Thursday, April 20, 2017
This from the Providence Post, 1862
"......most Southern blacks evince no friendliness toward the Yankees whatsoever. And neither have they attempted to flee north out of Dixie, or
Thursday, April 20, 2017
This from the Providence Post, 1862
"......most Southern blacks evince no friendliness toward the Yankees whatsoever. And neither have they attempted to flee north out of Dixie, or attack and overwhelm their white owners, as was expected. In fact, the few who have crossed over into Union lines show no urge to work or fight; only a desire to live off Northern whites, for their hearts are still with the Southern Confederacy."............I suspect that this mindset is the byproduct of several things; a) the horrible and barbaric way that Union soldiers often treated both slaves and freedmen, b) the nasty bigotry of the North in general, c) the way that most slaves were incorporated into the families of their masters, and d) a simple fear of the unknown. Granted, the situation had to change but being that the Civil War ended up slaughtering nearly 700,000 soldiers and possibly a million blacks and was easily the most divisive emancipation in all of world history, Plan B (a gradual and compensated emancipation in which the freed slaves had at least a modicum of support from the government and, no, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands doesn't count in that this agency provided horrible care for blacks) might have been a better course of action....I'm just sayin'.