Climbing Up to Glory (10 page)

Black women were as loyal as black men in the Union war cause. Union officials often used both sexes as spies and scouts because they knew the Southern countryside better than most white soldiers and could pass themselves off as just another slave. Jim Taylor, a seventeen-year-old slave, eagerly identified the camps of several Confederate regiments, which greatly assisted Union officials in mapping strategy. Likewise, Dick Williams, a slave, gathered valuable information while working on Confederate military projects. He subsequently escaped to report the disposition of 5,000 Confederate soldiers encamped around Leesburg, Virginia.
¹³⁹
Former slaves Lucy Carter and Elizabeth Bowser, working as house servants, provided valuable military intelligence to the Union. Bowser, a servant in the household of Jefferson Davis, secretly eavesdropped as the Confederate president and his generals discussed strategy.
¹⁴⁰
Mary Louveste's employment at the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk, Virginia, placed her in a prime position to be privy to Confederate intelligence. Accordingly, she was able to supply valuable information to Gideon Welles, Union secretary of the navy, about Confederate plans and ships. Mary Catherine Windsor was on board a ship to New Orleans when she saw Confederate forces hiding in the bushes on shore and ready to attack the craft. She passed the information along to Union navy officers, who promptly cancelled the landing. Throughout the remainder of the war, Windsor regularly engaged in similar reconnaissance activities.
¹⁴¹

Harriet Tubman, one of the most famous nineteenth-century black women and black abolitionists, acted as both a spy and scout for the Union army. Under the command of Colonel James Montgomery of the Second South Carolina Volunteers, Tubman headed a corps of local black men, most of them river pilots. Her attire as a plain freed-woman allowed her to travel all over the South without arousing suspicion. Tubman and her scouts were highly adept at pinpointing the location of cotton warehouses, ammunition depots, and slaves who were waiting to be liberated. Montgomery, noted as a guerrilla fighter, made numerous expeditions along the coastal areas of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida based on information from Tubman and her squad. In fact, Tubman led the way on his most celebrated raid up the Combahee River in June 1863.
¹⁴²
Sojourner Truth, equally famous, was also a spy for the Union army. For blacks to engage in espionage was particularly risky, and this willingness to do so underscores their commitment to defeat the Confederacy and overthrow the institution of slavery regardless of the costs. Indeed, both the Union army and navy depended on intelligence provided them by black spies and scouts. Union officers praised their service and were impressed by their devotion to duty in the face of danger. Furthermore, even General George B. McClellan, a fierce racist, admitted that his most reliable intelligence about the enemy came from blacks.
¹⁴³

HARRIET TUBMAN, A PROMINENT MEMBER OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, AND UNION NURSE, SPY, AND SCOUT.

Library of Congress

Several black women assisted the Union cause by serving as nurses and laundresses. For example, Susie King Taylor was both a nurse and laundress for the First South Carolina Regiment. She also taught eager soldiers how to read and write and cooked for the regiment as well.
¹⁴⁴
Elizabeth Keckley, a confidante of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, also served as a nurse for the Union army. In addition, when Union officials searched frantically for nurses to tend the wounded on the battlefield, Rose Russell, a slave, volunteered to go. At first, however, she was refused; Union officials thought that she was too delicate a person to handle such a demanding job. Nevertheless, Rose persisted and became a registered nurse in the army medical corps. Several years after the Civil War, Rose still carried a slight scar near her throat where a bullet had grazed her when she got in its path. Rose remembered “bullets falling around her feet like hail.”
¹⁴⁵
Finally, Lydia Penny served as a nurse with the Fifth U.S. Colored Infantry. A former slave in Memphis, Tennessee, she escaped to the Union lines, where she met and married Thomas Penny, and became a cook. Thomas was serving in the army as a servant in the three months' service. When his term expired, he reenlisted and joined the Fifth U.S. Colored Troops at Camp Delaware, Ohio. Owing to her love for Thomas and her country, Lydia decided to go along with her husband. She developed such an outstanding reputation as a devoted and caring nurse that she was affectionately called “the mother of the army.”
¹⁴⁶

BLACKS SERVING AS SCOUTS FOR THE UNION.

Vincent Colyer,
Report of the Services Rendered by the Freed People
, p. 28

Indeed, black men and black women served the cause of freedom in any way they could. One way was by helping escaped Union prisoners. Blacks in Richmond, Virginia, used the Van Lew mansion, the center of Union espionage in the city, to conceal escaped Union prisoners. Some 109 Federal prisoners were hidden there in a secret room after escaping from Libby Prison, only a short distance from the mansion.
¹⁴⁷
A black soldier wrote from Wilmington, North Carolina: “Almost, or I may say, all of the colored people have been engaged in the business of hiding Yankee prisoners. Almost every house in the city occupied by colored people has done this favor for our prisoners.”
¹⁴⁸
In Savannah, Georgia, Georgiana Kelly and a female friend also hid a prisoner in their homes for four or five months. They fed and cared for him, moving him between the two houses to avoid detection. Francis Keaton, also of Savannah, reported that he “stowed away eleven prisoners that came down from Andersonville.” Southern whites, however, discovered Keaton's act and locked him in the guardhouse with the intention of selling him as a slave. Fortunately, Keaton got a break when the keeper fled with the Confederates and left the keys. Keaton took them and freed all the prisoners. Last, another black Savannahian, Joseph Sneed, provided lodging for two escaped prisoners in his home, giving them food and clothes. Subsequently, he instructed his eighteen-year-old son to pilot them to a Union gunboat. The teenager “guided them around through the marsh to past the steamer
Water Witch
, then directed them on the course for escape.”
¹⁴⁹

Another covert way of supporting the Union cause was through prayer. Throughout most African-American communities, blacks prayed for a Federal victory, hoping that it would effect their ultimate freedom. In most instances, prayers for freedom were secret and never detected. If masters, overseers, and patrols sometimes heard them, those who prayed were usually brutally whipped. In Alabama a man named Ned was tied to four pegs in the ground and whipped for his freedom prayers “twell de blood run from him lack he was a hog.” But, undaunted, he refused to stop his freedom prayers. Shortly thereafter, Ned “slipped off an' went ... to jine de Union Army.”
¹⁵⁰
Some blacks were not as discreet as others, and were bold enough to pray aloud for a Union victory, as did Toliver, a Virginia slave. As a result, the aged slave was summoned by two young sons of his master to the barnyard. When they ordered Toliver to get down on his knees and pray for the Confederates, he instead prayed as loud as he could for a Yankee victory. Furious, the two sons lashed him the whole day, taking turns. Toliver finally collapsed, but he prayed to the very end. Only seconds before his death, he mumbled “Yankee.”
¹⁵¹

While some blacks showed support for the Union cause through prayer, others, particularly black women, formed “bread companies” that carried bread to the Union army in violation of policy. In Savannah, Georgia, black women were especially kind to the Union soldiers who had been captured and brought to the city. Sarah Ann Black, for instance, baked bread and potatoes for the Union prisoners and gave them tobacco. Moreover, Georgiana Kelly supervised an operation that collected as many as three hundred loaves of bread baked in black homes throughout the city for the Union prisoners. Small black boys generally threw the loaves of bread to the prisoners. Not surprisingly, such activity was not risk free. One free black female was incarcerated.
¹⁵²

Black women in the North contributed to the war effort by forming groups to raise money for the families of black soldiers. They also collected money to purchase flags and banners for the regiments and to buy food for soldiers who were sick and recuperating. Once Federal forces began to occupy areas of the South, slaves ran away in considerable numbers to the camps of Union troops or headed North. Most were poor, and their presence placed a heavy strain on government resources. Organizations were formed to assist these destitute blacks, and funds were sent to aid former slaves still in the South. For example, the Colored Ladies Sanitary Commission of Boston sent five hundred dollars for the suffering freedmen of Savannah. Furthermore, forty black women from the District of Columbia established the Contraband Relief Society to help runaway slaves who found their way to the capital.
¹⁵³

Regardless of racial, cultural, ethnic, religious, and class differences, people sometimes cross these boundaries to engage in sexual relations. This was certainly the case during the Civil War. For example, Northern white women feared that their husbands in the Union army would be seduced by black women, despite the fact that white men repeatedly claimed that black women were unattractive. Their wives knew better, however, for they were aware of their men's attraction to black women, particularly to mulattoes. Catherine Hopley, a Northern white, wrote, “There is a sort of gipsy beauty in the nearly white Negro. The large dark eyes retain their brilliancy, while their form is improved; a rich glow in the cheeks, a well-formed nose and full rosy lips, with glossy black ringlets ... full of feeling, with a smile lingering about the mouth ready to burst forth at a word of encouragement.”
¹⁵⁴
Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the commander of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Infantry, attended a tea party given by Northern teachers near Charleston, South Carolina, in July 1863. He singled out a light-complexioned black woman as the most attractive of the hostesses: “The interesting member of the Family is Miss Lottie Forten, from Philadelphia, a niece of Mr. Purvis, and a quadroon [of one-quarter black ancestry]. She is quite pretty, remarkably well educated, and a very interesting woman. She is decidedly the belle here, and the officers, both of the army and navy, seem to think her society far preferable to that of the other ladies.”
¹⁵⁵
Some black women were sexually drawn to white Union soldiers and made their interest known. Candace, a twenty-one-year-old Virginia slave, married Jim Lee of the Fourth Massachusetts Infantry. Another black woman bluntly told a youthful Union officer upon meeting him, “You is a right nice-lookin' man, I declare.” The soldier reacted as if she had been a member of one of the finest families: he blushed.
¹⁵⁶

Confederate soldiers sought the company of black women. Many of these men were already accustomed to sexual gratification from black women, and now that they were away from their wives and from the social constraints of their communities, such relationships could flourish. Elijah Parker and John L. Sutherlin were arrested in 1862 after being caught in the house of Jordina Mayo, a free black woman. George Norton was arrested for walking down a Richmond street “arm in arm with a negro wench named Hannah.” One free black woman, Millie Rawls, was involved in a common-law marriage with a white Confederate soldier, George W. Jameson, which began in 1861. The couple had five children whom Jameson faithfully supported. He transferred all of his property to Rawl's name. Such interracial couples were viewed with disdain by Southern whites as threats to the status quo.
¹⁵⁷

Sexual liaisons in the South between black men and white women did not cease in wartime. For example, in western North Carolina in 1862, a white man named Jesse Black assaulted his white wife, Tamsey, after discovering her affair with a black man. Jesse was initially found guilty of assault, but a higher court later overturned the decision. In its opinion, since the husband was “responsible for the acts of his wife,” Jesse was permitted to use force to make Tamsey “behave herself.” Martha Smith, a white woman in Alabama in 1865, was charged with “adultery or fornication” with one of her former slaves, Joe. Smith had to face the charge in court, where witnesses testified that the two had been caught in bed together in Martha's room in the house where she boarded.
¹⁵⁸
In all likelihood the liaison between Martha and her former slave had existed for several years. These relationships were fairly typical of the nineteenth-century South and have been well documented by scholars.

Some of these liaisons between black men and white women blossomed into long-term romances. For black men, it was extremely risky to cohabit with white women in the Civil War South. Under most state laws they could either be lynched or executed. Nevertheless, in Virginia, for instance, Richard, a Richmond slave, took up residence with Delia Mack, a white woman. Until Delia's sister Caroline reported them to the police, the couple lived happily together. Richard was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 117 lashes administered over a three day period. Another white woman and her black husband, Jackson, rented a house from the University of Virginia until the faculty chairman suddenly demanded their eviction in 1863. And John P. Anderson, another free black man, married a white woman, and they resided together for the duration of the war and during Reconstruction.
¹⁵⁹

Scholars have failed to adequately address the issue of rape. Most of the alleged victims were white women. Although white men were brought to trial and executed for rape, black men suffered this fate much more than did their white counterparts. Thus, white men got away with rape more often than black men. Members of the Thirty-sixth U.S. Colored Infantry were accused of raping twenty-five or thirty white females in June 1864, after a raid near Richmond and Petersburg.
¹⁶⁰
In all likelihood, the soldiers were executed for their alleged crimes. Dandridge Brooks and John Shepperd of the Thirty-eighth U.S. Colored Infantry were also accused of raping two white women. The evidence against them was strong, and their only defense was that they were “not in the house” that night. Both men were hanged.
¹⁶¹

Local authorities dealt harshly with male slaves accused of raping or attempting to rape white women. For instance, in July 1863, a Virginia slave was hanged amid allegations of rape.
¹⁶²
Sometimes black men accused of rape were mutilated. In 1864 in Georgia's cotton belt a slave was sentenced to be castrated and two doctors carried out the punishment. Even when local authorities tried to intervene on behalf of accused slaves, their efforts were usually futile. When a slave named Elias was convicted of attempting to rape Martha Burton, a white woman, his master sought a pardon, proposing that he would “put him in the army” if the man were allowed to live. Elias was executed. And after a slave was arrested for attempting to rape a white woman, he was lynched despite pleas from white citizens.
¹⁶³

Although fewer men were convicted and executed for raping black women than white women, black women were the victims of the majority of the war's rapes. As such, they were raped by both white and black Union soldiers, Confederates, and the general populace. Often black women were raped in the presence of their family members and friends to indicate a lack of respect for blacks in general and for black women in particular. Both Northern and Southern whites regarded black women as sexually promiscuous and thus prime targets of their sexual advances. In their view, one could not rape a black woman since she was always willing to engage in sexual relations. As expected, white Union soldiers took black women at will. In April 1862 a Yankee raped one of B. E. Harrison's slaves in Prince William County, Virginia. Of the event, Harrison wrote, “As she saw him approaching her she ran, ... but he caught her and forced [her] to a Brutal act, in full view of my dwelling and wife and two of her nieces.”
¹⁶⁴
During July 1862 four white Union cavalrymen raped two black women in Newport News. Two of the soldiers took turns unmercifully violating a black female in the yard of a friend whom she was visiting while the other two stood guard with pistols and swords. Shortly thereafter, the soldiers entered the house, and the two who had earlier stood guard now raped another black woman found inside “after a terrible struggle” in front of her father and grandfather.
¹⁶⁵
Not surprisingly, Confederates, too, sexually assaulted and raped black women. For example, a Confederate marine, Archibald Wilkinson, was arrested and transferred to the custody of the provost marshal for raping Margaret Willis, a free black Richmond woman, in November 1862.
¹⁶⁶
All blacks did not just stand back and allow their women to be sexually abused by white men. They formed vigilante groups and sometimes took revenge on white rapists. In Yorktown, Virginia, in 1863, for example, black vigilantes shot a white sailor to death for the attempted rape of a young black girl.
¹⁶⁷