Freedmen

1. Freedmen

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

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

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

5. Freedmen after slavery • Jourdan Anderson (now in Ohio) • Letter to master back in Tennessee • Written in 1865

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

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

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

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

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

11. Freedmen after war • Lacked capital • Owned no land, equipment • No cash in South • Restitution never paid • Lacked education • 5% literacy rate in 1865

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

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

14. Freedmen’s Bureau • Organized bank • Small loans • Collapsed 1874 • Organized schools • Literacy rate in 1870 = 15% • In 1880 = 20% • In 1900 = 30%

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

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

17. Elections in 1868 • Johnson almost impeached • Grant (Republican) v. Seymour (Dem) • Black voting rights a major issue • Allowed in South • Over 1/3 states in North reject • Racism and violence

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

19. Elections in 1868 • "Waving the bloody shirt" • Arkansas = 200 blacks killed • Louisiana = 1000 killed (mainly black) • Intimidation worked in many areas

20. Republican victory, largely owing to black vote Grant elected Black voting rights can now be addressed 1868 Election

21. U.S. Grant Served as President from 1869-77 Wished to preserve gains of war Urged KKK Act in 1871

22. States re-admitted Tennessee (1866) Florida, N & S Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas (1868) Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia (1870)

23. Radical Republican govts Resentment over ”Negro Rule” Never actually happened Two Senators, 15 Congressmen South Carolina w/ black majority Louisiana governor black

24. Black politicans Hiram Revels Senator from Mississippi Born free black First of six blacks to serve in Senate

25. 15th Amendment Prevents legislating against right to vote Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

26. 15th Amendment • Subverted in practice • Property requirements • Poll tax • Literacy tests • Grandfather clause • Civil Rights Act of 1965 finally establishes rights