The Red River Campaign, 1864

The Red River Campaign in the spring of 1864 was the disastrous culmination of the Union high command’s persistent efforts to conquer Louisiana and Texas. Abraham Lincoln ordered Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, commander of the Department of the Gulf, to lead a large force from New Orleans up the Red River Valley, capture Shreveport (the Confederacy’s Trans-Mississippi capital and major commercial center), and invade Texas. Lincoln delayed an important campaign against Mobile and diverted significant manpower from the western theater and Arkansas, along with a large fleet of naval vessels, to support Banks in order to accomplish sweeping economic, political, and foreign policy goals. Mismanaged by Banks from the start, the campaign suffered defeat before reaching Shreveport, but it created havoc in the Red River Valley by allowing many slaves to flee to Union forces, compelling many civilians to flee with their slaves to Texas for safety, and inducing defeated Union soldiers to destroy a vast array of civilian properties and towns. As a result, northern Louisiana suffered economically for many years, while Texas emerged from the war continuing to grow into an economic powerhouse.

The Maryland CampaignCarnage and Emancipation

The September 1862 Maryland Campaign resulted in three highly significant events: the largest surrender of Union soldiers in the war, at Harpers Ferry on September 15; the bloodiest single day of the war, on September 17 at Antietam; and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on September 22. Logistics played a prominent role in the conduct of the campaign, limiting the speed of the Union advance across Maryland and causing massive straggling in the Confederate Army from logistical failures. The ferocity of the Battle of Antietam and its massive carnage shocked soldiers of previous campaigns, and the operations of the two armies and resulting fighting dislocated civilians and caused significant damage to property. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation changed the war from one to preserve the Union to also include the destruction of slavery. Despite the carnage of the campaign, it strengthened rather than diminished the determination of both North and South to continue the war.

“The Servants … Could Not Be Conveniently Stored Away”

This chapter focuses on 1862, with a particular emphasis on how Stonewall Jackson’s 1862 Valley Campaign impacted enslaved people and free blacks. Throughout the spring of 1862, enslaved people, estimated in the thousands, sought refuge with Union forces. However, as this chapter illustrates, taking sanctuary with Union troops did not mean that the Valley’s African Americans were passive participants. This chapter highlights the various ways freedom seekers supported Union operations in the Valley throughout 1862. Simultaneously, the chapter also illustrates that the desire for survival at times trumped the desire for freedom and prompted some freedom seekers to return to enslavers. Although incidents such as these have been used by advocates of the Lost Cause to perpetuate the “happy slave” myth, this chapter discusses the complexities of life for African Americans and how what some interpreted as loyalty to enslavers was in fact an enslaved person’s loyalty to themselves. Finally, this chapter examines how some Union soldiers, due to interactions with enslaved people in 1862, became more open to transforming the war to preserve the Union into one that also eradicated slavery.

“To Call on All the Blacks”

Chapter 3 closely examines the experiences of the Shenandoah Valley’s African Americans during the Civil War’s first year. Initially, enslaved people believed that Union general Robert Patterson’s army, which entered the northern Shenandoah Valley in the late spring of 1861, might liberate them. However, as this chapter shows, the Valley’s enslaved learned that Patterson enforced Union policy at the conflict’s outset, which precluded Union soldiers from aiding enslaved people flee enslavers. Despite Patterson seizing freedom seekers and either returning them to enslavers or locking them up in the jail in Martinsburg, those who desired freedom remained undaunted. Freedom seekers hoped that offering something of value to Patterson, either labor or services as spies, might soften Patterson’s position, but it did not. Additionally, this chapter examines the efforts of some soldiers in Patterson’s army to defy his orders and aid freedom seekers. Finally, this chapter highlights the reaction of the Valley’s enslaved population to passage of the First Confiscation Act and the stories of enslaved people who fled to Harpers Ferry in late 1861 and early 1862, seeking refuge with Patterson’s replacement in the Shenandoah Valley, General Nathaniel P. Banks.

5. 1864

“1864” demonstrates that the Union defeats across Virginia in that year came at a politically precarious time for Abraham Lincoln, with rivals angling for the Republication presidential nomination and Confederates hoping for his defeat. News that Atlanta had fallen revived Northern morale and Lincoln’s chances for re-election. Though the election campaign turned nasty, characterized by race baiting and fears of “miscegenation.” Lincoln was re-elected by an overwhelming margin, supported by the votes of Union soldiers. The new vice-president was Andrew Johnson, a prominent War Democrat. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis had no choice but to watch Confederate ranks thin as a result of battle, disease, and desertion.

Claiming the Property of History in Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard

This chapter examines Octavia Butler’s Kindred (1979), a postmodern novel involving a woman from 1976 traveling back through time to the nineteenth-century world of slavery, and Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard (2006), a poetry collection focusing on the death of Trethewey’s mother and the forgotten history of black Union soldiers stationed at Ship Island, Mississippi, during the Civil War. Both texts show the haunting caused by the conflation of people with property, and both reverse the direction of this haunting to show the present haunting the past. This chapter argues that these narratives not only reveal that slavery haunts us; they expose how we haunt slavery. Through the haunting backwards allowed by time travel, the authors claim the property of history, a claim that rewrites the paradigm of power in slavery.

Ebony and Ivory

This chapter examines the American Civil War history of the piano to shed light on the enormous socioeconomic changes that occurred on the plantation during this tumultuous period. The war sent people and objects in motion. Union soldiers were sent into battle as far away as New Orleans, Louisiana, and Tampa, Florida, and they occupied the South for more than fifteen years after the war began in 1861. Confederate soldiers also went on the move, fighting across the South and the Mid-Atlantic states, while plantation owners abandoned their human and material property and sought refuge away from the front lines. Former slaves wrested freedom from their absentee owners and then, having secured that freedom, joined the cash economy and sought to become citizens. The tensions in the interactions between these groups were manifested materially, and the resulting artifacts survive as extant objects or textual references within the archive. Bound together in an investigation of place, the piano presents a powerful narrative of American history through the making and unmaking of the plantation space.