Transcripts For CSPAN3 The Civil War Slave Refugee Camps 20240714

Her graduate training at uva and as i mentioned, she is at kentucky. She only goes to schools where there are basketball powerhouses, there used to Winning National champions. Being from indiana i have got a faint memory, i know amy won this year at uva because you know a guy from indianapolis. So lets not forget that. Amy has just published, her book is right here, the book is entitled embattled freedom, journeys through civil war slavery vg camps. It is part of the america series. Its a pretty good year i would say. Its going to take a while for me to tell you all the awards the book is receiving, the 2019 Tom Watson Brown prize from the society of civil war historians, the 2019 award from the organization of american historians, the John Millbrook prize, youve cleaned up amy, congratulations this is well deserved as you all will discover this, as i said is a very important book and finally, i should add shes not only a traffic scholar shes also an excellent teacher as i recall, she received a Teaching Award the university, its my pleasure to introduce to you amy murrell taylor. [ applause ] oh my goodness, that was kind. Thank you, pete. I was walking over here this morning, thinking back to my junior year in college. I first got thinking about the civil war and studying the civil war. Back then, i never would have imagined i would be invited to speak at a place like gettysburg, its a real thrill to be here, thank you for inviting me. This morning i want to begin at the end, at the end of the war in 1865, to be more specific, the fall of 1865, at a time when the union army is withdrawing its presence from the south, mustering out men, leaving southern communities. I want to take you to a place where in all the traveling you have done to civil war sites and i imagine with this crowd theres been a lot of travel, and all your reading about the civil war, a place youve probably not seen or heard about before, it was known at the time as Sinclair Farms, a 600 acre tract of land on virginias peninsula which stretched along the coast between hampton and newport news. Or if you want to put this in terms of civil war military geography, it was about 68 miles northwest of port monroe, the farm was named after a white man who owned the land in 1861 whose name was Jefferson Sinclair, he was a confederate sympathizer, too old to serve in the confederate armies, he supported the army in other ways, initially he sold products to his army, he had a livestock farm eventually though in the summer of 1861, he fled the region like so many other white land owners did as the union moved in, his farm fell into union hands and over the course of the war it underwent a transformation that was nothing like anything that Jefferson Sinclair probably ever envisioned for his property, in fact, we could probably say this was one of his worst nightmares, because, by the hundreds and even the thousands, his farm began the destination of people during the war, surrounding farms and plantations in virginia a total of 4500 people had moved onto the property by 1865, they changed it, it looked different. They built houses, hundreds of them, scattered them in the fields where his livestock once roamed they built five churches, at least one store and they built a hospital too. Our settlement on sinclairs farm is laid out in streets with order and regularity. One of the residents reported in 1865. Containing many buildings of comfort and convenience and even ones of elegance. Planting crops, once they predicted in the fall of 1865 would yield better, richer, and heavier crops, twice fold the never known before under the system of slavery. So, from the beginning, the plantation once reliant on enslaved labor, Jefferson Sinclair had enslaved 69 people in 1860. The farm had become a settlement of thousands who were escaping slavery and seeking refuge from the union army and beginning to build new lives for themselves. So Sinclair Farms during the war began as a refugee camp which evolved into a new village or one might say, a new small town, devoted to freedom. But only during the war, it did not last. In the fall of 1865, the residents of sinclair farm, all 4500 of them were ordered off the land. Union officials in the region from Army Officers to nearby fort monroe, others agents of the newly established freeman bureau, showed up on the property and forced them to leave then go find another place to settle. The same thing happened and hundreds of other places throughout the south, in 1865 and 1866. Force was often involved and in some places threats of violence were necessary to empty people who did not want to leave these places. So what happened here . What was really going on . Why did it happen . And what did this all mean . I want to address these questions, while sharing with you the larger story of how a place like sinclair farm came to be, a story of how slavery collapsed in a massive displacement of people during the civil war, in what is rightfully or arguably called, a refugee crisis, one that at times, bore some resemblance to the refugee crises of our time today. This is a story that is not that well known in civil war history. It is not wellknown for many reasons, some of which i will talk about. Including the fact that theres a more dominant story about emancipation which has loomed large in our teaching and writing for generations. All right. Maybe thats a nice noise that will keep us awake here. I should use that once in a while. All right, you know this story, it is the story in which emancipation lincoln, the great emancipator, issues his emancipation proclamation and grants freedom to enslaved people in one decisive turning point, january 1, 1863. Let me just say at the outset, im not here to diminish lincolns role in emancipations history. What he did was important and it remains an important part of the story. But this is not the only part of that story and it is not the full story of how emancipation came about. Turning our attention away from the white house to these houses places like port royal subthalamic it became something tangible. Having made it real, by building these new settlements, we could begin to see how emancipation was lived and experienced and how it was won and how it was lost but first, a little bit of background the whole story begins at the beginning with the words opening days which this is the first day where they determined the war had something to do with them and something to do with freedom, they set out on the regions roads and waterways to free bondage and seek protection from the union army. That itself is remarkable. Im going to try one more time, oh good, it is working now but i went in the wrong direction. There we go. All set now. So this is a remarkable thing, the opening days of the war and we have scenes like this, okay . It is remarkable because just one month before the war started it hit the inaugural address, the president promise he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed in the south. He would not encourage the flight of enslaved people, the union army lines, in fact, federal law constrained him, not just constitution but also especially the 1850s fugitive slave act which required the federal government to assist in returning enslaved people who ran away to their owners, so lincoln would not interfere. But after several attempts in places like florida, maryland, virginia, in late may 1861 a group of enslaved people in eastern virginia, approached the Union General Benjamin Butler at fort monroe and persuaded him to see the benefit to the union army of allowing them inside of its lines. We will labor for the union, they said. Think about that, this takes labor, very important labor away from the confederacy at the same time. Butler, who was no abolitionist, which is a important fact to establish did agree. He saw the practical benefits of allowing these people inside of the lines and issued the order, abandoning federal law and the fugitive slave act, requiring his men to protect these individuals as contraband of war. So, the confederacy was reviewing this as their property, then the union would seize that property as contraband of war. This was not quite freedom, as you may hear from that, butler is still viewing these people as property. But this was a step. By protection, what butler agreed to do was protect them from returning to slavery as well as providing them with food, shelter, and opportunity to work. This was a big step which opened a flood gate. The story moved from the coast of virginia and carolinas, across the border states and down the Mississippi River valley in the wars later years. What ive put on the screen here is a map of where new settlements of these people fleeing slavery emerged. You could just kind of, instead of a bunch of dots on the map you could kind of see this as a general map of where people were running away. One thing you might notice about this, im sure, most of your many of you are familiar with the general map of the Union Occupation of the south, you could see that the footprints of the emergence of these camps matches the footprints of the Union Occupation. The single most important variable determining where people could flee and when and find protection, with proximity to the union army and its sphere of protection. The army had to come near or they had to go a Long Distance to find it. As they started to run away to these places, the refugees from slavery became a visible presence on the landscape. The vast clutches of housing emerged in these places, often first is a collection of cast off tents, tents that the army was not using anymore or a collection of burnedout buildings in a city like here in nashville. Over time, they gave way, these more temporary forms of housing, to newly built hot or shacks, cabins, as they were variously described in these records. Sometimes they looked similar to soldiers housing. Sometimes they were located very close to where the soldiers were living. The only thing that might separate them was this short distance, a creek, one some places had a , if that was the case you better bet that the refugee housing was at the bottom of the hill in the least desirable flood prone areas. We should say much prone to as well because that would be a real problem for many of these people. Around these houses, they offered their labor to the union army as cooks, long dresses, as hard laborers digging trenches and burial pits, as carpenters, teamsters, as laborers for the subsistence, engineers and ordinance departments. As hospital stewards and nurses. At fort monroe there were numbers of something called a stand in police gang which was something i was not familiar with at first but it turns out they were people who were policing the beaches and also digging and burying and digging pets and burying horses and mules in those pits. They worked in these different ways i should mention scouts who know the landscape they could be useful to the army that way and as they worked they were promised wages for their work for the first time now you may have heard me emphasize the word promised when i said that. Putting that in quotes because this would become a notoriously difficult problem as some Union Officials and some places refused to actually pay which would become an ongoing problem you have to be part of the dine in conversation that im having tomorrow, this is something that we will take up in that discussion. They worked but they suffered. They were in no way immune from the illness and disease that swept through these army encampments and though there were some medical care provided to them by the army it was often inadequate, definitely secondrate, and at other times, especially in the Mississippi River valley over the last year of the war, the settlements became targets of irregular violence. These settlements became embodiments of the social revolution that these individuals wanted to create but which confederates were trying to resist. And so, they became targets of irregular confederate violence. As one Union Official observed, there was one of the mall which had escaped these atrocities. And yet, despite all of this, and regions that became districts of active combat, and for time, the carolinas, these camps had the space and protection to evolve into something more permanent like what was seen on sinclairs farm or to give you another example, friedmans village, maybe this map gets reproduced quite a bit so maybe youve seen this before, Freeman Village was another camp which emerged on the property of robert e lee in arlington and you could see by the fact that the diagram was dated 1865 the fact that this existed, you could see this is a bit of planning that went into creating the camp and indeed, you could see the houses lining the streets, parks, there are all sorts of buildings for schools and churches and so forth, you have a pond in the middle. Heres a photograph of friedmans village as well. Villages like this became the destination of missionaries and benevolent reformers and release workers from the north who helped establish these churches and schools and sent Copious Amounts of supplies late , pencils and maps and so forth into the south. To help these freedom seeking people learn how to read and write. Most importantly were a couple of groups, quakers from philadelphia and richmond indiana moving directly south, and the American Missionary Association which was the non sectarian organization coming out of new york which sent a large number of missionaries to the south. Altogether, this was as some historians have suggested the greatest slave rebellion in history. And at the very least this was a migration of a estimated over 500,000 men, women, and children. 1 8 of the enslaved population in 1860 hit the road during the war to seek freedom. A migration that began at fort monroe been built steadily over the entire four years of the war. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this migration is that the enslaved people continue to flee into union lines especially in the first two years of the war even without assurance from the federal government that they would achieve legal freedom. They remain in the eyes of the union, contraband. Again, property. Where as more and more people would put it refugees. A quick note about the language here, you may notice im using the term refugee not contraband, this was quite debated at that time. Particularly in abolitionist circles who rejected the term contraband as a term that is one put it, is not fit for a human being. Refugee is a term that recognizes the personhood and also the fact that they had a compelling need for protection and were fleeing persecution much like refugees today. They were also living in this kind of suspended state of uncertainty about their status and their belonging in the United States. All sorts of questions surrounded them, would the union ever recognize their legal freedom . Or would the union even when the war to be able to recognize their legal freedom . This is all a big question. They did not have the answer but yet they continue to run. So much was uncertain, largely because of a basic and centrally important fact about emancipation. That the process of his of becoming free was embedded in the war and the military bureaucracy and culture. This was not something that could be decreed simply by politicians but had to be won by a army at war. That army would prove to be a imperfect ally as you probably already heard me suggesting. The union army was not equipped to oversee the refugee crisis when the war began and most, if not all of the men, did not predict this would become part of their duty. Soldiers and officers themselves, they varied in their commitment to ending slavery, something that some of the other historians here this weekend have written about. They dove right in, they became very active in assisting the refugees some of them assumed positions nearly creating official positions in the military bureaucracy as superintendents of contraband or superintendents of refugees. Then there were others, they felt the opposite and did the opposite and in the most extreme cases there were Union Soldiers who helped confederate slaveowners retrieve their slaves from a camp and at times, a need for the military with strategic considerations what they needed to win the war, didnt always align very well with the needs and interests of the refugees from slavery. Lincoln would go on in the emancipation proclamation to justify it legally as a military necessity or to quote the actual language, an act of justice warranted by the constitution upon military necessity. As if there was an alignment between the needs and interests of the union and those of freedom seeking people. But this was may be true in theory, and easier to imagine in the abstract, then in everyday life inside of these camps. Sometimes these two sets of needs and interest were not aligned at all and collided in everyday way is like when the union army needed to move but this was in the best interest of the refugees to remain put or when the army needed particular resources or space that had been allotted for the refugees, when these collisions happened this is war and of course, the needs of the military won out and always came first. Which meant a pretty tumultuous existence for those seeking freedom inside of union army lines. To give you a better sense of how the military process was experienced in the lives of particular refugees, i wanted to tell you about one case involving a married couple, edward and emma, among the first to go into union lines in virginia in may 1861. A little bit of background about them, they were both born into slavery in virginia, they spent most of their lives in newport news on the plantation there, on the virginia peninsula. I will just highlight the peninsula here and you cant see my point exactly but you could probably see newport news probably right in the center, that was roughly where the plantation was. Emma was a field hand and edward was what we call a hired out slave what that meant is that he probably had a particular skill, although what the skill was has escaped detection in these records. His owner, what his owner was doing was hiring him to other men in the region who needed that skill for a particular period of time. He would then bring the wages to his owner. Well, what could happen sometimes in this instance is a man might work, what we would call today overtime, so work later into the evening, and in some cases, that man, the enslaved man was allowed to keep what they call the overworked pay. Well edward was. So he kept his overworked pay and started to save it. He and his wife started to save it. What were they saving for . Well, its hard to know exactly but it was common in these situations for enslaved people to save to purchase their own freedom. So that was likely what they had in mind. They saved and saved and by 1861 when the war broke out, they had 500 in gold and silver coin which they kept in a trunk. That was 1861 and the war came a and the war changed everything as wars often do. Within weeks of the war beginning, they began to hear, hearing from other enslaved people around them, on the plantation, on surrounding plantations, they began hearing about what was happening at fort monroe and heard about Benjamin Butlers order, allowing them to come into the union lines as contraband of war, they probably heard this because the plantation, from which the very first people entered fort monroe was a plantation that was basically adjacent to their own. They probably knew these individuals. Well, not long after butlers order, the army expanded its presence on the peninsula and moved from fort monroe and into newport news and established a camp called camp butler after Benjamin Butler. Cant butler was just 2 miles from the plantation where the whitehursts were living and on may 27, 1861, they seized the moment. They left. They went to cant butler and immediately obtained work in the camp hospital. Edward soon got himself employed also as a guide for the army as it made its way toward big bethel in what turned out to be a failed campaign that summer. It turned out to be a pretty tumultuous existence that summer so they did not just enter the camp and then everything went smoothly on the course toward freedom, no, it was pretty, as i said, tumultuous. What was going on . There were attempts by confederates to recapture the people who had gone into the union lines, there were also the unions, in an effort to send more men to defend washington, started pulling troops out of the peninsula then contracting the presence back to fort monroe and abandoning camp butler. Cant butler was the praise was the place where the whitehursts were. They got out just in time escaping cant butler before the confederacy arrived to reclaim it and went to fort monroe. They made their way inside of its stonewalls, they got themselves employed there once again, soon they set themselves or set their sights on a different way of supporting themselves. They decided to open a store. A store, when i saw that in the record, it seemed like in my mind, the least likely thing with someone newly coming out of slavery would do, think about one of the basic things you need to open a store, you need capital, you need an investment. Well guess what, they had that in the trunk they brought with them. They took the 500 and started gathering up vegetables, corn cakes, flour, potatoes, and other supplies. Edward went to purchase products. There were some fragmentary references and some of the records, he mentions going to baltimore which was a remarkable thing, he probably got himself on a military ship, taking some of the troops out of virginia to washington and he also made his way to the original plantation then gathered up the harvest that they had originally planted. So they opened their store and sold these products and even had pigs and a yard. So there they were, within months of the wars beginning, a husband and wife who had transformed themselves from slaves into independent proprietors, they did this i should note, they had gone over to hampton close to fort monroe, heres a photograph of hampton, just one part of it which might have been where they were. The unions military presence had made that sense that movement possible, but again, this was war. And of course, things could change in an instant which is what happened. Fast forward to the following summer in 1862 when the region saw a influx of soldiers during the Peninsula Campaign led by general george mcclellan, yes the campaign brought more men to the region, they made their way up the peninsula in an attempt to take richmond, but of course as the campaign wound down unsuccessfully for the union, as many of you probably know, they did not take richmond of course. The troops then staggered down the peninsula from richmond toward the coast once again. As they did, the army brought hungry and frustrated men with little patience and little money and a great deal of hunger and so on one early august morning, the whitehursts were in their store, when two wagons rolled up in front and out came soldiers who went into the store then began removing bushels of potatoes, barrels of flour and 40 pounds of butter hurry up and put it in the wagon a sergeant reportedly ordered them, edward tried to stop them, he was told by the same sergeant that you can do anything, to not make any resistance as the soldiers were hungry and would get something to eat. The Union Soldiers cleared out the entire store that day. The whitehursts were not paid for anything taken and so they lost everything, their life savings. And they were not the only ones losing out in this moment, we are having dreadful times here. A missionary in the region observed. The soldiers are nothing more than a mob, the people are stripped of everything edible. The soldiers took food but they also took shelter, expelling black refugees from their tents and their shacks and soon took people as well. As mcclellan and the man who is now the commander at fort monroe, began ordering the impressment of the men to go labor in washington and serve mcclellans retreating troops. Impressment for the mens meant becoming separated from their families, going to places unknown, against their will. Which proved to be a low point for this population. As one refugee remarked, good god, if this is the way we are to be treated, we may just as well be in slavery. And that was the summer of 1862, you may be sitting there thinking, okay but what about the emancipation proclamation . When is this coming into play and does this clarify things . Well, yes and no. The timing of lincolns proclamation was actually quite good from the perspective of people like the whitehursts. Lincoln introduced publicly the next month after their store was rated, the rating of the store took place in august 1962, and in september in september 1862, the proclamation was issued publicly. We have rejoiced with you in the proclamation of the president was how a missionary in hampton described the local reaction. The people here seem to rejoice with joy unspeakable at the prospect of freedom and new years. The proclamation made it clear, the union did intend to free them, they would not just be suspended in some kind of contraband refugee status, the time despite all of the setbacks and devastation would not be in vain and would result in permanent freedom. Naturally, a celebration seemed in order. Refugees gathered at a Public Meeting in hampton in november 1862 to draft a plan for how they would observe this momentous day of january 1, 1863 when the proclamation would go into effect. They decided to set january 1 aside as the day of thanksgiving with 12 hour worship sessions during which they would pray together for deliverance from the yoke of bondage. They pledged not to work that day and to close their businesses for that day, which by the way, when i saw that i realized its not just the whitehursts that were opening businesses there were others. Stores were high until the news came the next month, in december 1862. President lincoln had exempted certain regions from the proclamation and among them, was the six county area on virginias coast as highlighted, some of the language here, a six county region which included Elizabeth City county. You could see here in the text ive highlighted at the top this outlines these regions included in the proclamation but in the parentheses, this is the important part, except the 48 counties designated as West Virginia and also the counties of berkeley, accomack, north hampton, princess anne, and northbrook. Elizabeth city county included fort monroe and hampton. The whitehursts and all the refugees who had made the region their new home over the last two years would be exempt from the proclamation in fact as the map shows and i will explain how, a third of the refugee camps that would be established across the south were exempt from the emancipation proclamation. On this map, the lighter gray region which include south carolina, georgia, alabama and so forth, that is the included areas, it is the darker gray region that was exempt, which includes a loyal border space, the union border space in places like kentucky, and also including areas that had been occupied and had come under Union Control by the time the proclamation came around and therefore was now considered loyal regions again and they would be exempt from tennessee for example and also, in the two squares, parts of the coast of virginia and the area surrounding new orleans, these were all exempt because again, these were considered loyal. There was no military necessity to interfere with slavery in these regions. So, you could imagine, this was a pretty devastating turn of events in december 1862 for those living in the coast of virginia. They did not know what this would mean for everyday life, it was one thing to have this written in this sort of policy talk its another thing to actually live this, what would happen . A missionary in the region in virginia feared that those, as he termed them, practically freed over the last two years now seemed in danger of being reenslaved. As it turned out, he was right. As some slaveowners started to show up at fort monroe, right after the exemption. And try to reclaim their slaves, they were basically taking advantage of what had become a great deal of confusion at the fort, what does the exemption mean . Do we need to send everyone away again . Or not let anyone new inside . Union officials did not know. This remained enough of a problem seven months later in august 1863 that one local Army Official stressed the importance of possible of getting the exemption clause of the president s proclamation removed. It is a terrible clog and drawback upon our success he wrote. The exemption was never removed. The passage of time could sometimes be clarifying and over the next year something was increasingly clear, although some formally enslaved people found them selves kidnapped into slavery a majority of them were not and found themselves remaining under the armys protection. None of the camps were shut down and there werent mass expulsions in the proclamations weight. Now, why in this specific case, to fully answer the question, it would require me to get deep in the weeds of policy and at 8 39 on a saturday morning thats probably not what you want me to do. Its complicated. Let me sum this up, alongside the issuance and emergence of the proclamation, there was a parallel set of military policies that kept the momentum going and making it possible for people to be in union army lines it starts with butlers original order which still applies. The order itself had been expended into what we know is the first and second confiscation act for laws passed by congress which made the order law. With some additional provisions. And then, there was the obscure article of war and i say obscure because this was one that had not been herald in history but would prove to be important. This was an order, a article of war which prohibited military personnel from returning enslaved people to their owners on penalty of being dismissed from the service. And this applied everywhere. So all of these parallel sets of policies enable people to continue running and receive protection from the union even if they were in a exempt region. The exemption did not stop this so you may wonder, well then what was the exemption all about . It still did the political work of placating or attempting to placate loyal slaveowners out there because this was sending a message, you know, we are not involving you in this great emancipation process, even though quietly, the military is still allowing their slaves inside of the lines. So in the aftermath of the proclamation, the movements of edward and emma are difficult to detect in records but its clear that they eventually left the location of their store behind, they probably did so right away and traveled 1 mile or so out of town to a farm outside of the center of hampton. It was the sinclair farm. They picked up the pieces from their pillaged store and managed to rent a broken down horse from the federal government, broken down, im not sure what they mean by that. Its a horse that wasnt deemed useful to the army but one they could still use while working the land. They started living in a small house than working the few acres of land around it on sinclair farm where they were when robert e lee surrendered his Confederate Forces in april 1865 which brings us back to where i started today, the whitehursts may have envisioned this was the place where they would stay for the longterm, because that is what many other refugees in slavery envisioned about the place where they had taken up residence during the war. Despite the deprivation, illness, and suffering, these are places where children had been born were families reunited after years apart. Where the injured and sick recovered or where they departed this life. This is where they picked up the pieces from slavery then began to envision a future. These settlements for all of the problems, had become anchors in a tumultuous world of change. But there was now a big problem, a big question, could they stay . In most places, the lands on which they had settled were precisely the same confiscated and abandoned lands in the unions possession that now came under the day in washington. It was about over 800,000 acres of land. Not all of them settled by the refugees but a significant amount. The big question debated was should the lands be returned to their 1861 confederate owners . In the interest of reconciliation . Or should the land remain in union hands and should the union then subdivide them and sell them or lease them to the people who had settled on them during the war, to freedom seeking people. As the debate played out in washington dc, the antebellum owner of the sinclair farm returned, much to the chagrin of the residents. He returned quickly, it was april 1865 when he showed up once again, at the same time he applied for a pardon from the federal government. A pardon in which he or application in which he renounced his loyalty to the confederacy and asked for the restoration of his Citizenship Rights which would include his right to his property and in the meantime, he got to work trying to force the people off of his land as some describe it, he and his family began seeking by every means in their power to take us from our homes. But the residents of the farm were determined to fight just as free people were doing and many other settlements. They organized, they pooled what limited funds that they had to try to purchase the land , they held Public Meetings and hired lawyers, they appeal to members of congress with petitions. Around hampton they had a sympathetic white military official try to purchase the land from sinclair so he could then turn around and subdivided and in their view, this was a matter of right, as another group in virginia that was trying to do the same thing put it, are not our rights as the free people and good citizens of these United States to be considered before the rights of those who were found in rebellion against this just government . It was also a matter of defending what had become their home. And their future vision of freedom in those homes. As the residence put it, we are anxious and willing to build up a city upon our land that would be as orderly and prosperous and patriotic and as intelligent could be done by any other people, but sinclair rejected all of this and told his family that he and his family would have all the day before possessed or nothing. He was soon aided by a quick resolution of the land debate in washington dc where the ascension of Andrew Johnson as the president after lincolns assassination meant the ascension of more charitable policies toward former confederates particularly his willingness to pardon x confederates and restore to them their rights including Property Rights and that was the beginning of the end. The end of refugee settlements across the south, evictions that followed like the one i described at the outset on the sinclair farm, houses that were destroyed and so were buildings that had housed churches as well as schools. The whitehursts and everyone else on the farm had to leave. There were few exceptions, the two most conspicuous exceptions to this were settlements which had emerged on the land of robert e lee, Freeman Village, and the land of Jefferson Davis and his brothers. So two of the most conspicuous confederates or some believe, most treasonous confederates did not have their lands restored and so those settlements remained. By and large, the remnants of this history was erased from the landscape in 1865 and 1866 s and in the years, decades, and generations that would follow as american set out to remember the war, as a preserved mansion and flocked battlefield, seeing old fortifications and burial grounds, they arrested monuments, all sorts of visible manifestations of the war and its memory, there was basically nothing to see for about half 1 Million People who have risked their lives to escape slavery and destroy the institutional together. No wonder the story of emancipation was forgotten. What happened to sinclair farm . It was subdivided eventually in the 1880s, although it was sold to white owners and became known as the neighborhood or the neighborhood was known as pastor point which some consider to be one of the more fashionable parts of town by the late 19th century. Fortunately in other places in recent years, there was a lot of efforts on behalf of the local community to try to preserve this history and allow it to be seen once again. Statues, parks, and exhibits in places like corinth mississippi, helen arkansas, camp melton kentucky, and in hampton virginia, there a local organization known as the Contraband Historical Society had been pivotal in trying to remember this history and get it out there and get it seen, they played an Important Role in persuading the president to declare fort monroe a National Monument largely because of this emancipation history. More of this work is needed because as we look back on the history of this era to try to comprehend it and commemorate it, i think the story of what happened during the civil war at sites like these camps is crucial. They remind us of the great risk that hundreds of thousands of people took to become free, freedom itself was not a status that was instantly obtained on january 1, 1863, and it reminds us of this essential role of the military in that process. I think they also remind us that what followed later in the century, the rise of jim crow, racial violence, the clan, was not inevitable. Something else had been possible in the 1860s. That Something Else had been glimpsed by each resident of these camps. Thank you. [ applause ] we have some time for questions. If anybody would like to ask a question you have to go to the microphones. Thank you for that nice talk. Im from texas. I know that eventually the lee family was compensated for their loss at arlington, what happened to Jefferson Davis is a state . Yes, well actually the land was owned by his brother. Parts of the land were in davis family control but part of it was the community and some of the land was sold to some of the free people there. Then this was tied up in litigation and some of these basic details will escape me. Much of the land eventually at the process of the litigation went back to the davis family. So this was decades later, some of the free people had to leave there. But there was a Thriving Community for quite some time for a number of years after the war. All right thank you. Im from massachusetts, i read your book recently and was surprised at how many things, how many elements of the book i was completely unaware of so i thank you for that. Im curious, in the course of your research, what did you find the most significant surprise that was something you came across that blew you away . I think the whole thing. There was so much i did not know about. Gosh, one of the surprises, it was something i didnt really talk about today, and i want to do more work on this but the number of children involved here. If you look at some of the populations of these camps broken down by age and gender and so forth, sometimes the majority were children and this was really striking to me and it was striking to me to see these entire families and the large numbers of children taken into a war zone, even the first couple of years of the war when they did not know for sure how this would turn out, this told me a lot. Before the war there had been slave flights to the north and into canada on the underground railroad. Generally, we dont see a lot of children involved in that. In part because of the great risk that was involved. They did not know whether they would make it. It would be a difficult thing to bring the children along. The fact that from the beginning these parents are bringing their children, their wives and children, especially the men was a sign that they knew this was it. This was the moment. This was the time when freedom actually may come. I found this quite striking and one thing im left wondering is, what this did to that generation of children, that was living this existence in the war zone and how this would affect them in the years ahead which is something that remains a question but this was a surprise. Honestly, everything was a surprise. Thank you. That sounds like good material for a followup book. Maybe so. Im from massachusetts. My question about the children and the survival of these people, was there starvation . Oh yeah. Yeah. To death . Was there anybody was there any one taking care at all of them or was it just . A big question, first of all, was this a cause of death . Certainly this was a controlling factor in many deaths but we do not have the records and analysis of the time to be able to pinpoint hunger as necessarily the cause. Hunger was an enormous problem and it was even a problem for soldiers. Food shortages, affecting soldiers, it would affect the population because these were largely, they were being fed by food rations from the army. They werent the same kind of rations a soldier would receive, the amounts were less, often. They were not adequate as a result. They were also expected to be shared by more people do you know where one ration would serve one soldier, this was expected to be more shared. So they did not have as much food as a soldier but they had some. What was interesting to me, the way in which they worked to compensate because of course they had to eat. They would not let themselves starve to death. And so, in some places, there was a lot of effort to have gardens. Which i found quite interesting that in the middle of the war zone, often times having to pick up and leave and go elsewhere, a garden is something that takes time. You have to be rooted in one place for quite some time. Sometimes it worked and sometime it didnt. That was one of the devastating things that could be happened if you have to leave your garden behind. Its also behind the whitehursts store that those that were receiving some pay or some wages for the work they were doing for the army would then go to the store like the whitehursts to purchase more to supplement their rations. So this is a big part of the story, ive got a whole chapter called them battling hunger, this was ever present in the minds of those fleeing. Hello, as a teacher im curious about who the teachers who came up to teach these camps were. They are coming from these organizations. They provide large numbers to teachers. Than what happens over the course of the war is more secular organizations begin to establish the western freedom commission. The northwestern friedmans aid commission. They would start sending teachers to the south as well. They are white and black they are male and female. A lot of women were sent into these camps. They are not necessarily people who had been teachers before the war but they are people who want to do something. A lot of them were people who had been abolitionist minded before the war and this becomes their way to practice what they preach literally. And to go down and try to facilitate this process. Today live in the camp . They did. They become an important source when it comes to researching the history. I relied on military records. They write a lot of reports. They are really fascinating sources. You read about shermans march through the carolinas. You read about the refugees. They burn the bridges and prevent them from crossing is it a scatter. It seems like a bad situation. Maybe they are expelled by the union. They form their own communities by themselves out there and tried to protect themselves in an incredibly difficult existence. Because of resources that i relied on were the sources that make it into those lines. They go to swamps and try to build a community much like these others. In particular along the mississippi and the free state of illinois in the border state which of course if you could comment on who was populating those camps. It depends on which state you are talking about. Some of it is people from tennessee. It is fighting and breaking out in tennessee. St. Louis becomes kind of a way station for one big attempt by the union. They resettled them in the north. What will happen is that they will get to st. Louis 1st for theres a lot of settlements some of them went to the north and stayed there. Kentucky is a whole other story i could probably spend two hours talking about what happens there. It is a border state and it is also a slave state. It is a place where they were very concerned about placating the loyal union holder. They dont want to establish a lot of these camps in kentucky but there are these people coming in and so the union tries this thing where they will have these camps but not for kentucky slaves. They tried to say if you are from tennessee you can resettle over here but not if you are from kentucky. That does not work. They dont have id cards. Theres no way of proving where people are coming from. So then what happens is they start saying nobody can come into these camps. Kentucky becomes a real contested and pretty violent place when it comes to figuring all of this out. Im not sure that fully answers your question. We have time for one more quick question. Are any of these other locations being preserved or identified or interpreted for the public today . Yes. Such as this year in 2018 camp nelson in kentucky despite everything i said about kentucky they did establish camp nelson there. That was declared a National Monument for the same reason for this history. That is ongoing right now. The park service is moving and im beginning to interpreter. Helena, arkansas, mississippi, the islands of south carolina. Mitchellville and hilton head. Theres a number and it has all happened in the last decade. It has been very recent and very local. It has started locally even from some descendents. Now we are beginning to see the park service recognizing and coming in and helping make this permanent. Thank you. Weeknights this month we feature American History tv programs as a preview of what is available every weekend. Tonight a look at the post civil war reconstruction. Starting with henry louis gates. He discusses constitutional amendments past during that time that aim to promote equality for african americans. He then examines the subsequent jim crow laws and other segregationist measures that were passed in southern states. Watch American History tvs tonight starting at 8 00 eastern on cspan three. I look at