Ring Shouts (Civil War)

Topic: Origins - Ring Shout
Our knowledge of ring shouts increased after the Union forces took control of Port Royal, South Carolina, in 1861. Confederate supporters fled to rebel-held lands, and slaves escaped to army camps for safety. By February 1862, at least 600 had moved into the army camp on Hilton Head, and the commander, Thomas Sherman, was asking Washington for help.

The Treasury secretary sent Edward Pierce to investigate. Philadelphia abolitionists sent Miller McKim in June. Pierce’s main interest was keeping the plantations on islands like Saint Helena producing cotton that could be sold to finance the war. [1] McKim’s concerns were humanitarian.

In April, Federal troops took the harbor defenses for Savannah, and in May David Hunger began recruiting Black troops. Neither Lincoln nor Congress was ready to see Black men armed, and Hunter was ordered to disband his army. He kept his first hundred troops on Saint Simons to protect the refugees there. [2]

Lincoln was worried arming African-American men might drive some border states to join the Confederacy. [3] However, he reconsidered his Hunter decision when the army had trouble enlisting men. In late August, he ordered the military governor of the South, Rufus Saxton, to create a Black regiment. The hundred men at Saint Simon became Company A under the command of their existing commander, Charles Trowbridge.

Saxton recruited Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, as the first white commander, of the new regiment. [4] He was the first to describe the ring shout just as men who had lived on isolated plantations were coming together to create a common culture. In his diary for 1862, he noted that every night he saw some enter a hut made from palm leaves where they began chanting, stamping their feet, and clapping their hands.

"Then the excitement spreads: inside and outside the enclosure men begin to quiver and dance, others join, a circle forms, winding monotonously round some one in the centre; some ‘heel and toe’ tumultuously, others merely tremble and stagger on, others stoop and rise, others whirl, others caper sideways, all keep steadily circling like dervishes." [5]

While Higginson was commanding the first African-American regiment on Saint Helena Island, missionaries were arriving to convert the abandoned slaves and keep them working in the fields. Some of them also left descriptions of shouts from plantations that were just beginning to lose their isolation.

Laura Matilda Towne Towne was assigned to The Oaks. [6] Its owner, John Jeremiah Theus Pope, spent the war in Charleston where he died in 1864. His wife, Mary Frampton Townsend, had died in February 1861, before the Union occupation of Beaufort. [7] Pope had 122 slaves and was an Episcopalian Baptist. [8] On 28 April 1862 she wrote a friend:

"Last night I was at the ‘Praise House’ for a little time and saw Miss Nelly reading to the good women. Afterwards we went to the ‘shout,’ a savage, heathenish dance out in Rina’s house. Three men stood and sang, clapping and gesticulating, The others shuffled along on their heels, following one another in a circle and occasionally bending the knees in a kind of curtsey. They began slowly, a few going around and more gradually joining in, the song getting faster and faster, till at last only the most marked part of the refrain is sung and the shuffling, stamping and clapping get furious. As they danced they, of course, got out of breath, and the singing was kept up principally by the three apart, but it was astonishing how long they continued and how soon after a rest they were ready to begin again. Miss Walker and I, Mrs Whiting and her husband were there—a little white crowd at the door looking at this wild firelight scene; for there was no other light than that from the fire, which they kept replenishing. They kept up the ‘shout’ till very late." [9]

Harriet Ware was sent to William Fripp’s abandoned Pine Grove plantation. At the time he died in the Battle of Port Royal, he had 3,000 acres of land and 313 slaves, divided into several plantations. [10] Margaret Washington described him as "a ‘chief mover and supporter’ of white Baptist activity in the Sea Island region." [11] Ware mentioned several shouts in letters to her family. On Sunday, 4 May 1862 she told them:

"They had had a ‘Shout,’ which I had heard distinctly at three o’clock in the morning when I happened to wake up. They come from all the plantations about, when these meetings take place for the examination of new members, ‘prodigals and raw souls,’ as ’Siah said, he being an elder and one of the deacons. They do not begin till about ten o’clock Saturday night, when the examinations commence and the other services, after which they keep up the shout till near daylight, when they can see to go home. They admitted two this time, and, as Uncle Sam remarked, ‘they say there is joy in Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, so we rejoice over these souls that have come in.’ [12]

Seven months later, on 26 December 1862, she was at Higginson’s army post. She noted, "they had no ‘taps’ Christmas Eve or night, and the men kept their ‘shout’ up all night." [13] A week later, after New Year’s, she wrote on 2 January 1865:

"Then I let the children sing some of their own songs in genuine, shouting style, a sight too funny in the little things, but sad and disagreeable to me in the grown people, who make it a religious act. It is impossible to describe it--the children move round in a circle, backwards, or sideways, with their feet and arms keeping energetic time, and their whole bodies undergoing most extraordinary contortions, while they sing at the top of their voices the refrain to some song sung by an outsider. We laughed till we almost cried over the little bits of ones, but when the grown people wanted to ‘shout,’ I would not let them, and the occasion closed by their ‘drawing’ candy from C. as they passed out." [14]

Considered as dance, the shouts combined three elements. The circle formation, in which individuals each moved alone, was separate from the discrete steps and combinations, while the music was provided by two groups. The singers did not participate, although dancers might join them when they were resting. They could be located inside the circle or to the side. The participants themselves provided the rhythm with their foot stomps and hand claps.

The genius of the choreography was participants shared the same rhythm and counterclockwise direction, but had no physical contact and were free to step as they chose. This allowed slaves from different areas of Africa to come together, without sacrificing their unique heritages. Cross-fertilization could occur, especially when children were learning steps before they were allowed to participate in ceremonies.

Many of the accompanying spirituals "consisted of a chorus alone, with which the verses of other songs might be combined at random." Higginson added, some were repeated "for half an hour at a time" by substituting the names of everyone present into a line like "Hold your light, Brudder Robert." [15] In others, every line was different, but the refrains were constant.

End Notes
1. The Confiscation Act of 1861 allowed the government to seize property of rebel soldiers, including their slaves who were used as laborers.

2. Willie Lee Rose. Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1964. 189.

3. United States War Department. "General Order 143: Creation of the U.S. Colored Troops." 1863. Posted by the National Archives on Our Documents. On Lincoln’s motives.

4. This was the same Higginson who encouraged Emily Dickinson.

5. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. Army Life in a Black Regiment. Boston: Fields, Osgood, and Company, 1870. 17-18.

6. After the war, Towne and and Ellen Murray bought Frogmore plantation on Saint Helena in 1868 to continue educating local Black children at the Penn School. When Towne died, the school was transferred to Hampton Institute. After the state took over education in 1948, Hampton converted the school into the Penn Community Service Center. Much of the land was sold when Murray died in 1909. ["The Penn Center (1862 - )." Black Past website. And Wikipedia. "Penn Center (Saint Helena Island, South Carolina)."]

7. "History of The Oaks Plantation." Oaks Plantation website.

8. Chalmers Gaston Davison. "100 Laurens Street." In The Last Foray. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971. Cited by Roots and Recall website.

9. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne; Written From the Sea Islands of South Carolina, 1862-1884. Edited by Rupert Sargent Holland. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1912. 22-23. Washington brought this to my attention. See #11. 298.

10. South Carolina. General Assembly. Report of State Officers, Board and Committees to the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina. 1900. On Fripp’s death, 35-36.

11. Margaret Washington Creel. "A Peculiar People." New York: New York University Press, 1988. 211.

12. Harriet Ware. In Letters from Port Royal Written at the Time of the Civil War. Edited by Elizabeth Ware Pearson. Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1906. No page numbers in on-line copy.

13. Ware. In Pearson.
14. Ware. In Pearson
15. Higginson. 198-199.