The Civil War ended slavery while many former masters still were returning home from the fronts. Union soldiers were confronted with masses of African Americans moving to their camps or urban areas for safety.
The 1860 census didn’t record the population of Livingston, Alabama, but did note only 25 freedmen were living in the county. [1] In 1870, the town had 200 ex-slaves in a total population of 500. [2] W. G. Little bought an old mill property on Smith’s Flats to build plantation-style rental housing in what soon was called Little’s Quarter. [3]
By the next census, it was clear the Black population wasn’t evenly distributed through Sumter County. The red dots on the map below represent census reporting districts with 1,277 to 3,429 freedmen. The blue dots represent areas with 147 to 623.
The largest concentrations were in Gainesville and Belmont. The first was a port where Union soldiers appeared and established a hospital in the Presbyterian church. [4] The other, with 2,274 colored people, encompassed the rich bottom lands in the curve of the Tombigbee river. Poorer lands, with the blue dots, lay south of the Sucarnoochee River that flowed through Livingston.
Booker T. Washington said that, after the Civil War, newly freed slaves left "the plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really be sure that they were free." [5] Charlie Johnson told Ruby Pickens Tartt in 1937 that "after the Surrender Pappy took us children and moved over about a mile from Livingston, and us stayed there about a year. Then we come back here, and ain’t never left no more." [6]
The military and Freedmen’s Bureau encouraged landowners to write cash contracts with freedmen defining mutual obligations in 1865. Sharecropping became more common because there was no currency for wages, and former slaves didn’t trust their former owners. [7]
In the fall, when crops were gathered and contracts were expiring, planters tried to reinstitute the rules of slavery. On 12 October 1865, an agent of the Freemen’s Bureau reported planters around Livingston had reintroduced the pass system to keep people from leaving their farms. [8]
Earlier, on 4 October 1865, the Freedmen’s Bureau had extended existing state laws regarding vagrancy and apprenticeships to include African Americans. [9] In February 1866, the state instructed counties to report poor minors to the Probate Court, so it could apprentice them to their former masters. [10] Peter Kochin observed:
"judges used practically any excuse to bind out black children. Although in some cases the children were in fact orphans, many others not only had parents, but parents who vigorously objected to the confiscation of their children." [11]
One example was a woman in Livingston whose granddaughter was taken before "her father was hardly cold." [12] Even though she could support the child, the court ruled the girl was "well cared for by the planter" and should stay with him. [13]
Within a few years, the annual contact ritual was in place. It revealed to all, black and white, the identities of good and bad planters, and good and bad laborers. Kolchin noted that "freedmen could feel relatively free in refusing to contract on what they regarded as unsatisfactory terms or in leaving employers with whom they were unhappy." [14]
The second action Washington said freed slaves took to establish their identities immediately after Emancipation was change their last names. [15] Tom Blake ran a comparison of the surnames of the largest slave owners in Sumter County in 1860 against the list of African Americans in the county in 1870, and found only 12% of the owners’ names were used by freedmen. The most common were Smith, Williams, and Taylor. Richardson and Sledge were used by 21%, while Brown was used by 13% and Chapman by 11%. [16]
Robert Spratt hinted the modification of names was another way freedmen identified abusive masters. He believed many took "the name of some family to whom they had formerly belonged." He listed seven different names used by former slaves of George G. Tankersley [17] In Blake’s data, only 5% of Tankersley’s 115 slaves kept his name.
Walter Fleming found one other way former slaves asserted their independence: "every man acquired in some way a dog and a gun." [18] He discounted white fears "that the negroes were preparing for an uprising." He thought it "more probable that they merely wanted guns as a mark of freedom." [19]
He also thought their Yankee sympathizers were misguided when they provided arms "in the
belief that the negroes were only seeking means of protection." [20] One suspects that, after years of being spied upon, freedmen didn’t need the advise. In 1939, Josh Horn recalled the ways Isaac Horn had imposed his morality:
"about that time Marse Ike slip up on a bunch of niggers at a frolic twixt Sumterville and Livingston and put a end to the frolic. The niggers having a bid dance, and Marse Ike and patrollers having a big run, say they wanted to have some fun, and they did. Say he eased up on them with a white sheet round him and a big brush in he hand, and somehow or another they didn’t see till he spoke. Then he holler, ‘By God, I’m bird-blindin.’ And he say them niggers tore down them dirty chimneys and run through that house. He say he ain’t never heared such a fuss in a cornfield in his born days." [21]
Graphics
Base map from G. A. Swenson, et alia. Soil Survey of Sumter County, Alabama. Washington: United States Department of Agriculture, May 1941. 3, "Sketch map showing topographic divisions of Sumter County."
End Notes
1. Classified Population of the States and Territories by Counties on the First Day of June, 1860. Section on Alabama posted on United States Census website.
2. Population of Civil Divisions Less than Counties. United States Census, 1870, Table III. Section including Alabama posted on United States Census website.
3. Robert D. Spratt. A History of the Town of Livingston, Alabama. Edited by Nathaniel Reed. Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997. 128. A Photograph taken around 1928, which was reproduced by both Spratt and Alan Brown, [22] showed the language, architecture and layout were carried over from pre-war slave quarters.
4. History of the Gainesville Presbyterian Church. 48 in The Heritage of Sumter County, Alabama. Edited by Charles Walker. Clayton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2005. The first duty of Union soldiers after the war was securing Confederate property. Gainesville was the last headquarters of Nathan Bedford Forest and had several military hospitals.
5. Booker T. Washington. Up from Slavery. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1907. 23. Walter L. Fleming brought this to my attention in Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905. 270. Others have used it without citation.
6. Charlie Johnson. "Reckon You Might Say I’s Just Faithful." Transcribed by Ruby Pickens Tartt for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Alabama. [23] 130–132 in Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens. Toting the Lead Row. University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981. 132. Owens modernized Tartt’s transcriptions to make them easier to read. [24]
7. Peter Kolchin. First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama’s Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972. 34–35.
8. Lieutenant General A. L. Mock. Letter to C. Cadle, Assistant Adjutant General of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Gainesville, Alabama. 12 October 1865. Cited by Kolchin. 5.
9. Fleming. 438.
10. Fleming. 381.
11. Kolchin. 64.
12. Lucy Abney. Letter to General Wayne Swayne, Livingston, Alabama. 9 April 1867. Quoted by Kolchin. 64.
13. Kolchin. 76.
14. Kolchin. 39.
15. Washington. 23–24.
16. Tom Blake. "Sumter County, Alabama: Largest Slaveholders from 1860 Slave Census Schedules and Surname Matches for African Americans on 1870 Census." Ancestry website. He listed 123 owners. I consolidated the duplicates and removed the obvious errors to get a total of 93 names. Thomas Ormond was an example of an error that produced possibly false zero matches. His surname was transcribed as Osmond.
17. Spratt. 129.
18. Fleming. 271.
19. Fleming. 412.
20. Fleming. 368.
21. Josh Horn. "I’s Tellin You Like You Asked Me." Transcribed by Tartt. 93–97 in Brown and Owens. 97.
22. Alan Brown. Sumter County. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2015. 23. He said the photograph came from the files of Joe Taylor, director of the Livingston Press.
23. For more information on Tartt and the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.
24. Laurella Owens. "Introduction." 59–60 in Brown and Owens. 60.
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