Return to the South.

Rebforever

Lt. Colonel
Joined
Oct 26, 2012
Does anyone have any numbers about how many Black Union Solders returned to the South after the 13th Amendment?
 
Does anyone have any numbers about how many Black Union Solders returned to the South after the 13th Amendment?

I haven’t seen any statistics, but probably most returned to the South since they would have been unwelcomed in most areas outside the South after the war.
 
I haven’t seen any statistics, but probably most returned to the South since they would have been unwelcomed in most areas outside the South after the war.
I am having great difficulty finding the logic in your explanation. There was still great hostility in the South and one would think the untamed West would offer the most opportunity. The great urban centers of the North, although not entirely inviting/welcoming, probably provided a safer environment, all told.
 
I am having great difficulty finding the logic in your explanation. There was still great hostility in the South and one would think the untamed West would offer the most opportunity. The great urban centers of the North, although not entirely inviting/welcoming, probably provided a safer environment, all told.

All told, a few blacks did go west, even fewer went north in the years following the war. Do you have some documentation to the contrary?
 
Pretty interesting. It looks like some of the enslaved soldiers got caught in a real Catch-22, where they got their freedom for enlisting but their families didn't, and though they hoped for a quick end to slavery, if they were in a state where it didn't happen, they had an enslaved family stuck back home for a while.

The members of the 54th/55th that I've been coincidentally following for a different research project have such different lives--doing nicely as born-free blacks who left the south years ago, residents of Massachusetts, established as caterers, barbers, or other small-businessmen, and receiving not only equal pay but a bounty for enlisting. What a variety of experiences! And I have a feeling there must have been some jealousy or clashes across social classes if people of the various backgrounds had to serve closely together, such as veterans combined with late 1864 newer recruits to fill out a regiment.
 
Pretty interesting. It looks like some of the enslaved soldiers got caught in a real Catch-22, where they got their freedom for enlisting but their families didn't, and though they hoped for a quick end to slavery, if they were in a state where it didn't happen, they had an enslaved family stuck back home for a while.

The members of the 54th/55th that I've been coincidentally following for a different research project have such different lives--doing nicely as born-free blacks who left the south years ago, residents of Massachusetts, established as caterers, barbers, or other small-businessmen, and receiving not only equal pay but a bounty for enlisting...

Yeah, poor souls. :wink: Or take the 5th USCT, recruited almost entirely from Ohio. Here are their occupations BEFORE they enlisted:

farmer - 53%
laborer - 22%
barber - 4%
blacksmith - 3%
boatman - 2%
waiter - 2%
cook - 1%
carpenter - 1%
cooper - 1%
mason - 1%
others: engineer, servant, painter, teacher, minister, doctor
'Only 6 of the men claimed no occupation.'

Source: Versalle F. Washington, EAGLES ON THEIR BUTTONS: A BLACK INFANTRY REGIMENT IN THE CIVIL WAR, - p. 14​

Of course none of them were nearly as well off as they would have been in the South, where over 90% of them would have been happily enslaved. And no doubt the South would have rolled out the Welcome Wagon for them if they came back after having served in the Union army. :rolleyes:
 
To be fair, the question in the OP is how many returned to the south, which I took to mean those who were residents of the south immediately before enlisting. So those like I mentioned, who were once residents of the south years ago but had established themselves for years in Massachusetts, or in Ohio like you mentioned, wouldn't count, as they would "return" to their homes in Mass or Ohio after discharge (which the ones I was following did, though a couple sons went together to Oregon).

But those who enlisted from Kentucky, Missouri, etc. etc. might return to Kentucky or Missouri after being discharged, and they're the focus of the question in the OP. At least that's how I'm understanding it? Is that right?
 
To be fair, the question in the OP is how many returned to the south, which I took to mean those who were residents of the south immediately before enlisting. So those like I mentioned, who were once residents of the south years ago but had established themselves for years in Massachusetts, or in Ohio like you mentioned, wouldn't count, as they would "return" to their homes in Mass or Ohio after discharge (which the ones I was following did, though a couple sons went together to Oregon).

But those who enlisted from Kentucky, Missouri, etc. etc. might return to Kentucky or Missouri after being discharged, and they're the focus of the question in the OP. At least that's how I'm understanding it? Is that right?

Yes, I think you're right. The responses to this thread have largely been in response to the ludicrous Post #2.
 
Yeah, poor souls. :wink: Or take the 5th USCT, recruited almost entirely from Ohio. Here are their occupations BEFORE they enlisted:

farmer - 53%
laborer - 22%
barber - 4%
blacksmith - 3%
boatman - 2%
waiter - 2%
cook - 1%
carpenter - 1%
cooper - 1%
mason - 1%
others: engineer, servant, painter, teacher, minister, doctor
'Only 6 of the men claimed no occupation.'

Source: Versalle F. Washington, EAGLES ON THEIR BUTTONS: A BLACK INFANTRY REGIMENT IN THE CIVIL WAR, - p. 14​

Of course none of them were nearly as well off as they would have been in the South, where over 90% of them would have been happily enslaved. And no doubt the South would have rolled out the Welcome Wagon for them if they came back after having served in the Union army. :rolleyes:

I just purchased Versalle Washington's book, it looks interesting. The Massachusetts regiments get a lot of recognition, deservedly so, but the 5th USCT deserves as much recognition.

- Alan
 
Yeah, poor souls. :wink: Or take the 5th USCT, recruited almost entirely from Ohio. Here are their occupations BEFORE they enlisted:

farmer - 53%
laborer - 22%
barber - 4%
blacksmith - 3%
boatman - 2%
waiter - 2%
cook - 1%
carpenter - 1%
cooper - 1%
mason - 1%
others: engineer, servant, painter, teacher, minister, doctor
'Only 6 of the men claimed no occupation.'

Source: Versalle F. Washington, EAGLES ON THEIR BUTTONS: A BLACK INFANTRY REGIMENT IN THE CIVIL WAR, - p. 14​

Of course none of them were nearly as well off as they would have been in the South, where over 90% of them would have been happily enslaved. And no doubt the South would have rolled out the Welcome Wagon for them if they came back after having served in the Union army. :rolleyes:

Always glad to see your posts -pointing out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Someone has to challenge....
 
I just purchased Versalle Washington's book, it looks interesting. The Massachusetts regiments get a lot of recognition, deservedly so, but the 5th USCT deserves as much recognition.

- Alan

An excellent book. Very well researched and a good read. I agree completely about the 5th. They were a class act.
 
Does anyone have any numbers about how many Black Union Solders returned to the South after the 13th Amendment?

I would imagine this would be a difficult number to come up with. We can look at the demographics for the total black population though, and take it from there. I've attached a chart that shows the growth of total population and black population on a per-state basis from 1860 to 1870 (Source: http://mapserver.lib.virginia.edu/php/state.php )

It would appear that there was an explosion of growth of the black population in the western states and most of the northern states, not so much in the South. I would assume that black Union veterans would have been more likely to have been on the western/northern side of this trend, rather than returning to the South.
 

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There are many documented accounts of black Union soldiers migrating to this area after the Civil War. However their exact origins are hard to know, because many of them were enslaved before enlistment, and were secretive about their names, ages, and nativity. Here's one of the more straightforward ones:

James Harrington, born a slave in North Carolina around 1840, never knew his correct age. At the time Fort Sumter was fired upon to touch off the Civil War he was the property of a man named Golman at Oxford, North Carolina. When James was sold to a Mr. Kittrell, also of Oxford, the crier who sold him put his age at twenty-five...

James ran away from Kittrell and at the end of 1864 enlisted in the 72nd U.S. Colored Infantry (Company A) at Ironton, Ohio, as a substitute for an Isaac H. Long who had been drafted in Jackson County's Milton Township. James enlisted as "James Herndon" and so he was known by the government for the rest of his life... He was discharged a private at Helena, Arkansas, in December, 1865.

James spent about six months living with a family named Auston at Berlin, Jackson County, Ohio, and then came to Oberlin [Ohio] where he was known as a house painter named James Harrington. In 1880 he married, in a ceremony performed by Oberlin College President James H. Fairchild, a girl named Rebecca whose last name was either Hall or Gordon. The couple had at least four children and lived, from the 1880's, at 166 Follett (Lincoln) Street...


Source: William E. Bigglestone, They Stopped in Oberlin, pp. 95-96​
 
Well, while I'm sitting here waiting FOREVER for a file to upload, I thought I'd compile the statistics from Post #13. I arranged the states into 3 groups: Northern free states (states east of the Mississippi that were free before the Civil War), Slave states (all states where slavery was legal at the outbreak of Civil War), and Western states (all non-slave states west of the Mississippi River). As can be seen, the black population in the Northern free states grew at almost double the overall growth rate, while in the slave states the black population grew at almost half the overall growth rate. In the West, the black population grew at almost 4 times the overall growth rate.
 

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And some statistical analysis of the above. The black population in the North and West grew by 59,000 people more than it would have had its growth rate been the same as the general population. The black population in the slave states grew by 269,000 people less than it would have had its growth rate been the same as the general population.

I've seen estimates that of the 180,000 blacks who served in the Union army, about 130,000 of them had been slaves. So make of all that whatever you will.
 
Does anyone have any numbers about how many Black Union Solders returned to the South after the 13th Amendment?

Reb,

Which of the following are you inquiring about:

A) Northern black veterans who had migrated from the South prior to war, and returned to the South after their service
- or -
B) Southern black veterans who stayed in the South after the Amendment was passed
- or -
C) both (A) and (B)?

- Alan
 
Does anyone have any numbers about how many Black Union Solders returned to the South after the 13th Amendment?

I have not seen overall numbers. But, there are some studies that shed some light on small groups of black soldiers.

For instance, in Soldiers in the Army of Freedom, the author describes some of general trends, with specific examples, of where the black veterans of the First Kansas Colored Infantry settled after the war.

"Most veterans of the First Kansas Colored Infantry sought a new place to live. Many of them, especially those who enlisted in 1862, had run away from the only communities they had lived in. Some settled in distance places. Company C's First Sergeant, Henry Davis, had been sold as an infant and taken from Tennessee to Missouri. 'Neither my parents nor my brothers or sisters accompanied me to Missouri,' he later said, 'and I have never known anything about my relations.' By the late 1890s he was living in Colorado, and in 1903 he died in the National Military Home in California.

"Daniel Campbell moved to North Dakota after a few years in Kansas. Joseph Simpson lived in California and New Mexico. Edward Clark lived in Seattle and Denver. Charles Houston settled in Colorado, and Adam Spencer chose Illinois. James W. Wells, who had adopted the alias Silas Hughes in the service, lived in Atchison, Kansas, until he married in 1871. He and his new bride moved to Minnesota. In 1889, William H. Smallwood, who had served as captain of Company G, moved to Anoka and found his fellow First Kansas Colored veteran Wells serving as a doorman to the Minnesota House of Representatives. Wells spent the rest of his life in Minnesota, dying in 1920.

"Soldiers who joined the regiment in Indian Territory and Arkansas often returned to their prewar communities. Harriett Markham, who had nursed her soldier husband in Arkansas, applied for a widow's pension long after the war. Testifying on her behalf was the son of her former owner, who explained to a pension officer in 1891, 'After the war [Harriett and Jeffrey Markham] returned here and lived together as man and wife until Jeffrey died some ten or twelve years ago.' Giles Gully and Samuel Miller were among a handful of men who had joined the First Kansas Colored Infantry in Camden, Arkansas, only days before the battle at Poison Spring. Both men mustered out with the regiment, and both chose to reside in Arkansas. Gully stated that after being discharged in Leavenworth, he promptly turned around and 'came to Little Rock Ark. & settled 12 miles from town and remained there ever since in Ashley Township.'

"According to available records, a significant proportion of the veterans of Missouri settled in Kansas. Harrison Miller joined the regiment after running away from Lexington, Missouri, and chose Leavenworth after the war. Jeremiah Fielding had been a slave near St. Joseph, Missouri. After the war, he spent three years in Douglas County, Kansas, before settling in Wyandotte, Kansas, for the remainder of his life. Philip Dudley of Company B lived in several Kansas towns--first Emporia, then Ottawa, and finally Council Grove." (Ian Michael Spurgeon, Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, The Civil War's First African Combat Unit, 261-262.)


The veteran's decision of where to settle likely related to where, and why, they originally enlisted. For instance, the quote above notes that many veterans from Missouri did not return to that state. When one considers that many of those black soldiers had run away to Kansas from their masters in Missouri, it is understandable that they may not have been interested in returning -- especially if they were single, young men with no family left behind. Black soldiers that enlisted close to their homes, when Union forces created or replenished USCT regiments deep within the South (such as in Louisiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas), were probably more likely to return to their prewar neighborhoods. They had not fled those communities before their service.
 
Reb,

Which of the following are you inquiring about:

A) Northern black veterans who had migrated from the South prior to war, and returned to the South after their service
- or -
B) Southern black veterans who stayed in the South after the Amendment was passed
- or -
C) both (A) and (B)?

- Alan
I can't explain it any better, Alan.
 
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