The Reconstruction Period

Though not as vast as Special Collections material on black life during slavery, items at Duke concerning African-American life during Reconstruction are also too voluminous to list here. The material listed below touches on major themes from the period, suggesting the shape of the collection as a whole. Black mobility, African-American political activity, the transition to wage and contract labor, white violence and black response are a few of the areas represented in the collections. The Davis and Miller guide cites many other relevant materials.

A - F | G - Z

James Chaplin Beecher Papers. 2 items and 1 volume

Collection contains the journal of James Beecher, Freedmen's Bureau agent in Charleston, South Carolina. Volume contains summaries of complaints brought to him by various freedmen. Material documents the transition from slave to wage labor undergone by many black southerners.

John Emory Bryant Papers. 1,818 items and 40 volumes

Personal and political papers of John Emory Bryant. Correspondence from his tenure as a solider in the 8th Maine volunteers describes black religious practices and the organization of slaves during an owner's absence. In 1865, Bryant worked as an agent in the Freedmen's Bureau in Augusta, Georgia. His letterbook and his wife's journal of 1865-1866 outline the work of a bureau agent and speak to the chaos and destitution surrounding those ex-slaves who flooded Augusta in the wake of the war. Included in the collection are a series of letters from Henry McNeal Turner, black Republican later noted as a bishop of the African Methodist church and as a staunch emigrationist. Also included are the correspondence, letterbook, and scrapbook of William Anderson Pledger, a black Republican and educator.

Cronly Family Papers. 1,962 items and 66 volumes

Personal and financial papers of the Cronly family of Wilmington, North Carolina. Jane M. Cronly's short stories and memoirs are devoted in large part to her family's relationship with their slaves, both before and after emancipation. Also included are two small volumes dealing with the 1898 Wilmington race riot.

Henry Daniels Papers. 1 volume

Records of Freedmen's Bureau in Brunswick County, Virginia, including lists of former slaves who worked on a government farm and drew federal assistance. The collection also contains contracts between black workers and white employers.

Samuel Fuqua Account Book. 1 volume

An executor's records of settlements of estates, household expenses, and labor. Includes a written agreement between a Virginia planter and his slaves regarding their continued service after the general emancipation. Briefly noted are former slaves -- both men and women -- who had "absented themselves" from the plantation without permission.

A - F | G - Z

George Gage Papers. 2 items and 4 volumes

Letterbooks of George Gage and the journal of his wife Sarah Marshall Ely Gage. Sarah Gage's journal contains minutes of the Freedmen's Home Relief Association of Lambertville, New Jersey, for which Sarah was secretary in 1864. The journal also described Sarah's journey south to teach at a Freedmen's Bureau school in Beaufort, South Carolina (1866-1867).

Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick Papers. 6,033 items and four volumes

Personal and business correspondence of Benjamin Sherwood Hedrick, professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1854-1856, and examiner in the U.S. Patent Office, Washington D.C., 1861-1886. University officials expelled Hedrick for his views on slavery and he was forced to leave the state in 1856. Included in the collection are the letters of Mary Ellen Thompson, Hedrick's wife, who writes to him describing the state of affairs in Chapel Hill following the Civil War. She notes the self-activity of black women and men as it concerned party politics, suffrage, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Edward W. Kinsley Papers. 109 items

Letters of a Boston businessman during and after the Civil War. Kinsley discusses black troops stationed in the South, particularly the 55th Massachusetts regiment in South Carolina and Georgia, but with mention of the 54th Massachusetts and the 35th. One item touches on reactions to a black public safety officer in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

William George Matton Papers. 4 items

Papers of English-born Methodist minister William George Matton. After the Civil War, Matton moved to North Carolina from New York to further the ministry of the Methodist Church North. Among other things, his detailed memoirs comment on relations between black and white church members, speak of a visit to Charlotte's black Calvary church, and describe the ordination of a black minister.

William C. Russel Papers. 29 items

Papers of a Massachusetts abolitionists. In 1864 Russel moved his family to Tennessee to manage a plantation run by former slaves. The letters of Russel's daughter Lucy describe her experiences teaching former slaves in her new home.

Manchester Ward Weld Papers. 1 item and 1 volume

Volume contains a compendium of lawsuits and cases aired before agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, 1865-1868. Among the disputes are the suits of black men to recover their wives from ex-slaveholders who refused to set the women free.

Last updated October 2001