Places of Exchange: An Analysis of Human and Materiél Flows in Civil War Alexandria, Virginia

Thomas, William G.; Nash, Kaci; Shepard, Robert B.

doi:10.1353/cwh.2016.0071

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…Unimpeded by local resistance for the entire war, and occupied by ideology-minded federal officials, Alexandria acted as the vanguard of free labor policies to transform the South. By 1865, as we have seen already, Alexandria's Freedmen's Bureau had become the conduit for free labor contracting to northern-run plantations in cotton producing Arkansas (Thomas et al 2016).…”

Section: African American Mobility To the Southwest: Arkansasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chattanooga possessed a large territory accessible in one day's travel by rail (more than 146,000 sq. miles), while Memphis's connectivity ranked well below all the others in the distance one could travel in one day by rail (Thomas et al 2016).…”

Section: Mobility Through the Freedmen's Bureau Officesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, an inverse distance weighted regression calculation was used to interpolate travel time estimates for all areas. For more on this method see Thomas et al (2016). not seen him since."…”

Section: Mobility Through the Freedmen's Bureau Officesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By 1865, as we have seen already, Alexandria's 14. For details of the effects of Army Worm, see Eaton 1865: 36. Freedmen's Bureau had become the conduit for free labor contracting to northern-run plantations in cotton producing Arkansas (Thomas et al 2016).…”

Section: African American Mobility To the Southwest: Arkansasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reconstructing African American Mobility after Emancipation, 1865–67

Thomas¹,

Healey²,

Cottingham³

2017

Soc. sci. hist.

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Historians and social scientists have relied on contemporaneous textual accounts to document African American mobility in the immediate aftermath of emancipation after the Civil War, but they have interpreted them in widely varying ways. Some emphasize large-scale migration across the South, while others suggest that most movements were local and limited. This research tracks the early or “first wave” of African American migrants between 1865 and 1867 within and out of the South in an attempt to map the motion taking place after the war and to document the scale, direction, and intensity of African American mobility in the period between 1865 and 1867. The Freedmen's Bureau records indicate certain kinds of movements within the South, while our census methodology shows that there was more movement out of the South than accounted for in the Freedmen's Bureau labor records or previously accounted for in the historiography. Further, we observe two types of movement: short-term migration based on one-year contracts, perhaps returning to the point of origin, and another movement not always mediated through the Freedmen's Bureau that was more long term, but also subject to the freedperson's return to the point of origin. We seek to chart the process of emancipation over time and across space, detecting spatial patterns on an otherwise highly variable individual experience. No study has used the Freedmen's Bureau labor contracts to trace African American labor movements, and no study has deployed the 1880 individual census data to examine African American migration based on birthplace cohorts.

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Section: African American Mobility To the Southwest: Arkansasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mobility Through the Freedmen's Bureau Officesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mobility Through the Freedmen's Bureau Officesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: African American Mobility To the Southwest: Arkansasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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