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A look at the origins and growth of black politics in the South from the days of slavery to the 20th Century

In late spring 1861, Harry Jarvis, a Virginia slave who labored for " 'the meanest man on all the Eastern shore,' " escaped in a canoe rigged with a sail and headed across Chesapeake Bay for Ft. Monroe. Brought before Union Gen. Benjamin Butler (who would soon declare fugitive slaves

" 'contrabands of war' " eligible to labor behind Union lines), Jarvis asked to enlist. Dismissed by the general, who insisted that " 'it wasn't a black man's war,' " Jarvis shot back: " 'I told him it would be a black man's war before they got through.' "

Jarvis was right on both political and military grounds: The war of reunion became a war of emancipation fought by an army that was, by 1865, 10 percent black. And one-third of the soldiers who occupied (if they did not entirely pacify) the postbellum Confederate South were African-American.

Like Butler, historians have often underestimated the contributions of black Southerners to the war and Reconstruction. Although few would deny that the "Negro question" was the central issue of the era, most political histories of the postwar South focus on white politicians like Radical Republican Charles Sumner, prominent black spokesmen such as Frederick Douglass and, of course, unreconstructed former Confederates.

In this magisterial new book, University of Pennsylvania historian Steven Hahn gives us the history of the South from the eve of the Civil War through the dawn of the Great Migration from the perspective of rural blacks. It is an awesome and audacious undertaking. Not since W.E.B. Du Bois' monumental "Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880" (1935) has a historian ventured to structure a political history of the entire post-emancipation South around black politics. At its broadest level a timely reflection on "the inspiring and dispiriting history of American democracy," "A Nation Under Our Feet" is more specifically about the creation of "a distinctive African-American politics during the second half of the nineteenth century, and about the origins of popular black nationalism and the civil rights movement in the twentieth."

Much popular writing on the civil rights movement treats the mid-20th Century struggle for equality as spontaneous, an organic uprising of African-American dissatisfaction fueled by two world wars for democracy and a deep sense of Christian righteousness. A growing number of historians, on the other hand, have argued for some time now that what we call the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement grew out of common black Southern traditions of self-governance and separatism. Hahn traces these traditions back to slavery and teases out the elements of incipient black politics in the antebellum era in order to better understand what happened after slavery's end (as well as what did not).

At the core of Hahn's work lie the links between the nascent African-American political arena and the overlapping worlds of black labor and community life. Rejecting the idea that slavery was "mere background or prologue" to post-emancipation black politics, Hahn argues that, "The quest for what may be termed self-governance animated African-American politics" throughout the entire period covered by the book, although it assumed different forms at different times. When slaves contested the wills of their owners (through disobedience or negligence); when they forged ties to each other through bonds of family and friendship; when they ran away to the city or the North; when they negotiated privileges (such as trading or selling products they raised on their "own" time) and then turned these privileges into "rights," they resisted the system that bound them and sketched "the framework for a politics of freedpeople."

Informal networks of communal politics became formal with the advent of black suffrage during Reconstruction. In the face of both white competition for black votes and white resistance to black political participation, African-Americans organized to protect themselves and advance their interests. Under the watchful eyes of the Union League (which advanced Republican politics and protected black interests at the local level), an occupying Army that included black soldiers, and a new class of Northern-educated African-American politicians--what Hahn refers to as the "shock troops of political revolution"--the freedpeople shook the pillars of white domination. During Reconstruction, black men held political office in every state of the former Confederacy. More than 100 won election or appointment to posts with jurisdiction over entire states, and almost 800 served in state legislatures. An even greater number (Hahn estimates 1,100) held public office at the local level, in counties, cities, smaller municipalities and militia districts. Never before in history, and nowhere else during the Age of Democratic Revolutions, was so large a group of previously dependent people enfranchised.

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A look at the origins and growth of black politics in the South from the days of slavery to the 20th Century In late spring 1861, Harry Jarvis, a Virginia slave who labored for " 'the meanest man on all the Eastern shore,' " escaped in a canoe rigged with a sail and headed across Chesapeake Bay for Ft.

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Kids History: Life as a Soldier During the Civil War

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Kids learn about what life was like as a soldier during the Civil War. What did they eat, how much were they paid, what was a typical day like?

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My day would start at dawn with many tasks that needed to be accomplished. We had drills in the morning and afternoon that would prepare us for battle. We also had to do chores such as cooking meals,fixing our uniforms,and  cleaning equipment.
Diseases could strike at an moment and potentially kill me. Since doctors had no such knowledge at the time, it made the experience even more dreadful and gruesome. It surely was a sickening time period for the soldiers and I. Well suited meals were scarce, and men had to hunt game to get more food. Income was also difficult to receive and was only handed out to a few men every few months. This was an experience enough to cause one major discomfort.

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In late spring 1861 , I was a former slave to one of the "meanest men on the Eastern Shore" . I soon escaped in a canoe rigged with a sail that was en route to Ft.Monroe. I was recruited by Union General Benjamin Butler as a "contraband of war". Unfortunately, General was not aware that the war would become a black man's war.