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HISTORY
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Article: John Washington
Article: 1862 Freedom
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African fabric from the collection
of Pamela Bridgewater
Click here to hear excerpts from a traditional
spiritual sung as a choir processional during the 11:00 a.m. service on
September 3, 2006:
"Children of God,
keep on
marchin',
for
one of these days,
we shall be
free..."
(MP3 format)
Featured voices are the Senior
Choir and Men's Choir of Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), with the Rev. Ronald
Cooper singing the lead
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Date published: 2/25/2006
Gateway to freedom
In the summer of
1862, many slaves
passed through
Union lines to freedom
By JOHN HENNESSEY
Chief historian and chief of interpretation of Fredericksburg and
Spotsylvania National Military Park
HISTORY IS FULL of big
ideas--freedom, democracy, faith, revolution, liberty, war, emancipation.
But rarely in our history books do those big ideas take human form; rarely do
they crystallize into an event, a person or a moment we can grasp at the
distance of years or decades. And because of that, most people are not much
interested in history.
That hard fact is especially tragic in a place like Fredericksburg, which is
full of places, people and stories that speak to some of the most important
ideas in the history of the world. Washington, Jefferson, religious freedom,
war, emancipation, the slave auction block, the Sunken Road, St. George's and a
hundred ancient buildings in town. A few of these stories and places stand out
as the standard stuff of Fredericksburg's history. But at least one story has
been almost entirely overlooked. Here in Fredericksburg, nearly 144 years ago,
emancipation and freedom took human form as vividly as any place in America.
Fredericksburg, like America, wrestled with an immense incongruity: the presence
of oppression in a land conceived of liberty. This community had known
slavery--had come to need slavery--since its founding in 1727. Before the Civil
War, about one-third of Fredericksburg's population was enslaved. In Stafford
County, the figure was closer to 40 percent. In Spotsylvania and Caroline
counties, slaves outnumbered white residents almost 3-2.
Before 1862, emancipation was a distant dream for most Fredericksburg-area
slaves. A few gained freedom in the wills of owners who were more charitable in
death than they had been in life. Some tried to seize freedom themselves by
running away. And in rare cases, slaves rebelled outright, but with the power of
government aligned with the slave owner, rebellion invariably ended in death or
export for the slaves.
For most slaves, life took on an unwavering rhythm: sow tend harvest. Year after
year. Lifetime after lifetime, with little hope for freedom.
That changed with the coming of the Civil War in 1861. For white residents
hereabouts, civil war brought a combination of excitement and dread. For area
slaves, war brought hope (though also hardship, confusion and sometimes forced
relocation to points south). John Washington grew up a slave of Catherine
Taliaferro, who lived in what is today the National Bank building on Princess
Anne Street, and he remembered the firing on Fort Sumter as "the Death knell of
slavery." He rejoiced, "Little did I think that my deliverance was So near at
hand."
Fredericksburg's residents knew that the security of slavery was inversely
proportional to the nearness of freedom. "It became a well known fact that
slaves was daily making their escape into the Union lines," John Washington
remembered. And as the spring of 1862 dawned, it became apparent to everyone in
Fredericksburg that those Union lines were heading this way.
As word of the approaching Union army reached Fredericksburg, residents white
and black grew restless. Betty Herndon Maury, living in what is today known as
Haydon Hall on Princess Anne Street, noticed an immediate difference among the
slaves--one that stimulated ancient fears in Virginia's white residents. "The
Negroes are beginning to be very independent and impertinent," she wrote in her
diary. "I am afraid of the lawless Yankee soldiers, but that is nothing to my
fear of the Negroes if they should rise against us."
The blue masses arrived opposite Fredericksburg on April 18. The slave John
Washington was working that day as a barkeeper at the Shakespeare House Hotel
(on the site of what is now 815 Caroline St.). The boom of two cannon announced
the Union presence on Stafford Heights. Washington remembered that instantly
every white man in the hotel was out of the house, hustling out of town. But, he
wrote, "Every Man Servant was out on the house top looking over the River at the
yankees[,] for their glistening bayonats could eaziely be Seen." For John
Washington, this was one of the greatest moments of his 24-year-old life. "I
could not begin to express my new born hopes for I felt already like I Was
certain of My freedom now."
The Union army would occupy Fredericksburg peacefully for the next four months.
Word of the Union army's arrival--and slaves' chance for freedom--quickly spread
to farms and plantations in the counties south of Fredericksburg, and soon
slaves took to the roads and trails heading into town. From Caroline, Louisa,
Spotsylvania and Orange they came, sometimes as many as 200 in a day. By
summer's end, according to the man responsible for running the trains between
Falmouth and Aquia Landing, as many as 10,000 slaves passed through
Fredericksburg heading to points north. If ever a dot on America's map warranted
the label "gateway to freedom," it would be Fredericksburg during the spring and
summer of 1862.
John Washington was one of the first to go. Just hours after the Union army
arrived, he, his cousin and a free black man headed up the Rappahannock to, as
Washington said, "get right oppisite the 'Union Camp,'" and listen to the great
number of "Bands" then playing those Tuching tunes, "the Star Spangled Banner,"
"Red White and Blue," etc.
They went as far as what is today Old Mill Park, just below the Falmouth Bridge.
There at the river's edge, Union soldiers called out to them, "Do you want to
come over?"
Washington's cousin and friend at first declined, but Washington yelled out,
"Yes, I Want to come over."
After Washington arrived on the Falmouth side of the river--probably on what is
today Falmouth Beach--curious Union soldiers gathered around him, full of
questions. Washington distributed some Confederate newspapers he'd brought,
reading material much appreciated by the Yankees. Finally, the conversation
turned to slavery. "Do you want to be free?" asked one of the soldiers.
"By all means," Washington answered. Later he recalled, "I did not know What to
Say for I Was dumb With Joy and could only thank God and Laugh."
A Union soldier remembered, "They came in singly, by twos, and in squads;
sometimes on foot, or in an old cart with a lank mule attached." That soldier
had the job of quartering the freshly freed men and women "in the basement of
the Court House." "Here," he wrote, "they would sometimes form a large circle of
boys and girls, join hands and dance, rocking right to left and sing. They all
seemed as happy as though they owned the town."
Another soldier noted that slaves "absolutely swarm in the city" reveling in
their new condition. "They are universally struck with surprise at being treated
like men instead of chattel, though evincing by their slavish actions that they
feel more like chattel than men," he wrote.
The influx of slaves bent on freedom challenged the capacity of the Union army
to handle them all, and slaves found that the land of freedom within Union lines
was no paradise. That many Union soldiers abhorred the idea of abolition as much
as they despised their Confederate enemies added to the struggles of the freed
men and women. A local paper noted in June 1862 that hundreds of slaves "are
strolling through the town and country unprotected, uncared for, homeless,
penniless, and friendless, not knowing where to go, what to do, nor what's to
be." Freedom would be an uncertain road indeed.
Some Union soldiers urged former slaves not to migrate north, but to seek paid
work within the community--an idea that caused indignation among white
residents. Fredericksburg's most famous diarist, Jane Beale, saw this Union
meddling as an attempt to punish the white population. "This policy may suit
[the Yankees]," she wrote, "but it fixes upon us the incubus of supporting a
race who were ordained of a high heaven to support the white man." Beale, whose
slaves had not joined the exodus, continued, "I can but hope that no evil
influences will be brought to bear upon their minds inducing them to place
themselves and me in a more unhappy position than that which we now occupy. "
Despite some soldiers' efforts to convince former slaves to stay in
Fredericksburg, most moved northward, passing over the Rappahannock on temporary
bridges built by the Union army or occasionally poling their way across on
makeshift rafts. Once in Stafford, many "contrabands," as the soldiers called
them, took paid jobs as camp attendants in the Union army. That, in turn, gave
Union soldiers their first up-close look at those who had lived their lives in
bondage. A soldier from New York wrote, "That strong attachment to 'Massa' and
'Misses,' which, I often heard it said at the North, would lead them to cling to
their Southern homes and refuse freedom even if it were offered, I haven't yet
happened to see. With one voice they breathe longings for a Northern home, eager
to turn their backs upon their masters forever, if they can only carry their
families with them."
Another Yankee pondered a more common question, "Who will take care of them and
how will it be done?"
Most former slaves passing through Fredericksburg would care for and make lives
for themselves (no easy thing, for freedom did not mean equality). The Union
army shepherded them northward along the line of the Richmond, Fredericksburg &
Potomac Railroad (some of them walking, some riding the cars) to Aquia Landing.
There, virtually every day all summer, steamboats carried loads of freed people
to Washington. Some, like John Washington, eventually settled there. In fact,
more than 300 former slaves from the African Baptist Church in Fredericksburg
(now Shiloh Baptist Church-Old Site) founded a new church in Washington--Shiloh,
which still exists, and which still proudly proclaims its Fredericksburg roots.
Others moved to new homes in Ohio (a most common destination) or other Northern
states. A few likely returned to the Fredericksburg area after war's end to
reunite with family or to simply work in a familiar land.
The exodus of slaves from the Fredericksburg region devastated the local
economy. Before the war, Southerners had argued that abolition would ruin the
South's economy, and in large measure the war proved them correct, at least in
this area. In Stafford County, 60 percent of former slaves left; in
Spotsylvania, 30 percent. It would take Spotsylvania nearly 100 years to reclaim
its wartime population (about 12,000).
The end of slavery also demolished the fortunes of white families. In
Spotsylvania, the value of personal property dropped 92 percent between 1860 and
1870--largely due to the exodus of slaves. James Horace Lacy, the secessionist
owner of Chatham and the biggest slaveholder in Stafford County, saw his
personal fortune shrink from $180,000 in 1860 (a huge figure for the time) to
$2,000 in 1870. Lacy lost more than 100 slaves during the war; the economic
impact of that loss was real. The family never recovered, and neither did dozens
of others across the region.
The image of slaves passively awaiting emancipation is exploded by the
experience of slaves in the Fredericksburg area during the spring and summer of
1862. Thousands of slaves seized freedom for themselves. Their efforts are an
eloquent and vivid testament to Lincoln's vision for a new America--a "new birth
of freedom." It's one of those big historical ideas taking human form, right in
our own backyards--a story of hardship endured, of freedom claimed, a legacy of
hope that reverberates still.
Copyright 2006 by The Free Lance-Star
For
another article relating to John Washington's escape from slavery in
Fredericksburg, click here.
For more information on the history of Shiloh
Baptist Church (Old Site), where John Washington was a member,
click here.
For information on Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site)
today, click here.
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