Black Mississippians in the Civil War

In 1861, the delegates to Mississippi’s secession convention declared that “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest in the world.” Fearing that the federal government was about to strike its “long aimed blow” against slavery — a blow that was tantamount to an attack upon “commerce and civilization” — the delegates explained that secession was both necessary and unavoidable. Yet their desperate gamble to preserve slavery heralded the death knell of the “peculiar institution.” On the eve of the Civil War, the majority of Mississippians were enslaved blacks. For them, the war was a struggle a freedom. This presentation examines the experiences of black Mississippians in the Civil War. It reconstructs their views of the conflict and how they used the chaos of the war to seize their freedom. By rising against their masters, flocking to northern lines, supplying intelligence to federal soldiers and shouldering arms in the Union army and navy, the enslaved sapped the foundations of the southern economy and military. The presentation draws heavily from Union and Confederate military records, newspapers, interviews with former slaves and records of Mississippi’s wartime government.

Speakers Expertise:

Max Grivno joined the history faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi in 2007 after completing his doctorate at the University of Maryland. Dr. Grivno’s first book, Gleanings of Freedom: Free Labor and Slavery along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790-1860, was published in 2011 as part of the University of Illinois Press’s series The Working Class in American History. Grivno is currently writing From Bondage to Freedom: Slavery in Mississippi, 1690-1865. Dr. Grivno’s teaching interests include the Old South, slavery, labor history and Mississippi history.