Wartime Reconstruction:
The West
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Union captures New Orleans April-May 1862
144,000 white population
Largest city of the Deep South
Critical transportation link between
Mississippi (and the interior) and eastern
seaboard (and Atlantic)
Flag Officer David G. Farragut who commanded
the Union fleet that broke through to New
Orleans.
Major General Benjamin
Franklin Butler, Military
Governor of New Orleans
under Union Occupation.
Panoramic View of New
Orleans-Federal Fleet at
Anchor in the River, ca. 1862.
Banks’ labor plan
• 700,000 Af-Ams under strict control
• Compulsory yearly contracts
• Strict limitations on mobility
Regulations by S. W. Cozzens, [Feb? 1864], filed between P-76
and P-77 1864, Letters Received, ser. 1920, Civil Affairs,
Department of the Gulf, U.S. Army Continental Commands,
Record Group 393 Pt. 1, National Archives. Although this
printed copy bears no evidence of its date of issue, Cozzens's
regulations probably date from about February 15, 1864, when
he transmitted a slightly different handwritten version to a
subordinate “inspector of plantations.” (S. W. Cozzens to Mr.
Charles L. Dunbar, 15 Feb. 1864, vol. 123, pp. 119–21, Outgoing
Correspondence of the Plantation Bureau, 3rd Agency, Civil
War Special Agencies of the Treasury Department, Record
Group 366, National Archives.)
• Unionists
– Conservative planters and merchants
– Free State Association
– Antebellum free blacks
• Constitutional convention (1864)
– Ends slavery, but ignores calls for black suffrage
• Given that a prosperous society depends on
economic growth, how do you make people
industrious?
• Which forms of political and social
organization are most conducive to general
prosperity?
Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois, from its
Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847
(Chicago: S.C. Griggs, 1854), 95.
“A Glance at Our Moral and Social Condition,”
The United States Democratic Review 42
(October 1858): 315-22.
William Ellery Channing, A Selection from the
Works of William E. Channing D. D. (Boston:
American Unitarian Association, 1855), 21.
Free labor
• “free labor” ideals
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Healthy desire to fulfill wants and accumulate goods
Tend to virtuous personal habits
And hence political liberty
Economic carrots rather than sticks
Free markets above all (laissez faire)
• Against this measure, how did slavery stack up?
• When is it appropriate for the government to
step in?
Edward S. Philbrick to The Liberator (May 13, 1864)
It seems to me, and I think the same view would be taken by any practical men who
has had much intercourse with laboring classes, that Industry to the great and by far
the most efficient engine to be used for the elevation of the negro. In his present
condition, his industry has never been cultivated one bit more than his intellect. His
wits have been almost exclusive employed, for generations back, in devising means
to shirk labor, for his labor was never rewarded pro rate. Thus he has become a
confirmed shirk, and the habit is not be shaken off in a hurry. Any system of labor by
which be can put down on his own responsibility, and he required to provide for
himself, at the same time paying bas exactly in proportion to the amount of labor
actually performed, will be the surest way to develop habits of industry , and get rid
of the degrading effects of compulsory labor and a position of no responsibility.
Edward S. Philbrick to The Liberator (May 13, 1864) [cont.]
In this view, I believe our Port Royal system is far better than any system by which
the laborer is paid for his time by the day or month. The very moment he sells his
time to me, the negro begins to device means of spending that time with at little
exertion as possible; and, as mentioned above, the negro has had an education that
renders him very expert in this thing. The very strongest incentive to exertion that
can be devised is, undoubtedly, to have an interest in the land; provided a man has
sufficient capital to live on while raising a crop for tale, and provided be has
sufficient confidence in the future to work for a distant reward, and sufficient
knowledge and appreciation of the usages of civilized society to live at peace with
his neighbor, and respect his neighbor's rights.
Edward S. Philbrick to The Liberator (May 13, 1864) [cont.]
If the possession of the land is the strongest incentive to industry , it should also be
regarded as the highest boon, next to citizenship, which a man can acquire in
society. It should, therefore, not be indiscriminately given, away, but held as the
reward for self-imposed exertion. The negro should not be allowed to buy land to
the exclusion of whites, any more than the white to the exclusion of the negro. They
should both have a fair chance in the race, on the same footing; and then the negro
will soon show himself not only capable of earning his homestead, but becoming a
citizen too; and I have confidence that this will be granted him in time….
The friends of the negro have, in my opinion, made a mistake in wishing to make
special enactments In his favor. They thus not only tend to defeat their own ends, by
raising to as active condition against him a degree of odium among men who might
otherwise let him alone, but, by petting the negro himself, tend to demoralize him
by removing from his shoulders a part of the burthen which I verily believe God
intended him to bear—viz., the full responsibility of working for his living on as equal
footing with other men.
Should the freedmen be viewed as ready to take their place as
citizens and participants in the competitive marketplace, or did
their unique historical experience oblige the federal government
to take special action on their behalf?
Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction, p. 31.
The players
• The freedpeople (those who had been enslaved)
– Want to reconstruct meaningful lives in freedom
• The planters (and their representatives in
government)
– Want coerced labor necessary to continue to generate
profits
• The state (the national government)
– Wanted profitable but “free” exploitation of periphery
to benefit the nation
Freedman’s Bureau officers, who were often taken from the ranks of military officials, were charged with
reconstructing the plantation regime by negotiating between planters and the freedpeople
What freedpeople wanted:
“peasant proprietorship”
• To reconstitute families, and work in families
(rather than in the gangs demanded by plantation
labor)
• To engage in market relations only on nonexploitative terms
• To produce for subsistence and local exchange
(rather than for the market)
• To reconstitute themselves as a self-sufficient
peasantry (as opposed to a wage-earning
proletariat)
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Access to capital
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the state
Desire for labor control
planters
freedpeople
Being freed into a competitive capitalist economy with virtually no capital,
the freedpeople were ripe for exploitation and coercion. Both the planters
and the state had an interest in the persistence of economic success in the
plantation complex. How would they fare from place to place?
• Proletarian: freedpeople compelled by low
availability of land, competitive market
conditions , and law to continue to work on
plantations on “free” (but exploited) wagelabor basis
• Peasantry: freedpeople able to reconstitute
themselves as a self-sufficient rural peasantry,
largely independent of external market forces
The sole ambition of the freedman at the present time appears to be to
become the owner of a little piece of land, there to erect an humble
home, and to dwell in peace and security at his own free will and
pleasure : if he wishes to cultivate the ground to cotton on his own
account, to be able to do so without any one to dictate to him hours or
systems of labor; if he wishes instead to plant corn or sorghum or sweet
potatoes, to be able to do that free from any outside control, — in one
word, to be free to control his own time and efforts without any thing
that can remind him of past sufferings in bondage.
A. Warren Kelsey, Orangeburg, S. C, Sept. 8, 1865.
The Davis Bend
experiment