, B29, Department of Natural Resources, Real Estate Division, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia. This genealogy source book is over five hundred pages long and contains detailed biographical sketches and descendant charts for forty-four first-generation families brought to Sapelo during the early nineteenth century. The author received a copy of this book from Carolyn Douse, executive director of the Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society (SICARS), in 2001. Carolyn Douse is the granddaughter of Katie Brown. Terry Alford writes that Muslim slaves were used as “drivers, overseers, and confidential servants with a frequency their numbers did not justify.” Terry Alford, Prince among Slaves, 56. Also, despite their religious resistance to enslavement, both Ben Ali and Salih Bilali were placed in positions of high authority and jointly used that authority to quell a slave insurrection during the War of 1812. See Alford, Prince Among Slaves, 56; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 700; Georgia Bryan Conrad, Reminiscences of a Southern Woman, 13. According to Bryan, Ben Ali and his family spoke English with the Spaldings, but spoke a different tongue among themselves. See Ruth Mae Green, “Sapelo Island Families,” Genealogical Source Book, Carolina Underwood, Family No. 136, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia, copy provided by Dr. Carolyn Douse, SICARS, Sapelo Island, Georgia. The grandchildren of Carolina and Hannah Underwood, interviewed in 1938 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), recalled how both continued to speak their “funny talk,” or native tongue, which their descendants could not understand.
  75. 75. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 699–700; Gomez, Black Crescent, 155; Parrish, Slave Songs, 22, 25–28, 28n21; Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 159–61. In addition to religious observances, Bilali apparently adhered to Islamic prescriptions on marriage. Brown remarked, “Magret she say Phoebe he wife, but maybe he hab more one wife. I spects des bery possible”; Austin, African Muslims, 265–68. Ethnic and religious differences were recounted by both Ben Sullivan and Cornelia Bailey. See Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 180–81; Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, chapter thirteen. According to Bailey, Ben Ali kept his distance from others because he “did not like mixing”; Muslims and non-Muslims tended to keep to themselves; however, they “got along” and could work with others for specific purposes or special occasions. Conrad, Reminiscences of a Southern Woman, 13. Ben Ali wore a cap that resembled a Turkish fez and kept himself aloof.
  76. 76. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 180–81.
  77. 77. Ibid.
  78. 78. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 91, 127, 165–66. Naming practices also indicated pride in an Islamic heritage. Shad Hall’s grandmother Hestuh bore a son called Page 109 →Belali Smith, who in turn was the grandfather of Phoebe Gilbert, also a Sapelo resident. Drum beatings served as an important communication device. According to the intergenerational narratives of Josephine Stevens, Madam Truth, and several other coastal Georgians, drums could be heard for miles, and the beats were encoded to symbolize events.
  79. 79. Ibid.; Parrish, Slave Songs, 26n17.
  80. 80. Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, May 11, 1802; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 696. See also Gomez, Black Crescent, 152–63.
  81. 81. Columbian Museum and Savannah Advertiser, March 27, 1807; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 696. Native American communities in the lowcountry provided havens for runaways. According to the Georgia Gazette, a “Mahomet” belonging to John Graham of Augustin’s Creek “had been seen at a settlement line near the Indian Line on the Ogeechee” three years after his initial flight. Georgia Gazette, August 31, 1774.
  82. 82. Georgia Department of Archives and History, GRG2–09 and GRG2–29, Atlanta, GA, quoted in Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 696; Gomez, Black Crescent.
  83. 83. William Dallam Ames, ed., Autobiography of Joseph LeCounte, 29–30; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 695. See also Gomez, Black Crescent, 143–73.
  84. 84. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 76, 120–21, 144–45, 154–56; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 699. See also Gomez, Black Crescent, 157.
  85. 85. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 76, 120–21, 144–45, 154–56.
  86. 86. Ibid.
  87. 87. Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion; Raboteau, Slave Religion, chapter three; Margaret Washington Creel, “A Peculiar People,” 259–328; Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 62, 67, 71, 159, 168; Parrish, Slave Songs; Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free.
  88. 88. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 91; Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, 134; Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 698; William McFeely, Sapelo’s People.
  89. 89. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 699n111; see also Gomez, Black Crescent, 143–84.
  90. 90. Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 19.
  91. 91. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 705; see also Gomez, Black Crescent, 143–84.
  92. 92. Ibid.
  93. 93. Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 71, 91. Sophie described the mark as a circle the size of a fifty-cent piece with lines that run toward the center. The narrative of Ophelia Baker reveals a relationship between markings and African secret societies.
  94. 94. Ibid, 65–67. The desire to return to Africa is evidenced by the actions of Golla Jones Davis, who left the Tatemville community for Africa around 1932.
  95. 95. Ibid. See also Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect.
  96. 96. Gomez, “Muslims in Early America,” 706; Bailey, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, chapter sixteen; Austin, African Muslims, 448; Gomez, Black Crescent, 161.
  97. 97. Lauren DuBois and Julius Scott, Origins of the Black Atlantic, 1–5.

Chapter 2: War and Freedom

  1. 1. Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven Miller, eds., Remembering Slavery, 8–11, 90–91.
  2. 2. Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark, 42.
  3. 3. Robert E. Birt, ed., The Quest for Community and Identity, 2, 4.
  4. 4. Karen B. Bell, “‘The Ogeechee Troubles,” 381.
  5. 5. Page 110 →Roderick A. McDonald, The Economy and Material Culture of Slaves, 70; James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. For an early study of slavery in Louisiana, see Joe Gray Taylor, Negro Slavery.
  6. 6. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 42–43.
  7. 7. Mr. Charles C. Jones Jr. to Rev. C. C. Jones, Savannah, Wednesday, October 1, 1856; Rev. C. C. Jones to Mr. Charles C Jones Jr., Maybank, Thursday, October 2, 1856; Mr. Charles C. Jones Jr., to Rev. C. C. Jones, Savannah, Saturday, October 4, 1856; Rev. C. C. Jones to Mr. Charles C. Jones Jr., Maybank, Saturday evening, November 1, 1856; Rev. C. C. Jones to Mrs. Mary Jones, Savannah, Wednesday, December 10, 1856, in Robert Manson Myers, Children of Pride, 240–46, 257–58, 270; Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 42–43.
  8. 8. U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties, and Proclamations, vol. 12 (Boston, 1863), 319.
  9. 9. James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 195–99; Clarence Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment, 27–29.
  10. 10. U.S. Population Census, 1860 (Washington, D.C.).
  11. 11. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navy, series 1, vol. 13, pp. 21, 159.
  12. 12. Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, series 1, vol. 44 (Washington, D.C., 1893) 159, 787.
  13. 13. Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom, 119; Rev. C. C. Jones to Lt. Charles C. Jones Jr., July 10, 1862, and July 21, 1862, in Myers, Children of Pride, 929, 935.
  14. 14. Higginson, Army Life, 79, 106–14, 162–63; Ella Forbes, African American Women, 46.
  15. 15. U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 12, 589–600.
  16. 16. Ira Berlin et. al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1, 123.
  17. 17. “Louis Manigault Civil War Diary,” December 3, 1863, Manigault Family Papers, Reel 2; “List of Negroes at Gowrie,” “Hermitage,” “East Hermitage,” Manigault Family Papers, #484), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (hereafter cited as SHC).
  18. 18. “List of Negroes at Gowrie,” Manigault Family Papers, #484, SHC.
  19. 19. “Commander of the Department of the South to the Secretary of War,” June 23, 1862, in Ira Berlin et al., Freedom, series 2; The Black Military Experience, 50–53.
  20. 20. Ibid.
  21. 21. “Superintendent of Contraband in the Department of the South to the Secretary of War,” January 25, 1863, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 54–55.
  22. 22. Ibid. George L. Hendricks, “Union Army Occupation of the Southern Seaboard, 1861–1865,” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1954, 80–89; Dudley T. Cornish, The Sable Arm, 138.
  23. 23. Hendricks, “Union Army Occupation of the Southern Seaboard, 1861–1865.”
  24. 24. Army Engineer to the Headquarters of the Department of the South, April 3, 1863, and Affadavit of an Impressed Black Recruit, April 28, 1863, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 55–58.
  25. 25. Commander of the Department of the South to the Superintendent of Contrabands in the Department of the South, August 29, 1864, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 61.
  26. 26. Ibid. See also Cousins, “A History of the 33rd United States Colored Troops,”” 35–51, 61–64. The activities of Colonel James Montgomery’s Second South Carolina Volunteers Page 111 →(Thirty-fourth U.S.C.T.) are discussed in Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction, 244–53; Cornish, Sable Arm, 138–42, 148–50, 244.
  27. 27. Berlin et. al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 142.
  28. 28. Ibid.
  29. 29. Mary Hawkesworth, Political Worlds of Women, 9.
  30. 30. Elinor Barnes and James A. Barnes, eds., Naval Surgeon, 247, 254–55.
  31. 31. Clarence Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 331–52; Commander of the U.S.S. Mohican to the Commander of the South Atlantic Squadron,” March 30, 1862, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery, 118–19.
  32. 32. Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 331–52.
  33. 33. Commander of the U.S.S. Mohican to the Commander of the South Atlantic Squadron,” March 30, 1862, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery, 118–19; Susie King Taylor, A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs.
  34. 34. Commander of the U.S.S. Dale to the Commander of the South Atlantic Squadron, June 13, 1862, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery, 125–26.
  35. 35. Commander of a Confederate Cavalry Battalion to the Headquarters of the 3rd Military District of the Confederate Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida,” June 14, 1862, in Berlin et al., Freedom, series 1, vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery, 128.
  36. 36. Hermitage, April 22, 1860, and East Hermitage, April 21, 1861, Manigault Family Papers, #484, SHC.
  37. 37. Louis Manigualt Civil War Diary, September 3, 1863, Manigault Family Papers, Reel 2, SHC; List of Negroes at Gowrie, Hermitage, April 22, 1860, Manigault Family Papers, #484, SHC.
  38. 38. Louis Manigualt Civil War Diary, September 3, 1863, Manigault Family Papers, Reel 2, SHC; Higginson, Army Life, 74.
  39. 39. James Schmidt, Free to Work, 95; Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 14; United States Statutes at Large, vol. 12, 590–92, 599. See also Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers; Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage.
  40. 40.. U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 12, 599; Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie Rowland, Freedom’s Soldiers, 21n39.
  41. 41. U.S. Statutes at Large, vol. 13, 571; Berlin, Reidy, and Rowland, Freedom’s Soldiers, 21n39. See also Evelyn N. Glenn, Unequal Freedom.
  42. 42. Captain George G. Davis to Brig. Gen. James Bowen, August 21, 1863, Letter Received, ser. 1845, Provost Marshal, Department of the Gulf, Record Group 393, Pt. 1 [C-768]; Provost Marshal of St. Bernard Parish to the Provost General of the Dept. of the Gulf, St. Bernard [Parish, La.], August 21, 1863, in Ira Berlin, et al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 157.
  43. 43. Affidavit of Mary Wilson, June 17, 1865, filed with H-8 1865, Registered Letters Received, ser. 3379, TN Asst. Comr., Record Group 105 Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands [A-6148], cited in Ira Berlin et al., Freedom, series 2: The Black Military Experience, 623–24. See also Hannah Rosen, Terror in the Heart of Freedom; Kidada E. Williams, They Left Great Marks on Me.
  44. 44. U.S. Census Bureau, 1860. The slave population in the state of Louisiana in 1860 consisted of 331,726 men and women, compared with a total white population of 351,556. This figure is for 23 parishes in Louisiana and for women between the ages of 15 and 60. There Page 112 →were a total of 48 parishes with slaves in Louisiana. The total female slave population of all parishes was 159,749. The free colored population was 18,547.
  45. 45. Record of Complaints, November 19, 1864, Records of the Field Offices of the State of Louisiana, M1905, vol. 1, roll 7, BRFAL, RG 105, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as NAB).
  46. 46. Record of Complaints, November 19, 1864, Records of the Field Offices of the State of Louisiana, M1905, vol. 1, roll 7, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  47. 47. Registers and Payrolls of Freedmen Employed on Plantations, Terre-Bonne-West Feliciana, Louisiana, 1864–68, M1905, roll 39, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  48. 48. Noralee Frankel, Freedom’s Women, 2; see also Mary J. Farmer, ‘“Because They are Women.’” Farmer argues that government officials waged a “war on dependency.”
  49. 49. Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, chapter two.
  50. 50. Farmer, “‘Because They Are Women,’” 163.
  51. 51. Record of Complaints, August 1, 1865, Elizabeth White, Amelie Candole, Caroline Starks, Charlotte Ann Hall, and Henrietta Henderson, Records of the Field Offices of the State of Louisiana, M1905, vol. 1, roll 7, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Register of Proceedings in the Freedmen’s Court, June 20, 1865, Sarah Moore, Mary DeLisle, Lorina Jones, Cecilia Jones, Records of the Field Offices of the State of Louisiana, M1905, vol. 1, roll 7, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. See Farmer, “‘Because They Are Women.’” For a discussion of the experiences of women in Civil War Mississippi see Frankel, Freedom’s Women.
  52. 52. Taylor, Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs, 7–8; Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 346.
  53. 53. William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 1104–105.
  54. 54. The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, 1880–1902), series 1, vol. 44, pp. 75, 159, 410.
  55. 55. New York Daily Tribune, December 23, 1864; Malcolm Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 380.
  56. 56. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 652–53.
  57. 57. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 651; Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 317; Report of Major General Slocum, January 9, 1865, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (hereafter cited as ORUCA), series 1, vol. 44, 159, 836. Statistics regarding slaves set free in northern and central Georgia by the Army of Tennessee also reference the figure 3,000 from October 4 to December 31, 1864. See ORUCA, series 1, vol. 44, 75.
  58. 58. Jacob D. Cox, March to the Sea, 37–38.
  59. 59. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 1106.
  60. 60. Report to General Joseph Wheeler, CSA, ORUCA, series 1, vol. 44, 410; W. C. Dodson, ed., Campaigns of Wheeler and His Cavalry, 301.
  61. 61. “The March to the Sea,” Western Reserve Chronicle, December 28, 1864; “From Rebel Papers,” The Cleveland Morning Leader, December 5, 1864; “From Sherman,” The Raftsman Journal, January 21, 1865; “Review of Sherman’s Grand Campaign,” The Caledonian, December 30, 1864.
  62. 62. Works Progress Administration (WPA), Annals of Savannah 1850–1937, 5; Lisa M. Brady, War upon the Land, 93.
  63. 63. The Soldiers Journal, February 1, 1865; Cleveland Morning Leader, December 5, 1864; Sherman, Memoirs, 1105–106; List of Possessory Titles Issued to Freed people, Register of Land Titles Issued to Freed people, Records of A. P. Ketchum, Savannah, Georgia, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB.
  64. 64. Page 113 →Savannah Daily Herald, December 6, 1865; Bell, “‘Ogeechee Troubles,’” 376–97.
  65. 65. Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 349–50; ORUCA, series 1, vol. 44, 787, 819. See also Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah.
  66. 66. Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 349–50.
  67. 67. Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 183; Edward Magdol, A Right to the Land, 137; Charles L. Hoskins, The Trouble They Seen, 28.
  68. 68. Magdol, A Right to the Land, 137; Register of Land Titles Issued to Freedmen, RG 105, BRFAL, Georgia, Reel 36, (M798), NAB.
  69. 69. Foner, Reconstruction, 183.
  70. 70. Ibid.
  71. 71. Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves; Wm. Tiffany, Supt. of the Ogeechee District to Capt. A. P. Ketchum, July 5, 1865, Records of Ketchum, Applications for the Restoration of Property, List of Possessory Titles Issued to Freedmen, Savannah, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB; Records of the Chatham County Superior Court, Chatham County Courthouse, Savannah, Georgia, Deed Book 3X, 199–200. Hereafter cited as RCCSC.
  72. 72. “An Account of the Capture of Fort McAllister,” by Lt. Col. William E. Armstrong, December 30, 1864, Miscellaneous, Reel 51, William T. Sherman Papers, Library of Congress; Lillian C. Bragg and Margaret Godley, Stories of Old Savannah, 13. The Bureau also controlled the rice mill on George Screven’s Mifflin plantation.
  73. 73. Articles of Incorporation, Burroughs, Georgia, 1898, Charter Book 4, pp. 123–24, RCCSC.
  74. 74. List of Possessory Titles Issued to Freedmen, Savannah, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB.
  75. 75. Ibid. Robert Habersham to Capt. A. P. Ketchum, February 6, 1866, Letters Received; Capt. A. P. Ketchum to Wm. H. Tiffany, Ogeechee District, October 30, 1865, Letters Sent, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB. RCCSC Deed Book 4F, 157. Francis MacLeod, the owner of Wild Horn, died in 1864. The plantation did not meet the definition of “abandoned” set forth in Section 2 of the July 2, 1864, Act of Congress. Similar circumstances probably occurred at Vallambrosia, whose owner was Arthur Heyward. The children of MacLeod and Heyward inherited the property. Francis H. MacLeod Estate, File 398, 1864, Records of the Chatham County Probate Court, Savannah, Georgia, Chatham County Courthouse. Hereafter cited as RCCPC.
  76. 76. Paul Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 167.
  77. 77. Ibid.
  78. 78. Register of Land Titles Issued to Freedmen, Savannah, RG 105, BRFAL, Georgia, Reel 36, (M798), NAB; Savannah Daily Republican, June 19, 1865; Hoskins, Trouble They Seen, 28; Magdol, Right to the Land, 105;
  79. 79. Register of Land Titles Issued to Freedmen, Savannah, RG 105, BRFAL, Georgia, Reel 36, (M798), NAB; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 395.
  80. 80. Wilson Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 17; see also Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember.
  81. 81. Slave Inventory, File 398, RCCPC; Mae Ruth Green, “Sapelo Island Families,” Department of Natural Resources, Real Estate Division, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Georgia. See also Register of Land Titles Issued to Freedmen, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, Record Group 105, BRFAL, NAB, for references to African Americans’ ancestral ties to lowcountry plantations.
  82. 82. Compendium of the Ninth U.S. Census, 1870, 139.
  83. 83. Page 114 →Bell, “‘Ogeechee Troubles.’”
  84. 84. A. P. Ketchum to Moses Bentley, July 6, 1865, Savannah, Records of A. P. Ketchum, Letters Sent, RG 105, BRFAL, Georgia, Reel 36, (M798), NAB; Magdol, Right to the Land, 104.
  85. 85. Judith Carney, Black Rice; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Agricultural Returns, Chatham County, Ogeechee District, 1880. The largest quantity produced by an African American rice planter in 1880 was 10,208 pounds from sixteen acres. See Plenty Ancrum, Frank Gladding, Mingo Broughton, Jacob Grant, Fortune Watson, and Richard Crawford, who each produced over 10,000 pounds of rice. In 1872 one thousand African Americans who cultivated rice assembled on Bay Street, the center of market activity in Savannah, to protest a possible repeal of the duty on foreign rice. African American leader Aaron A. Bradley stated that the repeal would touch the pocket of every rice planter, white and black. Savannah Morning News, January 23, 1872 (hereafter cited as SMN); Joseph P. Reidy, “Aaron A. Bradley.”
  86. 86. Mohr, On the Threshold of Freedom, chapter four; Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom, 75–79; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Agricultural Returns, Chatham County, Bryan County, Liberty County, McIntosh County, Glynn County, Camden County, 1860; George Alexander Heard, “St. Simons Island during the War between the States.”
  87. 87. Mart A. Stewart, “Rice, Water, and Power,” 47–48; see also Mart A. Stewart, What Nature Suffers to Groe.
  88. 88. “Sketches on a Rice Plantation,” Harpers Weekly, January 5, 1867, 6; Douglas C. Wilms, “The Development of Rice Culture in 18th Century Georgia.” See also Albert V. House, ed., Planter Management and Capitalism, 24–28; Daniel Heyward, Seed From Madagascar, 19–36; and Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture, 35–36. For the African origins of planting rice according to the task labor system see John Blassingame, The Slave Community, 101, and Carney, Black Rice. See also Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs, 225–36 for African cultural expressions that accompanied rice cultivation.
  89. 89. “Sketches on a Rice Plantation, Harper’s Weekly, January 5, 1867, 6.
  90. 90. For a discussion of the “Port Royal Experiment,” see Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction. In her early assessment of the land issue, Rose argued that land distribution would have had a negligible effect in alleviating African American poverty. See also Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 167.
  91. 91. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship, 167.
  92. 92. A. P. Ketchum to Wm. Tiffany, October 30, 1865, re George P. Screven’s Mifflin plantation, Permission Given to Freedmen of Ogeechee to Sell Rice, December 4, 1865, H.F. Sickles, Letters Sent, Records of Ketchum, Savannah, RG 105, NAB.
  93. 93. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 173. For the Bureau’s position on cases involving freedmen, see Complaint of Mungo Davis against Mr. Miller, June 30, 1865; A.P. Ketchum to Harris Phillips, June 24, 1865; and Notice to Mrs. Julia Spiers of Effingham County, June 28, 1865, in Letters Sent, Records of Ketchum, Savannah, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB. Ketchum acknowledged the “right of the freed people” in each of these cases. Judge Benedict and General Grover of the Bureau were identified by Reverend James Simms of Savannah as hostile to freed people. Ketchum replaced Judge Benedict. Capt. A. P. Ketchum to Bvt. Major Stuart M. Taylor, July 1, 1865, Letters Sent, Records of Ketchum, RG 105, BRFAL, NAB. See also Paul A. Cimbala, “The Freedmen’s Bureau, the Freedmen, and Sherman’s Grant,” 598; Paul A. Cimbala, “On the Front Line of Freedom,” 577–89.
  94. 94. Page 115 →SMN, December 31, 1868; RCCSC, Deed Book 3T, 301–2; RCCPC Slave Inventory, File 398. Langdon Cheves had previously owned Southfield plantation. A deed dated February 17, 1860, lists 116 slaves whose names correspond with those on the riot list related to the Ogeechee troubles. The names of slaves in the inventory of the estate of Francis MacLeod, owner of Wild Horn, also correspond with those listed on the riot list.
  95. 95. Daily accounts of the revolt and court records of the preliminary trial that followed appeared in the SMN, December 31, 1868, to February 1, 1869. Sworn affidavits of witnesses were also published in the SMN.
  96. 96. A. P. Ketchum to Moses Bentley, July 6, 1865, Savannah, Records of A. P. Ketchum, RG 105 NAB; Civil Minutes, State v. Moses H. Bentley, Docket 26, 440, RCCSC; Magdol, Right to the Land, 104. The criminal minutes of the Chatham County Superior Court for 1868–1869 are combined with civil minutes.
  97. 97. SMN, January 26, 1869.
  98. 98. SMN, December 31, 1868; January 1–2, 1869.
  99. 99. SMN, December 31, 1868.
  100. 100. SMN, January 2, 1869.
  101. 101. SMN, January 4, 1869.
  102. 102. Compendium of the Ninth U.S. Census, 1870, 139.
  103. 103. Russell Duncan, Freedom’s Shore, 21–27.
  104. 104. SMN, December 31, 1868, and January 2–6, 1869; Savannah, Florida, and Western Railway Company Guide to Southern Georgia and Florida (Savannah, Georgia, 1879), 7–9.
  105. 105. SMN, January 7, 1869, and January 23, 1872. The occupation “rice planter” appears in the ledgers of the Freedmen’s Bank. See Captain Shigg, Ledger #138, Index to Deposit Ledgers, Savannah, Records of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, RG 101, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Black labor activist Aaron A. Bradley, in speeches to rice workers, referred to them as rice planters.
  106. 106. Joseph P. Reidy, “Aaron A. Bradley: Voice of Black Labor in the Georgia lowcountry,” in Howard N. Rabinowitz, ed., Southern Black Leaders, 281–86.
  107. 107. SMN, January 4–6, 1869; Georgia Federal Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, 212; Art Rosenbaum, Shout Because You’re Free, 4–8, 137–39.
  108. 108. SMN, January 4–6, 1869.
  109. 109. Ibid.
  110. 110. Ibid. The robbery charges stemmed from the pilfering of rice.
  111. 111. Ibid; SMN, January 7–15, 1869.
  112. 112. Kenneth Coleman, ed., A History of Georgia, 213–14.
  113. 113. RCCSC, Civil Minutes, State v. Captain Green, Docket 27, 52–53, 108–9, 117, 228–29; SMN, January 25, 1869; February 1, 1869.
  114. 114. SMN, January 15–February 1, 1869.
  115. 115. Ibid.
  116. 116. Ibid.
  117. 117. Russell Duncan, Entrepreneur for Equality, 118–20; SMN, January 23, 1869.
  118. 118. RCCSC, State v. Captain Green [et al.], State v. Ned Edwards, State v. Dandy McNeil, Civil Minutes, Docket 27, 52, 67, 108–9, 117; RCCSC, State v. Captain Green [et al.], Civil Minutes, Docket 26, 498; SMN, July 12, 1869; Georgia General Assembly, Committee to Investigate the Official Conduct of Rufus Bullock Late Governor of Georgia (Atlanta, 1872), 76–77, 162–67.
  119. 119. Page 116 →Foner, Reconstruction, 41.
  120. 120. Mohr, “Before Sherman,” 351.
  121. 121. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Montgomery, Alabama, roll 43, District 6, 1930. In 1930 Delia Garlic was a widow who resided with her daughter’s family in Montgomery, Alabama.

Chapter 3: “Full and Fair Compensation”

  1. 1. Records of the Chatham County Superior Court (RCCSC), Deed Book 3S, pp. 247–55; Malcolm Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 311–40; William Dusinberre, in Them Dark Days, argues that slavery in the rice kingdom was much harsher and more horrific than has been acknowledged. See also Frances Butler Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation. The New York Daily Tribune provided multipage coverage of the March 11, 1859, auction and sale. See also Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson, “Unearthing the Weeping Time.”
  2. 2. U.S. Manuscript Population Census, Glynn County, 1870; Bell, Major Butler’s Legacy, 407.
  3. 3. Ira Berlin, Freedom, series 1 vol. 3: The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor, 111–12; U.S. Statutes at Large, 1863–1864, chapter 225, second section, 375–78; Letters Sent by the Commissioner of Customs Relating to Captured and Abandoned Property, M498, roll 1, Records of the U.S. General Accounting Office, RG 217, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as NAB). See also Steven F. Miller et al., Land and Labor.
  4. 4. Peter A. Coclanis and Stuart Bruchey, eds., Ideas, Ideologies, and Social Movements, 49; General Carl C. Schurz, “Observations on the Labor of Freedmen,” Bureau of Free Labor, Montgomery, Alabama, August 19, 1865, Carl Schurz Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
  5. 5. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Manuscript, Chatham County, Seventh Militia District, 1870; Savannah Morning News, October 9, 1874, p. 3 col. 3. The occupation “rice planter” appears in the ledgers of the Freedmen’s Bank; Index to Deposit Ledgers, Savannah, Records of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, RG 101, NAB. For a discussion of the significance of spatial dialectics on plantations, see Theresa A. Singleton, “Slavery and Spatial Dialectics.”
  6. 6. “A Disaster to the Rice Crop,” Manigault Family Papers, #484, Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Daniel Heyward, Seed from Madagascar, 19–36; Douglas C. Wilms, “The Development of Rice Culture,” 53. See also Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Rice Culture; Stewart, “What Nature Suffers to Groe.”
  7. 7. “Some Previous Floods,” Manigault Family Papers, #484, Southern Historical Collection, Manuscript Department, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
  8. 8. Leigh, Ten Years, 1, 14.
  9. 9. Ibid., 15. The Savannah Daily Herald, October 31, 1865, reported that 7,000 sick and helpless former slaves in Georgia were under the care of the newspaper. The Savannah Daily Herald had replaced the Daily Morning News in December 1864 after General Sherman’s arrival in Savannah.
  10. 10. Works Progress Administration, Annals of Savannah 1850–1937, vol. 16, 5. See also Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah.
  11. 11. Works Progress Administration, Annals of Savannah 1850–1937, vol. 16, 5.
  12. 12. Page 117 →Robert Birt, ed., The Quest for Community and Identity, 2, 4; William T. Sherman, Memoirs, vol. 2, 250–52.
  13. 13. In the Bible, see Exodus 6:1–8, Exodus 7–14, and Matthew 5:5; “Sketch of a Sermon by Rev. H. M. Turner LL.D., Delivered in St. James Tabernacle,” Savannah Tribune, November 28, 1875; Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands; John Langston Gwaltney, Drylongso, xxvi; Will Coleman, “‘Coming through ’Ligion’”; Wayne E. Croft, “‘You Jes’ Wait a Little.’” For an excellent discussion of reparations during the period immediately following the Civil War, see Mary Frances Berry, My Face Is Black.
  14. 14. Capt. A. P. Ketchum to Wm. H. Tiffany, Ogeechee District, October 30, 1865, Letters Sent, RG 105; List of Possessory Titles Issued to Freed People, Savannah, Georgia; Records of A. P. Ketchum, February 6, 1866, Letters Received, RG 105, NAB. See also Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We.
  15. 15. Savannah Daily Herald, February 3, 1865; Savannah Tribune, August 12, 1876.
  16. 16. The term “full and fair compensation” appears in speeches given by lowcountry African American leaders, many of whom served as agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau; the term also appears in Bureau correspondence. See, for instance, Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 88; Claim of W. A. Golding, Claim No. 18129, Liberty County, Georgia, Records of the Southern Claims Commission, RG 217, NAB; Letter to Capt. S. Soper, July 5, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (hereafter cited as BRFAL), RG 105, NAB. For a full discussion of labor laws, see James Schmidt, Free to Work, 2.
  17. 17. John R. Cheves to Col. H. L. Sickles, Letters Received, November 17, 1865, Savannah, Records of A. P. Ketchum, RG 105, NAB; Eric Foner, Politics and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War, 97–99; Karen Cook Bell and Peter J. Breaux, “Robert Smalls and the Politics of Race and Freedom.”
  18. 18. The National Freedmen, June 1, 1865; Senate Report 693, 46th Congress, 2nd Session; The New Era, March 3, 1870; New Orleans Tribune, October 31, 1867; Heather Cox Richardson, The Death of Reconstruction, chapter one. See also Steven F. Miller et. al, “Between Emancipation and Enfranchisement,” 1069–71.
  19. 19. Richardson, Death of Reconstruction, chapter one. For a discussion of the relationship between the Thirteenth Amendment and slave marriage, see Amy Dru Stanley, “Instead of Waiting for the Thirteenth Amendment”; Noralee Frankel, Freedom’s Women.
  20. 20. William Cohen, At Freedom’s Edge, 4; Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom, 177. See also Patricia G. Davis, “Ripping the Veil.”
  21. 21. For a discussion of the polarity created by skin color and the construction of blackness in the white imagination, see Toni Morrison, “Romancing the Shadow,” in Playing in the Dark, 31–59.
  22. 22. S. Ryan Johansson, “Status Anxiety and Demographic Contraction of Privileged Populations.”
  23. 23. State of Georgia Constitution (1865), art. 2, sec. 5; Georgia Acts 1865–1866; The Condition of Affairs in the State of Georgia, Report of the Joint Select Committee, February 19, 1872; Proceedings of the Freedmen’s Convention of Georgia, Assembled at Augusta, January 10, 1866. For a discussion of central Georgia, see Joseph P. Reidy, From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism, chapter six.
  24. 24. Page 118 →Mississippi Constitution (1832, as amended in 1865), art. 1, sec. 12; State of South Carolina Constitution (1865), art. 3, sec. 1; Laws of the State of Mississippi (1866), 82–86; W. E. B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction; Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 199–200.
  25. 25. A. P. Ketchum to Harris Phillips, June 24, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of Ketchum, Letters Sent, May-Oct. 1865, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, chapter ten.
  26. 26. Senate Documents, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 27, p. 60; Senate Documents, 39th Cong. 2ne Sess., No. 6, p. 127; House Executive Documents, 39th Cong. 1st Sess., No. 70, pp. 45, 57, 77, 231; House Executive Documents, 39th Cong. 2nd Sess. No. 1, pp. 718–19; Douglass Risley to J. Rowe, May 20, 1867, Letters Sent, Brunswick (Subassistant Commissioner), vol. 1, March 1867–June 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  27. 27. A. P. Ketchum to Harris Phillips, June 24, 1865; Contracts, Savannah, Georgia; Records of Ketchum, Letters Sent, May-October 1865; BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, chapter ten.
  28. 28. Reidy, From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism, 143. See also Susan E. O’Donovan, Becoming Free.
  29. 29. Reidy, From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism, chapter six.
  30. 30. Letter to Capt. S. Soper, July 5, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  31. 31. Land Report and Report of Planters Who Had Sent Their Freedmen Away Unpaid, August-September 1865, St. Simons (Agent), National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia; BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  32. 32. Notices to Mrs. Julia Spiers of Effingham County, June 18, 1865; Letters Sent by A. P. Ketchum, May-October 1865, Records of A. P. Ketchum, Savannah, Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  33. 33. Wm. Royal to Jesse Butler, June 24, 1868; Wm. Royal to Jesse Butler, July 30, 1868; Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105; NAB.
  34. 34. Complaint of Mungo Davis against Mr. Miller, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, 1865–1872, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Order of restoration to W. R. Nelson of “Modena” plantation Skidaway Island, January 29, 1866, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A.P. Ketchum, 1865–1872, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  35. 35. Complaint of Mungo Davis against Mr. Miller, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, 1865–1872, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. See also Wm. Royal to Major J. Booth, December 26, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  36. 36. Letter to Bvt. Major Stuart M. Taylor, July 1, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, 1865–1872, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  37. 37. Notification to Mr. Andrew T. Eyck, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, June 30, 1865, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. See also, Wm. Royal to J. Booth, June 26, 1868, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Page 119 →Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  38. 38. Gerald D. Jaynes, Branches without Roots, 121–27.
  39. 39. Raymond R. Kay v. Charles Walthour, Peter Way, and Billy Gillman, November 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  40. 40. Eliza F. Andrews, The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl (New York, 1908), 319; A. P. Ketchum to Mr. W. H. Tiffany, Agt. Ogeechee, October 28, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Communication from W.C.G. to Langdon Cheves in Regard to Land Owned by Him and Other Parties, May 11, 1865, Savannah, Georgia, Contracts, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  41. 41. Senate Documents, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 6, pp. 44, 54, 90; House Executive Documents, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess., vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1040, 1044.
  42. 42. Schmidt, Free to Work, 94–95. Schmidt argues that emancipation was a “legal event that destroyed a legal apparatus that had been instituted and perpetuated in the South.” My study argues that racial biases regarding contracts, apprenticeships, and exploitative wages remained firmly fixed as legal restraints on free labor.
  43. 43. See Winthrop D. Jordan, The White Man’s Burden; Gerald Horne, The Deepest South, chapters three and eight; Paul A. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 7.
  44. 44. House Executive Documents, 40th Cong., 3rd Sess., vol. 3, No. 1, p. 1052; Report on Reconstruction, Part 2, pp. 28, 290; Oliver Otis Howard, Circular Letter, October 14, 1865, Senate, Orders Issued by the Freedmen’s Bureau, 1865–1866, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. Senate Executive Doc. 6, 197–98; Schmidt, Free to Work, 1.
  45. 45. House Executive Documents, 40th Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 1, pp. 669, 664, 684; House Executive Documents 40th Cong., 3rd Sess., No. 1, pp. 1038, 1044; Senate Documents, 39th Cong., 2nd Sess., No. 6, pp. 48, 101, 123, 127; House Executive Documents, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., No. 70, pp. 173, 264, 313; see also Christopher R. Bean, “The Freedmen’s Bureau and Logistical Problems”; Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation, 14.
  46. 46. Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 136.
  47. 47. John and LaWanda Cox, “General O. O. Howard and the Misrepresented Bureau,” 430; Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 136.
  48. 48. James McPherson, Ordeal by Fire, 253–54.
  49. 49. Ibid., 253–55; Works Progress Administration, Louisiana: Past and Present, 47.
  50. 50. Ibid.
  51. 51. Schmidt, Free to Work, 95; Bentley, History of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 14; United States Statutes at Large, Volume XII, 590–92, 599. See also Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers.
  52. 52. Schmidt, Free to Work, 95. At Coco Bend Plantation in West Feliciana Parish, amid the disorder and chaos of war numerous slaves across the age spectrum left the plantation, and the Red River uprising led to the deaths of several enslaved men. Letter to Mrs. Henrietta Matthews, Bayou Sara, December 5, 1864, and “List of Slaves Killed in Red River Uprising,” Charles L. Matthews and Family Papers, Mss. 910, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge. The Matthews family owned Greenwood, Georgia, Coco Bend, and Chaseland plantations, located on the Red River in Rapides Parish. See also Auguste Le Blanc Family Papers, Mss. 214; Special Collections, LSU Libraries. In his study of Louisiana, C. Peter Ripley argues that Page 120 →the rivers, bayous, and swamps precluded the likelihood and success of running away. See C. Peter Ripley, Slaves and Freedmen, 7.
  53. 53. Registers and Payrolls of Freedmen Employed on Plantations, Terre Bonne, Louisiana, M1905, roll 39, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  54. 54. Ibid.; Schmidt, Free to Work, 2.
  55. 55. Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction, 68.
  56. 56. Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract Labor, 29.
  57. 57. Schmidt, Free to Work, 5. See also William E. Nelson, The Roots of American Bureaucracy, 1–8. Nelson argues that the origins of the modern state lie in the “tension between the idea of majority self-rule and the concern for protecting minority and individual rights.” The contract system developed by the Freedmen’s Bureau sought to strike a balance between these two ideas, but ultimately protecting the interests of the majority prevailed.
  58. 58. W. N. Ginn, “New History of the Rice Industry in America,” vol. 3, pp. 1–2 in Louisiana Sugar and Rice Trade Collection, Mss. 784, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Special Collections, Louisiana State University, LSU Libraries, Baton Rouge.
  59. 59. Ibid., 2.
  60. 60. Ibid., 5.
  61. 61. An Agreement Between William H. Gibbons and 119 Colored People, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  62. 62. Ibid. See also George P. Screven, October 30, 1865, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Letters Received, Records of A. P. Ketchum, 1865–1872, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Contract between George P. Screven and Certain Freedmen, February 20, 1866, Contracts, 1865–1872, Savannah, Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; George P. Screven, March 22, 1866, Savannah, Georgia, Contracts, Records of A. P. Ketchum, 1865–1872, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Article of Agreement between Richard McLeod and Certain Freedmen, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, 1865–1872, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  63. 63. An Agreement between William H. Gibbons and 119 Colored People, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  64. 64. For a discussion of the economic effects of uncompensated emancipation within a legal framework, see Paul Finkleman, Law of Freedom and Bondage.
  65. 65. Thomas V. Scriven and Certain Freedmen, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  66. 66. Ibid.
  67. 67. Peter Wallenstein, From Slave South to New South, 131–32.
  68. 68. William H. Burroughs and Certain Freedman, Contracts, Savannah, Georgia, February 26, 1866, Records of A. P. Ketchum, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  69. 69. J. Rowe, Esq., May 20, 1867, Brunswick, Georgia, Registered Letters Received, St. Mary’s, May 1867–November 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  70. 70. Jaqueline Jones, Labor of Love, 53. Henry L. Swint, ed., Dear Ones at Home, 203–4; Douglass Risley to Captain Eugene Pickett, June 4, 1867; Letters Sent, Brunswick (Subassistant Commissioner), vol. 1, March 1867–June 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight, 3–4. Risley discusses the conditions of women and their needs in lowcountry Georgia.
  71. 71. Jones, Labor of Love, 53. Douglass Risley to James F. Blain, Mayor of Brunswick, June Page 121 →21, 1867, Letters Sent, Brunswick (Subassistant Commissioner), National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, RG 105. For a similar discussion of how Freedmen’s Aid societies treated freed women see, Carol Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction, chapter seven.
  72. 72. Jones, Labor of Love, 53. “Testimony by a Georgia Freedwoman before the Southern Claims Commission,” Savannah, March 22, 1873, in Ira Berlin et al., Freedom, vol. 3, 150–54.
  73. 73. Jones, Labor of Love, 53. Ira Berlin et al., Freedom, vol. 3, 92–97.
  74. 74. Jones, Labor of Love, 53. John R. Dennett, The South As It Is, 105.
  75. 75. Jones, Labor of Love, 53. Douglass Risley to O. A. Dodge, Wayne County, Georgia, June 6, 1867, Letters Sent, Brunswick (Subassistant Commissioner), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  76. 76. Wm. Royal to Wm. Dickson, November 15, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. See also Wm. Royal to Francis Adams, December 30, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. Wm. Royal to James Dampier, July 29, 1868, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  77. 77. Wm. Royal to Wm. Dickson, November 15, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  78. 78. Wm. Royal to Dr. W.B. Folks, April 14, 1868, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. Wm. Royal to William Murray, February 24, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  79. 79. Wm. Royal to Dr. W.B. Folks, April 14, 1868, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB. Wm. Royal to James Dampier, July 29, 1868, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, NAB.
  80. 80. Douglass Risley to Mitchell August, June 4, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  81. 81. Wm. Royal to D. J. Dillion, June 4, 1868; Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  82. 82. Douglass Risley to E. P. Smith, August 15, 1867, Reel 32, Georgia, American Missionary Association Archives, 1839–1882, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University, New Orleans.
  83. 83. Jones, Labor of Love, 53–54. Letters Sent, St. Mary’s (Agent), vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  84. 84. Page 122 →Jones, Labor of Love, 53–54. Case 104, September 9, 1867, Register of Complaints, Cuthbert, Georgia, Agent No. 238, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB; Mary Farmer-Kaiser, Freedwomen and the Freedmen’s Bureau, chapter one; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 55.
  85. 85. Jones, Labor of Love, 55. Case 104, September 9, 1867, Register of Complaints, Cuthbert, Georgia, Agent No. 238, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  86. 86. Douglass Risely to Col. C. A. Reynolds, June 28, 1867, Letters Sent, Brunswick (Subassistant Commissioner), vol. 1, March 1867–June 1868, National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 52; Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  87. 87. William Royal to Miller B. Grant, December 16, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  88. 88. William Royal to Miller B. Grant, December 16, 1867, Letters Sent, St. Mary’s, vol. 1, September 1867–July 1868; National Archives Microfilm Publication M1903, roll 77, Records of the Field Offices for the State of Georgia, BRFAL, RG 105, NAB.
  89. 89. Works Progress Administration, Annals of Savannah 1850–1937, vol. 17, 5. For a discussion of the significance of 1866, see Patrick W. Riddleberger, 1866.
  90. 90. Reidy, From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism, 144.
  91. 91. “Petition of the Colored Washerwomen,” Jackson (Mississippi) Daily Clarion, June 24, 1866, in Philip S. Foner and Randolph Lewis, Black Workers; Tera Hunter, To Joy My Freedom, chapter four.
  92. 92. Interview with Benjamin Lewis, February 3, 2001, Savannah, Georgia. Lewis is the grandson of Sapelo Island resident Katie Brown, who is featured in Georgia Writers’ Project, Drums and Shadows, and Lydia Parrish, Slave Songs. Born during slavery, Brown cultivated rice on Sapelo Island, as did previous generations of women. Lewis described rice as his grandmother’s “money crop.” Recording in possession of the author.
  93. 93. Judith Carney, Black Rice, 107–8, 135; Leigh, Ten Years on a Georgia Plantation, 51. See also, Judith Carney and R. N. Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery; Daina Ramey Berry, “Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe.”
  94. 94. Leigh, Ten Years, 58–59.
  95. 95. Jones, Labor of Love, 57. Leigh, Ten Years, 58–59.
  96. 96. Carol Faulkner, Women’s Radical Reconstruction, chapter seven; Edmund Drago, “Militancy and Black Women in Reconstruction Georgia.”
  97. 97. Register of Signature of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah Branch, M816, roll 8: Acct. 722, Union Benevolent Society of Second African Baptist Church; Acct. 745, John the Baptist Society; Acct. 757, Union Republican Association; Acct. 842, Mary Magdalene Society; Acct. 927, Sisters Prayer Meeting Benevolent Association; Acct. 930, Ladies Union Society; Acct. 984, Poor and Needy Institute; Records of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Record Group 101, NAB. James Simms, First Colored Church of North America, 211–13, lists additional benevolent societies organized and headed by women.
  98. 98. Leigh, Ten Years, 25–26, 51, 55–56, 57, 59, 65–67; Lawrence Powell, New Masters, 109; Jones, Labor of Love, 57, 70; Eric Foner, Nothing but Freedom, 87. See also Elizabeth Hayes Turner, Women and Gender in the New South.
  99. 99. Mae Ruth Green, Sapelo Island Families, Pheobe Robinson Family #130, Genealogical Source Book (unpublished); copy provided by Carolyn Douse, Sapelo Isalnd Cultural and Page 123 →Revitalization Society (SICARS), Sapelo Island, Georgia; Barbara Omolade, The Rising Song, 39; Leigh, Ten Years, 54.
  100. 100. Records of the Chatham County Superior Court, Chatham County Tax Digest, 1876; Register of Signature of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, RG 101, M816, roll 8, #777; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Savannah, #1039, 1870; Simms, First Colored Church, 206–7, lists contributors to the building fund.
  101. 101. Records of the Chatham County Superior Court, Chatham County Tax Digest, 1876; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Savannah, #1692.
  102. 102. I.W. Avery, “The City of Savannah, Georgia,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, January 1888, 261; Register of Signature of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah Branch, M816, roll 8, #590, RG 101; Records of the Chatham County Superior Court, Chatham County Tax Digest, 1876, Savannah, Georgia.
  103. 103. Leigh, Ten Years, 54. For a comparative response in the Georgia cotton belt, see Susan E. O’Donovan, Becoming Free.
  104. 104. Leigh, Ten Years, 54.
  105. 105. Mae Ruth Green, Sapelo Island Families, Sampson Hillery, William Hillery, Family No. 116, unpublished Genealogical Source Book; copy provided by Carolyn Douse, SICARS, Sapelo Island, Georgia.
  106. 106. Mae Ruth Green, Sapelo Island Families, Family No. 116.
  107. 107. Mae Ruth Green, Sapelo Island Families, Sampson Hillery, William Hillery, Family No. 116. See also McFeely, Sapelo’s People.
  108. 108. RCCSC, Deed Books 4K, 530–33, Salsbury Barnard and Apollo Blunt; 4N, 222–23, Richard Crawford; 4O, 138–39, 153, 401–2, Frank Gladden, Pierce Neil, John Shellman, Caroline Ealy; 4P, 194, 212–13, 267, Charles Banks, Wally Large, Jeremiah Jones; 4Q, 352, James Grant; 4R, 361, 372–73, John Shellman and Plenty Ancrum; 4S, 277, January Stoney; 4V, 206, Fortune Watson; 4Z, 454–56, Mingo Bro[ug]hton, trustee for Hannah Green, Norris Weston; 5M, 68–69, 104–5, 367, Kate Brown and Children, Sarah Davis, Sara Miller; 5O, 324, Sarah Banks; 5P, 175, Tyra Williams; 6Z, 350, David Rolabit.
  109. 109. Foner, Reconstruction, 374, 379–81.
  110. 110. Savannah Tribune, January 1, 1876, p. 2, col. 3.
  111. 111. “Ku Klux Klan Report, Georgia Testimony: Report of the Joint Committee to Inquire into the Affairs of the Late Insurrectionary States,” Senate Reports of Committees, 42nd Cong., 2nd Sess., vol. 2, Pt. 7, pp. 1099–1103. Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 1st Sess., 283; Cong. Globe, 42nd Cong., 2nd Sess., 573; U.S. Congress, Senate, Georgia before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 1970; John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction, 153; Ralph Wardlaw, “Negro Suffrage in Georgia,” 38–39; DuBois, Black Reconstruction, 580. See also Herman Belz, A New Birth of Freedom.
  112. 112. Ralph Wardlaw, “Negro Suffrage in Georgia,” 38–39, 49.
  113. 113. Savannah Tribune, January 1, 1876; January 28, 1876; January 5, 1876; August 3, 1876; September 24, 1892.
  114. 114. Savannah Tribune, August 3, 1876.
  115. 115. Savannah Tribune, August 12, 1876; Rollin Chambliss, “What Negro Newspapers of Georgia Say,” 11–12.
  116. 116. Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 88; Claim of W. A. Golding, Claim No. 18129, Liberty County, Georgia, Records of the Southern Claims Commission, RG 217, NAB; James Page 124 →Stacy, History of the Midway Congregational Church, 209–20, 218–19; Robert Manson Myers, Children of Pride, 1613; Peggy Harris, “For the Love of Place,” 843n53. An ordained minister in the Congregational church, Golding became a leader in the local slave community. He joined Midway Congregational Church in 1839. His grandfather, Larson Sharper Jones, was reputed to be the “first colored Congregationalist preacher under white Congregationalists.” During slavery Golding had been the body servant for John B. Mallard, a planter and educator who owned a plantation near Charles C. Jones’s Arcadia plantation in Liberty County.
  117. 117. Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 88; Claim of W. A. Golding, Claim No. 18129, Liberty County, Georgia, Records of the Southern Claims Commission, RG 217, NAB. Politicians who engaged issues concerning labor were also landowners. They included Hamilton Jackson, constable of Darien (McIntosh County) in 1870, who owned $250 in real estate and $250 in personal property; Lewis Jackson, who represented McIntosh County in 1868, owned $800 in real estate and $250 in personal property; Caroline Johnson, member of the Darien City Council in 1870, owned $1,500 in real estate and $200 in personal property; Austin Jones, constable in Isle of Hope, Chatham County, in 1871, also owned land and property. Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, 20, 204, 181, 115, 117, 121. Also, Dandy Stewart of Butler’s Island, elected to the Darien County Board of Commissioners in 1878, owned real estate valued at $500 in 1870.
  118. 118. Tunis G. Campbell to Hon. E. D. Morgan, Atlanta, July 8, 1872, William E. Chandler Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. See Joseph P. Reidy, “Aaron A. Bradley,” 281–86; Duncan, Freedom’s Shore.
  119. 119. In Chatham County, Superior Court Judge William Schley in March 1869, in the case State of Georgia ex rel William J. Clements v. Richard W. White, ruled that the “right to hold office in Georgia does not belong to any person of color.” RCCSC, Civil Minutes, Docket 27, 1–13. In a series of court decisions such as Appling v. Odum (1872), which defined sharecroppers as wage laborers, the courts separated freedmen and freedwomen from the means of production and accomplished what planters by themselves could not achieve. See Foner, Nothing but Freedom.
  120. 120. Charles R. Hale, “The Cultural Politics of Identity in Latin America,” 568.
  121. 121. Savannah Daily Herald, July 25, 1865.
  122. 122. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870, Darien, McIntosh County, 271st Militia District; Tenth Census of the United States, 1880, Darien, McIntosh County, 27st Militia District; Tad Evans, ed. Darien, Georgia, Newspaper Clippings, vol. 1: 1818–1878, 266, 276, 284–87, and vol. 2: 1879–1890, 221, 304, 314, 323, 351, 370–74.
  123. 123. Savannah Tribune, December 7, 1889; Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 174.
  124. 124. Interview with LeRoy Palmer, Sapelo Island Cultural and Revitalization Society, March 17, 2001, Sapelo Island, Georgia.
  125. 125. Savannah Tribune, September 17, 1892, 2–3; Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 174; Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 414–15. See also Foner, The Story of American Freedom; The New York Times, November 6, 1890, p. 1, col. 1. Democrats were the majority in the 52nd Congress; however Alliance candidates made significant gains, with six elected from Georgia in 1890. Elected representatives included Alliance members Thomas Watson, Charles L. Moses, Thomas E. Winn, L. F. Livingstone, R. W. Everett, and Thomas E. Lawson.
  126. 126. Page 125 →Evans, ed., Darien, Georgia, Newspaper Clippings, 1891–1903, vol. 3, 16.
  127. 127. Georgia Property Tax Digest, 1890, Dandy Stewart, 271st Militia District.

Chapter 4: The State of Freedom is the State of Self Reliance

  1. 1. Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company, 1865–1874, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington D.C., microfilm publication M816, Ancestry.com. Freedmen’s Bank Records, 1865–1871 [database online], Provo, Utah, Ancestry.com. Georgia, Returns of Qualified Voters and Reconstruction Oath Books, 1867–1869, Ancestry.com. Georgia, Property Tax Digests, 1793–1892, Ancestry.com.
  2. 2. Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Culture.
  3. 3. Charles P. Loomis and J. Allan Beegle, Rural Social Systems, 293; Richard R. Myers and J. Beagle, “Delineation and Analysis of the Rural-Urban Fringe,” 14–17; Sherwin H. Cooper, “The Rural Settlement of the Lower Savannah River Basin in Georgia,” 116; see James Simms, The First Colored Church, for the religious origin of the rural-urban link in Chatham County.
  4. 4. Myers and Beagle, “Delineation and Analysis of the Rural-Urban Fringe,” 14–17.
  5. 5. Wilson Moses, Golden Age of Black Nationalism, chapters 2–3; Martin Robinson Delany, Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny, chapters 8–15; “Emigration to Liberia,” Savannah Morning News (hereafter cited as SMN), January 8, 1878, p. 2, col. 3; Kermit Small, Yearbook of Colored Savannah, 15; Edwin S. Redkey, Black Exodus, 219, 225–26; James L. Conyers, “Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism,” 37–38. In 1854 at the Emigration Convention, the delegates issued a proclamation demanding that the U.S. government pay reparations for their suffering. Following the Civil War, Henry McNeal Turner asserted that the U.S. government owed Black America 40 billion dollars for their enslavement. See also James Theodore Holly, “A Vindication of the Capacity of the Negro Race.”
  6. 6. The Jacksonian concept of the essential whiteness of the democratic man defined the way in which postbellum southern society constructed and reconstructed blackness and the heritage of slavery. See Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness, 4; Winthrop Jordan, The White Man’s Burden; George Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind, 71–96; Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy; Mia Bay, The White Image, 150–69. Michael D. Harris, Colored Pictures, examines how the visual arts have been marshaled in the creation and perpetuation of a racially divided America. According to Harris, early paintings and popular newspaper illustrations outline how physical and behavioral stereotypes were harnessed for the purpose of writing inferiority onto the black body. Patrick Rael, Black Identity; Jacqueline Bacon, The Humblest May Stand Forth; Moses, Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 17–29.
  7. 7. Donald L. Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 134; Edmund L. Drago, Black Politicians, Appendix B. See also Eric Foner, Freedom’s Lawmakers, for detailed biographies of African Americans in politics at the local, state, and national levels.
  8. 8. Georgia Office of the Governor, Return of Qualified Voters under the Reconstruction Act, 1867, Georgia State Archives, Morrow, Georgia; 1880 Census, St. Mary’s, Camden County, Georgia, roll 137; Georgia Property Tax Digests, 1871–1877, District 22, McIntosh County; Georgia Property Tax Digests, 1872–1876, Militia District 18, Camden County.
  9. 9. Grant, The Way It Was in the South, 134.
  10. 10. Page 126 →W. E. B. DuBois, The Souls of White Folk; Reiland Rabaka, “The Souls of White Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Critique.”
  11. 11. Mark Weiner, The Black Trials, 152.
  12. 12. Kidada E. Williams, They Left Great Marks, 101–44.
  13. 13. See Melbourne S. Cummings, “The Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner”; Delany, Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny.
  14. 14. Liberian Exodus Association, The Liberian Exodus, 8–11 accessible at http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/liberian/menu.html; Carter G. Woodson, The Mind of the Negro; Redkey, Black Exodus, 226–27; James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation; John Ernest, Liberation Historiography, 13.
  15. 15. Carter G. Woodson, The Mind of the Negro, 4–7; Cummings, “Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner,” 462–63; Edwin S. Redkey, ed., Respect Black. See also Edwin S. Redkey, “Bishop Turner’s African Dream”; E. Merton Coulter, “Henry M. Turner”; Andre E. Johnson, “Is the Negro Like Other People?” Redkey argues that middle-class African Americans generally opposed nationalism and emigration. See, Redkey, Black Exodus, 289.
  16. 16. Redkey, Black Exodus, 219, 225–26; “Emigration to Liberia,” SMN, January 8, 1878, p. 2, col. 3; Small, Yearbook of Colored Savannah, 15.
  17. 17. Allen Batteau, “The Contradictions of Kinship,” 28; Monroe Work, “The Negroes of Warsaw, Georgia”; Norman Crockett, The Black Towns.
  18. 18. Loomis and Beegle, Rural Social Systems, 293; Records of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population Returns, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 1880, Record Group 29, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. See also Dianne Swann-Wright, A Way Out of No Way.
  19. 19. W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Negro Landholder of Georgia,” 699; Enoch Banks, The Economics of Land Tenure, 62–75.
  20. 20. Du Bois, “The Negro Landholder,” 699. The total value of real and personal property in 1870 was 425,013. John Blassingame, “Before the Ghetto,” 469. The Ogeechee road was the main artery connecting these communities, with the exception of Dittmersville.
  21. 21. Chatham County Tax Digest, 1873–74, RCCSC: DB 4F, 89–90, William Morgin; DB 4H, 428, Robert Watts; DB 4B, 472, Diamond Williams.
  22. 22. SMN, February 24, 1874, p. 3, col. 4; SMN, September 27, 1881, p. 4, col. 2; RCCSC, Deed Book 6I 166, Sons and Daughters of Southville.
  23. 23. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Manuscript, Chatham County, Seventh Militia District, 1870.
  24. 24. William Morgin, Records of the Office of the Comptroller of Currency, Index to Deposit Ledgers, Savannah, Record Group 101, National Archives Building (NAB), Washington, D.C. In the bank ledger, Morgin lists his occupation as a carpenter. RCCSC, DB 4F, 89–90, William Morgin; U.S. Census Bureau, 1870, Seventh Militia District, #913, Record Group 29, NAB. Morgin’s real estate was valued at five hundred dollars in 1870.
  25. 25. RCCSC, DB 4B, 472, Diamond Williams; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1870, Seventh Militia District, #1005; RCCSC, DB 4H, 428, Robert Watts; U.S. Census Bureau, 1870, Seventh Militia District, #905, Record Group 29, NAB.
  26. 26. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population Returns, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 1880, RG 29, NARA, Washington D.C. Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 448; Arnold H. Taylor, Travail and Triumph, 161–67. Only fifteen of Page 127 →the twenty-four landowners could be located in the census. The 13 percent of landowners who did not have nuclear households maintained augmented nuclear families, with either a grandchild or niece living within the household. For an examination of kinship solidarity among rural African Americans, see Crandall A. Shiflett, “The Household Composition of Rural Black Families: Louisa County, Virginia, 1880.”.
  27. 27. Work, “Negroes of Warsaw, Georgia,” 36.
  28. 28. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Manuscript Returns, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, #729, 1880; Manuscript Agricultural Returns, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 20–21, 1880; “Burroughs Seeks Historic Status,” Georgia Gazette, February 11, 1981, p. 1, col. 3.
  29. 29. Loomis and Beagle, Rural Social Systems, 293; Records of the Chatham County Probate Court, Index to General Wills, File No. 849, Samuel Black. Samuel Black received fifteen acres of land at Grove Point plantation in 1865 under Sherman’s Field Order. Toby Roberts received ten acres at Grove Hill plantation. Black remained landless until 1890, when his real property was listed in the Chatham County Tax Digest as worth seventy-five dollars. Chatham County Tax Digest, 1880, 1890, Sam Black, Toby Roberts; U.S. Census Bureau, Population Manuscript Returns, 1870, Chatham County, Seventh Militia District, #1420, #1225.
  30. 30. Loomis and Beagle, Rural Social Systems, 293.
  31. 31. RCCSC, Deed Books, 4S, 318, January Stoney to Matilda Ferguson et al., 5E, 366.
  32. 32. James Grant to Adam Young, 5H, 474–75, Hobby and Dell to James Grant 5H 473–74. According to the latter deed, the land was located in the Ogeechee Ward, “four and one-half miles from Savannah.”
  33. 33. James Grant to Adam Young, 5H, 474–75.
  34. 34. Deed Book 6L, 350, David Roulabit; Deed Book 6M, 18, David Roulabit to Elze Green.
  35. 35. Edgar A. Schuler, “Some Regional Variations in Levels and Standards of Living,” 139. Schuler distinguishes between level of living and standard of living. Level of living refers to the “the content of goods and services utilized by a particular population … with regard to space, time, and income.”
  36. 36. Eric Foner, Nothing But Freedom, 108–10; Thomas F. Armstrong, “From Task Labor to Free Labor,” 443; Cooper, “Rural Settlement,” 132; Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed.
  37. 37. RCCSC, Deed Books 4’O, 401–2, Caroline Ealy.
  38. 38. RCCSC, Deed Book 4Z, 454–55, Hannah Green; 5M, 104–5, Sarah Davis; Farris W. Cadle, Georgia Land Surveying History and Law (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1991), 356; RCCSC, Deed Book 5M, 68–89, Kate Brown and children. Brown’s property was “bounded on the west by Chevis Road … and on the south by lot number twenty one, sold to Robin Davis and Prince Wright, trustees for Sarah Davis.”
  39. 39. Register of Signatures of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah Branch, 1866–1874, M816, roll 8, #499, Records of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Record Group 101, National Archives Building, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as RG 101). The signature books contain information on the account holders that includes age, color, occupation, birthplace, master’s name, current residence, marital status, and family history (names and ages of children, parents’ name, and siblings’ name). For a cogent discussion of the role of Black women in community development, see Tera W. Hunter, To Joy My Freedom; Sharon Harley and Rosalyn Terborg Penn, eds., The Afro-American Woman; Page 128 →Rosalyn Terborg Penn, African American Women; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow.
  40. 40. Savannah Tribune, February 5, 1876, p. 2, col. 1–2; RCCSC, Deed Book 5D, 320, Mt. Zion CME; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Chatham County, Seventh Militia District, 1870, Record Group 29, National Archives, Washington, D.C. James Stewart’s real estate was valued at one thousand dollars in 1870.
  41. 41. Savannah Tribune, February 5, 1876, p. 2, col. 1–2; RCCSC Deed Books 5H, 550, Colored Methodist Episcopal Church; 7N, 477, Mount Olive Baptist Church; 7Z, 58, New Ogeechee Baptist Church. The Great Ogeechee was one of several sister churches of the First Colored Baptist Church, established in 1788; RCCSC, DB 5A, 320, Mary Magdalene Society; SMN, October 7, 1873, p. 3, col. 1; SMN, July 22, 1881, p.4, col. 3; Savannah Tribune, May 27, 1876, p. 3, col. 2; Mechal Sobel, Trabelin’ On, 319–23; Simms, First Colored Church, 59. African Americans in the Ogeechee district also attended St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, which was formed in 1832 to provide religious services for rice planters and slaves. Georgia Gazette, “Burroughs Seeks Historic Status,” February 21, 1981.
  42. 42. Elsa Barkley Brown, “‘Not Alone to Build This Pile of Bricks,’ cited in Robin D. G. Kelley, “‘We Are Not What We Seem,’” 80.
  43. 43. Register of Signatures of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah Branch, M816, roll 8; Simms, The First Colored Church, 211–13.
  44. 44. Register of Signature of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah Branch, M816, roll 8, Acct. 722, Union Benevolent Society of Second African Baptist Church; Acct. 745, John the Baptist Society; Acct. 757, Union Republican Association; Acct. 842, Mary Magdalene Society; Acct. 927, Sisters Prayer Meeting Benevolent Association; Acct. 930, Ladies Union Society; Acct. 984, Poor and Needy Institute; Simms, First Colored Church, 211–13, which lists additional benevolent societies organized and headed by women. Robert Perdue, The Negro in Savannah, 89; Brown, “‘Not Alone to Build This Pile of Bricks,’” 80.
  45. 45. RCCSC, DB 7M, Sons and Daughters of Mount Sinai; DB 5N, 332, Sons and Daughters of Jerusalem; 6L, 333, Sons and Daughters of Zion.
  46. 46. Chatham County Tax Digest, 1876, Chatham County Courthouse, Savannah, Georgia; Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 149. Schweninger contends that the vast majority of the Lower South’s landowners were ex-slaves. See also John Simpson, “A Reflection of Black Enterprise in the Old South,” 35–38, which examines “virtually free slaves” in Savannah who participated in the free-market system.
  47. 47. John Blassingame, “Before the Ghetto,” 469; W. E. B. DuBois, “The Negro Landholder of Georgia,” 699.
  48. 48. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Savannah 1870; Register of Signatures of Depositors, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust, Savannah, RG 101; John Blassingame, “A Social and Economic Profile of the Negro in Savannah,” 94. A corollary body of records that sheds insight into the economic dimensions of the Reconstruction period is the Records of the Comptroller of the Currency. This record group contains the records of the Freedmen’s Bank, which operated thirty-seven branches in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. Over its nine-year history the bank had more than seventy thousand depositors, and deposits totaling more than $57 million. The Savannah branch of the Freedmen’s Bank operated until 1871. Bank branches collected an enormous amount of personal information Page 129 →about each depositor and his or her family. The Registers of Signatures of Depositors include place of residence, occupation, spouse, siblings, and remarks, which often contain invaluable personal information.
  49. 49. RCCSC, Deed Book 4A, 475–78, William Sheftall, Susan Sheftall, and Eve Johnson. William Sheftall worked as porter. His real property was valued at three hundred dollars in 1880. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Population Manuscript, Chatham County, Seventh District, #612, 1880. Savannah City Directory, 1874–1875. William Sheftall also purchased land from Margaret Sheftall’s estate. The surname Sheftall is associated with a prominent planter in Chatham County, Abraham Sheftall, who once owned Beverly-Berwick plantation. According to the deed, they were “heirs of Adam Sheftall, freedman.” See also Robert Perdue, Negro in Savannah, 117.
  50. 50. RCCSC, DB 5M, 68–69, Kate Brown and children.
  51. 51. RCCSC, DB 6U, 329, Nancy Singleton’s children. See Ira Berlin and Leslie Rowland, eds., Families and Freedom.
  52. 52. RCCSC, DB 5M, 356, Plenty Ancrum to Tenah Murray. All deeds must contain words of conveyance. Whether or not Tenah actually paid five dollars did not affect the validity of the deed.
  53. 53. Compendium of the Tenth U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 1880, 385; W. E. B. DuBois, “The Negro Landholder of Georgia,” 699; Banks, The Economics of Land, 62–75; John Blassingame, “Before the Ghetto,” 468–69; Compendium of the Tenth U.S. Census, Washington, D.C., 1880, 385. In the state of Georgia, African Americans owned 1,251,714 acres of the 31,103,973 acres of improved land, or four percent of the farming area by 1900. Lowcountry African Americans owned the largest percentage of this land.
  54. 54. “Resolution Adopted at the Liberty County Meeting,” Savannah Tribune, May 6, 1876, p. 3, col. 3. This resolution offering cheap land to the illiterate appeared for several weeks in the Tribune. Du Bois, “Negro Landholder of Georgia.”
  55. 55. “Burroughs Seeks Historic Status,” Georgia Gazette, February 11, 1981, p. 1, col. 3; Personal Scrapbook of Mrs. Gertrude Green, Chatham County, Georgia, in possesion of the author; Crockett, Black Towns, 15; Harold M. Rose, “The All Negro Town,” 362–64; Booker T. Washington, “Town Owned by Negroes,” World’s Work, 14 (July 1907): 9125–134. Other, more prominent, incorporated black towns included Mound Bayou, Mississippi; Nicodemus, Kansas; Boley, Oklahoma; and Clearview, Oklahoma.
  56. 56. Elizabeth R. Bethel, Promiseland; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 1880, #941 and #688; RCCSC, Deed Books 6T, 11, Apollo Blount to Elizabeth Agnew; 7Q, 149, Frank Gladden to C. K. Nelson, Bishop.
  57. 57. The habendum clause, which describes the boundaries of the property, indicates that at least three African Americans whose names do not appear in the grantor index for the Burroughs family purchased land in the settlement. Among them were Sukey Boles, wife of Thomas Boles, whose name is listed in the grantor index; however, the deed is between Nina Burroughs and Rebecca Tillman. Tillman lived in very close proximity to Boles. Also not listed in the index but with lands that are mentioned as boundaries are James Washington and Jake Grant. All were cross-referenced with the 1880 population census.
  58. 58. RCCSC, DB 6U, 329, Nancy Singleton’s children; 6U, 372–73, Hester Shepperd; DB, 6U 373, Abraham Williams; DB 6Z, 57–58, J.C. Legree et al.; DB 7R, 329, Jane Solomon; Page 130 →DB 7R, 32–33, Rebecca Tillman; DB 9A, 204, Hercules Barnard; DB 8R, 400, Jacob Shellman; DB 8N, 125, Priscilla Robinson; DB 9I, 245, Betsey Field; DB 9G, 370, Mollie Baker; DB 9’O, 277, Comfort Blake; DB 9I, 246, Sambo Crawford; DB 9’O, 157, Celia Prior.
  59. 59. DB 9’O, 277, Comfort Blake.
  60. 60. Ibid.
  61. 61. DB 6Z, 57–58, J. C. Legree et al. The latter deed specifies “heirs of Sallie Legree,” which indicates that Sallie Legree or her husband, Amos, who may have predeceased her, had worked as agricultural laborers and were both sixty-five years of age in 1880. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population Returns, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 1880, #723, #735, #897, #920, #923, #930.
  62. 62. Interview with Gertrude Green, March 17, 1993, Chatham County, Georgia.
  63. 63. Personal scrapbook of Gertrude Green, “Burroughs School,” in possession of the author; Sydney Nathans, “Fortress Without Walls,” 58–60; John Dittmer, Black Georgia, 51.
  64. 64. “Resolution of Condolence,” Savannah Tribune, May 14, 1892, p. 3, col. 2. At Howard’s funeral, members of the Mt. Olive church “turned out in full regalia.” “Tenth Session,” Savannah Tribune, August 27, 1892, p. 3, col. 2. The Tribune also reported the anniversary celebration of the New Ogeechee Baptist Church at Burroughs station. Deacons of churches in Savannah and Chatham County were invited to bring two guests.
  65. 65. Interview with Peter Warner, March 17, 1993, Chatham County, Georgia. (All interviews were conducted by the author unless otherwise stated, with tapes of same in possession of the author.) Peter Warner has been a resident of Grove Point Road for over a century. His grandfather, Winter Warner, signed labor contracts at Vallambrosia in 1866. His knowledge about the previous mayor of Burroughs and about Masonic secret societies is corroborated by London Lowman, a third-generation resident of the Ogeechee Neck whose grandfather received ten acres under Sherman’s Field Order No. 15. Interview directed with the assistance of W. W. Law, local historian and former director of the Beach African American Cultural Center. “L.U.P.A.,” Savannah Tribune, June 23, 1892, p. 3, col. 3; Perdue, Negro in Savannah, 113; “Ogeechee Notes,” Savannah Tribune, March 19, 1892, p. 3, col. 2; Work, “Negroes of Warsaw, Georgia,” 33. During the oyster season, 65.8 percent of African American women in the county migrated to the oyster factories of Thunderbolt for employment. See also, “Honored: Peter Warner, Jr.,” Georgia Gazette, June 24, 1981, p. 6, col. 2.
  66. 66. RCCSC, DB 5D, 70, Mt. Zion CME; RCCPC, Estate of Mars Ward, File 673. James Stewart’s real estate was valued at one thousand dollars in 1870. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Chatham County, Seventh Militia District, 1870, RG 29, NAB.
  67. 67. RCCSC DB 5A, 320; 5N, 332; 6L, 166, 333; 7M, 167; 7’O, 23; 10F, 97; Chatham County Tax Digest, 1910; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Negro American Family, chapter 3.
  68. 68. Savannah Tribune, May 27, 1876, p. 3, col. 2.
  69. 69. See William H. Grimshaw, Official History of Freemansonry, and H. R. Butler, The History of Freemasonry for the socioeconomic makeup of the Masons.
  70. 70. SMN, October 7, 1873, p. 3, col. 1; SMN, July 22, 1881, p. 4, col. 3; Savannah Tribune, May 27, 1876, p. 3, col. 2. The Poor and Needy Institute, which maintained an account with the Freedmen’s Bureau, contributed two and twenty dollars, respectively, to yellow fever relief in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Memphis, Tennessee. Poor and Needy Institute, Priscilla Shigg, Treasurer, Ledger #984, Savannah, Records of the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, RG 101, NAB. The press identifies churches and mutual associations as “colored.” Way’s Station across the Page 131 →Ogeechee River was the area most frequented for summer picnics by both rural and urban African Americans. See SMN, July 19, 1881, p. 4, col.1.
  71. 71. Georgia Society of Colonial Dames of America, Georgia, 213.
  72. 72. Walter Richard Hamlin, “Rural Black Kinship”; Kay Young Day, “Kinship in a Changing Economy,” 15.
  73. 73. Bethel, Promiseland, 107.
  74. 74. RCCSC Deed Book 8R, 125–26, 186, Emanuel Heidt to Crispy Arkwright, Martha Crawford, and Pinkey Sheppard. Martha Crawford was the wife of Sambo Crawford whose name is listed in the grantor index but is not a party to the transaction. Pinkey Sheppard’s deed states, “deed made in accordance with the will of Heidt.”
  75. 75. DB 8R, 400, Jacob Shellman.
  76. 76. RCCSC, DB 9Q, 137, Richard Crawford to Fountain, H. A. According to the deed, John Burroughs served as witness. In 1910 there were only three white residents in Burroughs. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, Chatham County, 6th Militia District, 1910. John Dittmer, Black Georgia in the Progressive Era, 26.
  77. 77. Cooper, “Rural Settlement,” 119.
  78. 78. Ibid.
  79. 79. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Manuscript Population, 6th Militia District, Chatham County, 1910, 1920.
  80. 80. Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 109.
  81. 81. Monroe Work, The Negro Yearbook, 165
  82. 82. Crockett, Black Towns, 15; interview with W. W. Law, March 17, 1993; Carter G. Woodson, The Rural Negro, 120.
  83. 83. Interview with Peter Warner, March 17, 1993.
  84. 84. Manuscript Population Returns, 6th Militia District, Chatham County, Georgia, 1910, 1920.
  85. 85. RCCSC, DB 13A, 124–25, Flander Grant; 13N, 180, John Shellman; DB 13Z, 298, Barney Preston.
  86. 86. RCCSC, DB 14K, 222, Clara and Sam Lowman to Richard Lachison; Adelbert H. Jenkins, The Psychology of Afro-Americans, 2–20.
  87. 87. Interview with Gertrude Green, March 17, 1993.
  88. 88. Dittmer, Black Georgia, 25, 186–87.
  89. 89. Ibid; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, chapter four.
  90. 90. Gertrude Green described the Burroughs community as an “African village” because it remained cohesive and tight-knit. Interview with Gertrude Green, March 17, 1993.
  91. 91. U.S. Population Census, 1900.
  92. 92. W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk; Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America.
  93. 93. W. E. B. Du Bois, “Georgia Negroes and Their Fifty Millions of Savings,” 11552; Du Bois, “Negro Landholder of Georgia,” 735.
  94. 94. Monroe Work, “Principal Negro Towns and Settlements,” 165; Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South, 165, lists Burroughs with several other farming communities. See also Woodson, Rural Negro, 119, which lists Burroughs and four other black towns in Georgia.
  95. 95. “Burroughs Charter of Incorporation,” 1898. The town council met for meetings at Page 132 →the mayor’s place. The government of Burroughs consisted of Mayor J. C. Legree, described as heavy and tall; Judge C. B. Sheppard, a full and heavy man; and Sheriff Eddie Gardner, “grandson of Steven Gardner.” All of the men were dark in complexion. Interview with Peter Warner, March 3, 1993, Chatham County, Georgia. The adjudication of the law reinforced the political, artistic, and spiritual values of Burroughs by reinforcing manhood, freedom, and self-reliance. According to the town charter, persons found guilty of misdemeanors were required to perform road work. Conversely, capital crimes required a trip to the courthouse in Savannah.
  96. 96. Interview with Peter Warner, March 3, 1993. Early surveys of African Americans in Georgia provide a useful comparison with the achievements of the town of Burroughs. See T. J. Woofter, “The Negroes of Athens Georgia”; W.B. Hill, “Rural Survey of Clarke County, Georgia”; Ruth Reed, “The Negro Women of Gainsville, Georgia.”
  97. 97. Rayford Logan, The Negro in American Life and Thought.
  98. 98. Jones, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, 149.
  99. 99. For a comparison between northern cities the Georgia lowcountry see, Clyde Vernon Kiser, Sea Island to City.

Conclusion

  1. 1. Françoise Charras, “Robert Hayden’s and Kamau Brathwaite’s Poetic Renderings,” 68.
  2. 2. Dylan Penningroth, “Slavery, Freedom, and Social Claims.”
  3. 3. Moses, The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 14.
  4. 4. Clifford Geertz, Interpretation of Culture.
  5. 5. “Burroughs Charter of Incorporation,” 1898.

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