Chapter 6: Peace, of a Sort

Hamlin’s inaugural was a celebration not only of his election but of the Union victory.

“We are, again, one nation,” he said. “Our unity must be celebrated, and it must be protected. We are one country, more American than we are Iowan or Georgian. We are American more than we are black or white, more than we are rich or poor, more than we are farm or city.”

Later on in his speech, Hamlin said, “Some have attempted to divide us, and we should not give them power to divide us again.” That was one of the issues for the Radical Republicans, more important for them – really – than the issue of giving Negroes the vote. They blamed the “slavocracy” for demanding again and again special concessions for their interests and then finally taking their section out of the Union.

The planters no longer owned men – the 13th amendment was not yet adopted, but it would be. They, however, still owned one hell of a lot of land. As politicians, the Radical Republicans knew how influential landowners were. The smallholders would look up to them and follow the planters’ interests rather than the smallholders’ interests.

The Constitution kept Congress from taking an estate as punishment for treason, but they already had a law on the books that punished the keeping of slaves after the Emancipation Proclamation with a stiff fine. While the Proclamation was prominently mentioned, the punishment was for keeping slaves – or restraining or requiring work from people on the pretense that they were slaves – after the law was passed. If that law could be enforced, the fines might bankrupt many planters.

Most Union officers were eager to go home; some weren’t. Among those, the administration appointed some as judges to try cases about ignoring Emancipation. The Administration had many tasks before it in the peace process, and they prioritized naming new district-court judges very low.

Sam Warren was a new judge of a “Tribunal inferior to the supreme court.” He tried mostly cases under the “Enforcement of Emancipation Act.” Butler warned him not to touch a case where he had taken part in gathering the evidence. When the jury – Union officers – found the owner guilty, Judge Warren levied a fine of $10,000 per slave. When the fine wasn’t paid, the plantation was seized. It was offered up at auction, but it would not be sold unless someone bid as much as the fine. Otherwise, it was US property.

Congress passed the “Survey of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina act.” Not only were those states to be surveyed into townships and sections like the Old Northwest had been, but – in any township in which the United States owned 5 sections or more of land – it would put aside 1 section to be leased to support the public schools, which were to be “Forever open to all township residents regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

President Hamlin brought prominent Blacks and abolitionists to the White House to float the idea of “Domestic colonization.”

“We have tried foreign colonization, and despite the noblest of intentions, it seldom worked,” he said. “Even when the alternative was slavery, it attracted little interest among those which it was supposed to benefit. We certainly hope that the alternatives faced by our colored brethren in the new United States are much more attractive. On the other hand, we are talking about a population which is overwhelmingly used to agricultural occupations.

“What I propose,” he continued, “is to offer each former slave family a small farm in the area in which they were enslaved. When the 13th Amendment is passed, they will have legal freedom and equality. True freedom, however, requires the skills of reading, writing, and reckoning. It also requires a way to earn their keep as free men.

“I am not persuaded that leaving them to work for their former masters for what those are willing to offer is true freedom. Rest assured that this is an offer; the days of compulsion are over. We do not expect colored men from the North to migrate, and we do not propose to punish any man, of whatever color, for deciding to migrate.”

His audience applauded his idea. So did congressmen who were hearing from constituents fearing a flood of black labor taking their suddenly-scarce jobs.

The final bill offered any man who had been a slave or held as a slave after January 1, 1860 and was adult at the time of passage of the act life title to 40 acres of land which the Federal government owned within the 4 states which had been surveyed. Any former Union soldier could have life title to 80 acres, but no-one could claim under both provisions.

The wording allowed Union veterans of any color to take the 80 acres. Since anyone could have 160 acres with ultimate freehold under the Homestead Act, Congress didn’t expect many white takers. On the other hand, some of the land in the south was fertile and within more settled territory. Some of the soldiers already there chose to stay as farmers.

Even earlier, Butler had been named military governor of Alabama. He took over the job with vigor, but he looked for his own opportunities, as well.

Sam heard from his family about Alice’s baby, he saw that it had been born less than 9 months later than the letter she had written him. He wasn’t particularly interested in going home to live near the Swensons. He wrote home:

Dear Mother,

Much as I miss you and Father, I was a
sergeant in Illinois and a general in
Alabama. I think I’ll stay here for a while
and see what happens to the country.

Unless there is a new war soon that
needs a cavalryman, all I know how
To do is tend store. I could come back
and help Father. I think I’ll open my own
store, instead. Right now, I’m still being a
judge, but I don’t know how long that will
last.
Love to everybody.
Sam

He was busy for a while longer. Then the president finally named some district-court judges for Alabama, and he was out of a job. To avoid taking title to land which had featured in cases he’d tried, he moved west of Montgomery. (All his cases had been east of that city.) He applied for 80 acres. When that land was granted, he paid to have a building raised, He lived in one end and opened a store in the other. The store started to do good business.

He had returned his horse, Jack, to the army. He bought a new one, Stepper, and the saddle and tack he would need. He didn’t raise a barn because he didn’t think the area ever got that cold. Jack had hardly ever been in a barn while Sam rode him, and they’d seen some snow.

The idea of a Freedman’s Bureau had been floating around Congress for 2 years. The various voluntary efforts had been inadequate even for the few freedmen of those years. Now, virtually every former slave knew that he was free. Those were not the only problems peace brought.

Congress established a Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands in the War Department.

The bureau needed many things. In particular, they needed teachers.

Deborah Kendrick was not a plain girl. Father said that she was a beauty, and Mother – who did not feel called to swell her daughters’ egos – said she was comely. Even her younger sister Gladys had expressed envy for her lovely hair. Now, though, Gladys was engaged, and Deborah was not.

Before she had graduated from high school, the boys of Mount Jackson had marched off to war. Well, she had always planned to be a teacher, and she went happily to the Normal School when she graduated.

She was in her last year of Normal School when the cruel war finally ended. She came home in June to discover that the men in blue had come home in January and February – well, some of them had, and the rest were not coming back ever.

They had been tired of their previous life and anxious to get on with their new one. There had been many whirlwind courtships, and many engagements, including Fred’s with Gladys. If you looked around Mount Jackson, you could see married couples, engaged couples, couples who were not quite engaged, and single women. You could see precious few single men, and none to whom Deborah felt the slightest attraction.

When the call came for teachers for the freedmen and refugees, Deborah felt it her patriotic duty to respond. She explained at supper that she could wait until Gladys had her wedding if that wedding were soon. She appealed to Father on his strong convictions about abolition. “Are they truly free if they cannot read, Father? What is a contract if only one party knows what is in it?”

Mother was not certain. Gladys pointed out that it was her plans which were being disturbed, and she was happy to make the sacrifice as her own contribution to the effort. Deborah felt quite cynical about that “sacrifice,” but as Gladys was arguing on her side, she did not comment.

She went to Boston for her interview with the American Missionary Association. The man interviewing her looked not much older than she was, but he had only one arm. His questions seemed irrelevant, and she was accepted.

From Boston she went in a ship. As the summer was progressing at the same time they sailed south, the heat grew every day. When the captain was convinced that they were becalmed, he put the ship on steam. The soot was unbelievable.

After sailing for days in the Caribbean, they finally reached Mobile. From there it was by train nearly to Montgomery. Two of her companions from the ship and train were going to teach there, as well, and the 3 of them waited on the tiny platform under the hostile and inquisitive stares of hostile white bystanders until a mule cart driven by a Negro arrived dustily and late.

“Mistresses,” the driver said, “You all be the new teachers.”

“We are,” Dorothy said. She thought that someone should say something. She wasn’t certain that she had heard a question in his voice. For that matter, the local whites seemed fairly sure, and they didn’t seem too bright.

“That be yo Luggage?”

“Yes.” Dorothy reached for her case, but the Negro jumped onto the platform.

“I’ll handle that,” he said. He moved the bags and cases to the front of the platform. Then he jumped down again and loaded them on the cart. There were steps at each end of the platform, with men sanding on each set of steps.

another teacher had preceded them by a month.

Their schoolhouse and dormitory was a former plantation house. It looked like great luxury gone to ruin. Each of them had a bedroom upstairs, nearly as large as her family’s dining room.

The kitchen was outside of the house – something she could appreciate in the stifling heat – and the downstairs rooms had been turned into classrooms.

She learned that she would be teaching different ages at different times of the day. Different ages, but the same curriculum. They would be teaching six-year olds to read and teaching their parents and, sometimes, grandparents to read, as well.

She had dressed for a Massachusetts summer and packed clothes for cooler weather. Massachusetts never got as hot at noon as Alabama often stayed ‘til midnight.

There were dress stores in Montgomery, but getting there would be a problem, and women – especially Yankee women – weren’t safe traveling alone. There was a general store not a mile away, and that might have, according to Marjorie who had been in the school longest, something that would suit her.

Going to the general store was perfectly safe. The people she passed called her “teacher” or “Mistress.” The storekeeper didn’t have anything that would fit her, but he could sell her cotton cloth and recommend a seamstress. As a matter of fact, the seamstress was in one of her classes.

She was amused by the way his customers addressed him, though. She mentioned that to Jane, another teacher, that night.

“I don’t like to make fun of our students, but I was at the store. Just because it’s a general store, they call the proprietor ‘general.’ Don’t you think that is quaint?”

“The general store?” Jane asked. “That’s Sam Warren. He is a general. Don’t you remember the stories about Andersonville? For that matter, Warren’s troops captured Davis.”

She felt a little ashamed. Maybe she should apologize. No. She shouldn’t tell anyone else what she had thought of the customers. When she had occasion, or at least an excuse, to visit the store again, she spoke to the owner.

“Are you Sam Warren?”

“Yes, Ma’am, but you have the advantage of me.”

“Deborah Kendrick. Are you the man who freed the prisoners from Andersonville?”

“Well, Miz Kendrick, I was there. So were a couple of thousand other blue coats. If I’d rode up to the gates by myself, I wouldn’t have rode back out. I’ll tell you that.”

She now remembered the story. He’d ridden right up to the gates at the head of regiments of cavalry. He’d practically dared them to shoot him.

But he was going on. “I wrote home from Savannah. They’d read about Sherman’s march from Atlanta to the sea, but some others of us were along. Matter of fact, neither general Sherman nor I did much marching. He was a general, and I was in the cavalry.”

Deborah ended her shopping trip with the opinion that General Warren was a modest man and, moreover, a charming man.

The teachers started work early in the morning and ended well after dark. They tried to take a full hour at noon for dinner, and to have it together. This turned into a time anyone could bring up an issue.

“I do wish the students would just call me ‘teacher,’” Diane said one day.

“Don’t they?” Marjorie asked. “Mine are almost painfully polite. It’s always either ‘teacher’ or ‘mistress.’”

“That’s my point. Their mistress was the woman who owned them, perhaps whipped them.”

“What do you others think?” Marjorie asked.

“Well, I see her point,” Jane said.

“And, if she corrects them and we do not,” Deborah said, “everybody outside of her class will still call her ‘mistress.’ Then, too, once it is explained I don’t want them calling me their owner.”

“Well, if you are all agreed – we are all agreed – we’ll bring it up when we think it is important. It need not be said too often. They have a habit, and they will form another.”

Deborah had a class of small children that afternoon, and she told them to call her “teacher.” Simply telling the children was different from simply telling the adults.

A man from Massachusetts moved into the neighborhood. At first, none of them met him, but a man from home aroused a bit of gossip at the table. Diane was from Maine, but the rest of them were from different towns in Massachusetts.

He stopped to speak to Deborah when she was on her way to the store and he was riding past. Mike Green was a veteran, “as what man wasn’t?” He had taken up his 80 acres where there was the fastest-flowing stream in the district. They shared a smile at how slow water flowed in this flat land. He was going to build cotton mills in partnership with General Butler, the current military governor.

“Alabama,” he said, “sends north thousands of bales of cotton, and it ships in thousands of bolts of cloth. That means that spinning and weaving right here would save all that shipping. Well, we can’t handle anything like what this area will produce, but we will be the first in line.”

She wished him well, and he asked her about when her students could work. She thought her students were working on farms and in classrooms already.

She mentioned the mill to General Warren when she made her purchase.

“Maybe that’s a good idea,” he said. “Freedmen have to be 21 before they can file for land. They need to do something besides help their parents farm. Looks like a little coin more than once a year, too. I tell you extending credit to people who never got paid before is a chancy thing.”

“You do that?”

“I have to. I had some money, but my stock now is all bought on credit. If everybody pays me, I’ll be rich. ‘Course you teachers pay cash, and so do some others.”

Sam was extending credit and buying from the wholesalers on credit. They were discounting his invoices at banks, and Jane wasn’t the only person who remembered “The Hero of Andersonville.”

“My wife’s favorite niece is married to a man who was in Andersonville,” a bank president told a clerk who expressed worry about their exposure. “I’d rather take the loss than have her learn I’d rejected a note with General Sam Warren’s signature.”

Congress passed a law calling for a convention to draw up a state constitution for Alabama. Deborah found that half the men in her evening class intended to run. The elections would be after harvest time.

“Don’t you think that one of the qualifications for writing a constitution is being able to write?” she asked.

“Teacher, you are saying that only white people get a say.”

“No. Well, almost. I know that there are Negroes who can read and write. But the point is that you need to read and write to write constitutions and laws. That is one reason that we are teaching you how to read. You will vote; I hope you will vote. Choose someone you trust who can read and write. If you get elected delegate, then you shall have to find someone you trust to tell you what is in the motions you will vote on, anyway. It seems to me that however few white men you trust here that you can tell whether to trust them more easily here than you would be able to find someone to trust among people you don’t know in Montgomery.”

First, though, came harvest. It would last for weeks, and school let out for 4 weeks to let people prepare and to let them rest up – and vote – afterwards.

The local mill was almost ready to operate. Mike Green made an offer on all the cotton that local farmers – including those in Deborah’s classes – grew.

Sam Warren closed the store for a day, not that he was seeing much business during harvest season and rode into Birmingham to see what the prices were there.

“The farmers shouldn’t take anything less,” he told Deborah. “I like General Butler, but his mills in Massachusetts are certainly paying a sight more.”

She told the other teachers, and they told whom they could. Warren was telling some farmers, too.

“I thought you were my friend,” Mike Green said to her one day. He’d ridden out to the school to deliver his message. “Lots of these niggers would of sold me cotton for less.”

“This year, they might have. But we are teaching them things. One lesson is how to deal with cheats. Your mill wouldn’t be worth much if it had to bring cotton from elsewhere.”

“You might be right.”

“General Warren is extending credit,” she said. “No colored person can get credit from Mr. Mason. You think they will forget that?”

Mike ended up forgiving both her and Warren. When the cotton was delivered, he had Warren there with his books. He wrote a check to Warren for what the farmer owed and paid the remainder in cash to the farmer.

Actually, Green’s friendly behavior was not entirely his own idea. He had written Butler about Warren

<block>

General,
From your directions to me,
I expected General Warren to
behave in a friendly fashion.
Instead, he has informed
The colored farmers of the
prices prevailing in town.
Did I misunderstand you?
I think I could break him.

</block>

To which Ben Butler responded:

<block>

Mike,
Sam Warren is a friend of mine, and I hope of yours. He always did take care of his troops, something I think you should appreciate. We have a profit without cheating anybody, and that will keep us in business when competitors come south.
Take good care of Warren.
Benjamin F. Butler.

</block>

Sam suggested that Miss Kendrick write her family to ask what workers in spinning mills got in Massachusetts. “We don’t have any such factories in Illinois. I like Mike, but I’m not certain he’s planning to pay down here what he paid up there.”

While she did, Sam got into the constitutional-convention race

The Congressional law had specified how many delegates would be elected from each county. They had done their calculation based upon the entire Negro population of each county in the 1860 census added to half the white population. Voters were required to take the “Iron-clad oath,” specifying that the voter had not been in the Confederate army or otherwise served the Confederacy. Congressional drafters had figured that only half of all white men could take that oath honestly, but they thought that specifying the number rather than the formula would be safer from constitutional challenge.

Sam, who had turned 22 in February, fit the age qualification by only one year. He thought that he might have established himself enough in the county to stand a chance. As it turned out, he got the highest total in the county. Teacher Deborah’s warning had gotten about – somewhat modified. Other candidates were saying, “Vote for me and for General Warren. When we’re there, he’ll tell me what’s in the proposals.”

The school would have a first grade after harvest, and Jane would be teaching it. Up to then, they had different classes for different ages, but they were all learning much the same lessons. The adults were hungrier for learning, but the children’s minds were more agile. The middle group, what Deborah thought of as “the older children” although some were little younger than she was, learned the fastest.

Several adult students came to Deborah to complain. They thought that the store had taken more money than they had owed.

“Well, tell them that’s why they’re learning to read and to reckon,” General Warren told her. “If you don’t, anyone who does can cheat you. But I can’t have them suspecting me. Can you find if the other teachers have also got complaints?”

They had. Warren visited for dinner, and they set up a series of visits with each teacher and the students she chose to come see Warren on a Sunday – the school and the store were both open the other six days – for the teacher to go over the books.

Before that, they got a statement from Mike Green of the checks he had written Warren.

“Now, this is why Miss Kendrick is teaching you to read and to reckon,” Warren said at her meeting. “The only record is the written record, and if you can’t read it, you don’t have any record. If you can’t add up what you owe, then I’ll add it up, and you have to accept my addition. This time, Miss Kendrick will add it up again.”

And that’s what they did. For each of the three people she had brought, Warren read off his list of the purchases, the prices, and the dates. The student tried to remember what he described, and she wrote down the price. Then she added the amounts up. Then she found the amount of the check.

The students left more-or-less convinced that they hadn’t been cheated.

She had been concentrating on reading and writing. She decided to put more attention on arithmetic.

Mike Green visited the teachers and persuaded them to cooperate with him on the students’ also working. They agreed that the older girls would go to school in the afternoon and could work in the mornings. The older boys would go to school in the mornings and could work in the afternoons.

Green agreed that he would not hire anyone 12 or younger. “That’s how they look, anyway. The nigger kids -- some don’t even know how old they are, themselves. You know that the ones not spinning cotton are going to be chopping weeds.”

“We know,” Marjorie said. “It’s just that their parents will take care of them if they get hungry or thirsty.”

On General Warren’s request, she mailed her family asking for a copy of the Massachusetts constitution. Diane sent for the Maine one, as well. Warren came for Sunday dinner and stayed into the afternoon while they talked about what should be in a constitution. He bought the Illinois state constitution, and all three were read.

“You understand, ladies, that there will be many people there. Maybe, nothing I say will be heard. Still, I learned from the army. You make plans, and then the enemy and the situation blow the plans to hades. Still, if you go in without making plans, then you’ll have the fight that the enemy planned to have.”

He came in with a draft preamble written down. Marjorie took it into another room and returned with something even he agreed sounded much better.

He wouldn’t push for women voting when Jane asked him to. “Ma’am, you are intelligent women, and I’m asking your opinions. Still, I have things I’ll urge at the meeting that I believe in. I’m not going to urge that Alabama be the first state with that rule. Besides, we’re probably going to say that Confederate soldiers and Confederate officials can’t vote. If women can, then Confederate women can.”

“I should have asked Deborah to propose the woman’s vote,” Jane said when General Warren was gone. “You do support it, don’t you, Deborah?”

“As a principle, certainly. It will never be law, though. And General Warren answered you quite reasonably. What difference would it have made if I had pushed it less determinedly?”

All three of the girls giggled. “He likes you, Deborah,” Marjorie said. “Green does too.”

She had seen no evidence, but she knew that denying it would just make them tease her. Honestly, they were teachers and were supposed to be adult women.

Military governor Ben Butler figured that presiding over the constitutional convention wasn’t his last job, but it was sort of a farewell. After the constitution was ratified, there would be an election, and he would be replaced. He would be happy enough to go. He had spent summers in New Orleans, Savannah, and Montgomery. He hadn’t enjoyed any of them, but Montgomery had been the worst; maybe he was getting old.

Still, he would leave some cotton mills behind. The old southern planters were worse snobs than the Boston Brahmins. They were too good to run factories; they owned plantations. Well, now they owned fewer plantations, and Ben Butler owned the factories. He had only 2 now, maybe 1 ½ since the weaving plant still had only half its machinery installed. There would be more later, though, and his credit was better in Boston than any of the southerners who would want to emulate him. Hell! His credit was better in San Francisco, and nobody in San Francisco knew him.

The first thing he did at the convention was to administer the iron-clad oath to 12 people whose background he knew; they administered the oath to the other delegates. There were more than 200 delegates from more than 70 counties.

Sam was one of the men administering the oath. He could believe that none of the colored men participated in the rebellion, at least no more than building the fortifications as slaves. Many of the whites were, like him, Union veterans. Some of the delegates from the northern counties, though, were the age that the Confederacy drafted. How did they escape military service? Still, it was his duty to administer the oath, not to find out if they were telling the truth.

As far as he could see, the colored delegates were the largest of three sections of the members of the convention. The Alabama whites were the next, and the Union whites were the smallest. Still, the three groups were nearly the same size, and you often couldn’t tell the whites apart until they spoke.

As soon as General Butler gaveled the convention to order, a man at the back was recognized to nominate a permanent chairman. Instead he challenged the legitimacy of the entire proceedings. Alabama already had a constitution, and that constitution provided a means of amendment. As this mob was not following the rules for amending the constitution, it was nil and meaningless.

Butler was about to respond when he saw Sam asking for recognition. “General Warren.”

“Mr. Chairman, the previous gentleman was incomplete when he cited the history of the state constitution. Alabama was created as a state in 1819 or created as a territory in 1817 and then turned into a state by the Congress of the United States. It existed only as one of the United States. When a legislature of that state announced that it had taken the state out of the Union, the state – which existed only as one of the United States – ceased to exist. The land and people were still here, of course, but the state was no more.

“Now, the people are gathering by representation to decide the form that a state with the same land and same name as the old state shall take. That is our right, and it is our duty.

“Mr. Chairman, I move that we proceed to do our duty in proper procedure, and I request that you repeat the question which we are now debating.”

“Thank you, General Warren. Nominations for permanent chair are now in order.”

Several names were presented. One of them was for Sergeant Gabe Lincoln. Sam remembered him. Apparently, the advice of the teachers he knew that the delegates should be literate was being repeated elsewhere. The Georgia sergeants were literate, and Lincoln – who had not had a last name when Sam had first seen him – had been a good sergeant otherwise, as well.