Topic: Origins - Early Versions
James Weldon Johnson described ring shouts he saw in Florida, in the 1880s. As mentioned in the post for 12 February 2022, he generalized his experience to fit everything he read later. That was necessary when he was discussing ring shouts in the introduction to his collection of spirituals.
However, it makes it difficult to know what existed in Fernandina and Jacksonville where he spent time as a boy. As should be clear to anyone who has read many of these posts, Black experiences differed by location. This would especially be true of Florida where Spain controlled territory until 1821. [1] Spain imported its slaves from central Africa, rather than west Africa, and many were baptized in the Roman Catholic church. [2]
Ring shouts may not have existed in northeastern Florida under the Spanish, but they were there, in a modified form, in 1871. When Harriet Beecher Stowe visited Jacksonville that year, she asked to “visit the meetings of the coloured people.” She found it “quite easy to do” because “there were two very large, active prayer meetings, the one Baptist and the other Methodist.” The Presbyterian [3] did not say which she visited. [4]
Whatever slave communities existed after the United States took control were disrupted by the Civil War. When hostilities broke out, local white men were sent to fight in Tennessee and Virginia. Union forces from Port Royal, South Carolina, [5] took advantage of the vacuum on 4 March 1862 and seized control of Fernandina’s Amelia Island. [6] The ocean port on the Saint Mary’s River, which flows south from Georgia, was used a “base of operations” until the end of war. [7]
Jacksonville was an inland port on the Saint John’s River, which flows north, parallel to the coast, for more than 300 miles. When Confederate sympathizers heard news of Fernandina, they fled west. [10]
The United States Navy made its first foray into Jacksonville on 11 March 1861. Confederate troops responded by burning all but one lumber mill. Then, a mob of “refugees from Fernandina and Jacksonville” set fire to more buildings. [11] The navy stayed until 1 April. [12] The loyal citizens, who had stayed in March, moved to Fernandina with the troops. [13]
The next expedition to Jacksonville occurred after Confederates built fortifications south of the city. The northern troops from Hilton Head found the town to be “nearly deserted” in October 1862. [14] One soldier noted “Grass and weeds grow rank and tall in the principal streets,” while “about the streets you see darkies, a few women, and a very few men.” [15] They took the slaves back with them. [16]
The Army hierarchy was hesitant to enlist Black soldiers. The first tentative experiments were at Port Royal, where Thomas Wentworth Higginson was named commander of the First South Carolina Infantry regiment in November 1862. [17] He noted that plantation owners had taken their house slaves with them when they fled Saint Helena Island. The field hands were “very black.” [18]
He also observed that the slaves who had come back from the October expedition to Jacksonville were “much lighter in complexion & decidedly more intelligent.” [19] When they proved they could master the drills, he sent recruiters to Fernandina and Saint Augustine in December 1862. They filled the regiment. [20]
The First South Carolina saw its first action in January 1863 when it sailed to Fernandina, then went up the Saint Mary’s river into Georgia. [21] Their success prompted James Montgomery to organize the Second South Carolina Infantry in Beaufort. [22]
Higginson’s troops were part of the longest occupation of Jacksonville, which began in March 1863. [23] The general overseeing operations from Hilton Head said “the negroes are collecting at Jacksonville from all quarters.” [24]
The troops spent time building forts. Their camp was in pine woods on an island west of Jacksonville near a brick church [25] that was built before the war by Baptists. [26] One imagines the men recreated the camp life they had had in South Carolina, which included frequent ring shouts. Although a contingent was left with the fortifications, most returned to South Carolina at the end of March to support “operations against Charleston and Savannah.” [27]
Once the First South Carolina Infantry had proven the value of Black troops, the Army organized more companies with recruits from the north. [28] When Union troops returned to Jacksonville in January 1864, seven of the fifteen infantry regiments were Black. They came from Massachusetts (2), North Carolina (1), and South Carolina (4). Higginson’s First South Carolina was not included, but Montgomery’s Second was. [29]
The main purpose was to support the siege of Charleston by stopping the flow of food from central Florida. [30] The army was routed when it moved inland. [31] They began leaving in April, and by May most of the “2,500 or 3,000 men” left were Blacks. [32] They left in July. [33] While Confederates rightly boasted of their victory, [34] commanders in Washington were moving troops away from peripheral areas to mount the attack in Virginia [35] that resulted in Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse on 9 April 1865.
At war’s end, the Army’s primary purpose was protecting federal buildings and supplies. [36] The Seventh Infantry of the regular army was assigned to Florida in May. [37] Otherwise, the military began mustering out volunteer units. It began with the expensive calvary in May 1865. [38] The Black regiments from the North left Florida in December. [39]
Congress was slower to respond to post-War needs. It established the Freedmen’s Bureau on 3 March 1865, but no one was sent to Florida until 1 September. [40] By then the planters were reestablishing their power. The legislature they elected passed its first laws controlling African Americans in October. [41]
Former slaves flocked to cities where there still were soldiers. Thomas Osborn, head of the Bureau, discontinued their rations in Fernandina and Jacksonville in November. He wanted them working on plantations, not living off the government. [42] His requests for continued military support were ignored by the War Department. [43]
Finally, in February 1866, nearly a year after Appomattox, Osborn was able to open an office in Jacksonville. [44]
A year later, on 15 March 1867, Congress put the South under martial law. [45] There must have been some troops in Jacksonville, [46] because the Freedmen’s Bureau moved its headquarters there in May. [47]
By 1868, Southern states had Republican governments, and Congress was preparing to declare victory. Florida elected Harrison Reed in July, and on the Fourth John Sprague, head of the Bureau, surrendered his authority to Reed. Reed’s request to have troops remain was refused. [48]
In October 1868, the head of the Army’s Department of the East moved troops to protect rail centers. Jacksonville had two companies of the Seventh Infantry, with men going to Fernandina as needed. [49] This was the regular army, and they were mainly white men from outside the South.
In December, Congress reduced the Freedman’s Bureau’s functions to education, and eliminated most of its employees. In February, the Seventh Infantry was moved to Montana [50] to protect miners against attacks by Native Americans. [51] Before they left, the soldiers opened fire on rioting Blacks in Jacksonville. [52] Sprague complained anarchy had returned. [53]
Graphics
Karl Musser. “St. Marys River Watershed.” Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 15 March 2007.
End Notes
1. Bland and Associates, Inc. “Historic Context and References.” Appendix A to The Historic Properties Resurvey, City of Fernandina Beach, Nassau County, Florida. 2007. 12.
2. Hugh Thomas. The Slave Trade. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. 397-398.
Michael A. Gomez. Exchanging Our Country Marks. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998. 145-146.
3. John Gatta. “The Anglican Aspect of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” The New England Quarterly 73(3):412-433:September 2000. 312.
4. Stowe’s version is discussed in the post for 30 September 2018, and reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.” The latter is available on the Academia.edu website.
5. Union activities in Port Royal Sound are discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.
6. Bland. 24.
7. Bland. 25.
8. United States Census. 1880. Population, By Race, Sex, and Nativity. Table V. “Population, by Race and by Counties: 1880, 1870, 1860.” 384.
9. Bland. 32.
10. Thomas Frederick Davis. History of Early Jacksonville. Jacksonville, Florida: The H. and W. B. Drew Company, 1911. 160.
11. Davis. 161.
12. Davis. 167.
13. Davis. 169.
14. Davis. 174.
15. Valentine Chamberlain. “A Letter of Captain V. Chamberlain, 7th Connecticut Volunteers.” Florida Historical Quarterly 15:93:October 1935. Quoted by Samuel Proctor. “Jacksonville During the Civil War.” Florida Historical Quarterly 41(4):343-355:1962. 351.
16. Davis. 174.
17. William A. Dobak. Freedom by the Sword: The U. S. Colored Troops, 1862–1867. Washington DC: United States Army, Center of Military History, 2011. 34-35.
18. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 35. His source is: The Complete Civil War Journal and Selected Letters of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited by Christopher Looby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Higginson is discussed in the post for 20 September 2018, which is reprinted in “Ring Shouts: Historic Descriptions and Contemporary Examples.”
19. Higginson. Quoted by Dobak. 36. Dobak suggests Higginson’s views were typical of the time, when whites thought people who were more like them, i.e., with lighter skins, were better than those that differed. This became a self-fulfilling prophecy when lighter skinned slaves were given more access to whites, and thus were more socialized into western ways, than those who were left alone because they had darker skins.
20. Dobak. 36.
21. Dobak. 39.
22. Dobak. 40.
23. Davis. 175.
24. Davis. 176.
25. Proctor. 352.
26. “Bethel Church (Jacksonville, Florida).” Wikipedia website, accessed 11 February 2023.
27. Davis. 178.
28. Dobak. 55. Joshua Rieger noted that families from areas controlled by the Union continued to move into the center of the state, and that “ planters’ families from across the South migrated to Middle Florida and southwest Georgia to protect their property interests in slaves.” [54] This would have increased the productive capacity of the area.
29. Dobak. 64.
30. Dubak. 61.
31. Davis. 186.
32. Davis. 189.
33. Davis. 191.
34. During Reconstruction, Joe Richardson said: “Floridians boasted that theirs was the only capital east of the Mississippi not captured during the war. The only attempt to take Tallahassee had been defeated in large part by a group of young boys and old men in March 1865. Though the Confederacy had fallen, the people did not feel that Florida had been conquered and they were inclined to be defiant and belligerent.” [55]
35. Dubak. 70.
36. Dubak. 459.
37. Steve A. Hawks. “7th United States Infantry Regiment.” Civil War in the East website, 2023. He has one sentence on its role in Reconstruction.
38. Dubak. 471.
39. Dubak. 473.
40. Reginald Washington. “Introduction” to Records of the Assistant Commissioner and subordinate field offices for the state of Florida, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1872. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2002. 1.
41. Joe M. Richardson. “Florida Black Codes.” Florida Historical Quarterly 47(4):365-379:1968.
42. Joshua Rieger. “Florida Freedmen’s Bureau during Reconstruction, 1865-1872.” University of Florida senior paper, 8 April 2015. 14.
43. Rieger. 9.
44. Rieger. 19.
45. Merlin G. Cox. “Military Reconstruction in Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 46(3):219-233:1967. 219.
46. Most of the published research on Reconstruction in Florida deals with politics and vigilante groups in the central part of state. Little exists on the military. Even descriptions of the Seventh Infantry are sparse for the period between Chancellorsville and Montana.
47. Washington. 1.
48. Ralph L. Peek. “Aftermath of Military Reconstruction, 1868-1869.” Florida Historical Quarterly 43(2):123-141:1964. 123.
49. Peek. 133. The commander was George Meade.
50. Peek. 138.
51. “Fort Shaw.” Wikipedia website, accessed 17 February 2023.
52. Peek. 138.
53. Peek. 140.
54. Rieger. His source was Jerrell H. Shofner. Nor Is It Over Yet. Gainesville, University Presses of Florida, 1974. 3.
55. Richardson. 371.
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