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3  “Surrounded on All Sides by an Armed and Brutal Mob” Newspapers, Politics, and Law in the Ogeechee Insurrection, 1868–1869 Jonathan M. Bryant On 29 December 1868, the Savannah Republican ran an editorial presenting the advantages of annexing the Republic of Santo Domingo. There would be no international outcry, argued the editor, and the people of Santo Domingo wouldwelcomeAmericancontrol.“Thenegroes’...rule,”explained the newspaper , “has been marked in every stage by the grossest misgovernment and atrocities at which humanity shudders.” The free blacks of Santo Domingo were bytheir nature “cruelanddebased,”andwouldonlybenefitfromAmerican rule. The black people of Santo Domingo, who had lived in idleness since 1821, could be made productive again under American management. Most readers probably nodded their heads in agreement. Reconstruction was a time of grave uncertainty, but if there was one thing elite white Savannahians could agree on, it was the propensity of former slaves to indolence and violence.1 Turning the page, those same readers would have found another article entitled, “Armed Negroes on the Ogeechee Road.” The Republican reported that armed blacks were guarding the road some seven miles south of the city and continued, “evidence accumulates from day to day showing that there are armed and organized bodies of negroes on every road leading into the city.” This in itself was disturbing news, but that same day events along the Ogeechee would inspire a frenzy of fear in Savannah. By early January 1869, readers of many papers across the United States, including the New York Times, the Quincy Whig (Illinois), the Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin, the Maine Farmer, and even the London Times read of a massive insurrection by freedpeople along the Ogeechee River, the burning of plantation houses, and Newspapers, Politics, and Law in the Ogeechee Insurrection, 1868–1869 59 the plight of frightened refugees pouring into the besieged city of Savannah. There, brave citizens organized a several hundred man defense force until the city was finally saved by the arrival of hundreds of federal troops. It was an exciting tale that caught the interest of readers across the county. The only problem was, there was no insurrection on the Ogeechee.2 The Ogeechee insurrection is more than a story of criminal acts by disaffected workers in the Ogeechee rice district and an overreaction by threatened white elites in Savannah. The conflict connects the political and economic rights of laborers and highlights the freedpeople’s desire to control the land upon which they worked. It raises questions about the influence of newspapers and the role of the legal system in the reconstruction of Georgia. Finally, it illustrates a central lesson often found in Reconstruction stories. Thirty years ago David Brion Davis showed us that the existence of slavery in Western culture fueled the creation of concepts of free labor and universal humanrights.Thisstory,however,showsushowfragile those rightsare inthe face of elite legal stratagems, media manipulation, and state power.3 In antebellum America the belief that enslaved Africans would only work under compulsion was common. So too were fears that slaves might rise in violent insurrection. Thus, the slave regime created a system of overseers and patrols to monitor the work and the activities of the enslaved. Of course, the newspaper’s mention of Santo Domingo would have raised images of the mostfearsome slave revoltof all,the revolutionthatcreatedHaitiin1804.The specter of large-scale slave insurrection and the massacre of whites haunted slaveholding Americans, and this menace was reemphasized by John Brown’s 1859 raid. During the Civil War the fear of revolt continued enhanced by rumors of numerous slave conspiracies, by the ongoing disintegration of the slave regime, and by the appearance of armed African American soldiers in the Union Army.4 Suchfearsdidnotmagicallyvanishwithemancipation.Newspapersacross Georgia expected both sloth and violence from the newly freed slaves. The Thomasville Southern Enterprise asked, “Will the Free Negro Labor?” Joseph Addison Turner’s Countryman answered that “Negroes will not work unless they are forced to do so, and they can not be forced to do so unless they are slaves.” The editor of the Albany Patriot agreed, arguing, “A great majority of the freedmen will not work unless compelled to. And the sooner they are forced to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, the sooner affairs will resume their customary channels.” During the last half of 1865 the Savannah Daily Herald ran dozens of stories about “negro outrages,” printing tales from correspondent newspapers across the country of freedmen attacking [3.144.9.141] Project MUSE...

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