What does it mean. For today, we are going to be talking about what did freedom mean and in particular, what did freedom mean to the free people . In january of 1865, the secretary of war Edward Stanton and Union GeneralWilliam Sherman had a meeting with 20 preachers in savannah georgia. They were preachers, pastors, late Church Leaders and they wanted to find out from these preachers basically what is it that free people wanted from freedom . What did they expect . Particularly, what did they expect in the aftermath of the emancipation proclamation . The group of 20 people whose ostensibly rebranded of of free black folks and the community selected garrison frazier, a 67 year old man to be the representative of the community. To speak for them. General sherman asked them, or asked him, basically what did he understand freedom to me especially in light of the emancipation proclamation . He said basically taking us from under the yoke of bondage and placing us where we can reach the point of our labor, take care of ourselves and assist the government and maintaining our freedom. So you can start to hear some of the language from the emancipation proclamation in assisting the government to maintaining our freedoms. We talked about sort of having the people who were emancipated served in the military, go to work and do that diligently. Hes reflecting that. But hes also reflecting the ability to reap the fruits of their labor. So they will get the benefit of their labor. The secretary and general asked some of the questions like, could black people take care of themselves . Yes they could. What did they need . Land. They want to live among white people . Some did but garrison frazier did not. In this discussion, we can start to see what it is that free people wanted from their lives even as this governmental exploration of what freedom was going to mean for free people . They were already looking at what they wanted freedom to mean and to be. This is building on our conversations of freedom and free black life and how precarious it was. We are moving into somewhere where freedom could mean something more. They could think about what could freedom mean when they think about the perspectives of the free people . One of the other themes we are sort of connecting into from the earlier part of the term has to do with the question of how do black people appear on the landscape of the United States . We started the beginning of the term talking about whether or not black peoples experience of the United States is something about black people, identity formation, or is it something about pushing the nation to live out the true meaning of its creek . We will consider the question whether or not people were pushing the meaning of what the meaning what this nation was supposed to be and its founding document claim. In the process of doing that, we will start to see how it was that when people talk about emancipation and the moment reconstruction, that sometimes the question is framed in a way that sherman and stat and framed it, which is basically what can be free people do for the country . And then there is a question about what do the free people want from themselves . We look at the longer process of reconstruction and what happened. A lot of what freed people wonder for themselves got caught up by what they could do for the nation. I want to put both of these questions and balance. Thinking about the relationship of the fried people to the nation but also and more prominently, what it is that freed people wanted for themselves . One of the ways they were going to get it that is by thinking of these first sites of freedom. The first places where free people lived and went to. Basically, they were caught contraband camps. Spending a majority of our time thinking about how free people define freedom as aspects of their lives. I wanted to start out with what i call these sort of first filings of freedom. The landscape of freedom. That is the black soldiers right. When we think about black soldiers, many of them were free black men who enlisted. In order to support the union effort. Some of them were south emancipated men who liberated themselves from slavery and went and join the union ranks. It was a real debate about whether or not enslaved men, free men, free blackmon, should support the war effort. You can think about reasons why. If you think about what the experience of African People was in the American Revolution for example. Sort of thinking about what happened after the American Revolution . Did they realize the freedom that the American Revolution promised . No. That is what we had that little graphic. They had freedom but it was not full freedom or meaningful freedom or complete freedom. There was a real debate about whether or not blackmon should support the war effort. Eventually, they do and they enlist. They enlist after the emancipation proclamation because it becomes a war measure to enlist blackmon to support the union effort. They do it anyway believing that they can demonstrate their commitment to the union and the principles of the nation and that would reflect well on African People. They were participating in this process. Some refused. Some black men refused to enlist and other were forced into the army. Even on the union side. It was not all soldiers who participated who 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 buying for black soldiers. When he participated in the war, oftentimes in terms of leadership, they did not get very competent leadership because they were laboring under the systems of racism and oppression that kept them from getting the primary sort of leaders. They were sometimes denied the ability to hold commission positions as leaders. Eventually, they were allowed to gain some commissions. They had some leadership role. They were also often times placed at the forefront. Sometimes called like cannon fodder. Put on the front lines of different battles and they suffered some of the greatest number of casualties as a result of their service. One example they suffered casualties because they were placed on the front lines but the tenor of the war was so charged at some points that they would experience extreme violence because they were freed blackmon but viewed as sort of being runaway slaves or Something Like that. At fort pillow in tennessee, there was a group of black soldiers and it basically ends up as a massacre of union troops were trying to surrender. Four black soldiers, they were oftentimes on the front lines so that is what happened at fort pillow in tennessee where they were hold up in eight fort. The Union Soldiers were trying to escape. When they tried to escape from the fort, they believed there was going to be sort of transport waiting for them. It turns out that there wasnt. As they are trying to escape and surrender, they were basically massacred and shot as they were fleeing from the fort. In a similar situation happened at the battle of the crater, where there were black soldiers on the front of alex of the union effort. As they rushed into this blown up sort of mine area, they were massacred as confederate soldiers were shouting no quarter. They would not be allowed to surrender. That they would only, the only and they could have was death. We can see all black soldiers were leading the cause of the war by sort of articulating how they could be supportive of the union. Because you how they were thinking through and struggling under some of the limitations including being denied by which happened relatively early on. Some of them refuse to be paid until they would be paid the same amount as white soldiers. Compensation in terms of wages as well as clothing and things like that. The other piece of what they did in terms of leadership in the war effort was in terms of securing freedoms for their families. I will speak in a moment about contraband camps and how people were liberating themselves. One of the things that also happened for the men that served for the military, they were also able to gain freedom for their wives and children. Theys able to figure out the by serving in the union they could also gain freedom for their families and children we also know that when it comes to pursuing freedom, its sometimes viewed as a sort of individual moment, making choices for themselves. But then theyre also making choices for their families and communities. We start to think about some of the first freedoms and the places were in slaved people started finding their freedom. It was in the contraband camps. It was the place where its life to 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 the significance of the war. This is significant because sometimes people think they do not know what was going on. They did. They had a robust Communication Network that showed messages about what was happening in the lead up to the war. So when the union came to their areas, they understood what it meant. One of those first places of freedom was fortress monroe in virginia. Not too far from here. Near hampton, virginia in 1861. We start to find that the first freedoms were both this moment of a political crisis and humanitarian crisis for the nation. All at the hands of enslaved people who were liberating themselves into freedom. In the second place is port royal South Carolina which was viewed as a sort of rehearsal for reconstruction. The sort of first moment every figuring out what the reconstruction process would look like. In fortress monroe virginia in 1861, relatively early to the war, there were three incitement who ran from the person who was insulating them, a colonel in the confederate army. They ran to fortress monroe where the union army had set up camp. They said they did not want to work anymore for the confederate colonel who there in slavery. When they got there, Union GeneralBenjamin Butler had no plan exactly for what to do in a situation like that. What was he going to do for these men who were liberating themselves from slavery . He thought pretty quickly about how to handle this situation and termed determined these men should be treated like contraband. Contraband was an idea that he pulled from International Law that said basically any goods being transported by any neutral parties for the benefit of the army could be confiscated as contraband. He decided he would deem these men as contraband. He also recognize relatively quickly that the idea of treating these human beings like property was not a workable idea. They also realized there was a conflict of what the union was going to do with people now that they deemed them as property as well but did not necessarily want to hold property. They did not want to hold formally enslaved people as property. In this moment, it starts to lay out the landscape by which the union can start to think about these self emancipating men as potential laborers for the war and eventually as soldiers. That is what he did. He started by putting these men to work in the union camps. A good work around for the time being. They had to figure out what that would mean much later. What ends up happening is not only are men coming to fortress monroe and other camps like it, but they are also wind coming, children coming, there are elderly people coming. They could not imagine how they could easily absorb that labor into the war project. So it becomes a question of what do we do with these people . How do we navigate . He starts to create a work camp essentially. Under the union guard. He has these people work for the union. Have women doing laundry and cooking like that. Having them take care of the elderly that they brought with them. What else was he going to do with him . That starts to push the sort of Political Landscape of emancipation. Import royal South Carolina, you can see how these contraband camps push the social aspects of emancipation. You have a union presence, self emancipating isolate people, and the influence of religious communities that begin to set up the equivalent of a humanitarian crisis response. Bring resources to people who are emancipating themselves in South Carolina. They envisioned, these northern missionaries from a variety of denominations, going down to help destitute people in need of resources. They imagined themselves going down to teach formally enslaved people to become citizens. How do labour diligently. How to reproduce families that were sort of moral. And how to create religious communities. They were shocked to find that there were already sort of Robust Networks for education, religion and they had been taken care of their own spiritual lives. That they were already pushing the landscape of what it meant to be free in terms of their families. But nevertheless, in this moment they start to set up what could look like other elements of reconstruction in terms of establishing the landscape for how the government would interact with free people. And later becomes the friedmans bureau and other elements. In this first free mid freedom moment, you have contraband camps that are created by the impetus of fried people running to the union alliance. As well as the union army having to sort of adapt and figure out politically what we are going to do. Socially and culturally what are we going to do . How will we sustain and support these communities . Even if they initially thought they would be sort of leading these communities. Lets look a little bit more deeply at this question of sort of what did it mean to be free from the perspective of self emancipating folks . There is a pretty robust landscape of information thinking what did it mean . In terms of labor. In terms of their mental and intellectual pursuits . In terms of their personal goals for their families in themselves and their own bodies . Their Political Goals . In terms of government, Office Holding and all those things . The religious community and even geography and movement. So what did it mean to be free . We have already heard from garrison frazier that would be free people want it was land. They wanted to be independent. Land was an important part of it. They also want to control of their labor. They wanted to profit from the fruits of their labor. One of the ways we get a picture of what free people want it is from its from a formerly enslaved man called Jordan Anderson writing to his former enslaver, a letter responding to his enslavers request to return to the plantation to work. One of the things that jordan, he challenges the ways the in slavery treated him and the violence inflicted upon he and his family. He then basically says, hes able to get paid and work every week and dayton ohio. His wife is sort of able to be risk affected and be called by her name and he calculates how much money he would get in back pay if his former enslaver were to basically pay him the hourly wage he gets now for the hours of service he had done without pay if he would compensate mandy for her labor as well. He substructure the amounts for the care. He estimated the amount owed to them would be about 11,680 dollars. And 19th century dollars. A pretty significant amount. He says if you are willing to pay me that and county some other things then we will come back. He is having this moment of u. S. Im not doing that. But letting his fan former and slavery know that this is how i want to be compensated for my labor. I want to be respected for the work that i do. 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 she was known for and disciplined a few times for going and putting on the enslaving womans perfume. Going into the vanity and put on a little bit of makeup and look at herself in the mirror and check her side profile. She was known for doing this and disappoint a few times. To her, that is what freedom was going to mean. To be able to do that and not be policed in that way. She might have responded after emancipation the same way another and slipped woman did when she was disciplined for not responding appropriately or quickly enough. So that is played out. That time is over. There is a sense of im going to control my labor and im going to push back against those systems of disciplining black labor that had been existing at the time. Some people wanted not to liberate all. They did not want to have to work for anyone. They did not want anyone to control their labor. One the one of the ways this manifested itself was not necessarily not to labor but to control the labor of the family whether it be children or wives who net wanted to stay at home or be kept at home. That kind of thing. This idea of choosing not to labor was another choice. A choice free people want it in terms of labor. Or to labor for themselves. To be able to gain the fruits of their labor from the plows of their own hands and what they were able to produce for themselves. That manifested itself as garrison frazier pointed out, enslaved people were liberated without land. That means they had to secure land from the land owners and engage in share cropping where they gained a portion of the crop. Sort of profit from that or from having crop leans where they own their own land, they would grow their own crops and have a portion of that crop they would have to give to the land owner or to the person assisting them. But all of this was not on the best terms for the formerly enslaved people. Harriet jacobs in the letter that we read today pointed this out which he says the friedman, with few exceptions, were cheated out of the crop of their cotton. Shes indicating there is a system where people are being manipulated in the process of not getting their full amounts. And lastly, they wanted land and had good reason to want it and to believe they would get it because when general sherman as part of the conversation he was having with the ministers in savannah, he was thinking about what to do with all of these fried people who are liberating themselves and filing into the union army. Not creating a drag necessarily but having all these people falling behind because they realized the meaning of the union armies presents. Pulling people to the union army and knowing what to do with them.