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4 ‘‘to put forth almost superhuman efforts to regain their children’’ Freedwomen, Parental Rights, and the Freedmen’s Bureau Families, torn asunder by the various forms of violence which had become an essential part of slavery, came with tears and sighs for reunion. Now and then an old master, still holding to the idea of chattels, resisted. Husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, limited by no shade of color or grade of intelligence , sought each other with an ardor and faithfulness sufficient to vindicate the fidelity and affection of any race—the excited joys of the regathering being equalled only by the previous sorrows and pains of separation. M others, once fully assured that the power of slavery was gone, were known to put forth almost superhuman efforts to regain their children ,’’ continued Brevet Brigadier General John Eaton, assistant commissioner for the District of Columbia, in his report to the commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in December 1865. Much impressed, he described their efforts in the first days of freedom as truly remarkable. Indeed, he explained, they were ‘‘travelling any distance, daring any perils, and even beating the pugnacious specimens of Christian chivalry in hand-to-hand conflict, and bearing off in triumph the long-sought child.’’1 Now free, however, African American mothers in Washington, D.C., found themselves in a troublesome situation, at least according to this bureau official. Having escaped the ‘‘tortures and terrors’’ of slavery, many had gathered in his ‘‘city of refuge’’ in pursuit of ‘‘safety from their bitter foes.’’ In doing so, they now found themselves alone. For, as Eaton explained, they often ‘‘had no adult male support.’’ Rather, their men, having ‘‘been run off by the enemy,’’ still serving in the military, or having been lost to slavery or the war, were nowhere to be found. Moreover, the question of male support aside, Assistant Commissioner Eaton was concerned about these mothers’ abilities to assume their parental rights and obligations. ‘‘Wisdom’’ was clearly necessary as the bureau aided freedwomen, he explained. For ‘‘sometimes,’’ Eaton cautioned, ‘‘the mother was not sufficiently emancipated from the brutal ideas of her bondage to understand the duties of a Christian parent.’’2 ‘‘to put forth almost superhuman efforts’’ 97 With emancipation, former slave women and men demanded that freedom grant, above all else, the opportunity to reclaim families torn asunder by slavery and war. Emancipation and the legal recognition of the African American family that it conferred had granted, at least in theory, black parents the right to claim and control their own progeny. And, as historians have demonstrated, for freedwomen especially, freedom was foremost familial. They focused first on reclaiming children and placed the highest priority on the right to marry, procreate, and nurture their families without white interference. Doing so would not be easy. In some ways, black parents found that maintaining the integrity of their families in emancipation could be as difficult as it had been in slavery. With freedom in hand, African Americans—like the freedwomen in Washington, D.C., about whom Assistant Commissioner Eaton wrote—soon discovered that they may have acquired the obligations of freedom, but the rights commensurate to their new status were harder to come by. Emancipation had readily granted black parents the responsibilities of supporting their children in the postwar South. But the privileges that came with parenthood—that is, the right to custody and control of children—were far more difficult to secure. Perhaps the most serious threat to black families and African American parental authority in the immediate postemancipation era was the apprenticeship system. Yet black mothers also faced custody battles with freedmen who sought to assert their rights as free and independent men by claiming control over the lives and labors of their families.3 The battle for custody and control of black children exposed the great lengths to which freedpeople would go to reconstruct their households in the aftermath of slavery. ‘‘Our homes are invaded and our little ones seized at the family fireside,’’ black Marylanders proclaimed as they fought the practice of apprenticeship in the first days of freedom. And both black mothers and fathers encountered formidable obstacles—including bureau officials who endorsed the use of apprenticeship for poor freedchildren—as they endeavored to defend family autonomy as free women and men. But the experiences of former slave mothers differed considerably from those of black fathers as they battled a variety...

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