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Christian Reconstruction
The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861â"1890
By Joe M. Richardson The University of Alabama Press
Copyright © 1986 Joe M. Richardson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-8246-9
CHAPTER 1
A Grand Field for Missionary Labor
THE ROAR of Confederate cannons shelling Fort Sumter had hardly faded when the American Missionary Association exulted that the war would open "one of the grandest fields for missionary labor" the world had ever known. By June of 1861 the association proposed to do its part in the "circulation of spelling books" among escaping slaves, and in September of that year it sent its first missionary to Virginia. Shortly after the commencement of hostilities slaves had begun fleeing to Federal lines. Since emancipation was not yet a war aim, puzzled commanders often returned escaped slaves to their masters until on May 23 General Benjamin F. Butler at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, declared three such slaves contrabands of war and set them to work on Union entrenchments at Hampton. News of Butler's decision spread quickly through the black "grapevine," and on May 26 eight more "Virginia Volunteers" arrived. The next day forty-seven, including babies and frail elderly women, straggled into Butler's backyard. Soon the trickle became a flood.
Lewis Tappan, treasurer of the AMA, had avidly followed newspaper accounts of the increasing number of contrabands at Fortress Monroe. On August 8 he wrote commending Butler for his treatment of the fugitives and asking his advice about bringing the "self-emancipated" blacks to the free states where they could find employment. If they could be removed and given jobs, Tappan suggested, the commander would be relieved of great "care and anxiety." Butler replied that the "contrabands" were better off in Virginia, but that if people wished to show sympathy they could send clothing. Tappan, who feared that the fugitives might be remanded to slavery if they remained in the South, questioned Butler's right to "control the movement of colored people, bond or free." He further objected to the army working contrabands without pay, and added that philanthropic people would gladly send relief if they could be assured that the government would not allow the escapees to be returned. Three days later Tappan again corresponded with Butler, asking whether "an intelligent, discreet and good man ... would have facilities at ... Fortress Monroe to distribute useful publications, preach to the 'contrabands,' converse with them, ascertain their physical & other necessities and be the medium of distributing clothing etc." Although Butler informed Tappan that the fugitives were being well cared for and that their religious needs were being met, the AMA sent the Reverend Lewis C. Lockwood to Virginia to investigate the condition of contrabands.
Lockwood, who arrived in Hampton on 3 September 1861, was a providential choice as the association's first missionary to contrabands. His sensitivity toward and acceptance of blacks, combined with his remarkable energy and endurance, made him unusual among the missionaries. His expense accounts were often inaccurate, he was unsystematic, and, much to the association's dismay, he sometimes used tobacco for his asthma, but he filled an indispensable role during the thirteen months he remained in Virginia. Lockwood discovered that Hampton blacks were "uniquely prepared" to take advantage of his assistance. Many had been skilled craftsmen, fishermen, and foremen on nearby farms. They had "a great thirst for knowledge" and were anxious for schools. Lockwood gave books to those who could read and organized several Sabbath schools, including one in ex-President John Tyler's house. He immediately began advising blacks, marrying those who had "taken up with each other," and planning the construction of a school and church at Fortress Monroe. But perhaps his most important action was to start a day school at Hampton on 17 September 1861 and to employ the remarkable Mrs. Mary Peake as teacher.
Mary Peake had been born Mary Smith Kelsey in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1823, the daughter of a free black mother and a white European father. At six she was sent to Alexandria, where she attended "a select colored school" for ten years. Upon her return to Norfolk she became active in a black Baptist church and founded the Daughters of Zion to aid the poor and ill. She also spent much of her time secretly teaching slaves. In 1851 she married an "intelligent and pious" former slave, Thomas Peake. She was teaching in Hampton when the Confederates burned the town on 7 August 1861.
Mrs. Peake conducted her AMA school with a strong religious emphasis, much as later association teachers would. Classes began with prayer and scriptures, and students were taught the Bible and religious songs as well as the ABC's. In addition to the day school, Mrs. Peake began night classes for adults, despite her increasing infirmity caused by tuberculosis. In January 1862 she rejected her physician's advice to abandon her work or soon be "lost to earth." Association agent William L. Coan remembered watching her "when too sick to sit, lying upon her bed, surrounded by her scholars, teaching them to read, and by her sweet patient submission to the hand of God upon her, most earnestly teaching them that religion can support the soul even if the body dies." Weakness soon compelled her to suspend her school, and she died 22 February 1862.
Association officials believed that Mrs. Peake's efforts on behalf of the contrabands aggravated her illness and hastened her death, and in their view she became almost a saint. Lockwood called her "a queen among her kind" and badly missed. Her successor, George Hyde, was thankful that he had been privileged to meet her. "Even in death," Hyde said, "the radiance of her life ... illumined the society of her race." Even hardened military surgeon Rufus K. Browne wrote of her: "In no other woman, however light the skin, have I seen a more comprehensive sense of duty or more activity of self-sacrifice for the benefit of others." Mrs. Peake gave him, Browne added, "a new revival of my respect for human character." Sensitive, unselfish, fragile yet strong, Mary Peake became the first and one of the most admirable casualties in the AMA's war against ignorance. Her school marked the beginning of the AMA's movement to educate freedmen. Hampton blacks and the AMA were partners in the latter's initial educational efforts.
Peake's school was only one of several opened by Lockwood. Mary Bailey, a free woman, and two assistants taught about fifty children at Fortress Monroe. Fugitive Peter Herbert began afternoon classes at Tyler's house, and Lockwood arranged for a private school for black patients at Hygeria Hospital. Lockwood continued to establish schools, but for the next several months his primary duty was to relieve suffering and protect contrabands from the military. The original Hampton residents such as the Peakes often had homes and jobs, but most fugitives flocked to military camps with little clothing, no food, and no place to live. Hundreds were crowded into rudely built split-log huts in "Slabtown," while others lived in tents or outside. Since many of the men were impressed by the military, most of those squeezed into camps were women and children. A Harper's correspondent was touched to see slaves "throwing themselves on the mercy of yankees, in the hope of getting permission to own themselves and keep their children from the auction block." In the process they suffered terribly. Already malnourished, without adequate food, clothing, shelter, or medical care, the contrabands were decimated by measles, mumps, whooping cough, respiratory ailments, and dysentery. In late 1862 Fortress Monroe averaged seven deaths daily.
Initially the military was not particularly helpful. Contrabands were an unwelcome nuisance. Almost without exception, commanding officers were more concerned with control than with assistance. Therefore, the AMA attempted to provide relief. Lockwood determined need and the association energetically collected clothing and supplies. By December 1861 a single agent had forwarded nineteen barrels of clothing to Fortress Monroe. After a two-week investigating trip to Virginia in November, Corresponding Secretary Simeon S. Jocelyn wrote President Lincoln of the contrabands' industry, orderliness, and religious character, but, he added, they needed medical attention, and he requested an interview. In a subsequent meeting Jocelyn persuaded the president to assign a military surgeon to the refugees.
The AMA organized a relief system that extended into the postwar era, but it was less successful in protecting contrabands from the military. Almost from his arrival Lockwood complained about army abuse of contrabands. Indeed, Lockwood charged that "contrabandism" was synonymous with government slavery. Blacks were forced to work for quarters, rations, and perhaps a few dollars' worth of clothing. Some were brutally treated. On one occasion General John E. Wool gave a fugitive a pass permitting him to work for himself. A sergeant tore up the pass and had the man severely whipped and sent back to the gang. Others already working independently had been impressed into government service. Quartermaster G. Tallmadge, assigned to care for contrabands, was unconcerned and dishonest, but, Lockwood wrote, "What more could you expect of old Pharaoh slavery revived under the Stars & Stripes."
Upon his return from a northern tour during which he vigorously criticized the military, Lockwood was refused admission to Fortress Monroe, but in the meantime his disclosures had propelled association officers into action. They decided that Congress, the president, and the "whole North" must be informed of "how little freedom & humanity have to hope for from such men." Corresponding Secretary George Whipple went to Washington to interview several congressmen in addition to cabinet members Edwin M. Stanton and Salmon P. Chase. From there he went to Fortress Monroe to see Wool, who agreed to appoint an investigating committee which later verified Lockwood's charges. Tallmadge and his assistant were relieved of responsibility for contrabands. The association managed to secure the appointment of one of its agents, Charles B. Wilder, as superintendent of contrabands around Hampton. Wool further ordered that all wages owed former slaves be paid. This order was aimed at transforming contrabands into free wage earners.
Wilder, an antislavery Boston businessman, had been sent to Virginia in early 1862 as the AMA's superintendent of relief operations. The contrabands apparently were impressed with him, but military men, who were more concerned with ending AMA complaints than with blacks, were not. Even though he was given the rank of captain, they correctly viewed him as more a missionary than a soldier and constantly interfered with his work. The AMA and Wilder hoped to do far more than provide relief and protection for contrabands. Lewis Tappan believed that, if treated fairly and given an opportunity, blacks would prove themselves capable, industrious, and educable, which in turn would "give a great impulse to the cause of emancipation." First those who worked for the government should be paid reasonable wages. Others should be allowed to seek available jobs or to farm abandoned land. Wilder persuaded Wool to authorize contrabands to settle on lands near Hampton. The AMA encouraged the move by sending farm managers and teachers, but General John A. Dix, who replaced Wool in June 1862, was less sympathetic to the plan. Whipple's visits with Dix failed to alter the latter's views. Moreover, war uncertainty interfered with settlement. Still, blacks occupied about fifty farms in 1863 under Wilder's supervision.
Contrabands continued to cultivate vacant farms, but the association never succeeded in completely safeguarding them from military abuse and exploitation. AMA officers wrote letters to congressmen and met with cabinet members and army commanders. They demanded that contrabands working for the government receive "just and equal" pay and "receive it punctually." Yet in December 1862 the army still owed Fortress Monroe contrabands $31,435 in back pay. Even more distressing, soldiers beat, robbed, and sometimes murdered fugitives. An AMA teacher claimed that soldiers seemed "to have lost sight of the Rebellion, & are fighting the ex-slaves, determined if possible to prevent them from making a living." He described the military as a mob robbing everyone too weak to defend themselves. Blacks were "stripped of everything eatable, houses broken open, pigs stolen, men seized in the street in open day and their money taken from them, and still the commanders make no effort to stop it," he said. Association agents could apply pressure against commanders, occasionally gaining concessions, but they could not control the troops.
Wilder wrote of soldiers perpetrating "beastly barbarities" upon black women while guards assigned to protect them stood by indifferently. When soldiers armed with pistols and swords broke into a contraband's house near Fortress Monroe and raped his wife and daughter, Jocelyn furiously wrote that "such soldiers like Devils are not to be trusted in armies" and demanded that they be discovered and punished. A group of contrabands planted and cultivated sixty acres near Newport News, Virginia, at their own expense, asking only government protection. What they needed was protection from Union soldiers. In July 1862 General Ambrose Burnside's troops came through and destroyed nearly all of their early crops. The following month part of General George McClellan's retreating force camped nearby and destroyed more than half of their remaining produce. The black AMA teacher there, John Oliver, feared to leave his lodging at night. A contraband exclaimed to Oliver: "Good God, if this is the way we are to be treated we may just as well be in slavery." A teacher at Portsmouth feared that blacks' experience with the army might teach them to distrust all northern whites, "and much worse ... they will begin to think honesty is only another name for self-interest."
By late 1862 AMA officers almost despaired of securing protection for blacks, and they placed much of the blame on President Lincoln. Tappan thought Lincoln might be honest "on a low scale but he is not honest toward God or the suffering poor," and he prayed that the president's eyes would be opened. The old abolitionist believed his prayers had been partially answered when Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September 1862. The association praised the decision but lamented that delaying it until January 1863 would be "productive of evil." Tappan was ecstatic when emancipation was finally proclaimed. He rejoiced that Lincoln did not accompany his proclamation with schemes for colonization, compensation to masters, or transitional apprenticeship for slaves. Tappan attended the great emancipation celebration at Cooper Union and made a short speech. It was fitting that he should be there as he, more than anyone else, symbolized antislavery in New York. While the proclamation was less sweeping than he had wished, Tappan was hopeful that it would alter the treatment of blacks, since they were now freedmen rather than contrabands of war. Unfortunately, however, government policy changed too little. In mid-1863 Secretary of War Stanton himself gave orders to impress Virginia freedmen for work in the Quartermaster Department of the District of Columbia.
Although the association was pleased with the Emancipation Proclamation, it believed Lincoln was too slow in recruiting black soldiers and endorsing racial equality. In September 1862 Jocelyn had said that Lincoln ought to accept blacks in the army and added that he hoped the president would "no longer play the fool" with the matter of border states. When the government began actively recruiting freedmen, the AMA praised the policy in an editorial in the American Missionary, the association's journal. The decision to incorporate blacks in the army, it said, "creates a new era in their history, it recognizes their manhood, gives them a status in the nation and is an open acknowledgement of their value to the country in time of peril." Moreover, enlisting blacks necessitated "measures for the protection of large masses of women and children, and for their employment, and, thereby their subsistence, while the men are in the army." The association assumed that the country was finally recognizing blacks as worthy of fair treatment. It deplored later methods of recruitment, however, including indiscriminate impressment of all available ablebodied men. This disastrous policy caused suffering and some "bitter feelings" toward the government.
When General Benjamin F. Butler replaced General Dix as commander of eastern Virginia in November 1863, the association believed that the freedmen's position there would improve appreciably. Wilder claimed that some of Butler's orders were essentially what the AMA had been fighting for for the past two years. Although Butler was more sympathetic and helpful than some previous commanders he seemed more interested in enlistments than in helping the freedmen. In 1864 the association was still complaining in Washington of mistreatment of blacks. No matter who was in command, the AMA's aid to freedmen was always limited by uncertainties of war and by the fact that black needs were subordinated to those of the military.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Christian Reconstruction by Joe M. Richardson. Copyright © 1986 Joe M. Richardson. Excerpted by permission of The University of Alabama Press.
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