Her graduate training at uva and as i mentioned, she is at kentucky. She only goes to schools where there are basketball powerhouses, there used to Winning National champions. Being from indiana i have got a faint memory, i know amy won this year at uva because you know a guy from indianapolis. So lets not forget that. Amy has just published, her book is right here, the book is entitled embattled freedom, journeys through civil war slavery vg camps. It is part of the america series. Its a pretty good year i would say. Its going to take a while for me to tell you all the awards the book is receiving, the 2019 Tom Watson Brown prize from the society of civil war historians, the 2019 award from the organization of american historians, the John Millbrook prize, youve cleaned up amy, congratulations this is well deserved as you all will discover this, as i said is a very important book and finally, i should add shes not only a traffic scholar shes also an excellent teacher as i recall, she received a Teaching Award the university, its my pleasure to introduce to you amy murrell taylor. [ applause ] oh my goodness, that was kind. Thank you, pete. I was walking over here this morning, thinking back to my junior year in college. I first got thinking about the civil war and studying the civil war. Back then, i never would have imagined i would be invited to speak at a place like gettysburg, its a real thrill to be here, thank you for inviting me. This morning i want to begin at the end, at the end of the war in 1865, to be more specific, the fall of 1865, at a time when the union army is withdrawing its presence from the south, mustering out men, leaving southern communities. I want to take you to a place where in all the traveling you have done to civil war sites and i imagine with this crowd theres been a lot of travel, and all your reading about the civil war, a place youve probably not seen or heard about before, it was known at the time as Sinclair Farms, a 600 acre tract of land on virginias peninsula which stretched along the coast between hampton and newport news. Or if you want to put this in terms of civil war military geography, it was about 68 miles northwest of port monroe, the farm was named after a white man who owned the land in 1861 whose name was Jefferson Sinclair, he was a confederate sympathizer, too old to serve in the confederate armies, he supported the army in other ways, initially he sold products to his army, he had a livestock farm eventually though in the summer of 1861, he fled the region like so many other white land owners did as the union moved in, his farm fell into union hands and over the course of the war it underwent a transformation that was nothing like anything that Jefferson Sinclair probably ever envisioned for his property, in fact, we could probably say this was one of his worst nightmares, because, by the hundreds and even the thousands, his farm began the destination of people during the war, surrounding farms and plantations in virginia a total of 4500 people had moved onto the property by 1865, they changed it, it looked different. They built houses, hundreds of them, scattered them in the fields where his livestock once roamed they built five churches, at least one store and they built a hospital too. Our settlement on sinclairs farm is laid out in streets with order and regularity. One of the residents reported in 1865. Containing many buildings of comfort and convenience and even ones of elegance. Planting crops, once they predicted in the fall of 1865 would yield better, richer, and heavier crops, twice fold the never known before under the system of slavery. So, from the beginning, the plantation once reliant on enslaved labor, Jefferson Sinclair had enslaved 69 people in 1860. The farm had become a settlement of thousands who were escaping slavery and seeking refuge from the union army and beginning to build new lives for themselves. So Sinclair Farms during the war began as a refugee camp which evolved into a new village or one might say, a new small town, devoted to freedom. But only during the war, it did not last. In the fall of 1865, the residents of sinclair farm, all 4500 of them were ordered off the land. Union officials in the region from Army Officers to nearby fort monroe, others agents of the newly established freeman bureau, showed up on the property and forced them to leave then go find another place to settle. The same thing happened and hundreds of other places throughout the south, in 1865 and 1866. Force was often involved and in some places threats of violence were necessary to empty people who did not want to leave these places. So what happened here . What was really going on . Why did it happen . And what did this all mean . I want to address these questions, while sharing with you the larger story of how a place like sinclair farm came to be, a story of how slavery collapsed in a massive displacement of people during the civil war, in what is rightfully or arguably called, a refugee crisis, one that at times, bore some resemblance to the refugee crises of our time today. This is a story that is not that well known in civil war history. It is not wellknown for many reasons, some of which i will talk about. Including the fact that theres a more dominant story about emancipation which has loomed large in our teaching and writing for generations. All right. Maybe thats a nice noise that will keep us awake here. I should use that once in a while. All right, you know this story, it is the story in which emancipation lincoln, the great emancipator, issues his emancipation proclamation and grants freedom to enslaved people in one decisive turning point, january 1, 1863. Let me just say at the outset, im not here to diminish lincolns role in emancipations history. What he did was important and it remains an important part of the story. But this is not the only part of that story and it is not the full story of how emancipation came about. Turning our attention away from the white house to these houses places like port royal subthalamic it became something tangible. Having made it real, by building these new settlements, we could begin to see how emancipation was lived and experienced and how it was won and how it was lost but first, a little bit of background the whole story begins at the beginning with the words opening days which this is the first day where they determined the war had something to do with them and something to do with freedom, they set out on the regions roads and waterways to free bondage and seek protection from the union army. That itself is remarkable. Im going to try one more time, oh good, it is working now but i went in the wrong direction. There we go. All set now. So this is a remarkable thing, the opening days of the war and we have scenes like this, okay . It is remarkable because just one month before the war started it hit the inaugural address, the president promise he would not interfere with slavery where it already existed in the south. He would not encourage the flight of enslaved people, the union army lines, in fact, federal law constrained him, not just constitution but also especially the 1850s fugitive slave act which required the federal government to assist in returning enslaved people who ran away to their owners, so lincoln would not interfere. But after several attempts in places like florida, maryland, virginia, in late may 1861 a group of enslaved people in eastern virginia, approached the Union GeneralBenjamin Butler at fort monroe and persuaded him to see the benefit to the union army of allowing them inside of its lines. We will labor for the union, they said. Think about that, this takes labor, very important labor away from the confederacy at the same time. Butler, who was no abolitionist, which is a important fact to establish did agree. He saw the practical benefits of allowing these people inside of the lines and issued the order, abandoning federal law and the fugitive slave act, requiring his men to protect these individuals as contraband of war. So, the confederacy was reviewing this as their property, then the union would seize that property as contraband of war. This was not quite freedom, as you may hear from that, butler is still viewing these people as property. But this was a step. By protection, what butler agreed to do was protect them from returning to slavery as well as providing them with food, shelter, and opportunity to work. This was a big step which opened a flood gate. The story moved from the coast of virginia and carolinas, across the border states and down the Mississippi River valley in the wars later years. What ive put on the screen here is a map of where new settlements of these people fleeing slavery emerged. You could just kind of, instead of a bunch of dots on the map you could kind of see this as a general map of where people were running away. One thing you might notice about this, im sure, most of your many of you are familiar with the general map of the Union Occupation of the south, you could see that the footprints of the emergence of these camps matches the footprints of the Union Occupation. The single most important variable determining where people could flee and when and find protection, with proximity to the union army and its sphere of protection. The army had to come near or they had to go a Long Distance to find it. As they started to run away to these places, the refugees from slavery became a visible presence on the landscape. The vast clutches of housing emerged in these places, often first is a collection of cast off tents, tents that the army was not using anymore or a collection of burnedout buildings in a city like here in nashville. Over time, they gave way, these more temporary forms of housing, to newly built hot or shacks, cabins, as they were variously described in these records. Sometimes they looked similar to soldiers housing. Sometimes they were located very close to where the soldiers were living. The only thing that might separate them was this short distance, a creek, one some places had a , if that was the case you better bet that the refugee housing was at the bottom of the hill in the least desirable flood prone areas. We should say much prone to as well because that would be a real problem for many of these people. Around these houses, they offered their labor to the union army as cooks, long dresses, as hard laborers digging trenches and burial pits, as carpenters, teamsters, as laborers for the subsistence, engineers and ordinance departments. As hospital stewards and nurses. At fort monroe there were numbers of something called a stand in police gang which was something i was not familiar with at first but it turns out they were people who were policing the beaches and also digging and burying and digging pets and burying horses and mules in those pits. They worked in these different ways i should mention scouts who know the landscape they could be useful to the army that way and as they worked they were promised wages for their work for the first time now you may have heard me emphasize the word promised when i said that. Putting that in quotes because this would become a notoriously difficult problem as some Union Officials and some places refused to actually pay which would become an ongoing problem you have to be part of the dine in conversation that im having tomorrow, this is something that we will take up in that discussion. They worked but they suffered. They were in no way immune from the illness and disease that swept through these army encampments and though there were some medical care provided to them by the army it was often inadequate, definitely secondrate, and at other times, especially in the Mississippi River valley over the last year of the war, the settlements became targets of irregular violence. These settlements became embodiments of the social revolution that these individuals wanted to create but which confederates were trying to resist. And so, they became targets of irregular confederate violence. As one Union Official observed, there was one of the mall which had escaped these atrocities. And yet, despite all of this, and regions that became districts of active combat, and for time, the carolinas, these camps had the space and protection to evolve into something more permanent like what was seen on sinclairs farm or to give you another example, friedmans village, maybe this map gets reproduced quite a bit so maybe youve seen this before, Freeman Village was another camp which emerged on the property of robert e lee in arlington and you could see by the fact that the diagram was dated 1865 the fact that this existed, you could see this is a bit of planning that went into creating the camp and indeed, you could see the houses lining the streets, parks, there are all sorts of buildings for schools and churches and so forth, you have a pond in the middle. Heres a photograph of friedmans village as well. Villages like this became the destination of missionaries and benevolent reformers and release workers from the north who helped establish these churches and schools and sent Copious Amounts of supplies late , pencils and maps and so forth into the south. To help these freedom seeking people learn how to read and write. Most importantly were a couple of groups, quakers from philadelphia and richmond indiana moving directly south, and the American Missionary Association which was the non sectarian organization coming out of new york which sent a large number of missionaries to the south. Altogether, this was as some historians have suggested the greatest slave rebellion in history. And at the very least this was a migration of a estimated over 500,000 men, women, and children. 1 8 of the enslaved population in 1860 hit the road during the war to seek freedom. A migration that began at fort monroe been built steadily over the entire four years of the war. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this migration is that the enslaved people continue to flee into union lines especially in the first two years of the war even without assurance from the federal government that they would achieve legal freedom. They remain in the eyes of the union, contraband. Again, property. Where as more and more people would put it refugees. A quick note about the language here, you may notice im using the term refugee not contraband, this was quite debated at that time. Particularly in abolitionist circles who rejected the term contraband as a term that is one put it, is not fit for a human being. Refugee is a term that recognizes the personhood and also the fact that they had a compelling need for protection and were fleeing persecution much like refugees today. They were also living in this kind of suspended state of uncertainty about their status and their belonging in the United States. All sorts of questions surrounded them, would the union ever recognize their legal freedom . Or would the union even when the war to be able to recognize their legal freedom . This is all a big question. They did not have the answer but yet they continue to run. So much was uncertain, largely because of a basic and centrally important fact about emancipation. That the process of his of becoming free was embedded in the war and the military bureaucracy and culture. This was not something that could be decreed simply by politicians but had to be won by a army at war. That army would prove to be a imperfect ally as you probably already heard me suggesting. The union army was not equipped to oversee the refugee crisis when the war began and most, if not all of the men, did not predict this would become part of their duty. Soldiers and officers themselves, they varied in their commitment to ending slavery, something that some of the other historians here this weekend have written about. They dove right in, they became very active in assisting the refugees some of them assumed positions nearly creating official positions in the military bureaucracy as superintendents of contraband or superintendents of refugees. Then there were others, they felt the opposite and did the opposite and in the most extreme cases there were Union Soldiers who helped confederate slaveowners retrieve their slaves from a camp and at times, a need for the military with strategic considerations what they needed to win the war, didnt always align very well with the needs and interests of the refugees from slavery. Lincoln would go on in the emancipation proclamation to justify it legally as a military necessity or to quote the actual language, an act of justice warranted by the constitution upon military necessity. As if there was an alignment between the needs and interests of the union and those of freedom seeking people. But this was may be true in theory, and easier to imagine in the abstract, then in everyday life inside of these camps. Sometimes these two sets of needs and interest were not aligned at all and collided in everyday way is like when the union army needed to move but this was in the best interest of the refugees to remain put or when the army needed particular resources or space that had been allotted for the refugees, when these collisions happened this is war and of course, the needs of the military won out and always came first. Which meant a pretty tumultuous existence for those seeking freedom inside of union army lines. To give you a better sense of how the military process was experienced in the lives of particular refugees, i wanted to tell you about one case involving a married couple, edward and emma, among the first to go into union lines in virginia in may 1861. A little bit of background about them, they were both born into slavery in virginia, they spent most of their lives in newport news on the plantation there, on the virginia peninsula. I will just highlight the peninsula here and you cant see my point exactly but you could probably see newport news probably right in the center, that was roughly where the plantation was. Emma was a field hand and edward was what we call a hired out slave what that meant is that he probably had a particular skill, although what the skill was has escaped detection in these records. His owner, what his owner was doing was hiring him to other men in the region who needed that skill for a particular period of time. He would then bring the wages to his owner. Well, what could happen sometimes in this ins