williams1909

@Article{ williams1909,
	author = {G. Mott Williams},
	title = {Letters of {General Thomas Williams}, 1862},
	journal = {American Historical Review},
	volume = 14,
	number = 2,
	month = {January},
	pages = {304--328},
	year = 1909,
}

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1832660

For more on Williams, see winters1963.

p. 318, writing on May 22, 1862, on Mississippi River, 3 miles below Vicksburg; Steam Transport Laurel Hill:

And the blackies, they swarm wherever there’s a dry spot to stand on, and wave us a welcome with their hats, and grin their delight at the hope we’ve come to free them. Skiffs bearing them away from their masters are constantly met with floating down the river. Where they can go and how they can subsist is hard to say. But many must eventually escape and be otherwise lost by starvation to their masters.

Williams himself is not very sympathetic. He calls “fanatic slaveholders … the counterparts of our abolition fanatics,” and says that in throwing off the Union they have thrown off the one secure protection of their property:

A party of these slaveholding gentlemen called on me the other day to ask if we would not assist them to recover their slaves. I answered it was a singular request to ask assistance from an authority they had repudiated.

Likewise, on p. 322, while Williams is in Baton Rouge on June 18:

A visit just now from a lady and her husband about a valuable mulatto run away from them. I told the lady to stop the war and all such troubles would cease …

p. 323: While talking about the ditch being built later that month to cut off Vicksburg:

I have upwards of 700 contrabands employed on the work, which have been taken by my armed parties from the plantations, 3 to 5 miles around. They work and shout as they work, thinking they’re working for their freedom, and if the canal is a success will deserve it and shall have it. … long may they flourish, if the cut off’s a success.

After part of the canal caves in the next month, Williams estimates he’ll need 3 months and “3000 negroes” to finish the ditch. On July 21, still just below Vicksburg:

The Confiscation Act and Emancipation Act of Congress of recent passage must bring the Southerners to their senses, or culminate in their destruction. If the war continues a year longer, I don’t see how they’re to escape a servile war. The negroes are flying from their masters in all directions, and have become thoroughly impressed with the idea of being free. Old, decrepit men and women, even, come into our lines, whose old age and infirmities were probably well provided for. Yet they leave the comforts their age and infirmities require, for freedom, which, may be, has been the dream of all their lives. That idea of being free, how can they ever be dispossessed of it? Never. The doom of slavery is already written, unless the South stop the rebellion. They began the rebellion to establish a great slave empire: they must stop the rebellion to save their country from destruction and servile war, and perhaps themselves from negro domination and a Black Republic. What a terrible punishment! (p. 325)

p. 326: On July 21, he’s still having trouble with the ditch, despite digging “with our 1500 contrabands.” Throughout the letters he talks about fever and sickness among his men, though whether contraband slaves were affected isn’t mentioned. Also returns to the question of emancipation:

But emancipation and confiscation must do much to end the war. Or what can the south expect but a servile insurrection! If the war continues a year longer, nothing can save them from it. The idea of freedom has possessed itself of the entire black population, and what idea of this sort ever failed to work itself out? The old and decrepit are not exempt from it, and leave the comforts age and infirmity require for freedom. Here they are in our lines, old, young; men, women; boys, girls; rampant with the idea of being free, look and speak defiantly to their quondam masters.