A Century of Negro Migration - Carter G. Woodson
An elaborate plan for handling such fugitives was carried out by E.S.
Pierce and General Rufus Saxton at Port Royal, South Carolina. Seeing the
situation in another light, however, General Halleck in charge in the West
excluded slaves from the Union lines, at first, as did General Dix in
Virginia. But Halleck, in his instructions to General McCullum, February,
1862, ordered him to put contrabands to work to pay for food and
clothing.[5] Other commanders, like General McCook and General Johnson,
permitted the slave hunters to enter their lines and take their slaves
upon identification,[6] ignoring the confiscation act of August, 1861,
which was construed by some as justifying the retention of such refugees.
Officers of a different attitude, however, soon began to protest against
the returning of fugitive slaves. General Grant, also, while admitting the
binding force of General Halleck's order, refused to grant permits to
those in search of fugitives seeking asylum within his lines and at the
capture of Fort Donelson ordered the retention of all blacks who had been
used by the Confederates in building fortifications.[7]
Lincoln finally urged the necessity for withholding fugitive slaves from
the enemy, believing that there could be in it no danger of servile
insurrection and that the Confederacy would thereby be weakened.[8] As
this opinion soon developed into a conviction that official action was
necessary, Congress, by Act of March 13, 1862, provided that slaves be
protected against the claims of their pursuers. Continuing further in this
direction, the Federal Government gradually reached the position of
withdrawing Negro labor from the Confederate territory. Finally the United
States Government adopted the policy of withholding from the Confederates,
slaves received with the understanding that their masters were in
rebellion against the United States. With this as a settled policy then,
the United States Government had to work out some scheme for the remaking
of these fugitives coming into its camps.
In some of these cases the fugitives found themselves among men more
hostile to them than their masters were, for many of the Union soldiers of
the border States were slaveholders themselves and northern soldiers did
not understand that they were fighting to free Negroes. The condition in
which they were on arriving, moreover, was a new problem for the army.
Some came naked, some in decrepitude, some afflicted with disease, and
some wounded in their efforts to escape.[9] There were "women in travail,
the helplessness of childhood and of old age, the horrors of sickness and
of frequent deaths."[10] In their crude state few of them had any
conception of the significance of liberty, thinking that it meant idleness
and freedom from restraint. In consequence of this ignorance there
developed such undesirable habits as deceit, theft and licentiousness to
aggravate the afflictions of nakedness, famine and disease.[11]
In the East large numbers of these refugees were concentrated at
Washington, Alexandria, Fortress Monroe, Hampton, Craney Island and Fort
Norfolk. There were smaller groups of them at Yorktown, Suffolk and
Portsmouth.[12]
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE PER CENT OF NEGROES IN TOTAL POPULATION, BY
STATES: 1910.
(Map 2, Bulletin 129, The United States Bureau of the Census.)]
Some of them were conducted from these camps into York, Columbia,
Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and by water to New York and
Boston, from which they went to various parts seeking labor. Some
collected in groups as in the case of those at Five Points in New
York.[13] Large numbers of them from Virginia assembled in Washington in
1862 in Duff Green's Row on Capitol Hill where they were organized as a
camp, out of which came a contraband school, after being moved to the
McClellan Barracks.[14] Then there was in the District of Columbia another
group known as Freedmen's village on Arlington Heights. It was said that,
in 1864, 30,000 to 40,000 Negroes had come from the plantations to the
District of Columbia.[15] It happened here too as in most cases of this
migration that the Negroes were on hand before the officials grappling
with many other problems could determine exactly what could or should be
done with them. The camps near Washington fortunately became centers for
the employment of contrabands in the city. Those repairing to Fortress
Monroe were distributed as laborers among the farmers of that
vicinity.[16]
[Illustration: DIAGRAM SHOWING THE NEGRO POPULATION OF NORTHERN AND
WESTERN CITIES IN 1900 AND THE EXTENT TO WHICH IT INCREASED BY 1910.
COUNTIES IN THE SOUTHERN STATES HAVING AT LEAST 50 PER CENT OF THEIR
POPULATION NEGRO.
(Maps 3 and 4, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)
(Maps 5 and 6, Bulletin 129, U.S. Bureau of the Census.)]
In some of these camps, and especially in those of the West, the refugees
were finally sent out to other sections in need of labor, as in the cases
of the contrabands assembled with the Union army at first at Grand
Junction and later at Memphis.[17]
There were three types of these camp communities which attracted attention
as places for free labor experimentation. These were at Port Royal, on the
Mississippi in the neighborhood of Vicksburg, and in Lower Louisiana and
Virginia. The first trial of free labor of blacks on a large scale in a
slave State was made in Port Royal.[18] The experiment was generally
successful. By industry, thrift and orderly conduct the Negroes showed
their appreciation for their new opportunities. In the Mississippi section
invaded by the northern army, General Thomas opened what he called
_Infirmary Farms_ which he leased to Negroes on certain terms which
they usually met successfully. The same plan, however, was not so
successful in the Lower Mississippi section.[19] The failure in this
section was doubtless due to the inferior type of blacks in the lower
cotton belt where Negroes had been more brutalized by slavery.
In some cases, these refugees experienced many hardships. It was charged
that they were worked hard, badly treated and deprived of all their wages
except what was given them for rations and a scanty pittance, wholly
insufficient to purchase necessary clothing and provide for their
families.[20] Not a few of the refugees for these reasons applied for
permission to return to their masters and sometimes such permission was
granted; for, although under military authority, they were by order of
Congress to be considered as freemen. These voluntary slaves, of course,
were few and the authorities were not thereby impressed with the thought
that Negroes would prefer to be slaves, should they be treated as freemen
rather than as brutes.[21]
It became increasingly difficult, however, to handle this problem. In the
first place, it was not an easy matter to find soldiers well disposed to
serve the Negroes in any manner whatever and the officers of the army had
no desire to force them to render such services since those thus engaged
suffered a sort of social ostracism. The same condition obtained in the
case of caring for those afflicted with disease, until there was issued a
specific regulation placing the contraband sick in charge of the army
surgeons.[22] What the situation in the Mississippi Valley was during
these months has been well described by an observer, saying: "I hope I may
never be called on again to witness the horrible scenes I saw in those
first days of history of the freedmen in the Mississippi Valley.
Assistants were hard to find, especially the kind that would do any good
in the camps. A detailed soldier in each camp of a thousand people was the
best that could be done and his duties were so onerous that he ended by
doing nothing. In reviewing the condition of the people at that time, I am
not surprised at the marvelous stories told by visitors who caught an
occasional glimpse of the misery and wretchedness in these camps. Our
efforts to do anything for these people, as they herded together in
masses, when founded on any expectation that they would help themselves,
often failed; they had become so completely broken down in spirit, through
suffering, that it was almost impossible to arouse them."[23]
A few sympathetic officers and especially the chaplains undertook to
relieve the urgent cases of distress. They could do little, however, to
handle all the problems of the unusual situation until they engaged the
attention of the higher officers of the army and the federal functionaries
in Washington. After some delay this was finally done and special officers
were detailed to take charge of the contrabands. The Negroes were
assembled in camps and employed according to instructions from the
Secretary of War as teamsters, laborers and the like on forts and
railroads. Some were put to picking, ginning, baling and removing cotton
on plantations abandoned by their masters. General Grant, as early as
1862, was making further use of them as fatigue men in the department of
the surgeon-general, the quartermaster and the commissary. He believed
then that such Negroes as did well in these more humble positions should
be made citizens and soldiers.[24] As a matter of fact out of this very
suggestion came the policy of arming the Negroes, the first regiment of
whom was recruited under orders issued by General Hunter at Port Royal,
South Carolina in 1862. As the arming of the slave to participate in this
war did not generally please the white people who considered the struggle
a war between civilized groups, this policy could not offer general relief
to the congested contraband camps.[25]
A better system of handling the fugitives was finally worked out, however,
with a general superintendent at the head of each department, supported by
a number of competent assistants. More explicit instructions were given as
to the manner of dealing with the situation. It was to be the duty of the
superintendent of contrabands, says the order, to organize them into
working parties in saving the cotton, as pioneers on railroads and
steamboats, and in any way where their services could be made available.
Where labor was performed for private individuals they were charged in
accordance with the orders of the commander of the department. In case
they were directed to save abandoned crops of cotton for the benefit of
the United States Government, the officer selling such crops would turn
over to the superintendent of contrabands the proceeds of the sale, which
together with other earnings were used for clothing and feeding the
Negroes. Clothing sent by philanthropic persons to these camps was
received and distributed by the superintendent. In no case, however, were
Negroes to be forced into the service of the United States Government or
to be enticed away from their homes except when it became a military
necessity.[26]
Some order out of the chaos eventually developed, for as John Eaton, one
of the workers in the West, reported: "There was no promiscuous
intermingling. Families were established by themselves. Every man took
care of his own wife and children." "One of the most touching features of
our Work," says he, "was the eagerness with which colored men and women
availed themselves of the opportunities offered them to legalize unions
already formed, some of which had been in existence for a long time."[27]
"Chaplain A.S. Fiske on one occasion married in about an hour one hundred
and nineteen couples at one service, chiefly those who had long lived
together." Letters from the Virginia camps and from those of Port Royal
indicate that this favorable condition generally obtained.[28]
This unusual problem in spite of additional effort, however, would not
readily admit of solution. Benevolent workers of the North, therefore,
began to minister to the needs of these unfortunate blacks. They sent
considerable sums of money, increasing quantities of clothing and even
some of their most devoted men and women to toil among them as social
workers and teachers.[29] These efforts also took organized form in
various parts of the North under the direction of _The Pennsylvania
Freedmen's Relief Association, The Tract Society, The American Missionary
Association, Pennsylvania Friends Freedmen's Relief Association, Old
School Presbyterian Mission, The Reformed Presbyterian Mission, The New
England Freedmen's Aid Committee, The New England Freedmen's Aid Society,
The New England Freedmen's Mission, The Washington Christian Union, The
Universalists of Maine, The New York Freedmen's Relief Association, The
Hartford Relief Society, The National Freedmen's Relief Association of the
District of Columbia_, and finally the _Freedmen's Bureau_.[30]
As an outlet to the congested grouping of Negroes and poor whites in the
war camps it was arranged to send a number of them to the loyal States as
fast as there presented themselves opportunities for finding homes and
employment. Cairo, Illinois, in the West, became the center of such
activities extending its ramifications into all parts of the invaded
southern territory. Some of the refugees permanently settled in the North,
taking up the work abandoned by the northern soldiers who went to war.[31]
It was soon found necessary to appoint a superintendent of such affairs at
Cairo, for there were those who, desiring to lead a straggling life, had
to be restrained from crime by military surveillance and regulations
requiring labor for self-support. Exactly how many whites and blacks were
thus aided to reach northern communities cannot be determined but in view
of the frequent mention of their movements by travellers the number must
have been considerable. In some cases, as in Lawrence, Kansas, there were
assembled enough freedmen to constitute a distinct group.[32] Speaking of
this settlement the editor of the _Alton Telegraph_ said in 1862 that
although they amounted to many hundreds not one, that he could learn of,
had been a public charge. They readily found employment at fair wages, and
soon made themselves comfortable.[33]
There was a little apprehension that the North would be overrun by such
blacks. Some had no such fear, however, for the reason that the census did
not indicate such a movement. Many slaves were freed in the North prior to
1860, yet with all the emigration from the slave States to the North there
were then in all the Northern States but 226,152 free blacks, while there
were in the slave States 261,918, an excess of 35,766 in the slave States.
Frederick Starr believed that during the Civil War there might be an
influx for a few months but it would not continue.[34] They would return
when sure that they would be free. Starr thought that, if necessary, these
refugees might be used in building the much desired Pacific Railroad to
divert them from the North.
There was little ground for this apprehension, in fact, if their
readjustment and development in the contraband camps could be considered
an indication of what the Negroes would eventually do. Taking all things
into consideration, most unbiased observers felt that blacks in the camps
deserved well of their benefactors.[36] According to Levi Coffin, these
contrabands were, in 1864, disposed of as follows: "In military services
as soldiers, laundresses, cooks, officers' servants and laborers in the
various staff departments, 41,150; in cities, on plantations and in
freedmen's villages and cared for, 72,500. Of these 62,300 were entirely
self-supporting, just as any industrial class anywhere else, as planters,
mechanics, barbers, hackmen and draymen, conducting enterprises on their
own responsibility or working as hired laborers." The remaining 10,200
received subsistence from the government. 3,000 of these were members of
families whose heads were carrying on plantations, and had undertaken
cultivation of 4,000 acres of cotton, pledging themselves to pay the
government for their subsistence from the first income of the crop. The
other 7,200 included the paupers, that is, all Negroes over and under the
self-supporting age, the crippled and sick in hospitals. This class,
however, instead of being unproductive, had then under cultivation 500
acres of corn, 790 acres of vegetables, and 1,500 acres of cotton, besides
working at wood chopping and other industries. There were reported in the
aggregate over 100,000 acres of cotton under cultivation, 7,000 acres of
which were leased and cultivated by blacks. Some Negroes were managing as
many as 300 or 400 acres each.[37] Statistics showing exactly how much the
numbers of contrabands in the various branches of the service increased
are wanting, but in view of the fact that the few thousand soldiers here
given increased to about 200,000 before the close of the Civil War, the
other numbers must have been considerable, if they all grew the least
proportionately.
Much industry was shown among these refugees. Under this new system they
acquired the idea of ownership, and of the security of wages and learned
to see the fundamental difference between freedom and slavery. Some
Yankees, however, seeing that they did less work than did laborers in the
North, considered them lazy, but the lack of industry was customary in the
South and a river should not be expected to rise higher than its source.
One of their superintendents said that they worked well without being
urged, that there was among them a public opinion against idleness, which
answered for discipline, and that those put to work with soldiers labored
longer and did the nicer parts. "In natural tact and the faculty of
getting a livelihood," says the same writer, "the contrabands are inferior
to the Yankees, but quite equal to the mass of southern population."[38]
The Negroes also showed capacity to organize labor and use capital in the
promotion of enterprises. Many of them purchased land and cultivated it to
great profit both to the community and to themselves. Others entered the
service of the government as mechanics and contractors, from the
employment of which some of them realized handsome incomes.
The more important development, however, was that of manhood. This was
best observed in their growing consciousness of rights, and their
readiness to defend them, even when encroached upon by members of the
white race. They quickly learned to appreciate freedom and exhibited
evidences of manhood in their desire for the comforts and conveniences of
life. They readily purchased articles of furniture within their means,
bringing their home equipment up to the standard of that of persons
similarly circumstanced. The indisposition to labor was overcome "in a
healthy nature by instinct and motives of superior forces, such as love of
life, the desire to be clothed and fed, the sense of security derived from
provision for the future, the feeling of self-respect, the love of family
and children and the convictions of duty."[39]
These enterprises, begun in doubt, soon ceased to be a bare hope or
possibility. They became during the war a fruition and a consummation, in
that they produced Negroes "who would work for a living and fight for
freedom." They were, therefore, considered "adapted to civil society."
They had "shown capacity for knowledge, for free industry, for
subordination to law and discipline, for soldierly fortitude, for social
and family relations, for religious culture and aspiration. These
qualities," said the observer, "when stirred, and sustained by the
incitements and rewards of a just society, and combining with the currents
of our continental civilization, will, under the guidance of a benevolent
Providence which forgets neither them nor us, make them a constantly
progressive race; and secure them ever after from the calamity of another
enslavement, and ourselves from the worst calamity of being their
oppressors."[40]
It is clear that these smaller numbers of Negroes under favorable
conditions could be easily adjusted to a new environment. When, however,
all Negroes were declared free there set in a confused migration which was
much more of a problem. The first thing the Negro did after realizing that
he was free was to roam over the country to put his freedom to a test. To
do this, according to many writers, he frequently changed his name,
residence, employment and wife, sometimes carrying with him from the
plantation the fruits of his own labor. Many of them easily acquired a dog
and a gun and were disposed to devote their time to the chase until the
assistance in the form of mules and land expected from the government
materialized. Their emancipation, therefore, was interpreted not only as
freedom from slavery but from responsibility.[41] Where they were going
they did not know but the towns and cities became very attractive to them.
Speaking of this upheaval in Virginia, Eckenrode says that many of them
roamed over the country without restraint.[42] "Released from their
accustomed bonds," says Hall, "and filled with a pleasing, if not vague,
sense of uncontrolled freedom, they flocked to the cities with little hope
of obtaining remunerative work. Wagon loads of them were brought in from
the country by the soldiers and dumped down to shift for themselves."[43]
Referring to the proclamation of freedom, in Georgia, Thompson asserts
that their most general and universal response was to pick up and leave
the home place to go somewhere else, preferably to a town. "The lure of the
city was strong to the blacks, appealing to their social natures, to their
inherent love for a crowd."[44] Davis maintains that thousands of the
70,000 Negroes in Florida crowded into the Federal military camps and into
towns upon realizing that they were free.[45] According to Ficklen, the
exodus of the slaves from the neighboring plantations of Louisiana into
Baton Rouge, Carrollton and New Orleans was so great as to strain the
resources of the Federal authorities to support them. Ten thousand poured
into New Orleans alone.[46] Fleming records that upon leaving their homes
the blacks collected in gangs at the cross roads, in the villages and
towns, especially near the military posts. The towns were filled with
crowds of blacks who left their homes with absolutely nothing, "thinking
that the government would care for them, or more probably, not thinking at
all."[47]
The portrayal of these writers of this phase of Reconstruction history
contains a general truth, but in some cases the picture is overdrawn. The
student of history must bear in mind that practically all of our histories
of that period are based altogether on the testimony of prejudiced whites
and are written from their point of view. Some of these writers have aimed
to exaggerate the vagrancy of the blacks to justify the radical procedure
of the whites in dealing with it. The Negroes did wander about
thoughtlessly, believing that this was the most effective way to enjoy
their freedom. But nothing else could be expected from a class who had
never felt anything but the heel of oppression. History shows that such
vagrancy has always followed the immediate emancipation of a large number
of slaves. Many Negroes who flocked to the towns and army camps, moreover,
had like their masters and poor whites seen their homes broken up or
destroyed by the invading Union armies. Whites who had never learned to
work were also roaming and in some cases constituted marauding bands.[48]
There was, moreover, an actual drain of laborers to the lower and more
productive lands in Mississippi and Louisiana.[49] This developed later
into a more considerable movement toward the Southwest just after the
Civil War, the exodus being from South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and
Mississippi to Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas. Here was the pioneering
spirit, a going to the land of more economic opportunities. This slow
movement continued from about 1865 to 1875, when the development of the
numerous railway systems gave rise to land speculators who induced whites
and blacks to go west and southwest. It was a migration of individuals,
but it was reported that as many as 35,000 Negroes were then persuaded to
leave South Carolina and Georgia for Arkansas and Texas.[50]
The usual charge that the Negro is naturally migratory is not true. This
impression is often received by persons who hear of the thousands of
Negroes who move from one place to another from year to year because of
the desire to improve their unhappy condition. In this there is no
tendency to migrate but an urgent need to escape undesirable conditions.
In fact, one of the American Negroes' greatest shortcomings is that they
are not sufficiently pioneering. Statistics show that the whites have more
inclination to move from State to State than the Negro. To prove this
assertion,[51] Professor William O. Scroggs has shown that, in 1910, 16.6
per cent of the Negroes had moved to some other State than that in which
they were born, while during the same period 22.4 per cent of the whites
had done the same.[52]
The South, however, was not disposed to look at the vagrancy of the
ex-slaves so philosophically. That section had been devastated by war and
to rebuild these waste places reliable labor was necessary. Legislatures
of the slave States, therefore, immediately after the close of the war,
granted the Negro nominal freedom but enacted measures of vagrancy and
labor so as to reduce the Negro again almost to the status of a slave.
White magistrates were given wide discretion in adjudging Negroes
vagrants.[53] Negroes had to sign contracts to work. If without what was
considered a just cause the Negro left the employ of a planter, the former
could be arrested and forced to work and in some sections with ball and
chain. If the employer did not care to take him back he could be hired out
by the county or confined in jail. Mississippi, Louisiana and South
Carolina had further drastic features. By local ordinance in Louisiana
every Negro had to be in the service of some white person, and by special
laws of South Carolina and Mississippi the Negro became subject to a
master almost in the same sense in which he was prior to emancipation.[54]
These laws, of course, convinced the government of the United States that
the South had not yet decided to let slavery go and for that reason
military rule and Congressional Reconstruction followed. In this respect
the South did itself a great injury, for many of the provisions of the
black codes, especially the vagrancy laws, were unnecessary. Most Negroes
soon realized that freedom did not mean relief from responsibility and
they quickly settled down to work after a rather protracted and exciting
holiday.[55]