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

4. A New Promise of Freedom and Dignity

Chapter 4 A New Promise of Freedom and Dignity The morning of 4 July 1865 was greeted in Worcester with an anticipation and excitement not experienced in years. For the previous two months, townspeople —from schoolchildren to captains of industry—had prepared for a celebration worthy of the momentous Union victory. The city commemorated Independence Day “in a manner worthy of the new glories that cluster around the natal day of the republic from the trials, sacrifices, and victories of the last four years,” wrote Worcester Daily Spy editor John Denison Baldwin. The celebration was “commensurate with the new promise of national freedom and dignity assured by the overthrow of our country’s enemies.”1 Between 1862 and 1870, over 330 newly freed black Americans sought the new promise of national freedom and dignity in Worcester and Worcester County in the aftermath of the Civil War. This pioneer generation of migrants significantly augmented the county’s African American population, from approximately 769 to 1,136, and nearly doubled the city’s black community, from approximately 272 to 524. Virginians and North Carolinians accounted for the lion’s share of migrants, making up over 60 percent of those who came North. While the census shows that only 46 southern-born blacks, 35 of them from Maryland, lived in the city and county in 1860, as early as 1865, 128 southerners lived in the city and county, many hailing from states previously unrepresented in 1860. (See Appendix.)2 Black migration patterns to Worcester County mirrored the specific paths A New Promise of Freedom and Dignity 89 the county’s troops and missionaries trod. Birth, marriage, and death records, unlike the census, often specified the towns where southern migrants were born, and these often were the same towns and cities Worcester soldiers and missionary teachers traversed. For North Carolina–born transplants, New Bern appears frequently, along with Kinston, Washington, Beaufort, and Elizabeth City—all within the orbit of the activities of the 25th and 51st Massachusetts regiments and Worcester’s missionary teachers in the era of the Civil War. Likewise, Leesburg, Culpeper, Norfolk, and Fredericksburg natives replicate the trails of Worcester County regiments, including the 15th Massachusetts , as well as local missionary teachers, such as the Chase sisters, who went south to teach in Virginia. A handful of young Louisianans appeared in northern Worcester County, having returned with the 53rd Massachusetts, a regiment largely raised from the northern part of the county that served in Louisiana in 1863–64.3 Whereas many migrants made their way north during and immediately after the war in the company of local soldiers and missionaries, beginning in 1866, another group of migrants came to Worcester and Worcester County under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Inundated with unemployed and desperately poor ex-slaves who had made their way to the nation’s capital , the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington established an employment agency to find jobs for them, providing transportation. Washington-area blacks, from Virginia and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia, came to Worcester and Worcester County through this network, swelling the number of migrants from those locales. Pioneer Civil War–era migrants soon established patterns of chain migration , wherein they rapidly facilitated the arrival of additional family members and friends. Moreover, they helped create a migration tradition for men and women from eastern North Carolina and Virginia that lasted at least through the end of the century. Notably, by 1870, southern-born Worcesterites made up almost half of the city’s black adult population. Young and vigorous, they would leave their imprint on the city’s black community. An examination of Civil War–era migration not only sheds light on the bonds created between southern blacks and northern white soldiers and missionaries ; it also demonstrates how their interactions profoundly shaped each group. In addition, the study of Civil War–era black migration to Worcester County affords a rare glimpse into the lives and strategies of freedpeople, of black men, women, and children, as they shaped and defined their own freedom. Their stories show the way in which former slaves negotiated a new 90 A New Promise of Freedom and Dignity world of freedom, the strategies they employed, and the decisions they made in an effort to ensure their liberty and that of family and friends whom they subsequently brought north. Finally, a comparison of migrants who came north through personal...