The training which the Negroes received during the Civil War as soldiers
should not be overlooked. It represents his first opportunity for real
manhood training in an effective way. The training of the military camp
is no less important than the training of the school-room in the
development of good habits and manners.
With the beginning of 1863, immediately after the Emancipation
Proclamation, a call was made for Negroes to enlist in the United States
Army, to which there came a ready response. Before the end of that year
there were 100,000 former slaves in the military service, about half of
whom bore arms in the ranks; and by the close of the war the number of
Negro troops had risen to 186,000.
It has been usual to speak of this enlistment in its bearings on the
progress of the war. General Grant set a high estimate upon his Negro
troops, as some of his dispatches show, and President Lincoln said:
“By arming them we have added a powerful ally. They will make good
soldiers, and taking them from the enemy weakens him in the same
proportion as they strengthen us.”
But there is another point of view, the influence of this military life
on the men who enlisted. Taken as they were at that time, especially
those who were in the camps or floating about the country, without
settled abodes or regular occupation, what could have happened more to
their advantage than to be summoned to the orderly habits and rigid
discipline of a soldier’s life. It put the Freedmen into a far more
effective school than it was possible to provide for them in the former
way.
In some of the regiments there were commanding officers of so fine a
mold that is was an inspiration to noble manhood to be under their
orders. When Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was choosing officers for
the two colored regiments that went from that State, he set it before
him to find men “of acknowledged military ability and experience, of the
highest social position if possible, and who believed in the capacity of
colored men to make good soldiers.” Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
of the first colored regiment mustered into service, was a man of this
order, as his illustrious life has amply shown. Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw, of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, not only proved his own
greatness, but his aptitude in making heroes of the men who charged with
him to their death in the storming of Fort Wagner. Another of these
commanders of Negro soldiers was General Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who
went from his honorable military service to the still larger civil
service of building up the famous industrial school at Hampton. And yet
another was Major Horace Bumstead, who was afterward president of
Atlanta University. The colonels, majors, captains and lieutenants of
the colored troops as a whole were men of no ordinary character. They
were of the sort who do not flinch from taking their stand on the side
of an unpopular cause, so it be right, and they put their best endeavor
into the training of the troops over whom they were in command. It was
an educational opportunity of no trifling significance. Two years or
more of daily drill in such a school had in it the making of manhood.
Soon after the Civil War began, several societies were formed to aid in
the care and education of the Freedmen. With the progress of the war the
operations of the societies were constantly changing to meet new
demands. They began at Fortress Monroe and Hilton Head in 1861, and took
up work in other places, as one by one they were opened, and necessity
appeared for the service they might render. As the field widened,
supplies in larger quantity were required; more money had to be raised
and a greater number of agents and teachers sent down to the several
centers of activity. The teachers at the beginning were mostly men, as
was befitting the rough duties undertaken; but it was not long before
conditions were such as to invite the ministries of women and the force
was largely made up of them. The work of looking after the refugees
yielded in time to efforts of many kinds in behalf of the communities.
Attention was turned to the young people and children, and schools were
opened and maintained particularly for their benefit. Preaching and
Sunday school work were also made very prominent. Thus a certain
stability and promise of continuance began to be seen.
While the war lasted, these movements were carried on and maintained by
voluntary organizations in the North, though uniformly with the approval
and cooperation of the military forces. But on March 3, 1865, about a
month before the surrender of General Lee, the United States Congress
passed an act establishing the Freedmen’s Bureau in the War Department:
“A bureau of refugees, freedmen, and abandoned lands, to which should be
committed the supervision and management of all abandoned lands and the
control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen.” This brought
the Government into formal participation in these endeavors, with the
certainty of adequate financial resources. The bureau was organized with
a general superintendent, a general inspector, and a superintendent of
schools in each district. “In entering on the work a few schools were
found in charge of tax commissioners, a few maintained by the Negroes
themselves; but by far the greater number were under the care of the
Northern societies. General supervision was at once instituted over all
schools; reports were made at stated intervals; unused Government
buildings were thrown open for schools houses, and transportation and
subsistence for a time were furnished to the teachers.” This cooperation
was definitely approved by Congress in the following year, July 16,
1866, and provision for maintenance extended to two years from that
date. Half a million dollars was set aside for school expenses. Then
grading and systematizing followed, and the societies were stimulated to
greater endeavor. The efficiency of the bureau continued to 1870, when
the last congressional appropriations for this object were expended and
its influence became little more than nominal.
At first, and for some years after the close of the war, the teaching in
colored schools was mostly elementary. It was so from the nature of the
situation. There was no call for any other than the simplest lessons;
and after the Negroes had all been made free it was most essential that
a chance should be given them everywhere to acquire some education as a
qualification for citizenship. So the task of the Freedmen’s Bureau,
joining with the other agencies already in the field, was to set up
these elementary schools in all places where there were Freedmen to
attend them. These schools were made public in the largest sense and
free to all who cared to attend them. And out of them grew the present
public school system for Negroes in the South. It was at this point that
denominationalism entered into the education of the Negro. In discussing
this phase of Negro Education, it is noteworthy that one of the first
denominational schools established, was by the colored people themselves
in the founding of Wilberforce University.