The sheets of yellowing pages emblazoned with “Harper’s Weekly” instantly attracted me. During the Civil War, the newspaper was famous for its illustrations of the war’s battles, its wins, its losses and its politics.
Harper’s also chronicled the lives of enslaved Africans in its illustrations. As I asked the auction-house staffer for a look at the half-box of pages, I wondered if any would contain illustrations of them. In fact, there were several. The pages offered a history lesson through the illustrations and stories.
The pages dated from 1859, six years before slavery was abolished in this country, to 1873 during Reconstruction when the newly freed Africans were terrorized by those who had enslaved them.
Harper’s Weekly was one of the most read newspapers during the Civil War. Before the war, though, it barely wrote about slavery and took no sides because of the conservative leanings of its owners. Under new leadership during the Civil War, it tended to back the Union and its support of freedom for enslaved Africans. While Harper’s portrayed blacks kindly in some instances, it also slipped in some stereotypical illustrations, sometimes in the same publication, as one author noted.
Here are some of the illustrations and stories:
Titled “Educating the Freedmen,” the article accompanying this illustration tells of northern missionaries and teachers who went south to not only educate the freedmen but also poor illiterate whites. It talks of the progress they were making in “breaking down the barrier of prejudice between ‘the poor whites’ and blacks, which has been the chief obstacle to their education, and which will result into bringing the two classes into better understanding, and into a very general acceptance of both of the means of education.” (They didn’t have much luck with that.)
This story was headlined “The Savannah Duel,” although the duel seems to have taken place on the South Carolina shore. It was a confrontation over politics between Jackson Brand and Eugene Morehead. Brand was killed. The tragedy was that no doctor was present.
John Brown and his followers pumped fear in the hearts of southern enslavers. Brown and the men took over the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, W.VA, on Oct. 16, 1859, hoping to get enough arms to outfit a slave revolution. They were captured two days later, and many of the men were killed. Brown was tried for murder and treason, and was executed on Dec. 2, 1859.
This illustration is one of three front-page illustrations with the title “The Effect of John Brown’s raid at the South,” November 1859. The illustration showed black people ready to fight for the plantation owner. Since we have only the illustrator’s version of their response, we don’t know if they were truly ready and willing.
The article talks about a revolutionary fervor in Cuba and the state of the country. Half of its 1.3 million inhabitants in 1862 were “colored,” with 386, 500 slaves. The illustration shows the brutality and barbarism of slavery.
These folks were hiding from whites who had viciously massacred hundreds of black people in Grant Parish, LA. Some blacks sought refuge in a courthouse, which was bombarded with cannon fire, and those who tried to escape “were shot down like dogs,” according to the Harper’s account.
During the Civil War, about 179,000 black men fought with the Army and 19,000, with the Navy. They served in the artillery, infantry and in such non-combat roles as carpenters, chaplains, cooks, guards, laborers and more. Black women, who could not serve, worked as nurses, spies and scouts (Harriet Tubman was among those). Many were enslaved Africans who volunteered for service. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass embarked on a campaign to encourage black men to join the Union army.
Thomas “Blind Tom” Wiggins was a musical genius who became a famous and popular performer during the late 19th century. Born a slave on a plantation in Georgia in 1849, the owner recognized his talent and had him playing concerts when he was 8 years old. Blind Tom wrote his first composition when he was 11. Over the years, Blind Tom was hired out as a musician, and the plantation owner used much of the money from his concerts to help fuel the Confederacy.
By 1868, his concerts in the United States and Canada were averaging $50,000 annually. He went to Europe and became an internationally known star.
Africans were brought to Cuba starting in the 16th century primarily to work on its sugar-cane plantations. Slavery was abolished in 1886.
This illustration shows a fiddle player whose repertoire includes the Stephen C. Foster song. The illustrator has him dreaming of a different time when all was well and black folks were happy as showcased in the song, written as “Old Folks at Home” in 1851. I suspect he would have illustrated it differently.
