The Work of Reconstruction The Work of Reconstruction From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1 860—18 70 JULIE SAVILLE University of California, San Diego Mn CAMBRIDGE W W UNIVERSITY PRESS Published by the Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 [RP 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia © Cambridge University Press 1996 First published 1994 First paperback edition 1996 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-521-36221-0 hardback ISBN 0-521-56625—8 paperback For my parents Betty jase Saville and Alphonso F. Saville, ]r. Contents Acknowledgments page ix List of Abbreviations Used in Notes xiii A Note on Spellings xiv Maps xv Introduction I 1 Freedom Versus Freedom: Competing Visions of Emancipation Antebellum Field Slaves’ Labor: Regional Overviews Twilight of Slavery, Dawn of Freedom Rebels and “Rebels in Disguise” A Measure of Freedom: Plantation Workers and the Wartime Introduction of Wage Labor in Port Royal 32 Eluding the Confederacy’s Grasp 32 Inducing Wage Labor behind Federal Lines 36 Wartime Planting 45 “A Dollar a Task!” 60 “As Hard Times as They Has See with the Rebel” 7O Restoration and Reaction: The Struggle for Land in the Sherman Reserve 72 The Reconstruction of Work 102. Remaking Family Life and Labor in the Interior 102. Control of the Crop 110 Control of Supplemental Plots 121 Working on Shares 125 Holding onto Land and Time in the Low Country I30 Uncertain Harvests: Seasonalization of Agricultural Employment I35 The Work of Reconstruction I43 Light in August I43 Why Can’t We Be Friends? I51 There’s a Meeting Here Tonight I60 vii viii Contents A Perfect System? I70 “On Duty” in the League I77 “We the Laboring Men out of Doors’9 I88 Afterword I97 Bibliography I99 Index 215 Acknowledgments So many people have helped me with this project. To acknowledge their support is to reach the straightest portion of a long and winding course. At the beginning, there were the words of my Louisiana-born grand- mother, Mrs. ]ulia Jase. During my childhood, neither of us dreamed, while her stories unfolded about kin who had experienced slavery and emancipation in Rapides Parish, Louisiana, that she would be stimulat- ing an adult’s quest for understanding. During my graduate studies, words of scholarship and counsel from C. Vann Woodward brought new worlds into view, and in the process inspired a topic for dissertation re- search. My appreciation for John W. Blassingame’s insights about life and labor as a historian deepens with the passage of time. David Montgomery, who supervised the writing of the dissertation on which this study is based, remained a source of invaluable criticism, and the substance and spirit of his advice continue to enrich the meaning of the historian’s work. One of life’s good fortunes is to receive comments as thoughtful as the queries and suggestions that this manuscript has received at various stages. Harold D. Woodman considerately assessed three chapters with insight that proved crucial to my completion of the dissertation. Evalua- tions of the dissertation from David Brion Davis and Gerald D. Jaynes helped me see the subject with new eyes. Eugene D. Genovese’s rich com- ments on an earlier version of the book manuscript improved this study and inspired another project. The anonymous reader for Cambridge Uni- versity Press left me with much to ponder while suggesting how to bring this investigation to a close. I am grateful for the ending and the begin- nings that these remarks have made possible. Friends and family also lent assistance at critical moments. To Collette Willis Lashley, Deborah Anita Dobbs, and Gwendolyn Lipsey — wherever they are - I remain grateful for their ready hospitality during my first re- search trip to Columbia, South Carolina. George Heltai, Agnes Heltai, and Lucille S. Whipper offered their vast understandings of human affairs during my sojourn in Charleston, South Carolina. M. Nanalice Saville read the manuscript with a poet’s eye and a sister’s heart. My brother, Alphonso F. Saville, III, and my sister-in-law, Patricia Heard Saville, ix