Young Heroes of the North and South by Sarah Elder Hale

Author:Sarah Elder Hale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Civil War, Kid, child, teen, hero, Yankee, confederate, union, america, slave
Publisher: ePals Publishing
Published: 2011-11-29T16:00:00+00:00

Former slaves, freed by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, were escorted by Union troops to contraband camps.

Thirst for Knowledge

But most black children did manage to spend at least part of their time in school. Some worked in the morning and attended class in the afternoon. Young babysitters brought their infant and toddler siblings with them to school, letting them nap on the porch while the older brothers and sisters studied inside.

Some schools were very small, like the one organized for several little black girls by the nine-year-old daughter of a Union army surgeon in Corinth, Mississippi. Others were quite large. For instance, 1,400 African American students attended public schools run by the Union army in New Orleans. And a woman named Lucy Chase opened a school in Richmond’s (Virginia) First African Church that had more than 1,000 students!

Some teachers were African Americans, and some were former slaves. In 1861, Mary Smith Peake organized the first school opened by the American Missionary Association in Norfolk, Virginia. Peake was a black woman whose school eventually became Hampton Institute (now Hampton University). Many 19th-century and early 20th-century black leaders, such as Booker T. Washington, were educated there.

The subjects learned by these newly freed children were often the same as those studied by white children in the North: reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography. They used textbooks written just for them with names like The Freedman’s Spelling Book.

Most former slave children were very serious about their studies, although sometimes they were mischievous. In one school, the students confused their teacher by trading names or making up new ones every week. One student even called himself Stonewall Jackson, after the famous Confederate general.

But education was clearly very important to the freed children who were lucky enough to attend school. This was proven to one Northern teacher when she asked a group of girls, “What good does it do you to come to school?” One of them replied, “If we are educated, they can’t make slaves of us again.”

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