Sojourner Truth was an American abolitionist and activist for African-American civil rights, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.
Samuel Gridley Howe was an American physician, abolitionist, and advocate of education for the blind. He organized and was the first director of the Perkins Institution. In 1824, he had gone to Greece to serve in the revolution as a surgeon. He arranged for support for refugees and brought many Greek children back to Boston with him for their education.
Oliver Otis Howard was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the Civil War. As a brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac, Howard lost his right arm while leading his men against Confederate forces at the Battle of Fair Oaks/Seven Pines in June 1862, an action which later earned him the Medal of Honor. As a corps commander, he suffered a major defeat at Chancellorsville and his performance was of question at Gettysburg in May and July 1863. However, he recovered from possible career setbacks as a successful corps and later army commander, commanding the Army of the Tennessee from July 27, 1864 until May 19, 1865 leading the army in the battles of Ezra Church, Battle of Jonesborough, Sherman's March to the Sea, and the Carolinas campaign in the Western Theater.
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, usually referred to as simply the Freedmen's Bureau, was a U.S. government agency of early post American Civil War Reconstruction, assisting freedmen in the South. It was established on March 3, 1865, and operated briefly as a federal agency after the War, from 1865 to 1872, to direct provisions, clothing, and fuel for the immediate and temporary shelter and supply of destitute and suffering refugees and freedmen and their wives and children.
Forty acres and a mule was part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16th, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs, II was an American Presbyterian minister who served as Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction of Florida, and, along with U.S. Congressman Josiah Thomas Walls, was among the most powerful black officeholders in the state during Reconstruction. An African American who served during the Reconstruction era, he was the first black Florida Secretary of State, holding the office over a century prior to the state's second black Secretary of State, Jesse McCrary, who served for five months in 1979.
James Miller McKim was an American Presbyterian minister and abolitionist. He was the father of the architect Charles Follen McKim.
The American Missionary Association (AMA) was a Protestant-based abolitionist group founded on September 3, 1846 in Albany, New York. The main purpose of the organization was abolition of slavery, education of African Americans, promotion of racial equality, and spreading Christian values. Its members and leaders were of both races; The Association was chiefly sponsored by the Congregationalist churches in New England. The main goals were to abolish slavery, provide education to African Americans, and promote racial equality for free Blacks. The AMA played a significant role in several key historical events and movements, including the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights Movement.
Contraband was a term commonly used in the US military during the American Civil War to describe a new status for certain people who escaped slavery or those who affiliated with Union forces. In August 1861, the Union Army and the US Congress determined that the US would no longer return people who escaped slavery who went to Union lines, but they would be classified as "contraband of war," or captured enemy property. They used many as laborers to support Union efforts and soon began to pay wages.
Mitchelville was a town built during the American Civil War for formerly enslaved people, located on what is now Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. It was named for one of the local Union Army generals, Ormsby M. Mitchel. The town was a population center for the enterprise known as the Port Royal Experiment.
The Port Royal Experiment was a program begun during the American Civil War in which former slaves successfully worked on the land abandoned by planters.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922.
Charles Henry Howard was an officer in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and a newspaper editor and publisher. He was the younger brother of Union general Oliver O. Howard.
The Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island, also known as the Roanoke Island Freedmen's Colony, or "Freedman's Colony", was founded in 1863 during the Civil War after Union Major General John G. Foster, Commander of the 18th Army Corps, captured the Confederate fortifications on Roanoke Island off North Carolina in 1862. He classified the slaves living there as "contraband", following the precedent of General Benjamin Butler at Fort Monroe in 1861, and did not return them to Confederate slaveholders. In 1863, by the Emancipation Proclamation, all slaves in Union-occupied territories were freed.
John E. Osborn is an American lawyer and former diplomat who served in the United States Department of State during the administration of President George H. W. Bush, and later as a member of the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.
George H. Hanks was an abolitionist and civil rights activist and colonel in the US Civil War.
Linus May Nickerson was a Methodist minister who also served as Chaplain of the 122nd New York Infantry, a Republican delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868, and an Indian Agent in Lake County, Oregon before his death in Grafton, California.
Frances W. Titus (1816-1894) was an American abolitionist and suffragist who is best known for being the confidante, secretary, tour director, financial manager, and editor of Sojourner Truth's biography, Narrative of Sojourner Truth. She led important reform movements as the founder of a school for freed slave men and also played a major role in local and state suffrage movements.
Julia Wilbur was an American abolitionist and suffragist. She kept a diary during the Civil War and in it she records events of historical significance as well as everyday happenings that provide a picture into life during that time. She is noted to have worked alongside Susan B. Anthony to establish voting rights for women. She was an early member and later secretary of the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society (RLASS), which helped fund Frederick Douglass' newspaper.
Garrison Frazier was an African-American Baptist minister and public figure during the U.S. Civil War. He acted as spokesman for twenty African-American Baptist and Methodist ministers who met on January 12, 1865 with Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, of the Union Army's Military Division of the Mississippi, and with U.S. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at General Sherman's headquarters in Savannah, Georgia. This meeting is commonly known as the "Savannah Colloquy" or the "Forty acres and a mule" meeting.
