The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina 1860–1870 0521566258, 9780521566254

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The Work o f Reconstruction

The Work of Reconstructio n From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1 860—18 7 0

JULIE SAVILLE

University of California, San Diego

Mn CAMBRIDGE W W

UNIVERSITY PRESS

Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 [RP 4 0 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 1 0 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1996 First published 1994 First paperback edition 1996 Printed in the United States o f America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data is available.

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-521-36221-0 hardback ISBN 0-521-56625—8 paperback

For my parents

Betty jase Saville and Alphonso F. Saville, ]r.

Contents

page ix

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Used in Notes

xiii

A Note on Spellings

xiv xv

Maps Introduction

1

I

Freedom Versus Freedom: Competing Visions of Emancipation Antebellum Field Slaves’ Labor: Regional Overviews Twilight of Slavery, Dawn of Freedom Rebels and “Rebels in Disguise” A Measure of Freedom: Plantation Workers and the Wartime Introduction of Wage Labor in Port Royal Eluding the Confederacy’s Grasp Inducing Wage Labor behind Federal Lines Wartime Planting “ A Dollar a Task!” “As Hard Times as They Has See with the Rebel” Restoration and Reaction: The Struggle for Land in the Sherman Reserve The Reconstruction of Work Remaking Family Life and Labor in the Interior Control of the Crop Control of Supplemental Plots Working on Shares Holding onto Land and Time in the Low Country Uncertain Harvests: Seasonalization of Agricultural Employment The Work of Reconstruction Light in August Why Can’t We Be Friends? There’s a Meeting Here Tonight vii

32 32 36 45 60 7O

72 102. 102. 110 121 125 I30 I35 I43 I43

I51 I60

viii

Contents

A Perfect System? “On Duty” in the League “We the Laboring Men out of Doors’

9

I70 I77

I88

Afterword

I97

Bibliography Index

I99

215

Acknowledgments

So many people have helped me with this project. To acknowledge their support is to reach the straightest portion of a long and winding course. At the beginning, there were the words of my Louisiana-born grandmother, Mrs. ]ulia Jase. During my childhood, neither of us dreamed, while her stories unfolded about kin who had experienced slavery and emancipation in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, that she would be stimulating an adult’s quest for understanding. During my graduate studies, words of scholarship and counsel from C. Vann Woodward brought new worlds into view, and in the process inspired a topic for dissertation research. My appreciation for John W. Blassingame’s insights about life and labor as a historian deepens with the passage of time. David Montgomery, who supervised the writing of the dissertation on which this study is based, remained a source of invaluable criticism, and the substance and spirit of his advice continue to enrich the meaning of the historian’s work. One of life’s good fortunes is to receive comments as thoughtful as the queries and suggestions that this manuscript has received at various stages. Harold D. Woodman considerately assessed three chapters with insight that proved crucial to my completion of the dissertation. Evaluations of the dissertation from David Brion Davis and Gerald D. Jaynes helped me see the subject with new eyes. Eugene D. Genovese’s rich comments on an earlier version of the book manuscript improved this study and inspired another project. The anonymous reader for Cambridge University Press left me with much to ponder while suggesting how to bring this investigation to a close. I am grateful for the ending and the beginnings that these remarks have made possible. Friends and family also lent assistance at critical moments. To Collette Willis Lashley, Deborah Anita Dobbs, and Gwendolyn Lipsey — wherever they are - I remain grateful for their ready hospitality during my first research trip to Columbia, South Carolina. George Heltai, Agnes Heltai,

and Lucille S. Whipper offered their vast understandings of human affairs during my sojourn in Charleston, South Carolina. M . Nanalice Saville read the manuscript with a poet’s eye and a sister’s heart. My brother, Alphonso F . Saville, III, and my sister-in-law, Patricia Heard Saville, ix

x

Acknowledgments

taught me the secrets of the grain of mustard seed. My nephews Marshall Patrick and Alphonso, IV, paid me the great compliment of renewing their commitment to their own studies. Willda Shaw Jackson and Frank Seales, Jr., read early drafts of the dissertation, cheerfully admonishing me to earn the interest of those who have not formally scrutinized the mysteries of the past. I have also drawn upon unparalleled combinations of judgment and friendship. Joye L. Bowman, Kandioura Dramé, and Karen E. Fields patiently offered comments on early drafts of several dissertation chapters. Lawrence N. Powell, Clarence L. Mohr, and C. Peter Ripley offered encouragement as the work progressed (and even when it did not). The work never could have proceeded without the unstinting gifts of counsel and exemplary scholarship from Barbara Jeanne Fields, Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, and John Higginson. At the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, I found wisdom and camaraderie without bounds in discussions with Ira Berlin, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie 5. Rowland. Theresa Singleton, Irene Silverblatt, and David Barry Gaspar generously spared time from their own research to help me think through problems that arose as the study neared completion. Colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, made southern California a wonderful place to teach, write, and think. I am particularly indebted to Steven Hahn’s astute comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, Michael E. Parrish’s helpful editorial suggestions, and Stephanie McCurry’s generous sharing of documents and formulations shaped by her own engagement with South Carolina. Rachel N. Klein’s compassion and wisdom saw me through many a paragraph and many a day. Although they never commented directly on the manuscript, Michael Bernstein and Robert C . Ritchie, now director of research at the Hunt-

ington Library, always found time to offer an encouraging word. Archivists offered patient guidance. The late Sara Dunlap Jackson, Walter Hill, and Michael Musick in particular smoothed my visits to the National Archives. The staff of the South Caroliniana Library, especially its director, Allen H . Stokes, J r . , and George D . Terry of the McKissick

Museum at the University of South Carolina extended a wide range of assistance. I am also thankful for assistance from the staff of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, the South Carolina Historical Society, the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina, and Perkins Library at Duke University. The aid of Susannah Galloway, bibliographer at Central University Library at the University of California, San Diego, and the university’s Interlibrary Loan and Government Documents staff was indispensable.

Acknowledgments

xi

Institutional support permitted me to overcome otherwise insurmountable obstacles to research and writing. A predoctoral fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute of Afro-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia provided a combination of financial support, scholarly discussion, and working time without which I could not have completed the dissertation. I remain grateful to Armstead L. Robinson, William E. Jackson, and Mary F. Rose of the Woodson Institute. A postdoctoral fellowship from the National Research Council and resources of the University of California’s Graduate Seminar in Southern History permitted me to revise the manuscript for publication. The book’s fifth chapter began to take shape during a semester’s visit at the Postemancipation Societies Project at the Center for African and African-American Studies at the University of Michigan, Stimulated by thoughtful questions from Rebecca Scott, Frederick Cooper, Neil Foley, and students in the com-

parative emancipation seminar. Kristin Webb and Michael Gorman, graduate students in United States history at the University of California, San Diego, offered critical research assistance in the last stages of revision. I had often read about Frank Smith’s remarkable qualities as an editor before I benefited from them myself. His judgment and extraordinary patience were the salvation of the author and the manuscript. Janis Bolster generously guided me through the intricacies of turning a manuscript into a book. Cary Groner’s skillful copyediting improved my prose. To all mentioned here, and to others remembered but left unnamed because of constraints of space, my appreciation is everlasting. Because they believed in me and in this project with a dedication that only parents can summon, this work is dedicated to my mother and to the memory of my father.

Abbreviations Used in Notes

AFIC AgH AHR AMA CtY DLC GaH Q

]AH ]NH ]SH ]SocH

LH PR Pt r RG SCDAH S CHM SCHS SCL UNC Univ

WiM WM Q

American Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission Agricultural History American Historical Review American Missionary Association Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress Georgia Historical Quarterly journal of American History journal of Negro History journal of Southern History journal of Social History Labor History Press Part

reel number Record Group South Carolina Department of Archives and History South Carolina Historical Magazine South Carolina Historical Society South Caroliniana Library Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill University Manuscripts Division, University of Wisconsin, Madison

William and Mary Quarterly

Bracketed numbers refer to copies of documents consulted in files prepared by editors of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland.

xiii

A Note on Spellings

I have tried to let material cited in the notes retain as much of its original flavor as possible, and to this end have used sic only when spelling errors could be construed as my own rather than as those of my sources, or could lead to other confusion about meaning. Given a wide variation in the rendering of regional place names, I have opted to standardize with a possessive apostrophe such names as St. John’s River and St. Matthew’s Parish.

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