UNIVERSITY

FREED AFRICAN AMERICANS

NAME

COURSE

PROFESSOR

CITY AND STATE

DATE

How Freed Slaves Reacted To Their New Status after the Civil War and the Reality of Their Freedom

After the civil war more than 3.9 million African Americans gained their freedom. In this incredible transition period the freed slaves reacted by first establishing their families. They also sought ways in which they could manage their working environment, apart from that they looked for ways in which they could establish their own churches and schools and participate in public life not as slaves but as citizens. However, these objectives were not easy at that point in time. Their transition from a life of slavery to that of freedom was as astonishing as it was multifaceted. The freed slaves experienced a mixture of joy and disappointment as they tried to establish themselves as free people.

The former slaves now encountered challenges in their efforts to ascertain themselves as free citizens. They frequently faced challenges in their efforts to establish themselves as free citizens and paid workers. Most of their owners refused to accept them as free people. They not only had no place to live rather they also lacked ways of supporting themselves.

However over 20,000 former slaves had joined the army during the war, to gain their freedom. As a matter of fact, 40% of Tennessee’s union troops were made up of African Americans. Most of these men initially worked as military laborers, they assisted in the completion of the Johnsonville and Nashville railroad before gallantly fighting in the 1864 Nashville battle. Most if the African American soldiers also had families that followed them to seek their freedom behind the union lines. The renegades especially women and their children as well as the elderly were perceived as a big burden by the union and were thus were not welcomed. Most of these women attempted to look for work in union camps, even though there were limited opportunities some of them eventually succeeded to work as hospital workers, cooks, seamstresses and laundresses.

The freedom during war time was disastrous for families that lived behind the union lines because of unbearable conditions. By the end of the war hurriedly erected contraband camps that had been built all over Tennessee became very poor asylums for the freed slaves. The fragile shelters in the union encampments offered little protection from hazardous elements and the congested conditions resulted in shocking rates of diseases and deaths. Apart from that, women in these camps were sexually exploited by white soldiers.

Consequently most slaves decided to stick with their former owners after they heard about the heart rending conditions in the union camps. The slaves who had stuck with their owners in the entire war period began to experience some form of freedom. They obtained some leverage from their owners due to the potential threat they had of escaping. Some of the concessions they received from their masters included: having quality time with their families and doing enough work for their own families.

Most of the land owners had fled after the war and their land was seized by the Union Army. Some of this land was promised be given to the freed slaves by the Union General William Sherman. However, this was reverted when the former land owners were pardoned by President Andrew Johnson in 1865 and repossessed their property. Most of the former slaves pushed to the wall with no other way of fending for themselves or their families made up their mind to go back to their former owners. Even though they were now paid a monthly salary some were made to sign contracts whose conditions were similar to slavery. For instance they could be fined for foul mouth and they could not leave the farms without seeking permission.

Since they were no more in slavery, a fundamental concern for a majority of the freed slaves in the south was to locate members of their families from whom they had been detached under bondage. Given that they had long been deprived of mobility while still in bondage the freed African Americans took to their feet. They travelled across cities and towns, as they searched for each other, they sought any leads that could assist them unite. They took detailed adverts in Newspapers in an attempt to find each other. The families that managed to reunite experienced both the delight of reconciliation alongside the tension of constructing cut off relationships.

The desire to ensure that their families were established kept on motivating former slaves at the end of the war. However, several peripheral pressures curtailed their efforts to keep their families intact. Inadequate resources, miserable economic situations and constant manipulation by their former owners who were searching for cheap laborers made some African Americans to franchise their kids to the white employers.

The effort to ensure that freedom was indeed distinct from slavery was a daunting task in the reconstruction years. Most freed African Americans worked for their former owners in the farms but for very slight compensation. As much as the former slaves wanted their own independence and control of their time, this often clashed with their white employers.

Bibliography

Bobby L. Lovett, The African-American History of Nashville, Tennessee, 1780-1930 Fayetteville, AR: Univ. of Arkansas Press, (2007), 59-60.

Bussell LeForge, “State Colored Conventions of Tennessee, 1865-1866,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 65 (Fall 2006): 231-235

Carroll Van West, Tennessee History: The Land, the People, and the Culture (Knoxville, TN: Univ. of Tennessee Press, (2010). 100-193

James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 Chapel Hill, NC: Univ. of North Carolina Press. (2005). 123-130.

Michael T. Gavin, Maury County African-American Heritage Tour Guide (Columbia, TN: Middle Tennessee Visitors Bureau, (2008), 3-15.

Robert A, Divine America: Past and Present, Volume 1 Brief Edition. Pearson: New York (2009). 300-320