Freedmen and Southern Society Project

Amy Moore & her enslaved family were freed by the Union Army in Alabama, only to be arrested & sold as slaves behind Union lines. "We claim protection," Moore wrote in 1865, "under that [Emancipation] Proclamation from the fact of our living in one of the States mentioned in Said Proclamation."

Moore's testimony offers an important window into the tactics of forced relocation, the precarity of refugee status, & the lawlessness of local authorities, who leveraged their family's vulnerability as migrants to treat them as property.

Union authorities, Moore testified, "brought us all to Nashville Tenn where we were put on board of a transport & Started for Cincinnati Ohio... when we arrived at Louisville Ky we were arrested by a man who Said he was a watchman & taken to the Slave pen on Second Street Louisville Ky."

Moore noted the lawlessness of her re-enslavement & requested help "in procuring our wages for the time we have labored for these parties as slaves since we have been actually free."

Amy Moore & her enslaved family were freed by the Union Army in Alabama, only to be arrested & sold as slaves behind Union lines. "We claim protection," Moore wrote in 1865, "under that [Emancipation] Proclamation from the fact of our living in one of the States mentioned in Said Proclamation."

"Act first in this matter," Hodgkins advised, & then "afterward explain or threaten" since "the act tells" without which "the threat or demand is regarded as idle." War crimes, he concluded, must be punished visibly & severely to offer any hope of protection against future lawlessness.

"This request or suggestion is not made in a spirit of vindicativeness," Hodgkins explained, "but simply in the interest of my poor suffering confiding fellow negros who are even now assembling at Annapolis and other points to reinforce the army of the Union."

If the US treated war crimes seriously, "the rebels will learn that the U.S. Govt. is not to be trifled with & the black men will feel not a spirit of revenge for have they not often taken the rebels prisoners even their old masters without indulging in a fiendish spirit of revenge or exultation."

"If the murder of the colored troops at Fort Pillow is not followed by prompt action on the part of our government," Hodgkins warned, "it may as well disband all its colored troops for no soldiers whom the goverment will not protect can be depended upon."

After Confederate war crimes against Black troops, Theodore Hodgkins, a Black New Yorker wrote to Secretary of War Stanton that "black soldiers have been murdered again & again yet where is there an instance of retaliation."

"This is the kind of liberty," Hunter warned the Confederate President, "the liberty to do wrong–which Satan, Chief of the fallen Angels, was contending for when he was cast into Hell."

"You say you are fighting for liberty," he concluded, "liberty to keep four millions of your fellow-beings in ignorance & degradation–liberty to separate parents & children, husband & wife, brother & sister–liberty to steal the products of their labor, exacted with many a cruel lash & bitter tear."

Gen. Hunter observed that Black soldiers "are fighting for liberty in its truest sense; and Mr [Thomas] Jefferson has beautifully said,–'in such a war, there is no attribute of the Almighty, which will induce him to fight on the side of the oppressor.'"

"On your authorities will rest the responsibility of having inaugurated this barbarous policy," he fumed, "and you will be held responsible, in this world and in the world to come, for all the blood thus shed."

These Confederate war crimes, Gen. Hunter threatened, "shall be followed by the immediate execution of the Rebel of highest rank in my possession; man for man, these executions will certainly take place, for every [Black soldier] murdered, or sold into a slavery worse than death."

After learning that captured Black soldiers "have been cruelly murdered by your authorities, & others sold into slavery," U.S. Major General David Hunter wrote to Confederate President Jefferson Davis to condemn "every outrage of this kind against the laws of war and humanity."

"If the world doubts our fighting," they argued, "give us A chance and we will show then what we can do–" Instead, the Union commander continued to refuse Black officers & deployed Black troops primarily as manual laborers.

"Give us A commander," the group of former Black officers pleaded, "who will appreciate us as men and soldiers, And we will be willing to surmount all outer difficulties."

After the Army forced Black officers out of the ranks in 1863, a group of Black former officers from Louisiana petitioned to be reinstated "to assist in putting down this wicked rebelion. And in restoring peace to our once peaceful country."

This relentless white conservative state & vigilante violence against Black Southerners could only be resolved in one way:

"get Congress to stick in a few competent colered men [into public service] as they did in the army & the thing will all go right."

Not only did local police & officials refuse to protect Black rights in the state, but actually worked to undermine them. "They have been accusing the colered peple of an insorection which is a lie, in order that they might get arms to carrie out their wicked designs–"

Some Black Mississippians, he asserted, "are being knocked down for saying they are free, while a great many are being worked just as they ust to be when Slaves, without any compensation."

One Black mother reported, he wrote, that "the coldest day that has been this winter & said that she & her eight children lay out last night, & come near friezing after She had paid some wrent on the house." The white landowner evicted her, despite her rent having been paid.

After emancipation, a Black Mississippi veteran reported that his white neighbors "outraged [Black Southerners] beyound humanity. Houses have been tourn down... & the old Negroes after they have worked there till they are 70 or 80 yers of age drive them off in the cold to frieze & starve to death."

We’ve published a fantastic new primary source collection—"Radicalism and Popular Protest in Georgian Britain, c. 1714–1832”.

Visit the collection landing page at buff.ly/Mf1q0nH.

Of course! Happy to help!

Thank you so much. This is my hometown and I’ve never heard of this incident. Will definitely look into this more

You will see if you do a newspaper search for his name, however, that there are numerous other complaints against him from Black South Carolinians, several of which led to guilty verdicts, an incredibly unlikely outcome given the racist nature of the courts.

Photo of a newspaper article from The Columbia Daily Phoenix, May 15, 1866, p. 2. "Coroner's Inquest.--A Coroner's Inquest was held on the body of the freedman, shot by Mr. Green, Chief of Police, on Saturday morning. After hearing of testimony, both white and colored, the jury returned the following verdict: That John Brown, a freedman, came to his death on the 13th day of May, 1866, from the effects of a wound caused by a ball fired from a pistol in the hands of Samuel Green, Chief of Police, while in the discharge of his official duties."

Thank you for asking! His name was Samuel Green. Needless to say, the details in the letter give a very different account, but this is a clipping from the Daily Phoenix newspaper in Columbia that gives an overview of the coroner's inquest.

Eighteen. Sixty-six.