Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama

by Walter L. Fleming

In August, 1865, Sheriff John M. Daniel of Cherokee County arrested and imprisoned a band of marauders dressed in the Federal uniform, though they had no connection with the army. A short time afterwards the citizens asked him to raise a posse and arrest a similar band which was engaged in robbing the people, plundering houses, assaulting respectable citizens, and threatening to kill them. And as such occurrences were frequent, Sheriff Daniel, after consulting with the citizens, summoned a posse comitatus and went in pursuit of the marauders. One squad was encountered which surrendered without resistance. A second, belonging to the same band, approached, and, refusing to surrender, opened fire on the sheriff’s party. In the fight the sheriff killed one man. Upon learning that his prisoners were soldiers and were on detail duty, he desisted from further pursuit, released the citizens who were held as prisoners by the soldiers, and turned his prisoners over to the military authorities. This was on August 24. Daniel was at once arrested by the military authorities and confined in prison at Talladega in irons. Six months later he had had no trial, and the general assembly petitioned the President for his release, claiming that he had acted in the faithful discharge of his duty.[699] The memorial asserts that such outrages were of frequent occurrence. Another petition to the President asked for the withdrawal of the troops, whose presence caused disorder, and who at various times provoked unpleasant collisions. Many of the troops, remote from the line of transportation, subsisted their stock upon the country. This was a hardship to the people, who had barely enough to support life.[700]

For several years the arbitrary conduct of some of the soldiers was a cause of bad feeling on the part of the citizens.[701] But the soldiers were very often blamed for deeds done by outlaws disguised as Federal troops. In northern Alabama a party of northern men bought property, and complained to Governor Parsons of the depredations of the Federal troops stationed near and asked for protection. Parsons could only refer their request to General Davis at Montgomery, and in the meantime the troops complained of drove out of the community the signers of the request for protection. One of them, an ex-captain in the United States army, was ordered to leave within three hours or he would be shot.[702] The soldiers, except at the important posts, were under slack discipline, and their officers had little control over them. At Bladen Springs some negro troops shot a Mr. Bass while he was in bed and beat his wife and children with ramrods. They drove the wife and daughters of a Mr. Rhodes from home and set fire to the house. The citizens fled from their homes, which were pillaged by the negro soldiers in order to get the clothing, furniture, books, etc. The trouble originated in the refusal of the white people to associate with the white officers of the colored troops.[703] These negroes had little respect for their officers and threatened to shoot their commanding officers.[704] At Decatur the negro troops plundered and shot into the houses of the whites. In Greensboro a white youth struck a negro who had insulted him, and was in turn slapped in the face by a Federal officer, whom he at once shot and then made his escape. The negro population, led by negro soldiers, went into every house in the town, seized all the arms, and secured as a hostage the brother of the man who had escaped. A gallows was erected and the boy was about to be hanged when his relatives received an intimation that money would secure his release. With difficulty about $10,000 was secured from the people of the town and sent to the officer in command of the district. No one knows what he did with the money, but the young man was released.[705]

Before the close of 1865, the commanding officers were reducing the troops to much better discipline and many were withdrawn. The provisional government also grew stronger, and there was considerably less disorder among the whites, though the blacks were still demoralized.

Sec. 3. The Negro testing his Freedom

The conduct of the negro during the war and after gaining his freedom seemed to convince those who had feared that insurrection would follow emancipation that no danger was to be feared from this source. Most of the former slaveholders, who were better acquainted with the negro character and who knew that the old masters could easily control them, at no time feared a revolt of the blacks unless under exceptional circumstances. It was only when the wretched characters who followed the northern armies gained control of the negro by playing upon his fears and exciting his worst passions that the fear of the negro was felt by many who had never felt it before, and who have never since been entirely free from this fear.

When the Federal armies passed through the state, the negroes along the line of march followed them in numbers, though many returned to the old home after a day or two. Yet all were restless and expectant, as was natural. During the war they had understood the questions at issue so far as they themselves were concerned, and now that the struggle was decided against their masters they looked for stranger and more wonderful things, not so much at first, however, as later when the negro soldiers and the white emissaries had filled their minds with false impressions of the new and glorious condition that was before them. For several weeks before the master came home from the army the negroes knew that, as a result of the war, they were free. They, however, worked on, somewhat restless, of course, until he arrived and called them up and informed them that they were free. This was the usual way in which the negro was informed of his freedom. The great majority of the blacks, except in the track of the armies, waited to hear from their masters the confirmation of the reports of freedom. And the first thing the returning slaveholder did was to assemble his negroes and make known to them their condition with its privileges and responsibilities. It did not enter the minds of the masters that any laws or constitutional amendments were necessary to abolish slavery. They were quite sure that the war had decided the question. Some of the legal-minded men, those who were not in the army and who read their law books, were disposed to cling to their claims until the law settled the question. But they were few in number.[706]

How to prove Freedom

The negro believed, when he became free, that he had entered Paradise, that he never again would be cold or hungry, that he never would have to work unless he chose to, and that he never would have to obey a master, but would live the remainder of his life under the tender care of the government that had freed him. It was necessary, he thought, to test this wonderful freedom. As Booker Washington says, there were two things which all the negroes in the South agreed must be done before they were really free: they must change their names and leave the old plantation for a few days or weeks. Many of them returned to the old homes and made contracts with their masters for work, but at the same time they felt that it was not proper to retain their old master’s name, and accordingly took new ones.[707]

Upon leaving their homes the blacks collected in gangs at the cross-roads, in the villages and towns, and especially near the military posts. To the negro these ordinary men in blue were beings from another sphere who had brought him freedom, which was something that he did not exactly understand, but which he was assured was a delightful state. 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. Later, after some experience, they were disposed to bring with them their household goods and the teams and wagons of their former masters. This was the effect that freedom had upon thousands; yet, after all, most of the negroes either stayed at their old homes, or, that they might feel really free, moved to some place near by. But among the quietest of them there was much restlessness and neglect of work. Hunting and fishing and frolics were the duties of the day. Every man acquired in some way a dog and a gun as badges of freedom. It was quite natural that the negroes should want a prolonged holiday to enjoy their new-found freedom; and it is rather strange that any of them worked, for there was a universal impression, vague of course in the remote districts—the result of the teachings of the negro soldiers and of the Freedmen’s Bureau officials—that the government would support them. Still some communities were almost undisturbed. The advice of the old plantation preachers held many to their work, and these did not suffer as did their brothers who flocked to the cities. Many negro men seized the opportunity to desert their wives and children and get new wives. It was considered a relic of slavery to remain tied to an ugly old wife, married in slavery. Much suffering resulted from the desertion, though, as a rule, the negro mother alone supported the children much better than did the father who stayed.[708]

In many districts the negro steadily refused to work, but persisted in supporting himself at the expense of the would-be employer. Thousands of hogs and cattle that had escaped the raiding armies or the Confederate tithe gatherer went to feed the hungry African whom the Bureau did not supply. The Bureau issued rations only three times a week, and as the homeless negro had nowhere to keep provisions for two or three days, there would be a season of plenty and then a season of fasting. The Bureau reached only a small proportion of the negroes; and, of those it could reach, many, in spite of the regulations, neglected to apply for relief. By causing the negroes to crowd into the towns and cities the Bureau brought on much of the want that it did not relieve. The complaint was made that in the worst period of distress the soldiers in charge of the issue of supplies made no effort to see that the negroes were cared for. It was easier also for the average negro to pick up pigs and chickens than to make trips to the Bureau. During the summer the roving negro lived upon green corn from the nearest fields and blackberries from the fence corners and pine orchards. With the approach of winter suffering was sure to come to those who were now doing well in a vagrant way, but winter was to them too far in the future to trouble them.