Crafting Lives: African American Artisans in New Bern, North Carolina, 1770-1900

FOUR: Worthy to Be Free, Worthy to Be Respected: Civil War, Union Occupation, and Presidential Reconstruction, 1862–1866

F O U R Worthy to Be Free, Worthy to Be Respected Civil War, Union Occupation, and Presidential Reconstruction, 1862–1866 The fact that in spite of all law and opposition, many of us did learn to read and write, and, in spite of the evil influences and tendencies of slavery, there has always been society, some morality, and some undefiled religion among us, ought to settle the question of our capability for such things. . . . Surely the great effort of our friends at the North, and the heroic deeds of colored men on the battle field, will so far remove our difficulties, as to enable us to show to the world that we are deserving the rights and titles of citizens— a people worthy to be free—worthy to be respected. —John Randolph, “The Capabilities of Our Race,” Washington, North Carolina, April 1864, Christian Recorder, May 21, 1864 In his letter to the Christian Recorder, John Randolph set forth his long-held hopes for freedom and citizenship at a time when such goals loomed at last as real possibilities.1 Within days of penning his missive, the enslaved artisan and his family left their home in Washington, North Carolina, for New Bern, where he joined the growing ranks of black artisan-leadership in an almost unimaginable new world of black freedom and agency. Both towns had been occupied by Union forces for some two years when Federal ships evacuated Washington’s remaining Unionists and slaves to New Bern in advance of a Confederate attack on Washington.2 In occupied New Bern Randolph found common cause and unprecedented opportunity among black artisan leaders who were already advancing far along the path toward economic self-sufficiency and the “rights and titles of citizens.” Coupling their pent-up hopes and anger with strategies born of years of experience, from early 1862 onward black artisans in New Bern cast away the bonds that had limited them and asserted themselves as men and women capable of supporting themselves and their families and as political beings focused on freedom and full citizenship. By the time John Randolph Jr. arrived in town in the spring of 1864, New Bern was humming with activity and abuzz with political energy, and by midsummer he was taking a prominent role in the most vibrant black political arena in the state. For artisans of color, New Bern’s situation during the Civil War and early Reconstruction provided a platform for action far different from most communities, North or South. From the time of Union liberation by General Burnside’s troops in March 1862 onward, the nearly all-black city offered a pocket of freedom and opportunity on the edge of the Confederacy—a “Mecca of a thousand noble aspirations,” as one Union soldier put it.3 Liberated New Bern differed from other Union-occupied sites in the South both in its urban character and in its black leadership. In 1861 Union forces captured the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, but the “contraband ” colonies and camps that formed there had little in common with New Bern’s urban character and experienced artisan-leadership. In contrast to those and other rural areas where northern whites strove to create a “rehearsal for Reconstruction” to demonstrate the capacities of the freedpeople , in New Bern the leadership emerged from the black community.4 From the first days of liberation, New Bern’s artisan-leaders not only asserted their desire for freedom but outpaced Union policies in their pursuit 152 : WORT HY TO BE F R EE of autonomy. Already seasoned in leadership in their churches, under occupation they could express publicly the dreams they had shared among themselves through years of oppression. In addition to empowering local people of color, the liberated city attracted other dynamic black leaders. While some had been free before the war, most were new freedmen. Together they transformed the city into one of the South’s principal centers of black political leadership as they moved toward their goals of freedom and the “rights and titles of citizens.” Essentially all of these leaders were artisans. in the spring of 1862, New Bern was a world turned upside down literally overnight. With the majority of whites, including most prominent white citizens, having “skedaddled” inland—one Union officer estimated in 1862 that only about 200 white civilians had stayed behind in a total wartime population of...