The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina 1860–1870

240 Pages·1996·5.15 MB·English

by  Julie Saville

The Work of Reconstruction

The Work of Reconstruction
From Slave to Wage Laborer in
South Carolina, 1 860—18 70
JULIE SAVILLE
University of California, San Diego
Mn CAMBRIDGE
W W UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 [RP
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Cambridge University Press 1996
First published 1994
First paperback edition 1996
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-521-36221-0 hardback
ISBN 0-521-56625—8 paperback
For my parents
Betty jase Saville and Alphonso F. Saville, ]r.

Contents
Acknowledgments page ix
List of Abbreviations Used in Notes xiii
A Note on Spellings xiv
Maps xv
Introduction I
1 Freedom Versus Freedom:
Competing Visions of Emancipation
Antebellum Field Slaves’ Labor: Regional Overviews
Twilight of Slavery, Dawn of Freedom
Rebels and “Rebels in Disguise”
A Measure of Freedom: Plantation Workers
and the Wartime Introduction of Wage Labor in Port Royal 32
Eluding the Confederacy’s Grasp 32
Inducing Wage Labor behind Federal Lines 36
Wartime Planting
45
“A Dollar a Task!” 60
“As Hard Times as They Has See with the Rebel” 7O
Restoration and Reaction: The Struggle for Land
in the Sherman Reserve 72
The Reconstruction of Work 102.
Remaking Family Life and Labor in the Interior 102.
Control of the Crop 110
Control of Supplemental Plots 121
Working on Shares 125
Holding onto Land and Time in the Low Country I30
Uncertain Harvests: Seasonalization of Agricultural
Employment I35
The Work of Reconstruction I43
Light in August I43
Why Can’t We Be Friends? I51
There’s a Meeting Here Tonight I60
vii
viii Contents
A Perfect System? I70
“On Duty” in the League I77
“We the Laboring Men out of Doors’9 I88
Afterword I97
Bibliography I99
Index 215
Acknowledgments
So many people have helped me with this project. To acknowledge their
support is to reach the straightest portion of a long and winding course.
At the beginning, there were the words of my Louisiana-born grand-
mother, Mrs. ]ulia Jase. During my childhood, neither of us dreamed,
while her stories unfolded about kin who had experienced slavery and
emancipation in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, that she would be stimulat-
ing an adult’s quest for understanding. During my graduate studies,
words of scholarship and counsel from C. Vann Woodward brought new
worlds into view, and in the process inspired a topic for dissertation re-
search. My appreciation for John W. Blassingame’s insights about life and
labor as a historian deepens with the passage of time. David Montgomery,
who supervised the writing of the dissertation on which this study is
based, remained a source of invaluable criticism, and the substance and
spirit of his advice continue to enrich the meaning of the historian’s work.
One of life’s good fortunes is to receive comments as thoughtful as the
queries and suggestions that this manuscript has received at various
stages. Harold D. Woodman considerately assessed three chapters with
insight that proved crucial to my completion of the dissertation. Evalua-
tions of the dissertation from David Brion Davis and Gerald D. Jaynes
helped me see the subject with new eyes. Eugene D. Genovese’s rich com-
ments on an earlier version of the book manuscript improved this study
and inspired another project. The anonymous reader for Cambridge Uni-
versity Press left me with much to ponder while suggesting how to bring
this investigation to a close. I am grateful for the ending and the begin-
nings that these remarks have made possible.
Friends and family also lent assistance at critical moments. To Collette
Willis Lashley, Deborah Anita Dobbs, and Gwendolyn Lipsey — wherever
they are - I remain grateful for their ready hospitality during my first re-
search trip to Columbia, South Carolina. George Heltai, Agnes Heltai,
and Lucille S. Whipper offered their vast understandings of human affairs
during my sojourn in Charleston, South Carolina. M. Nanalice Saville
read the manuscript with a poet’s eye and a sister’s heart. My brother,
Alphonso F. Saville, III, and my sister-in-law, Patricia Heard Saville,
ix