South Carolina – African Americans – 1525 to 1865

SC Home SC African American History, Resources SC Slavery, Civil War

• Buying and selling human beings - examines slave trade from the shores of Africa to the markets of Charleston, including capture, the Middle Passage, auctions and cost, and the separation of families
  

• Everyday life - labor and living conditions ... describes work loads, accountability systems, rice cultivation, slave quarters, clothing, and diet
  

• Everyday death - talks about the constant presence of disease and death in South Carolina's slave community ... also gives info about African-American cemeteries and burial traditions
  

• In their own words - first-person narratives and histories of South Carolina slaves and ex-slaves
  

• Black revolts
  – Stono Rebellion - 1739 - the largest slave uprising in America prior to the Revolution - scroll down for additional resources
  – Denmark Vessey's Conspiracy - 1822 - recounts details surrounding Vessey's plot to overtake Charleston ... includes terms of Gullah Jack's sentence and record of Monday Gell's confessions
  

• South Carolina's slave population - includes breakdowns by year and explains the relationship between SC's high slave population and the lowcountry's unique suitablity to rice culture ... also looks at our slave population compared to other Southern states
  

• White opinion - collection of online letters, diaries, and books written by nineteenth-century white South Carolinians documenting their attitudes toward slavery
  

• What was a freedman? - meanings of the word "freedmen" before and after the Civil War
  

• Free Persons of Color in Charleston, SC, before the Civil War - everything from where they worked to where they lived ... also explains how they obtained their freedom, the competition they faced from white laborers, and the increasing limits imposed on them by South Carolina's fearful white government
  

• On Borrowed Ground - more excellent information about the everyday lives of Charleston's free blacks and mulattos from 1810-1861 ... explores social and legal distinctions within the city's African-American community as well as the repercussions of Denmark Vessey's conspiracy and the rise of the white labor class to power
  

• Mitchelville: Experiment in Freedom - begun on Hilton Head Island in 1862 as part of the Port Royal Experiment ... Mitchelville has been called "the place where freedom began" for South Carolina's Sea Island slaves
  

• A freedman testifies - 1863 - Harry McMillan speaks about black people's lives in bondage and their aspirations in freedom - emphasizes their desire for land
  

• The Freed Men of South Carolina - 1862 - conditions of Sea Island freedmen according to Port Royal Relief Committee's J. Miller M'Kim
  

• Brown Fellowship Society - Charleston social club - established 1790 - renamed Century Fellowship Society in 1890 or 1892 - scroll to bottom
  – Additional info - explains the Society's role in securing a burial site (photograph) for its members as well as the subsequent desecration of this site (called Macphelah) by the Catholic Diocese ... also mentions the Society for Free Blacks of Dark Complexion (later called the Brotherly Society), a similar organization which established the Ephrath cemetery for people of pure African descent
  

• Freedmen's Bureau Records - reports that include information on conditions, laws, land grants, and more
  

• Charleston's Free Blacks During the Civil War

• 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, Colored - United States - first regiment of freed slaves in the South ... combined with two other regiments in 1864 and renamed 33rd US Colored Troops
  – "Dats what dis regiment did for de Epiopian race" - Thomas Long, former slave and private in the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, talks about the meaning of black military service in the Civil War
  – "Reminiscences of My Life in Camp" - the story of the 33rd US Colored Troops, formerly known as the 1st South Carolina Volunteer Infantry, as told by an African-American regimental laundress who was also the wife of one of the soldiers ... incredible, easy-to-read, and includes photographs - scroll down for text
  

• 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Company One - United States
  

• 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, Company Two - United States
  

• 55th Massachusetts Burials on James Island
  

• 105th US Colored Troops - Charleston
  

• Court Martial of William Walker, 3rd SC Colored Infantry - United States
  

• Robert Smalls - a Beaufort slave who hijacked a Confederate steamship, disguised himself as a white captain, and sailed to Union safety ... later he became a captain in the US Navy and a representative in the US Congress
  

• Piecing the past together - the role of historians and archaeologists in learning about the history of South Carolina's "invisible people" – African-Americans
  

• Third Person, First Person: Slave Voices from the Special Collections Library - Duke University - bills of sale, receipt books, letters, and other documents shed light on the "life experiences of American slaves" - includes many South Carolina resources
  

• Excerpts from Slave Narratives - University of Houston - large collection of narratives and oral histories by ex-slaves from many Southern states
  

• Documenting the American South - University of North Carolina - online histories of both black and white Southerners - contains info about slavery and what life in the South was like between 1861 and 1865