Ira Berlin Research Articles

Unions, civics, and National identity: Organized Labor's reaction to Immigration, 1881–1897

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsCatherine CollompA first version of this paper was presented at the conference “In the Shadow of the Statue of Liberty” held in Paris (October 1986). I am indebted to Professors Ira Berlin, David Brody, Marianne DeBouzy and David Montgomery who read the paper and suggested some improvements.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867. Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States. Series I, Volume I: The Destruction of Slavery. Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xxxviii plus 852 pp. $39.50)

Journal Article Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States. Series I, Volume I: The Destruction of Slavery. Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. xxxviii plus 852 pp. $39.50) Get access Waldo E. Martin, Jr. Waldo E. Martin, Jr. University of Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Social History, Volume 21, Issue 4, Summer 1988, Pages 805–807, https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/21.4.805 Published: 01 July 1988

Victor Markowitz: In memoriam

This is a eulogy that Herb gave for his father-in-law. It is telling in many ways, connecting Herb's humane sensibility with his historical concerns and giving a sense of Herb's Jewish roots. Ira Berlin

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series I, Volume I, The Destruction of Slavery (review)

190CIVIL WAR HISTORY barometer of public opinion, perhaps there was a real chance for such a realignment, properly managed. This would challenge the current view that the culture of party loyalty was too strong to permit a realignment. Fermer might have considered this question if he had not overlooked LaWanda Cox and John H. Cox's classic study Politics, Principle, and Prejudice, which suggested that the Herald figured in Seward's strategy. It would have been interesting to see how close Bennett actually came to collaborating with his long-standing nemesis. This, then, is a most welcome and useful volume that scholars can read with profit. George McJimsey Iowa State University Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Series I, Volume I, The Destruction of SL·very. Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. xxxvii,852. $39.50.) One of the most ambitious documentary histories ever undertaken in the United States, the Freedman and Southern Society Project, anticipates five series with each including one or more volumes. The Project's first volume, published in 1982 and devoted to the black military experience during the Civil War, received universal praise as an extraordinary contribution to the social history of emancipation. No less impressive, the current volume traces slavery's collapse "under the pressure of federal arms and the slaves' persistence in placing their own liberty on the wartime agenda" (xxii). Selected from the voluminous holdings of the National Archives, the 331 documents (or groups of documents under a single number) in this volume range in length from a few lines to several pages and include military reports, affidavits, depositions, and petitions, as well as letters from slaves, slave owners, black soldiers, and politicians . The centrality of the slaves' role in their own liberation clearly emerges from these documents. Although federal officials at first maintained that the sole objective of the Civil War was the restoration of the Union, slaves had a wholly different understanding. Determined to make the abolition of slavery a wartime aim, they seized every opportunity offered by the military conflict to achieve this end. Several considerations , including geography, the character of the slave society, the extent of white unionism, the progress of the military conflict, and the changing policies of Union and Confederate governments determined both the opportunities open to slaves to pursue their own liberty and the form that their struggle for freedom assumed. No two paths out of slavery followed the same course. For slaves in the low country of South BOOK reviews191 Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, who lived on large plantations and possessed a substantial measure of independence, the road to freedom differed from that of slaves in the Mississippi Valley, Kentucky, or even Maryland. Regardless of where slaves resided or the conditions under which they lived, they chipped steadily away at their bondage by "taking help where they could find it and turning every loophole to their advantage" (334) . By placing their loyalty, labor and lives in the service of the Union, they ultimately succeeded in making any federal policy short of universal emancipation untenable. Even so, the destruction of slavery was an uneven, halting and often tenuous process. Just as a Union advance could accelerate the process, a Union retreat could reverse it. These documents also underscore the hesitancy and contradictions involved in making emancipation official Union policy. Caught in the crossfire of slaves and masters, Union commanders struggled to avoid being either slave stealers or slave catchers. A Union officer in Louisiana expressed his frustration by requesting to be relieved of duty because "fighting disloyal citizens" was much more to his "taste than settling the pecadilloes of negroes, creóles or thoroughbred planters" (241). Some Union commanders, such as Generals William T. Sherman and Don Carlos BeII, were either contemptuous of blacks or intensely pro-slavery; others embraced emancipationist principles and bent the First and Second Confiscation Acts in the slaves' favor. In the trans-Mississippi theater commanders such as Samuel R. Curtis and John W. Phelps transformed federal forces into an army of emancipation. Everywhere wartime experiences turned many common soldiers into abolitionists. All the...

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Series I, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery. Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. xxxvi, 852. $39.50.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Series I, Vol. 1: The Destruction of Slavery. Edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Pp. xxxvi, 852. $39.50.

Ira Berlin <italic>et al. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867</italic>. Volume 1, <italic>The Destruction of Slavery</italic>. (Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States, series 1.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985. Pp. xxxviii, 852. $39.50

Journal Article Ira Berlin et al. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Volume 1, The Destruction of Slavery. (Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States, series 1.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985. Pp. xxxviii, 852. $39.50 Get access Berlin Iraet al. Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867. Volume 1, The Destruction of Slavery. (Selected from the Holdings of the National Archives of the United States, series 1.) New York: Cambridge University Press. 1985. Pp. xxxviii, 852. $39.50. Louis S. Gerteis Louis S. Gerteis University of Missouri, St. Louis Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 92, Issue 1, February 1987, Pages 211–212, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/92.1.211-a Published: 01 February 1987

Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland during the Nineteenth Century (review)

BOOK REVIEWS179 Sfovery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryfond during the Nineteenth Century. By Barbara Jeanne Fields. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985. Pp. xv, 268. $27.50.) Sfovery and Freedom on the Middle Ground analyzes Maryland's transition from the last stages ofa crumbling slave society to the first stages ofa modern capitalistic one. Professor Fields's portrait of die former fits historiographically upon the larger canvases painted by Eugene Genovese and Ira Berlin; her portrait of the latter extends into a Border state the contemporary American Marxist analysis ofpostslave societies. On theone hand, Professor Fields offers strong, subtle interpretations and discusses at several points the ways in which her views relate to those ofother scholars. That is one ofthe most intellectually engaging aspects ofher style. On the other hand, the footnotes in this book verge on being gratuitously combative , and I can only hope that the many historians whom she dismisses will consider her ideas in a more generous spirit than she displays toward dieirs, for she has some excellent material to offer. Fields lays to rest the assumption that Maryland slavery, because it had to accommodate itself to the polity of a Border state and because it coexisted with a uniquely high percentage of free blacks, was somehow more benign in character than slavery farther south. Instead, Maryland slaveholders were nervous and defensive, clinging to power in an unrepresentative legislature, and prepared to impose their own version ofpolice order upon Baltimore. Fields also musters finearguments to illuminate the paradox that small slaveholdings (the mostcommon holding in Maryland in 1860 was a single slave) may have proved more disruptive to the lives of individual black people than large slaveholdings. The chapters on the Civil War in Maryland and the fall ofslavery there are firmly rooted in the records of the Union army and Freedmen's Bureau, where Fields has done extensive research. Many ofher insights hit home. General Benjamin Butler, for example, hardly a hero in traditional accounts of Maryland during the Civil War, emerges as a realist who understood power. He gave his superiors "the luxury ofbenefitting by his action while clucking dieir tongues in disapproval." Her discussion ofdie ways in which army recruiting among blacks broke down the distinctions among previously free men, previously enslaved men, and fugitives from elsewhere is deftly done. Less persuasive is her cautious treatment ofthe mercurial rise and precipitous fall of the Radical coalition that passed the 1864 constitution, then evaporated in 1867. That phenomenon, which fits awkwardly into the story as Fields conceptualizes it, is not adequately addressed. The strongest portions ofthis monograph trace the social consequences ofthe postwar growth of industrial capitalism and the trend toward truck forming in many ofthe areas where slaves had once raised staples. Fields's analyses ofwhat happened to blacks in the course ofthese two processes is outstanding, and her painstaking survey ofblack farmers in three counties 180CIVIL WAR HISTORY in the 1880 census yield impressive evidence. She interprets the labor crises of 1877 as a sort ofpublic announcement that a new social order had emerged and all sides in Maryland recognized it. James C. Mohr University of Maryland My Passage at the New Orleans Tribune: A Memoir of the Civü War Era . By Jean-Charles Houzeau. Edited, with an introduction by David C. Rankin. Translated by Gerard F. Denault. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984. Pp. xvi, 168. $20.00.) The publication of this account of events in New Orleans from 1863 through 1868 by a participant in those events, Jean-Charles Houzeau, accompanied by an extensive introduction on the life of Houzeau, is a valuable addition to the scholarship of Reconstruction in Louisiana. Houzeau was a Belgian journalist and astronomer of aristocratic family, who came to the United States in 1857. His Enlightenment beliefs in progress and the importance of the environment over heredity appear in his writings and influence his actions throughout his life. Residing in Texas when the Civil War began, he made his way to Union-occupied New Orleans in 1862. He soon was writing articles for L'Union and then the Tribune, newspapers published by free persons of color in New Orleans. In November...

Herbert G. Gutman, 1928-1985, and the Writing of Working-Class History

On October 29, 1985, hundreds filled the New School auditorium in New York City for a moving memorial service for Professor Herbert Gutman of the City University of New York. Speakers who shared their memories of Herb included a range of historians whose work had been touched by his—Ira Berlin, John Hope Franklin, Greg Kealey, Bruce Levine, Joan Scott, and E.P. Thompson. In addition, his family presented a scenario of visual images of Herb from the various stages of his life. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Cause and Consequence of a Union Black Soldier's Mutiny and Execution

THE CAUSE AND CONSEQUENCE OF A UNION BLACK SOLDIER'S MUTINY AND EXECUTION Howard C. Westwood OF THE NINETEEN Union soldiers executed by the Union army for mutiny committed during the Civil War, fourteen were blacks.1 Since the war was half over before the army began extensive enlistment of blacks, those figures understate the blacks' relative involvement in the most serious military crime. It seems strange that so disproportionate a number mutinously defied the authority that had become engaged in ending slavery. The first black to be executed for mutiny was William Walker, a sergeant of Company A of the Third South Carolina Colored Infantry. He was charged with leading his company in a strike which protested that the rate of pay to black troops was less than the pay to whites. Rarely have historians done more than note the event.2 More is merited. However risky it may be to generalize from an instance, the Walker story aids in tracing our society's stumbling advance from slavery toward freedom. Walker, twenty-three years old when he was enlisted in the spring of 1863, was one of the host of slaves who had come under Union dominion in November 1861 in the Port Royal, South Carolina, area.3 Early I am most indebted to Dr. Elaine Everly, of the National Archives, for perceptive guidance. 1 List of U.S. Soldiers Executed by United States Military Authorities during the Late War (Adj. Gen. Office, 1885). Blacks are listed on pp. 8-11. 2 Of historians' references, The Black Military Experience, 1861-1867 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), edited by Ira Berlin, is almost alone in doing more than noting the event. After a summary account on pp. 365-66 it provides some documentation on pp. 388-95. 3 Walker's age appears in the list of initial enlistments, Apr. 24, 1863, of Co. A, 3d South Carolina Colored Volunteers, (hereafter cited as List, Co. A, 3d S.C.) in U.S. Colored Troops, 21st Infantry, Regimental Descriptive, Letter and Endorsement Book, Office of the Adj. Gen., RG 94, Nat. Arch, (hereafter cited as 21st USCT, Reg. Des.). In Civil War Historv, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, ©1985 by The Kent State University Press MUTINY AND EXECUTION223 in that month a navy/army expedition had occupied Port Royal, roughly midway between Charleston and Savannah. Nearly all the white populace for many miles around fled; most of their thousands of slaves remained. During following months the Union achieved control of the entire coast between the vicinities of Charleston and Savannah, with lodgments also below Savannah and in northeastern Florida. Port Royal itself became a busy naval base for a blockading squadron. And, with managers and teachers brought from the North, the Treasury Department organized and launched a program to establish for the blacks a selfsustaining life of freedom on the rich coastal plantations. The program became known to history as the Port Royal Experiment. In June 1862 Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton sent Rufus Saxton, newly promoted from captain to brigadier general, as military governor, to lead Port Royal's orderly development and government.4 Employment by the army, the navy, and the Port Royal Experiment had opened great opportunities for South Carolina blacks. Walker, though illiterate, possessed unusual ability and found employment as a civilian gunboat pilot with the navy.5 By the spring of 1863 he and his fellow South Carolinians had left far behind their old world of slavery. A revolutionary opportunity in their new world was the enlistment of blacks into the armed ranks of the United States Army. Just after General Saxton's arrival in late June 1862 a military crisis in Virginia caused the recall of a large fraction of the Port Royal army. That, in turn, led the secretary of war, in a letter of August 25 to General Saxton , to authorize Saxton to recruit blacks as soldiers, under white officers, specifying that they were to "receive the same pay and rations as are allowed by law to volunteers in the service." This was the first time since the War of 1812 that the United States government had allowed any but white men in...

Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, editors. Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution. (Perspectives on the American Revolution.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the United States Capitol Historical Society. 1983. Pp. xxvii, 314. $15.95

Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, editors. <italic>Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution</italic>. (Perspectives on the American Revolution.) Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, for the United States Capitol Historical Society. 1983. Pp. xxvii, 314. $15.95

Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW

For almost two decades, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick have roamed the frontier of Afro-American history, blazing trails that others have followed. This book forges a solid link between race and class conflict in the twentieth century.---Ira Berlin, The NationThis fact-filled study is essential to students of the labor and civil rights movements.---David Kusnet, The New RepublicA fascinating slice of history illustrating important race and class issues that are still with us.---Library JournalBy ignoring the conventional lines between labor and black history, Meier and Rudwick have found an unexplored middle ground---the net of relations between the black community and white economic institutions---that shaped the working life of blacks in Detroit's auto plants. This is a major achievement.---David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Davis. . . an important work . . . one of the first to apply the nitty-gritty of social and institutional history to 20th century African American and labor history.---Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at ChicagoBlack Detroit and the Rise of the UAW is essential reading for historians of labor and race in America, as well those interested in Detroit's importance as a crucible for American urban history.

Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America

Journal Article Time, Space, and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on British Mainland North America Get access Ira Berlin Ira Berlin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 85, Issue 1, February 1980, Pages 44–78, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/85.1.44 Published: 01 February 1980

From Exclusion to Segregation: Southern Race Relations, 1865-1890

SINCE the appearance in 1955 of C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow, extensive research has been devoted to uncovering the origins of racial segregation in the South. challenges the traditional view that the restrictive Jim Crow codes were the product of the immediate post-Reconstruction period. Emphasizing the legal side of segregation, he argues that the separation of the races grew out of forces operating in the last decade of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth century. He has modified his original position, but the existence of a law enforcing segregation remains the key variable in evaluating the nature of race relations. Because of the alleged absence of these statutes, contends that forgotten alternativesexisted in the period between redemption and the fullscale arrival of Jim Crow.I Although George Tindall had in part anticipated Woodward's arguments, it is the Woodward thesis over which historians have chosen sides. Charles E. Wynes, Frenise A. Logan, and Henry C. Dethloff and Robert P. Jones explicitly declare their support for (even though much of their evidence seems to point in the opposite direction); and the same is true of the more recent implicit endorsements by John Blassingame and Dale Somers. In his study of South Carolina blacks, however, Joel Williamson, unlike Woodward, emphasizes customs rather than laws and sees segregation so entrenched in the state by the end of Reconstruction that he refers to the early appearance of a duo-chromatic order. Vernon Lane Wharton's account of Mississippi blacks reaches a similar conclusion, and it has been used to support the arguments of Woodward's critics. Richard C. Wade's work on slavery in antebellum southern cities, Roger A. Fischer's studies of antebellum and postbellum New Orleans, and Ira Berlin's treatment of antebellum free Negroes also question Woodward's conclusions.2

Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South

Ira Berlin, <i>Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South</i>