Slavery in the Confederacy

slavery. Most Confederates accepted the view of their Vice-president,
Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, that the cornerstone of the government
“rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man;
that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition Lincoln’s administration proclaimed that the war was about restoration of the Union and initially promised not to interfere with the
South’s institutions. Until the conflict became a war of liberation after the
Emancipation Proclamation not only the slaves enemies—the Confederates
—but also their enemies enemies—the Union side—constituted in principle an obstacle to creating the conditions for freedom. Many whites also seem to have assumed that slaves had very little idea of the significance of the conflict. This was to underestimate the extent and efficiency of the network of news and rumor in the slave quarters and between plantations. An experienced journalist accompanying Union troops in Missouri in 1862, after questioning a number of slaves, concluded The darkeys understand the whole question and the game played.”
4
Parts of the Confederacy, like Texas, remained largely distant from the fighting for the whole of the war. Elsewhere the element of instability within slavery assumed more serious proportions but produced a complex set of responses amongst African-Americans. They did not universally anticipate the approach of a longed-for freedom. Some reported fears of how the
Yankees might treat them. His owner told a Tennessee bondsman in that Union forces would Sell them to Cuba Some believed, with justice,
that Yankee soldiers would treat them as enemies. Relatively early some
Union officers recognized the vulnerability of slaves to the rapacity of the unprincipled part of our army who robbed them while the wives of some have been molested by soldiers to gratify thier [sic] licentious lust.”
Uncertainty in face of the unknown was bound to be paramount for many.
Samuel Elliott, of Liberty County, Georgia, was typical of thousands in admitting, At the beginning of the rebellion I did not know anything about the war He was perhaps also representative in how he began to find out.
“Mrs Somersall boys told me the War had commenced and we would all be free Slaves also experienced contradictory feelings about members of their owners families. Knowing their owners well kept some house servants close,
and they might feel sympathy when the war brought death or disability to family members. Yet, as many later recalled, such grievous blows could make the remaining whites behave towards them with even greater unpredictability than before.
5
Other blacks in the Confederacy did feel from an early stage their hopes rising that freedom was nearer. As Mack Duff Williams of South Carolina testified, I sympathized with the Union cause, because that was the party I believed would give me my liberty.”
6
Such slaves, however, had no immediate prospect of freedom. When the masters and their sons left for the
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war they experienced the removal of a familiar authority, to be replaced sometimes by a more rigorous and unmediated regime of work and discipline. The whites left behind to enforce it could strain to the limit the compromises with necessity that bondsmen and women normally made.
Precisely at the time when their hopes were rising slaves could experience intensely the constraints of their situation.
When they had felt deep frustrations before the war they had not infrequently resorted to flight. As more of them appreciated that their masters were under direct assault the temptation to try to escape was enhanced.
The advance of Union forces meant the chances of reaching free communities successfully were greater than in peacetime. Then only a small minority had followed the North Star to Canada. One successful fugitive rejoiced:
“It used to be five hundred miles to git to Canada from Lexington, but now it’s only eighteen miles Camp Nelson is now our Canada.” The pattern of slaves behavior indicated they had seized upon the hope of a general turn in their fortunes. Sometimes the sense of a turning point was unwittingly aided by the actions of the masters. Samuel Elliott spent eleven months as a waiter in the company of his master in military service. I came home with him. I told my son what was going on—he with eleven more ran off and joined the Yankee Army on St. Catherine Island Women slaves, because they had always had less opportunity of traveling away than their menfolk,
were more prone to imagine and adopt forms of resistance within the bounds of the plantation until they were confident that the whole system was unravelling.
7
Owners came to fear that they might not get back laborers who had served a turn with the military forces. The initial intent of masters in hiring out slaves was usually that they should aid in the construction of coastal and river fortifications and defensive works to protect the main towns and cities.
Frequently the urgency of this work arose from the approach of enemy forces but the proximity of Union troops was precisely the temptation that might lure slaves away. Working as teamsters as well as laborers, bondsmen had the opportunity to travel across the surrounding country, survey the lie of the land, and plan how best to get to Union lines. The harsh reverse side of working for the army—sufficiently unpleasant to provoke complaints and debate about the conditions in which the hired or impressed bondsmen lived and worked—could provide the determination the fugitives needed to make the most of the opportunities that came their way.
8
Confederate impressment of slaves, and eventually free blacks, occurred when hired laborers were unavailable. Impressment, widely detested by the workers, produced tensions between masters and military officials and the War Department and state governments seeking to protect the interests of local slaveowners. Masters not only disliked loss of control over their own agricultural and artisan labor but suspected that impressed laborers
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were treated with less regard than hired slaves. Slaves knew how hard they had to work They have a perfect horror of working on entrenchments,”
commented one Virginia legislator. The conditions were widely known to be so harsh that I feel certain if they hear of another impressment, we will lose nearly all our men Many of the impressed were soon unable to work, an engineer officer revealed. Most of them have runaway many are sick—
and some are dead In such circumstances, runaways escaping to their owners might not be handed back, or they fled straight to the enemy.
Shortage of impressed laborers to construct defensive works could become so great that military commanders pursued runaways, even when it meant seizing back slaves from their owners. The only sweetening of a bitter pill for the dragooned laborers was the provision of huts, rations, and medical attention. For many, during the last months of the war, not even these compensations were available. At the start of 1865 one commander contemplated releasing all slaves, especially in view of the complaints I learn relative to clothing them . . . It has been literally due to want of money & material.”
In March, 1865, at Danville, Virginia, the food being issued to the laborers
“was inadequate to maintain their physical strength to a degree sufficient for them to perform the labor required They consequently ran off.
9
Another profoundly disruptive process was “refugeeing,” the term applied to transfer of slaves from areas under threat from Union troops to places more distant. This was analogous to, and caused as much anguish as, migration with owners and the internal slave trade had done before the war. In those earlier years slaves had sometimes tried to take their fate into their own hands in escaping back to old haunts or leaving slavery behind altogether.
They attempted similar actions while being “refugeed.” The early stages of a “refugeeing” journey were the most likely time for slaves to make off. Mary
Williams Pugh, of Louisiana, decided to add her people to her parents and take them to Texas.“The first night we camped Sylvester left—the next night at Bayou B. about 25 of Pa’s best hands left & the next day at Berwick Bay nearly all of the women & children started—but this Pa found out in time to catch them all except one man & one woman. Altogether he had lost about sixty of his best men Even the prospect of “refugeeing,” with the possibility of separation of families, encouraged slaves into delaying tactics.
10
In some cases losses by flight were so disastrous that masters decided to turn back and hope for the best so far as the Yankees were concerned. The use of Confederate troops in Washington County, Mississippi, into move slaves out of the path of the Yankees led to slaves taking to the hills, where they laid out for over a week until the troops had gone. Some then went over to the Yankees.
11
Exceptionally brave fugitives returned to slave territory in the hope of liberating others. The superintendent at the Union encampment of Fortress
Monroe in Virginia in charge of “contrabands,” the slaves of Rebel owners
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who had fled from Confederate military labor, had encountered daring runaways back from a trip of 200 miles to aid others. Though fewer in number than males, some successful runaways were women, including several who escaped notice disguised as men. In one incident, helped by
Yankee troops near Smithfield, Virginia, in August, 1864, the rescuers with fugitives and soldiers came under fire from a force of irregular appearance,
numbering about 100.” They had to scatter over marshes, resulting in the loss of nearly all the fugitives and even some of the troops. In consequence of these missions of liberation Confederate authorities gave strict orders to their forces When you take Negroes with arms evidently coming out of the enemies [sic] camp proceed at once to hold a drumhead court martial and if found guilty hang them on the spot Recaptured fugitives were quite frequently executed.
12
Despite the risks, flight was extensive, occurring in phases as news of
Union advances spread. Initially the incidence was significant in northeast
Virginia in 1861 and 1862 and then around the Union enclaves in North
Carolina in 1862. After Union forces achieved control of the length of the
Mississippi Valley in the summer of 1863 river towns drew in thousands from the surrounding country. Similar flight happened in Southeast coastal regions with Yankee occupation of islands and mainland bridgeheads.

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