Schooling the Freed People: Teaching, Learning, and the Struggle for Black Freedom, 1861-1876

337 Pages·2010·2.917 MB·English

by  Ronald E. Butchart

Schooling the Freed People
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the university of north carolina
Chapel Hill
Schooling
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fr eed people
the
Teaching, Learning,
and the Struggle for
Black Freedom,
1861–1876
ronald e. butchart
∫ 2010 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Designed by Jacquline Johnson
Set in Walbaum MT
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book
Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the
Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Butchart, Ronald E.
Schooling the freed people : teaching, learning, and the struggle
for black freedom, 1861–1876 / Ronald E. Butchart.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8078-3420-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Freedmen—Education—Southern States. 2. Education—Southern States—
History—19th century. 3. African American teachers—Southern States—
History—19th century. 4. Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865–1877) I. Title.
lc2802.s9b874 2010
371.829%960730750934—dc22
2010011936
cloth 14 13 12 11 10 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xxi
1. At the Dawn of Freedom 1
2. To Serve My Own People
Black Teachers in the Southern Black Schools 17
3. It Will Result in a Better Understanding of Their Duties
Southern White Teachers and the Limits of Emancipation 52
4. A Desire to Labor in the Missionary Cause
Northern White Teachers and the Ambiguities of Emancipation 78
5. You Will, of Course, Wish to Know All about Our School
Learning and Teaching in the Freed People’s Schools 120
6. Race, Reconstruction, and Redemption
The Fate of Emancipation and Education, 1861–1876 153
Appendix A: Teachers in the Freed People’s Schools, 1861–1876 179
Appendix B: Estimating the Number of Black and
Southern White Teachers, 1869–1876 184
Notes 189
Bibliography 247
Index 301
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Illustrations and Tables
Illustrations
Students from the Capitol Hill School 9
Isabella Gibbons 24
Joshua E. Wilson 35
James H. Bowser 39
Mrs. Ida S. Marshall 50
Mrs. Eunice Leland 82
Miss Ellen S. Kempton 83
Joshua Stuart Banfield 86
Betsey L. Canedy 98
Jane Briggs Smith 118
Three children in Mary A. Upton’s class 129
A second group of students from the Capitol Hill School 139
Anna Gardner’s school 148
Mary S. Osborne 163
‘‘Worse than Slavery,’’ by Thomas Nast 173
Tables
1. Teachers of the Freed People by Race and Region of Origin 20
2. Participation Rates of Teachers by Race and
Region of Origin, 1861–1876 55
viii
3. Teachers’ Gender and Mean Years of Teaching,
1861–1876, by Region and Race 81
1-A. Gender and Race of All Teachers 180
2-A. Northern Teachers by Race and Gender 181
3-A. Southern Teachers by Race and Gender 182
4-A. Teachers of Foreign Birth by Race and Gender 182
5-A. Mean Years of Teaching in Freedmen’s Schools, 1861–1876 183
6-A. Mean and Median Age at Commencement of
Teaching in Freedmen’s Schools 183
1-B. Teachers in South Carolina Schools, 1870–1879, and
Estimated Number in South Carolina Black Schools 186
2-B. Proportions of Teachers of Each Race to Total Population
of Race in South Carolina, Adjusted Proportions, and
Resulting Estimate of Total Southern Teaching Force
in Southern Black Schools, 1870–1876 187
Illustrations and Tables
Preface
If there is one constant in historical writing, it is revision. Each generation
of writers brings its own perspectives and troubles to bear on the past, finds
new material, and reinterprets old sources. The result is new understand-
ings of old stories, new images and portraits, revised pictures of the past.
Reconstruction’s history bears dramatic evidence of that process. Attentive
readers of that history have moved the earlier images of the actors and
processes of Reconstruction to dusty mental storage rooms, replacing them
with new, often starkly di√erent images. Reviled villains have been re-
drawn as tragic victims; heroic causes have been revealed as ignoble, mur-
derous treachery.
Yet in one corner of Reconstruction historiography, the history of the
schooling of the freed people, interpretations have shifted, but the por-
traits of the primary actors have been only lightly retouched after a cen-
tury of historical study. Whether their history was captured by W. E. B. Du
Bois, by historians in the Dunning tradition, or by revisionists of the last
three decades, the foreground of that picture has remained remarkably
unchanged. While each historiographic tradition has intended something
di√erent by the exact shadings and details of the portrait it rendered, the
main figures in the portrait have been largely untouched in the process.
W. E. B. Du Bois sketched the most enduring elements of the educators’
image. Describing what he called ‘‘the crusade of the New England school-
ma’am,’’ he wrote, ‘‘Behind the mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico
dresses of women who dared. Rich and poor they were, serious and curious.
Bereaved now of a father, now of a brother, now of more than these, they
came seeking a life work in planting New England schoolhouses among
the white and black of the South.’’∞ Several of the salient elements of the
teachers’ enduring portrait were etched deep in that poetic description: the
teachers were New England schoolmarms, a description that implied that