Notes by topic
Slave Life
Contraband
Change of pace
- Treatment of slaves ranged from mild to paternalistic to cruel and sadistic.
- Whipping was a usual punishment
- Families were sold away from each other
- 1857: The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott Decision ruled that slaves were subhuman property with no rights of citizenship which meant they had no legal means of protesting the way they were treated.
- Due to their treatment, slaves would do things such as fake an illness, sabotage machinery, runaway, and sometimes commit arson or murder to escape their owners treatment.
- Little Rock alone had about 43 free black residents (8.5 percent of the black population) as early as 1845 and just as many free blacks living in the adjacent areas of Pulaski County. By 1850 some 608 free blacks had settled in Arkansas even though an 1843 law prohibited any more free black settlers.
- When the state's free black population grew to 682 persons the governor of Arkansas proposed legislation "to secure the emigration of all the free persons of color from the state, and to prevent the subsequent residence of any of them in it." The legislature passed the bill and also required that after January 1, 1860, any remaining free blacks could be forced into slavery. Most free blacks fled Arkansas. The 1860 census listed only 0.1 percent (114) free black persons, a drop from the 2.3 percent of 1840.
- Gov. Henry M. Rector, a Democrat, personally led the secessionists in rebellion against the United States. He approved the taking of Federal arsenals in Arkansas by state forces and the movement to rid the state of potential black leaders, the free blacks.
- February 18, 1861, the voters of Arkansas cast ballots against secession. Then on May 6, 1861, after a successful Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the campaign swung in favor of the southern nationalists who persuaded all but one convention delegate to approve Arkansas's ordinance of secession.
- On April 12, 1861 the American Civil War began.
- On May 7, 1861, Arkansas became the ninth slave state to join the Confederate States of America. Yet, what the Confederates needed most to win the war, they would never gain- the loyalty and support of a majority of black and white Arkansans.
- The slaveholders and their Confederate allies continued to maintain control of Arkansas by passing loyalty laws and conscription acts. They also used domestic violence and intimidation to keep the pro-Union citizens in check.
- Tension grew between Northern and Southern Arkansas about slavery, Southerners got laws passed in the 1850s which “prohibited owners from granting freedom to their slaves.
- Southerners argued that black people were like children and needed someone to care for them, so they thought slavery was a paternal system b/c it kept slaves fed, clothed, and occupied.
- Northerners did not think of slavery as a paternal system at all, yet they still thought of blacks as an inferior race.
- Many slaves escaped using the Underground Railroad to freedom in the North.
- September 1862 that President Abraham Lincoln yielded to the abolitionists' arguments and made a strategic decision to declare the slaves free in rebellious territories effective January 1, 1863.
- Yet President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation caused social upheaval in Confederate Arkansas, because once they sensed the disruption of the war and then heard about the President's Proclamation, the rebellious slaves ran away in increasing numbers. To keep slavery intact, the Confederates passed a law to exempt white men from military service if their farms included twenty slaves or more. Later (May 1863), the Confederate government changed the "20 Negro law" to cover mostly plantations with minors and dependent.
- Near Helena in November 1862, Union navy officer James W. Shirk said: "The slaves heard of the President's proclamation, and that in spite of all the owners could do, they would get to the river. All of those who came on board the Lexington tell me that they are to be free on the 1st of January [1863], but their owners are getting ready to move them back from the river as soon as possible.”
- Some Arkansas slave owners ran their slaves into Confederate territories. For example, Texas was reportedly filled with refugee slaves, many of whom were from Arkansas. Plans to move the slaves to Confederate areas were devised too late for most slave owners in Arkansas counties b/c blacks outnumbered whites in many districts.
- Even earlier than November 1862, the Arkansas Delta became the first area to lose slaves due to the blacks that fled the river plantations when Union naval ships boldly (as in guns showing, etc) cruised the rivers...
- Former slaves thought that their families "could easily be obtained from Helena," b/c the Union naval commanders shipped many fugitive slaves to Memphis and points as far north as Illinois, in order to provide badly needed labor for naval operations in November 1862.
- Between the spring of 1862 and the fall of 1863, Confederate control of the Mississippi Valley and Arkansas faded fast.
- With great excitement fugitive slaves followed his army's trail every step of the way to Little Rock. On September 10, 1863, Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele's army secured the capital city of Little Rock and later extended Union army posts along the White River from Fort Smith to Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Camden, and from DeVall's Bluff east to Helena.
- Slaves in west Tennessee, eastern Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana walked away from the farms without fearing the mistress's empty threats and pleas.
Contraband
- Beginning in August 1862, to prevent being overwhelmed by the flood of black fugitives, the Federal government established a contraband camp system.
- Some blacks headed back home after finding little food, poor shelter, and no work in Helena's overcrowded Camp Ethiopia. In the summer of 1863, northern missionary societies were encouraged to enter occupied territories, where they and army officers worked together to obtain blankets, tents, and clothing for the contrabands. It was too late to save some 25 percent of Helena's earliest contrabands who died from disease and exposure.
- In October 1863 the federal authorities instituted a labor and wage system to convert idle fugitive slaves into active workers.
- Land-lease system consisted of a few blacks gaining permission to lease abandoned lands. They were to use this land to farm their own small plots often to fifty acres, many growing vegetables for subsistence and cotton for profit. But the land-lease system for blacks was short lived in Arkansas. Few blacks had either proper tools or adequate supplies to take advantage of the system.
- After abolitionists and missionaries argued that the former slaves needed help to transcend slavery, in March 1865 the Congress created the Bureau of Freedmen, Abandoned Lands, and Refugees (Freedmen's Bureau) to help convert America's former slaves into self-supporting citizens.
- "In late 1865 the Freedmen's Bureau began to relocate ("scatter") thousands of urban blacks by arresting "idle Negroes," imposing fines in the Freedmen's Courts, and assigning the convicted persons to white farmers who paid the fines.
- Not only did it attempt to revive the agricultural system, but the Arkansas Freedmen's Bureau supported schools, hospitals, and cemeteries for the freedmen. Under Maj. William S. Sergeant, the Arkansas Freedmen's Bureau set up a Freedmen's Court to dispense justice and confiscate abandoned post office packages to buy food and supplies for thousands of destitute whites and blacks. The Freedmen's Bureau was the first federally-funded social work program for blacks.
- The Freedmen's Bureau still failed to give economic independence to black Arkansans. Too many Bureau agents helped to corrupt the Arkansas system by taking bribes to furnish other whites (land owners and renters) with inexpensive black labor. Instead of a cash economy, most rural blacks moved from a slavery to a barter system, exchanging their labor in return for needed goods and services.
- Many Arkansas slaves began their employment in the Union navy by 1862…
- “Not all the aid given by the slaves was voluntary. For example, on December 1, 1862, the leaders of the Confederate government were authorized to conscript male slaves from eighteen to forty years of age, not exceeding one-sixth of those owned by an individual. The government was responsible to the owner for hire, a death by neglect, or capture by the enemy. The slaves were not to bear arms, but were to be used as cooks, teamsters, and workers on fortifications."
- The use of black soldiers in the Union army became a positive factor relative to the achievement of freedom and the opportunity for blacks to make socioeconomic progress in Arkansas. This development came about because of the need for massive numbers of men to fill the federal government's armies, labor units, and gunboats.
- But the real organization of Arkansas's black troops began on April 6, 1863, when the commissioner for Recruitment and Organization of Colored Troops arrived near Helena.
- In 1863 Arkansas had 23,088 male slaves and 22 free black males of military age (18-45 years). In late February of 1864 the Union army declared that "All able-body [black] males between the military ages of 18 and 45 within the lines of occupation in the Department of Arkansas will be immediately enrolled for service."
- In 1867 the Arkansas Republicans responded to the demand and even recognized blacks as a possible political asset. Potential black voters outnumbered white voters in several counties: Jefferson, Lafayette, Phillips, Pulaski, and Arkansas.
- When the Arkansas Constitutional Convention met in late January and early February 1868, among some five dozen delegates were eight black men who represented 13 percent of the delegates, although black Arkansans constituted 25 percent of the population. Three blacks became assistant doorkeepers and pages for the convention.
- The black delegates fought hard to gain approval for black suffrage. “But a frail white Conservative delegate, J. W. Cypert of White County (Searcy), led the convention fight against black suffrage. Cypert argued that giving suffrage to ignorant blacks implied racial equality and was an insult to the white race.”
- In April 1868 the voters approved the new Arkansas constitution, including the black suffrage provision. On June 22, 1868, Congress readmitted Arkansas into the Union.
- In 1868 and 1873 Arkansas passed civil rights laws to benefit the blacks, and several black men gained important political jobs.
- By 1873 some twenty blacks held seats in the Reconstruction legislature of Arkansas.
Change of pace
- The black-Republican coalition's control of Arkansas politics generally ended in 1874 when Conservatives, Democrats, and former Confederates regained political power. Indeed, the 1874 return to power "of the landed elite and their political spokesmen created a world that resisted modernization and one in which the lives of Arkansans in 1900 would not be dissimilar to those of their forebears in I860."
- To support the Republicans, blacks paid another great price. They served in the state militia during the turbulent Republican years and had to face the white counter-revolution, which included attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups.
- A mob of black men lynched three white men in Chicot County after the white men murdered a black lawyer in a local store. Mason, the black politician who controlled the county, argued that resentment against recent Klan atrocities caused the blacks to lynch the white men.
- By 1870 the federal government responded to organized white violence all over the South by enacting the Force Acts. This legislation failed to prevent the lynching of 244 persons in Arkansas between 1882 and 1927.
- Some 95 percent of former slaves stayed in Arkansas after the war.
- Many blacks migrated to Arkansas during the 1870s and the 1880s, partly because they believed that better wages and good conditions existed there.
- Many black families came to Arkansas after Congress passed the Southern Homestead Act of 1866, which provided eighty acres of land on easy terms.
- By 1866 black Arkansans did not own more than one percent of lands in any given county, and only 116 black families had acquired Arkansas homestead lands by 1867.
- Still the black population of Arkansas became more urban. It doubled and even tripled in some cities such as Fort Smith, Little Rock, Helena, and Pine Bluff, where contraband camps were located. By 1870 the blacks represented nearly 26 percent of Arkansas's population.