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2 Throwing Up Breastworks: Slave Laborers under the Engineer Bureau
- The University of North Carolina Press
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45 CHAPTER TWO Throwing Up Breastworks Slave Laborers under the Engineer Bureau In 1937, speaking with Works Progress Administration interviewer Susie Byrd, Reverend Ishrael Massie recalled his experiences with Confederate slave impressment. A young teenager at the time of the Civil War, Massie once helped his master and the local impressment agent “catch men to carry to th’ battlefield.” When one slave attempted to run away rather than face service on the fortifications, Massie grabbed the man and tried to hold him. He recalled, “To weaken dis man down, one t’other men struck de bayonet in him. Dey missed his arm an’ stuck mine right above de elbow.” Eventually, the impressment agents pacified the slave and “put him to wuck on de breastworks.” Massie received medical care for his arm and returned home.1 The enslaved man Massie fought was right to fear impressment and the weeks of difficult labor it entailed. Perhaps this man had already served a term with the Engineer Bureau and therefore had firsthand knowledge of work on the fortifications. Perhaps he had simply heard stories from slaves who had returned from earlier terms of impressment. This slave may have acted with the tacit approval of his master, a Mr. Young, because many slaveholders were also aware of the dangers slaves faced while on the fortifications. Neither Massie nor his interviewer had access to all of this information, but the anecdote suggests some key points in the story of slave impressment. Not surprisingly, impressed slaves faced long hours of extremely hard physical labor. In addition, the Confederate government 46 / Throwing Up Breastworks routinely failed to provide adequate food, shelter, and medical care for impressed slaves. But most important, the widespread availability of information about these dangerous conditions made impressment both more necessary and more difficult throughout the course of the war and may have encouraged slaves to escape to Union lines rather than face a trip to the fortifications. Slaveholders gleaned information about the living and working conditions of engineer laborers from a number of sources. Their first, and often most reliable, sources of information were the overseers who supervised both hired and impressed slaves. In particular, Virginia’s planters trusted the slaveholding neighbors (often physicians or wounded Confederate soldiers ) appointed as overseers in accordance with the state’s impressment legislation. These overseers were in a position to provide slaveholders with detailed information about the daily routines, living conditions, shelter, and medical care afforded impressed slaves, especially after the slaves returned home. During each two-month term of impressment, overseers regularly sent letters to local newspapers with more general information about life on the fortifications; these letters most often contained appeals for additional food. Newspaper editors also published reports about the Engineer Bureau’s labor practices, often noting the most inflammatory or sensational stories in an attempt to indict the bureau for mistreating impressed slaves. One such story illustrated “the meagerness of the rations given [impressed slaves], by one of the negroes snatching a ration of meat from a comrade, and placing it with his own, swallowing both in one mouthful.” Finally, slaveholders received reports from their own slaves as well as from the slaves of their neighbors as men returned from the fortifications. William T. Macklin told his representative that “reports from the sick servants returned to the [county] are that the sick in the hospital are very much neglected & almost starved.” Governor Zebulon Baird Vance received a letter from a North Carolina slaveholder who complained that “the returned negroes say that my boy is without shoes or clothing and that he has been sick, and is very much swollen, still he is hard at work.”2 These complaints—and dozens of letters just like them—reflected slaveholders’ widespread assumptions that the Engineer Bureau either neglected or abused their slaves, and clearly owners hoped to capitalize on these perceived abuses to resist impressment calls. The governors uniformly rejected such appeals but also insisted that the Confederate government provide food, shelter, and medical care to all enslaved laborers. Most engineer officers recognized the importance of providing proper care [13.59.82.167] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:48 GMT) Throwing Up Breastworks / 47 to impressed slaves and frequently bemoaned their limited resources. Yet the charges of abuse and neglect, as well as the connections planters drew between labor requisitions and runaway slaves, remained remarkably consistent over time and space. While slaveholders’ opposition failed to alter either state’s commitment to slave impressment, they did...