Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T00:09:48.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconstructing African American Mobility after Emancipation, 1865–67

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2017

William G. Thomas III ,
Richard G. Healey  and
Ian Cottingham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Historians and social scientists have relied on contemporaneous textual accounts to document African American mobility in the immediate aftermath of emancipation after the Civil War, but they have interpreted them in widely varying ways. Some emphasize large-scale migration across the South, while others suggest that most movements were local and limited. This research tracks the early or “first wave” of African American migrants between 1865 and 1867 within and out of the South in an attempt to map the motion taking place after the war and to document the scale, direction, and intensity of African American mobility in the period between 1865 and 1867. The Freedmen's Bureau records indicate certain kinds of movements within the South, while our census methodology shows that there was more movement out of the South than accounted for in the Freedmen's Bureau labor records or previously accounted for in the historiography. Further, we observe two types of movement: short-term migration based on one-year contracts, perhaps returning to the point of origin, and another movement not always mediated through the Freedmen's Bureau that was more long term, but also subject to the freedperson's return to the point of origin. We seek to chart the process of emancipation over time and across space, detecting spatial patterns on an otherwise highly variable individual experience. No study has used the Freedmen's Bureau labor contracts to trace African American labor movements, and no study has deployed the 1880 individual census data to examine African American migration based on birthplace cohorts.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , Winter 2017 , pp. 673 - 704
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, Luther (2003) “‘It was north of Tennessee’: African American migration to Louisville and the meaning of the South.” Ohio Valley History 3 (3): 37–52.Google Scholar
Asaka, Ikuko (2010) “Race across empire and republic: Black migration to Canada and racial, national, and gender formations in Atlantic context.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin–Madison.Google Scholar
Ash, Stephen (2004) A Year in the South: 1865: The True Story of Four Ordinary People Who Lived through the Most Tumultuous Twelve Months in American History. New York: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Ayers, Edward L. (1993) The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ayers, Edward L., and Nesbit, Scott (2011) “Seeing emancipation: Scale and freedom in the American South.” The Journal of the Civil War Era 1 (1): 3–24.Google Scholar
Berlin, Ira, Miller, Steven F., and Rowland, Leslie (1988) “Afro-American families and the transition from slavery to freedom.” Radical History Review 42: 89–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulton, S. Charles (2006) “Fugitives from injustice: Freedom seeking slaves in Arkansas, 1880–1860.” National Park Service. nps.gov/subjects/ugrr/discover_history/upload/fugitives-from-injustice-freedom-seeking-slaves-in-arkansas.pdf.Google Scholar
Bureau of Freedmen and Refugees. Report of Hon. T. D. Eliot, Chairman of the Committee on Freedmen's Affairs, H.R. Rep. No. 30–40 (1868).Google Scholar
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Tennessee. NARA microfilm publication M999, rolls 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.Google Scholar
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Records of the Field Offices for the District of Columbia. NARA microfilm publication M1902, roll 18.Google Scholar
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Records of the Field Offices for the State of Kentucky. M1904, roll 64, 65, 66, 68, 123.Google Scholar
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Records of the Field Offices for the State of Tennessee. NARA microfilm publication M1911, rolls 15, 53.Google Scholar
Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. Records of the Field Offices for Virginia. NARA microfilm publication M1913, rolls 40, 42, 47, 48, 52, 156, 157, 160.Google Scholar
Cadagin, Sean P. (2011) “Becoming the land of Lincoln: Emancipation and the construction of race in Illinois, 1853–1892.” PhD diss., Northern Illinois University.Google Scholar
Chay, Kenneth, and Munshi, Kaivan (2011) “Black mobilization after emancipation: Evidence from Reconstruction and the Great Migration.” econ.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/23211/Munshi_04172012.pdf.Google Scholar
Chicago Tribune (1865a) “The news.” August 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849–1986).Google Scholar
Chicago Tribune (1865b) “The Aquia Creek riot.” August 17. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849–1986).Google Scholar
Chicago Tribune (1867) “Reconstruction.” April 8. ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849–1986).Google Scholar
Chilton, Katherine (2009) “‘City of refuge’: Urban labor, gender, and family formation during slavery and the transition to freedom in the District of Columbia, 1820–1875.” PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University.Google Scholar
Cimbala, Paul A. (1997) Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Cleveland Morning Leader (1860) “Free negroes expelled from Arkansas.” January 7. Chronicling America. “Force, freedom, and the army in Reconstruction.” chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83035143/1860-01-07/ed-1/seq-2/.Google Scholar
Cohen, William (1991) At Freedom's Edge: Black Mobility and the Southern White Quest for Racial Control, 1861–1915. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Delaney, David (2002) “The space that race makes.” Professional Geographer 54 (1): 6–14.Google Scholar
Downs, Gregory P., and Nesbit, Scott (2014) Mapping Occupation. mappingoccupation.org.Google Scholar
Eaton, John (1865) “Report of the general superintendent of freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and State of Arkansas for 1864.” Memphis, n.p. catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011534808.Google Scholar
Executive Documents of the House of Representatives, 1865–66 (1866). Vol. 8. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Fain, Cicero (2011) “Early black mobility and the post-emancipation black community in Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865–1871.” West Virginia History N.S. 5 (2): 29–58.Google Scholar
Farmer-Kaiser, Mary (2010) Freedwomen and the Freedmen's Bureau. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Field, Kendra T. (2015) “‘No such thinking as stand still’: Migration and geopolitics in African American history.” The Journal of American History 102 (3): 693–718.Google Scholar
Fields, Barbara Jeanne (1978) “The Maryland way from slavery to freedom.” PhD diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
Foner, Eric (1988) Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Gerber, David A. (1976) Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860–1915. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Glymph, Thavolia (2008) Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hacker, J. David (2011) “A census-based count of the Civil War dead.” Civil War History 57 (4): 307–48.Google Scholar
Hague, E. (2010) “‘The right to enter every other state’: The Supreme Court and African American mobility in the United States.” Mobilities 5 (3): 331–47.Google Scholar
Hahn, Steven, Miller, Steven F., O'Donovan, Susan, Rodrigue, John C., and Rowland, Leslie, eds. (2008) Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series 3: Volume 1 Labor, 1865. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Hayden, René, Kaye, Anthony E., Masur, Kate, Miller, Steven F., O'Donovan, Susan, Rowland, Leslie S., and West, Stephen A., eds. (2013) Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867, Series 3: Volume 2, Land and Labor, 1866–1867. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Howard, O. O. (1869) Report of Brevet Major General O. O. Howard, Commissioner Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, to the Secretary of War, October 20, 1869. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Howard, Victor B. (1983) Black Liberation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862–1884. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Jackson, W. Sherman (1980) “Emancipation, negrophobia and Civil War politics in Ohio, 1863–1865.” Journal of Negro History 65 (3): 250–60.Google Scholar
Johnson, Michael (1999) “Out of Egypt: The migration of former slaves to the Midwest during the 1860s in comparative perspective,” in Hine, Darlene Clark and McLoud, Jacqueline (eds.) Crossing Boundaries: Comparative History of Black People in Diaspora. Bloomington: Indiana University Press: 223–45.Google Scholar
Kharif, Wali (2001) “Black reaction to segregation and discrimination in post Reconstruction Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 64 (3): 344–64.Google Scholar
Intelligencer, Lancaster (1860) January 17.Google Scholar
Litwack, Leon (1979) Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Masur, Kate (2010) An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Mellen, William P. (1864) Report Relative to Leasing Abandoned Plantations and Affairs of the Freed People in First Special Agency. Washington, DC: McGill and Witherow.Google Scholar
Nelson, Scott Reynolds (1999) Iron Confederacies: Southern Railways, Klan Violence, and Reconstruction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Nesbit, Scott (2010) “Mapping marriage and migration in emancipation-era Virginia.” Hidden Patterns of the Civil War. dsl.richmond.edu/civilwar/mme.html.Google Scholar
Nesbit, Scott (2011) “Scales intimate and sprawling: Slavery, emancipation, and the geography of marriage in Virginia.” Southern Spaces. southernspaces.org/2011/scales-intimate-and-sprawling-slavery-emancipation-and-geography-marriage-virginia.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nesbit, Scott, and Ayers, Edward L. (2012) “Visualizing Emancipation.” dsl.richmond.edu/emancipation.Google Scholar
Nesbit, Scott, DeLozier, Grant, Floyd, Grant T., McIntosh, John, and Yuan, May (2012) “Mapping all the troops.” Paper presented at the Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Meeting, Lexington, Kentucky, June 16.Google Scholar
New York Times (1865a) “The Negro in Georgia.” June 12. nytimes.com/1865/06/12/news/negro-georgia-great-problem-before-south-shall-accommodate-itself-new.html.Google Scholar
New York Times (1865b) “From Washington.” July 27. nytimes.com/1865/07/27/news/washington-admissibility-negro-testimony-interesting-important-case-honors-for.html.Google Scholar
New York Times (1867a) “The South.” January 16. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851–2010).Google Scholar
New York Times (1867b) “Affairs in Virginia. From our own correspondent.” April 7. ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2006).Google Scholar
O'Donovan, Susan (2007) Becoming Free in the Cotton South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Page, Brian Daniel (2009) “Local matters: Race, place, and community politics after the Civil War.” PhD diss., Ohio State University.Google Scholar
Presley, Leister E., Mrs. (1889) Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeast Arkansas, Comprising a Condensed History of the State. Chicago: Goodspeed Publishing Co. Google Scholar
Rabinowitz, Howard (1996) Race Relations in the Urban South, 1865–1890. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Randall, James G. (1913) “Captured and abandoned property during the Civil War.” American Historical Review 19 (1): 65–79.Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger L., and Sutch, Richard (1977) One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ruef, Martin (2012) “Constructing labor markets: The valuation of black labor in the U.S. South, 1831–1867.” American Sociological Review 77 (6): 970–88.Google Scholar
Schwalm, Leslie A. (2004) “‘Overrun with free negroes’: Emancipation and wartime migration in the Upper Midwest.” Civil War History 50 (2): 145–74.Google Scholar
Staley, Amy Dru (1998) From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and Marketplace in the Age of Emancipation. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Steedman, James P., and Fullerton, J. S. (1866) “The Freedmen's Bureau. Final report of Gens. Steedman and Fullerton.” Daily Union and American, August 9. Chronicling America. chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85038519/1866-08-12/ed-1/seq-1/.Google Scholar
Sternhell, Yael (2008) “Revolution in motion: Human mobility and the transformation of the South, 1861–1865.” PhD diss., Princeton University.Google Scholar
Sternhell, Yael (2012) Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Stewart, Mart A. (1996) “What nature suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Sumpter, Amy R. (2011) “Racial identity, spatial mobility, and labor in the non-plantation rural South, 1880–1940.” Journal of Historical Geography 37 (4): 460–69.Google Scholar
Thomas, William G. (2011) The Iron Way: Railroads, the Civil War, and the Making of Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, William G., Nash, Kaci, and Shepard, Rob (2016) “Places of Exchange: Human and Material Flows in Civil War Alexandria.” Civil War History 62 (4): 359–398.Google Scholar
US Bureau of the Census (1872) Ninth Decennial Census of the United States, 1870. Volume I. The Statistics of the Population of the United States. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Williams, Heather Andrea (2012) Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Wright, Gavin (1986) Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar