Review of: Dr. Sharon Romeo, “The First Morning of Their Freedom: African American Women, Black Testimony, and Military Justice in Civil War Missouri” Missouri Historical Review 110, no. 3 (April 2016) 196-216.
By Charlie Guthrey
The article “The First Morning of Their Freedom: African American Women, Black Testimony, and Military Justice in Civil War Missouri” is an insightful look into the many ways African-American women in Missouri utilized military courts during the Civil War to advance their own legal and social standard. This eye-opening piece was written by Dr. Sharon Romeo. Romeo is currently an associate professor of history and the classics at the University of Alberta in Canada. This essay of hers appeared in a 2016 issue of the Missouri Historical Review and was also featured in her book, Gender and the Jubilee: Black Freedom and the Reconstruction in Civil War Missouri.[1]
At the beginning of the Civil War, in the fall of 1861, Union military forces under General John Fremont entered the border state of Missouri and declared martial law in an effort to prevent the state from seceding to the Confederacy. While under martial law, Missourians also had to adhere to military laws and were tried in military courts when these laws were broken. To some, this was a gross overstep on the military’s part and infringed on Missourian’s Sixth and Seventh Amendment rights, while others argued that it was a necessary act for the military to maintain order and stability in Missouri. No matter the case, African-Americans in Missouri, and especially African-American women, took advantage of the Unionist military courts in matters both civil and criminal by claiming citizenship rights. This allowed freed and enslaved African-Americans to bring cases before the military courts dispersed throughout the state. However, the majority of cases were heard in St. Louis, where the headquarters for the military courts were located. African-American women brought all kinds of civil cases before the courts in St. Louis, almost all of which were aimed at white Missourians for a range of reasons. One of the most common types of cases brought to these military courts were enslaved women fighting for their freedom or for the freedom of their children. They were able to do this by accusing the person holding them or their family as slaves of being “disloyal to the Union”. Such accusations caught the attention of military courts, who were eager to capture suspected Confederate sympathizers. Once a case was filed, African-American women were able to identify themselves as contraband and have themselves legally removed from the servitude of their former enslavers. Enslaved people would also report on white slaveowners who held their children as a way to reunite with their long-lost family. If a slaveowner was found to be disloyal to the Union, they were arrested and their enslaved persons were turned free, allowing families to reunite after years of separation.
One of the more serious types of cases brought before the military courts, especially by women, were cases of assault or sexual violence. These were mainly brought up by African-American women against white men, who assaulted them for both racially- and sexually-charged reasons. A well-known example of this kind of case was the assault on Charlotte Ford, an African-American woman, by a white man. According to Sharon Romeo, “US military policemen had been pursuing [a man named Thomas] Farrell on May 29, 1864, when they came upon Ford in the alley outside of her St. Louis family home. She reported that Farrell had struck her on the head with a brick, shouting, ‘That is the way Jeff Davis does the business.’” Cases of blatant violence like this were not uncommon in Missouri during the Civil War. And unfortunately, they would not go away with the conclusion of the war. However, the legal freedoms granted to African-American women greatly increased their abilities to bring their attackers to justice.
The freedoms afforded to African-American women in Missouri during the Civil War helped improve their legal standings after the war ended. The Missouri state legislature passed a law allowing African-Americans testify against white Americans in court. This law, combined with the new legal precedents set during the Civil War, granted African-American women the greatest legal freedom they had ever experienced in the state of Missouri.
[1] “Sharon Romeo, PhD, MA, BA” University of Alberta Directory, https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/seromeo.