When It Was Grand: The Radical Republican History of the Civil War by LeeAnna Keith

Author:LeeAnna Keith [Keith, LeeAnna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), political science, Political Process, Political Parties
ISBN: 9781429947589
Google: GZyEDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2020-01-14T23:57:34.886262+00:00

Having seized his highbrow booty, Higginson and his black regiment took pains to cover their retreat, consigning the town of St. Mary and several outlying plantations to the flames.24

Montgomery would also loot and burn, scandalizing the upright Bostonian Colonel Shaw when leading the Massachusetts 54th and his own troops against the town of Darien, Georgia, in June 1863. In company with Tubman, however, the Kansas veteran would execute some of the most exalted military emancipations of the war.

On the longest day of the year, June 21, the steamer USS John Adams bearing Tubman and James Montgomery (remembered by an eyewitness as two women sitting on an upper deck in chairs) appeared on a quiet stretch of the Combahee (called Cumby) River. They anchored at a dock adjacent to the plantation house of Joshua Nichols. Being quiet enough to be mistaken for a pleasure outing taking in the early sunrise, the mission advertised its intentions by sending out black men in uniform to spread the word by setting fire to barns and watercraft at Nichols’s and all the neighboring plantations. Laying anchor for six hours, the John Adams and a second steamer offered refuge to any in the area who cared to escape.

As the number of escapees mounted into the hundreds, the pandemonium of the flight and loading somehow tickled the funny bone of Harriet Tubman, who related to her friend and collaborator Sarah H. Bradford a memory of the event to transcribe for her autobiography, an account of a woman carrying upon her person three small children, live pigs in a sack, and a steaming pot of cooking rice.

In his own account, Colonel Montgomery emphasized the tragic dimensions of the mission, which ended with far more slaves awaiting transport than could be loaded on the little fleet. The grip of those not taken, actually, had nearly exposed the John Adams and company to capture with the approach of Confederates by land. When exhortations to let go of the boats had failed, the colonel turned to Tubman and requested that she sing. Raising her voice and her hands in a rendition of “Uncle Sam’s Farm,” a Hutchinson Family favorite, she inspired a wave of praise and emulation that freed the boats to dash away:

Of all the mighty nations in the East or in the West

This glorious Yankee nation is the greatest and the best

We have room for all creation and our banner is unfurled

It’s a general invitation to the people of the world.

So come along, come along

Make no delay.

Come from every nation, come from every way.

This land is broad enough so don’t be alarmed.

For Uncle Sam is rich enough to buy us all a farm.

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