Doctoral fellow and virginia sensor for civil war studies. Im certainly really glad she is here and i think you all will be as well once you hear her talk. Its clear she will bring an awful lot to Virginia Tech in terms of teaching, research and outreach programs as well. She specializes in 19th century u. S. History. It but also north american slavery more generally. Her writing as appeared in civil war monitor annes and Civil War History journal among other publications. Her big project at the moment is converting her ph. D. Dissertation into a book. That is going to be well worth looking at a few years down the line. Its in the same topic we will speak about tonight. You can see the power point is already up there. Black prisoners of war in the confederate south. Under the rebel lash. Hero she was big for 30 or 35 minutes, which will leave us plenty of time for discussion. I think another advantage of the zoom format is that you can type in your questions using the queue and a feature. So you wont be able to use in the chat and the weapon, which will be able to use the qanon button if you have a question. You can type those in any time during the top, after the top, and of course we may not be able to get interim all the questions, through all the questions depending on how many you ask, but we will certainly try to address as many as we possibly can. We will wrap things up by about a 15. Okay, that is all from the. Please join me in whatever the remote version of a round of applause might be. I dont know, maybe it is a round of applause. I invite doctor newhall to begin her top. Over to. You write. Thank you so much, paul. I appreciate that lovely introduction. Thank you so much, everybody, for being here tonight. It is such a pleasure to be able to share my research with you and go through some of the details of my findings. This has been a labor of love for the last six years and will continue for many years beyond. So im excited to have a conversation with you. I want to hear your thoughts about some of what i am telling you about tonight. Just really try to understand the complexities of what this time period can bring. So speaking of generous donors, i will be referencing this a few times tonight. Ive got some of the centers and donors who really helped contribute to my ability to be able to do this research. This was a six year long process. Zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero its like a long time a lot of favor. So really to recognize but places like the Virginia Center for civil war can do the job more forceable history. Each or suggest you guys know about them what theyre capable of and join their list as well and just keep having these conversations with us as we move forward. Ten so im going to give you a bit of an overview of well talk about tonight. How im going to address this topic. There will be key concepts all be talking about, just to give you a broad sense of the way our approach this research, how i conducted it, the resources i had to clip to put this together. And my findings basically when i have interpreted, based on what ive come up with, looking through thousands and thousands of records over the last few years. So all tell you not just about the civil war, but more broadly what people can tell us about that, but also a black prisoners of war were able to accomplish themselves, their direct action and agency, even when within or limited contingent circumstances that they had to navigate throughout the war. Their choices and their actions were just as important as policy in my opinion. So just to explain some of the terms. On a lob to the u. S. City, a cia a couple of times. Thats the United States core troops, the body of black soldiers were fighting for the United States. The United States infantry which was one facet of that group. Also be going through some of the terms that i go over in describing their variety of experiences and proclamation. Dont worry about those just yet but i wanted to put this up on screen so you have some sense of what im talking about and how im going to move through this topic. So first and foremost, i want to discuss why black prisoners of war in the first place . One question i got very early on in this research was, did lack peeled abuse even exist . More they all executed upon capture . And so when i revisited my topic when i got the grad school, i was looking through various authors and historians, like my despair and fabian, william marvel, they really sparked my research and thinking about black p. O. W. s more broadly. There is a consistent discussion of black prisoners of war being taken alive, but most being presumed of died in contest custody, because no one could track their movements if they entered a prison. Even beyond the idea, why studying black prisoners of war, as why call them black prisoners of war . I go through this in detail, but the confederacy did not treat black soldiers as combatants, neither legitimate or illegitimate combatants. The main argument that i look at in my work is that confederacy tree black soldiers as reclaimed property, we covered property. As property to be distributed and used as necessary. As property could not be treated in the same ways as soldiers were, as white soldiers in particular. So ill go through some of those differences. I refer them as black prisoners of war, even if the confederacy did not, because that is what they were. A black prisoner of war was a legitimate combatant, arm in the uniform of the United States, approved as a soldier by the United States, and should have been protected under the laws of war. But within the boundaries of confederacy, that protection was stripped away. They were protected in various, ways very minor ways as will talk. About thats an important distinction, this idea of legitimacy and what these men had to do in order to survive and to navigate their captivity. Beyond just looking at block peeled ideas themselves, i want to get into some of the reasons why i started to look into these men as a group, and some of my findings that i think really push back against some of our existing knowledge. Theres definitely existing knowledge on black prisoners of war, some very excellent historiography, particularly by george berke hard for example. But there is a consistent tool narrative that i kept running into one of his first studying these men. The first was that there was an emphasis on battles and not so much captivity so, we focus on the moment of capture but not the aftermath so much. What happened these men who actually did survive capture . Once they were entered into captivity what happened to them . We know from various examples of the 54th massachusetts, they were held in charleston. These were freeman who were held in prisons be on that, what happened to these man who had vulnerability as formally enslaved man once they were captured by the confederacy and treated under the property principle . So theres emphasis on battles in battle ship battles atrocities. Black soldiers were very vulnerable when encountering confederates in battle and theres been a lot of work done on that. But what happens after capture . That was one of the questions that i wanted to understand. Not just what happens after capture, but how many of these men were able to survive. Those basic questions we just didnt know about yet. And additionally, i also found there was this emphasis on a particular space in the civil war, which our military presence. Military prisons are definitely places where we encountered information on black prisoners of war, but beyond that there were so few numbers reaching the prisons as a whole, of the man who are known to have been taken captive. Benjamin floyd is estimated about 1200. What happened to the others who didnt make it to prison . Theres an assumption of mortality must be a part of the equation, and it certainly was. When i found in my research, as i went through militarys military service records, ill talk about that pensions. I found that the reality was far more complex and the sites of captivity, incarceration went far beyond military prisons. Black prisoners were subjected to a diversity of captivitys on. White p. O. W. s had a particular experience of captives in their confederacy. They were held in prisons, they were treated in certain, ways protected in certain ways. Black prisoners of war didnt have that experience, they were certainly incarcerated in military prisons but quite a few were reclaimed by private enslavers, by private citizens of the confederacy. Quite a few were sold from out of these prisons to entirely new slavery. The majority were enslaved by the military and used in the same ways as slave people, forced labor. That was the most used which black prisoners views were used. I argue, that this is basically not a confusing happy stance. The fact that so many men did survive, were able to navigate captivity should not be surprising to us, and large part because of the confederacys entire reason for being, was to press save slavery, to protect slavery, and to make use of enslaved people during the war effort. They did that, invisible awful ways with black p. O. W. Is as well. They did this by treating black prisoners of war as war booty. This is something i try to emphasize in my book. So were gonna be talking about violence in restraint, where violence and restraint were essentially two sides of the same coin for black prisoners of war, as was the case of slavery. Violence and restraint could both be applied to enslaved people, by enslavers. Theodore that restraint is mercy, i disagree with. I see restraint as a calculated logic, kind of in keeping with doctor aaron sharon dean as talked about. So restraint is not necessarily mercy or benevolence. Survival is not necessarily an indication of concern for black prisoners of war while being. But the calculated logic of reclining these men and reconfiguring them and in a way as enslaved people. So a Nathan Bedford forest for example said Something Like i regard captured knee grows as i do other captured property and not as captured soldiers. It is not in the policy of the interest of the south to destroy destroy the black man, but on the contrary. He was not being facetious and hes not being hypocritical in his own estimation, even though we said this several months after the majority of black soldiers did in fact diana moment of capture. This idea that restraint in violence could be used throughout the war was vital to the confederacy. So i argue that restraint, serve the services of confederacy, and that black p. O. W. Sewers survive because of this restraint made use of their knowledge of confederacy in order to navigate it. So can fat federal sees past president s, of slavery and more fair. In the war of 1812 for example, and a second seminal war there were instances of the United States trying to get compensation for escaped enslaved people. Basically those who have escaped to the enemy, still or a lifetime of labor in the eyes of the United States. So they sought basically reclamation restitution. Discontinued during a severe war. The confederacy pointed to these past president s as a legal standing for itself to apply this behavior to block p. O. W. s. So again emphasizing this property principle rather than the idea of legit is messy or a legit its me. So essentially i went through the reference of more than 50 United States regiments in order to find black p. O. W. s. Approximately records of 50,000 men in total. I found at least 2300 men were captured, this is just my initial first few years of research, theyre still more to be done. Of 178 u. S. Siti regiments, theres more to look. Through ive already identified 2300 men who were noted as captured and i found that about 70 of these men survive. More than 1500 men, hundreds escaped, hundreds resistant, and hundreds survived, and outlived confederacy, and were able to use makeup their freedom after the war to enter their own voices into the record, which all talk about. So im using this to complicate ands existing interpretations basically. But one of the main reasons why its been so reason to find black p. O. W. s is because of the prevalence of narratives of white p. O. W. So andersonville, one of those infamous infamous spaces, with very high mortality rates of white p. O. W. s, this visual history culture surviving white p. O. W. s, the knowledge of who they were. White people doubles were codified. Their lives were recorded and their deaths were recorded. They were unknown entity. This is not the case with black p. O. W. s. They were not recorded in the same, ways or followed in the same, ways they were basically reintegrated into the enslave population in the confederacy. So for a lot of times weve had to rely on the records of and reports of what white p. O. W. s went through. Weve had to rely on records from andersonville where we can see this moment of captivity for these man, we can see their sufferings, we get a sense of what theyre going through. We understand their conditions and this really dictated a lot of the post for discussion as well regarding captivity and p. O. W. This and also the suffering away p. O. W. As went through. White p. O. W. s went through an inordinate amount of suffering in these prison camps. Empty as seen by these photographs of men who came out of andersonville who were still star that they basically look like concentration camp victims. That is an indelible memory that has been burned into the minds of americans when it comes to car cyril experiences of the several war. We dont have this for block peeled abuse. To my knowledge there is no existing photograph of a black prisoner of war in captivity. That is something to be reckoned with and weve also had to rely on white p. O. W. s own writings about black p. O. W. s. Some were only getting a snippet of the experience, because theyre contained in these specifics prison sites. Or seen theyre not seeing the vast majority of black p. O. W. s. This is something to reckon with, when we think about how to go beyond certain spaces, to look into different records. One of the reasons why from waiapi a double this, is the fact that so many were able to write memorize after the war. More than 150 men were able to give some sense of memory of what they went through in the war, but also their high mortality rates were so unimaginable at the time and their sufferings were unimaginable. So it really penetrated the consciousness of americans. This is why its been so hard to really uncover block peeled obvious because we just dont have the same bitten memories in the same visual culture the white p. O. W. Stud. White p. O. W. Is provided a lot of hopeful information, but we cant get it will block keeled obvious had to say about their experiences. White p. O. W. s were contained with black p. O. W. Is in several spaces on, notably charleston, with the 54th massachusetts, but something that came out in the midst of my research was realizing that the majority of black and obvious that we know about from these testimonies, from historians research, were freeman from the north. Men who had not previously been in slave, and were held in these prisons where they were neither free nor and sleigh. They couldnt be exchanged under the terms of the confederacy. They didnt have that right because they were blocked soldiers. Block soldiers were inherently seditious and rebellious and could incite slave insurrection, so they were seen is particularly dangerous. They were experiencing captivity in quite the same ways as formerly enslaved man. This is something a really came defined as i researched this project. This wasnt a period i start off, with this took several years for me to figure out. Basically when i realized, was that freeman have been the most dismal route of black p. O. W. They are also a relative minority. Several hundred men or freeman from the north were in prisons like, andersonville or charleston, a thousands of men who had been formally enslaved were also held captive and also survived. They were subject to military enslavement, to sail and reclamation. In part because the confederacy still owe labor. And the confederacy as a neighbor nation themselves, because their conditions are not change with them entering into the u. S. Territory. Theyre basically building on precedent set by fugitive slave back of 1850, indicating this idea that the uniform of the u. S. Army convert any sort of standing for these men. And so, most of my research has been to follow the paths of these men who entered into prisons briefly and then exited them again. What happened to these men who were removed from the site of the United States, who are removed from the uniforms and return to the enslaved population generally throughout the confederacy . So again, to reiterate, slavery and practices of slavery carried on through the war. There was a lot of consistency and how the confederacy approach their treatment of black prisoners of war. Black p. O. W. , is particularly those who have been previously in slate, use their knowledge of enslavement to resist on an operate within the circumstances of captivity. They were able to make choices in order to survive, difficult joyce is for sure, but those were available to them. This takes me to, how did i even get to this point . How did i start my research . Well i started off with a typical resources that weve had available to us for a very long time, particularly correspondents and policies created by highlevel politicians for example. We have a lot of understanding of policies that confederacy created. So i started here. I started with the official records of the war. And basically realized immediately that there was going to be a difficulty finding these men because theyre not referred to as p. O. W. s. And theyre not refer to a soldier. They are neither slaves captured an arms. They are captured slaves in uniform. These kind of euphemisms were applied to them regularly, so i really had to expand my search to understand what was going on on the ground. So prisoners of war was just not applicable, and basically i started searching through this more than 120 volume collection of correspondents spanning the entire war and found very little and realized quickly i had to go beyond this set of sources that we have been relying on for so long. But i also realized that would Jefferson Davis is saying in 1862, which is a response to the preliminary proclamation of anticipation, the past and january 1863, the black soldiers were going to be a fact and how to deal with them. I think interestingly he makes this argument that these men do have to be delivered to state authorities in order to be dealt with. In or in order with the laws of the states with dealt with support processes, and fair Court Processes as well as execution, this requires essentially keeping these men alive in order to deliver them to the one place, from battlefield to the Effective Authority of the state. So this is something to consider. What was going on with the cnn . But as i went through the official records, i kept finding these really interesting details. Thought i found it out of more than 120 volumes, four instances of testimony from blackmon themselves, these first person testimonies. Two were from block sailors from new york, and to or from black sergeants who have been captured in alabama, by confederacy forces. This about as long as his detail as we get in the official records. There are two sergeants, sergeant bakr and leach, and what they tell us reveals a lot. First that these men are being put to labor by the military, and being forced to labor on railroads, theyre being forced to do work for the military itself, and for the confederate war effort. Also being returned to former enslavers, at least 250 according to buccaneer and leach. Sergeant leach sorry. So we know whats happening. Also that some of these men are being reclaim by people who are claiming to be foreman slavery but in fact are not. Also that these men are able to escape, and some of these men are being sent into hospitals to be able to be treated. So the small snippets open up this whole idea of what was going on for these men, that they were experiencing this variety of captivity. So i started to expand my search, not on the official records, which is where i started. I started to find things like general orders number 25, which basically establish these depots for reclamation of state enslaved people, initially intended for non combatants, people who hadnt entered into the United States army. But they established these depots, in all these urban spaces throughout the confederacy, and order for enslavers to come between people who had run away. It established these practices which were put into slavery, advertising for these people in newspapers. So i started looking through newspapers to see if theres anything i can find about these men. And whether or not they are being put through these kind of processes. Indeed they were. I found several instances in newspapers, some of them have been spoken of before, but making this connection with general orders number 25 is exciting. These men or be captured in uniform and then being advertised in newspapers as if they are simply runaway slaves to be reclaimed, regardless of having been worn the uniform of the United States. It didnt matter. Once they were in the boundaries of the confederacy, that seems to matter, and what mattered most was upholding prop private property rights. This is advanced in the ways which general order 25 was hell upheld. When in the daily huntsville confederate, in 1863 early on, as well in the aftermath of the battle of the crater in 1864. There are several newspaper articles that references and show these men being maimed, the foreman slavery being named, whether from, and then basically being advertised, to be reclaimed in taken out of these prisons. Basically the confederacy try to propagate this process, awe essentially being reclaimed by former enslavers. Im still learning a lot about this topic as i go along, theyre all these silences and gaps in the historical record. How these men gave up such information. Why did these men reveal the name of former enslavers if they had been formally slight . What did what do they get out of . It really being forced into it . Are they doing it voluntarily . Was it a mix of the two . I assume the latter. But theres very little documentation of it. These were simply unspoken processes. Slavery and how it was enacted was very often for an formerly done. Its this is why its been so difficult to find these men in these records. So beyond the newspapers, i definitely filed certain instances, but again this is coming from white people. White people are recording what theyre doing to black p. O. W. This water black p. O. W. Is doing . I started with compiled military service records. What i found was that i had to look for these memorandum from p. O. W. Records, where basically i look through every single individual record, every regiment i could, which is an arm of ancestry. Com and to see who would lean been courted as being a combat of one porter in. Other sometimes i was really lucky, as have as i could find this p. O. W. Memorandum, who was captured from the 111th u. S. Count cup should troops, he was captured by forces outside trestle. Once he is captured, he has been enslaved by a rebel officer. And set to work on that rebel officers plantation. Not only set to work there and claim by this man for his labor, but kept there until december, 1865. So these men were also being held well after the end of the official hostilities between the u. S. In the confederacy, which opened up a whole other can a worms for me. Theres some others that i Fan Experience this as well. A lot of them dont talk to him about. This is where i started. Yet again, these men are still being spoken of. Its not their own testimony of whats happening. So i turn of the pension files. Thanks to my colleagues in graduate school, like eric berke who suggested this, as well as my advisor. They suggested you really need to look through the pension files and see if it can find anything. Thats exactly what i ended up doing. By cross referencing, where i found these 2300 men or so, more than 1500 of them seem to have survived, 715 at least were able to claim passions after the war. That was a group of 715 man who potentially gave voice to those p. O. W. Experiences. In the pension files are great resources. They can range from a few pages 200 pages long. So all this process of a man essentially trying to get some compensation from the federal government after the war particularly if he had been injured or developed a debility of some kind during the war itself, at least up until 1890 when things were extended a little bit. So these files include a lot of information on medical records, and most importantly for me, affidavits. These men had to speak to pension agents essentially one on one and talk about and confirmed the facts of what they went through, during their military service. If i was lucky, and a lot of these men do talk about it to the degree, they talk about their captivity. When they were captured, what happened, where theyre incarcerated, sometimes how they were treated, whether they escaped or not, the people with a with who they were incarcerated, because they had to get witnesses to affirm these facts. And literally took a long time to create a pension file. This is where it started essentially to see with these men were saying oneonone. So Abrams Morales from the 44th, was reclaimed bys former enslaver from alabama, taken back to the farm and, ran back home, he was brutally punished by his former enslaver, whos actually in the house of representatives for the confederacy for a while. But he was also able to win privileges back even though he was a reclaimed soldier, even though he had actively resisted the confederacy, he was still allowed to marry, and visit her from nine miles away. Get a pass every weekend to go see here. He then ultimately escaped again with her, and they never communicated again with their families for the rest of the. Lies these these with a sort of stories that eventually emerge because these pension files. 350 i gone through most of them. I developed this holistic picture of what was going on, beyond the prisons. What was happening after reclamation, after people have been sold . There are several men, like Richard French who was sold out of a prison in richmond, virginia, and it up in greensboro, north carolina, in prison and enslaved by hotelier, in greensboro and acted as a porter for the rest of the war. He then ultimately move down to louisiana afterwards. Or men like Samuel Brooks who been captured at a battle he was one of several dozen survivors that of the of, he labored is a blacksmith for the rest of the war. He was aided by a white irish woman to escape. These are still just slivers of these mens lives. This is just about their military service, it doesnt give us the full picture of who they are, what they went through from their birth to their death, but it does give us something to start working with and to really expand upon what we know about military service for black man. And for particularly for formally enslaved black man who didnt have the privilege to write about their experiences, whose lives were not codified by firmer enslavers, their, birth their marriages, their deaths. Before the war and after the war. Former enslavers might aid their claims but they certainly didnt aid them by codifying their lives to any degree in state records. They always held on to that information to use that power. That was something that black prisoners of war continue to have to negotiate after wars and. But they were able to undercut take direct action and make these difficult choices in order to survive. I do want to emphasize that their survival is not an indication of a combination of other factors that reveals the complexity of what was going on on the ground. So luckily through the pension files, have been able to extend a little bit of a photographic history of black prisoners of war. There is a series of photographs in existence of a bloc prisoner of war named private harbored. Private harbor picture here from the 44th. His picture here is often referenced as a clear cut example of what military service did for the black american. Hes pictured here it is in his in slave close and in the after effect of his investment in the u. S. Army and what it meant to formally in slave person to suddenly become a citizen essentially, a soldier. What effect that had. He was also a prisoner of war, he was captured along with several hundred other men. But we dont have his photograph in captivity. We can presumes some things like maybe he was attempted to put into his in slave close to some degree, but we dont really have much beyond that. This is one of the few photographs in existence. But i was able to locate that a private Richard French was in the 44th along with richard harbor and several hundred men were captured in 1864. This is the photograph of uses in pension application process his comrades, people with whom he had been employed. Anyway to identify him. This photograph and not been open until, i think, 19 1900 for. We had assistance from the national archives. The really helped me locate some of these men and navigate the difficulties of figuring out how to pull their files and go through them. Basically, this work is only just begun. Im hoping to find more photographs of men like Richard French. I think Richard French is photograph is really important. Not just that we have this photograph of him after the war, with that his photograph really emphasizes survival. What these men were able to do after the war, during the war, prior to the war. How they were able to navigate these highly contingent and terrifying circumstances in order to survive. Not only to survive, but to enter their own perspectives into historical records. To push back against this silencing of their lives in historical records. We now have hundreds of voices to work with but i think will open up a lot of different avenues of research that im quite excited to look through. So we can reckon fully with the implications of confederate policy, of slavery in the confederacy, and really understand what it meant to have violence and restraint take place during the war. So, thank you so much for your attention during this time. This is a closeup. I forgot about that. I did a little closeup of his photo so you could better see him. The original was the card as i found it in the archives, but i was able to fiddle with the coloring a little bit. This is private Richard French the 44th and his nice stoic visage. He was a great man basically, and he went through some incredible things that i cant even begin to imagine. I really want to emphasize that his photograph can give us some sense about was possible during the civil war, and to not make these brash suctions of what was happening two men because we only get the perspectives of people who talked about them. So theres a lot more to be found. There is a lot of Exciting Research to be done here. I cant wait to find out more and see what happens with this research as i move forward with the book project. I wanted to give you all my Contact Information as well if i do not get to your questions during the q a. Please feel free to reach out and contact me. Follow me on twitter. With that, i just want to say thank you so much and i look forward to hearing your questions and having a conversation with everyone. Thank you so much, carolyn. I guess i should and the presentation. Thank you so much, caroline. That was wonderful. If i listen carefully, i can almost hear people around the country clapping. That was really nice job and just a fascinating topic and presentation. Weve got a really good number of questions. Feel free to keep them coming in the qand a. Using the q and a and zoom. I will select a couple for us to get started with. As i said at the beginning, we will try to get through as many of these as we can. One of the questions a couple of different people have asked is about the distinction between formerly enslaved blackmon and formerly free blackmon and whether there was any effort on part of the confederate authorities to really distinguish between those groups. This is a continued process than i am trying to figure out of the intricacies of. I definitely have some correspondence, particularly from secretary of war of the confederacy. His communications with some of the civil war governors, particularly governor bottom from south carolina, where they were having particular difficulty of figuring out how to navigate freemen from the north versus formerly and slayed men. A Legal Process to essentially trial the man they had captured in charleston. They ran into issues very quickly because the local courts did not want to enter into this issue. They did not feel they had the jurisdiction over black soldiers. They were very nervous and hesitant about it because they did not really know if it should be a federal issue, or i should say confederate government issue, if it should be a State Government issue or not. What happened is they determined they could really only determine with formally enslaved. They put about four men on trial. They could not come to anything conclusive. So they sent them just back to prison. I think it helps elucidate some of the complexity that is going on on the ground here. That is not work i discovered myself either. That was another historian whose name im blanking out on, but he wrote this in the eighties. They are basically talking about some legal issues that confederates were confronting. They had to themselves seemed legitimate. It wasnt just an issue a black p. O. W. s legitimacy, it was about the confederate legitimacy and if they were themselves exceeding the laws of war and committing illegal acts, essentially, and trying to gain the support of foreign entities like britain and france. They were trying to get britain and france to support them in the war. They are very cognizant of some of the issues where they might be overstepping their bounds. Even when it came to black p. O. W. s who were executed in the median aftermath of capture, they buried that information in certain agrees. There are a couple of instances where confederates are debating what to do with a couple of kernels who basically facilitated and execution in louisiana. They decided just not to do anything. They are worried about retaliation for the United States because lincoln had instituted this retaliatory law in 1863. They were very cognizant of the mess they could step into. To them, in a way, having these men imprisoned or returning them to enslavers were the two easiest options. We are just making use of their labor with the military. Freeman occupied a different status because they did not owe any labor to any enslavers, and because they could not be identified as formerly enslaved men. There wasnt much to be done about treating them as property essentially. Whereas, with formerly enslavement, and i dont quite know the intricacies of this process. I know that in certain cases that papers were captured from various regiments like the 44th. I believe they had the records of their enslavers sometimes. It was noted in their military service records. That was one way they were able to identify and slave versus not enslaved. They would just treat it along that principle, but it was missing complicated. Long story short. Its complicated. I can imagine it was really difficult to prove identity in any definitive sense anyway. This was an area where people do not walk around with paper forms of identification. Its somebody that i could imagine if a white southerner said thats my former slave and i want him back, than most people around would say okay and simply accept. Yes. We see that happen with sergeant leach. I had his reported posted in the power point presentation. He was claimed by a man claiming to be his former enslaver, who was not. So that definitely did happen. People were taking advantage of the lack of records suggest people up. Yeah. Speaking of records. For me, and it seems based on the questions for other people as well, one of the most interesting was when you addressed the question of what kinds of evidence you had to work with on this topic. They showed us a little bit about the official records, the compiled service records, and so a couple of people have asked about other forms of evidence that you may have looked at or may look at in the future. One of them, for example, which comes from a professional archivist in north carolina, we wondered whether you thought about looking at the wheels of surviving black p. O. W. s. He seems to have come across some examples where people would actually talk about evidence about their p. O. W. Experience. Somebody else asks about gar records, grand army of the rebellion. Have you looked at these . Is that something worth doing . No, [laughs] , i have not looked at them. They are on my slate for sure. Ive been told many times i need to get in touch with barbara gannon. She is totally on my list. I know she has incredible records of what the people were doing with the gar. I was very much confined to the federal records that i had. If anyone is familiar with the pension files and easy, that was where it was collecting most of my evidence. Just really focusing on the records that i knew about that i could identify from afar. Then, go collect in person. You can only pull 20 to 24 per day. So i was going for weeks at a time and just pulling these and photographing them and not even looking at them and then going through them afterwards. Thats why i went through 350 over the course of four years. But it took a long amount of time and my next step, i hope, is to do more localized records for sure. Go to the areas where these men are from, basically what im doing for the book is focusing on particular individuals who i think a representative of particular occurrences of captivity. Richard johnson who i think i mentioned, Richard French, im going to basically try to find records from where they were, where their families and descendants, their former enslavers if they have them, and basically just really expand upon what i can find, because im sure family papers of a lot more to offer than what ive been able to dig my toes into. Certainly a consideration and ill take the next 20 years of my life. Yeah that sounds like hard work but potentially rewarding if youre digging through all that evidence, a needle in a haystack when, you find the needle its really, really special. Yeah, and knowing who they are is very helpful, so many use that as a jumping off point for my next stage of research. Hopefully some of them have unusual names, because trying to search for someone called john brown is not sometimes very easy. George washingtons work me. We have a question from kristen holdem about the process of applying for pensions. Again these records are very fascinating to tell you about the wartime experiences but also maybe about the post war climate, so christine is asking whether black soldiers faced additional difficulties obtaining passions due to racial discrimination. Yes. Thank you christine thats an excellent question. Good to see where. That was absolutely a problem for black p. O. W. , as black soldiers in particular, and particularly formally enslaved man. Freeman from the north had a little easier time because they generally tended to be illiterate, compared to formally enslavement generally speaking. They had an easier time acquiring evidence from people around them. With formally enslaved people, they do not have ways to identify themselves. They still had to prove to people that they had to existed in the first place when they applied for pensions. So a lot of trouble that the formerly in slave people encounter was that they just had to prove who they were to begin with, and that even served in the regiments that they claim to. And the difficulty for black p. O. W. Is that because there was so little recorded about their captivity, they also have that added layer of proving would happen to them once they disappeared from the regiments. There was a ton of skepticism from white pension agents. They were very skeptical of formally enslaved peoples claims. They basically treated them as lying until proven correct. Essentially, they were rated much lower than white witnesses. And someone reallys ironically and devastatingly, pension agents trusted former white enslavers far more than a trusted formally enslaved people, even if those people had sleigh serve for the u. S. Army. So they defect they encountered a lot of difficulty, a lot of skepticism, but itll in a way that helped create a more robust record because they were treated to examinations, for a special examiners would be sent out to determine a facts of what was going on with these men. They would do special investigations and they would question people repeatedly, go to employers, neighbors, former neighbors, former enslavers. This actually created a very robust catalog of of records for these men. So the tragic irony of that is that it also enables us to understand them to a better degree, because they were subjected to such a skepticism and racist skepticism. Thank i sort of expected that answer of course, but its really interesting to hear how you explain how that operated in the decades after that war. So another question asks about the man who were rein slaved after being captured. Are there examples where they incited rebellions or violently resisted slavery after being returned to their former slave holders . I have found no instances of violent resistance from black p. O. W. s. Something i talk about a little bit in my dissertation which i hope to expand upon in my book, there are mass outbreaks on several occasions by block p. O. W. s from prisons. Danville has a massive escape, and these men basically tussle with their white cards but dont do anything. They dont steal their weapons, they dont fire on them, theyre basically just trying to get free. Thats something that is pointed out in his the book calculus, violence i think is what its called. He really talks about how black americans really just wanted freedom, they didnt want revenge. They are very cognizant of the fact that violent resistance will be met with severe consequences. Thats something that we see through the entire period as well, particular was slave narratives of douglas his biography, the consequences of violent resistance are terrifying. So theyre trying to find ways of navigating without violence, words even if theyre caught, they cant be found accountable on that. I dont know how conscious that is, thats something im still figuring out, but really i cant find any instance of a black prisoner of war ever hurting a guard or killing a gun. I have not found. That so a question about the broader context of p. O. W. s from brad nichols. Hes wondering about what might be the advantages of placing black civil war p. O. W. s, not only in comparison with white p. O. W. Says youre obviously doing but also with other p. O. W. s in different modern wars. Is that something you think is worthwhile or not . Absolutely. I think there are a lot of interesting connections that could be made in talking particularly about black military experiences into the 20th century and the particular contingencies the black prisoners of war throughout history that had to deal with because of their lack of protection under laws and the discrimination against them. I dont happen to know all that much about history into the 20th century wars, but i know there are people are doing thats kind of work and its something im definitely interested in. One thing i love to do for a future book beyond the first book is really expand this temporally and go beyond the civil war period both ways. Go into the past, go into the future, not the future the president. I think about the various connections and ways in which the laws of war applied and violated, what it means to be a black soldier just generally speaking and these various contacts. Its a great question. I do not have specifics for you yet but maybe in a few years. Jonathan jones who is one of our feature speakers this semester, so its great to see you hear, are see evidence that you are here in your typed question i should say. Jonathan is asking and i suspect this may be a difficult thing to pin down exactly, but hes asking do you have a sense of roughly the proportion of black soldiers who are taking prisoner as opposed to executed when they were captured by the confederates . Im still struggling with that. That is a really tough thing to figure out, in large part because of how these men are being spoken of, other being recorded as black prisoners of war. Its really tough to determine who was captured in those first moments after capture. So people talk about, the numbers are not very clear and its something i have to revisit what im going through the military service records, and other records when it comes to casualties. Its really trying to figure out the finer points about who was a prisoner and who dies in action, versus who dies in captivity. Out of the records, i found there are around at least 700 men who die in captivity that i know of and i suspect quite a few of them are in the immediate aftermath. Colonel johnson of the 44th was a white officer was exchanged two days after his capture wall 600 manner returned into slavery basically. He knows that least six men were killed in the immediate aftermath. Another man of the 44th talks about how he was part of a mass escape, where he escaped with 21 other man. 21 except for him are all killed, drowned in a river trying to escape. Their ways to figure that out, i havent got there, but the numbers are very tough to determine. Im hoping to have something more definitive there. My numbers are kind of influx and more guidelines then based on the numbers i found i think theres really strong evidence thats something i definitely emphasize also because i can speak to that little more definitively ian executions and the immediate aftermath. We know its happening. We know it happens and saltville and plymouth and variety of other places, but its hard to figure out because, again, a lot of euphemisms are used. Died in captivity, died of brutality. I dont know when, i dont know how. Thats definitely an ongoing process im trying to figure out. Yeah, thats a tough one. Well, this is a question from me. Even though there are other questions and we will get to them. Im really curious about uniforms, which you mentioned several times in your top. It just fascinated me when you talk about uniforms such a powerful symbol, that African American men were bona fide soldiers and International Law apply to them. Particularly when they returned to the confederate states. Whats happened to the uniforms . Presumably they were not allowed to continue wearing them or to own them in any way. But what actually happened . I guess this is just going to be my stock for everything, but its complicated. Some get it to keep them and some dont. Rolls, who i mentioned, hes a particular instance of removal of his uniform. That happens after his reclamation. Basically, he is brought back, brought by his former and slavery to the farm next to their is, and intentionally has his uniform stripped and his close replaced. Robert slave close, as he calls it. A broom manages to hang onto his belt buckle. I believe his future wife was able to salvage that. Shes the one who exchanged is close for him. Theres a lot going on that is unspoken. He also references that other soldiers had their uniforms stripped almost immediately after capture. Some are in a very sorry state. They are visibly rendered as enslaved people, essentially. The removal of the uniform was a really powerful meets of negating their service and their freedom and their independence. I think that happened quite a lot. Im not totally sure about the total numbers where that happens, but it definitely happens a lot to black p. O. W. s. Part of why i think theres such difficulty in being able to locate their captivity, if we have pictures of captive black p. O. W. s, they will be hard to find because they will probably have been stripped of their uniforms. So its hard to identify them as such. That was definitely an intentional tactic that confederates, both in the military and private citizens used, as a means to sending a message to other enslaved people as well. There are consequences for doing this and you are going to watch and see it. Yeah, powerful things, clearly. Angela says this is fantastic exclamation point. Its really nice to see. She asks if you could speak a little bit about the Actual Experience within prison camps of black prisoners. Things like where they segregated from white prisoners . Where they allowed medical treatment . Somebody else actually is interested in the medical treatment as well. Yes. I have a whole chapter on medical treatment in my dissertations. I will talk about that in a moment. It also just depended on the prison. A lot of black p. O. W. s experience is so contextual and dependent on where they end up, Whose Authority they are under, who they have to deal with. There are men who are placed with white officers as a means of degrading the white union officers. That is an intentional tactic that he confederates used. A lot of times, they were segregated. I know that happens at the old city jail in charleston. They are kept on a whole separate floor. They are also sometimes interacting on the grounds when they are let out for activity. I know in andersonville that there was a whole group of mankind of congregated around the Southern Gate a black p. O. W. s who, it seems they almost self segregated. I dont quite know the dynamics going on there. But they are mentioned is kind of gathering around the Southern Gate. They are also being taken out for burial duty. They are digging graves for the prison. They are working alongside, but kept separate, from enslaved local people who have been its late for that purpose. There is also some resentment with white p. O. W. s who had previously been able to exit the president. It was one of their few forms of relief to be able to perform that labor. Whats black the ows are put into the mix, that is kind of taken away from them. Interestingly, black p. O. W. s have a lot more mobility than white p. O. W. s. They are often having charged as being fed better, treated better, less oversight in some ways. Its really interesting and super complicated. It really seems to depend on just what prison they were entered into. What the structure of that prison was by the time that they got their. Thats because the prisons were such a mess. I know that you know that, angela. People were just kind of figuring things out as they went. It really seem to depend on who the commander was. Turner at castle thunder was particularly nasty. I know he was doing some questionable things. Yeah, it really ran the gamut i think. It seems like there was some segregation though. And then, intentionally mixing these people as a way to insult the white soldiers. , is that even possible . Is that just too difficult . Have you looked four letters from confederate soldiers who and slave them . I havent looked at the soldiers so much. I looked at the commandments, the higher level guys. Thats the oversight i have, not looking at the common soldiers who are dealing with this and what their reactions are . Thats definitely something to consider. That is a great question. No, i have not. I dont know what is going on there. I assumed it would be really interesting though. I will forgive you for not doing absolutely everything already. The nice thing about turning the dissertation into a book, of course, is that you can do some Additional Research and fill in some gaps. I think its great to have these questions and suggestions coming at you tonight. Yes, thank you, everyone. These are awesome questions. I will definitely take them forward as i work on the manuscript. Thank you. Mark beryl asks whether there are many examples of native american soldiers being captured and whether theyre treatment compared with blackmon. Yes. I know native americans were definitely involved, particularly in the western theater. And not a shirt and the eastern theater. There are several instances where native americans are fighting for the confederacy. In fact, they are involved in some of the atrocities towards black soldiers. Notably at Poison Spring with the 70 night u. S. City. I know they are involved. I do not know quite their numbers of capture. I have not really looked into that. That is something i am hoping to talk to other people about. I know some people are doing that work. Its a really under studied area as well that i just do not know much about, unfortunately. I think there were some native american p. O. W. s. In andersonville, for example, but my knowledge about that is very much surface level at best. One participant is asking whether there is evidence that black prisoners were tortured in the prisons. I can imagine other forms of extreme violence being inflicted upon them. Are there examples of that . Yes, absolutely. One of the issues of being forced to work for the confederacy is been slip as insulate labor was a lot of these men are performers sick performing dangerous labor, particularly around mobile. They are having to mount guns. They are working in mobile bay. They are shivering in the cold and are essentially starving. They are already being treated quite harshly when they are in the control of the military. I know there are several instances where men are attacked without provocation essentially. Buy cards. There is a man from the 27th u. S. Cte who was held in a prison in lunch bird, virginia. He basically talks about how, in the middle of the night, he got up to go urinate in the tub, he can tell its full in the darkness and is basically attacked from behind by a confederate guard who tries to stab him through the kidneys with his bayonet. He kind of manages to fight him, escape and hide amongst the crowd. Since its start, he manages to not be identified, so he manages to make it through the rest of his captivity by so why not getting antagonized by the guard. It speaks volumes about the very difficult circumstances they had to operate under. Survival was not safety. Survival was just survival at that point. This happens to a number of men where they are targeted and attacked by their guards. Im sure that out of racist retaliation, out of anger, out of hatred, even if they did not know these men. I do not have many more specifics beyond just general brutality and working them quite hard. I know that is happening. I dont know very much about a the stocks being used. For example, i know that was induced for a lot of white p. O. W. s. Definitely subjected to win things in several instances. Theres a man from the 54th at andersonville who is caught trying to forge a pass. Hes from the 54th massachusetts. Hes illiterate. Trying to forge a pass is a major trespass. He is ordered to be whipped 500 times i think. The soldier who is whipping him kind of mitigates that and acts like hes going to whip him 500 times, but doesnt. This is the soldier talking about this. The ways that there are some mitigation of violence by confederates themselves, but they are still participating and enforcing it. Its definitely happening. They are definitely being brutalized at a lot of different turns. Sam asks a question about the post war situation. Are there patterns and whats black pwc went on to do after the war, or did they just kind of scatter and each percent of his own thing . Most people return to where they had been from originally. People have families and communities that they had to return to. There are examples of men who escape into never see their families again in tennessee and alabama. But many of these men are still dependent after the war and have to navigate their inter personal relationships with the people who had its life them. Thats who they know. We see the jim crow laws being implemented. They have to enter into these really strict contracts. Those are we entering into physical labor. They are working inquiries. They are working as tenant farmers. They are working in various capacities like that. And the north, theres a little more diversity. Some get to work in drug stores and do more merchant type work. Its different in the south where they are very much relegated to that form work and physical labor. A lot of them kind of return to those communities essentially. At least start out there. A lot of them ultimately move to different places. But at least in those first few years after the war, they are returning to their families and trying to kind of reestablish ties and go from there. The post war period is very complicated. Im looking forward to drawing that up more because theres a lot i still do not know. I guess the nature of the sources, especially those where you rely on the pension records, theres almost a sort of survivor bias built in. The guys who were still alive then gates after the end of the war, they were the ones who, i guess, were most likely to have led successful lives and healthy lives afterwards. Yeah. You see a lot of struggles with these men as well. A lot of them are in abject poverty for the rest of their lives. Even though they get pensions, they are barely eking out a living because they are affected by their military service or just abilities after the war, and because they have to rely on physical labor and cant do as much as able bodied men, as they are described. Its really hard to make a full living wage. A lot of these men are really struggling. That is why the pensions become so necessary and why so many do end up applying after the war. They needed. They need that extra support. You do see instances of them having to rely on their communities for charity, for example. I think that might be one of the reasons why a lot of former enslavers to support their pension files. Confederate soldiers did not get federal pensions. The fact that these former enslavers are supporting black soldiers and getting pensions after the war is pretty interesting. I think its, in part, trying to get them off of the dependency about communities after the war. Since they do not have that same claim to their bodies and that labor. They want to kind of take them to the curb a little bit is my guess. Yeah, just kind of thinking out loud. I can imagine some situations where the white person is the landowner and the farmer black p. O. W. Rents the land or is a sharecroppers. So the land owner has a vested interest in the Financial Health of the renter. Yes. And if they cant work as much because they are severely disabled, that makes things self interested for the tenant farmers for sure. That definitely happens with a couple of men where they kind of hurt their claims because they are hiding their wounds and injuries from their employers. Their employers do not know that they are wounded to the level that they are. So its really complicated. Yeah. I guess one final question. This actually came in and email before your top. We started touching at it a little bit, but i will ask it anyway. Someone was asking about the sort of and of the civil war and a wrapping up of slavery. Hes interested in kind of the moment where confederates agreed slavery is over. Enslaved people are now free. Hes interested in when did that happen. Was there a moment was there documentation issued at that time . What is your response to that . I dont know. Given what i have seen of several men being held basically captive even after the war has ended. Some men are being help till almost 1867. Thats well after the war has technically ended. Even after Andrew Johnson is declared the civil war ended. Things people are still trickling back. That is definitely going on. I dont know about specific documentation. My feeling is that former confederates are not really former confederates. They are still confederates prolife and a lot of ways. They still see themselves as entitled to black labor and black bodies. You see that through the rise of the prison system in the postwar as well. And so the ways in which slavery just evolves. It never truly ends in my pinion, it just transforms and shifts. So i dont quite know about specific documentation of that, but i have some guesses. I think that was a great answer. The idea that slavery did not have a need and point and evolved and shifted into different forms of domination. I think you are exactly right there. Thats a good way to answer the question. Fortunately, we got to most of the questions. Not quite all of them, but we are just about out of time. I really want to thank caroline very much for her presentation and sharing your expertise through the queue and a session as well. I also want to thank the audience members for being here and attending the event. Also, for asking such great questions. Yes, thank you. All new material for the book. [laughs] yes, lots of homework and new things to think about. Between a dissertation and a book, as i said, there is that scope for doing new things and flushing things out. So its great to have some new ideas. I really appreciate carolines presentation and the audience questions. So thank you very much. Author tera hunter speaks now with the coeditors of the journal of the civil war era about the significance of juneteenth and her book bound in wedlock slave and free black marriage in the nineteenth century. Miss hunter explained the difference between the emancipation proclamation and juneteenth, as well as how three people navigated family ties and relationships after the war. The journal of the civil war era provided this video. Let me introduce todays speaker, doctor tera hunter. She is the edwards professor of American History and professor of African American studies at princeton. She is a specialist in the 19th and 20th century histories. She specializes in gender, race, labor and the history of the United States south. A little bit about her publications, which are multiple award winning. Her most recent book is bound