[please stand by] [please stand by] [please stand by] 3372 children. 57 children. Unlike most wars in this case, refugees are running towards the. Ine they were giving birth out of slavery because it was meaningful, even though it was even birth in a war zone. It was often ugly, against fence posts, women finding whatever they could to cut on the local court straight cut umbilical cords. They need to bury the placenta, so they looking for places to do that and they are determined to do that even if they are in a place of deprivation. This is a reconstruction from the point of view of midwives of invention. This was ingenuity in the face of great crisis. Midwiferygraph is in school at penn school at saint helena island, where a. Uccessful refugee camp is your is picture of refugees in the rain. Shoes and water. These are not familiar scenes in the same way we see the gero type. But shoes and water are all over the record. You cant get through a page another plea, another action motivated by need for shoes and water. Ingenuity that comes with finding these are making these shoes are desirable for passage over the rocky terrain to make the migration into the camp. , shoes give you status. It means you name you may not be owned, you can walk freely without suspicion. With shoes, you can pass through seeming like you are on a rent. Children went barefoot all the time, one woman said. Small shoes were especially hard to come by. Earnest. Orkers are in just send shoes, they write to all the bostonians and pennsylvanians who are sending goods their way. We know shoes are especially important because slave masters during this time locked them up at night. The shoes of negroes are locked up in many cases to prevent them from going off great masters blame their slaves departures on their ability to procure shoes. The two may negroes begged of him i got five dollars to buy shoes just to run away in. Not just mobility, it was mobility they could control. Once she got her shoes, she left the camp and she went to d. C. To search for her daughter. The black soldiers said he enlisted so he could send his ilistment bounty to the woman call my lady so she could get some shoes. Thats what he spent all his money on. Water was of paramount importance. A downpour like this meant you got a shower. One refugee said his spirit was cotton until his group found some of those models. They would be plum bloody, but we would drink that water as if it was the best in the world. Rain could mean floods and it could compromise shelters, but it was hygiene too. This is easy transportation, if you had something that could keep you afloat. Confederates were in a story us notorious for destroying anything they could ea flotation device. Using wheelbarrows. Drinkable water was important, and this is why the South Carolina sea island refugees do so well and why they stayed and built. Theres not just saltwater, theres potable water. ,ome Mississippi River islands they would become strategic readouts. President s island, johnsons island, Island Number 10. These are the locations of contraband camps, places of and they become places unto themselves, places of an experiment. Most of these islands are all women and children and they learn how to do for themselves. They built lasting connections, even if the island communities themselves dont last. Is even a story of all slaves gravitate to rivers during this period and make their way through them. During this time as there is Great Migrations of free slaves, you see mexicans setting up great platforms right in the middle of the rio grande. If you can swim that platform without drowning, you can get your freedom in mexico. You are not just going north, you are going south too. The other scene i wanted to bring to your attention was revival. I argue that emancipation is a religious event. Markedation gets religiously by freed people in these caps. You will see it again and again, and its not about a particular nomination trying to bring people into the fold. Conversions, but its not the same as jesus christ as your lord and savior. Its much more oriented towards bringing about the result of emancipation, being in direct conversation with god. Here you see in this slide. His is on december 31, 1862 to make emancipation on january 1 as promised,. Meetings last all through the night. A lot of them are female lead. Awakening. N was an a new england minister captures his feelings. This is outside new orleans. He writes of the experience he had observing one of these watch night meetings. For a few moments, perfect silence prevailed. Then a single voice coming from a dark corner of the room began a low, mournful chants in which the whole assemblage joined by degrees. N old man knelt down to pray his voice when it first flow, then gained impulse. With went on, he burst out a good dear lord, we pray for the colored people. Not what we have been through. Do us free. The audience swayed back and forth in their seats. And then one or two began a wild, mournful chorus. In an instant, all joined in and the sound swelled upwards and downwards like the waves of the sea. The ritual he described as weird and overwhelming, he half laughed and then felt deep sadness. It was improvised and yet ordinate it. This is how strangers met and forged a language, a common way of knowing. This is just outside new orleans , a month after the emancipation proclamation. These few hundred blacks had come from a radius of 40 miles to meet in a rude church and voice their chat for permanent freedom. Funerals become the bane of the existence of many an Army Commander because there is a lot of death in these caps. Camps. They insist on having an allnight funeral for every fallen person. It starts at midnight for the torch procession. The coffin is very important. Free people fight hard for coffins. There are so many protests over burying too many people in a whole. Lasted all funerals night, sometimes into the morning. In fact, Congress Even passes a law. They want chaplains to give a monthly report saying how these funerals are going on, whats going on with the funerals. They show us that refugee camps were simultaneously faces of death and possibility. Slave religions reduced a. Echnology for communing around destructive, but under a system in which suffering had been so much a , forof everyday life slaves could also be redemptive. Firstmmander of the africanamerican regiment of volunteers i learned to think that we abolitionists had underrated the suffering produced by slavery among the negroes but overrated demoralization, or rather we did not know how the religious temperament of the negroes had checked demoralization. Loss, and loss became one strategy for meaning making and kinship forming. Suffering could be redemptive great the purpose of many of these meetings was directly positioned to bring about permanent emancipation. That is what is different. Its a little passive aggressive, when he gave him an receipt, but hes also saying you can come back for your slaves as soon as you pledge as soon as you pledge loyalty, things will go back. What free people were pushing for was a permanent freedom if they did not find their family, they made their family. A folks a climax of religion speaking of freedom, and strivings for lost family erupted, and in the void because ,here often werent reunions came religious means of conceiving new can. Lets look at how the caps change the landscape. Camps change the landscape. They get shut down on paper, but the people go someplace. Fort monro was a place in point case in point. We have fort monro as a mecca, rendezvous point. You can see it in the wta interviews that fdr, the new deal conducts in the 1930s. They systematically interview former slaves. They were talking about fort monro even then. Here are the numbers of the people who come into fort monroe. 61. Three on may 23, 18 67 in the next week. By summer there is 800, 500 of which are women and children. By early 1862, 1500. June, 5,000. By 1864, four monro and the satellite camps around it. The islands are more of a peninsula with a little strip they had to find these other camps and open them. 39,110 freeome to people. This is where we can see, if you , that is thes maps increase in norfolk county. Thats the legacy of the. Ontraband camp in fort monro you also have the grand contraband cap, built on the ashes of the confederate coming in and guerrilla warfare. Again, and it becomes a place where hampton institute, historically black university, becomes the linchpin. Or the black middle class alexandria, washington, d. C. We look at that as a case in point. Cultural multiple contraband caps on would forever change the character of the nations capital. The black population of alexandria increases from 2802 7300. April 16, 1862. Immediateres emancipation. Everyone from maryland and virginia coming into their borders. In 1863, the black population of d. C. Was just over 14,000. By 1870 it was 43,000. Memphis, tennessee is called new africa. There are six refugee caps there. They actually outnumber the white population in memphis. The population quadruples between 1860 and 1870. Hers turn back to marry and migration in 1863. What was the side of the refugees driven further south by their masters . Here was a meeting ground and the site of reunion realized. This crystallizes something so important to me. She got her free papers in 1863. You often think of urban spaces as the place of freedom greatness was under union control. She could enjoy her freedom, earn wages. Whered she went to texas, the slave trade was active, hunting for her mother. More than the security of a wage, making assertions of equality, living actual legal freedom, mary went to texas because freedoms function was a claim to her kin. Being together. Freedom did not mean anything if she wasnt with her mom. She wanted to know she existed, new her location. Even when free people find out their next of kin is dead, they want the body sent act. Nd the union often obliges it is the force and forcefulness of these families to be together that made freedom meaningful. Possibility opened up for reunion in this world instead of the next, which had been the core of like religion for all of slavery times. It was a possibility to remedy that prayer that was so often cited. It had been just white noise coming in the background. I will meet you on the other side. I will meet you in heaven. Now maybe it could be i will meet you at fort monroe. Here it was in these caps that slaves innovated new families of adoption, a woman with eight children finds another lost in a cornfield on the way and adopts her. The coming together of the cap played out the choreography of reunion. It was in these cramped communal spaces of mass existence that they turned strangers into kin, with song, latenight meeting, allnight funeral. Camps sety, refugee up the blueprint for community reconstruction. Much. You so [applause] anybody want to ask a question . [inaudible] about marys trip to mississippi in 1863, there was not much real regular Passenger Service tired service. How did that work . How did she get down to new orleans . Do you know . Thise way she tells it is marys own words. You from thet to way she describes what the boat was. It was a scary experience for her, she had been in st. Louis all her life. She said she got on a boat with a big wheel on it in the back. And she had to stay crouched down near the wheel. It wasnty fuss about hiding, she could be there. She had a ticket. Her master who freed her help her get a ticket. A was possible there was cargo piece of this. Stay near the big wheel and dont show your papers, dont look at anybody in the eye. That was the story she tells. Shes able to get to new orleans on the Mississippi River. Dave sullivan, newmarket, New Hampshire. All,ary find her family at and where did her life go, in a positive direction . Lifewas the outcome of her after the camp . Prof. Cooper sure. He asked, did mary find her family, and what happened next . Where did she go afterwards . Is, she finds her mother. Her father was pulled away when she was four years old. Her master legally sold her mother. Her mother was alone. He got extra pocket money by taking her down to shreveport, louisiana. Find her,termined to but she was the only can she knew. She did get married to George Armstrong shortly after the war, 1866. They settled in houston. She lived, her mother and George Armstrong, and she becomes a active. D is very she helps in the yellow fever epidemic later in the century. You can see her posing here. You can seeh that she is proud of her story. Nd proud of her experience thank you. My question is about a more sensitive topic. Africanamerican women being frequent targets of Sexual Assault and frequent victims, particularly at the hands of white soldiers, i was wondering if you had any information about this occurring in these refugee camps and what, if any, the response was from the community. Prof. Cooper as you can imagine, a core piece of reconstruction is about womens and the fears of what has been inherited from slavery. Whats interesting is both subjection and liberation, you actually have women bringing charges of rape. What is harrowing about it is you get to hear the details of the experiences of rape. But its also the first time this is able to be named as rape. Its never been legally construed as such. Soldier gets 5 years for rape in the norfolk area. [inaudible] you do have missionaries to are especially aware of it who are especially aware of it. This is where camps become places of survival. The survival is at first exciting for missionaries. Then they become alarmed. They are led by women. Women are trying to find how to have their own dual identities. Arguments defending [inaudible] thank you. [inaudible] at the same time that all these africanamerican refugees are fleeing to union lines, theres also southern white unionists that are also going to union lines to escape conscription. Can you talk about the relationship between these black refugee caps and white refugees who are showing up at the same time, how they relate to each other, how the government relates to them . In the records [inaudible] its when you have in different places is different context. Places like North Carolina, totally segregated. The white unionists are local. Nd they feel entitlement, in other places c jane austen. The story about a white refugee women who is lost, including her children. She has five children and she loses one and is so depressed. A black refugee woman says, youve got to get it together. You have 4 other children. Youve got to keep going. It becomes a bit of a religious text. Thank you for your question. Im thinking about the black people in the north and recently thed people in the south at extent to which the people in the north could reach out and do something. They did send a lot of soldiers down there. Could you speak to that a little bit . Blackcooper free communities and the north, how are they interacting. You have soldiers. You have transplants who are southern born and now living in the north. Black teachers charlotte is in the South Carolina sea island. Todd, lady in waiting. You see them mobilizing so they have mutual aid societies, getting funds from black communities in the north. Methodist, episcopal and episcopal zion churches are active in the effort. You do see a little bit of compassion. Compension. A lot of free people are interested in homesteading. One man says, i will wait on the union sons. Give me another year before i will sign up for your threeyear tour. They are a little wary of wage , and interested in working worshiping in a circle. Its actually a really interesting moment in moment. Thank you. Hello. Im from los angeles, california. How did one go about establishing a refugee cap camp . Was there land set aside by the government . They are so diverse. Its actually a work in progress, that i have a website. It is so different for each one. Ill give you an overview. [inaudible] what you see are sometimes they are selfmade, sometimes they are union made. Often what is interesting about is there isde camps a certain level of neglect. Within neglect, there are places for autonomy. The flip side of that is you have deaths, health crises. Sometimes it takes a few allies. There is a union town. What happens is they basically get an ally to get them 20 pegs of nails and boards and they build a community that is so successful that they start a making profit off turpentine and the union tries to kick them out. Find all kinds of gypsy communities moving around. More people come around. All of a sudden you have a town on the census in 1860. All of a sudden you will find these places completely created by people on the move. The Mississippi Valley camps have the best record. John eden is a very abolitionist chaplain. These are regulated by the government, but meant to have free people call the shots as much as possible. [inaudible] this is where the birth of different yurok receipts. Its good for historians to get a read on their notes. The superintendent of contraband is not a military role, but they often give this role to chaplains. They become assistant, then superintendent assistant superintendent. Choose different people who are good at reading just a little bit, and in they become teachers. This is how you have the first teachers. This is how you have so many women. Even though you read the memoirs their wivesticians, are helping them read the paper because they got education in these camps. Hearingwhere you start of the improvised leadership culture, especially among female missionaries and the superintendence. David rosen from alexandria, virginia. I was struck by your comment of refugeesnsions to have their own land at homestead. Is there anything to be said about what happened subsequently between the former refugees and the possibility of homesteading . Prof. Cooper thank you for that question. Sas actually has the best outcome. There is a movement in 1879 where africanamericans in the south who have in arrest been harrassed go to kansas. Astounding land in leavenworth, kansas. The bigpeople devastation is on the South Carolina sea islands. They are building with the intention of having these lands for themselves. If they think they are going to get it, a few get in an time to keep their land. The court has already ruled. What happens with Andrew Johnson, basically shermans order goes forward in january 1865. Then johnson revokes it that so howard, the head of the freemans, has to break the bad news. Are possibilities. You even have people going west. Up. Have people going illinois is the free state southernmost on the mississippi. You see people taking that evenge and finding land, going to nebraska, michigan, wisconsin. Thank you. Thats perfect timing. Its 2 03,