Black History Month: The Slave Experience for Families

Families before the abolition of slavery experienced separation and reunion. Slaves were separated from their families and were sold to liquidate estates, settle debts, and sometimes given away as wedding presents. Over 19% of all slave marriages were forced to separate. Males were mainly taken away from their families as often. There was a preference for young slaves as analysis showed that slaveowners removed 7 percent of slave children within the eight to eleven age cohort from their families. Another 14 percent of slave children aged twelve to fourteen were sold, and children in the eight to fourteen age cohort were involved in 25 percent of all sales.

FAMILIES WITHIN THE SYSTEM OF SLAVERY

Slaves and masters had varied perspectives on the concept of family. Masters had complete control over their slaves, including the authority to sell family members on the spur of the moment. Slave masters also believed they acted in the slave family’s best interests. Slaveholders sold their slaves for economic reasons, and no laws prohibited the dissolution of any slave family. Husbands and wives were separated, and mothers were separated from their children.

Slaves were often threatened to be separated from their family members by their masters. Slaves formed extended ties by integrating close relatives into the family bond due to the constant threat of separation. To extend connection and memory, slaves frequently named their offspring after close relatives. They dreaded the auction block and the potential of losing themselves or a family member, perhaps to the Deep South, never to be seen again. Slaves, contrary to their owners’ beliefs, had a strong bond with their families, and this affection extended to close relatives within the extended family.

Evidence of slave family separations became more apparent as the Civil War (1861–1865) concluded. In 1863, the U.S. Congress created the Freedmen’s Inquiry Commission to hear the experiencesForced of slave families. Testifying before the commission was Solomon Bradley, a former slave from South Carolina who had enlisted in the South Carolina Colored

Created in March 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau, became the first federal social welfare agency. Although the agency was not tasked with finding and reuniting ex-slave families, the overwhelming demand

“Noon at the Primary School for Freedmen, Vicksburg, Mississippi”, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed February 3, 2022, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/ slaveryimages/item/658 “Black Family, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1862”, Slavery Images: A Visual Record of the African Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Early African Diaspora, accessed February 3, 2022, http://www.slaveryimages.org/s/ slaveryimages/item/638

for reunions led agents to send telegrams, write letters, provide transportation vouchers, and, wherever possible, work to reunite ex-slave families.

In some cases, ex-slaves who joined the Union army reported that masters sold their family members as retribution for enlistment. A Freedmen’s Bureau agent in St. Louis complained that he received daily reports from field officers who had black soldiers requesting protection for their families. forced off plantations and became destitute. On other occasions, the Union army caused black family separations by recruiting black men and using other ex-slaves as laborers.

Poignant testimony from Freedmen’s Bureau records attests to the separation and reunion of countless black families during slavery and their efforts, along with that of the Bureau agents, to find and reunite family members. Although bureau records do not always indicate if attempts at the family reunions were successful, these and countless more examples illustrate how exslaves often turned to the Freedmen’s Bureau for assistance.

Bureau agents reunited Charity Cox, an eighty-year-old former slave, with her family by providing transportation. She traveled from Charlottesville, Virginia, to Shelbyville, Tennessee. The bureau issued transportation vouchers to a family of nine ex-slaves who journeyed from Mecklenburg County, Virginia, to join relatives in Washington County, Mississippi. In Richmond, Virginia, Bureau agents transported Richard Jones to Petersburg, Virginia, reuniting a son with his mother. Jones had had both legs amputated at a Richmond hospital and needed his mother’s assistance experiences forced.

Overall, although many ex-slaves turned to the Freedmen’s Bureau for assistance in relocating family members, most were unsuccessful in finding their loved ones. Time and distance operated against many ex-slaves seeking family reunions. Without modern communication, slavery broke the bonds between families.