The Year of Jubilee
George F. Nagle
Smashwords Edition.
Copyright 2010 George F. Nagle
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Table of Contents
Part 1: Introduction
Chapter Two—The Bridge—Thursday, 25 June 1863
-- Hercules
Part II: Rising Waters
Chapter Four—Legacy of Slavery
-- Death
Chapter Five—Dogs, War, and Ghosts
-- “Unlike the men, more ferocious than wild beasts”
-- Dogs
-- War
-- “Supposed to be gone to the enemy”
-- Ghosts
Chapter Six—No Haven on Free Soil
-- “For you know the Negroes are Slaves”
-- “Every Slave may be reckoned as a domestic Enemy”
-- “He has some friends that are freemen living in a cedar swamp”
-- “If not secreted by Negroes in Philadelphia”
-- “It becometh not us to counteract His mercies.”
-- “I notify any person that can have claim to me to come forward”
-- The Talons of the Kidnappers
-- “Behold…the natural result of fanatical and lawless legislation”
Part III: Approaching Storms
-- 1820s
-- Zeke Carter and the Pioneering Entrepreneurs
-- Change—1830s and the Second Generation Entrepreneurs
-- “Pursuing a Course Unwise, Fanatical, and Disorganizing”
-- For “the down trodden and oppressed!”
-- “From that time down to the present the cause has been onward”
-- Welcoming the “Anti-slavery Pilgrims”
-- Underground Railroad in Harrisburg and Central Pennsylvania
-- The Underground Road: To and From Harrisburg
-- Men of God
-- The Good Doctors Rutherford and Jones
Chapter Eight—Backlash, Violence, and Fear: The Violent Decade
-- “Plentifully besprinkled with blood”
-- “The law is an abomination”
-- Harrisburg’s Slave Commissioner
-- “It was time a fuss was made”
-- “This insurrectionary movement…not more than three hours journey”
-- “This nation will yet weep”
-- Ousting the Bloodhounds: Harrisburg Loses its Slave Commissioner
-- “Intense excitement ensued”
-- Doctor Jones Comes to Independence Hall
-- The Harrisburg-Harpers Ferry Connections
-- The 1860s
-- “The city is weekly invaded with new-comers”
-- “We can do for ourselves what nobody else can do for us”
-- Flags, Streamers, and Banners
-- “Like a thief in the night”
-- Harrisburg Blacks Prepare for a Storm
-- “More than ordinary vigilance”
-- “The Negroes…have become troublesome”
Part IV: Year of Jubilee
-- “The master spirit of the negro war effort”
-- Spring 1863: “Instruments in the Hands of God”
-- May 1863: “Blood is cheap and courage is at a discount”
-- 8 June 1863: “The gospel trumpet hear”
-- 11 June 1863: “Wars and Rumors of Wars”
-- 12 June 1863: “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow”
-- Weekend of 13-14 June 1863: “How Many Colored Troops?”
-- The Pianist
-- The Editor
-- The Engineer
-- The Refugees
-- The Patriots
-- 17-18 June 1863: “It is well to avoid all controversy”
-- Thursday, 25 June 1863: The Bridge
-- “The first hot breath of war”
-- War Meeting
-- Friday, 26 June 1863: “The Colored Troops of Harrisburg”
-- Saturday, 27 June 1863: “The whole south are coming into Pa.”
-- Sunday, 28 June 1863: “We…are even now ready to give them a wrestle”
-- Sunday Night: “Like so many burning ships”
-- 29 June 1863
-- “The Year of Jubilee is Come”
Notes
Preface
The American Civil War remains the central event in African American history. It redefined the place of every person of African descent in American society not only by destroying forever the institution of legalized slavery in this country, but also by weakening the traditions of state-sponsored racism that had permitted slavery in the first place. The impact of the war on American racial mores was made all the more powerful because African Americans took an active role in securing their right to fight in the war. Although far from being passive actors throughout the pageant of American history, the constant agitation in support of equal rights, most notably by African American abolitionists in the North, people such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Delany, Thomas Morris Chester, Frances Ellen Watkins, Mary Shadd, and Robert Purvis, served to keep pressure on lawmakers to advance the cause more quickly. When real change came, it came swiftly, due in part to the military exigencies of the war, but also owing to the increasingly belligerent tone taken by African American activists, whose mounting impatience in the face of bureaucratic stonewalling took the form of impassioned speeches and pleas, calls to action, and highly effective alliances with local white abolitionists, all of which served to highlight the absurdity of denying them a chance to prove themselves equal in all measures.
Moreover, the war was the ultimate showdown for African Americans against the most tangible aspects of racism. Each cartridge fired in battle was a furious blow against slavery, an uprising no less significant than those led by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Nat Turner. To each African American not in uniform, the campaigns of “their troops” became heroic odysseys to be followed faithfully in newspapers and letters. In Harrisburg, getting news about the African American soldiers was somewhat difficult because the only available newspaper that covered news of the U.S. Colored Troops, as they were officially designated, was the Philadelphia Christian Recorder. Local subscribers to that newspaper, persons such as A.M.E. minister Joseph A. Nelson, merchant William Toop, or barber Samuel Stanton, whose shop stood in the African American neighborhood of Tanner’s Alley, would have been the best sources of current news. The assignment of local man T. Morris Chester as field reporter with the Army of the James by the Philadelphia daily newspaper the Press added greatly to the available coverage of actions involving African American troops. Chester documented the day-to-day lives, activities, heroism, and deaths of Northern sons and husbands on the battlefield and in camp. The resulting portrait of African American soldiers was gratifying to Chester’s readers because it showed these troops to be competent and often brave, but not super heroic. Mostly, it showed them to be average soldiers. This was important because it placed their performance on par with white soldiers, and it did so without condescension or bias.
If the Civil War was the central event in African American history, the third year of that war, 1863, was the crucial year for African Americans living in south central Pennsylvania at the time. It was a year of monumental events, all hastened by the war to occur in quick succession. Not only was it the year in which President Lincoln activated the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Conscription Act was written to include African Americans, Governor Andrew of Massachusetts began filling the ranks of his two black infantry regiments, and African Americans were finally permitted to fight as national troops—those were all significant national events—but the most dramatic event of the year, particularly to local citizens, was the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania in late June. Taken individually, any of these events would have marked a momentous year, but with all occurring within a time span of six months, Harrisburg’s African American residents must have thought they were caught up in an epic endgame. It is clear why they turned to their faith and employed biblical references to give voice to an incredible surge of emotions throughout this period. Politics and sectional differences seemed insufficient catalysts for events of such formidable proportions. Such a series of events, it was reasoned, could only have a transcendent origin, as when the gods of Mount Olympus deigned to interfere with mortal matters. But this was wholly unlike Zeus’ swanlike dalliance with Leda, or Aphrodite’s jealous torture of Psyche. These events had a dark, retributive, Old Testament quality to them. Hadn’t old John Brown, even as he stood in the shadow of the gallows four years earlier, predicted a bloody dawn for society’s long night of crimes? To Harrisburg’s African American community, these were the events that heralded that dawn. The climactic battle at Gettysburg during the first three days of July, though it involved no African American regiments, was regarded for years by blacks as something approaching Armageddon. Writing from the front lines in Beaufort, South Carolina in late 1864, a soldier in the Third U.S.C.T. Regiment referred to the very mention of Gettysburg as having “magic powers in making the heart of every true patriot in the land beat quickly. Thank God that was won!” He went on to ask for God’s continued blessing to help them “put down this unholy rebellion.” The Christian Recorder published a letter a mere month after the battle, in which the writer declared, “The soil around Gettysburg has been consecrated by the best blood of the nation.” That same newspaper, at the end of the year, published a reflection from one-time Harrisburg resident and eloquent anti-slavery activist Junius C. Morel, who pronounced Gettysburg “a monument of undying fame” in resistance to the slave power.
The assault on Fort Wagner, although involving African American troops—the much-heralded Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts regiment—and occurring two weeks after Gettysburg, did not garner more than a mention in the daily papers of Harrisburg, but received good coverage in the Christian Recorder a few weeks after the actual battle. It never assumed the ultimate good-versus-evil mantle that African Americans continued to associate with the earlier battle at Gettysburg, but it came to represent something even more important: proof that African American troops could and would fight with the same valor and ferocity as white troops. By war’s end, the unsuccessful charge against the ramparts of Fort Wagner had taken its place in the litany of battles associated with black sacrifice, standing tall next to Milliken’s Bend, Petersburg, and Fort Pillow. The charge at Fort Wagner and the mass entry of African American men into the ranks of the United States Colored Troops rounded out the Year of Jubilee, not as a grand finale, but more as a coda. It was evident to African Americans that, despite the mythic scale of the year’s events, there was much more work to be done.
The stories of the persons in this book reflect the broad range of African American experience in south central Pennsylvania from colonial times to the middle of the Civil War. Beginning with the story of the area’s only well known enslaved man, Hercules, the rescuer of John Harris, and continuing through periods of slavery, anti-slavery, and war to the triumphant welcome home parade for the U.S. Colored Troops in Harrisburg, these stories introduce many additional characters seldom encountered in the standard local histories. From entrepreneurs such as George Chester and Edward Bennett to unobtrusive matriarchs and laborers such as Judy Richards and Joseph Popel, each person portrayed here played an important role, some more prominent than others, in the events of their time. A few of these actors on the hometown stage of history had unwelcome parts, rising from a position of utter obscurity to having their names on the lips of nearly every citizen within days. Rachel Parker and William Smith were victims of sensational crimes, while the tragic Chloe and the notorious Ben Stewart were convicted of capital crimes and paid their debt to society with their lives. Others achieved public recognition slowly and laboriously, garnered through their tireless work, humanitarian efforts, or selfless devotion to a cause. Men like the highly respected Stephen Smith, the scholarly William Whipper, and the iconoclastic Junius Morel became important leaders of their times, giving voice to, and highly influencing, African American opinion and thought. Less prominent but no less influential were the women who supported these and other men: schoolteacher Charlotte Weaver, the daughter of abolitionist and Underground Railroad agent Jane Chester, and evangelist Amanda Smith.
These persons helped take Pennsylvania and the nation from colonial dependence to a period of new optimism born of faith and patriotism. From pre-revolutionary freedom seekers to industrious merchants in a growing river town to unflinching color bearers advancing through a hail of minie balls toward the enemy line, each had a specific dream to follow. No one knew how events would unfold; they only knew that they had to pursue that dream. All the while, they sensed a great flow of history swirling around them, changing their lives forever. Those whose lives spanned the war years saw the greatest change, and they were justly proud of their accomplishments. They had saved the Union, unchained their brethren, and gained a voice in democracy. Before the Civil War began, few could envision the breadth of changes that would be wrought in the crucible of America’s bloodiest conflict. Few as well could have foreseen the level of sacrifice that would be required of every American. Perhaps old John Brown saw it coming, but even he, in his most violent moments at Pottawatomie Creek and Osawatomie, probably never dreamed of the carnage that would result from four years of vicious fighting.
The impact of the Civil War on the African American community is still visible today. Stand in the middle of any old African American burial ground and look around. A great number of the men who were of fighting age in 1863, 1864 and 1865 went off to war. Those who survived and returned to their hometowns eventually got on with their lives, but their tombstones, inscribed with the initials “U.S.C.T.” will forever reflect the sacrifice that they made. Still more may be hidden in forgotten graves beneath the grass underfoot, and though their final resting places may be unmarked by enduring granite tablets, their lives were certainly not un-mourned. In Harrisburg’s Lincoln Cemetery stands a noble marker, an obelisk, to commemorate those dead. It reads, “This monument erected in memory of the colored soldiers and sailors of Dauphin C. who gave their lives for the Union in the rebellion and to the unknown dead.” This is not a modern marker. It was placed by the still grieving but intensely proud mothers and fathers, brothers, and sisters of local African American Civil War soldiers.
From a modern viewpoint, African American history radiates outward from the Civil War. We can point to the events of 1776, 1780, 1850, or 1859 as important milestones on the long road to emancipation and freedom, and we can trace the roots of many important events that followed back to the war. It is important to be aware, however, that those enslaved persons, abolitionists, workers, teachers and soldiers whose stories follow were not aware of the grand scheme of history, as we now understand it. We have an obligation to them to try to understand their actions from the point of view of persons struggling with the great issues of their day. Slavery, anti-slavery, African American rights, the fugitive slave laws, secession, and the justification for war itself were all hotly debated in taverns, on street corners, and in homes. While most people had similar understandings of right and wrong, many disagreed on what courses of action to take. Ultimately, most people did what they felt they had to do. Some made poor choices, some made good choices, and a few rose to lead and inspire others. Sooner or later, however, they all came together on the road to Jubilee.
A work of this scope would never have been possible without the kind assistance of many people who are dedicated to the preservation of Harrisburg area history. I am particularly grateful to Calobe Jackson, Jr., Barbara B. Barksdale, Eric Ledell Smith, and John Weldon Scott for a treasure trove of Harrisburg black history stories, data, and information, and for clues to additional sources. Regrettably, Eric Ledell Smith and John Weldon Scott are no longer with us, but their legacy of local history books and stories continue to enrich our lives today.
Others who have contributed valuable information and have aided by understanding of particular areas include Tim Niesen for information on the Chester family of Harrisburg; Dave Houseal for Harrisburg firefighting history; Carl Dixon of Fort Hunter for a detailed diagram of the Fort Hunter African Burial Ground and for information on the slaves held by Archibald McAllister; Gregg F. Freyseth for a copy of Richard McAllister’s letter to Reah Frazier; Michele Garcia for photocopies and transcriptions of the Harrisburg 1821 Registry of Free Colored Persons; Janet Taylor for information on black Civil War vets in Cumberland County, and for copies of primary documents relating to the kidnapping of blacks in Cumberland County; Randy Harris for Lancaster County information, and for a map of the Africa settlement in Franklin County; Chris Catalfamo, of the Indiana County Historical Society, for First of August sources; and Christopher Densmore for a wealth of UGRR sources, data and tips.
I am also indebted to local historians who have answered my questions and have supplied resources on geographic areas outside of my area of expertise. These include Mark E. Dixon for Chester County area information; Scott L. Mingus, Sr., for York County information; Mark S. Painter for Mercer County information; Jan Slater and Glen Dixon for information on the enslaved and free persons of color of western Pennsylvania; and Fred Kelso for information on free and enslaved blacks in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
Historians who have supported this writing project for many years, and who have contributed moral support and advice, in addition to information, include G. Craig Caba for Pennsylvania anti-slavery and Underground Railroad data, information and stories, a tour of Gettysburg area UGRR sites, and for sharing artifacts of the Wert collection; Debra McCauslin and Alisha Sanders for information on Adams County enslaved and free persons of color; James Schmick, of Civil War and More, and Robin Lighty and Larry Keener-Farley of the Camp Curtin Historical Society and Civil War Round Table for Harrisburg area antebellum and Civil War information.
All of the facts, data, and information in the world will not produce a completed manuscript without the will to forge ahead and finish. For that unflagging support and encouragement, I will be forever grateful to my coworker at SciTech High School, Kevin Varano, but most particularly to my wife, Amy, daughter Sarah and son Jonathan. Thank you all.
George Nagle, Harrisburg, PA, August 2010.
Part I: Introduction
Chapter One—The Torrent
History flowed around them that year like the swift waters of the Susquehanna River at flood level. Caught in a torrent of events and carried forward with an awesome momentum that had been fed by slavery, abolition, and war, Harrisburg’s African American residents were buoyed by their faith. It was faith that kept their heads up, kept them fighting against the swirling eddies of racism, and reassured them that they would, like Noah, find their Mount Ararat. Although the rapid onrush of events threatened to overwhelm them, they were far from being unprepared; they knew it was coming. They could tick off each fierce storm that had heralded the deluge: Stono, Southampton, Christiana, Harpers Ferry, and Sumter. They had listened attentively to those who, with eyes cast toward gospel-gray skies, predicted calamity. John Brown, his dream of an African American homeland shattered, had warned everyone. From his Charles Town jail cell, on the day he would die, he wrote, “The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with Blood.”1 While most people observed a ranting madman on his way to the gallows, African Americans perceived a prophecy of doom for the country. Brown’s prediction carried special weight with them because they trusted him. This trust had not been placed blindly, nor had it been given freely. Too many others, men of high principles with dreams of moral righteousness, had taken this trust lightly and broken with it when the weather got rough, abandoning their African American friends to the storm. Brown’s impatience with lofty ideals kept him from such infidelity. He believed himself to be “an instrument in the hands of Providence,” and with such humbling responsibility came a solitary sense of purpose. The destruction of slavery was as much his responsibility as anyone’s. He believed it.2 He had faith in that vision. He was also similarly parsimonious with his trust, working mostly with African Americans, reasoning that white people would rather go home and read their Bibles than commit themselves to the bloody work of revolution.3 Captain Brown understood the nature of the evil that had infested his country, their country, so when his final words reached them, they listened.
Even as they mourned, though, they prepared. They could not vote, but they could petition. They could not fight, but they could work. They could not openly aid the weary fugitives from bondage that crossed the Susquehanna into their town, but they could quietly hurry them into their homes and churches, change their clothes, feed them, and discreetly send them or guide them on their way. All of this took faith, and it took a tremendous amount of patience. Fortunately, their faith taught patience. They had learned the lessons of Job, and so they persevered, forever preparing, forever agitating, and paddling steadily through the rising tide of history. Then it came, the thunderhead harbinger of change. Out of “the City of Washington, this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty three,” President Abraham Lincoln, citing military necessity, issued the document for which they had been praying. Freedom! Lincoln’s Proclamation made the long-awaited promise of freedom a reality, but not just freedom. It proclaimed slaves to be “forever free,” making it a covenant with destiny, restoring a right unlawfully deferred by American founding fathers for eighty-seven years. In this “Proclamation of Freedom,” imperfect and filled with limitations though it was, African Americans saw a familiar “instrument of Providence”: the ghost of old John Brown. It was a document every bit as revolutionary as Old Osawatomie himself, and with its release the waters surged and the ancient order began to erode.
It was appropriate that they gathered, at the start of this year of the Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, in a church to respond to this momentous event. Faith had gotten them this far and it was faith again that allowed them to recognize the hand of God in the document. The Bethel A.M.E. building on Short Street was humble in size, but it occupied a major role in the salvation of local souls. The Reverend Mifflin Gibbs oversaw an active congregation that included many of those who did man’s work by day and the Lord’s work by night, maintaining an active presence in that shadowy operation known as the Underground Railroad. It was work at which they and others in the city had labored long and patiently, Job-like, and the good reverend might have made reference to the long-suffering Old Testament patriarch as he offered a prayer to begin the meeting. Then the choir began to sing the old Charles Wesley hymn, “Blow Ye the Trumpet, Blow,” and the congregation joined in to make the words reverberate throughout the cold, dark alleys around Short Street:
Blow ye the trumpet, blow!
Let all the nations know,
To earth’s remotest bound:
The year of jubilee is come!
The year of jubilee is come! 4
It was a particularly appropriate choice, imbued with new meaning, and it set not only the mood for the evening’s work, but also the tone for the coming months. That night, three Harrisburg men, chosen for their erudition and piety, hammered out a soaring response to Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation of freedom, beginning with the bold statement “Resolved, That we, the colored citizens of the city of Harrisburg, hail the 1st day of January, 1863, as a new era in our country’s history.”5 From that brash beginning, they continued to write, very aware that they were documenting much more than mere approval of their president’s actions. Their words also had to reflect the anger and frustration of their community with more than two centuries of abuse and torment. It also had to warn of the imminent end of their willingness to abide such injustices. The task was great, but these men were well suited to it. Amid the congregational celebrations around them, they labored into the night to finish the document. They were: John Wolf, the schoolteacher who had sheltered the self-emancipated-slave-turned-abolitionist Frederick Douglass on his visit to the town sixteen years earlier, Samuel Bennett, scion of the venerable family known by white townsfolk merely as chimneysweeps and waiters, but who in their world were pillars of the African American community, and the Reverend David Stephens of Wesley A.M.E. Zion, whom fate would shortly propel into the vortex of war. When they were done, the words of Wolf, Bennett, and Stephens ascended majestically from the finished resolution, invoking the Goddess of Liberty, the omnipotence of truth, and the fires of freedom. It was work of which they could be justly proud (if pride could be tolerated, just this once, in the Lord’s house). By the time the final hymn had been sung, their resolution was approved, voted upon, and readied for presentation to the world. It marked an auspicious start to the New Year for Harrisburg’s patient African American community. Business accomplished, their exit into the smoky night air of Short Street was a triumphant one, but pride was tempered by the realization that the wooden threshold of the Bethel church had become a gateway into a new era, as they defined it, and there was much work yet awaiting them. Perhaps one of those congregants, as they pondered the evening’s events on the walk home, thought of the line from the popular song “We Are Coming Father Abraham,” penned by James Sloan Gibbons and published the previous year in the New York Evening Post: “Oh we dare not look behind us, but steadfastly before.”6
Mere weeks passed and another storm blew in. This was a nor’easter, originating in Massachusetts, and it looked big. It was heralded by earnest men sent out by the Bay State’s honorable governor, John Andrew, in search of volunteers for the first African American regiment from a free state. Finally, black soldiers could and would fight for the Union. News of this development was borne on the wind into the bustling African American neighborhoods known as Tanners Alley and Judy’s Town long before any of these agents actually reached Harrisburg, though some local men had already made the trip to Boston and were mustered into Uncle Sam’s service before any sort of official meeting was planned. When the meetings were finally arranged they created intense excitement, but also a tumult, as long-held grievances were aired. Too dark-complexioned to be considered for service to the Keystone state, constitutionally disenfranchised, and still generally despised by their European-descended neighbors, African American men in Harrisburg, as well as their brethren in similar meetings elsewhere in the state, paused to speak their minds before plunging into the unknown waters. After all the points were debated, the arguments were made, and the air was cleared, however, they still volunteered by the score, and if it was not eagerness to prove loyalty to a system that treated them as second-class citizens that stirred them, perhaps then it was a keen desire to demand payment for a two-century-old debt at the tip of a bayonet. The gales of this latest storm were forcing a change in the Keystone State’s political weather, driven by a torrent of tears for the fallen men of ’61 and ’62, and by the realization that white men alone could not hold back the impending flood. The rising waters were battering against the levee of the old order now. Harrisburg’s blacks sensed that it would not long hold.
No one could remember spring storms as fierce as those of 1863: the draft, Charleston Harbor, Chancellorsville, Brandy Station. The last squall promised dire consequences, as it soon became apparent that a butternut wave was surging north. Ever mindful of the dark clouds, African Americans convened an emergency “War Meeting” in Tanners Alley to prepare. The Reverend David Stevens, one of the three men who had crafted his community’s response to Lincoln’s Proclamation a few months earlier, was there, as were many more who had been at the Bethel Church in January. Unlike the January meeting, however, this gathering included men uniformed in the Union blue of a much-cheered Massachusetts regiment. Speeches were made, cheers were given, and “John Browns’ Body” was sung. A sense of exhilaration permeated the hall until late into the evening, making this meeting palpably different from all the previous recruitment efforts. Even the local newspaper reported it as “one of the most enthusiastic negro meetings we ever saw.”7 It finally broke up one hour short of midnight with the departing crowd, reminiscent of the Short Street meeting at the beginning of this momentous year, singing, “The year of jubilee is come.”8 Three hours later, the reason for the celebration became apparent as one hundred and thirty African American men boarded railroad cars for Boston, intent upon enlisting in the Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Infantry. It was a celebration of community and family. Harrisburg’s mothers and fathers bid a bittersweet farewell to their sons, and wives said lingering and tearful goodbyes to their husbands. No one knew who would be returning, or when. With a shrill warning blast from its steam whistle, the train lurched slowly into motion, carrying many of Harrisburg’s young black men away from their families and into the night.9 Just days later, the storm of the year began.
It began with shocking headlines preceded by the dire warning, “Latest by Telegraph. Highly Important!” Then, “Occupation of Hagerstown by the Rebels. The Rebels Advancing on Pennsylvania. To Arms! To Arms!”10 Governor Andrew Curtin, seeing that Pennsylvania was bleeding itself white with the loss of so many able-bodied African American men to Massachusetts, immediately put a stop to the hemorrhaging with General Order Number Forty-Two. It expressly forbade “people of color” from enlisting in “any organization of colored volunteers to be furnished from other states.”11 Though he would not yet give them guns, their service would be required with pickaxes in the defenses being constructed across the wide Susquehanna. All the while, refugees continued to cross the bridge into town, a trickle at first, in carts loaded with possessions, driving livestock before them. Soon the trickle became a steady stream, with more and more people on foot, carrying packs, leading footsore and weary children. Then the stream became a torrent of humanity of all colors: dazed, lost, suddenly homeless, with neither food nor money, so abrupt was their flight. Harrisburg offered the impression of safety, but many remained panicked, particularly the many African Americans among the throng. They told stories of neighbors and friends being herded south, into bondage, by gray invaders. Even more frightening was the daily progress of the Rebel tide as it crept closer to Harrisburg, sweeping aside whatever resistance it encountered. By Monday, 29 June, Carlisle was occupied and the authorities had lost communications with York. Suddenly Harrisburg’s promise of safety seemed an illusion. The local newspaper sought to ease worries, but when it quoted “military men of experience” who pronounced the fortifications on the heights at the western end of the Camel Back Bridge “the best and most formidable erected during the present war,” it provided little comfort to those who had experienced the horrors of slavery firsthand.12
At the height of the crisis, permission was finally secured to equip and arm two companies of men among the local African American men. Captained by Henry Bradley and Thomas Morris Chester, these recruits drilled at the eastern end of the Camel Back Bridge,13 but they were far too few and the hour was far too late. The floodwaters of history had reached their zenith for these citizens now, and as events thrust them further along they did their best, kicking and paddling, to maneuver, avoid rocks and most of all to keep their heads up, because their faith told them that the waters must eventually recede. This was the year that their unbowed faith and their violent history collided in one awesome series of events that would forever change their world. All that came before seemed to be leading up to it, and all that followed would be influenced by it. It was the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and sixty-three. It was the Year of Jubilee.
Chapter Two—The Bridge—Thursday, 25 June 1863
The bridge leaped from the dusty riverbank and soared into the air before settling down, clumsily, on a massive stone pillar that held it safely above the slowly flowing brown water. Then it leaped once more, to repeat the maneuver again and again, until it gained a respite on a large island in the middle of the river. The effect must have been wondrous to the people that now approached this marvel of engineering after descending the narrow and muddy cut that dipped under the tracks of the Northern Central Railroad, past newly dug rifle pits sparsely occupied by soldiers, to emerge far below on the western bank of the Susquehanna River. Here they were confronted by a bustle of activity as men uniformed in Union blue marched by, passing in the direction from which they had just come, and wagons filled with barrels and crates and loads hidden beneath canvas tarpaulins drove off of the stone ramp from the huge bridge onto the muddy road, forcing them to crowd along the side and into the weedy gutters of the thoroughfare to avoid being trampled. This frantic buzz of activity probably did not impress them nearly as much as the sight of the magnificent bridge itself. By now, they were accustomed to the mad scramble of people in the path of an invading army, having witnessed it in Chambersburg, in Carlisle, and in Gettysburg. It was as if the entire ordered world was suddenly plunged into chaos, like a large anthill smashed open under the iron shoe of a mule. People ran in all directions, some fleeing in abject terror, wailing with grief and worry as they gathered stray children and bundled them, along with some blankets and extra clothing, on the back of a skittish horse, while others hurried toward the threat with ancient fowling pieces at their sides, mustering whatever misguided notions of patriotism and heroism they could conjure up to mask their fear. Some ran toward the foe for entirely different reasons, driven by an insatiable desire to get a glimpse of the infamous “Rebs,” despite, or perhaps because of, the palpable threat to their liberty and even their lives. There was no order to this sudden release of energy. People ran in opposite directions, all intent upon their own purposes; but whether fleeing, fighting, or gawking, the effect was that of an entire town that had lost its senses to the panic of the hour. Indeed, the refugees who now found themselves at the side of a wide river, surrounded by hurrying troops and careening wagons, were victims of that same panic. They had been aroused by the shouts and ravings of frantic friends and neighbors in those towns, routed from their homes, hurried onto the turnpike roads with what few possessions they could carry, their children in their arms or hurrying alongside, toward the supposed safety of Harrisburg, whose church spires and capitol dome they could now see on the opposite riverbank, at the end of that long bridge.
It was a flight born of decades of fear. Awakened in the middle of the night by hysterical shouts and rumors of the imminent arrival of southern soldiers, they had hurriedly bundled together a lifetime of memories into a quilt tied at the ends, frantically choosing between the most irreplaceable treasures and the most necessary supplies. Some were luckier than others, having a wagon and a mule onto which they loaded furniture, tools, cook pots, clothing, and bedding. Others carried everything on their shoulders, loaded down with packs that nearly touched the ground. All, initially, hurried as fast as their encumbrances would allow. Men and women drove dangerously overloaded wagons as family members scurried behind. Children ran, fell down, cried, and were picked up. People shouted at each other in irritation and excitement, jockeying for position on the main road out of town, each convinced that enemy riders would shortly thunder over the hills behind them with revolvers blazing and chains at the ready to kidnap and carry them into Maryland and Virginia, all because of the darkness of their skin. Politics had little to do with it, although there was probably not a Copperhead, as the Republican press had dubbed those who opposed the war, among them. They were Unionists, but their motives for supporting the war effort had less to do with preserving the Union and more to do with destroying the hated institution that had once enslaved many of them and continued to enslave their brethren. Many knew personally the cruel bite of the lash, and the unbearable pain of seeing family forcibly taken away—sold downriver—never to be seen again. For some, these memories were as fresh as the previous month, while others had been breathing the free air of Pennsylvania for many years. Still others had never known bound servitude, having been born proudly free in the Keystone State, of free parents. Yet all were now mixed together, sharing a common desperate plight, keeping a wary eye on the last ridge that they had just crossed, listening fearfully for the sudden thundering of army-shod war horses galloping down upon them. But as mile after mile passed with no signs of riders, their panic ebbed and their pace slowed. Fatigue began to set in after a few hours of tramping along the turnpike, and most assumed a slower but still steady gait. Night’s darkness gradually yielded to the creeping light of dawn. Irritated speech gave way to occasional conversation, which was in turn replaced by the simple act of placing one foot ahead of the other.
For those that did not travel much, the transition from town to countryside was as interesting as it was gradual. The familiar houses built with their front doors along the main road thinned out as warehouses and factory buildings, and then stables and mills, took their place. The acrid smell of coal oil burning in the streetlamps gave way to the distinctive stench of the tan yards, and then mellowed into the mildew and musk of sawdust, hay, lumber, and manure. The turnpike became narrower and more uneven as it began to thread through a countryside filled with fields of ripening grain and white bank barns. The road that was hard-packed and smooth from frequent travel close to town soon became muddy and rutted. Here it descended through stands of sweet-smelling honeysuckle to cross a brook, shaded by groves of tall maple trees, then climbed back into the sun, past thickets of green canes heavy with raspberries. There it wound around an outcropping of gray fieldstone, damp with soft, green moss on the side that did not see the sun. At another point, dogs barked in farmyards and cows moved leisurely in green fields that were well defined by a peculiar construction of rails and posts known locally as “cattle high and hog tight.” It was truly beautiful countryside, and most of the travelers might have appreciated it more had they been passing through it under different circumstances. But today they were footsore and bone weary. They passed through a series of small towns along the way, some of which were little more than a handful of houses and outbuildings sitting astride a crossroad. After a while, they all began to blend together in the sameness of their weatherboard-clad walls pierced by a few undecorated windows, well-tended kitchen gardens surrounded by whitewashed pickets to keep the chickens out, and lines of newly washed clothes and linens strung out behind the house to whiten in the sun. Occasionally they observed a stylish home constructed of locally produced brick, painted to match the owner’s fancy and pierced with windows that were pointed at the top, like a cathedral. Even more impressive were the large fieldstone mansions of two stories, studded with multi-paned windows, with smaller windows around the doorway, columns of contrasting quoins at each corner and a portico in the front. But most of these houses did not sit with their grand front doors on the turnpike, inviting inspection like an honest working man’s home, but were set back from the road at the end of long lanes flanked by columns of trees and rubble walls, defying anyone who dared to walk up the long formal lane and knock on the large entrance door to disturb the owner’s repose. Many of them ensured their solitude with threatening dogs that sometimes chased the travelers and made sure that they stayed in the road.
They passed many people. At first, in the morning, the people on the farms and in the small crossroads towns took great interest in them, asking them where they were from and where they were headed and why they were on the road with all their possessions. Some of the weary refugees welcomed the excuse to stop for a while and trade their stories for some water from these folks. A few of the country dwellers were very alarmed to hear the stories of marauding rebels, but most took the news easily, either believing it to be a false alarm—similar news had caused such uproar in previous months, and nothing had come of it—or confident of protection in their status as simple farmers with no interest in the war. Very few expressed any sympathy for the travelers, although some would part with some bread and apple butter if the travelers happened to have a few coins to spare, and most only grudgingly allowed the use of their well, particularly as the day wore on and the novelty of seeing a family of blacks in flight wore off. More than a few of the farmers blamed the refugees for their plight, for the war, and for the general inconvenience and misfortune that was sure to come. Wasn’t the entire war, the farmers argued, about freedom for the black man? Why should a Pennsylvania farmer care if southern farmers wanted to keep their slaves? What was the sense of all this death and destruction for such a frivolous crusade? More than a few times the farmers punctuated their debate with curses and profane talk, much to the distress of the travelers. Today, however, was not the time to argue the value of freedom, particularly with people who took no pains to hide the scorn that they felt for this rising tide of humanity. Besides, the travelers sensed that these people were not expecting an answer, as they did not see a rational, intelligent human being under the layers of dust-caked clothing. They saw only a stream of weary men, women, and children that was increasing by the hour and would surely bring trouble in its wake. Already there were many hundreds of frightened refugees on the road, and all were headed in the same direction. They passed slower family groups, helping some that were in distress, and joined with others if for no other reason than to increase the safety that is found in numbers. They learned to ignore the stares, the jokes, the curses, and the insults that they heard in the towns, and in time the townspeople, too, simply ignored them as they tramped on by. They simply kept moving on, intent upon reaching a safe place. The miles passed slowly.
To some of them it was a familiar trek. They knew the land, the fields, and the barns, having journeyed this way previously on business or errands. Some regularly sold produce, meat or game to the vendors in the old market sheds that stood on the square in Harrisburg. A man could make a tidy profit if he got his cabbages to the greengrocer or his fresh fish to the fishmonger before everyone else got there and the price fell. Some visited the town regularly, to buy nails, or bolts of cloth, or a pair of shoes, and they admired its tall church steeples, its impressive courthouse and state government buildings, and its bustling rail yards. They knew the towns along the way; they even knew the long bridge, having crossed it numerous times, and most importantly, they knew the people that lived a few blocks away from the markets in Harrisburg. Good people lived in the densely settled neighborhood that they called Tanner’s Alley. They would find help there, among the fine souls that attended the Wesley church at the end of the street and the Bethel church around the corner, and among the sturdy men that populated the Masonic lodge there. That was their hope. So when the long journey ended, and they finally arrived at the river and found themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of activity, with soldiers hurrying to ascend the muddy cut to get to the top of the bluff, men shouting at each other, steam engines chuffing, locomotives whistling, and wagons driving fast and bumping hard along the road, they probably took little notice of the din. In front of them was the bridge that seemed to stretch forever as it undulated as if alive, uncoiling snake-like, across the wide river. It rose from the piers and then fell in the middle, as if the span was too much to bear, yet it spewed forth columns of armed men, officers on horses, wagons of supplies, all without creaks and groans or swaying corridors or collapsing beams. It certainly seemed safe enough. If the bridge, with its truss-and-beam wavelike construction, inspired these refugees to see it as a living thing, they would only be following tradition. The citizens of Harrisburg had long ago imagined an exotic beast in its numerous humps, nicknaming this vital link to the west shore of the Susquehanna River the “Camel Back” Bridge.
The people who were preparing to cross this three-quarter mile-long construction were African American refugees from throughout the Cumberland Valley.14 They, along with many white refugees, had been arriving at Harrisburg for several days now. At first there were only a few, arriving in small groups by wagon or on horseback, many loaded with provisions and valuables, including livestock, which they were trying to keep out of the hands of foraging Confederate soldiers. Some were farmhands, leading horses and mules that belonged to white employers. Others were hired teamsters who were driving wagons loaded with merchandise quickly unloaded from general stores in Carlisle, Mechanicsburg, and New Cumberland. Many of these earlier arrivals did not linger in Harrisburg, but paused in town only long enough to rest themselves and their team before striking out for points farther east. They did not stand out among the increasing tide of persons, mostly white merchants and farmers, who were beginning to appear in town with droves of horses, the entire stock of their business in their wagons and with rumors of invasion on their lips. But as those dread rumors turned into sensational headlines in the local newspapers, the tide of humanity that was being disgorged from the bridge onto the capital city’s Front Street began to include more and more African Americans whose motivation to flee had nothing to do with protecting possessions and everything to do with preserving their freedom.
The bridge itself represented more than just a means of crossing a wide but shallow river. It was a link to a safe haven. As the refugees ascended the well worn stone ramp that led to the entrance of the first part of the bridge—architect and accomplished bridge builder Theodore Burr had designed it in two sections, each crossing from an opposite shore to meet on Forster’s Island, in the middle of the river—their attention was probably riveted upon completing their long and tiring journey in the perceived safety of Pennsylvania’s capital city. That feeling of safety may have been bolstered by the sight of so many armed troops, cannons and impressive looking rifle pits that they had passed along the road that circumvented Hummel Hill, the heights that towered over the bridge, and on which was situated the newly designated Fort Washington, the destination for those same soldiers and cannons. Even if they knew nothing of cannons and rifle pits, they may have taken comfort in the wide expanse of the Susquehanna River flowing between them and any invading Confederates. It was about three quarters of a mile wide at this point, and to civilians it seemed to constitute a formidable water obstacle to any military maneuvering. But what they might not have known was how shallow this river was. The western side was so low that rocks could be observed sticking out of the water, and the eastern side was not much more than two feet in depth.15
If the safety aspect proved to be illusory, the symbolism of the Camel Back Bridge as a means to gain and keep freedom was very real, especially to African Americans. Fugitive slaves had been crossing this same bridge for decades in their flight from bondage. One of many routes of the Underground Railroad—the surreptitious network of anti-slavery activists that helped fugitive slaves gain their freedom—ran from Carlisle to Harrisburg along the turnpike road and across the bridge. Slave catchers often stationed themselves near the bridge to observe the comings and goings of African Americans and used the bridge as an escape route to hustle captured blacks to the west shore side, where they were removed from the easy reach of those in Harrisburg’s African American community—and there were many in that community—who would come to their aid. One such attempted kidnapping occurred in September 1849 when some fugitives, a family of five, arrived in Harrisburg after a long flight out of bondage. They succeeded in passing safely into the city, where they found refuge, but several days later one of the men in the family was observed by two slave catchers who were scouting out the neighborhoods near the bridge. The North Star, a newspaper published in Rochester, New York by escaped-slave-turned-abolition-activist Frederick Douglass, picked up the story and reported what happened next: “On Saturday the 29th, inst, as one of their number was passing along Front street on the river bank, he was pursued by two men, and after a considerable chase they overtook him, and endeavored to get him to the bridge. Fortunately, two colored men observing the chase, joined the parties, and effected the release of the fugitive, his pursuers making good their escape across the river.”16 Had the Harrisburg men not come to the aid of this fugitive in such a timely manner, he would have been quickly carried by his captors through the dark bridge to the other side of the river, probably to a waiting carriage for a ride back to enslavement. In this incident, the bridge marked a clear division between freedom and a return to slavery.
That distinction was not always so tangible, particularly in the decades when slavery was common throughout the commonwealth, a period that ran from colonial times through the 1830s. Locally, slaves could be found in Dauphin, Cumberland, York, Lebanon, Lancaster, Adams, and Perry counties some fifty years after the commonwealth passed legislation to end it. Slavery was coming to an end by that time, though, and slaves mixed freely with free blacks in the larger towns of all these counties. Toward the end of that era, Harrisburg was beginning to gain a sizable free black community, and only then could be seen as a possible destination for freedom seekers. Fugitives knew that they could count on their free brethren to provide food, shelter, new clothes, and most of all the anonymity that a large town could offer by allowing new arrivals to blend in with the African American populace. The local black community also secured housing and jobs for these new arrivals with local employers, and many persons who were formerly enslaved settled down in this welcoming town, to a newfound life of freedom. State laws friendly to fugitive slaves provided a degree of comfort, and the Mason-Dixon Line came to represent, to many freedom seekers, the line between freedom and bondage. The intervening counties of York, Adams, and Cumberland provided an extra buffer zone bordered by the Susquehanna River. That line of safety, delineated by the river, was temporarily erased, however, after the passage of the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, when most of the guarantees against kidnapping and assurances of personal liberty were taken away by Congress. Liberty’s border was again in flux. Sometimes freedom and the lines that defined it were as difficult to see as the tiny dot of light at the end of Theodore Burr’s long wooden bridge.
Freedom on this day, particularly to the African American refugees that ventured onto the wooden floor joists of Mr. Burr’s most famous covered bridge, meant escaping the invading troops of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The specific troops that threatened their liberty were elements of Brigadier General Albert Gallatin Jenkins’ Virginia Cavalry Brigade that had swept into Chambersburg the previous week and had since been terrorizing the countryside as they drew steadily closer. In front of the marauding southerners were Union soldiers in full retreat. On Monday, 15 June, fifty army wagons under the command of Colonel A. T. McReynolds rolled through Greencastle in Franklin County, a vestige of the scattered garrison of Brigadier General Robert Milroy in Winchester, Virginia. Milroy’s command, consisting of about 7,000 men, had been overrun by a Confederate force of more than 12,000 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell. Ewell’s Second Corps had been ordered to clear the Shenandoah Valley of all Union troops, which they did easily, in preparation for Lee’s planned invasion of Pennsylvania. Milroy’s garrison was outnumbered and in full retreat, attempting to reach Charles Town, Virginia, when a night flanking maneuver by Major General Edward Johnson’s division cut them off on the morning of 15 June. Union losses were more than 4400, including 2400 who surrendered, while the Confederates lost less than 300 men.17 McReynolds’ wagon train, the remnants of his garrison at Berrysburg, was driven by tired, battle-shocked men who had just barely escaped from Ewell’s encirclement, and who were desperately trying to reach Harrisburg. General Milroy had also escaped, and passed with some other survivors through Carlisle a week after the fiasco on the fifteenth, arriving in the county seat of Cumberland on Tuesday the twenty-third, just two days before this group of refugees reached the bridge. Their headlong and breathless flight had been triggered by the reports from the military men that Confederate troops were not far behind.18