Unit
Years: 1846-1857
Culture & Community
The end of the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution brought an end to enslavement across the United States. But emancipation–the freedom from bondage–had different effects on different people. For some formerly enslaved people, emancipation meant the freedom to define themselves outside of the system of enslavement by choosing a new name, enrolling in school, getting legally married, and reuniting with family. For others, emancipation brought continued racial discrimination, violence, and repression.
Emancipation came with its own set of opportunities, as well as new obstacles that Black Americans had to overcome to live truly free lives. The federal government created the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist formerly enslaved people in meeting these challenges and opportunities. The Freedmen’s Bureau supported Black Americans in finding their loved ones, set up public schools for Black children and adults, and distributed resources to formerly enslaved people who had few personal belongings. But the Freedmen’s Bureau and other government agencies–including the U.S. military–also limited the opportunities that Black people could pursue by enforcing exploitative sharecropping agreements, keeping Black soldiers from returning to their families, and failing to enshrine legal protections for Black Americans during the brief period of Reconstruction. For many formerly enslaved Black Americans, the promise of emancipation did not quite match its reality.
Excerpt from interview with former slave Felix Haywood, age 92, of San Antonio, Texas, “Like Freedom Was a Place” Felix Haywood, born into slavery in St. Hedwig, Texas, was one of thousands interviewed for the Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal Writers’ Project.
The end of the war, it come just like that—like you snap your fingers. . . . How did we know it! Hallelujah broke out—
Abe Lincoln freed the n*****
With the gun and the trigger;
And I ain't going to get whipped any more,
I got my ticket,
Leaving the thicket,
And I'm a-heading for the Golden Shore!
Soldiers, all of a sudden, was everywhere—coming in bunches, crossing and walking and riding, Everyone was a-singing. We was all walking on golden clouds. Hallelujah!
Union forever,
Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Although I may be poor,
I'll never be a slave—
Shouting the battle cry of freedom.
Everybody went wild. We all felt like heroes, and nobody had made us that way but ourselves. We was free. Just like that, we was free. It didn’t seem to make the whites mad, either. They went right on giving us food just the same. Nobody took our homes away, but right off colored folks started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they'd know what it was—like it was a place or a city. Me and my father stuck, stuck close as a lean tick to a sick kitten. The Gudlows started us out on a ranch. My father, he'd round up cattle—unbranded cattle—for the whites. They was cattle that they belonged to, all right; they had gone to find water 'long the San Antonio River and the Guadalupe. Then the whites gave me and my father some cattle for our own. My father had his own brand—7 B)—and we had a herd to start out with of seventy.
We knowed freedom was on us, but we didn’t know what was to come with it. We thought we was going to get rich like the white folks We thought we was going to be richer than the white folks, 'cause we was Stronger and knowed how to work, and the whites didn’t, and they didn’t have us to work for them any more. But it didn’t turn out that way. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud, but it didn’t make 'em rich.
Did you ever stop to think that thinking don’t do any good when you do it too late! Well, that's how it was with us. If every mothers son of a black had thrown 'way his hoe and took up a gun to fight for his own freedom along with the Yankees, the war’d been over before it began. But we didn't do it. We couldn’ help stick to our masters. We couldn’t no more shoot 'em than we could fly. My father and me used to talk bout it. We decided we was too soft and freedom wasn’t going to be much to our good even if we had a education.
Source: reprinted in Botkin, B.A., ed. Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Delta, 1989, 231. (Document 4.7.2)
Excerpt from interview with former slave Simon Phillips, age 90, of Birmingham, Alabama, “What’s Mine Is Mine” Simon Phillips, born into slavery in Hale County, Alabama in 1847, was one of thousands interviewed for the Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal Writers’ Project.
One day . . . a few n*****s was sticking sticks in the ground when the massa come up.
"What you n*****s doing!" he asked.
"We is staking off the land, Massa. The Yankees say half of it is ourn."
The massa never got mad. He just look calm-like.
"Listen, n*****s," he says, "what's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours You are just as free as I and the missus, but don't go fooling around my land. I've tried to be a good master to you. I have never been unfair. Now if you wants to stay, you are welcome to work for me. I'll pay you one-third the crops you raise. But if you wants to go, you sees the gate."
The massa never have no more trouble. Them n*****s just stays right there and works. Sometime they loaned the massa money when he was hard pushed. Most of 'em died on the old grounds.
Source: reprinted in Botkin, B.A., ed. Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery. Delta, 1989, 239. (Document 4.7.4)
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was a crucial step in ending institutionalized slavery in the United States following the Civil War and emancipating millions of enslaved individuals.
The act of setting free or liberating someone from slavery, servitude, or oppression, often through legal or formal means.
An executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War, declaring that all enslaved people in Confederate-controlled territory were to be freed.
The period in American history following the Civil War, approximately from 1865 to 1877, where efforts were made to rebuild and transform the Southern states that had seceded from the Union. It aimed to address issues such as the integration of formerly enslaved African Americans into society.
Also known as the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, a federal agency established by Congress in 1865 during the Reconstruction era to assist formerly enslaved African Americans and impoverished whites in the South with education, employment, health care, and other social services. The Freedmen's Bureau played a significant role in supporting the transition from slavery to freedom and promoting civil rights and equality in the post-Civil War South.
Provisions of food or supplies distributed by authorities or organizations, typically during times of scarcity, emergencies, or conflicts, to ensure that individuals or populations have access to essential resources to meet their basic needs.
Sharecropping was an agricultural system prevalent in the Southern United States after the Civil War, in which landless farmers, often formerly enslaved individuals, rented land and equipment from landowners in exchange for a share of the crops grown.
The 17th President of the United States (1865-1869) who succeeded Abraham Lincoln after his assassination and oversaw the early Reconstruction period following the Civil War.
