berlin1985

@Book{ berlin1985,
	editor = {Ira Berlin and Barbara J. Fields and Thavolia Glymph and Joseph P. Reidy and Leslie S. Rowland},
	title = {The Destruction of Slavery},
	address = {Cambridge},
	publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
	year = 1985,
}

Part of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Ser. 1, Vol. 1.

p. 676: “According to one estimate, some 150,000 slaves were forcibly moved from the Mississippi Valley to Texas in the year following the federal capture of Vicksburg.”

p. 11:

Political uncertainty, particularly in the border states, also caused slave owners to transfer, or (as the process became known) “refugee,” their slaves to the Confederate interior. Slaveholders along the exposed periphery of the South soon joined those in the border states in refugeeing the slaves most likely to bolt for the Union lines. Usually they moved suspect slaves to their own or relatives’ estates farther from the military action. When this was not possible, they often hired them out or—cutting their losses—sold them for whatever they would bring.

The editors note this practice of refugeeing as proof that “even with the aid of federal arms, freedom advanced slowly and not always directly. Individual slaveholders could aggravate the difficulties of escape to the Yankees, and Southern armies could recapture black people who had already reached Union lines” (35).

They also note, however, that “attempts to tear black men from their families” by ordering them to the interior, “rather than ending unrest, further stimulated flight” (675). Thus refugeeing can ultimately be seen as another sign and cause of the destruction of slavery.

Viz., p. 675-676:

Slave owners searching for a safe harbor, distant from the dangers of escape and impressment, moved frenetically about the South. The removal of slaves that began as a trickle in the first year of the war turned into a floor in the second half of 1864. … Wartime refugeeing altered the geography of black life and, contrary to its design, added momentum to slavery’s decline.

Attempts to relocate slaves prompted flight, and often had to be done at gunpoint or with shackles, and “even then, some refugeed slaves escaped and returned to the old plantation, struck out for Union lines, or simply hid in the woods” (676), while others left behind formed self-sustaining communities that aided runaways and further informed Union armies about slaveholders’ whereabouts.

p. 676:

Slaveholders hoped that transfer to the interior would insulate their slaves from the disruptive effects of the war. Instead, from the first, refugeeing disrupted the plantation order and transferred the disorder of the war zone to areas yet untouched by the conflict.

The editors note, however, that “in greater proportion than any other segment of the planter class that confronted federal invasion, Louisiana’s sugar barons remained on their estates” (188). Louisiana was also different in that “emancipation came to southern Louisiana in fits and starts” (187).

The volume also contains, on pp. 772-773, the September 4 order from Kirby Smith that “able bodied male negroes and transportation should be carried back in advance of our troops” (772), followed by later reports that planters around Alexandria were reluctant to move, since it was “now reported by persons returning from Texas that one half is taken … and some even who have started are, I am informed, returning, preferring to risk the changes with the Enemy” (773). A year later, in Arkansas, Smith had to reverse course and urge planters who were considering fleeing to stay an dgrow crops. “I have learned with much regret that you are preparing to remove with your labor to Txs,” he told planters in November 1864, “leaving your present plantations uncultivated” (780).