Paying for the Civil War: The First U. S. Income Tax

   So you think you have trouble with federal taxes, come April 17, 2012?

   Nothing’s new: Both Yankees and Southerners had to pay income taxes to finance the Civil War. If you had lived in the loyal states or in the portion of the Confederacy occupied by the Union Army before the Civil War ended or during Reconstruction the first years after the war you would have paid Uncle Sam your taxes.

   Financing the Civil War was no easy matter.  The U. S. Congress in 1861 passed legislation setting up the first income tax in the country’s history, and the tax law went into effect in 1862. Yankees had to pay the tax to support the war and other federal government debts throughout the war.  The Confederate government in 1863 also resorted to income taxes. The Confederacy came up with a graduated income tax. Wages up to $1,000 were exempted. There was a 1% tax on the first $1,500 above the exemption, and then 2% on all additional income.

   The U. S. Congress began taxing conquered Southern territory residents before the war ended in 1865. The Rebs ought to bear the cost of the War Against the Rebellion, the legislators felt. Already added to taxpayers’ misery south of the Mason-Dixon line were various Confederate government laws trying to collect taxes from residents of these Southern states still held by the South.  The Confederate tax effort was more hit-or-miss than the federal governments, however. Collections were never enough to support the Southern war effort, nor was the sale of Confederate bonds enough to keep the financial wolf away from the door during the war.

   The U. S. tax effort was much more thorough. Those taxed paid 5 per cent of their incomes if they had income less than $800 yearly. If they made above $800, they paid 10 per cent.  Some sources give a lower rate of taxation, however. Also the tax efforts were rife with special taxes on specific items or businesses. If you had a gold watch, that was taxable, as was silver plate, carriages, a piano, etc.

   Hotel keepers had to pay up, the tax depending upon the size and quality of their hotels. Whisky sellers, too, were taxed, as were more mundane jobs. There was even a specific category for jugglers who entertained the public.

   The Fed tax collectors also hit upon the idea of making their assessments public.  Your neighbors could look you up on your district’s tax lists to see if you were paying what you owed, as determined by the federal assessors.

   “These lists were organized  alphabetically according to surname and recorded the value, assessment, or enumeration of taxable income or items and the amount of the tax due,” according to a good explanation of the tax program explaining Ancestry.com’s “U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918.”

   An excellent article is in the National Archives’ Prologue Magazine, in the Winter, 1986, issue, No. 4, by Cynthia Fox. You can read this article online at the following link: http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1986/winter/civil-war-tax-records.html. This article also discusses tax records available in portions of the 19th Century and early 20th Century.

   The federal income taxes were probably even more disliked than the nation’s  taxes are taxes now. Taxing citizens was a new thing in 1862.  We’ve had a long time to get used to it, although there were periods in the 19th and early 20th centuries when there were no individual federal income taxes.

   But the tax chore to citizens, both North and South, is the genealogist’s and historian’s gain. While not everyone was taxed, a great many of a community’s residents were. The tax assessment records furnish us with much valuable information about the occupations, income and worth of various residents and business operations. This information is especially valuable because much of it comes between census years. If you lose track of your relatives between federal or state censuses, you may stand a good chance of finding them in the Assessment Lists. The availability of these records is not uniform through the states and territories. The easiest online source to use is Ancestry.com’s the federal government’s IRS assessment lists found on the Web site. Many libraries offer free access to Ancestry.com, or you can subscribe on a yearly basis. Access to Confederate financial records is less organized. Various state archives may have some records.

   Information included in the federal records is the tax collection district, name of collector, date of the tax list, instructions for the tax form, the name of the person or business being taxed, their address, the taxable period, amount reported by the collector, assessment remarks, article taxed and the taxpayer’s occupation. Businesses were also assessed.

Local historians and genealogists will find it very interesting to find such data readily available. The original tax data is available at the National Archives in its microfilm records. Some libraries also stock the National Archives microfilms for researchers. And Ancestry.com is to be commended for making much of the tax information available on its website.

So take a break from figuring your own federal income tax and see what your relatives had to pay about 150 years ago!

Here’s an example from the assessment form for taxing Clarke County, GA residents in the years immediately after the Civil War:



  

   From being an ex-slave to becoming one of the richest African-Americans in the South—that’s the fantastic story of an Athens, Clarke County, Georgia resident, Monroe Bowers Morton. And he is a strong motivating figure for young people even today.

   On Martin Luther King Day 2012, a group of white and African American youths visited the Morton family lot at Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery to learn about his family and to pick up trash as their work project. Their work was supervised by the Rev. Solomon Smothers and his wife Lora, both of whom are taking a leading role in teaching young students about the cemetery and African Americans buried there.

   Morton’s success as a leading businessman and real estate owner was documented by Athens and Atlanta newspapers, as well as by census statistics on real and personal worth and deed records. His two-story, large home on Prince Avenue at South Milledge Avenue in Athens was considered the best African-American home in town.  Several newspaper articles recognized Morton as one of the wealthiest black men in the South.

   “Mr. Morton is a self-made man, and has won his way to the front in business, politics, society by sheer force of character, distinct individuality, rare precocity and strict application to business,” the Atlanta Independent newspaper said in a long story about him on Jan. 30, 1904. 

   The  Athens general public knows Morton best as the builder of the four-story Morton Theatre, frequented by leading African-American entertainers and restored as one of the few remaining early 20th Century black theaters. Early in the 20th Century, his Morton Theatre was referred to as “the colored opera house” or Morton’s Opera House. 

   It was much more than a typical vaudeville theater. The Morton was the venue of many high-class concerts, commencements, etc. in the African-American (and white) community. Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway were among leading black entertainers playing there. Monroe Morton built the theatre, not only to make money, but to give a quality setting for African-American entertainment.  Whites also frequently came to see well known black entertainers. Today it’s a beautifully restored theater, supported strongly by both black and white communities.

   Morton, known more commonly as “Pink” Morton, became a nationally known Republican Party leader. He served on the committee telling William McKinley he had been chosen the Republican Party’s candidate for President in 1896. Later, after McKinley’s win over William Jennings Bryan for the presidency, he appointed Morton the second black postmaster of Athens. Morton served from July 27, 1897, to Feb. 6, 1902, according to U. S. Post Office records.  

   Morton named one of his daughters Ida  Saxton Mckinley for President McKinley’s wife, Ida Saxton McKinley.

   Madison Davis, another former slave and politician, was Athens’ first black postmaster. He served from 1882 until 1886. Both Davis and Morton were opposed ferociously by many whites in Athens, but local residents could do little to stop Republican presidents from appointing them postmasters and receiving congressional confirmation.

   Morton was nicknamed “Pink” because of his light complexion.  A long-time Athens court bailiff, William Pope, told me in 2007: “Morton wasn’t black and he wasn’t white, so they called him ‘Pink.’”

   President McKinley was assassinated in office, dying on Sept. 14, 1901. He was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.  As the 19th Century ended, few black office holders remained in the South. The Epoch of Jim Crow set in, with more segregation and stringent laws limiting African-Americans’ civil rights.

   Morton was born sometime between 1853 and1857.  His tombstone in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery, Athens, indicates he was born in 1856. Census records, however, give other dates. He was a slave on a plantation north of Athens, according to his obituary in an Athens paper.  His master may have been John Phinizy, a wealthy planter living in the Buck Branch Militia District in northern Clarke County.  Morton’s obituary in the Chicago Defender said Morton was a slave on the “Phinizy Plantation,” north of Athens, not giving a more precise location.  The 1860  federal census slave schedule indicates there was a slave who could have been of an appropriate age to be Morton on the John Phinizy plantation. 

   Two mulatto males, one 6 years of age and the other 3 years old in 1860, could have been Morton, who was a mulatto. Phinizy’s slaves included a 38-year-old female and a 27-year-old female. The 38-year-old was described as “black,” while the 27-year-old was listed as a “mulatto.” As you probably know, birthdates for slaves were frequently imprecise, as white masters frequently didn’t attach much importance to an exact date.

   It was common knowledge in Athens that Monroe B. Morton had a white father. Several sources say his father was James B. White, who would become the president of the First National Bank of Athens. Researcher Thomas Riis, who documented the development of the Morton Theatre and the Morton family, said Maud Muller Morton, one of Monroe Morton’s daughters, told him that Morton’s father was James B. White. But she also said, according to a member of the family, that Morton’s father was a Billy Morton. Professor Riis said Morton’s mother was named Elizabeth Morgan, a slave. White would have been quite young, about 13-17 around the time of Morton’s birth.

   Pink Morton, even as a child, showed hustle and business ability. At age 6 he was working at an Athens hotel during the Civil War. His mother, commonly called Lizzie, was the head of his family according to the 1870 census. Pink Morton was later to erect a memorial stone to her in the Morton family plot in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery. Nothing was said about his father. The “in Memory” stone indicates she died in the 1880’s, although the last digit is not readable. The marker notes that she was about 50 years old.

   In 1890 Pink Morton showed assets of $30,000 on the tax rolls for Clarke County. This was a large valuation in 1890.  Charles Morton, a grandson of Pink Morton, told me that White gave financial support to Morton’s contracting business. It is obvious that he got help as a business entrepreneur.  He was widely respected by both black and white residents and exerted a moderating influence in several racially explosive situations. 

   His business life flourished. Clarke County deed books show he owned several dozen pieces of property in Athens, and he had a farm outside the city.

   Toward the end of the 19th Century Morton as a contractor built a federal building in Anniston, Alabama, a marble-front business building in downtown Athens and the Wilkes County Court House in Washington, Georgia. He would follow with the construction of the Morton Theatre, which opened in 1910. He actively managed the theatre for years. Eventually his son Charles Morton Sr. would follow him in running the theatre. Charles Morton Jr., as a young boy, played roles in skits at the theatre.

   Monroe Morton emphasized that his theatre showed only “clean” entertainments, keeping a high reputation.  His daughter, Maud, however told interviewer Conoly Hester in the 1980’s that she wasn’t allowed to go to the theater.

   His theater building also housed businesses, doctors’ and dentist offices for African American leaders, helping to establish its location at Hull and Washington Streets as the main building at “Hot Corner,” the leading black business and entertainment area in Athens. The Morton Theatre later showed movies, as interest generally lessened in vaudeville and live shows performed by black entertainers.  The theater after World War II fell vacant and was in danger of being condemned until interested citizens and the Athens government restored it as a rare example of a major black theatre.

   Stories abound about the theatre building.  Morton installed a gasoline pump so that cars of African Americans could be filled up. At that time many whites didn’t like to pump gas for black customers.  Conoly Hester, then a reporter for the Athens Observer, wrote a thorough article on “Hot Corner” and Pink Morton’s role in its development.  She interviewed Jacob Weaver, an African American who grew up in the area, who told her Morton performed another service: furnishing bootleg whisky from a large vat on top of the theatre roof. He said a pipe led down to a sink in Smith’s Café, on the street level. “White lightning” came out of one of the water faucets.

   Monroe Morton lived until Feb. 12, 1919, when he died in Athens. His death certificate indicates he died of cirrhosis of the liver and chronic myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. He was about 63 years old. His obituary in the Chicago Defender, a major national black newspaper, said he had suffered from a long illness.

   “Mr. Morton was prominent in fraternal circles and the owner of a theater he erected expressly for the purpose of keeping his people from being forced to sit in the dirty Jim Crow apartments provided for by white theaters,” the article said. It noted he was one of the wealthiest men in Georgia.

   Today, the Morton family lot in the Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in East Athens is on the main avenue going from the front gate. It is fenced and kept clean. A white friend of Maud Morton, Mrs. Louise Silcox, kept the lot tidy for many years and hired someone to look after it later on.  This past MLK Day, a small group of excited students toured the cemetery and became familiar with some of the history of the illustrious Morton family. They were excited and awed by the spectacular career of an ex-slave, a major figure nationally as well as in Athens.

 

   Augustus Longstreet Hull, one of Athens, Georgia’s most respected citizens, chronicled much of Athens and Clarke County history in his well-known book, Annals of Athens. His testimony of the Civil War years in the area is very valuable, because he himself witnessed these years and Reconstruction that followed.

   Trying to delineate the anger, grief and wracking Civil War changes in the lives of the residents of Athens and Clarke County is a difficult task. Almost every family had a member who fought, died, or was wounded in many of the most horrific battles fought between the North and the South.  Few men were left at home who did not see military service from 1861 to 1865.

   A compilation of the deaths of Clarke County troops shows they suffered heavy casualties fighting in many of the major battles fought. Lists of those killed in action in some major battles are as follows: Seven Days Battles, June 25-July 1, 1862, 23; Crampton’s Gap, September 14, 1862, 10; Sharpsburg, Sept. 17, 1862, 9; Fredericksburg, Dec. 13, 1862, 5; Chancellorsville, May 2-3, 1863, 12; Brandy Station, June 9, 1863, 3; Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1863, 18; Knoxville, November 29, 1863, 3; The Wilderness, May 4-21, 1864, 14;  and Siege of Petersburg and The Crater, June, 1864-April, 1865, 20. This list is in Kenneth Coleman’s Confederate Athens.

    Athens and its county suffered no damage by military action, although there were a few close calls, as Union units operated near the town. Sherman’s march of devastation from Atlanta to Savannah and into the Carolinas missed Athens. But the loss of life in military action, the wounding of many others and the death by disease or imprisonment in Northern prisons left the majority of Athens and Clarke County families shattered.  On the home front, deprivation of supplies of food, goods and services took a severe toll on the population. And many well-off families sank into poverty. Not only did most of the county’s men serve in Confederate units, but their families made great sacrifices to supply the fighting forces with supplies, clothing, and food.

   Many books could be written solely about the war and its effects just on Athens and Clarke County, but this blog will deal with some questions commonly asked by those seeking to know the cost to those serving in various Athens area Confederate units—the numbers killed in battle or by disease, or wounded.

   Augustus Hull wrote in his Annals that listing the names of those killed or wounded might seem “not interesting” to some of his readers. But, as to most residents, it was a personalized war in which they knew well their fathers, sons, and brothers who sacrificed in a heart-felt cause, he said.

   “Many of those men I knew and the mention of their names bring up memories of other days which throw a halo about them. I recall how they looked as they marched, new uniformed, with alert step, full of life and vigor, and how they stopped to speak the good-bye word; how, afterwards, they toiled on the forced march tattered, half-shod, half starved; how they went bravely into battle and how some came out bloody and faint, and some lay dead,” Hull wrote.

  The casualty totals make it achingly clear to us even 150 years later the catastrophic losses of the Civil War. These numbers aren’t precise for the totals, but estimates are accurate enough to show the magnitude of battle.  It’s estimated that somewhat more than one million men fought for the Confederacy. Of these, about 94,000 died from wounds, while disease killed off an estimated 164,000 more. Those wounded came to approximately 100,000. The Union put more than 1.5 million men into battle. Of this number about 110,000 were mortally wounded; almost a quarter of a million died from disease, and more than 275,000 received non-fatal wounds. These figures come from the respected site at the University of Houston, http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us20.dfm.

   We can be somewhat more precise when we look at the fearsome cost involving troops from a specific area such as Athens and Clarke County, Georgia. Thorough rosters have been compiled of the units from this area seeing Civil War service. Military records, accounts in local newspapers and personal knowledge of the families have been used to keep track of the casualties from here. One of the most thorough casualty tabulations has been done by Joseph H. Kitchens, Jr., preparing the listing for Prof. Kenneth Coleman in his readable Confederate Athens, re-issued in a 2009 paperback edition by the University of Georgia Press.

   A total of 1,649 men were on the rosters of military units from Athens and Clarke County. Of these, 197, or 11.9 per cent, were killed in battle. Disease was even more deadly than battle, killing 214 or 13.0 per cent. Of the men serving from Athens and Clarke County 364 were wounded, or 22.1 per cent.  All told, approximately 46 per cent, or nearly half of those listed on the rosters were killed in battle, killed by disease or wounded.

The table below, based on Kitchens’ work, shows the figures for those from Athens area units killed in battle, dying from disease or wounded.  It doesn’t include 10 men who were termed “missing.” He based his work on Athens newspapers, The Watchman and The Banner 1861-65 issues, and rosters in a manuscript, “Roster of Companies Furnished by Clarke County Georgia, to the Confederate Army in the War Between the States, 1861-1865,” compiled by Albert L. Mitchell by authority of Clarke County Commissioners T. P. Vincent, W. H. Morton and S. M. Herrington, in 1903. A similar list is used by Hull in his Annals.

Military Unit                             Total Killed in Battle                 Dying from Disease                  Wounded

Athens Guards (143)                                30                                       30                                            63

Troup Artillery (287)                                 15                                       34                                             59

Clarke Rifles (150)                                  28                                        35                                             77

Johnson Guards (145)                           27                                        19                                             69

Cobb’s Legion Cav. (316)                    30                                         30                                             28

Mell Rifles (136)                                     31                                         25                                             42

Highland Guards* (136)                      15                                             9                                             23

Other Units **(75)                                 20                                             9                                             28

Factory Guards*** (110)                        1                                             4                                               3

Lumpkin Artillery*** (151)                     0                                             0                                               0

Grand Totals             1649            197 214              364

* The Highland Guards had troops from Athens, Northeast Georgia and Western North Carolina. Casualties may have been heavier, but were not all reported in local Athens newspapers.

** Athens area men serving in Confederate units other than those from the immediate area.

*** The Factory Guards and Lumpkin Artillery were “home guard” units and did not participate in any major fighting.

   Although it’s difficult to believe,  Athens area residents apparently only learned of the April  9 surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee  on April 26, 1865. Issues of The Watchman and The Banner for that date carried details of Lee’s surrender and of the assassination of President Lincoln. If residents knew earlier, there is no public record of it that we can find.

   Union troops from the 13th Tennessee Regiment raided the town on May 3. Brigadier General William J. Palmer and his troops stopped the raiding and stayed in Athens for several days in May as they hunted for Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy. The official occupation of Athens by a small number of Union troops began on May 29—the 22nd Iowa Volunteers under the command of Capt. A. B. Cree.

   Kenneth Coleman puts it quite bluntly in his book: “Henceforth Confederate Athens existed only in the memories of her people.”

                        

   Thousands of books have been written about heroes of Civil War battles. In this the 150th anniversary year of the start of the Civil War, such books proliferate like rabbits—and some make good reading.
   But an Athens, Georgia, author, Gary Doster, has just published a book which tells us a lot about a different kind of hero in the war—the stubborn Confederate soldiers who kept to their duty, although their biggest enemies were boredom, often fatal illnesses, dumb officers, and lack of furloughs.
   Gary has produced a wonderful book about a bunch of Georgia Civil War troops, mainly from Oglethorpe County and Greene County, Georgia, near Athens and Clarke County, who found themselves almost forgotten, mainly in Florida during the war. Through hard work and a lot of good luck, Gary tells us their stories in Dear Sallie. . .: The Letters of Confederate Private James Jewell, Echols Light Artillery, Oglethorpe County, Georgia. This book, 360 pages long, is a marvelous collection of letters Private Jewell wrote to his family back home in Oglethorpe County, GA, and letters they wrote to him. So in a way, Private Jewel and his family members basically wrote the book themselves through their letters, although the letters were never meant for publication. Private Jewel was from a farm in rural Oglethorpe County.
   Culminating years of work, Gary ran down 120 letters from Pvt. Jewel or members of his family to him. Most of these Gary was lucky enough to obtain through a dealer, and some he tracked down at Emory University in Atlanta. Getting the letters and publishing this first-hand account of the Civil War, mainly in Florida, is a major contribution to Civil War history. 
   Gary's soft-cover book also has good maps showing where the Echols Artillery served, and he has located several hitherto unknown military sites from the letters indicating Confederate camps in Florida. The book also contains a photograph of the grave of his "Aunt Sallie Jewel" and a picture of a ruined chimney on the old Jewel property in Oglethorpe County. Unfortunately no photos of Private Jewel, his wife, Eliza, or of his sister Sallie, to whom he wrote the majority of his surviving letters, are available.
   Any veteran in our armed services knows well some of the difficulties Pvt. Jewel faced in his long service in Florida. They frequently suffered from the military's "hurry-up-and-wait" attitudes, poor decisions or lack of decisions by commanding officers, and the inability to get furlough time to see a wife and family at home. Pvt. Jewel's letters frequently graphically point out the administrative and supply problems, which modern veterans had a name for: SNAFU.  It's too graphic a term to translate for non-vets.
   The Echols Light  Artillery's main duty stations were in Florida until late in the war. You might say that Florida was considered "the back-door of the Confederacy," to be guarded but denied most of the resources given to more strategic areas. Main enemies for Private Jewel weren't Yankees. They were malaria, diarrhea, and a host of other illnesses, lack of attention by the Confederate government, and sheer boredom of routine.  Sometimes the Echols Artlillery members couldn't even figure out why they were in Florida. At other times, they were placed there to guard vital salt works, guard rivers against attack, and to stymie Union advances into the state.
   Florida was the site of some important Civil War conflicts, but only a few minor contacts characteriized activities of the Georgia unit to which Private Jewel belonged.The unit was formed in 1862.
   It wasn't until almost the end of the war that his outfitl moved out of Florida and did indeed fight some of the last battles in South and North Carolina shortly before Lee's surrender in April, 1865. His unit  served under Gen. William J. Hardee, who made a stand at Averasboro, North Carolina, on March 16, 1865. 
   The story of Private Jewel is unfinished. Sadly there was no closure for his wife and family—and for us. According to an article in the  Aug. 7, 1885, issue of the Oglethorpe Echo, Lexington, GA, newspaper, written by two veterans of the unit, C. M. Witcher and M. B. Amason,  Private Jewel disappeared, apparently missing in action.
   "How he met his end is unknown," Gary Doster writes, drawing on the veterans' recollections. "Nathan M. Eberhart was killed, and I. H. Webb and J. H. Tiller, Jr. wounded, and James Jewel missing and never afterwards heard from."
   His wife, Eliza, filing for a Confederate widow's pension in 1891, indicated her husband was sent to a hospital at Smithfield, North Carolina, "and that he has never been seen or heard from since that time."
  Lack of space precludes quotes from the letters and a description of Private Jewel's activities, mainly in Florida. Florida Civil War researchers will find a wealth of information about where Confederate units were stationed there and their activities.     
   Dear Sallie. . . should be a standard reference for anyone interested in either the war in Florida or its effects on many of the men serving in the Echols Artillery from Georgia.
   The book is available at $24.95 from AngleValleyPress.com, or from Amazon.com and many book stores at varying prices.
Dear Sallie: The Letters of Confederate Private James Jewel, Echols Light Artillery, Oglethorpe County, Georgia by Gary L. Doster              copyright 2011 foreword by Dr. William Warren Rogers.
6 x 9 softcover, 360 pages, 6 maps, 4 photos, appendices, genealogy information, [ECHOLS] bibliography, index.
FIRST LETTERS EVER PUBLISHED FROM THIS  BATTERY NOW AVAILABLE - PRICE $24.95 from AngleValley Press. Author signed 1st edition includes FREE Shipping/Handling and no tax for website and mail orders.
NOT AVAILABLE for Phone Orders! Internet & Mail Order Only!



   
   

When you are trying to fathom African-American history or genealogy at a local level, it’s hard to get the information. This is of course true of slavery days and still a problem during the early days of slaves’ freedom after the Civil War and during Reconstruction. White-owned publications rarely contain much personal data on African Americans, unless their activities were perceived to be threatening to the white community.

And yet the rewards of tracing the stories of the African-American community during such formative times are great. This has been my experience working on several books and various articles about the story of Athens’ African-American community and its interactions with the white citizenry of our town and county, Clarke County, Georgia.

Many present-day African-Americans are faced with a lack of tools or knowledge in studying their own history in a local setting.

“How can I tell what happened to my family just after they were freed,” numerous African Americans here in Athens have asked me.  “Where do I start?”

         This blog deals with an underused source of historical data that can be extremely useful to historians and genealogists—the records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually called the Freedmen's Bureau. It was a controversial agency of the U. S. government  as it faced aiding freed slaves and some whites hit hard after the Civil War ended.  White Southerners generally disliked it strongly as a Yankee intrusion, but blacks looked to it for help and protection.


Feeding, clothing and transporting freed people, and some of the white population made destitute by the war was a daunting task. With much bickering and hesitation the federal government saw nobody else could do this and reluctantly entered its mission—but on a temporary basis. After Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Johnson pretty much sided with the South and saw the Freedmen’s Bureau as a detriment. Congress, however, made appropriations to set up the Bureau and ignored Johnson’s objections. The Bureau had its roots during the Civil War as Union forces occupied areas of the South and slaves had to be supported. But the Bureau officially came into existence after the war ended.

In addition to furnishing food, clothing, and transportation for refugees, the Bureau also pioneered in setting up schools for ex-slaves throughout the South. Freed persons felt learning to read and write was a key to any success. 

Another duty of the Bureau was to hear complaints lodged by both blacks and whites about racial relations and to work out labor contracts between white planters or farmers and African-Americans. It was very difficult to get a workable system that got the agricultural tasks done but paid African-Americans enough to keep body and soul together. Health care was also urgent for freed people, and the Bureau was active setting up hospitals throughout the South. Too, the Bureau dealt with what to do with abandoned plantations, and at one time parceled out some of these to blacks, especially in Georgia and South Carolina coastal areas.

Fortunately the Freedmen’s Bureau kept quite thorough records on national, state and local levels involving all these major tasks. We are lucky that  many of these records are readily available now online. Once it was necessary to go to the National Archives to research the Freedmen’s Bureau activities. In Washington are the original records and thousands upon thousands of microfilm rolls there. Microfilm of Bureau Records is also available  at some major libraries.

Within the last few years, however, many of the Freedmen’s Bureau records have been digitized and placed online on the Web. The largest readily available collection online is at Ancestry.com. You can get a personal subscription to use the multiplicity of services of Ancestry, or most libraries can give you free computer access to these online records. Many other sites on the Web also have other free collections of the Bureau’s records  which can be helpful. Check Google or other search engines and you’ll find many sites.

I am most familiar with Georgia records of the Bureau and have used microfilms in the Athens Regional Library and online access on my own subscription. Using these records have paid rich dividends. Parts of several of my books and articles would have been impossible  to write without  access to Bureau records.


The biggest problem you face using Freedmen’s Bureau records is that they are not well indexed, or in some cases, not indexed at all. There may be only broad headings such as Letters Sent and Received in various Freedmen’s Bureau offices records. For instance, Athens was the location of one of the Bureau’s sub-districts with agents reporting to the Athens office for 10 counties. The communication system was very similar to the military system up the channels of command, where the communications made their way from many Georgia Bureau agents, on to the state, or to the national level of the Bureau.

You can find complaints files, files on the number of assaults and murders investigated by the Bureau, the rations lists showing who drew rations from the Bureau or who received clothing. Many refugees used Freedmen’s Bureau funds to travel and re-unite themselves with their scattered families after the war. Names and details are available in all these files.  Monthly reports of activities are available.

The local Athens Sub-District field office records are scarcely indexed. Much browsing will be required to find items of interest, but there are some rudimentary indices, mainly by names of persons involved and by broad subject headings. Patience will be required. The online digitization gives you excellent images of the microfilmed letters, reports, tables, orders to agents, appointments of employees, lists of expenses of each office, etc. Microfilm reels of specific field offices are available for a fee from the National Archives.

Some of the most fascinating records are those of the Bureau’s mediation on labor contracts between whites and former slaves. Education files are very extensive, indicating the status of establishing schools throughout the Southern states. Athens files to the Bureau’s Education superintendents from 1865 through about 1874 are voluminous, giving names of schools, attendance, names of teachers,  critiques of performance and costs of education projects.

Separate from the Bureau Records, but online via Ancestry.com and on microfilm in the Athens library’s Heritage Room are the records of the African Americans setting up savings accounts as depositors in the Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, 1865-1874.  As I recall, Augusta and Savannah also had branch banks in Georgia. The records of the Atlanta Branch are most fruitful for finding Athens area depositors. Many hundreds of blacks put their dollars into what they considered was a very safe bank. Tragically, however, many lost their savings when the bank later collapsed. The signature registers don’t have the amounts of deposits. I haven't found any records of individual deposits.

What can you find?

•               Number of application

•                Name of depositor

•                Date of application/deposit (with original signature if the applicant could write)

•                Name of employer (not always)

•                Name of plantation(sometimes, but other times a precise  town address.

•                Age

•                Height (not always)

•                Complexion (not always)

•                Name of father and/or mother (sometimes their ages)

•                Whether married (sometimes when)

•                Place of birth

•                Current Residence

•                Occupation

•                Names of children (sometimes ages)

•                Names of brothers and sisters (sometimes ages)

As Ancestry.com says: “Freedman's Bank Records is a great source for genealogists researching their African American heritage because of the amount of personal information recorded for each individual in it. Be sure to view the corresponding image of the original document associated with your ancestor in order to obtain all possible information available for them.”

The Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, which ran the bank, was incorporated in 1865 by an act signed by President Lincoln.

“The purpose of the company was to create an institution where former slaves and their dependents could place and save their money,” Ancestry.com says. “The original bank was first headquartered in New York and later moved to Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter branch offices opened in other cities, primarily in ones in the South where there was a larger population of African Americans. Eventually there were 37 branch offices in 17 states with approximately 70,000 depositors (over the bank’s lifetime) and deposits of more than $57 million. In 1874, as a result of mismanagement, fraud, and other events and situations, Freedman's Bank closed.”

Obviously African Americans with more money were likely to be depositors, but upon occasion I found black domestic servants with carefully saved up deposits. There are several hundred thousand names and information about depositors and their family members in these records.

An entire book could be easily written about Freedmen’s Bureau and the Savings Bank records and their use for genealogists and historians.  But be warned: Working with the records takes dogged work, The nuggets of information about relatives and persons of interest, however, may be more valuable to you than gold. You’ll find your use of these records can become addictive.

 
AN EX-SLAVE SOLDIER IN THE UNION ARMY  is buried in an Athens, Georgia, African-American cemetery. A rather elaborate gravesite for Pvt. Charley Hicks exists in the beautiful but sadly rundown Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery in East Athens on Fourth Street. Charley Hicks joined a newly formed black regiment in May, 1865, before the Civil War was over. He received an honorable discharge as a private and got a pension following the war when he returned to Athens.

We estimate there are perhaps 3,500 graves in the cemetery founded in 1882 to give Athens area blacks a dignified and landscaped cemetery. About 600 or so graves have tombstones or markers. Approximately one-fifth of the marked graves are of ex-slaves. Prior to Gospel Pilgrim, burials for African Americans took place in small graveyards in more rural areas of Clarke County or in sub-standard portions of the old Athens City Cemetery and in Oconee Hill Cemetery.

Black citizens in the 19th Century knew that their graves might be violated and African-American graves covered over by new construction. Just this week I ran across a legal case in which a black citizen sued the City of Athens for digging a sewer line through the gravesite of her relative. That's why hundreds of African Americans welcomed the chance to bury family members in Gospel Pilgrim.

The dishonoring of black graves continued into the 20th Century. Some African-American graves in the old city cemetery were opened and bones found were hustled out one dark night and secretly buried en masse on Nowhere Road in Clarke County. The African-American graves were in a part of the old cemetery needed to build the University of Georgia’s Baldwin Hall adjacent to the burial ground. In Oconee Hill Cemetery, black graves were relegated to an unattractive area bordering a ravine.  When a railroad embankment was constructed nearby, many of these graves were covered up.

THE GOSPEL PILGRIM SOCIETY WAS CHARTERED IN 1882, an African-American fraternal burial and insurance society. Members bought their lots at reasonable prices and paid a few cents per week to get a big funeral procession, led by lodge members in full regalia.  The last president of the Gospel Pilgrim Society died in 1977. No one knows where his records went, although a woman who cared for him in his last illness had them in her attic.  She can’t remember to whom she gave the records. This hampers lot identifications greatly.  Since about 10 years ago I have helped with the restoration of the cemetery as chair of research and history for Gospel Pilgrim, a 9-acre cemetery at Fourth and Bray streets. The cemetery is inactive now, but very occasionally a burial is allowed if descendants can produce a lot ownership certificate and know where the lot is.

A few years ago City-county residents voted generously in a special sales tax election to make Gospel Pilgrim a $360,000 item to restore its roadways and improve its infra-structure. A re-dedication of the cemetery was held in 2010. It capped a decades-long effort to clear the jungle of privet, trees, and wisteria and tons of trash from the cemetery. About three-quarters of the cemetery was cleared and a program of grave identification using GPS and ground photography was carried out.

All care of the cemetery has now ground to a halt.  The city-county has not set aside any maintenance funds, and with the current Recession, the cemetery is being allowed to return to the jungle. Athens-Clarke County doesn’t own the cemetery and only oversees it under a state law giving local governments permission to voluntarily take care of abandoned cemeteries.  On Oct. 8, 2011, at 10 a.m. I’ll lead a walking tour of Gospel Pilgrim, calling special attention to Charlie Hick’s grave and to leading black educators buried in the cemetery. The walking tours are sponsored by the Athens-Clarke Heritage Foundation, and you can register online if you wish to participate.  See http://achfonline.org/heritage-walks/. Price per ticket is $12 per ACHF member or $15 per non-member. The tour lasts about one hour.
 
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ALTHOUGH WE HAD THE BARE BONES OF INFORMATION about Charley Hicks being buried in Gospel Pilgrim Cemetery and knew where his grave was, it was not until his great- granddaughter, Patricia Wooten of North Carolina, visited the grave and told us about his time of soldiering for the Union. A look at his military service records in the National Archives in Washington D. C., and other data verified her information about Charley Hicks.

Hicks ran off from a plantation in Newton County, Georgia, and was mustered into the Union Army on May 1, 1865, at Macon as a private in the newly formed 138th Infantry Regiment, Colored Troops. Although Robert E. Lee had surrendered, various Confederate units kept fighting well into June, 1865. The Union Army was segregated. About 180,000 blacks joined the Union forces in units commanded by white officers. Hicks ended his brief service in January, 1866. Hicks's military records reveal he joined the Army when he was 18 or 19. The brief historic mentions of the 138th  indicate its troops saw constabulary duty. Hicks said he remembered helping convey horses to Union troops in Augusta, Georgia, from Atlanta. The 138th was one of three new regiments founded in 1865. Hicks was discharged on Jan. 6, 1866. All three of the black regiments disbanded in January, 1866. Hicks received a pension for his services, and his widow also got a widow’s pension.

He was born a slave on the plantation of Harmon Hicks, about 11 miles southwest of Covington, Georgia.  At some point he moved to Athens, marrying Mary Ann Shaw of Athens.  They raised a family here, and one of the houses belonging to Charley Hicks is still standing, but boarded up, on West Hancock Avenue.

"A HEAP OF PERSONS CALLS ME CHARLES, but I claim my name is Charley,” he testified in his pension application. “Folks write my names Charley H. Hicks, but I don’t know what that first H is for. I have but the two names, Charley and Hicks.”

Charley Hicks was listed as a butler in the 1880 Clarke County, Georgia, federal census. There are indications he might have worked for the wealthy James Camak family in Athens. He died Dec. 8, 1916 and was buried in Gospel Pilgrim.

Patricia Wooten and her husband Chet would like very much to see an appropriate military marker placed on Charley Hicks’ grave. The present marker is toppled and damaged. If any blog readers have helpful ideas about this, they can write me in comments to the blog, and I’ll put them in contact with the Wootens. 

LATE NEWS:  An Athens-Clarke County resident, Gary Doster, has just published a new book of interest to local Civil War and Reconstruction buffs, as well as those interested in Civil War in Florida subjects.  Gary, who is a very good writer, has just finished Dear Sallie. . . Letters of Confederate Private James Jewel." The collection contains more than 100 letters from Pvt. Jewel from his Confederate service in Florida to his sister in Oglethorpe County, GA. Among those selling his book is http://www.amazon.com/Dear-Sallie-Confederate-Oglethorpe/dp/0971195013/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316996349&sr=1-12

  Any blog has to answer the question, "What's in it for the reader?" Of course it also has to answer the author's question, "What's in it for me?" I hope the answers to these questions will be positive for readers  and for me. The subjects of these blogs may range from the ridiculous to the sublime—but they basically will deal with history and from time to time some culture, too. As you can tell, my Web pages are  mostly about Civil War and Reconstruction subjects and incidents. They are, obviously, also about selling two of my books. Writing local histories is a labor of love, and I can say nobody gets rich doing it.
   The Internet has made it possible for us to reach a great many more persons than writing a small-press-run book and hiding it in the cobwebbed stacks of miscellaneous libraries. Blogs on the Internet put a lot of chaff out there for others to see and read. But they do offer an unparalleled opportunity to reach some Web users interested in subjects bonding them together. I hope these blogs, more or less to be aired each week will pique your interest and keep you coming back for more. 
   There's nothing an author likes to do more than get the viewer's or reader's interest.  If he or she can do this, the Web user may be put into a jocular frame of mine to put up with a writer. Each blog will probably contain a lively treatment of some off-beat or little-known incident in Athens or Clarke County during the Civil War or Reconstruction. Here's the first one:

The Confederate Veteran Who Taught Ex-Slaves in a Yankee Freedmen's Bureau School in Athens, Georgia—and a Union drum major who taught ex-slaves in Athens

  The Yankee Drum Major: Less than two months after the Civil War ended, an Yankee Union Army drum major from New York was busily teaching what seems to have been the first Freedmen's Bureau school for African American ex-slaves in Athens. Perhaps even more surprisingly, a Confederate veteran from an old Athens family took a job just days later teaching ex-slaves in another Freedmen's Bureau school. Both men began their teaching careers in August, 1865, when Athens was still under occupation by units of the Union Army.
   Lt. Col. Homer B. Sprague of the 13th Connecticut Infantry Regiment of Volunteers served as the first Freedmen's Bureau agent in Athens, although he was on active duty with occupation forces here in 1865. He encouraged the earliest efforts to educate ex-slaves in Athens and Clarke County.  Blacks ardently wished to become literate. It had been illegal during slavery. Most white citizens didn't want ex-slaves educated and gave almost no support to efforts by the federal government to do so, or to efforts by such groups as the American Missionary Association, which furnished many of the teachers for ex-slaves throughout the South.
   The Yankee drum major was Bernard P. Jacobs, about 22 years old when he saw duty in Athens with the 156th Regiment, New York Volunteers. He was mustered in as drummer, Co. I, Nov. 18, 1862. He was promoted to fife major on that same date, and made regimental Drum Major Feb. 19, 1864. (From files of the Adjutant General of New York, 1904, and records in the Athens Freedmen's Bureau correspondence.)
  "The Colored School of Athens (at the Colored Baptist Church) was opened on the 10th of August, 1865, taken charge of, conducted by Mr. Barnerd [sic] J. [sic] Jackobs [sic], Drum Major of the 156th Regt., New York Volunteers. . ," the Rev. William Finch, a prominent African-American leader in Athens wrote to Freedmen's Bureau Supt. of  Georgia Schools, G. I. Eberhart. There were about 60 to 70 pupils in this first black school.
   "I don' think that children by any means made more rappid [sic] progress than they have done under Mr. Jacob's teaching. He has become a great favorite among the colored people. . . by his gentlemanly conduct and general good behavior and I know the colored people of Athens would do anything to have Mr. Jacobs come again, after him being discharged from the service of the United States. I don't suppose that any colored school has been opened any where under more difficult circumstances than his without any help and hardly any books," the Rev. Mr. Finch said.  Jacobs was mustered out on Oct. 23, 1865. 
   The Confederate Veteran: Leonard S. Schevenell, a member of an early Athens family headed by Richard Schevenell, had enlisted in Company G of the North Carolina Infantry, also called the Highland Guards. He joined at age 18. A number of Athens men had joined the 25th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, as had Schevenell. He mustered in on April 1862. He mustered out on April 9, 1865, the day Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox. Schevenell didn't go into details about why he wanted to teach. He must have taken severe criticism from white townspeople for teaching blacks. Richard Schevenell, Leonard's father, had one 61-year-old female slave, according to the enumeration in the 1860 Federal Census.
   "I am a white man and the only Southern man I know of engaged in teaching Freedmen," he wrote to Eberhart on Nov. 2, 1865. Schevenell said he began teaching in Athens on Aug. 14, 1865 ". . . on which day I organized the school of which I now have charge." He had 26 pupils. His school met in an African-American church. "There is a general disposition among the colored people to educate their children but very few of them are able to pay for their tuition [$1 per month per student].  The children progress very well in their studies as in general they pay more attention to their lesson than white children," he wrote the school superintendent. 
   "Being dependant [sic] on my labor for a support I fear I shall have to discontinue my school activities as the amount that I receive for tiuition is insufficient," Schevenell explained.
   The Confederate veteran was criticized in a letter written to Supt. Eberhard by Daniel Hough: "The other school is taught by Mr. L. Schevenell, a Confederate soldier, and in my opinion does not amount to much. I don't think he will continue."
   Schevenell remained in Athens for many years, but not teaching school.  He worked at various times as a bookkeeper and carpenter, and was employed by the Athens Evening News.  On Dec. 16, 1904, the Athens Weekly Banner reported his death, saying he died Dec. 8, 1904, falling from the Georgia Railroad trestle into the Oconee River. He is buried in Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens.
   This unlikely pair of Yankee drum major and Confederate Infantry veteran were the forerunners in what would become a major effort to give African Americans an education. During Reconstruction and afterward, many schools gave blacks their first education, long before the whites in Athens had public schools. Whites were also invited to attend Freedmen's Bureau schools, but there is no record any of them wanted to be educated with blacks.

   These are mere vignettes of brief teaching careers, but we wonder what motivated the New Yorker and the Athenian to teach black children in Athens. Union military unit members also taught in other Freedmen's Bureau schools and received encouragement to do so. Schevenell, a returning veteran, seemed to count on the low pay to support himself. Jobs were few and far between in Athens that soon after the Civil War.