I never gave much serious thought to the Civil War; I don't remember being
taught very much in school about it either.  However, since I was a child, I
might not have paid much attention to what the teacher and the text book
tried to  present. War always seemed to be someplace else in some other time
and children are very much into the here and now.   I can remember the very
day that my mind and heart took the Civil War seriously.  I was enjoying the
privilege of rummaging at leisure through a courthouse attic in South Texas.
Old records laid in piles everywhere....mostly because there were no
shelves!  That made the one shelf in the huge space attractive. When I
started going through those records, they dated to just after the close of
the Civil War.  They were all neatly folded and bound into stacks.....bonds
placing orphaned black children  with white families  to be cared for,
taught a trade, and  educated  through an elementary level.   Many of the
children were very young. The white families who took them in had to put up
bonds with the court to guarantee  delivery of the obligations to the
orphans.

It was a very sobering experience to  read these bonds and think  about all
the young black children left homeless by the war.   How was it different
than the young white children left homeless by the war?   It led me through
some very interesting thought processes.  Many people  were left homeless;
many a man was left with a family for which he could no longer provide.
Just read the pension applications.
In my opinion, history is mis-taught.  It should not  be battles and
battlegrounds; who won this and who lost that.  The history of war is the
history of  conscience, culture changes, the evolution of an economy through
destruction and recovery....which is what each side lives with in the
aftermath.   It is the history of coping and denial; of discovery and
resolution; of suffering and healing. It is the evolution of society.

 Everyone suffered in the Civil War; I dare say there was much that was both
right and wrong about just about every side of the issue. IF  either side
had been ALL right, it would have been easier to reach an agreement.
Reconstruction  was accompanied by much lawlessness, humiliation,
bitterness, pain, loss of dignity and property, and loss of homes for the
black and white and  homeless orphaned children both black and white. It
launched an entire race into poverty.  Had more wisdom accompanied that war,
perhaps some forethought and provision  would have been given to what would
become of all the freed slaves when suddenly they were without a place to
be.  It wasn't just a simple matter of the "owners" paying them for their
labor where before there had been no pay. Many of those land owners were too
broke to pay anyone for anything after the war. War doesn't know color!

This is not justification for slavery. This is attention to  a few little
discussed and perhaps overlooked  observations. While there had been labor
for the slaves, there was also  food, clothing, shelter and medical care.
For some there had been  enough reading to read the Bible; for others some
real education depending on the expectations of their "owners".  Black
people worshiped in the same churches at the same time white people did.
Read the church records if you need to convince yourself  of that.  Once
freed and paid for the labor,  all of  these necessary amenities of life
became the obligation of the  freed.  Many found  what the land owners could
afford to pay them as freedmen  was not enough  to provide  the provisions
they had enjoyed  as  slaves;  they were free but owned nothing, and their
ability to acquire it was extremely limited ;as much because of the  changed
economic system as because of limited skills.  All kinds of new
responsibilities and obligations came with freedom; but little or no
information/training for those expectations.   The insecurity of their
situation must have been extremely painful.   Added to their poverty was a
certain lack of affection and respect that many had enjoyed from their
"owners".  Not all owners were cruel and hard taskmasters. Many cared very
much for their black families. They took care of them in their old age, they
left them security in their wills, they provided  for their daily needs and
well being .  The war  was a painful time in history  and in man's
conscience for most of America.  Many a Christian person wrestled with their
conscience during this war; right is not always any more obvious than is
wrong.   The reshaping of cultures   also reshapes economy, industry, the
bedrock of culture. In this case, it required reshaping the mindset of a
nation.   Those are not academic terms; those are the terms of living!  That
is how we provide for daily  needs whether it be subsistence  or luxury.  It
requires bridges to make such wholesale changes. The war didn't build any
bridges. Reconstruction  may have been intended to be a bridge, but it was
sorely lacking in good timber.  Was it all that was possible at the time?
Who knows.  It may have been well conceived; but it is doubtful if the
delivery was equal to the conception.   It was all human.  Too often
studying the history of these events becomes a session of judgment making.
Without any history at all, can we evaluate where we are today? Where should
we go tomorrow?

Soapbox collapsed!  I had my say.  Thank you to those who "listened".

Loretta

It has always interested me to read colonial period wills  and even for many
years thereafter in which men provided pensions to be paid to their elderly
slaves and which will included directives to the heirs  to care for those
slaves as long as the slaves lived; some prohibited certain heirs from
inheriting or otherwise acquiring any of the deceased's slaves because they
knew that  descendant would not treat the slaves well; I have read wills
where men gave land to their slaves and grain and livestock, to set them on
their way when  the owner was no longer there to care for them. I read a
will where the deceased provided the entire estate  and a guardian to move
all the slaves to Illinois and reestablish them as free people.  Slavery
wasn't right; but it wasn't always  the epitome of evil either, which is the
light in which most of us think of slavery as having been .  If you read the
estate papers of  many people over the slave holding years, you get a much
different picture of the relationships that existed between  slave owners
and slaves than the one we get from our living culture.

Some of my ancestors were slave holders; some were "Yankees" who fought the
slave holders.  Almost all of my research has pertained to those ancestors
who came from the South....TN and VA.  In the estate papers of my gr gr gr
grandfather he left his only slave to his son, John. That was in 1846.
John  was adult during the Civil War and served.  Census lists show that
black family still living  in the household in 1870. Another black family
next door.  All the other families listed on the page were white.  John died
in 1888. His widow died 1907. When I found her estate papers, there were
accounts of her last year's expenses.  Listed in the accounts were
"medicines for the black family".    This was a family, black and white,
that went through  slavery, war, reconstruction and life together.  I
believe this is called RESPONSIBILITY.

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