Doctoring Freedom by Gretchen Long

Author:Gretchen Long [Long, Gretchen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9780807835838
Google: K4zru7Dc5W8C
Goodreads: 13790968
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2012-01-15T02:42:52+00:00

In July 1866, Moses Camplin wrote to the Freedmen’s Bureau about his struggles to practice medicine as a newly freed black man in Charleston, South Carolina. Although this is the first record of Camplin’s contact with the Bureau, his name does appear in at least one other Civil War–era document. A biography of Martin Delany, an African American activist, writer, and Union army recruiter, described a meeting of “colored citizens of Charleston, South Carolina,” who convened on 29 March 1865 to draft a resolution celebrating their freedom and honoring Union commanders and President Lincoln.8 Moses Camplin, enslaved until shortly before this date, was listed as the chairman of the colored citizens’ committee.9 Camplin’s election as the chair of this committee one month after Charleston African Americans received their freedom bespeaks a number of aspects of his past as a slave and his view of what life would hold for him as a free man. Most obviously, his election to head the group shows his standing and respectability in the antebellum enslaved African American community. His chairmanship of the committee also indicates Camplin’s immediate investment in long-lasting and meaningful freedom for ex-slaves. Through his public leadership of the committee, Camplin showed his faith in the Union victory. He clearly saw his emancipation as a signal for participation in Charleston civic life. Camplin made an immediate stand as a free man and demonstrated his belief that organized groups, political awareness, and a forthright celebration of freedom were paths to political and economic power for Charleston’s African Americans. If some African Americans felt it more politic not to embrace freedom outright for fear of reprisals, Camplin was clearly not in such a camp. Indeed, as his letter to the Bureau showed, he was a believer in a transparent and liberal notion of the state, regulatory functions, and the practice of medicine.

The date 18 February 1865, a month before Camplin chaired the colored citizens’ meeting and a year and a half before he wrote his letter to the Freedmen’s Bureau, marked the reversal of Charleston’s racial hierarchy. Charleston fell that day, and Lee’s surrender was not far off. The date retained its significance for Camplin in the way he charted and remembered his emergence both as a professional doctor and as a free man. In July 1866, Camplin addressed the federal Freedmen’s Bureau with his problem. He wrote that he had worked as a “servant” in the office of Dr. Thomas L. Ogier, “where,” he stated, “I studied and practiced medicine without molestation.” Camplin used the word “servant” as many antebellum whites did to refer to a slave who was property. Camplin clarified his status in the letter’s next sentence, which referred to 18 February. He stated that it was “the 18the day of Febr’y 1865, when I received my freedom from the said Dr Ogier, and two weeks after I opened an office of my own.” In the opening sentences of Camplin’s letter, he equated his own background and skill with that of practicing white doctors in Charleston.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.