Today, we areso going to be talking about the meaning of freedom. I wanted to capture our earlier discussions about the meaning of freedom when we thought about free communities, free black folks in the north and south and how we came up with this way of representing freedom as freedom with a line through it, not quite freedom. Freedom to freedom, this question of freedom and what does it mean. We will talk about what did freedom mean and in particular what did freedom mean to the free people. January of 1865 edwin stanton, secretary of war, and Union GeneralWilliam Sherman had a meeting with 20 preachers in savannah, georgia. They were pastors, lay church leaders. They wanted to find out from these preachers basically what is it that free people want from freedom . What did they expect in the aftermath of the emancipation proclamation . People who were ostensibly representatives of free black folks in the community selected one person, garrison frazier, a 60 sevenyearold man to be the 67yearoldve a man to be the representative of the community. General sherman asked him what did he understand freedom to mean in light of the emancipation proclamation. He said, taking us from under the yoke of bondage and placing us where we can take care of ourselves and assist the government in maintaining our freedom. You start to hear some of the language of the emancipation proclamation. Assisting the government in maintaining our freedom. Talking about having the emancipated to work and do that diligently, serve in the military, he is also also reflecting the ability to reap the benefits of their labor. The secretary and a general ask other questions like could block people take care of themselves . Yes they could. Could black people take care of themselves . Yes they could. Did they want to live among white people . Yes, some did but garrison frazier did not. Even as it is couched in this governmental exploration of what was freedom going to mean for free people, they were already thinking about what they wanted freedom to be. This is building on our conversations of freedom and free black life and how precarious it was. We are moving to where freedom could mean something more. What did that freedom mean when we think about it from the perspective of free people . When of the other things that we are connecting to from the earlier part has to do with this question of how do black people appear on the landscape of the u. S. . Started at the beginning of the term talking about whether black peoples experience in the u. S. Is a part of identity formation or if it is about pushing the nation to live out the true meaning of its creed. We are going to be thinking about this question of whether or not free people were pushing the meaning of what this nation was supposed to be and what its founding document claimed for it. In the process of doing that we will see how it is that when people talk about, when historians write about emancipation and this moment of reconstruction, sometimes the question is framed the way that sherman and stanton framed it, which is basically what can free people do for the country and then there is the question of what do free people want for themselves . When we think about this longer process, which we will talk about in the coming weeks about reconstruction about and what happened, what free people want for themselves is either assumed or crowded out by what they can do for the nation. I hope we can keep both questions in balance, think about the relationship of free people to the nation but also and more prominently what free people wanted for themselves. One of the ways we are going to get at that is by thinking about these first a bites of freedom. Lived,where free people where they went to, they were called contraband camps. I will get into why. We will spend the majority of our time talking about how free people defined freedom in many aspects of their lives. You can think about reasons why. If you think about what the experience of African People was in the african in the American Revolution for example ash what happened after the American Revolution what happened after the American Revolution . That graphice have about the freedom with a line through it. They had freedom but it wasnt a complete freedom. There was a real debate about whether or not black men should support the war effort but eventually they do. The emancipation proclamation because it becomes a war measure. To enlist black men and support the union effort. They do anyway thinking they could demonstrate their commitment to the union and the principles of the nation and that that would reflect well on African People. That they were participating in this process. Some refused. Some black men refused to enlist and others were impressed into the army. It was not all soldiers who participated or were ready to jump in for the war effort but many did. In fact they made up about 10 of the union army and about 25 of the union navy. There was a significant buyin for black soldiers. When they participated in the war, they often times in terms of leadership did not get very competent leadership because they were laboring under the systems of racism that kept them from getting primary leaders and they were sometimes denied the ability to hold positions as leaders. Eventually they were allowed to gain some commissions. They had some leadership roles. Were also often times placed at the forefront. Sometimes called cannon fodder. They were put on the front lines of battles and suffered some of the most greatest number of casualties as a result of their service. They suffered casualties because of being placed on the front lines but also because the tenor of the war was so charged at points that it would experience extreme violence because they were free black men but they were viewed as being runaway slaves or Something Like that. Tennessee at a fort in tennessee, there was a group of black soldiers and it basically ended as a massacre of union troops who were trying to surrender. Black troops were often on the front lines and that is what happened in tennessee. Andere holed up in a fort the Union Soldiers were trying to escape. When they tried to escape from the fort, they believed there would be a transport waiting from them and it turns out that there was not. As they were trying to escape and surrender, they were basically massacred and shot as they were fleeing the fort. Similar situation happened in the battle of decatur where there were black soldiers on the front of the union effort. As they rushed in, they were blown up in a mine area. They were massacred as confederate soldiers were screaming no quarter. The only end they could have would be death. There would be no surrender. We can see how black voters were leading the cause of the war by articulating how they could be supportive of the union. There were thinking through and struggling under some of the limitations including being denied pay. That happened pretty early on. Some of them refused to be paid as until they would be paid as much as white voters be paid. Piece of what they did as far as leadership in the war effort was in terms of securing freedoms for their families. I will talk in a minute about the contraband camps and how people would liberate themselves but one thing that also happened for men who served in the military was they were able to gain freedom for their wives and children. They were able to figure out that by serving in the union they could gain freedom for their families and children. We also know that when it comes to pursuing freedom it is not sometimes it is viewed as an individual moment. People make choices for themselves that then there are those who make choices for their families and communities. We start to think about some of the first freedoms and the places where enslaved people started to find their first freedom, it was indie contraband camps. It was in these places where enslaved people ran to the union lines. When they heard there was a union army in the area, they knew they could find freedom there. They knew what the significance of the war was. Some people think they did not know what was going on, but they did. They had a robust, Communication Network so when the union came to their area, they knew what it meant. One of those places of freedom was munro, in virginia near in 1861 wheninia we start to find that these first friday him were during this moment of humanitarian crisis. All at the hands of enslaved people who were liberating themselves. The other places port royal, auth carolina, which was rehearsal for reconstruction, this first moment of looking figuring out what the reconstruction process would look like. In munro, virginia in 1861, relatively early in the war there were three enslaved men from the person who was enslaving them. He was a colonel in the confederate army. They ran to fortress munro and they said they did not want to work anymore for the confederate general the confederate colonel who was there and slaver enslaver. Benjamin butler had no plan for what to do in a situation like that. What was he going to do with these men who were liberating themselves from slavery . He thought quickly about how to handle the situation and determined that these men should be dealt like contraband. Contraband was an idea he pulled from International Law that says any good being transported by a could be treated as contraband. He recognized relatively quickly thesehat idea as treating human beings as property was not a workable idea. You also realized there was a conflict of what was the union going to do with these people after viewing them as property as well but they didnt want to hold formerly enslaved people as property. And this moment we start to lay out the lands in this moment we start to lay out the landscape in which the union can start think about these self emancipating men as laborers in the war and eventually soldiers. He put these men to work in the union camps. It was a good workaround for the time being. They had to figure out what that was going to mean much later, but what ended up happening is not only men are these people company, but there are also women coming, there are children coming, there are elderly people coming. It reallymagine becomes a question, what do we do with these people . They create a work camp essentially and under union guard have these people work for the union. They have women doing laundry and cooking, taking care of the elderly they brought with them. What else was he going to do with them . That pushed the Political Landscape of emancipation. In port royal South Carolina in port royal, South Carolina we can see how it pushed the Cultural Landscape of emancipation. You have self emancipating and the people influence of religious communities that start to set up the equivalent of a humanitarian crisis response. How do we take care of and add resources to the people who are emancipating themselves in South Carolina. They envisioned, these northern missionaries, they were made of missionaries from a variety of denominations including the congregationalists and others and they imagined themselves going down to help people with native resources. They imagined themselves going down to teach formerly enslaved people on how to labor diligently, how to become citizens, how to reproduce families that were moral. Thatwere shocked to find there were already Robust Networks already for education, there were already Robust Networks for religion and churches. People had been taking care of their own spiritual lives. There were already pushing the landscape and what it meant to be free in terms of their families. In this moment they start to set up it starts to look like other elements of reconstruction in terms of establishing some of the landscape for how the government would interact with free people, which later becomes the freedoms bro or which is the freedoms bureau at this point and other elements. In this first freedoms moment, you have these the freedoms bureau or which is the freedoms bureau at this point. Socially, culturally what are we going to do . How are we going to support these communities even if they initially thought it would be leading these communities . And look a little bit more deeply at this question what did it mean to be free from the perspective of self amount self emancipating folks. There is a robust landscape of information. What didnt mean in terms of labor . In terms of mental and intellectual pursuits echo in terms of personal goals, for their families, for their bodies , for their political goals, in terms of office holding, their religious community and even younger fee and movement . Geography and movement . What did it mean to be free . When of the areas we heard from garrison frazier was land. They wanted to be able to be independent but land was in important an important part of it. But they wanted to be able to get the fruits of their own labor. When of the ways we get a picture of what free people wanted is from the now pretty famous letter of a formerly enslaved man named it Jordan Anderson writing to his former in slavery en slaver. Jordan,he things that he basically very memorably verllenges his former ensla on the violence he visited upon him and his family and he says basically in dayton, ohio where he lives he is able to work and get paid every week. His wife is able to be respected and be called by her name as misses anderson. He calculates how much money he would get in back pay if his enslaverd slave were to pay him for the years of Service Without pay, if he had paid mandy for her work as well and subtracted the amount for any care they received while hey were there and calculated that that would be over 11,000. His significant amount. He said, so long as you are able to guarantee that and a few other things, we will come back. Slave is former and enslaver know he wanted to be respected for the work that he did. In another instance, in terms of labor and controlling labor and getting the fruits of their labor, there was an enslaved woman in georgia in the 1860s and she was known for and a disciplined a few times for perfume and going into the vanity and putting on a little bit of makeup and looking at herself in the mirror. Side profile or whatever. She was disciplined for it a few times by for her that is what freedom was going to mean. The ability to do that and do not be policed in that way. She might have responded after immense apartheid emancipation like another woman dead. She was disciplined for not responding like another women another woman did. She was disciplined for not responding. Towas a sense of i am going push back against those is systems of disciplining black labor that were extant at the time. Some people did not want to labor at all. They didnt want anyone to control their labor. When of the ways it manifested itself was not necessarily not to labor but to control labor on the family, whether that the family or wives who were now who now wanted to stay at home. The idea of choosing not to labor was another choice that free people wanted. Or to labor for themselves. To be able to gain the fruits of their labor with what they were able to produce for themselves. That manifested because as garrison frazier pointed out, enslaved people were liberated without land. That meant they had to secure the landowners and engage in sharecropping where they would gain a portion of the crop and profit from that or from having crop liens where they own their own land, they would row their own crop and then have grow their own crop and then have a portion that they would have to the land owner or the person who was assisting them. It was not on the best terms for the formerly enslaved people. Harriet jacobs and the redder we lead today pointed it out. She said friedman with few exceptions were cheated out of the crop of their cotton the letter we read today pointed it out. Freed men with few exceptions were cheated out of the crop of their cotton. Lastly they wanted land and they had good reason to want it and to believe that they would get it because when journal sherman general sherman is a part of the conversation he was having with the ministers in savannah was speaking about what to do with all of these free people who were liberating themselves into joining the union army. It was not creating a drag but having all these people following behind, because they realized the meaning of the union armies presence was pulling people to the army that didnt know what to do with them. They took a swatch of land on the eastern seaboard of georgia and South Carolina and promised to distribute some of that land to the freed people to labor on for themselves and take care of themselves because that is what would have been needed in the very Agricultural Society at the time. That is what people did. He apportioned some land, you could call them like homesteads. That was not able to be fulfilled. We will talk about that more at will later point at a later point. To work and take care of their families. What it means to be free in terms of mental and intellectual processes this is one of the areas where the pursuit of literacy was robust. It was incredibly robust to. Booker t. Washington described it like gang a whole nation trying to go to school. Imagine everyone trying to get into the schoolhouse to learn how to read, and all the elements education afforded. Some of what emerges during this missionaryergency schools. Ur missionary missionaries find there are already schools there. So people like mary pictured here in the corner, the free black woman in hampton who had already been running a free school in hampton for free black folks before the war, so this infrastructure for education among free black folk to educate other black folk that continues on during the. Period during the of emancipation. Then you have people like Harriet Jacobs who go to the south and help establish schools and help teach in the schools. Charlotte horton, you will remember, she is the daughter of james horton. He fought in the American Revolution in philadelphia. She goes down as part of gideon band in South Carolina and she is shocked at the exuberant energy they bring to the classroom space at the capacity they have. She is shocked because the discourse about enslaved people have been that they were not capable of learning, they are wantapable they do