Six months following the war, guerrilla activity and murders of freedmen are common in the South. Less common in the sight of white southerners, and much resented, are “colored troops.” Today a U.S. Colored Troops officer, Lieutenant J. M. Warren of Company D, 42nd Colored Troops, stationed in Decatur, Alabama, is ordered to take a…
Treated as non-humans by Southern state laws in the decades prior to and during the war, slaves were not allowed to marry. Many slave couples compensated by engaging in simple rituals signifying informal marriages. White Baptist leaders of the South remained defiantly supportive of black slavery throughout the war, although some voiced support of laws…
In Selma, the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, freedpersons feel anything but free. Major J. B. Houston is is the provost marshal for Selman’s Freedmen’s Burea. This month he files a report concerning a dozen cases of “white-on-black violence,” the incidents of which are “but a small part of those that have actually been”…