/ CBS News. Rick Francis, county Clerk of Southhampton County, is a descendant of a white slave-owning family that sustained significant losses in Turner's revolt. An American should have the right to own his labor and sell it where and how he wants, Lincoln declared. Due to the nature of certain archival formats, including digital and audio-visual materials, access to certain materials may require additional advance notice. Now, by God, Ill put him through. Item: Visit the Aiken-Rhett House on Elizabeth Street in Charleston to learn all about its previous owners, William Aiken (once the owner of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company) and former South Carolina Governor, William Aiken, Jr. Easy as setting John Brown to come down here and cut our throats in Christs name.. The diary was later annotated by C. Vann Woodward and published as, "Mary Chestnut's Civil War." It won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1982. The balance of power in the Senateand eventually among U.S. Supreme Court justices, who were confirmed by the Senatewould be decided by which region had the most states, free or slave. I said, Look, I think he got what was comin to him., I dont claim the sinners or the saints in my ancestry, says Cooper. Let the war end either way, and you will be free. That set off howls of indignation among slaveholders. I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln, wrote abolitionist Lydia Maria Child one week before he was assassinated. Mary Boykin Chestnut was a famous Confederate author, whose diary encapsulated life in the upper-class society during the Civil War. Army. The papers are divided into three series:James Boykin materials; Burwell Boykin materials; and other Boykin family members' materials. About 360,000 Union men and 200,000 Confederate men died of battle wounds or disease during the war. Mr. Thornton 4-Elizabeth Boykin mar. Learn how your comment data is processed. Reflecting on a visit to the White House, Douglass wrote that the presidents personal behavior and demeanor expressed an entire freedom from popular prejudice against the colored race., As the war reached a new stalemate that year, Lincoln was under intense pressure to retreat from abolition as a precondition for peace negotiations with the Confederacy. Published long after the war, the diary included many insightful and pointed criticisms of slavery, such as this passage, in which she calls the institution "a monstrous systema wrong and an inequity." Thu 27 Apr 2023 01.00 EDT. But Mary knew her world had died; plantation slavery was finished. Francis says at least 17 of his family . Mary Boykin Chesnut was born near Camden, South Carolina, the daughter of Mary and Stephen Miller, a plantation owner and politician. Are they stolidly stupid or wiser than we, silent and strong, biding their time?, Over the next four years of war, Mary tried to plumb the mysteries of Africans who surrounded her, but they remained inscrutable. The second and more important was Abraham Lincolns election to the presidency. Lincoln was not yet the Great Emancipator whom Americans celebrate today. It is likely that Stephen, Chancy, Susan/Suzan, Peter, Wilson, Green, and Caroline, listed in the 1846 will, are the same people listed in the 1840 list (Document 2). Whites who failed to live up to their responsibilities were considered negligent. The majority of Confederate soldiers, including those from South Carolina, didnt own slaves. But when she revised her manuscript years after the war, she condemned blacks as a race, attacking them with crude, vitriolic language. They hanged Sandy him after they found him." Booth was scandalized by Lincolns speech on the White House lawn. appears that she was married to Edwards son, John Boykin. The Boykins were part of a large and prominent Southern family with branches in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium | 287 Meeting Street, Charleston, S.C. 29401 | 843.953.2078 |, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Palmetto Environmental Education Certification, Curricula, Lessons, and Classroom Resources, Professional Marine and Environmental Education Organizations, S.C. Sea Grant Consortium and Agency Logos, Undergraduate Internships and Fellowships, Education for Coastal Community Officials. The first was John Browns famous raid. Mary Boykin Chesnut: A Biography. From Aiken to Boone to Ravenel to Rutledge, many of Charlestons homes, streets and structures are named after these famous families. Confederate States of America. She closed her book with a July 1865 entry: Eliza Lee describes various manners of bows. When he opened the shed The assault failed to take the fort, but the regiments soldiers were widely hailed for their courage, as were black fighters in other notable battles. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continuously, and considering how slavery had weakened and perverted the moral sense of the whole country, it was great good luck to have the people elect a man who was willing to grow., Weeks after Lees surrender, Mary Chesnut visited her Camden plantation, the Hermitage, which had largely survived damage from Union troops. Burwell locked him in a shed. of "Lawnes Creek Parish, Surry Co.,", on Feb. 5, 1702, sold to Edward Keegan, John. Indeed, it was Lincolns position that slave emancipation should be considered in concert with voluntary black colonization abroad to Africa, South America, or the Caribbean. and asked, 'Have you learned your lesson?' The Confederate elite aimed to preserve a society based on slaveholders rights and white superiority. land owner in Isle of Wight County in 1678 for on July 3, 1678, 2 Thomas Ravenel. They are probably no worse than man everywhere, but the lower the mistresses, the more degraded they must be. Abstract Papers of an important Dallas County, Alabama, planter family, including correspondence, household and plantation records, materials regarding James Boykin's cavalry unit during the Civil War, and papers of Boykin's descendants down to the mid-twentieth century. Confederates fought their revolution of 1861-1865 against the Union for one goal: to sustain mastery of the white over the black. Boykin's father Winborne ODOM was listed on the 1820 Census of Putnam County, with wife, a son and daughter under age 10, and 27 slaves. Abolitionists, black and white, attacked Lincoln for his colonization ideas during the first years of the Civil War. South Carolinas elite, believing that slavery was directly threatened, responded almost immediately. Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. 18th-Century Runaway Slave Advertisements, Runaway Slave Advertisement from Revolutionary Virginia, Runaway Slave Advertisement from Antebellum Virginia, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/712. And that the shells were roofing it overbursting toward the fort. Mary, dreading war, made reference to Shakespeares Macbeth, the Scottish king who killed for power in a bloodbath that ended with his death: Sound and fury, signifying nothing. Under such crosswinds, her emotional weather could change in an instant. On St. Domingue, slaves rebelled against their masters, and subsequently fought invading armies of Spain, Britain, and France. To fire-eater secessionists, the rise of the Republican Party showed that the era of compromise between slave states and free states was finished, and that slavery would be doomed if the South remained in the Union. That is the last speech he will ever make.. Her gravest indignation was targeted at planters who had mistresses and whitey brown children living in slave quarters. Some northern newspapers extolled John Brown as a martyr to the cause of abolition. By all accounts she treated slaves well. Mary Chesnut was a close student and critic of abolitionist literature. Of course, the plantation regions of southern states lacked free labor markets. at Caernarvon in Wales, but this is unsupported tradition. Edward Boykin bows and smiles so cordiallyyou feel he is your friendAndand the weight that hangs upon our eyelidsis of lead.. And two months later, in April, the Confederacy began the Civil War by firing on Fort Sumter. Indeed, Lincoln gained only 2% of the entire southern vote in 1860. It drives home (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) the moral and intellectual failures of the southern master class. Edward was a Early Twentieth Century Mexican Immigration to the U.S. Did they plan to rebel? Does ayone have the Redmond Boykin Kemper Co Ms Boykins? Two days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, concluding the war, Lincoln spoke to an interracial crowd on the White House lawn. Chesnut also claimed to dislike slavery because it was unprofitable, and because she believed slaves were "dirty Africans." In late June 1861, just weeks into the war, her entry said: Slavery has to go, of courseand joy go with it. Mary seemed reconciled to losing her way of life if slavery disappeared. My disgust sometimes is boiling over. Brown, a violent abolitionist who had fought to keep slavery out of Kansas, aimed to ignite a slave revolt in Virginia and establish a refuge there for escaped slaves. Also fifty acres of land C) caused . His son Arthur was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mary Boykin Chesnut was a plantation owner who became known for the diary she kept during the Civil War. #78 BOYKIN FAMILY PAPERS Inventory Abstract: Boykin family of Camden, S.C., including Alexander Hamilton Boykin (1815-1866), cotton planter, state legislator, and Confederate officer. Also, debts and debtors listed in the accounting pages show the newspapers subscribed to, artisans contracted, and businesses dealt with during this period of Upcountry plantation economy and culture. L McCraney 4/01/13. These Yankees may kill us and lay waste the land for a while, but conquer us? Its a model example of antebellum architecture, where you can learn about life in Charleston in the 1800s. Boykin, Sarah Jones DeSaussure, fl. Thomas Boykin-one slave (NC Rev. In a series of 1854 speeches, he condemned the monstrous injustice of slavery, adding no man is good enough to govern another man, without that others consent.. (the specific excerpt under consideration is below.) This was a time when the Norths leading intellectualsRalph Waldo Emerson, Horace Greeley, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowewere eloquent, full-throated abolitionists. James Boykin (8 August 1823 - 13 July 1907), was one of six sons of Francis Boykin (1785-1839) and Mary Darrington James Boykin (1795-1854), who arrived in Alabama from Camden, South Carolina, about 1818. Henry Ravenel (1790 1867) was a planter and his son (also named Henry) was a botanist. He was also a signer of the Constitution. The Kansas-Nebraska Act provoked Lincolns first forceful public statements against slavery. The war was a catastrophe for southern planters who lost everything they fought forand more. Unknown; updated by Andrew Harris and Donnelly Walton, 2013, The University of Alabama Libraries Special Collections, Slave bills of sale -- Alabama -- Specimens, United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865, Majority of material found within 1848 - 1870. South Carolina enslaved a majority of its population. The Civil War, however, unleashed energies among black Americans that had been suppressed for many generations. The war, of course, concluded with slave emancipation throughout the United States and its territories, southern families and communities devastated, towns and farms in ruins, planters financially broken, and the Souths influence in the wider world gone up in smoke. Robert Smalls was an African-American politician, serving as senator and representing South Carolina from 1874 to 1886. The anti-slavery movement, by contrast, opposed the expansion of slavery and slaveholders rights beyond the South into U.S. territories and northern states. Northern skilled workers and farmers increasingly joined the antislavery movement, which was distinct from the abolitionist movement. Born in Kentucky, a slave state, Lincoln did not overcome every racial misconception of his era, yet as president he advanced equality further than any before him. A birds eye view, looking south, of Circular Church on Meeting Street (right) in Charleston at the close of the Civil War. Mary, in her Charleston schoolgirl days, heard stories of St. Domingue violence from her migr teachers. South Carolina Cavalry Regiment, 2nd. Mary Chesnut was not always composed herself. Remarkable is the list of the 70 slaves belonging to Boykin Lyles's estate showing their ages and values. How a War for Union Became a War for Freedom. Photo: Library of Congress. Mary Boykin Chesnut was born near Camden, South Carolina, the daughter of Mary and Stephen Miller, a plantation owner and politician. And people talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. But its an interesting part of American history, and I think we all have that patchwork of good and bad. 2016 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. Few free blacks in the United States would agree to leave their native country. Photo: Library of Congress. land in the Quit Rents of 1704. Raised in a prominent Southern family Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut was born on March 31, 1823, in Statesburg, South Carolina. She felt old, exhausted, at age 42. Change). Boykin "of the Upper Parish of Isle of Wight one half of 800 acres of in Brunswick County not bequeathed already. Creek, in the present County of Florence., Boykin petition for another tract of 200 acres on the n/s of adjoin lands of John Bentley. The series containing other Boykin family members' materials include the miscellaneous business, legal, and military papers of James Boykin's brothers, Samuel T. and R. D. Boykin. The compromise prohibited slavery in most of the Louisiana Purchase territory north of latitude 36 30, a region that eventually be came states or parts of states from Iowa west to Montana. Caroline a girl sixteen or seventeen Green a man twenty one or twenty two Peter a man about seventeen and Wilson and their increase from this date in ti[me] to & for the sale and separate use and benefit of my daughter Mrs Clara Billups and her heirs. He could not imagine a time when millions of freed slaves would be fully integrated into American life. Rick Francis is no defender of the horrible institution practiced by his forebears, but he does not see Nat Turner as a heroic figure. Cotton trade--South Carolina. I should be damned in time & in eternity for so doing.. Slavery, in short, was required to protect Africans from themselves. In the South Carolina lowcountry, for instance, many slaveholders hired out their slaves as carpenters, bricklayers, and other occupations, driving down wages for free workers and inhibiting new enterprises. And Mary describes her mother-in-laws deep fear of slaves, having in her youth the St. Domingo storiesindelibly printed on her mind. died in Dec. 1886 Putnam County. Photo: Library of Congress. She knew she was a tangle of paradoxes. The first reading, Mary Boykin Chesnut's Slavery a Curse to Any Land presents the views of a white Southern woman and Harriet Jacobs' Trials of Girlhood present the views of a slave. In December 1865, Company E, 4th U.S. On many isolated plantations, slaves outnumbered whites 10 to one, 100 to one, or more. Nat Turner changed that.. Edward An 1840 promissory note for a loan of $9,340.00 by James Boykin to his son-in-law James R. Jones, Muscogee County Deed Book B, page 101, included the following individuals with their ages: Gustus age 14, could be the same as Augustus, age 12 in the 1839 document. Photo: Library of Congress. In free states, Lincoln said, the man who labored for another last year, this year labors for himself, and the next year he will hire others to labor for him.. DeSaussure family. Cites: Wills of Isle of Wight Co., VA, Book 3, p . [5] Many southerners, rich and poor, joined the war effort in 1861 because they thought it would be easy. Learn about current events in historical perspective on our Origins site. Douglass came to admire Lincoln as a man. It was awfully nearthat thought of deathalwaysalwaysNoNoI will not stop and think., Marys friends admired her sly, quicksilver intelligence and her conversation that flowed with warmth and humor. Anderson refused to surrender, and Chesnut, after consulting with his superiors, gave orders to open fire. The Boykins were part of a large and prominent Southern family with branches in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. He would stand his ground on the spread of slavery but would not interfere with slavery where it already existed. Sumner said not one word of this hated institution which is not true. Later that year, the U.S. Coast Survey, which eventually became part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), issued this map of slavery in the South, and it captured the attention of President Abraham Lincoln, according to Susan Schulten, a historian at the University of Denver. Francis questions whether a desire to end slavery is what motivated Turner to kill. We all have heroes and villains in our family tree.. Mary Boykin Chesnut, A Confederate Lady's Diary (1861) I wonder if it be a sin to think slavery a curse to any land. But that idea was quickly discarded. To fight something which is so unjust, what is justifiable? Lynches Creek, the other of 100 acres to Edward Boykin on Jeffreys So are we.. I give and bequeath to my son Francis E. Boykin and my son in law James R. Jones as trustees for my daughter Mrs. Clara Billups & her heirs the following slaves to wit Chancy a woman about fifty years old Suzan a woman about twenty four or twenty five years old with her child William. Perhaps slave emancipation was the only way to undermine the Souths slave-based economy and win the war. Other records, such as below,9 show that Edward B.B. Copyright 2023 American Social History Productions, Inc. Who Freed the Slaves? He was the son of Winborne ODOM b. Northampton Co., NC and Mary BENNETT.Mary was the daughter of Bowen BENNETT b. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all mulatto children in everybodys household but her own. His second son, James Boykin, born in 1792 in Kershaw County, SC, was my four-greats grandfather. Amazed, Cooper told Gates that he had little sympathy for his slave-owning relative. Black Warriors. By 1865, black soldiers comprised about one-tenth of the Union military manpower. The Chesnuts also entertained the southern elite at their familys plantations near Camden where 450 slaves lived and worked. Another famous Charleston family in politics, the Calhouns are descendants of the seventh vice president of the U.S., John Caldwell Calhoun (who served under presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson). Vesey, a free black man, was charged with planning a slave rebellion throughout the city, and was hanged. The bloodiest slave uprising in the New World began in 1791 in the French sugar colony of St. Domingue (now Haiti). Arthur Allen sold him 525 acres at Blackwater Aug.9, 1692. President James Buchanan, in turn, declared that slavery existed in all the territories by virtue of the Constitution., Lincoln considered Dred Scott a travesty of justice, a burlesque upon judicial decisions.. Women were slave owners. Are you an American? The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. He was the son of a Confederate soldier and the descendant of slave owners. They save me all thought as to household matters, and they are so kind and attentive and quiet. She viewed Laurence, her husbands valet, with particularly high regard. Muhlenfeld, Elisabeth. Many politicians had promoted colonization since the 1830s, though it had little practical traction. Renton's 2021 book, Blood Legacy, investigating his family's slave-owning past, prompted other descendants of slave-owning families to contact him asking for advice on what they should do. The Ravenels have lived in Charleston for generations. Which would agree with other research documentingstatements in the Will of William Other papers include sales receipts for slaves, foodstuffs, tools, and other hardware, as well as papers regarding James Boykins cavalry unit during the Civil War. October 2, 2016 / 6:41 PM Burwell to death. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Colored Infantry, Fort Lincoln, guarded the District of Columbia.
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