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3 Disordered Communities: Freedpeople, Poor Whites, and “Mixed Blood” Families in Reconstruction North Carolina
- The University of North Carolina Press
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chapter three Disordered Communities Freedpeople, Poor Whites, and “Mixed Blood” Families in Reconstruction North Carolina White people, wrote Colonel Samuel Thomas in September 1865, “still have the ingrained feeling that the black people at large belong to the whites at large, [and] . . . will cheat a negro without feeling a single twinge of their honor. To kill a negro they do not deem murder, to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication, to take property away from a negro they do not consider robbery.” With those words, Colonel Thomas, assistant commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau for Mississippi, captured the essence of why the decade of Reconstruction to follow would be one of the nation’s bloodiest and most divisive.1 Writing only two months after Colonel Thomas filed his pessimistic report for Mississippi, Clinton A. Cilley, superintendent of the bureau’s West District in Salisbury, North Carolina, offered a similarly bleak assessment of race relations in that state.2 Superintendent Cilley estimated that about three-fourths of blacks were willing to work, while the rest made their livings by stealing and prostitution. Although he estimated that three-fourths of whites were likewise willing to employ blacks, he thought that only two-thirds were willing to pay fair wages— and that even they would not 60 Reconstruction and Beyond treat blacks fairly except for the “advice and authority” of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Were the bureau discontinued, he concluded, “blacks would be no better off than before the war.”3 It is not surprising that Southern white men, especially former slaveholders , would rage against their loss of political authority and racial dominance. For a brief few years, their world was turned upside down, and most did not doubt that their diminished power signaled the destruction of civilized society. But more than political and racial dominance were at stake. At its most fundamental, day-to-day level, slaveholding men’s right to dominate their households was also challenged. To better understand their struggle to maintain power, we must examine gender as well as race and the lives of poor as well as propertied whites.4 African Americans formed an important but fragile alliance with white Unionists. Early in the war, local and state Confederate leaders had cracked down hard on Orange County citizens who opposed secession. From Chapel Hill, William Lloyd, Cannon Bowers, and Joseph Ivey were said to be the only men in their neighborhood who dared vote against secession. But open dissent against the Confederacy resurged among many Southern whites, especially in the yeomanry, during the final two years of the war. The stage thus was set for showdowns during Reconstruction over which political party would prevail in the wake of Confederate defeat. Orange County’s Unionists were from various backgrounds, but the greatest levels of dissent came from neighborhoods made up mainly of nonslaveholding farmers and laborers.5 Durham’s best-known Unionist was William W. Guess, a wealthy Whig slaveholder. As a result of his opposition to secession, Guess’s grain mill was boycotted by disgruntled Confederates during the war. Old Sam Cole, who continued to patronize Guess’s mill, was another outspoken Unionist. Neighbors worried for his safety, but Sam may have escaped harassment because of his advanced age (he was over eighty years old) and because three of his grandsons lost their lives in service to the Confederate Army.6 If it was dangerous for propertied white men to express Unionist views, it was doubly so for African American women. Nelly Stroud, of Chapel Hill, remembered that “colored people” like her did not discuss the politics of the war, at least not publicly: “A still tongue made a wise head.” As a washerwoman, Stroud’s livelihood depended upon the willingness of whites to hire her; she dared not shoot off her mouth about politically charged issues. Even her friend Nancy Brewer, unusual as an economically independent black woman who owned her home and had purchased her [18.205.114.205] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 09:26 GMT) Disordered Communities 61 husband out of slavery, agreed with Stroud that blacks generally kept quiet. She felt compelled to add, however, that they always sympathized with the Union cause, believing it was “God’s will for the colored race to be free.”7 Freedom did come, but it was quickly followed by the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror. In the eastern portion of the state, blacks were too numerous and too necessary a labor...