Who Owns This Land: Land for the Freedmen? Project: O'Brien: Primary Sources

Please start with at least FIVE of the following sources:

• J. McKaye

  1864 by J. McKaye,  Commissioner of the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission:
  “No such thing as free democratic society can exist in any country where all the lands are owned by one class of men and are cultivated by another. Such ownership of the lands of a country constitutes the basis of the most permanent and oppressive aristocracies.” 

• Wendell Phillips

  1879 in journal --abolitionist, writing in 19th century literary magazine
  “Treason should have been punished by confiscating its landed property.... Land should have been divided among the negroes, forty acres to each family, and tools--poor pay for the unpaid toil of six generations on that very soil. Mere emancipation without any compensation to the victim was pitiful atonement for ages of wrong. Planted on his own land, sure of bread--instead of being merely a wages-slave--the negro's suffrage would have been a very different experiment.”

• General Rufus Saxton
  Congressional testimony 1866 -- like Thaddeus Stevens, he believed that only an economic reorganization of the South could prevent the return of former rebels to power. He also shared the Radical Republicans' desire to see a society of small, independent producers replace the plantation system

• Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens
  1867 pro-confiscation--punishment, owe it to victims and freedmen

• Baley Wyat
  Former slave making case for distribution of land to former slaves

• William Finck (D-Ohio)
  1867 - Ohio rep. Critical of Radicals imposing policy on S--”You conquered a peace; but did you conquer a single inch of territory over which the United States did not exercise jurisdiction before the war commenced?” 

• The New York Times (2)
  7/9/1867--the editors of The New York Times feared that land distribution in the South would lead to the undermining of all property rights, even in the North.--

• The New York Times (3)
  6/27/87 - “The right of property is of paramount importance in every civil system. It is hardly too much to say, as many have said, that the great end of government is to shield and secure that right.”  Compare to Ireland

• Francis Cardozo
  1868 - favors confiscation--large plantations will keep some vestige of slavery in place if not broken  up

• Melton Linton
  1866 former slave in Sea Islands -- a bit like Wyat, but less powerful

• Louisiana Freedmen
  1865 - applications for gov’t land by freedmen inc payment w/what they have/have worked

• The National Freedmen
  1865 - mtg w/Sherman about staying on the land

• Debow's Review on European Labor
  1867-looking for German immigrants to buy vacant land

• Debow's Review on the Radicals
  1867--attacks the Radical Republicans' idea that the races can live together peacefully. He argues that the Northerners would not be so eager to advocate equal rights if African-Americans were more numerous in the North.

• Mississippi “Black Code”
  1865--harsh codes in Miss. intended to return freedmen to slavery

• The New York Times (1)
  1867- writer feels threat of confiscation biggest cause of stagnated S economy

• Samuel Thomas
  1865 - FB official describes ex-confed view of formerly enslaved people--”still have an ingrained feeling that the blacks at large belong to the whites at large, and whenever opportunity serves they treat the colored people just as their profit, caprice or passion may dictate.”

• Colonel Whittlesey
  1866-more testimony re: violence perpetrated against former slaves by ex-Confeds.

• Reverend Henry Dexter
  1865--This excerpt depicts the former Confederates as traitors who have lost all property rights, and sees the freedmen as superior to northern ethnic groups.

• Harper's Weekly 1866--“The national disgrace of an abandonment of the freedmen in their present condition to those who lately held them as slaves would be overwhelming. They are our wards and we have no moral right to relinquish their hands until we leave them as fully secure in every civil right as every other citizen”

• New Orleans Tribune 1867--The New Orleans Tribune notes that Freedmen could not always count on the Bureau for assistance.

• George Clemenceau 1928?? argues that it is vital that freedmen have access to land and land ownership. Discusses the example of Russia--no real freedom sans land; former rebels will keep them subordinate forever.