Black Education in Louisiana, 1863-1865

BLACK EDUCATION IN LOUISIANA, 1863-1865 William F. Messner The history of freedmen's education during the Civil War has been a topic of considerable fascination for scholars interested in the period of our national bloodletting. Much of this appeal is undoubtedly due to the fact that the establishment of educational facilities for the former slaves was one of the few areas of freedmen 's reform in which, to paraphrase Willie Lee Rose, the revolution did not go entirely backwards. Although substantial economic progress for black Americans did not occur until well into the twentieth century and the political gains of the 1860's were largely nullified during the next several decades, the seeds of educational advance planted during the war years were never completely uprooted, despite the intense opposition which black education met throughout the era of Jim Crow. In Louisiana especially , the federal military established a well organized system of black elementary education as early as 1864, and by the end of the Civil War black youths gave evidence of substantial educational progress. Despite the fact that Louisiana whites did their best to limit black educational advance in the years following Reconstruction, at least a limited effort continued nurtured by the knowledge gained by a substantial segment of the black community during the years of "Black Reconstruction."1 Although the story of this educational effort in the Gulf Department has been told more than once, relatively little attention has been paid to what motivated the normally frugal and conservative federal military to embark upon a progressive and expensive educational program during the Civil War.2 The reasons are not 1 See William Ivy Hair, Bourbonism and Agrarian Protest: Louisiana Politics, 18771900 (Baton Rouge, 1969), pp. 107-141, for a discussion of the decline in public education in Louisiana after Reconstruction. 2 For a general discussion of black education in Louisiana during the Civil War and Reconstruction see Roger A. Fischer, The Segregation Struggle in Louisiana, 18621877 (Urbana, 1974); John W. Blassingame, Bteck New Orleans, 1860-1880 (Chicago , 1973), pp. 107-122; Robert S. Bahney, "Generals and Negroes: Education of Negroes by the Union Army, 1861-1865," (Ph.D. dissertation University of Michigan, 1965), pp. 201-220; Howard Ashley White, The Freedmen's Bureau in Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1970), pp. 166-200. The term "Gulf Department" was used by the federal army to denote those portions of southern Louisiana under Union control 41 42CIVIL WAR HISTORY difficult to ascertain. A study of black education in Louisiana, while highlighting the altruistic motives of those northern teachers who traveled south to work with the freedmen, also brings into sharp relief the political dimensions of black schooling and clarifies the manner in which the philanthropic tendencies of liberal educators complemented the political goals of federal policymakers. In other words, black education served the interests of Union officials as well as those of the freedmen, for the federal military considered education to be not only a source of black enlightenment, but also a potent tool for black control. Federal officials in Louisiana believed , in fact, that control was the cornerstone of black enlightenment . Education would be a civilizing influence upon the freedmen, preparing them for the role they were to assume as contributing members of a free labor society, while simultaneously checking the blacks' unruly passions and insuring at least a minimum of black economic productivity. Education, viewed from this perspective, was one of the foundation blocks of the national administration's reconstruction efforts in Louisiana, for it promised to resolve the tension which existed between the hopes and fears of whites for the future of the black individual in American society. Central to an understanding of the motivation which prompted the Union army to institute an educational program for blacks in the Gulf Department is a knowledge of the political goals of those federal officials who administered the Union occupation of southern Louisiana from 1863 to 1865.3 By the end of the second year of the war the national government had been generally successful in its plan for seizing control of the lower end of the Mississippi Valley and was ready to begin the delicate task of restoring the area to...