Outreach programs as well. She special ooiizes in 19th cen history, including, of course, the civil war era, but slavery more generally, warfare more generally as well. Her writing has appeared in civil war monitor and Civil War History journal among other publications. Her big project at the moment is converting her phd dissertation into a book. Thats going to be well worth looking out for a few years down the line. Its on the very same topic shell speak about tonight. As you can see, the powerpoint is up there called under the rebel lash black prisoners of war in the confederate south. Another advantage to the zoom format is you can type in your questions using the and a feature. You can type those in any time during the talk, after the talk, and of course we may not be able to get through all the questions depending how many you ask, but well certainly try to address as many as we possibly can, and well wrap things up by about 8 15. Okay . Well, thats all for me, so please join me in whatever the remote version of round of applause might be. Maybe it is a round of applause as i invite dr. Newhall to begin her talk. Over to you. Thank you so much, paul. I really appreciate that. Lovely introduction and 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, hear your thoughts about some of what im telling you about tonight and just really try to understand the complexities of what this time period can bring. So speaking of generous centers and donors, ill be referencing this a few times tonight, but 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 sixyearlong process, no joke. It was a labor of love trying to figure out what to do, the Virginia Center of research cannot be understated. Im going to give you a bit of an overview of what ill talk about tonight, how im going to address this topic and go through it, some of the key concepts ill be talking about just to give you a broad sense of the ways in which i approached this research, how i conducted that research, the resources i had to look at to put this together and my findings, basically, what i have interpreted based on what ive come up with through looking through thousands and thousands of records over the last few years. So ill tell you not just about the civil war more broadly and what black p. O. W. S can tell us about that, but what blacks were able to accomplish themselves, even within the very limited contingent circumstances that they had to navigate throughout the war. So their choices and their actions were just as important as policy, in my opinion. Just as a way of explaining some of the terms as well, ill refer to the usct, the sct, the usct. The United States infantry is one particular facet of that group. Ill also go over some of the terms of recognizing the variety. I wanted to put this on the screen so you had some sense of what im talking about and how im going to move through this topic. First and foremost, i want to discuss why black prisoners of war ended up in this place. One question i got was did black prisoners of war even exist . Were they executed upon capture . When i was visiting my topic, i was looking at works like lonnie spear and others. There was a consistent discussion about black prisoners of war being taken alive, but most being presumed to have died in custody because no one could track their movements if they didnt enter into a prison. Ill talk about that in a second. But also even beyond the idea of why i began studying black prisoners of war is why i called them black prisoners of war. Ill go into this in detail, but the confederacy did not treat black soldiers as combatants, illegitimate or legitimate combatants. The confederacy treated black soldiers as property, as reclaimed property, as recovered property, as property to be distributed and used as necessary. And 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 to them as black prisoners of war even though the confederacy did not, because that is what they were. A black prisoner of war was a legitimate combatant armed 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, and they were protected in different ways, in some very minor ways as well talk about. But that is an important distinction, this idea of legitimacy and what these men had to do in order to survive and to navigate their captivity. So beyond even just looking at black p. O. W. S themselves, i want to get into some of the reasons why i started to look into these men as a large group and some of my findings that i think really push back against some of our existing knowledge. There is definitely existing research on black prisoners of war, some really excellent historiography, but there is a consistent dual anywhe duel narrative i kept running into. First was the emphasis on battles and not so much captivity. We focus on capture but not necessarily the aftermath. Once they were entered into captivity, what happened to them . We know from various examples from the 54 massachusetts, for example, these were free men who were held in prisons, but beyond that, what happened to these men who had vulnerability as formerly enslaved men once they were captured and treated under this principle. So there has been battlefields and battlefield atrocities for good reason. Black soldiers were very vulnerable when it came to encountering confederates in battle. What happens after capture . That is one of the questions that i really wanted to understand. And not just what happens after capture but how many of these men even were able to survive. Those basic questions we just didnt know about yet. Additionally, i also found there was this emphasis on a particular space in the civil war, which are military prisons. Military prisons are definitely places where we encounter information on black prisoners of war, but beyond that, there were so few numbers reaching the prisons as a whole out of the men who were known to be taken captive. Lonnie spear estimated about 800 men, Benjamin Clair estimated about 1200. What happened to the others who didnt make it to prison . The question of mortality must enter the equation, and it certainly was, but what i found in my research as i went through military Service Records, pension files, and ill talk about that in detail tonight, i found that the reality was far more complex and the sites of captivity went far beyond military prisons. Black people were subjected to a diversity of captives. They were held in prisons, they were treated in certain ways, protected in certain ways. Black prisoners of war didnt have that experience to the same degree. They were certainly incarcerated in military prisons but quite a few were reclaimed by private enslavers, private citizens of the confederacy. Several of them were sold out of these prisons to entirely new enslavers, and the majority were enslaved by the military and used in the same ways as impressed, enslaved people. I argue basically that this is not a confusing happenstance, the fact that so many men did survive and were able to navigate captivity should not be surprising to us, in large part because of the confederacys entire reason for being, was to preserve slavery, to protect slavery and make use of enslaved people during the war effort, and they did that, in visible, awful, awful ways with black people as well. They treated black people as war duty. That is something i really try to emphasize during my work. Well talk about violence and restraint where violence and restraint are essentially two sides of the same coin for black prisoners of war, as was the case in antebellum slavery. Violence and restraint could both be described by constrained people. The fact that restraint is mercy i disagree with. I see it as a logic kind of in keeping with what sharon dean has talked about, so restraint is not necessarily mercy or benevolence. And enslavement is not necessarily concern for a black persons wellbeing, but reclaiming these men and reconfiguring them in a way as enslaved people. When Nathan Bedford forrest, for example, said something like, i regard captured negros as property. It is not the desire to destroy them but instead to protect them. He was not being facetious, and he wasnt being hypocritical of his assessment, where many did often die when captured. The fact they could be used throughout the war was vital to the confederacy. So i offer that to serve the purposes of the confederacy as much as violence did, and that black p. O. W. S who survived because of this restraint made use of their knowledge of the confederacy in order to navigate it. The confederacy used past presence in warfare. In the war of 1812, for example, and the second seminole war, there are instances of the United States trying to get compensation for escaped, enslaved people. Basically those who escaped to the enemy still owed a lifetime of labor to the United States. They basically saw it as restitution, and this continued during the civil war. They pointed to these past precedents as a Legal Standard to apply this behavior to black p. O. W. S. Again, emphasizing that property principle rather than the idea of legitimacy or illegitimacy. Essentially i went through the records of more than 50 United States troop residents in order to find black p. O. W. S, approximately records of 50,000 men in total, and i found at least 2,300 men were captured. This is just my initial first six years of research, theres still more to be done out of the 178 uct regimens, there are more to look through. But i already identified 2300 men who were noted as captured. I found that 73 of these men r men survived, more than 50 lived and survived and were able to make themselves part of the record that were talking about. One of the main reasons its been so difficult to find black p. O. W. S is because of the prevalence of narratives of white p. O. W. S. So andersonville, one of the those faces where there were higher mortality rates of white p. O. W. S, this visible culture surrounding white p. O. W. S, the knowledge of who they were. White p. O. W. S were caudified. This was not the case for black p. O. W. S. They were not followed in certain ways. They were basically put into the system. We need to understand what black p. O. W. S went through to begin with. We had to rely on records from andersonville where we can see the moments of captivity of these men, we can see their sufferings, we get a sense of what theyre going through, we can understand their conditions, and this really dictated a lot of postwar discussion as well regarding captivity and p. O. W. S and also the suffering that white p. O. W. S went through. White p. O. W. S went through an inordinate amount of suffering in these prison camps as seen by these photographs of men who came out of andersonville who were so starved that they basically looked like concentration camp victims. That is an indelible memory that has been burned into the minds of americans when it comes to thinking about these views of the civil war. To my knowledge there is no existing photograph of a black prisoner of war in captivity. So that is something to be reckoned with. Weve also had to rely on white p. O. W. S own writings, so theyre only getting a snippet of the experience, because theyre seeing particular types of black prisoners of war, but theyre not seeing the vast majority. This is something to reckon with when were thinking about how to go beyond certain spaces to look into different records. One of the reasons why were able to glean anything we can of black prisoners of war is because so many were able to write memoirs after the war. 150 men were able to give some sense of what they went through after the war, but their high mortality rates censored americans. We dont have the same written memories and same culture that white p. O. W. S did. White p. O. W. S provided a lot of helpful information, but we cant get what black prisoners of war had to say themselves about their experiences. But white p. O. W. S were contained with black prisoners within several spaces. But something that came out in the midst of my research was realizing that the majority of black p. O. W. S that we know about from these testimonies, from prior historians research, were free men from the north, men who were not previously enslaved and were held in these prisons with a kind of limbo. Good afternoon, everyone. The beginning of the end of the pandemic started with the leadership of President Trump. In recent days, pfizer and moderna reported the highly successful results of their vaccine development, each achieving a Covid Vaccine that is 94 effective. Moderna is 94. 5 effective, pfizer 95 . That is amazing. Operation warp speed agreed to provide pfizer with 1. 5 billion to produce their vaccine, allowing this vaccine to be free for the american people. While democrats were producing a highly divisive and entirely baseless impeachment endeavor as far back as november 13, this president and the National Institute of health was partnering with moderna and was working on this vaccine for the american people. But thats not all. This administration has remained engaged on the development and distribution of a safe and effective vaccine throughout the year. It began in january and continued thereafter. On may 15th, operation warp speed was launched. On september 16th, we released two documents outlining a strategy to deliver a safe and effective vaccine. These documents were a strategic distribution overview in state and local partners. On september 23rd, we provided 2 200 million for plans for distribution. On november 14th, we provided money for related products. On november 16th, we made agreements with cvs and walgreens to administer vaccines to residents of longterm care facilities. On october 21st under the prep care act, we issued guidance allowing tech to administer the vaccine. We announced that they will store supply kits to help Health Care Workers who administer the vaccines. And on november 12th, we announced the partnership with large chain pharmacies and independent regional ones to deliver safe and effective vaccines. The president s response to this pandemic has already saved Many American lives. As you can see, this timeline was ongoing. This was a long process and one that we are very proud of. Now with multiple safe and effective vaccines just around the corner, we urge all americans to wash their hands, socially distance, wear a mask when you can do so. With that, ill take questions. Reporter im going to ask you a question im asked fairly often away from the white house, and that is with respect to what Rudy Giuliani and the legal team on the campaign side had to say yesterday, people ask, lets suggest that, yes, there is evidence of fraud, irregularities, even malicious intent with respect to vote totals. The question is, what then would be the pathway or strategy to overturn what the campaign believes is a flawed election . Are we talking about a judicial pathway . Are we talking about a legislative pathway . And how soon will people be able to get their hands on a vaccine . To your first question, there have been multiple lawsuits filed across the country by the campaign and others. I will leave it to the campaign to make those determinations on how to proceed. But the president has been very clear, he wants every legal vote to be counted and to make sure no illegal votes are counted. But with regard to a vaccine, we believe there will be 40 million doses available by the end of the year. Again, this is extraordinary. This is the fastest vaccine in history by fivefold. Its really extraordinary progress. You heard dr. Fauci, among others, say that, and it was only made possible by this president who said, at the same time im pursuing a vaccine, im going to do something novel, im going to manufacture it. Many american lives will be saved thanks to President Trump and operation warp speed. Reporter as to the Covid Vaccine, is there concern inside the white house that a lack of working with a potential or presumptive president elect biden team will slow down the distribution of the Covid Vaccine . Im glad you asked that question, its an important one, and not in the slightest. I did hear the former Vice President say yesterday that he was concerned about not being able to distribute a vaccine. He shouldnt be. Maybe he hasnt seen but we have publicly available the covid19 vaccination program, the interim playbook for a jurisdiction of operations. This is currently available if you would like to read through it. Going back months, we partnered with the 15 jurisdictions in this country to make sure they had individualized plans. This has been assessed and this work has been ongoing. There is a distribution that says within 24 hours we will be able to distribute this across the country. You can watch the rest of this White House Briefing on our companion network cspan2. Now we take you to American History tv. I started finding orders like general orders 25, which basically established these depots for reclamation for escaped and enslaved people, initially for people who hadnt entered the United States army, but they established these depots throughout the confederacy in order for soldiers to reclaim people who had run away. They established these places by advertising in the newspapers. I said, is there any way i can find out about these men and what they were put through in these processes . I found several instances in newspapers, but making this connection to general orr november 25 struck me. Once they were within the boundaries of the importance of upholding property rights. There are a couple examples here, one in the huntsville confederate, as well as the battle of 1864. There are several news articles that show this and show these men being named as they come to get reclaimed and taken out of these prisons. Basically the confederacy is trying to propagate this policy. Whats fascinating and something im still trying to work on, im still learning about this topic as i go. There are a lot of sigaps in th historic record. Why did these men reveal the names of formerly enslaved if they had been formerly enslaved . What did they get out of that . Were they doing it voluntarily . Was it a mix of the two . I assume the latter, but there was very little documentation. How it was enacted is so beyond the newspapers, i definitely found. I started with compiled military Service Records just to try to identify what i could. What i found was that to look for these memoranda from pow, unfold three, which is an arm of confederacy. Com, and recorded who had become captive at one point or another. Sometimes im lucky and i would say, he was captured in the fall of 1864, i think by forces outside. Basically, he was sent to a rebel officer and kept there until 1865. So these men were often kept well beyond the time of hostility, which just opened up a whole other can of worms for me. There were several that i found that definitely experienced tin some degree or another. This is where i started. Yet again, still these men are prisoners. My adviser suggested, you really need to look through the pension files and see if you can find something from these men directly. Thats exactly what i end upped doing. By crossreferencing the subpoe depository search records, 715 at least were able to claim pensions after the war, or apply for pensions. So that was a group of past experiences. The pension files can range from a few pages to a hundred pages long. Its all. Particularly if he had been injured or sdopd. I wont sgit all those details, but just uchlt. Most importantly for me, affidavits. These men had to speak to pension and find out what they went through. If im lucky, and a lot of people do talk about this to some degree, they talk about their capture, where they were incarcerated. Sometimes theyre treated and were released in space. It yearly took a community to. This is where i started essentially to find what these plen if many taken back to the farm and basically ran back home after being hired out initially. He was out of form and favor, but he was also able to win privileges back even though he was a reclaimed soldier, even though he had acted revisited the confederacy, he was able to marry an enslaved woman and visit her from nine miles away, get a pass every weekend to go see her, and ultimately escaped again with her, and they hid with the rest of their lives and never communicated. These were stories that emerged as i went through these files. I read about 350. I really tried to paint a holist holistic. Theres several men like Richard Finch in richmond, virginia, enslave bid a hotelier in greensville and worked as a reporter, essentially, for the rest of the day. Or men like Samuel Brooks who was captured and sent dand was aid bid a white woman to escape. These are still slivers about these mens lives. It doesnt give you a full picture about what they went through from their birth to their death, but it gives us something to work with and expand on what we know. Formal early enslaved black men just didnt have the privilege to right about their experiences. Theyre births, theyre deaths. Former slaves might be in state records. They always retained that power, and that was something black prisoners of what are to continually negotiate after the wars end. But they were able to take direct action and make these difficult choices in order to survive, which i really doment to kbaz size, is that their survival is not a form of the essence of what was going on on the ground. Luckily the pension files, ive been able to expand a little bit on the photographic history of black prisoners of war. There is a series of photographs in existence of a white slaveowner. His photograph is often referenced as this cleardid you tell ly many. What it meant to a formerly enslaved person to suddenly become aessentially, and a soldier. But he was a prisoner of war. He was captured along with 700 other men. But we do not have his photo from captivity. We can infer maybe he was intending to return to texas. But i was able to recover that of Richard Finch and serl of these men who were captured in 1864. This is his photograph he uses during his pension application process to identify him to his comrades, to people with whom he had been employed, any way to d record this. Our archivists are incredible. They helped me capture the timeline of this and pull out the books. I really like Richard Frenchs books for a reason. Not that we not only have a photograph of him after the war, but his photo recounts survival and what these men were able to doily many we need Historical Records to push back against this silencing of their lives in Historic Records and we now have hundreds of voices to work with which i think will open up a lot of differences. We can 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, and ill just quickly and this is a closeup, a forgi forgot abou. I did a little closeup of his photo so you can better see them. The original is in the archives so i was able to mess with the color a little bit. This is private Richard French with his stark composure. He was a great man, and he went through some things i cant even imagine. I want to emphasize his photo gave a sense of what did happen during the civil war. We konl get the perspective i ha have, theres a lot of research ton dune here as i move, please contact me on twitter at the vccws. Its an incredible constitution. With that ill say i enjoyed having a conversation with everyone. I guess i should end 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 a really nice job and just a fascinating topic and presentation. We have got a good number of questions, but feel free to keep them coming in the q a using the q a button in zoom. I guess ill select a couple for us to get started with, and then, as i said at the beginning, try and get through as many of these as we can. One of the questions that a couple of different people have asked in regards to the distinction between formally enslaved black men and formerly free black men and whether there was a part on the federal authorities to really distinguish between those groups. This is a project im trying to continually figure out the processes of, but particularly governor millage bonham from Southern California where they were trying to navigate how they were treating free men from the north. He had tried to free the men they had captured in starlz ton. But they found out that they didnt feel they had the jurisdiction over black soldiers. They were very hesitant because they didnt know if it should be a federal issue, a State Government issue or not. So they determined they could only deal with who they knew had been formerly enslaved. They just sent them back to the prisons and i think that helps loosen some of the complexity going on on the ground here. Another historian whose name im blanking out on, he wrote about that in the 80s and talked about some legal issues that the confederate was questioning the legitimacy and whether they themselves were exceeding the laws of war and trying to gain support of foreign entities like britain and france. They were trying to bring britain and france to support them in the war, so they were 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 immediate aftermath of capture, they buried some of that. Ly they just decided not to do anything about it because they were worried about retaliation from the United States. Lincoln had constituted this law in 1858 and so they felt very vulnerable objections, so freeman occupied a different status and they didnt owe any labor to anyone, so there wasnt anything being done. I know in certain papers, John Bell Hood had the role of this and i believe the record of their enslavers, sometimes that was noted in military Service Records. Those were some ways in which the confederacy was able to make distinctions and identify enslaved versus nonenslaved, but it was a messy complication. I can imagine that was really difficult defining identity in any definitive sense, anyway. This was an era where people didnt walk around with phones for identification. They would say, i want them around, and most people would just say, okay. I had robert leachs picture posted in the powerpoint presentation. He was claiming to be a man and was not. Speaking of records, that was for me, and it seems like based on the questions from other people as well, one of the most interesting parts of your talk bei being. And siem c so im looking at other forms in the future. One comes from matthew peak which is a professional archivist in north carolina, when you look at the wills of black p. O. W. S, he seems to have come across some examples where people would actually talk about ill leave experiences of that, and some others ask about the gnr record and, you know, have you looked, at least . No, i havent looked at them and theyre on my slate for sure. Ive been told many times i need to get in touch with barbara gann. If anyone is familiar with the pension files in dc, thats where i was focusing on the records that i knew about that i could identify from afar and go and 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 going through them afterwards which is like i got about 3 poo. Our next stem basically what im doing on the book is focusing rawls who i mentioned, Richard Lynch who i mentioned, im going to try and get records of where they were, their former family and really just expand on what i can find. Im sure family marpz have a lot more to offer than the little it sounds like a lot of work, but potentially rewarding work when youre digging through all that evidence. When you find that needle is very, very purddelusive. Being called john brown is sometimes not that easy. The George Washingtons support me. We have a question from kristen baldon about the process of applying for these . It may also be about the postwar climate, so kristen is asking whether black soldiers faced additional difficulties obtaining pensions due to racial discrimination. Yes. Thank you, kristen, thats an excellent question. Good to see you here. That was absolutely a problem for black p. O. W. S, black soldiers generally, and particularly formerly enslaved men. In the north they tended to be illiterate. Black soldiers in the south generally had a presence to identify themselves. They still had to prove themselves, so a lot of trouble tlafs encountered was they had to prove to begin with. A difficulty for black p. O. W. S was that because there was so little reported about their captivity, we had to report what happened to them after i said that. People were very skeptical of enslaved order peoples claims. They usually talked about them as not being trusted. Somehow they trusted newly enslaved people rather than formerly enslaved people. It also helped krcreate a more robust record where central customers would turn out to determine the facts of what was going on. They questioned people repeatedly. Go to employers, family members, former enslavers. This created a very robust catalog for these men. Tra this led to trying to understand them to a better degree because they were faced with such skepticism, and racial skepticism, to be sure. I sort of expected that answer, of course, but its really interesting to hear you explain how that operated in the decades after the civil war. Another question asks about the men who were captured and resisted slavery after being returned to their former slaveholders. I have found no instances of violent resistance from black p. O. W. S. Something i talk about in my dissertation which i hope to expand for the book. There are mass outbreaks on several occasions from black prisoners. These men basically tussle with their white guards but dont do anything. They dont steal their weapons, they dont fire on them, theyre basically trying to get free. That is something mr. Dean has addressed in his book, calculus and violence, i think is what its called, but he really talks about how black americans really just wanted freedom, they didnt want revenge. Theyre very cognizant as well that violent resistance would be met with severe consequences. Thats something we see in the antebellum period as well, particularly with fred douglas autobiography where they are tried to talked out of violence. Really, i cant find an instance of a black prisoner of war killing or hurting a guard at all. I have not found that. Thank you. So a question about the kind of broader context to p. O. W. S from brock nickels. Hes wondering what might be the advantages of placing black civil war p. O. W. S kind of in comparison with white p. O. W. S as youre obviously doing but obviously with other p. O. W. S during different 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 that black prisoners of war throughout history have 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 when it comes to that, but i know there are people who are doing that kind of work, and its something im definitely interested in. One thing i would 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 present and think about the various connections and the ways in which the laws weof war were applied, the way laws of war were violated and what it means to be a black soldier just generally speaking in these various contexts. Thats a great question. I dont have specifics for you yet, but maybe in a few years. Jonathan jones, who is actually one of our featured speakers this year, its great to see you type a question. He 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 were taken prisoner versus executed as soon as they were captured by the confederate . No. I am still struggling with that. That is a really tough thing to figure out, in large part how these men are being spoken of, how theyre being treated as prisoners of war. Its hard to know who is captured in those first moments of capture. The numbers are not very clear, so its something i have to revisit when im going through the compiled military Service Records and other records when it comes to casualties is really trying to figure out maybe 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 were in the immediate aftermath. Colonel johnson of the 44th who was a white officer was exchanged two days after his capture while 600 men are returned into slavery, basically. He notes that at least six men were killed in the immediate aftermath. Another man of the 44th talks about how he was part of the mass escape where he escapes with 21 other men. All 21 except for him are killed, were drowned in a river on their way to escape. There are ways of figuring that out. I havent gotten there yet. The numbers are really tough to determine. But im hoping to have something more definitive there. My numbers are kind of in flux and theyre more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule for sure. Based on the numbers that i found, i think there is really strong evidence of survival as well, so thats something i definitely emphasize also because i can speak to that a little more definitively than executions and the immediate aftermath. I know its happening. I know it happens in saltville and plymouth and a variety of other places, but its hard to figure out because, again, a lot of euphimisms are used. Died of captivity, died of brutality. I dont know when and i dont know how. Thats definitely a process im trying to figure out. Thats a tough one. This is a question from me. Im really curious about uniforms which you mentioned several times in your talk and it just really fascinated me when you talked about uniforms as such a powerful symbol that africanamerican men were bona fide soldiers and International Law applied to them, and particularly when they returned to the confederate states, what happened to the uniforms . I mean, 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 my stock answer for everything. Its complicated. Some get to keep them, some dont, so abram rawls who i mentioned talks about the removal of his uniform and that happens after his reclamation. Basically, hes brought back and is brought by his former enslaver to the farm next to theirs and intentionally has his uniform stripped and his clothes replaced in proper slave clothes, as he calls it. Abram manages to hang onto his belt buckle. I believe his future wife was able to salvage that. Shes the one who exchanged his clothes for him. So there is a lot going on thats unspoken. But he also references that other soldiers had their uniforms stripped almost immediately after capture, so some are in a very sorry state, visibly rendered as enslaved people, essentially. The removal of the uniform was a really powerful means of negating their sfervice and ther 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 and part of why i think there is such difficulty in being able to locate their captivity. If we have photographs of black captured p. O. W. S, it will be hard to find because theyre probably stripped of their uniforms. That was definitely an intentional tactic, c that both confederates and private officers in the military used, and there are consequences for doing this and youre going to watch and see it. Powerful things, clearly. Angela says, this is fantastic, exclamation point, which is really nice to if you can spea the experience within prison camps of black prisoners, things like were they segregated, somebody else is interested in the medical treatment as well. Sglif a whole chapter on medical treatment in my dissertation, so ill talk about that in a second. It also just depended on the prison. Experiences are so dependent on where they end pup. Those authority they are under, who they have to deal with. So there are men in libby who are placed with white officers as a means of degrading the white union officers. Thats an intentional tactic that was used. A lot of the times they were segregated. I know that happens at the old city jail in charleston. They are kept on a separate floor, but they are interacting on the grounds when they are let out for activity. There was a whole group of men con degree gaited around the Southern Gate who it seems i dont know the dynamics going on there, but they are mentioned as gathering around the Southern Gate. They are digging the graves for the prison. They are working alongside but kept separate from local enslaved people who have been impressed for that purpose and theres also some resentment with white p. O. W. S who were able to exit the prison. So once they are in the mix, thats somewhat taken away. So they have a lot more moiblt than white p. O. W. S. They are charged as having being treated better, less oversight. Its really interesting. Its super complicated. It seems to depend on just what prison they were entered into, what the structure of that it prison was by the time they got there. The prisons were such a mess. I know you know that. People were figuring things out as they went. It seemed to depend on who the commandment was. Turner at castle was nasty. S he was doing some questionable things. So it ram the gam et. It seems like there was some segregation. And intentionally mixing these people as a way to insult the white soldiers. Theres another kind of research tactic that i suspect may be another time consuming one. Have you looked for letters from con fed rattle soldiers who captured black Union Soldiers or guards for them in prison camps . Is that even possible . Or is that just too difficult . I imagine it could be. I really havent looked into confederates very much who were in charge. I have been mostly looking at the commandments. Thats not looking at the common soldiers dealing with this. And what their reactions are. So thats definitely something to consider. Thats a et great question. No, i havent. I dont know whats going on there. I would assume it would be really interesting though. The nice thing about the dissertation into a book is you can do some additional research, fill in some gaps and i think its great to have these questions and suggestions come. Thank you, everyone. These are awesome questions. Total ly going to take these forward as i work on the man script. So thank you. Mark asks whether there are any examples of native american soldiers being captured and whether how their treatment compared with black men. Yes, i native americans were definitely involved. Particularly in the western theater. Im not as sure about the eastern theater. There are several instance where is native americans are fighting for the confederacy and are involved in some of the atrocities towards black soldiers. Notably at Poison Spring with the 79th, so i know they are involved. I dont know their numbers of capture. I havent looked into that. Thats something im hoping to talk to other people about and know some people are hoping to rope in for future panels. Because thats a really understudied area as well that i just dont know much about. I think there were some native american p. O. W. S. But my knowledge about that is very much surface level at best. They are asking whether theres evidence where i could imagine other examples of violence. With. One of the issues being forced to work for the confederacy is enslaved labor was a lot of men are performing dangerous labor. Particularly around a mobile. They are having to mount guns. They are working in mobile bay. They are shivering and they are cold and starving. So they are already being treated quite harshly when they are in the control of the military. And i know theres several instances where men are attacked essentially without provocation. Theres a man from the 27th who was held at a prison in lynchberg, virginia, who basically talks about how in the middle of the night, hes gotten us up to urinate in a tub and cant tell its full in the dark ness and is attacked from behind by a confederate guard who tries to stab him through the kidneys with his bayonet and manages to fight him off and escape and hide amongst the crowd. Since it was dark, he manages to not be identified. So he manages to make it through without being antagonized by that forward, which speaks volumes about the difficult circumstances they had to operate ushd. This happens to a number of men. They are targeted and attacked by their guards. Im sure out of anger or hatred. I dont have many more specifics beyond general brutality and working them hard, but i know thats happening i dont know about the stocks being used. That was in use for a lot of white p. O. W. S. Definitely subjected to whippings in several instances. Theres a man from the 54th at and ersonville who is caught trying to forge a path. So thats a major trespass. So hes ordered to be whipped 500 times. So that mitigates that and acts like hes going to whip him 500 times but doesnt. This is the soldier talking about the ways that theres some mitigations of violence by confederates themselves be but still participating and enforce ing it so its definitely happening. They are being brutal liezed at a lot of different turns. A question about the post war situation. That patents and what black p. O. W. Sen went on to do after the war. Or do they just scatter and each person does his own thing. Most return to where they had been from originally. People had families. They had had communities that they had to return to. There are examples of them who escape to tennessee and never see their families again. But a lot of people are still dependent after the war and have to navigate their interpersonal relationships with the people who had enslaved them prior to the war. Thats who they know. And we see the gym crow laws being implemented. They have to enter into these really strict contracts. Most are reentering into physical labor. Working as tenant farmers. Working in various capacities like that. In the north, theres a little more diversity. Some work in drugstores and do merchanttype work its a little different in the south where they are relegated to that farmwork, physical labor. But a lot of them return to those communities essentially. At least start out there. A lot of them ultimately move to different places. But at least in the first few years, they are returning to their families and trying to reestablish ties and go from there. The post war period is very complicated. Im looking forward to drawing that out more. Theres a still a lot i i dont know. Especially where you rely on the rods as almost a survivor and because the guys who were still alive decades after the end of the war, they were the ones who were most likely to have led successful lives and healthy lives afterwards. Yeah, you see a lot of struggles with these men too. A the lot of ohm are in povr tu 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 stabilities after the war. 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. So a lot of these men are are rg strugg struggling. They need it. They need that support. So you do see instances of them having to rely on the chunts. Theres a lot of former enslavers do support their pension files. Confederate soldiers did not get federal pensions. So the fact that these former enslavers are supporting black soldiers in getting pensions after the war is interesting. I think its in part that trying to get them off the dependency of White Communities essentially after the war. Since they dont have that same claim to their bodies and thash labor, they want to kick them to the curb a little bit is my guess. Just kind of thinking out loud. I can imagine some situations where the white pesh is the landowner and former black p. O. W. Represents the land or a sharecropper. So the landowner as a vested interest in the Financial Health of the renter. If they cant work as much because they are disabled, that makes things selfinterested for the farmers for sure. That happens with a couple men where they hurt their claims because they are hiding their woumpbds and injuries from their employers so they dont know they are wounded to the level that they are. So its really complicated. One final question. This dame in an email before your talk. Ill ask it any way. Somebody was asking about the end of the civil war and the wrapping up of slavery. And is interested in the moment where confederates agreed that slavery is over. Enslaved people are now free. Hes interested in kind of when did that happen . Was there a moment where that documentation that was issued at that time. Whats your response to that . I dont know. Given what i have seen of several men being held, some are being held until almost 186. So well after the war has technically ended. Even after Andrew Johnson declared the civil war end. Thats also part of the reason why its been difficult to find some of these men is that because they are still held in captivity, even though technically they are not combatants anymore, thats definitely going on. And i dont know about specific documentation, but my feeling is that former con ffederates rbt really former confederates. They are still confederates for life. They still see themselves as entitled to black labor and black bodies and we see that through the rise of the prison system in the post war as well. So the ways in which slavery just evolves. It doesnt end, in my opinion. It 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 slaves ri didnt have any end point. And evolved and shifted into different forms. And thats a good way to answer that question. I got to most of the questions, not quite all of them. Butter we are just about out of ti time. And sharing your expertise through the q a session as well. I want to thank the audience members fbeing here and atended the event and asking such great questions. Lots of new things to think about. Which is between this station and the book. Its great to have some new ideas. I really appreciate carolines presentation and the audiences questions. So thank you very much. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv, on cspan 3, go inside a Different College classroom and hear about topics ranging from the american revolution, civil rights and u. S. President s. With most College Campuses closed due to the impact of the coronavirus, watch teaching to a virtual setting to engage with students. Freedom of the press, its institutional as the press. Lectures in history on American History tv on cspan 3. Every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Lectures in history is also available a as a podcast find it where you listen to podcasts. Weeknight this is month, were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan 3. Since the 1970s, david pilgrim collected objects that dehumanize africanamericans. 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