Week 8 Blog Post Continued - Comments on Schwalm

Comments on A Hard Fight For We by Leslie A. Schwalm: Schwalm gave a detailed account of the hardships faced by newly emancipated freedmen and especially freedwomen. It was especially brutal that the Union troops in Sherman’s march took everything the slaves had, not only their food but their cooking utensils as well. (Schwalm, 123-124, 151) It is amazing that the Union army would then wonder why so many freedpeople would show up to receive rations! They would then characterize the blacks as lazy when their soldiers were the ones who took away all their means of sustenance destroying their property and confiscating their food and animals.

General Saxton’s view that “slavery had totally eradicated in slave women any self-restraint in their sexual expression” seems totally bizarre by our standards today. (Schwalm, 141) Yet, it was in keeping with the racism of the times.

It was interesting to read of Col. James C. Beecher’s change of heart concerning sympathy for the freedpeople after he had observed the “former slaves’ capacity for revenge as well as their violent defense of freedom and independence.” (Schwalm, 170-171) In my opinion, Beecher’s use of violence to attempt to force the freedpeople into working according to the plantation contracts was as unjustified as the freedpeople’s violence. His form of “discipline” was and not an effective method of obtaining compliance.

I was glad to see Schwalm point out the double standard with which freedpeople viewed their post-emancipation circumstances. “Freedpeople expected bureau agents and the military’s provost courts to enforce planters’ obligations under the labor contracts, and yet freely violated the terms of those contracts themselves.” (Schwalm, p. 185)

Written by Molly Kettler