Leslie Schwalm - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Leslie Schwalm
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2018
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Slavery & Abolition, 2017
In the United States, slavery's destruction was a war-long process, shaped not only by Union mili... more In the United States, slavery's destruction was a war-long process, shaped not only by Union military victories, legislation, and presidential proclamations, but also by contradictory, inconsistent and sometimes lethal policies enacted by the Union military and federal government toward refugees from slavery. The haphazard nature of those policies and their often deadly consequences were never more evident than in the experience of enslaved women, mothers, and the children under their care, who approached Union lines in pursuit of freedom, but encountered a gauntlet of conflicting and unevenly enforced military edicts and a humanitarian crisis still only superficially understood by many Civil War historians. Emancipation in the United States is often heralded as the achievement of President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation (and secured by the enlistment of black men into the Union army). But Mary Grice, an enslaved servant on Adele Allston's coastal South Carolina plantation, knew better: Mary's daughters, her daughters-in-law, and her grandchildren were not freed by presidential proclamation but rather through Mary's secret arrangements, her son-in-law's knowledge of the countryside, and her children's willingness to risk their lives, by running to nearby Union forces. 1 Similarly, Missouri slave Saphronia Carter, about to give birth to her second child during the first year of the war, could not wait for Lincoln to embrace emancipation as a war goal; she moved herself and her children closer to freedom by refusing to be sent to Texas by her owner, who was anxious that the war might threaten his investment in human property. 2 In Mississippi, another mother, with an infant in arms, was one of thousands who lost their lives in a desperate effort to gain her freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation. Caught up in the chaos when tens of thousands of former slaves streamed into Vicksburg after it fell to Union forces in July 1863, the same fugitives were forced out of the depleted city by General Grant. Without food or shelter, she perished by the side of the road, only to be discovered days later, her infant barely alive, still at her breast. 3
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
The Women's Review of Books, 1994
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
The Women's Review of Books, 1992
Journal of Women's History, 1997
In his memoir of Civil War and Reconstruction, rice planter Charles Manigault offered what he reg... more In his memoir of Civil War and Reconstruction, rice planter Charles Manigault offered what he regarded as some of the "leading Characteristicks of The NEGRO, and. .. The Times, through which we have recently passed." For Manigault, those characteristics were exemplified by his former slave Peggy, who offered ample evidence of how emancipation and Confederate defeat had turned Manigault's world upside down. Manigault noted that as the war came to a close, former slaves plundered and destroyed planter homes throughout his lowcountry South Carolina neighborhood. Peggy "seized as Her part of the spoils my wife's Large & handsome Mahogany Bedstead & Mattrass & arranged it in her own Negro House on which she slept for some time" and in which Manigault bitterly imagined she enjoyed "her Sweet Dreams of freedom." Peggy also confiscated from the Manigault residence "some Pink Ribands, & tied in a dozen bows the woolly head of her Daughter, to the admiration of the other Negroes." Lastly, Manigault noted Peggy's response when he, joined by his son and a former overseer (and Confederate officer), came onto the farm and "immediately began to pitch the Negro Effects" into two wagons, intending to evict the freedpeople. Only Peggy ("the lady of the Big Mahogany Bed") tried to intervene: "placing her arms akimbo, said 'She would go off to the Provost Marshal in town & stop our unlawful proceedings with their property in their own homes.' "a Peggy's appropriation of her former mistresses' furniture, her use of contraband ribbons to style her daughter's hair, and her public challenge to Manigault's authority all signaled to Manigault that Peggy was pursuing her freedom with a literal vengeance, or what Manigault described as "recklessness and Ingratitude." In the actions of freedwomen like Peggy, and also in the responses that she and freedwomen like her provoked from former owners and from the civilian and military agents of Reconstruction, lies one of the most underexplored dynamics of the South's transition from slavery to freedom and the subject of this essay: the influence of former slave women's defining acts of freedom on the South's transition to a free labor society. In the last 15 years, historians have produced an impressive body of work reexamining the South's transition from slavery to freedom during and after the Civil War, work that has yielded new information and a
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2010
The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2011
Ask any Civil War historian about the cost of the Civil War and they will recite a host of well-k... more Ask any Civil War historian about the cost of the Civil War and they will recite a host of well-known assessments, from military casualties and government expenditures to various measures of direct and indirect costs. But those numbers are not likely to include an appraisal of the humanitarian crisis and suffering caused by the wartime destruction of slavery. Peace-time emancipation in other regions (the northern U.S., for example) and in other societies (like the British West Indies) certainly presented dangers and difficulties for the formerly enslaved, but wartime emancipation chained the new opportunities and possibilities for freedom to war’s violence, civil chaos, destruction and deprivation. The resulting health crisis, including illness, injury, and trauma, had immediate and lasting consequences for black civilians and soldiers. Although historians are more accustomed to thinking of enslaved people as the beneficiaries of this war, rather than its victims, we cannot assess t...
The Journal of American History, 2001
The Journal of American History, 1993
Civil War History, 2004
... Iowa State Historical Society, especially Mary Bennett, for their help in locating materials;... more ... Iowa State Historical Society, especially Mary Bennett, for their help in locating materials; and Kathleen Diffley, Kim Marra, Laura Rigal, and Doris ... New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 220-21; and James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the ...
The Journal of the Civil War Era, 2018
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Slavery & Abolition, 2017
In the United States, slavery's destruction was a war-long process, shaped not only by Union mili... more In the United States, slavery's destruction was a war-long process, shaped not only by Union military victories, legislation, and presidential proclamations, but also by contradictory, inconsistent and sometimes lethal policies enacted by the Union military and federal government toward refugees from slavery. The haphazard nature of those policies and their often deadly consequences were never more evident than in the experience of enslaved women, mothers, and the children under their care, who approached Union lines in pursuit of freedom, but encountered a gauntlet of conflicting and unevenly enforced military edicts and a humanitarian crisis still only superficially understood by many Civil War historians. Emancipation in the United States is often heralded as the achievement of President Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation (and secured by the enlistment of black men into the Union army). But Mary Grice, an enslaved servant on Adele Allston's coastal South Carolina plantation, knew better: Mary's daughters, her daughters-in-law, and her grandchildren were not freed by presidential proclamation but rather through Mary's secret arrangements, her son-in-law's knowledge of the countryside, and her children's willingness to risk their lives, by running to nearby Union forces. 1 Similarly, Missouri slave Saphronia Carter, about to give birth to her second child during the first year of the war, could not wait for Lincoln to embrace emancipation as a war goal; she moved herself and her children closer to freedom by refusing to be sent to Texas by her owner, who was anxious that the war might threaten his investment in human property. 2 In Mississippi, another mother, with an infant in arms, was one of thousands who lost their lives in a desperate effort to gain her freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation. Caught up in the chaos when tens of thousands of former slaves streamed into Vicksburg after it fell to Union forces in July 1863, the same fugitives were forced out of the depleted city by General Grant. Without food or shelter, she perished by the side of the road, only to be discovered days later, her infant barely alive, still at her breast. 3
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
The Women's Review of Books, 1994
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
Emancipation's Diaspora, 2009
The Women's Review of Books, 1992
Journal of Women's History, 1997
In his memoir of Civil War and Reconstruction, rice planter Charles Manigault offered what he reg... more In his memoir of Civil War and Reconstruction, rice planter Charles Manigault offered what he regarded as some of the "leading Characteristicks of The NEGRO, and. .. The Times, through which we have recently passed." For Manigault, those characteristics were exemplified by his former slave Peggy, who offered ample evidence of how emancipation and Confederate defeat had turned Manigault's world upside down. Manigault noted that as the war came to a close, former slaves plundered and destroyed planter homes throughout his lowcountry South Carolina neighborhood. Peggy "seized as Her part of the spoils my wife's Large & handsome Mahogany Bedstead & Mattrass & arranged it in her own Negro House on which she slept for some time" and in which Manigault bitterly imagined she enjoyed "her Sweet Dreams of freedom." Peggy also confiscated from the Manigault residence "some Pink Ribands, & tied in a dozen bows the woolly head of her Daughter, to the admiration of the other Negroes." Lastly, Manigault noted Peggy's response when he, joined by his son and a former overseer (and Confederate officer), came onto the farm and "immediately began to pitch the Negro Effects" into two wagons, intending to evict the freedpeople. Only Peggy ("the lady of the Big Mahogany Bed") tried to intervene: "placing her arms akimbo, said 'She would go off to the Provost Marshal in town & stop our unlawful proceedings with their property in their own homes.' "a Peggy's appropriation of her former mistresses' furniture, her use of contraband ribbons to style her daughter's hair, and her public challenge to Manigault's authority all signaled to Manigault that Peggy was pursuing her freedom with a literal vengeance, or what Manigault described as "recklessness and Ingratitude." In the actions of freedwomen like Peggy, and also in the responses that she and freedwomen like her provoked from former owners and from the civilian and military agents of Reconstruction, lies one of the most underexplored dynamics of the South's transition from slavery to freedom and the subject of this essay: the influence of former slave women's defining acts of freedom on the South's transition to a free labor society. In the last 15 years, historians have produced an impressive body of work reexamining the South's transition from slavery to freedom during and after the Civil War, work that has yielded new information and a
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 2010
The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 2011
Ask any Civil War historian about the cost of the Civil War and they will recite a host of well-k... more Ask any Civil War historian about the cost of the Civil War and they will recite a host of well-known assessments, from military casualties and government expenditures to various measures of direct and indirect costs. But those numbers are not likely to include an appraisal of the humanitarian crisis and suffering caused by the wartime destruction of slavery. Peace-time emancipation in other regions (the northern U.S., for example) and in other societies (like the British West Indies) certainly presented dangers and difficulties for the formerly enslaved, but wartime emancipation chained the new opportunities and possibilities for freedom to war’s violence, civil chaos, destruction and deprivation. The resulting health crisis, including illness, injury, and trauma, had immediate and lasting consequences for black civilians and soldiers. Although historians are more accustomed to thinking of enslaved people as the beneficiaries of this war, rather than its victims, we cannot assess t...
The Journal of American History, 2001
The Journal of American History, 1993
Civil War History, 2004
... Iowa State Historical Society, especially Mary Bennett, for their help in locating materials;... more ... Iowa State Historical Society, especially Mary Bennett, for their help in locating materials; and Kathleen Diffley, Kim Marra, Laura Rigal, and Doris ... New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 220-21; and James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the ...