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By Root 1242 0

war had ended, the white South placed no higher premium on any demand than the removal of the black troops from their midst. “Why are these savages still kept here to outrage & insult our people?” Henry Ravenel asked. The matter assumed greater urgency with every new report of an “outrage” and every new rumor of an impending black insurrection. “They were taught during the war that it was their duty to kill the whites & they cant learn now that the war is over,” Ravenel confided to his journal. “Their shooting propensities still continue strong, showing a tendency toward reversion to the savage state.” Finding that reports of “outrages” secured results, whites besieged Federal authorities with their protests and petitions, often with the backing of local Union Army commanders and Freedmen’s Bureau agents. And with President Johnson adopting an avowedly conciliatory policy, the demobilization of black troops proceeded rapidly. By 1866, most of them had been mustered out of service or transferred to posts outside the South. The nightmare had ended, Governor Humphreys of Mississippi seemed to suggest in his report to the legislature; the removal of black troops had freed the white race from “insults, irritations and spoliation,” while the ex-slaves were now free to pursue “habits of honest industry” and to enjoy the “friendship and confidence” of their former masters.109

Now that they were being discharged, the black soldiers lined up to receive the appropriate papers and their final pay. Around many of the camps, guards had been posted with orders to exclude peddlers, who were said to be lying in wait. “Beware of these unprincipled knaves!” a black newspaper warned of the “modern Shylocks” who sought to swindle the soldiers out of their discharge pay. But the black veteran had far more to fear than peddlers as he left his camp and entered civilian life. If he remained in the South, he entered a society in which the dominant population only grudgingly recognized his freedom, refused to admit him as an equal, and remembered all too vividly his service in the Union Army. To many whites, at least, he was a traitor and more than likely a potential troublemaker. As a soldier, he had been feared; as a civilian, he seemed no less dangerous. A prominent South Carolinian had predicted a race war if the troops were not removed; now that they had been mustered out, another South Carolinian feared the discharged black soldier would contribute his services to the agitation for land.110

Although the black soldier had fought to preserve the Union, he found himself with less voice in the government, in the courts of law, and in the work place than those he had only recently vanquished. “The great question with us is: Shall traitors to our country hold the balance of power again?” a black minister in North Carolina asked. “I give you the unequivocating answer, No! They shall die so dead, so dead, so dead.” Not nearly as confident, a black veteran in Beaufort, South Carolina, addressed an appeal to President Johnson, reiterating his devotion to the Union and requesting some clarification of black freedom. “We Want to Know Some thing A Bought our Rites.” But as the President’s policy for the South unfolded, J. H. Payne, a black sergeant stationed in North Carolina, found himself placing what faith he had left in God rather than in Andrew Johnson.

I remember reading an old history one time, where there was a certain king who had signed an unalterable decree for the destruction of a certain race of people; and yet, through the instrumentality and prayers of a certain woman, the great curse was removed. So let there be days of fasting and prayer proclaimed … among the colored race, and let them call upon the name of Elijah’s God, until the fulness of their rights is maintained.… O! that God would awaken in us a spirit of independence to ask of the white man no favors but ask all from God …

Whether blacks appealed to Johnson or to God, the results were less than reassuring. Not only did the veteran find himself restricted in his access to