The politics of freedom: St. Mary played a role in an emancipation experiment

When the congregation settles in for services at Morgan City’s Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church, the worshipers sit within yards of a monument to their own history.
A historical marker on the property notes that the church at one end of Federal Avenue was first built in 1865. The parishioners had only recently been emancipated from slavery.
The land for the had been donated by a man called Olympus Young. The church bell was donated by a former slaveholder named Lawrence.
It makes for an inspirational tale of reconciliation.
But it’s far from the only story about emancipation in St. Mary Parish. Other stories are about war and peace, cynical politics and noble aspirations, and freedom in a brutal world that long outlived the peculiar institution.
One scholar who studies slavery and emancipation, Assistant Professor John Bardes of LSU, says the enslaved people of St. Mary and elsewhere in Louisiana were part of an experiment in reconciliation, a method for bringing Louisiana and other states back into the Union.
“It was a test case that would establish a precedent,” Bardes said in a phone interview, “and they needed to get this right.”
The extent to which they succeeded is a matter for debate.
Slavery
in St. Mary
Any discussion of slavery here has to begin with sugar cane, although agriculture didn’t.
Indigo and cotton were raised in South Louisiana in the era between Spanish rule and early statehood. But many local farmers settled in the early 19th century on sugar cane, a profitable but labor-intensive crop. And as cane became more important to the local economy, so did slavery.
In a January 1949 article for Louisiana Historical Quarterly, Jewell Lynn de Grummond painted a relatively rosy view of St. Mary plantation life.
De Grummond acknowledged that the work was “arduous” during grinding season. But “despite the strenuous activity required during that period — black and white alike — seemed to thrive on the steamy atmosphere, and the hot syrup constantly available.”
Her accounts of life among enslaved people focused on kindhearted plantation owners who protected their investment with humane treatment.
But de Grummond also wrote that notices about runaways were frequent items in the press.
Bardes said stories suggest that sale to Louisiana plantations was a threat used elsewhere to keep enslaved people in line. And he relayed another story, which he couldn’t confirm, that the average working life of a work on a West Indian sugar plantation was seven years.
In any case, the system worked on an economic if not a humanitarian level. Before the secession winter of 1860, St. Mary was the state’s leading sugar producer eight years in 10, de Grummond wrote.
In the same 1850-60 period, the number of White St. Mary residents grew by fewer than 100 to 3,508. The number of enslaved people grew by more than 3,000 to 16,800, according to census records, or nearly 78% of the parish’s population. While most slaveholders held fewer than 100 enslaved people, most enslaved people were part of larger plantation holdings.
War
The economic success of sugar cane production may account for an odd fact cited by LSU’s Bardes: Louisiana had a significant number of slaveholders who were against secession.
And that may be the reason for another historical quirk: St. Mary Parish, along with 12 other parishes to the east and the city of New Orleans, was specifically excluded from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.
The National Archives explanation for the exclusion is that Lincoln invoked his war powers to make the proclamation, so it purported to free enslaved people only in states in rebellion. Because the area near New Orleans, including St. Mary, St. Martin and Assumption, were under Union control by spring 1862, the proclamation didn’t apply to them.
Confederate troops apparently didn’t get the word about Union control. Two significant battles in St. Mary, Fort Bisland and Irish Bend, were fought in 1863, after the proclamation.
But according to Bardes’ account, one reason for the exclusion was more subtle. It was part of an effort to appeal to those anti-secession slaveholders, just as the federal government had sought accommodation with the border states to keep them in the Union.
Bardes called it a way the slaveholders could keep their human property.
“The decision excluding St. Mary and other parishes in Louisiana reflected the desire to create and maintain their support,” Bardes said.
Did it work?
“Not really,” Bardes said.
Enslaved people here weren’t legally freed until the 1864 state constitutional convention, which the federal government required as a prelude for re-entry into the Union.
So it can be argued that the proclamation freed not a single person — except that, in a way, it freed thousands.
Freedom
“Even if the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t apply to Louisiana,” Bardes said, “it signaled to the whole world that the policy was to end slavery.”
And that encouraged enslaved people to abandon the plantations and other workplaces in search of freedom.
“The Emancipation Proclamation made it difficult for the old slaveholders to maintain the status quo,” Bardes said. “Slaveholders would wake up and there would simply be no one left.”
The freedom-seekers generally went to two places of refuge: New Orleans and the nearest Union Army unit.
Although some Union soldiers embraced abolition, others didn’t, Bardes said. And the runaways were sometimes abused by soldiers.
As the war wore on, Bardes said, more soldiers began to favor the end of slavery and were more likely to protect African Americans.
The African American population of New Orleans increased by 30,000 between 1860 and 1870. Life wasn’t easy there, either, Bardes said. The newly freed people faced poverty, disease and a lack of work.
“It created a migrant crisis, which makes sense to us living in this century,” Bardes said. “It was a humanitarian crisis.”
As time went on, Louisiana continued to play a large role in the evolution of race relations.
In 1873 in the central Louisiana town of Colfax, a group of white supremacists attacked and killed at least 100 Black soldiers. A zealous federal prosecutor obtained convictions against some of the perpetrators.
But in its Cruikshank decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions. The court ruled that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause could be applied to governments but not to individuals. And that left Blacks vulnerable to violence perpetrated by the Ku Klux Klan and other racists.
Then, in 1896, the court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision, based on a New Orleans case, created the “separate but equal” doctrine and upheld segregation laws.
The work of emancipation would continue into the 1950s and 1960s, and maybe beyond.
Hope
Not all the conflicts over equality happen on battlefields, plantations or Supreme Court dockets.
J Ina is the principal at Franklin Junior High. He’s also one of two African Americans on the St. Mary Parish Council.
“I think a lot has changed since then,” Ina said in an interview for this story. “But in my lifetime, I’ve seen things that haven’t changed a lot. ... I see a lot of tolerance more than acceptance, if that makes sense.”
Ina has pushed for more Black representation on the 11-member council. He points to a parish population that is 32% Black while the 11-member council includes only two Blacks.
The council has eight traditional geographic districts and three at-large districts that have geographical boundaries, although the members in those districts are elected by parishwide votes.
Ina has asked the council to consider proposing a charter amendment to elect council members from 11 traditional districts. The School Board already uses that system and has four African-Americans among its 11 members.
He also proposed limiting the voting for at-large districts to people who live in those districts.
That would create a Black majority at-large district in West St. Mary.
The proposals don’t draw vocal opposition, Ina said. But they don’t go anywhere.
Still, “I’m very hopeful,” he said. “I’m very optimistic that things will change.
“It may be the person who takes my seat. It may be the person after that. I think delayed doesn’t necessarily mean denied."

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