First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862-1900

2. The Prettiest Blue Mens I Had Ever Seed

Chapter 2 The Prettiest Blue Mens I Had Ever Seed In the fall and early winter of 1861, the 15th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry regrouped at Poolesville, Maryland, veterans of the disastrous battle at Ball’s Bluff. The unit had sustained well over a hundred casualties in what would prove to be a mere taste of the bloodshed they would suffer during the course of the war. On Christmas Eve 1861, Isaiah Allen, a slave in Leesburg, Virginia— across the Potomac from Poolesville—took advantage of his owner’s holiday revelries. With a fellow slave, he swam across the river and escaped to the safety of the Worcester County regiment.1 Similarly, Allen Parker, a slave in Chowan County on the plantation Martinique , heard of the Yankee invasion of eastern North Carolina in 1862 through the slave grapevine. “Although our masters tried to keep all matters relating to the war from their slaves,” he remembered, the slaves nevertheless “managed to get hold of a good deal of news, and the idea was fast gaining ground, that in some way they were soon to be free.” Despite “every effort” of masters to keep slaves on the plantations, fearing their escape to the Yankees, Parker and several of his fellow slaves managed to meet and plot their escape. Pledging to flee to the next federal vessel that came up the Chowan River, Parker and three compatriots soon got their chance before dawn on a morning in August 1862. Absconding in a crude cypress dugout, the four slaves made their way to a Union gunboat. Many years later Parker recalled the moment that freedom came into his grasp: “Pushing out from the shore we bid goodbye to the old plantations and slave life forever.”2 28 The Prettiest Blue Mens I Had Ever Seed Mary Barbour remembered being awakened in the night by her father. Imploring his children to keep quiet, he guided his wife and children to a wagon he had stolen from his master. Barbour recalled that her father explained “dat we is goin ter jine de Yankees.” Yankee soldiers in Chowan County directed the family to New Bern, where they would be taken care of, “so ter New Bern we goes.”3 Five years old when the Yankees came to North Carolina, Sarah Harris vividly recalled the thrill of seeing Yankees for the first time. “I wuz not afraid of ’em,” she remembered. “I thought dey were the prettiest blue mens I had ever seed.”4 Throughout the South, slaves sought to free themselves from their bondage by escaping to the invading Union army. Despite the efforts of masters to move and hide them, to frighten them into submission with horror stories, and to keep them ignorant of the Yankee invasion, tens of thousands of slaves absconded anyway. And even though the Lincoln administration insisted that the war was not about slavery but about the preservation of the Union, the arrival of the Yankees signaled the commencement of slaves’ freedom. Neither the most exhaustive efforts of slavemasters nor the carefully articulated conservative war aims of the federal government could quench the slaves’ thirst for freedom or shake a fundamental tenet of their faith: God had finally sent the Yankees to deliver them. As one North Carolina runaway explained to a Worcester soldier, “de Lord is come now!”5 Some fugitives and soldiers from Worcester County, sharing the experiences of war, forged strong personal bonds that formed the foundation of migration networks to the North during and after the war. The interactions of runaway slaves and their Yankee liberators profoundly shaped each group. Wartime relationships left deep and lasting impressions that went far beyond the exigencies of war. “Bress de Lord and Massa Lincoln!” Soon after its formation in Worcester, the 15th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment made its way south in August 1861, setting up camp near Poolesville, Maryland, on the Potomac, to keep rebel soldiers across the river in Leesburg at bay. At Poolesville, members of the 15th Massachusetts had their first encounter with slavery when they came into contact with “contrabands of war,” runaway slaves seeking their freedom with the Union army. “There are plenty of ‘Uncle Toms’ out this way,” wrote W. J. Coulter, a member of the 15th, “and it is amusing to hear them talk.” For Coulter, the contrabands provided The Prettiest Blue Mens I Had Ever Seed 29 “amusing incidents . . . which help to remove the...