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10. Yankee Schoolteachers
- The University of Alabama Press
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Yankee Schoolteachers .;..-'- - - - - - - - - - ; " [34.230.66.177] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 08:45 GMT) ! ~ HE NORTHERNERS who came South to teach the freedmen ~ ~ have been variously viewed as courageous heroes or meddlesome fanatics, idealistic egalitarians or hypocrites who taught blacks for ulterior motives.1 According to southern reports, legions of "slab-sided old maids" assisted by an occasional "Dr. Malgamation " flocked to the South to teach former slaves "to lie and steal." A Louisianian branded them as "miserable wretches, imported scalawags, pale faced renegades and pensioned pimps," while a Georgia editor claimed they were mostly women, "all either fanatics or knaves" with the "sole mission" to "stir up strife and sow the tares of hate and evil in the minds of their pupils." Their supporters, on the other hand, portrayed these teachers as angels in the midst of devils and neglected their human attributes. W. E. B. DuBois concluded that these "saintly souls" were New England's gift to freedmen. They brought "not alms, but a friend; not cash, but character." The education crusade, DuBois added, was the "finest thing in American history, and one of the few things untainted by sordid greed and cheap vainglory ."2 Neither detractors nor supporters gave a true picture of Yankee teachers. They were much the same as other people: selfish and selfless, cowardly, courageous, understanding, and arrogant. But whatever their human failings, they were as a group far more sympathetic to blacks than was the country at large. Most teachers were motivated to go South by a genuine desire to assist blacks; some had been abolitionists for years. John G. Fee had risked his life fighting slavery in Kentucky, and B. C. Church, who joined the antislavery movement in the 1830s, had once been pelted with rotten eggs in Ohio for his views. Adam K. Spence had hated slavery from the time he learned of Elijah Lovejoy's death. The first president of Atlanta University, Edmund A. Ware, had been con163 164 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION verted to abolitionism by Wendell Phillips and by Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. He was succeeded by Horace Bumstead, an abolitionist who had been an officer in a black regiment. Mrs. R. M. Bigelow volunteered as a teacher because she wished to devote her time to the cause so dear to her late abolitionist husband, Jacob. However , a majority of the teachers had not been abolitionists before the war. Of 138 teachers who submitted applications to the AMA in 1866, only 15 could be clearly identified as active abolitionists by their letters and testimonials.3 Although not abolitionists, most of the teachers were antislavery. John Lowrey was "fIrm & radical" against slavery, but was "averse to war" and did not wish to enter the army. He became a teacher to make himselfuseful in the cause. James F. Sisson had worked with blacks for several years in aNew Bedford, Massachusetts, mission school. Antislavery sentiment had led Rebecca Veazie to teach Jamaican blacks before going South in 1864, and Harriet Arnold had taught fugitives in Canada at her own expense. Several male teachers became concerned about the freedmen's plight while in the military, and others viewed the AMA's work as a continuation of the struggle. Lieutenant John Silsby concluded that "a great moral warfare yet remains to be endured " as "slavery is not yet fully dead much less is the Negro enfranchised " and "conservatism is far from being rooted out of the church even." Silsby worked for the AMA for several years in Alabama.4 Closely connected with sympathy for blacks was a religious motivation . H. S. Beals, a public school principal who had drawn "my love for freedom from my mother's breast," viewed the Civil War as a great battle between good and evil. He had given his two sons to the war, and joined the AMA because he loved "God & Humanity" and because , he said, if the country did not make amends for the terrible wrongs of slavery "we shall see darker days & surer judgments than those just past." Beals's wife and daughter also became teachers. Annie R. Wilkins became a freedmen's teacher because she loved "to work for Christ," and Mary E. Hilliard wished to spend the rest of her life in active service to God. Many teachers had been former missionaries or children of missionaries. Frederick Ayers and Marcia Colton had been missionaries to the Indians. Samuel Chapman Armstrong and John and Mary Green were children of missionaries to Hawaii...