US to 1877 HIST-2010
Melvin1984
USto1877HIST-2010FinalWritingEssay.docxFinal Revised Writing Assignment (Exam Essay)
Due July 25, 2025
Note: For your final (exam) writing assignment, you will add to what you have written in WAs 1- 4, and revise WAs 1-4 as suggested in my comments throughout the semester. Final Essays are due on Exam Day (Friday) by 11.59pm.
Read, Think, and Write:
Read American Yawp, Chapter 15
Read this excerpt from "A History They Can Use: The Memphis Massacre and Reconstruction's Public History Terrain," written by University of Memphis Department of History professors Susan O'Donovan and Beverly Bond:
On May 20th and 21st, a group of scholars, students, and public historians gathered at the University of Memphis to discuss a dramatic event often overlooked in the narrative of Reconstruction, the Memphis Massacre of 1866. The symposium, and the Memphis Massacre Project, informed the public about the massacre and began a difficult and necessary conversation about how Americans approach the history of Reconstruction–how we rethink and repurpose existing spaces and create new public spaces to reflect on that history. The symposium’s directors, Dr. Beverly Bond and Dr. Susan O’Donovan, spoke with Muster about their work and their hopes for the project’s future.
From the capture of Memphis by Union forces in June 1862 through the final surrender of the Confederacy in April 1865, Memphis experienced dramatic demographic, social, and economic change. Thousands of enslaved African Americans fled area farms and plantations for sanctuary in the city. These new arrivals were housed in camps near the Union Army’s Ft. Pickering, on President’s Island, and in surrounding areas. After the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, African American men were allowed to enlist into segregated units of the U.S.C.T. Some of these soldiers were garrisoned at Ft. Pickering and a U.S.C.T unit from Ft. Pickering was among the black soldiers killed in the 1864 Ft. Pillow massacre, about forty miles north of the city.
The city’s white population also changed during the Civil War. Some Confederate sympathizers left the city to fight with the Confederate army or to refuge deeper into Confederate-held areas. Union military personnel, northern businessmen or war profiteers, teachers and other agents of northern missionary aid societies, and Freedman’s Bureau officials and workers poured into the city. As conflict wound down, some self-exiled white Memphians, returned to the city, hoping to take advantage of President Andrew Johnson’s generous amnesty programs and to reclaim homes and other property. Control of city services shifted back to civilian authorities.
These Memphis populations – newly emancipated African Americans, former Confederates (including many former slaveholders), former free people of color, ethnic whites (including many Irish immigrants), northern military and civilians – were negotiating the new terrain of freedom in the post-Civil War south. As was the case across much of the former Confederacy, white Southerners wanted to confine black Southerners to the narrowest of freedoms. White Memphians were willing to concede the end of slavery, the right to marry, and the right of former slaves to assume responsibility for the economic support of their families, but were not willing to extend full equality, full citizenship or even the fullest exercise of free labor to their black neighbors. Touting the presence of “surplus” African Americans in the overcrowded city, and beginning as early as fall 1865, white civilians and city government officials, sometimes with the complicity of the Union Army and the Freedman’s Bureau, encouraged (or pressured) black Memphians to return to the countryside to satisfy the labor needs of white farmers and planters.
Contemporary portrayal of the 1866 Memphis Massacre. Courtesy of Blackpast.org.
This volatile situation in the spring of 1866 engendered a series of minor confrontations between black soldiers at Ft. Pickering and members of the Memphis police, which escalated into a much larger massacre, a three-day wave of violence that left at least forty-six African American men, women and children dead. Other black Memphians were beaten and/or driven out of the city. Every African American church and schoolhouse was destroyed, homes and businesses were burglarized and burned, and at least five women were raped. Within weeks, a Congress that had already been at logger-heads with President Johnson over Reconstruction policy, dispatched a delegation to Memphis to investigate the massacre and its origins. What they learned, and how they responded to that new knowledge, led to the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, changed the course of Reconstruction, and with it, the constitutional underpinnings of the nation. And then, as a nation, we “forgot” about Memphis along with the rest of Reconstruction’s history.
View "Reconstruction in America" from the Equal Justice Initiative (below)
Primary Sources
Contract between A. T. Oliver and Cummins et al., 1 July 1865
Contract between a Texas Planter and His Former Slaves
[Austin Co., Tex.] July 1st 1865
Copy of contract
We the following named negroes, formerly belonging to A. T. Oliver, do agree to remain
as heretofore, and work as heretofore, for A. T. Oliver on his plantation; to cultivate and save his
crop on said plantation from this date July 1st 1865, until the 1st of January 1866; the said Oliver
agrees to furnish them, the following named negroes, their usual clothing, medicines, and
attention when sick for themselves and children; and at the end of the year, he agrees to pay
them what he thinks is right for each one according to his value in making, and saving said crop;
the said negroes are to do good, and faithful work under the control, and direction of said A. T.
Oliver or agent, and not to leave the plantation without a pass from said Oliver, and conform to
all the rules of the plantation as heretofore, Cummins, Lidia, Moses, Eli, Manda Andrew,
Georgiana, Dave, Harreitt & 3 children, Bene & 1 child, Billy, Jane & 2 children, Martha
Hobson, Rena, Marsh, Quince, Louisa & 4 children Jack, Mariah & 1 child, Thomas, Lucy & 1
child, Israel Frank, Mitchel, Clary & 1 child, John, Charlotte & 3 children, Dorrick, Helen & 3
children, Edmond Watson, Jane & 2 children, Paddy 7 years old, Frank Isaac, Mariah, Asaline &
5 children, Louis, Lina, & 2 children, Aggy, worthless, two boys Osca, & Virgil, Jacob Emily &
3 children, Primus, Isham, Docia & 3 children Frances, Ham, Vina, Eliza & 2 children, Crockett,
Martha & 3 children, Henry (boy) Mat, Sam, Rachael, Jerry, America Taylor, Kitty, Amonette &
3 children, Stephen 2 children, Charles, Sally & 2 children
In testimony whereof I hereunto sign my name, and affix my seal, using scroll for seal,
this the day and date above mentioned
HDcSr A. T. Oliver
Contract between A. T. Oliver and Cummins et al., 1 July 1865, filed with 1st Lt Levi Jones to
Col W. H. Sinclair, 26 Mar. 1866, J-1 1866, Registered Letters Received, ser. 3620, TX Asst.
Comr., RG 105 [A-3261]. Witnessed.
Capt. Charles C. Soule to Gen'l O. O. Howard, 12 June 1865 https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Soule.htm
Henry Bram et al. to Major General O. O. Howard, [20 or 21 Oct. 1865] https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Edisto%20petitions.htm
Toney Golden et al to Col. H F Sickles, 28 Nov. 1865 https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Golden.htm
Mississippi "Black Codes," U.S. Congress, Senate, “Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of Freedmen, and a Synopsis of Laws Respecting Persons of Color in the Late Slave States,” Senate Executive Documents, 39th Cong., 2nd sess., No. 6, serial 1276, pp. 190-97 https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/excerpt-mississippi-black-codes-1865
Once you have read this week's chapter in American Yawp and analyzed the primary sources listed in the links above, consider again (and for the final time this semester!) the question the theme of expectations and outcomes. How do this week's readings/viewing shape your understanding of early Americans' expectations versus their lived experiences?
Revise your big argument and introduction as necessary ( again, underline your thesis statement). This is the final "installment" of your essay, so your introduction and thesis should reflect the entire essay.
Add to your essay using at least 1 document from last week's study unit and 1 document from this week's study unit. Use your textbook, the excerpt above from "History They Can Use," and the video for context.
Revise your entire essay as suggested in my comments on each document throughout the semester.
Proofread for grammatical and spelling errors. Be sure all sources are cited with correct (MLA of CMS) formatting.
Be sure your bibliography is complete
The editors of American Yawp include this definition of "yawp" in the introduction to the text:
Yawp \yôp\ n: 1: a raucous noise 2: rough vigorous language
"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world." Walt Whitman, 1855.
As you analyze the primary sources and textbook chapters and conclude your essay, consider:
How "American yawp" as a concept expressed in the sources you have read over the course of this semester
How who tells a story shapes the story
