Blacks in Winston and Salem faced challenges during Civil War

The Civil War began 150 years ago when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor in April 1861, and commemorations will occur across the country as the voluminous history of the war comes under review.

The story of life for slaves and free blacks who lived here through that war in what was then the towns of Winston and Salem is much murkier. But the records that exist paint a picture of blacks who continued their work either for white craftsmen in town, on nearby farms and plantations or as laborers.

Many had joined the African Moravian Church, which was later known as Philips Moravian Church, during this time.

"It is difficult to know what the black members were thinking as the Civil War progressed, since they left behind no correspondence or written records," according to S. Scott Rhorer in his book, "Freedman of the Lord: The Black Moravian Congregation of Salem, N.C. and its Struggle for Survival, 1856-1890."

"What we know of this period is from the pens of white men. Nevertheless, their activities as recorded by white diarists indicate that they were following battlefield developments closely," Rohrer wrote. "From 1863 on, as Confederate military fortunes waned and while morale plummeted, they become more assertive in their demands. They apparently realized that the South was fighting a losing cause."

Small in number, but vital

The 1860 federal census shows that 1,766 slaves and 219 free blacks lived in Forsyth County amid 12,692 white residents.

In the Salem district that included Salem and Winston, there were 418 slaves, 10 free blacks and 1,894 whites. Elsewhere in Forsyth County, slaves and free blacks lived in such communities as Kernersville, Clemmons and Bethania and on farms.

During the war, some slaves escaped their white owners to join the Union Army or live as wards of the federal government after leaving plantations and farms as Union troops advanced in eastern North Carolina and other Southern states.

Others stayed behind on farms and plantations or in towns such as Salem, waiting for the Union Army and their liberation to arrive.

They waited for four years as the Union and Confederate armies fought each other.

"While the Confederacy may have been losing on the battlefield by 1864, slaves still operated from an extremely weak position, especially in Forsyth County," Rohrer wrote. "The county was far removed from Union lines, and slaves apparently found it more difficult to bolt to freedom."

Before the war started, the majority of white North Carolinians didn't own slaves. The percentage of slaveholding families in the state was 28 percent in 1860, according to "The Encyclopedia of North Carolina." Agriculture was the state's leading industry with tobacco, cotton, wheat and corn as the leading crops.

The census shows that there were 146,000 white males between the ages of 15 and 49 living in the state, according to "State Troops and Volunteers" by Greg Mast.

Nearly 125,000 white men served in the Confederate Army or Navy. Other whites traveled to Kentucky, Ohio or unionist enclaves in North Carolina and Tennessee, where they joined the Union Army.

Blacks served in both armies. After the Union Army invaded eastern North Carolina in 1862, four regiments of U.S. Colored Troops were later recruited among the free blacks and escaped slaves, Mast wrote.

In the Confederate Army, many slaves were personal servants who accompanied their masters to war. Others worked as teamsters, cooks and laborers, Mast wrote. A small number served as soldiers in N.C. Confederate regiments.

But that was not case for blacks who lived in Salem.

There is no record of any male slave escaping to join the Union Army or a free black joining the Confederate Army, said Kym Maddocks, the division associate for operations and outreach for Old Salem Museums and Gardens.

Church owned slaves

In Salem, individual white residents were not allowed to own slaves, Maddocks said. The Salem Moravian Church initially owned all the slaves in town.

As the years passed in the 19th century, individual whites eventually owned slaves, with the women doing domestic chores such as the laundry and the men working in the town's tannery or making pottery, Maddocks said.

Other blacks lived and worked on the Schuman Plantation, which was across Salem Creek in what is now the Waughtown community, she said. Many blacks lived in the town's Negro Quarter, which was across a tributary of Salem Creek. That neighborhood eventually became the Happy Hill community.

During slavery, Southern blacks grew most of their food in their own gardens, which they tended in their spare time, according to "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans" by John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr. White owners sometimes provided their slaves small portions of meat every week.

In Salem, the diets of blacks included corn, wheat bread, cheeses, okra and cabbage, Maddocks said.

Many black children played with marbles and attended Sunday school at the church, Maddocks said. The black boys and girls often played with their white counterparts as they grew up together.

"There was a lot of interaction," Maddocks said.

About 50 black adults attended the African Moravian Church, she said, but other blacks attended Home Moravian Church, where they worshipped with white residents.

Through their church attendance and spirituality, some blacks gained a level of acceptance and trust among the white Moravians, Maddocks said.

"It's more difficult for Moravians to look upon members of their church as slaves or as property," he said.

A month after the war ended, a chaplain with the 10th Ohio Cavalry Volunteers preached a sermon to nearly 200 blacks who gathered inside the African Moravian Church on May 21, 1865.

The chaplain told the worshippers that President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had set them free and that they would have greater responsibilities as free people and encouraged them to be industrious, honest and pious, according to "Records of the Moravians in North Carolina. Volume 12, 1856-1866."

Blacks and whites now faced new challenges.

"For all Americans, perhaps the greatest problem that arose out of the Civil War and its economic aftermath was to find a way to retain freedom," Franklin and Moss wrote.

jhinton@wsjournal.com

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