Author Archives: Susan Barsy

Stampede of Slaves from Hampton to Fort Monroe

7 Feb 2022 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Southern slaves emancipated by the movement of the Union troops fled into a war zone laced with hazards and potential catastrophes. Suddenly freed from their owners, many ran off without a chance to think, forsaking what shelter and sustenance they had had. They ran from places that were familiar, taking nothing, since for the most part, slaves were legally prohibited from owning property. They had their clothes on their backs. They ran from former masters toward the safety, the more certain freedom, that they understood Continue reading →

Where To Defeat The Republicans

5 Feb 2022 By in The New Jeffersonian Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Restoring political stability in the US depends on defeating individual Republicans at the ballot box in states.  As long as Trump remains at large and the Republican Party remains his instrument, the rest of us who care about the survival of self-government must join together to defeat candidates still loyal to the so-called Republican brand. Continue reading →

Freedmen Leaving the Plough

4 Feb 2022 By in History Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

During the Civil War, the movement of Union troops through the slave states brought emancipation to the enslaved.  This drawing by Union sketch artist A. R. Waud captures one such moment, as field slaves on horseback jubilantly greet advancing Union troops and leave  the plough they are hauling, knowing they are free.

Waud accompanied the Union army during virtually the whole of the Civil War, capturing the truths of the war with his drawing as no other medium could.  Thanks to his efforts and those of other documentarians, later Americans can catch glimpses of a wildly tumultuous period in black history, when millions who had endured the tragedy of bondage enjoyed self-possession for the first time.

Image: Waud’s “Negroes Leaving The Plough,”
published with descriptive text in Harper’s Weekly, March 26, 1864,
from this source.

1870: Black Voting Rights Secured–Right?

3 Feb 2022 By in History Tags: , , , , , ,

On this day in 1870, the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified.  Its text is brief.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The passage of the Amendment was a staggeringly large step toward race equality in America.  Yet even before three-quarters of the states ratified it, racists began to deter blacks from exercising their new political power: the power of the ballot.  The campaign against them, consisting of intimidation, violence, and legal obstacles, was particularly brazen in the former slave states.  Shockingly, it would be another 100 years before the promise of the 15th Amendment became something like a reality.  With the new assault on voting rights we see today, the fragility of this Constitutional guarantee is obvious.

Image: from this source.

A Storybook Dream of Reconstruction

2 Feb 2022 By in History Tags: , , , , , , ,

In the years immediately after the Civil War, the victors imagined that the US was on the verge of becoming a racially just society. For four long years, Americans had warred against one another over the issue of slavery and whether the states had a right to secede.  The Confederate states had staked everything on these ideas.  Their determination to cling to them became a matter of pride and at last shame and bitterness, because in the end, they could not carry the argument even with the aid of cannons and guns.  When the Union won in 1865, shouldn’t the argument have been over, too? Continue reading →