"The 'faithful slave' is about played out": Civil War slave resistance in the lower Chattahoochee valley

IN HIS GROUNDBREAKING 1938 STUDY, Southern Negroes, 1861-1865, Bell Wiley made the then startling suggestion that rebelliousness among slaves during the Civil War was much more frequent than many postwar commentators had been willing to admit. Nevertheless, Wiley saw disloyalty as restricted largely to Union-occupied areas of the Upper South and coastal regions. Expressions of slave resistance were, he believed, rare in the South's interior. Decades of subsequent research on African Americans during the Civil War have tended to alter that perception somewhat, but more by implication than by direct analysis. Most research on the topic has focused on blacks and their relationship to Union military efforts either as recruits or refugees. Far less research has centered on wartime slave resistance in those interior regions that Wiley dismissed more than half a century ago.' In the lower Chattahoochee River valley,2 an interior area not occupied by Union forces until after the war, slaves' desire for freedom was just as strong as in federal-held territories. Considering that these valley slaves were beyond the protection of northern troops, resistance was surprisingly overt. That slaves were rebellious at all was long obscured by a fog of Lost Cause mythology that hung especially heavy over the lower Chattahoochee valley. Years after the war, in typical fashion, one member of the gentry in Barbour County, Alabama, wistfully recalled that "although war was raging all around, both on sea and land, yet in our quiet valley. . . we were happy and contented, both master and slave."3 But sources from the war years paint a much different picture. In 1863 another Alabama slaveholder frankly admitted that "the `faithful slave' is about played out."4

Long before Lost Cause writers popularized the image of happy and contented slaves, slaveholders used the concept to defend their "peculiar institution." Despite their rhetoric, however, slaveholders knew better than anyone except the slaves themselves the misery of life in bondage. Perhaps nowhere was the discontent spawned by that misery more evident than in the lower Chattahoochee valley, a region where half the inhabitants were slaves.5 Valley slaveholders lived in constant fear of those they enslaved and took serious measures to guard against insurrection. Slave patrols were active throughout the valley. In Barbour County the justice of the peace assigned companies of white men in each precinct to patrol duty. Slaves found away from their plantations without written permission could receive up to thirty-nine lashes.6

By the mid-1850s, newspapers serving the lower Chattahoochee valley carried alarming rumors that slaves were plotting rebellion throughout the South. They advised an increase in slave patrols and warned that "citizens should always have their arms ready for service."7 Some newspapers went even further. After John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, the Eufaula Express urged immediate secession even if it meant war. "Since blood has commenced to flow, we say let it flow on until the question is settled once and for all." The editor called on slave states to "form a separate confederacy, and then let the Abolitionists whip us if they can."8 The Opelika Southern Era saw John Brown's attack as an outright declaration of war against the South. The paper insisted that thousands of northerners must have known of Brown's plans yet gave no warning of this "conspiracy to murder and plunder the free white citizens of the South."9

Columbus, Georgia, papers carrying news of the Harper's Ferry raid stressed that some of the rebels were blacks, organized and led by "blatant `freedom shriekers."" Some valley residents were sure that this was the start of a general slave uprising designed "for the extermination of the Southern whites." A Barbour County woman imagined that "the three places in our own county which were known . . . to be most thickly peopled with slaves were marked on John Brown's map of blood and massacre as the first spots for the negro uprising."

Early County, Georgia, slaveholders were terrified by wild rumors that their chattel planned to "rise on a certain night" and "murder, pillage and burn."12 Other reports held that groups of Brown's men were hiding in the valley, ready to strike. One Opelika newspaper insisted that the whole South was infested with "agents of the Black Republican Party."13 Several fires in November 1859 were blamed on rebellious slaves. One fire destroyed an estimated $6,000 worth of corn, fodder, and cotton on a Muscogee County, Georgia, plantation. Another swept through a gin house two miles from Columbus destroying twenty-five cotton bales along with the gin.14

Threats of slave rebellion, real or imagined, made the 1860 presidential campaign the most emotionally charged in United States history. With the Democrats politically fragmented, the Republicans-headed by Abraham Lincolnseemed sure to gain their first presidential victory. Throughout the campaign Republicans insisted that they posed no threat to slavery where it existed. They wanted only to keep slavery out of the western territories. But in the wake of Harper's Ferry hysteria, and with fire-eaters railing against the "Black Republicans," most white Southerners saw Lincoln as John Brown writ large.

Lincoln's primary support in the South came from those who could not vote-the slaves. Although only a child at the time, former Russell County, Alabama, slave Louis Meadows remembered hearing talk of the election among adult slaves on his plantation. All agreed that a Lincoln victory would serve their best interests. The valley's black residents, both slave and free, did all they could to learn about the campaign and what it might mean for them. They attended so many public campaign rallies in Columbus that white citizens became alarmed by their "unusual interest in politics, and the result of the Presidential election." The mayor issued an order in September barring all blacks from future rallies. In Eufaula "vigilant committees" kept a close watch on blacks who gathered in the streets to discuss the upcoming election.l5 A heightened sense of anticipation among the valley's slaves was clearly evident as election day approached. But having no right to express themselves through free speech or the ballot box, blacks found other outlets for their frustrations. At 2:30 A.M. on election day, fire consumed much of Fort Gaines, Georgia. The buildings destroyed included Paullin's drugstore, Jones's grocery store, Pearson's bank, the Masonic building, and C. N. Johnston's dry goods store. Total damage was estimated at $50,000. Not long after residents brought the flames under control, two blacks were shot in the act of trying to restart the blaze.'6 The incident is but one example of the many challenges slaveholders faced in trying to maintain control.

Anne Maddox heard a great deal of talk about Abraham Lincoln from older slaves on her plantation not far from Opelika.2" On a nearby plantation, Louis Meadows and his fellow slaves knew that as long as Jefferson Davis remained in power they would never be free. "That was why," Meadows said, "everybody hoped Master Lincoln would conquer."21

From the war's earliest days, slaves in the lower Chattahoochee valley often met in secret to hold prayer meetings for freedom. According to Mary Gladdy, Muscogee County slaves gathered in their cabins two or three nights a week for such meetings. They placed large pots against the doors to keep their voices muffled. "Then," she said, "slaves would sing, pray, and relate experiences all night long. Their great, soul-hungering desire was freedom."22 Those few slaves who could read kept up with events through stolen newspapers and spread the word to their neighbors. As news of Confederate reversals became more frequent, excitement among the slaves grew. Young Ella Hawkins of Muscogee County heard older slaves on her plantation whispering among themselves, "Us is gonna be free! Jes as sho's anything. God has heard our prayers; us is gonna be free!"23

As the prospect of freedom approached, slaves became increasingly difficult to control, especially when it came to corporal punishment. Whipping was a terribly painful symbol of their lowly status, and it is hardly surprising that resistance to the lash became one of the main ways slaves sought to demonstrate a measure of independence. Such resistance could, of course, be very dangerous. One Troup County, Georgia, planter was noted for turning his dogs on slaves who refused to be whipped. A slave on the Hines Holt plantation near Columbus was shot for it. He had beaten off six men who tried to hold him down.24

Despite such dangers, slaves continued to resist. According to Celestia Avery, a former Troup County slave, Peter Heard whipped his slaves "unmercifully." One day while hoeing the fields, her grandmother Sylvia was told by an overseer to remove her clothes when she got to the end of a fence row. She was going to be whipped for not working fast enough. When the overseer reached for her, she grabbed a wooden rail and broke it across the man's arms. A Russell County slave named Crecie, described as "a grown young woman and big and strong," was tied to a stump by an overseer named Sanders in preparation for whipping. He had two dogs with him just in case Crecie gave any trouble. When the first lick hit Crecie's back, she pulled up the stump and soundly beat Sanders and his dogs.25

Sanders survived Crecie's wrath, but some were not so lucky. When a Muscogee County overseer began beating a young slave girl with a sapling tree, one of the older slaves grabbed an axe and killed him. A Fort Gaines slave was hanged for trying to kill two white men, one of them his master. Another valley slave named Lash succeeded in killing his master and was burned at the stake.26

Slaves sometimes devised or participated in elaborate plots to kill their masters. Occasionally, they even conspired with whites to do it. Two Dale County, Alabama, slaves belonging to Columbus Holley assisted John Ward, leader of a local deserter band, in doing away with their master. Holley had made a habit of exposing every deserter he could, and Ward hatched a plan to kill him for it. Holley's slaves were eager to cooperate. On the designated evening, the slaves met Ward at a rendezvous point not far from the plantation and carried him on their shoulders to Holley's residence. They took Ward to a bedroom window that Holley always left open at night, and with one shot Ward killed the planter as he slept. The slaves then carried Ward back to his horse, and he made a clean getaway. Because his feet never touched the ground there was no scent for the bloodhounds to follow. The only tracks near the house were those of the slaves, but no one thought of that as unusual. Their footprints were all over the plantation. The mystery of Columbus Holley's murder remained unsolved until years later when Ward finally confessed on his death bed.27

To avoid punishment for anything from "insolence" to murder, slaves often fled to nearby woods and swamps and sometimes stayed for the war's duration. Charlie Pye of Columbus said that his mother would hide out in the woods for months at a time rather than be whipped. But she always returned, he said, "when the strain of staying away from her family became too great."28 Celestia Avery told an especially harrowing story of her grandmother Sylvia's sadistic treatment at the hands of her master, Peter Heard: Every morning my grandmother would pray, and old man Heard despised to hear anyone pray saying they were only doing so that they might become free niggers. Just as sure as the sun would rise, she would get a whipping; but this did not stop her prayers every morning before day. This particular time grandmother Sylvia was in [the] "family way" and that morning she began to pray as usual. The master heard her and became so angry he came to her cabin, seized and pulled her clothes from her body and tied her to a young sapling. He whipped her so brutally that her body was raw all over. When darkness fell her husband cut her down from the tree. During the day he was afraid to go near her. Rather than go back to the cabin she crawled on her knees to the woods and her husband brought grease for her to grease her raw body. For two weeks the master hunted but could not find her; however, when he finally did, she had given birth to twins. The only thing that saved her was the fact that she was a mid-wife and always carried a small pin knife which she used to cut the naval cord of the babies. After doing this she tore her petticoat into two pieces and wrapped each baby.29 After his own severe beating, another Troup County slave named William ran away and dug out a large cave in which he took up residence. Several nights later, under the cover of darkness, he moved his wife and two children to the cave, where they lived until the war ended.so

Runaway slaves sometimes gathered in small, isolated communities along the Chattahoochee River. So numerous were their settlements in the valley's lower reaches that Governor John Gill Shorter of Alabama, a Barbour County native, referred to the wiregrass as a "common retreat of . . . runaway negroes."31 Groups of runaways sustained themselves by living off the land and making raids on local plantations. S. S. Massey of Chattahoochee County, Georgia, complained to his governor, Joseph E. Brown, that slaves were "killing up the stock and stealing every thing they can put their hands on."32 The Early County News of Blakely, Georgia, reported in March 1864 that there had been "more stealing, and rascality generally, going on in Blakely and Early County, for the past few months, than has ever been known for several years.... [N]egroes are doing a great deal of this stealing, burning, &c."33

Some were accused of more than that. In October 1864 a slave jailed on charges of "ravishing" a white woman was lynched by "some of the good citizens" while awaiting trial before the superior court in Miller County, Georgia. "Served him right," said a local editor. In his view members of the lynch mob deserved "a great deal of credit for their promptness in this matter."34 This sort of violence was not uncommon. A few weeks earlier three southwest Georgia slaves had been lynched on suspicion of plotting a slave insurrection.35

From the beginning of the war whites feared that individual acts of insubordination might ultimately lead to a general slave uprising. As early as May 1861 an Alabama planter urged the men in his district to stay at home and save their families "from the horrors of insurrection."36 That same month the Albany Patriot complained that blacks in southwest Georgia would "congregate together contrary to law, exhibit their weapons, and no doubt devise their secret, but destructive plans."37

During the late spring and early summer of 1861 a rebellion hysteria swept southwest Georgia. Especially worried were slaveholders in the large plantation districts along the Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers. Panic spread through Decatur County, Georgia, in June when one of the local slave patrols caught a man named Israel away from his plantation without a pass. The patrollers somehow became convinced that a general slave revolt involving slaves from plantations all over the county would begin shortly. Wild rumors spread that blacks in Bainbridge, Georgia, were collecting firearms and planning to "kill all of the men and old women and children and take the younger ones for their wives." Although there was no evidence of such a plot and no guns were ever found, authorities arrested two suspected insurrection leaders. One local white resident swore they would be killed if they ever got out of jail.38

By midsummer the insurrection mania had subsided, but slaveholders' fears of rebellion remained strong. William Mansfield advised Governor Brown that planters in Stewart County, Georgia, were terrified of their slaves and feared that local militiamen were not "prepared to quell any riots that might begin."39 A Fort Gaines man asked the governor for a company of cavalry to protect southwest Georgia from a slave rebellion that he felt sure was coming.4'

In an effort to stem the rising tide of rebelliousness among slaves, the Georgia General Assembly added several new provisions to the state penal code. A December 1861 revision mandated the death penalty for any black person found guilty of arson. A subsequent change forbade masters to let slaves hire themselves out and required slaves to reside on their master's premises. In 1862 the Assembly reinforced laws forbidding slaves to travel without passes and canceled all exemptions from patrol duty. The Alabama legislature approved restrictions on liquor sales to free blacks and prohibitions on any sort of trade with slaves. In 1861, 1863, and again in 1864 Alabama lawmakers increased fees awarded for the capture of runaway slaves.41

Some city and county governments went even further. Officials in Blakely hired extra police for every district in Early County. The editor of the Early County News called it "the duty of all good citizens to go out nightly on patrol."42 The Cuthbert, Georgia, city council divided the town into three wards and assigned all white males between the ages of sixteen and sixty to patrol duty. At least two men patrolled each ward every night.43 Where there were fewer slaves, patrols were less frequent. In Dale County, where slaves made up less than 15 percent of the population, the patrol made its rounds every Saturday night. According to one county resident, that was when the slaves "had their parties, dances, quiltings, etc."44

Despite efforts by state and local authorities to control the slaves, they continued to take unprecedented liberties throughout the war years. A southwest Georgia man noted with alarm that slaves in Fort Gaines were impossible to control: "Many Negroes there are doing as they please, hiring out their time which the law of Georgia forbids."45 To seek work for wages had always been a hallmark of freedom, and many southern blacks began to assert their freedom by earning wages long before federal troops arrived. One valley slaveholder on a visit to Columbus found a runaway slave working at one of the city's mechanical shops.46 In Russell County a slave hired himself out as a blacksmith and by war's end had a trunk full of money, although in worthless Confederate bills.47

As early as 1862 one passenger on a southwest Georgia railroad said that "crowds of slaves in gayest attire" were getting on and off the trains "at every country stopping place." In Blakely, E. H. Grouby reported that blacks were "almost nightly running around where they have no business."48 A Muscogee County slaveholder feared that the blacks of Columbus were forgetting their second-class status. "It is not uncommon," he wrote, "to see two or three in one whiskey shop."49 In the summer of 1862 the Columbus Enquirer complained that the city's black population was becoming difficult to control. Freedom of movement, especially at night, was getting out of hand. The editor urged masters to keep a tighter rein on their slaves and suggested increased patrols.j Such complaints were apparently of little consequence. By 1864 Columbus slaves were holding romps almost every night. One city paper called these festivities an "unmitigated nuisance" but could suggest no effective remedy.5l

Some city residents thought that making concessions to blacks might ease tensions. In March 1865 the Columbus Times editor suggested returning black churches to their rightful occupants. Like the churches of poor whites, they had been commandeered months earlier for use as hospitals. On top of that, blacks had been turned away at the well-to-do white churches. "There are comparatively few sick and wounded among us," the Times pointed out. "Then why not evacuate these churches at once?"52 If the editor thought such an act might help calm blacks and make them easier to control, he was very much mistaken.

Even slave patrols were losing their powers of intimidation as the war entered its final year. Slaves were beginning to anticipate their coming freedom and were less likely to see the patrols as a threat. Moreover, there were few white men still willing to accept patrol duty. Most had come to view the struggle as "a rich man's war" and wanted no part in defending slavery at home or on the battlefield.53 In January 1864 a letter from Harris County, Georgia, reached Governor Brown's desk. The writer complained that only four men in the vicinity of Waverly Hall were available to ride patrol over seven hundred slaves.54 Similar complaints came from worried slaveholders throughout the valley.

By 1864 the patrols clearly inspired little fear among the slaves. One slave boy who outran the patrollers made fun of them after he was safely behind his master's fence. Some slaves even fought back. It was not unusual for slaves to tie ropes or vines neck-high across a dark stretch of road just before the patrollers rode past. According to a former slave, these traps were guaranteed to unhorse at least one rider. When patrollers raided a prayer meeting near Columbus, one slave stuck a shovel in the fireplace and threw hot coals on the intruders. The room instantly "filled with smoke and the smell of burning clothes and white flesh." In the confusion every slave escaped.55

Running away was perhaps the most dramatic way in which southern blacks resisted their enslavement and contributed to Confederate defeat. Thousands of slaves deserted their masters in what historian W. E. B. Du Bois called a general strike against the Confederacy. Every slave owned by members of the Troup Artillery fled to Union lines. In September 1862 eleven slaves working at a St. Joseph Bay, Florida, salt-making facility sought refuge with the Union blockading fleet. One southwest Georgia slave was hanged for attempting to organize a mass exodus of local slaves to the Federals on the Florida coast.56 Slaves ran off individually as well as in groups. One slave who escaped from Conecuh County in southern Alabama made it all the way to Troup County before he was captured and taken to the local jail. Other fugitive slaves stayed much closer to home. Bill, who escaped from a West Point, Georgia, slave dealer, remained in the area for three years before he was finally caught.57

Even those slaves who remained with their masters often did what they could to help federal troops. On July 18, 1864, as a Union raiding party approached the outskirts of Auburn, Alabama, a group of local blacks hurried out to warn its commander, Col. William Douglas Hamilton, of a Rebel force hidden in the thickets ahead. In a charge that "could be better heard than seen," Hamilton and his men rushed the startled Confederates, who, as Hamilton later reported, "broke on our first fire and scattered in every direction."58

After his men looted the town, Hamilton invited Auburn's residents to take whatever was left. "This," he said, "changed the excitement. Women and children, white and black, came rushing to help themselves." He recalled with some amusement one particular scene. "A well dressed lady, that I noticed, came with a colored servant, and pointed out some hams, which she ordered him to take to the house. 'Haint got time, Missus, haint got time,' replied the negro, eagerly grabbing what he wanted for himself. The lady then proceeded to help herself as the others were doing."59 One Auburn resident recalled that not only townsfolk but people from the surrounding countryside, black and white, "broke into stores and carried off everything movable."60 The next day Union forces destroyed the railroad between Auburn and Opelika, took all the supplies they could carry, burned the rest, and headed northeast into Georgia. Three days later, accompanied by hundreds of fugitive slaves, they reached William T. Sherman's army just north of Atlanta.61

Prior to the summer of 1864, anti-Confederate guerrilla bands were raiding and looting the valley's lower reaches. By summer federal raiders were doing the same farther north. Most valley residents saw Confederate defeat as imminent and feared even greater damage if the war continued. Confederate troops sensed the inevitability of defeat as well; desertion became such a serious problem that Confederate leaders began to consider the unthinkable: freeing the slaves and arming them. By late 1864 Jefferson Davis himself favored the idea.

On January 5, 1865, William Scruggs, editor of the Columbus Daily Sun, published a strongly worded editorial in which he suggested that freeing the slaves "would excite the sympathy and secure the aid of the Christian world."62 By March Scruggs was even more direct in his editorials. The Confederacy's fate, he said, was entirely in the hands of the slaves: "It is now evident that the negro slave is to be a sort of balance power in this contest, and that the side which succeeds in enlisting the feelings and in securing the active operation and services of the four millions of blacks, must ultimately triumph."63

But would giving guns to slaves make them supporters of the Confederacy? To Columbus Times editor J. W. Warren the answer was obvious: Slaves would never fight for the Confederacy, even if they were freed. Warren feared that blacks would join the Yankees as soon as they reached the front lines. If the idea of arming slaves went forward, he warned, "we will ourselves, take the best in the country, drill and train them, and then hand them over-ready made warriors-to the enemy."6

Despite such fears, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress authorized the recruitment of up to 300,000 slaves. The Confederate lawmakers did not, however, promise freedom for those who agreed to serve. It made little difference. For the slaves the arrival of Union soldiers was their longanticipated guarantee of freedom. General James Wilson's troops overran Columbus on April 16, 1865, and when the news reached the slaves of a Stewart County plantation, they spoke for thousands: "It ain't gonna be long now! "65 Two weeks later, when word of approaching Union troops spread through Barbour County, all the slaves on the Edward Garland plantation turned out to greet them. "Large and small left the `quarter,"' recalled the Garland children's teacher. By the time she reached the yard she found herself surrounded by "a surging mass of black humanity."66 Not only did they eagerly anticipate the arrival of federal forces, but many slaves assisted them whenever possible. Percy, a Troup County slave, led a detachment of Wilson's raiders to a nearby swamp, where his master had hidden the family's money.67 That slaves welcomed federal troops with open arms was more a reflection of their desire for freedom than their love for the Yankees. Few were under the illusion that northerners held any great affection for them. Those who did were quickly disappointed. When Wilson's troopers raided the lower Chattahoochee valley in April 1865, they ransacked slave cabins and planters' mansions alike. Opelika ex-slave Cornelia Robinson told how they stripped her master's plantation clean and "tore up everything they couldn't take with them." Rhodus Walton, a freedman from Stewart County, recalled that Union soldiers destroyed nearly everything on his master's place. They even pressed slaves into service as cooks.68 W. B. Allen reflected the sentiments of many former slaves when he insisted that "the only time the Northern people ever helped the Nigger was when they freed him." Yankees, he said, were no friends of blacks.69

Still, the slaves' hatred of slavery was powerful enough to overcome any fear they had of white men in blue uniforms. Besides, many slaves gave the federal forces little credit for their emancipation. They believed their freedom was a gift from God. The Union Army was simply God's instrument of deliverance. To the slaves, as one valley freedman recalled, "God was using the Yankees to scourge the slaveholders just as He had, centuries before, used heathens and outcasts to chastise His chosen people-the Children of Israel."70 Like the Jews of old, blacks saw themselves as a chosen people to whom God was granting a special salvation. "It was God's blessing to the black peoples," said ex-slave Louis Meadows of Russell County, "to come out from bondage; to belong only to theirselves and God."71

Slaves were fully aware that whatever form their postwar world might take, whether dominated by North or South, it would still be a white man's world. Nonetheless, they had an abiding faith that life would improve with slavery gone. When a slaveholding couple in Russell County, on the eve of Wilson's raid, asked one of their chattel to pray that God might turn the Yankees back, the young man refused. "I told them flat-footedly," he later recalled, "that . . . I could not pray against my conscience: that I not only wanted to be free, but that I wanted to see all the Negroes freed!"72 So precious an ideal was freedom to the slaves that any future with it was preferable to the past they had known without it.

Slaves in the lower Chattahoochee valley reacted to the war in a variety of ways. But no matter what form resistance took, subtle or overt, slaves were trying as best they could to expand their personal liberties and improve their lives in a dangerous and hostile world. And they fervently hoped that the end of slavery would make that world at least a little more tolerable.

Bell I. Wiley, Sr>>uthern Ae,toes, 1861-1865 (New Haven, (:on., 1938). The first;gestioni that (:is il War slave resistance was more widespread than Wiley thoogilt appeared in Hebert Aptheker's Ati(nn eticain Nt Vo Slave Keznolts (New York, 1943). But his brief nine-page chapter on the Civil War years provided less than a dozen examples of interior slave resistance and did little to move research toward the interior regions. Like Wiley, students of slavery, when they admitted disloyalty at all, cont:iniled to focus attention oin Union-held or threatened areas. That was, for the most part, true of T. Coon Bryan's Cot^,on/ederate Georg-io (Athens, Ga., 1953), but he gave some examples of interior rebelliottsness as well. Bs-van, tinfo(rtttnatel' was the exception rather than the role. In his article "The Negro in rll)at Doring the Civil War," /ounal of :,%egro History 35 0nly 1950): 265-89, Robert D. Reid completely ignored more subtle forms of resistance by concloding that "most slaves were fai Lhfal to their owners," since fewer than 10,000 of the state's slaves "were fi)rmally incorporated into the Union At-my" (p. 973). Benjamin Quarles lent coisiderably more crcdenicc to the notion

of slave disloyalty in his book The Negro in the Civil War (Boston, 1953), but he too focused on resistance as it related to the Union war effort and was largely silent on interior rebelliousness. The same can be said of James M. McPherson's The Negro's Civil War (New York, 1965).

The extent to which slaves took matters into their own hands during the war moved more toward center stage in the 1970s with works such as Eugene D. Genovese's Roll Jordan Roll: 7'he World the Slaves Alade (New York, 1974), Paul D. Escott's "The Context of Freedom: Georgia's Slaves During the Civil War," Georgia Historical Quarterly 58 (Spring 1974): 79104, and ('. Peter Ripley's Slaves and Freed men in Civil War Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976). In speaking of General Benjamin Butler's reluctant institution of a wage-labor system for blacks in Union-held New Orleans, Ripley noted that blacks themselves, "by their tenacity and refusal to accept the old order, had forced the issue" (p. 39). But like earlier works, Genovese, Escort, and Ripley remained almost entirely focused on Union-occupied or threatened regions.

The late seventies and early eighties saw a retreat from the notion of slave initiative and even from the idea of slave rebelliousness. In his Been in the Storm So Long: Ille Ajee.4fte7nath of Slavery, (New York, 1979), Leon F. Litwack opined that slaves remained loyal For the most part, offering support to the Union only when it seemed in their immediate interest to do so-such as when the Yankee armies were near. Victor B. Howard, in his Black Lilation in Kentucky: Emancipation and Freedom, 1862-1884 (Lexington, Ky., 1983), highlighted the impact of white policy on blacks, dismissing black efforts to secure freedom for themselves. Although noting that many slaves held "a wide range of reasons for remaining loyal to their old masters,",[ohn B. Roles admitted in his Black Southerners, 1619-1869 (Lexington, Ky., 1984) that "in those regions along the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River where Union troops quickly won control, slaves decided overwhelmingly for freedom." However, he went on to say that "much of the interior of the South was remote from northern military advances, and there slaves seldom had a chance to choose liberty" (pp. 183-84). Here again, slave resistance is seen mainly as a by-product of the Union Army's proximity. It seems that neither Boles nor most scholars before him recognized that slaves were expanding their personal liberties through resistance long before Yankee troopers arrived.

Of those works that deal with wartime slavery in the Deep South, the most thorough is Clarence L. Mohr's On the Threshold of Freedom: hla sters and Slaves in (,ivil lEar (;ir`al 6G*xz-Geotrga (Athens, Ga., 1986). But like his predecessors, Mohr treats slave resistance by focusing on the Union-held coastal region. Southwest Georgia, an area where half the inhabitants were slaves, is almost entirely ignored. There are no works at all dealing adequately with Civil War slave resistance in Alabama. But encouraging research on the issue has appeared in recent years. One of the best examples is lunius P. Rodriguez's "'We'll Hang Jeff Davis on the Sour Apple Tree': Civil War Era Slave Resistance in Louisiana," (haff Coast Historical Quarterly 10 (Spring 1995): 6-23. Like the current study, Rodriguez's work focuses on the actions of slaves themselves, mostly prior to or outside Union occupation, and concludes that "servile loyalty was a mere chimeric hope of white society" (p. 20).

2 For the purpose of this study, the lower Chattahoochee valley is defined as that region encompassing all or parts of the modern counties of Chambers, Lee, Russell, Barbour, Henr, Houston, Dale, and Geneva in Alabama, and Troop, Harris, Muscogee, Chattahoochee, Stewart, Quitman, Randolph, Clay, Early, Miller, Seminole, Decatur, and (Grady in Georgia. Reference is occasionally made to surrounding areas as well.

I Parthenia A. Hague, A Blockaded Family: Life in Soutl2g?n Alabama l)u ing the Civil,War(1888; reprint, Freeport, N.Y., 1971), 119.

4John F. Andrews to Mrs. Clement (laibone Clan, luly ](1, ,Iuh 10, 1863, (Clement Cl(iGorne (by Papers, 1811-1865 Hunt.sx,ille (M6Wli.soin (;ounty), AlnL>aba, Recold.s of Ante-he beieUztm .Southe? sI Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil l'ar, Series fR Sele/tions fio?n the Ma.srriJzitss?ipt I)5?artment, Duke LUniz!ersity Lib?art, Part 1, 7,he Deep South (Frederick, Md., 1986), microfilm, reel 21.

5 The 1860 census showed the total population of the lower Chattahoochee valley counties to be 211,359. Of this total, 105,071 were African tinerican. Of those, only 401 were listed as free persons of color The wealth those slaves constituted was held in relatis-ely few hands. Of valley slaves, 58 percent were held by planters (slaveholders who owned tweno, or more). Planters and their families made up only 3.8 percent of the valley's residents Of the valley's whites, 55 percent owned no slaves at all. LI.S. Census Bureau, Population of the United States in 1860 (1864 reprint, New York, 1990).

6 Anne Kendrick Walker, Backtracking in Barbour County. A Narrative of the Last Alabama Frontier (1941; reprint, Eufaula, 1967), 178. 7 Albany Patriot, December 25, 1856.

Eufaula Express, November 25, 1858, and October 27, 1859. Opelika Southern Era, November 29, 1859.

10 Columbus Daily Sun, October 19 and 21,1859. The paper mistakenly (perhaps hopefully) reported that John Brown was killed in the raid.

Hague, A Blockaded Family, 5. 12 Early County News, December 21, 1916. 13 Opelika Southern Era, December 6, 1859, and September 15, 1860. 4 Columbus Daily Sun, November 5,15, and 16,1859.

xs George P. Rawick, ed., The Amencan Slave: A Composite Autobiography, suppl., ser. 1, vol. 1, Alabama Narratives (Westport, Conn., 1977), 255; Columbus Daily Sin, September Y7, 1860; Walker, Backtracking in Barbour County, 173. As with all oral history, careful scholars should approach the slave narratives with a degree of caution. Aside from the usual concerns of sketchy details and faded memories, much that is problematic about the slave narratives has to do with the racial climate in which the interviews were conducted. B1lite employees of the 1930s Federal Writers Project usually interviewed blacks, many of whom were habituated to telling whites what they thought white listeners wanted to hear. Even when former slaves were candid with their experiences, it must be remembered that their stories were often filtered through white interviewers. Nevertheless, the narratives constitute the most complete record we have of life under slavery in the late-antebellum South. They can be a most valuable source in the hands of a scholar who applies comparative analysis and common sense. For discussions of approaches to the slave narratives see John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Twvo Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, 1977) and Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Twentieth-Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979). Ifi Columbus Enquirer, November 13, 1860.

LS George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, suppl., ser. 1, vol. 1, Alabama Narratives (Westport, Conn., 1977), 255; Columbus Daily Sun, September 27, 1860; Walker, Backtracking in Barbour County, 173. As with all oral history, careful scholars should approach the slave narratives with a degree of caution. Aside from the usual concerns of sketchy details and faded memories, much that is problematic about the slave narratives has to do with the racial climate in which the interviews were conducted. White employees of the 1930s Federal Writers Project usually interviewed blacks, many of whom were habituated to telling whites what they thought white listeners wanted to hear. Even when former slaves were candid with their experiences, it must be remembered that their stories were often filtered through white interviewers. Nevertheless, the narratives constitute the most complete record we have of life under slavery in the late-antebellum South. They can be a most valuable source in the hands of a scholar who applies comparative analysis and common sense. For discussions of approaches to the slave narratives see John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Intenriews, and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge, 1977) and Paul D. Escott, Slavery Remembered: A Record of Teen tieth-Century Slave Narratives (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1979). 16 Columbus Enquirer, November 13, 1860.

20 Ibid.. vol. 6, Ala. narratives. 272. 21 Ibid.. suppl., ser. 1, vol, 257. 22 Ibid., vol. 12, pt. 2, 26-27. 23 Rawick. American Slave, suppl., ser. 1, vol. 3, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 (Westport. Conn., 1977), 315.

24 Ibid., vol. 12, pt. 1, 24; ibid., pt. 2, 17.

25 Ibid., pt. 1, 25; Rawick, American Slave, vol. 9, Arkansas Narratives, Parts 3 and 4 (1941; reprint, Westport, Conn., 1972), pt. 4,18.

26 Rawick, American Slave, vol. 13, Georgia Narratives, Parts 3 and 4 (Westport, Conn., 1972), pt. 3, 186; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 126; Rawick, American Slave, vol. 13, pt. 3, 5.

27 Fred S. Watson, Winds of Sorrow: Hardships of the Civil War, Early Crimes and Hangings, and War Casualties of the Wiregrass Area (Dothan, Ala., 1986), 13-14. 28 Rawick, American Slave, vol. 13, pt. 3, 187.

29 Ibid., vol. 12, pt. 1, 24-25. 30 Ibid., 24.

31 Shorter to James A. Seddon, January 14, 1863, War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C., 188-1901), ser. 1, vol. 15, 947 (hereafter O.R).

32 S. S. Massey to Joseph E. Brown, March 9, 1865, Correspondence of the Governor of Georgia, Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta (hereafter GDAH). 33 Early County News, April 6, 1864.

34 Ibid., October 12 and 19, 1864.

35 Milledgeville (Ga.) Southern Recorder, August 30, 1864. For a complete discussion of the incident see Christopher C. Meyers, "`The Wretch Vickerv' and the Brooks County Civil War Slave Conspiracy,"Journal of Southwest Georgia History 12 (Fall 1997): 27-38. 36 George W. Gayle to Jefferson Davis, May 22, 1861, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, ed. Lynda Lasswell Crist and Mary Seaton Dix (Baton Rouge, 1992), 7:175. 37 Albany Patriot, May 23, 1861.

38 Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 127.

39 William S. Mansfield to Joseph E. Brown, May 26, 1864, Correspondence of the Governor of Georgia, GDAH.

40 [name illegible] to Joseph E. Brown, October 5,1864, Correspondence of the Governor of Georgia, GDAH.

41 Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 126;John V. Denson, Slavery Laws in Alabama (Auburn, 1908), 10-11, 55.

442`**Mrd 16. la"4

43 Annette McDonald Suarez, A Source Book on the Early History of Cuthbert and Randolph County, Georgia (Atlanta, 1982), 130-31.

44 Mary Love Edwards Fleming, "Dale County and Its People During the Civil War," Alabama Historical Quarterly 19 (Spring 1957): 102.

45 Mary Grist Whitehead, ed., Collections of Early County Historical Society (Blakely, Ga., 1979), 2:160.

46 Columbus Enquirer, April 9, 1862. 47 gui.;ck, American Slave, vol. 12, pt. 1, 12. 48 Early County News, March 16, 1864.

49 B. W. Clark to Joseph E. Brown, January 30, 1864, Correspondence of the Governor of Georgia, GDAH.

50 Columbus Enquirer, August 12, 1862. 51 Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 132. 52 Columbus Times, March 17, 1865.

53 For an examination of white disaffection on the Georgia side of the valley's lower reaches see David Williams, "Rich Man's War: Class, Caste, and Confederate Defeat in Southwest Georgia,"Journal of Southwest Georgia History 11 (Fall 1996): 1-42. 54 John R. Edwards to Joseph E. Brown,January 8, 1864, Correspondence of the Governor of Georgia, GDAH.

55 Rawick, American Slave, vol. 13, pt. 3, 5; ibid., suppl., ser. 1, vol. 3, pt. 1, 5; ibid., 4-5. 56 Donald L. Grant, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia (Secau

cus, NJ., 1993), 83, 87; Columbus Enquirer, September 18, 1862; Bryan, Confederate Georgia, 127.

57 La Grange (Ga.) Rorter, March 3, 1865.

8 O.R, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 3, 973-74; William Douglas Hamilton, Recollections of a Cavalyman of the Civil War after Fifty Years, 1861-1865 (Columbus, Ohio, 1915), 137. 59 Hamilton, Recollections, 137. 60 O.R, ser. 1, vol. 38, pt. 3, 973-74.

61 Ibid., pt. 2, 908-9; July 19, 1864, "Oak Bowery (Alabama) Journal," Civil War diary of Joseph H. Harris, 1860-67, Cobb Memorial Archives, Valley, Alabama. 62 Columbus Daily Sun, January 5, 1865. 63 Ibid., March 22, 1865.

Columbus Times, February 15,1865. 65 Rawick, American Slave, vol. 13, pt. 4, 126. 66 Hague, A Blockaded Family, 152-53. 67 Rawick, American Slave, vol. 12, pt. 1, 26.

68 Ibid., vol. 6, Ala. narratives, 331; ibid., vol. 13. pt. 4, 127;ivid., pt. 3, 187. 69 Ivid., vol. 12, pt. 1. 13. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid., suppl., vol. 1, 257.

72'bjd, 1. 0

David Williams is Professor of Historv, Valdosta State University.

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