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5. Friends and Allies
- The University of Alabama Press
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Friends and Allies ~~--~T " TH E (;[ [54.225.1.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:21 GMT) :r ~ HE CIVIL WAR spawned dozens of freedmen's aid societies -> ~ with which the AMA alternately cooperated and feuded. Fortunately differences were subordinated during the war, and the diverse societies worked together for the relief and education of former slaves. In 1862 George Whipple and Lewis Tappan helped found the National Freedmen's Relief Association in New York, which coordinated its activities in Port Royal, South Carolina, with the Boston Educational Commission. The latter agency's clothing and supply committee sent tons of goods to its southern stations through the AMA.l In 1864-65 Freewill Baptist and Boston Educational Commission teachers lived in the association mission home in Norfolk, Virginia. Teachers from different societies worked in the same schools in Savannah without rivalry, and the superintendent of Negro affairs in North Carolina, Horace James, marveled at the cooperation in his state. "It is like soldiers of the regiments fighting side by side, though gathered from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south," James said. When Richmond fell to Union forces, William H. Woodbury , AMA superintendent in Norfolk, was one of the first men to secure a pass to the Confederate capital. He opened a school there for each association represented in Norfolk so that all could have an equal start. In Missouri, Isaac T. Gibson, agent for the Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends, also represented the AMA and the Northwestern Freedmen 's Aid Commission. Occasionally societies held joint public meetings to solicit funds.2 The association also worked closely with the African Methodist Episcopal church. In 1864 the AMA proposed to the A.M.E. annual conference that the latter furnish buildings for schools and board for teachers, when possible, and the association would pay the teachers' 71 72 CHRISTIAN RECONSTR UCTION salaries. The conference accepted the proposal, probably because of the influence of Bishop Daniel A. Payne, who was on good terms with Whipple. The following year Payne visited Whipple and consummated an arrangement even more profitable to the A.M.E. church whereby the church and the association jointly paid A.M.E. southern missionaries . The presumably nonsectarian AMA helped plant African Methodist Episcopal churches in the South. When Bishop Payne went to England on a fund-raising tour, Whipple gave him letters of introduction to English friends. Whipple was also friendly with Bishop John Mifflin Brown, who had been one of his students at Oberlin. Despite Whipple's closeness to Payne and Brown, cooperation turned into competition when the AMA later began to establish Congregational churches in the South.3 Not surprisingly, the AMA cooperated with the nation's most important all-black freedmen's aid organization, the African Civilization Society , since they shared several officers and members. Moreover, both were nondenominational and required their members and teachers to be evangelical. That the society contended that blacks were best able to educate former slaves seemed to create little friction. The association and other white-dominated societies would have done well to learn from the African Civilization Society, which aimed to prove the fitness of blacks to teach and lead their own people. Probably more than any other, this society taught racial pride.4 As the number of societies increased and their work expanded, jealousyand friction became more apparent. Teachers preferred the safest localities, and societies tried to occupy places where success would be most obvious. John Eaton, superintendent of freedmen for the Department of Tennessee, observed that agents' loyalty to their organization "led occasionally to forms of self-seeking strangely at variance with the heroic self-sacrifices which the same individuals were constantly making." Even when rivalry was absent, there was still a lack of systematic cooperation and direction. Several societies might compete in major cities while smaller towns were ignored. The AMA's aggressive and often successful attempts to occupy desirable points created resentment. A teacher from the New England Freedmen's Aid Society referred to the AMA as "that modest association, which, having appropriated to itself the worlds above, claims as its own also the Whole of the United States." Although the statement was made in [54.225.1.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 13:21 GMT) Friends and Allies 73 anger, there was some substance to the charge. The AMA, no less than other societies, sought to expand its influence and it was becoming more concerned about what...