The Civil War era was not only a political and social trial for the nation but a religious trial for the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in the United States. Several faiths, such as the Mennonites and Brethren, demanded pacifism of their members, but the most prominent pacifist sect in mid-19th-century America were the Friends. The Friends had come to America from England in the 17th century seeking to escape Crown persecution.
In the United States, though some Friends held slaves, most did not, and the meetings (congregations) soon came to hold that slavery was incompatible with the religion’s emphasis on universal brotherhood. In 1754 the Friends became the first religious group to take a stand against slavery by formally prohibiting their members from buying or selling slaves. Friends were instrumental in establishing many antislavery organizations, including the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Friends were a majority in many abolitionist organizations by the 19th century. In particular, 40 percent of all female abolitionists were Friends, including Lucretia Mott and Angelina and Sarah Grimke. In addition to pressing for abolition, Friends promoted the Underground Railroad and the names of Friends safe houses circulated amongst the slave community.
Despite their antislavery sentiments, the Civil War posed a dilemma to the Friends, who were caught between their antiviolence teachings and their stalwart support of antislavery. Even though the Union’s war aims appealed to their idea of universal brotherhood, the decision to take up arms with the intent of committing violence upon fellow humans was more than most Friends could bear. For Friends, one evil could not be cured by another, and war, even in the service of a “just cause” went against the faith’s fundamental tenets of nonviolence. Thus, during the Civil War, Friends became America’s best-known conscientious objectors. In both the North and the South, Friends sought exemptions from military service when draft laws threatened to force them into uniform. Both Northern and Southern governments were fundamentally sympathetic to the conscientious objector’s plight, but neither government would grant blanket exemptions from service for Friends. At various times, both the North and the South allowed conscientious objectors like the Friends, if drafted, to provide a substitute, pay a commutation fee, or volunteer for nonmilitary duty, such as hospital service (the Union offered the option of serving draft time in the South assisting and educating the newly freed slaves). Some Friends accepted these options as viable and provided essential services during the duration of the war.
Despite these allowances, many leaders of the Friends considered any connection with the war effort corrupt. There were, however, both regional and age splits over the war within the Society of Friends. Southern Friends (numbering roughly 10,000 at the outset of hostilities—most of whom lived in North Carolina), so long as they did not hinder the Southern war effort, found generally kindly disposed state and national officials willing to grant exemptions from service. Some Confederate leaders went so far as to concede that Friend farmers left to till their fields were as valuable to the Southern cause as any soldiers.
The Union was home to the majority of Friends, with 200,000 members in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Indiana. Of this Northern Friend population, relatively few broke with church doctrine and served in the war, but a significant number did. Generally, younger Friends volunteered or accepted military duty if drafted. Friends from the more western meetings were more likely to join the army than were their northeastern fellows. Only four of 105 Philadelphia Friends from Orthodox Meetings served in the army upon receiving draft notices, but Indiana sent approximately 1,200 Friends into military service during the course of the war.
There was considerable concern both among the soldiers and the Friends left at home about the impact that their wartime service would have on their character. It was generally expected that Friends who had supported the war would return to their meetings and formally acknowledge the error of the war, accept the responsibility for their incorrect actions, and seek forgiveness from their fellow
Friends. But while refusing to acknowledge participation in the war as wrong could be grounds for a Friend to be disowned (excommunicated) by his meeting, not all returning Quaker VETERANS saw fit to apologize for their choices. Ultimately, in gestures that showed how great the faith’s internal tension over the issue of fighting against something they abhorred was, few meetings disowned unapologetic members, and in subsequent years speakers found gatherings of Friends unwilling to tolerate criticism of veterans.
After the war ended, Friends continued their efforts on behalf of freed people during RECONSTRUCTION. Friends provided essential aid, especially in EDUCATION services to the Freedmen’s Bureau. The rise of redemption governments in the South greatly troubled many meetings. But despite their long-standing stance of antislavery and their work on behalf of the freed people, Friends had views similar to those of many other white Americans. Their educational interests were predicated on the idea that African Americans were primitive and backward. Eventually, like other Americans’, the Friends’ interest in African-American rights and concerns waned. By the latter 19th century, Friends’ financial and physical commitments to working with the freed men and women dwindled in the face of rising issues of Southern governmental corruption and political issues within the Friends’ own Northern communities.
Further reading: Hugh Barbour and J. William Frost, The Quakers (NY: Greenwood Press, 1988); Philip S. Benjamin, The Philadelphia Quakers in the Industrial Age, 1865-1920 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976); Thomas Edward Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (Gloucester, Mass.: P Smith, 1965); Jacquelyn S. Nelson, Indiana's Quakers Confront the Civil War (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991).
—Ruth A. Behling
Special Field Order No. 15 (January 16, 1865) During the CiViL War, a special order issued by a commanding general had the force of law behind it. Written by Union general William T. Sherman, Special Field Order No. 15 granted Southern land seized by the Union in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida to freed slaves. It also gave African Americans complete control over this land and government assistance to develop it. Special Field Order No. 15 was, however, only a short-lived boon for the freed men and women. Special Field Order No. 15 was rescinded in 1865 by President Andrew Johnson.
Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16, 1865, while he and his troops occupied Savannah, Georgia. Special Field Order No. 15 was the result of a January 12 meeting that Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton had with 20 leaders of the city’s
African-American community. The order granted freed-people full control of the sea islands as well as of the coastal land 30 miles inland from Charleston, South Carolina, south to Jacksonville, Florida. This order helped the freed slaves who, as refugees, had no place to go and no property. Specifically, Special Field Order No. 15 granted African-American heads of families 40 acres of land under “possessory title” and protection by the U. S. Congress. The purpose of Special Field Order No. 15 was to assist the freedpeople in creating self-governing and self-sustaining settlements free from the intrusion of white control.
In this revolutionary order, Sherman asserted that the African-American settlers had the opportunity to choose the land on which they would farm and to obtain government assistance in starting their agricultural settlements. To this end, Sherman promised to loan the freedpeople mules to help them work the land. Further, this order carefully laid out a description of the complete control freedpeople would have over their lives and livelihoods on the land formerly possessed by their masters. In Special Field Order No. 15, Sherman prohibited white people from any roles other than those regulated by the federal government, usually as military personnel placed on duty there. As a result, the freedpeople would have full control over their daily lives. Further, Sherman used these orders to stimulate enlistment in the Union army by guaranteeing land ownership to those freedmen who served, even if they could not immediately settle on the land.
To carry out this order, Sherman appointed Gen. Rufus Saxton as the inspector of settlements and plantations. As such, Saxton took charge of settling the freedpeople on the land covered by Special Field Order No. 15, commonly referred to as “Sherman land.” Saxton, like other abolitionists, worried that Sherman’s order isolated and colonized the freedpeople instead of helping them. African Americans eagerly tried to take Sherman up on his promise of land. Although thousands hurried to the sea islands to claim the land promised, many were turned away as ineligible. Only male heads of households had legal claim to the land under Sherman’s orders, so freedwomen could not successfully petition for land. Even so, by June 1865, approximately 40,000 freedpeople inhabited 400,000 acres of land granted to them in Special Field Order No. 15. The U. S. government followed through with its promise of help by providing the settlers with farm tools, seeds, and advisers. On the urging of abolitionists, the government also sent missionaries and teachers to the area to help the freedpeople establish themselves.
General Field Order No. 15 helped instigate the congressional act that created a Bureau for the Relief of Freedmen and Refugees on March 3, 1865. However, postwar President Andrew Johnson rescinded Sherman’s Special
Field Order No. 15 on May 29, 1865, when he granted general amnesty to former Confederates and returned land to the former slaveholders. Those freedpeople settled on “Sherman land” lost their land ownership and returned to a life of working other people’s land.
See also Port Royal, South Carolina, Experiment; sharecropping.
Further reading: Willie Lee Rose, Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999); Leslie A. Schwalm, A Hard Fight for We: Woman's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).
—Lisa Tendrich Frank
World History
