Bitterly Against Us:
Slave and Free Black Women in Florida During the Civil War
Tracy J. Revels
Wofford College
“A LIKELY NEGRO GIRL—a good washer and ironer and seamstress.”
Florida Sentinel, advertisement, December 9, 1862
When Elizabeth Coffee Sheldon’s father left his Madison County plantation, he made a farewell speech to his family and the assembled slaves. Years later, his daughter fondly remembered the address. “My father bids farewell to his slaves, and to their care and protection he leaves his home, his wife, his two little girls, his all.” After illness shortened his military career, Sheldon’s father returned to his estate. On learning of Lee’s surrender, he decided to inform his bondsmen of their freedom, telling them they had the option of leaving or staying. “The Negroes received the intelligence without the slightest demonstration,” Sheldon recalled, proudly noting that all of her father’s former chattel elected to remain on the plantation.[1]
Southerners comforted themselves with this image after the cause was lost, arguing that their imprisonment of a people had somehow been beneficial, and that most blacks had lovingly worn their chains. On the surface, with no major slave uprisings or massacres, Florida had been a land of relative contentment, where slaves were either too loyal or too terrified to oppose their masters. However, when individual accounts are collected, a very different picture—one of quiet but dogged determination to be free—begins to emerge. Though usually ignored in the story, slave women contributed to this quest for freedom and dignity, and their experiences are worth seeking.
The 1860 census enumerated 30,397 female slaves in Florida, compared to 31,348 male slaves.[2] Most female slaves lived on plantations or farms, and were concentrated in the cotton region known as ‘Middle Florida.’ Others worked in towns, serving as cooks, nurses, and laundresses. In agricultural areas, the labor women performed depended greatly on the size of the estate and the nature of the owner or overseer. The larger the plantation, the greater the chance that an individual slave would perform sex-typed work such as cooking or sewing; on most estates the women worked in the fields. Even on prosperous plantations, women’s seasonal fieldwork was essential. The fertility of female slaves was a calculation planters did not ignore, and some children of slaves recalled that their mothers were purchased as ‘breeders’. A female valued for her childbearing might receive better treatment and praise from her owner, but few women escaped the grueling work in Florida’s fields. Records from Chemoninee Plantation in Jefferson County note the number of female slaves who fainted from the heat while working in cotton.[3]
Unlike their mistresses who publicly demonstrated their loyalty to the Confederacy or confided their thoughts to letters and diaries, slave women are historically mute. Few could read or write, and to assert any sentiment in opposition to their owners was to court punishment. Much work remains to be done on the first hand remembrances of slaves, in Florida and elsewhere, but outside observers did record comments and actions of Florida’s slaves. While the sources must be viewed critically, many of the actions speak volumes for how slaves, especially women, felt about and reacted to their condition.
Labor management was one of the key problems faced by women of the slaveholding South as their men departed for the battlefield. Plantation mistresses were certainly experienced in dealing with domestics, and in tackling duties such as providing clothing or medical care, but many were not comfortable with supervising field work outside of the ‘big house’.[4] Letters from soldier husbands and fathers contained advice on how to deal with slaves. While most seem to focus on the male labor force, some of the instructions were directed towards the management of female slaves. George Washington Parkhill, master of the Tuscawilla plantation in Leon County and a Captain in the 2nd Florida Infantry, wrote to his wife Lizzie that she “must take a girl out of the field and learn her what you wish her to do”—perhaps a daunting task to a woman insecure in her new role as plantation manager. New strategies for work, punishment, and rewards were constantly being negotiated between mistresses and maids.[5]
Florida’s slaves contributed to the Confederacy by continuing to labor in the fields, producing the staples to finance and feed the troops, as well as the local population. Domestics of the Watkins family of Bartow were sent out to labor for Confederate ladies, a task that drew a pointed comment from one slave, when she told her young mistress “Missis L. Say you father he sending us to wash to help her husband fight to keep us slaves.”[6] On the Pine Hill plantation near Tallahassee, domestics also served as tutors to Susan Bradford Eppes and her mother, who had forgotten the arts of spinning and weaving. Other slave women contributed their knowledge of herbs and roots, demonstrating how to produce natural dyes for clothing and home remedies.[7]
If slave management became too difficult, or the family coffers depleted, then slave women might find themselves serving as financial assets for Florida families. The price of slaves rose during the war due to labor shortages, and a ‘likely female’ could raise ready cash. Wartime newspapers continued to carry advertisements for slaves of women and children, often to cover debts. A woman might be more prone to find herself on the auction block than a male who would be still be needed in the fields. In towns, despite strict laws designed to curb the practice, female slaves were still rented out to neighbors for kitchen or washing duty.[8]
While women like Susan Bradford Eppes or Elizabeth Coffee Sheldon later remembered their domestics as cheerful and willing allies in the war effort, other women reported that female slaves were surly and disrespectful during the conflict. Sarah L. Jones, the English governess employed by Governor Milton’s family at Slyvania, Milton’s Jackson Country plantation, found her black charges particularly exasperating. Jane, a slave girl given to her as a personal servant was, in the governess’ view, “a hideous picture of sullen, dogged stupidity” whose constant expression was a spiteful glare. Mrs. Milton frequently ordered Jane to the overseer for punishment, but cuts with a whip, which the girl refused to even acknowledge, did not improve her nature.[9] If anything, the beatings made Jane more incorrigible. When Jane purposely blotched such simple assignments as lighting fires, Jones worked up the nerve to do as Mrs. Milton had suggested and “cuff” Jane for disobedience, landing two weak blows on Jane’s back. Jane turned, and in an “underground” voice that terrified the teacher, told her how her former mistress had never struck her, indicating her contempt for the cowering Jones. The teacher later concluded that “in spite of her temper, (Jane) respected herself, and was really very unhappy, from loneliness and want of sympathy.” Aware that her parents in South Carolina were already free and working for the Yankees, Jane probably did not expect to be burdened with Jones’ petty tyranny for much longer.[10]
Flora, assigned as a nurse to the youngest Milton child, also seemed to be waging a private psychological war against the teacher. She would bring the baby to the classroom, allow him to scatter his toys, then abruptly announce “Missus calls!” Seizing the child, she dashed from the room, leaving the toys for the governess to retrieve. On other occasions, she would move at a snail’s pace, pretending not to understand commands to close doors and windows. Pushed beyond patience, the governess slapped her. Flora continued to meander through her chores, acting as if she had not felt the blow. Only the teacher’s hand was hurt.[11]
Octavia Stephens found that war and matriarchs made for surly domestics. When her mother moved into Rose Cottage, the Stephens’ plantation near Welaka for the duration, the house slaves, Jane and Jesse, made it clear that “two bosses” were too much for one household. They became disrespectful, complaining constantly about the extra work. When Stephens threatened to beat Jane, Jane replied tartly that “she would rather be whipped to death than worked to death.” Such small rebellions indicated the will of black women to resist their enslavement in ways that would not threaten their lives or families, but would still punish their owners.[12]
Some slave women indicated their discontent with their situation during the war by refusing to feel sympathy for whites, or even by teasing former owners about their misfortunes. Brought to Tampa as a child in 1854, Sarah Brown endured a painful separation from her mother. When she cried, her mistress beat her. As a young woman in this frontier region, Brown held a variety of jobs. She was a chambermaid at the Florida House hotel, a field hand, a nursemaid, and finally a laborer in a salt works. She witnessed the brutal treatment of a deranged female slave, who was hitched to a plough and forced to pull it around a field. This “cure” killed the woman. During the war, Brown and other women at the salt works watched Union gunboats shelling Tampa; their thoughts were not recorded, but can easily be imagined. Brown returned to her mistress’ home and found the woman sobbing. When asked why, her mistress explained that her husband was in service and might be killed. Brown took the opportunity to remind her white owner of the many beatings she had received for crying when separated from her mother. With caustic bluntness, Brown told her owner that weeping “would not do her any good.”[13] In Key West, where freedom came early for many slaves, a former bondwoman watched in amusement as her refined mistress struggled to plant a garden. Leaning on the fence, confidence in her new status, she asked her one-time owner about the work and “how she liked it.”[14]
As a slave state, Florida was not friendly to its “free colored” population before the war. Their numbers were very small; only 932 were listed in the 1860 census and all but 326 of these persons lived in cities and towns, with the heaviest concentrations in Pensacola, Jacksonville, Key West, and St. Augustine. A majority, 643, were mulattoes. Women accounted for slightly more than half of the free black population.[15] Numerous state and local laws made common actions difficult for this class. Any free black person judged by whites to be “idle” or “dissolute” could be seized and sold into slavery. In Pensacola, home to the largest population of free blacks, they were often assessed special tax, including a $2 fee to put on any form of entertainment[16]. A legislative act of 1848 required free Negroes in Florida to establish a white person as a legal guardian. Another act in 1856 added provisions for enforcement, following complaints that the law was lax in St. Augustine and Pensacola. Free blacks who failed to obey could be arrested and fined. Despite these hardships, some free blacks fared well, including Martha Daxter of Duval County, who in 1860 had $5,000 in real estate and a personal estate estimated at $52,000. Most free black women lived as best they could, working as servants, seamstresses, laundresses, and midwives.[17]
The free population of Florida increased during the war whether whites approved or not. Despite the legends of loyal servants who hid the silver and protected mistresses from Yankee insults, many slaves expressed their true desires by abandoning their owners at the first opportunity. Master and mistresses tried to secure their investments by spreading stories of Yankee atrocities, warning that the Union men would throw children in the rivers or sell them in Cuba. Some even portrayed the Yankees as subhumans or demons, complete with hooves and pointed tails. These stories may have terrified children or a few superstitious elders, but slaves generally equated Yankees with freedom.[18] Sensible masters and mistresses tried to keep their slaves ignorant of troop movements, realizing, as Ellen Call Long of Tallahassee did, they should be “far from thinking that they [slaves] will not succumb to Yankee authority if it should approach them.”[19] Some owners, secure in the interior, did manage to prevent their slaves from learning how close they were to freedom. A former slave from Suwanne County recalled that the residents of his plantation had “hardy been aware that there had been a war going on,” while Thomas Lenton of Jefferson County managed to keep his field hands unaware of the war’s end until the spring crops could be planted in 1865. However, for most whites the slave grapevine was a far better intelligence service that either the Union or the Confederacy could ever devise. Amanda McCray, a seamstress and domestic on a plantation in Madison County, recalled that she first learned of the war from another slave who then led them in secret prayers for the Union soldiers. “Contrabands,” as escapees were called, were soon a common sight.[20]
As Union forces moved into Florida and Confederate families fled into the interior or to other states, slaves found prime opportunities to escape. Refugeeing caused confusion and hardship on families, black and white. Slaves were separated from spouses and children, the old, disabled, or very young were sometimes simply abandoned to the Yankees. Slaves on the march could flee, their absence not noted in the general mayhem until too late. Sometimes entire families ran away, hurrying to the Union lines where food, clothing, and medical attention waited.[21] In May 1864, a small craft filled with 30 slaves raised a white flag and was taken aboard the steamer Magnolia on the St. Johns River. Esther Hill Hawks, a woman doctor with the troops, issued rations to the women as the men were quickly drafted for labor in the camps. She interviewed only the female contrabands, and came to the conclusion that they “are intelligent and active—and many of them have picked up a little book learning. It is not uncommon to find a fair reader among those who have always been slaves.” An educated member of any escape party was certainly an asset.[22]
Though many slaves remained on plantations, sometimes within the sound of gunfire, it is doubtful that they did so out of an exaggerated sense of loyalty. Some many have been treated decently, and others might have thought their chances better remaining on the plantation that slipping away to an uncertain fate.[23] Certainly those beyond the gates harbored few illusions about whites. Susie King, a laundress for the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a black unit, spoke with rebel families in Jacksonville during the 1863 Union occupation. She noted that the white women complained about having only hardtack to eat and refused to offer hospitality to their black visitors. “They were bitterly against our people,” King wrote in her memoirs, “and had no mercy or sympathy for us.”[24]
Free blacks and slaves who found their way to freedom quickly took advantage of its opportunities to find work for themselves. Women turned to traditional tasks of cooking and cleaning, finding jobs where ever Union soldiers were stationed. Aunt Eliza, a former slave hired by Emily Holder, wife of a Union surgeon at Ft. Jefferson, was already a famous cook in Key West when she found employment. She quickly became a familiar sight to the troops, stooped from working long hours in fields, her front teeth gone, and smelling strongly of tobacco from her odorous pipe. She had abandoned her slave husband for a younger man, Jack, who was thirty to her fifty. Jack was somewhat shiftless, causing his bride to occasionally threaten him with an ax. Eliza retained habits from her slave days, including devouring all the food her employers failed to eat, but obviously enjoyed her new life as a free person.[25] Amanda McCray eventually left the plantation in Madison County to become a cook for Union troops. Other black women, especially in Key West and Union occupied coastal cities, sold fried cakes to the servicemen, who noted their friendliness and their willingness to talk about their experiences in slavery.[26] In seeking opportunities, not all former slave women were successful or noble. In St. Augustine, a young mulatto woman was forcibly ejected from Fort Marion for annoying a Union regiment, and in Fernandina white teachers complained of an elderly black women “enslaving” a black orphan.[27]
Education for their children was another essential concern of black women. Chloe Merrick and Cornelia Smith, teachers supported by the Freedmen’s Relief Association of Syracuse, established a school in Fernandina in December 1862, enrolling some 70–80 pupils who had already begun informal instruction under the tutorage of soldiers, ministers, and freedwomen. The teachers held mothers’ meetings weekly and observed that whites could learn much from the spirit of co-operation in the black community. In Jacksonville, Esther Hill Hawks noted how one scholar, a former slave girl, expressed bitterness towards her former owner. “She never give me ‘nuff to eat,” the youngster charged, and begged Hawks to teach her how to write so she could pen a letter to her mistress, telling her about all the good food she now savored and how she hoped her mistress was starving.[28]
Black women celebrated their freedom vibrantly. In St. Augustine, they marched in Emancipation Day parades with their spouses and children, then listened to speeches on patriotism. Their children gave public performances of popular tunes, including Thrice Happy Days. In a mirror image of white society, black women took the initiative in planning fundraisers and parties. The Peninsula of Fernandina noted that two committee of colored ladies had been established to plan the refreshments for the 1863 celebration of Independence day. All were proper matrons, and were known to be experienced cooks and caterers. “The affair promises to be a complete success,” the paper predicted. The same could be said for freedom.[29]
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[1]Elizabeth Coffee Sheldon, “My Old Black Mammy,” in United Daughters of the Confederacy, Florida Division Scrapbooks, Vol. 3, Florida State Archives, Tallahassee. Afterwards cited as UDC Scrapbooks.
[2]Eighth Census, 1860, Vol. 1, Population, 54.
[3]Female slavery in Florida seems to follow the outlines discussed by Kenneth Stampp in The Peculiar Institution. For more specific discussions of the nature of slavery in Florida, see Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, 1821–1860 and Edwin L. Williams, Jr., “Negro Slavery in Florida” in the Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 28.
[4]See “Slave of Slaves” in Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress: Woman’s World in the Old South (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 16–35.
[5]George Washington Parkhill to Lizzie Parkhill, 13 October 1861, George Washington Parkhill Letters, 1861–1862, Special Collections, Florida State University, Tallahassee.
[6]Margaret Watkins Gibbs, Memory Diary of Mrs. George Gibbs, St. Augustine Historical Society Collection, St. Augustine.
[7]Susan Bradford Eppes, Through Some Eventful Years (Gainesville: University Press of Florida [facsimile edition], 1968), 147, 162, and Eppes, The Negro of the Old South: A Bit of Period History (Chicago: Joseph G. Branch Publishing Company, 1925), 109–111.
[8] 8 Julia Floyd Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida 1821–1860 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1973), 50.
[9]Catherine Cooper Hopley, Life in the South (New York: Augustus M. Kelley [reprint edition], 1971), vol. 2, 258–259.
[10]Ibid, 279–283.
[11]Ibid, 283–285.
[12]Ellen Hodges Patterson, “The Stephens Family in Florida.” (M.A. Thesis, Gainesville, 1979), 51.
[13]“One Time Slave Sheds Light on Life in Tampa,” Tampa Tribune, 5 June 1988.
[14]“At the Dry Tortugas During the War: A Lady’s Journal,” The Californian Illustrated (1892), 103.
[15]Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth, 111–112; Eighth Census, 1860, Vol. 1, Population, p. 54. There were 478 female free blacks to 454 males. Of these 325 females were considered mulattoes, as were 318 males.
[16]Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, p. 216; John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr, From Slavery to Freedom, 6th edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 141.
[17]Ruth B. Barr and Modeste Hargis, “The Voluntary Exile of Free Negroes Of Pensacola,” Florida Historical Quarterly 17 (July 1938): 8–10; Smith, Slavery and Plantation Growth In Florida, 119–120; Russell Garvin, “The Free Negro in Florida Before the Civil War,” Florida Historical Quarterly 46 (July 1967): 12.
[18]Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 February 1864; Bell Irvin Wiley, Southern Negroes (New York: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1938), 12–18. Ironically, slave parents sometimes used the threat of Yankees to keep naughty children in line!
[19]Ellen Call Long, Southern Breezes; or, Florida, New and Old (Gainesville: University of Florida Press [facsimile edition], 1962), 331.
[20]Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States, From Interviews With Former Slaves, Florida Narratives (St. Clair Shores, Minnesota: Scholarly Press, 1976), Vol. 17, 98, 165–166, 214–215.
[21]Mrs. L. Thompson, “Reminiscences of the War,” UDC Scrapbooks, Vol. 1; Brian E. Michaels, The River Flows North: A History of Putnam County, Florida (Palatka: Putnam County Archives and History Commission, 1976), 99.
[22]Gerald Schwartz, ed., A Woman Doctor’s Civil War: Esther Hill Hawks’ Diary (Columbia: University of South Carolina press, 1984), 77.
[23]Thelma Bates, “The Legal Status of the Negro in Florida,” Florida Historical Quarterly 6 (January 1828): 172.
[24]Patricia W. Romero, ed., A Black Woman’s Civil War Memoirs (New York: Markus Wiener Publishing, 1988), 56.
[25]“At the Dry Tortugas,” 87–89.
[26]Slaves Narratives, Vol. 17, 212–213; A Few of the Reminiscences in the Life of a Soldier of the 110th N. Y. Vols. By Wm. S. Stebbins, Oswego County Historical Society, n.p. in Lewis G. Schmidt Papers, Florida State Archives.
[27]Diary of Elias A. Bryant (4th New Hampshire Regiment) in Lewis G. Schmidt Papers, Florida State Archives; Sarah Whitmer Foster and John T. Foster, Jr., “Chloe Merrick Reed: Freedom’s First Lady,” Florida Historical Quarterly 71 (January 1993): 286.
[28]Foster and Foster, “Chloe Merrick Reed,” 284–285; Schwartz, ed., A Woman Doctor’s Civil War, 69–70.
[29]William Watson Davis, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida (Gainesville: University of Florida press [facsimile edition], 1964), 237; Fernandina The Peninsula, 2 July 1863.