In 1863, a U.S. Army Chaplain Interviewed Slaves and Enslavers. Here’s Some of What He Learned.
Imperial carte de visite by Mathew B. Brady of New York City. Chaplain George Hughes Hepworth arrived in Louisiana with the rest of the 47th Massachusetts Infantry on the last day of 1862. Though in uniform only a month, he later wrote, “I had already begun to feel that my chaplaincy tended to confine rather than give ample scope to my desire for work.”
Having met the overall commander of Union forces in the region, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, Hepworth requested and received an assignment as first lieutenant in the 4th Louisiana Native Guards. Banks placed Hepworth on his staff with orders to investigate and report on labor in Louisiana.
Hepworth, 29, brought his Harvard education, Unitarian faith and ardent abolitionism to bear as he traveled Louisiana during the immediate aftermath of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Over the remaining months of his enlistment, he chronicled plantation culture in his book, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword; The Gulf-Department in ’63. He summarized his experience in the introduction: “If I talk a great deal of slavery, it is because I have seen a great deal of it. If I say no good thing of it, it is because I found no good thing in it. I learned to pity the slaveholder and the slave, and to thank God and the genius of the age for the Proclamation.”
In his book, published before the end of 1863, Hepworth directed his harshest criticism to those who enslaved people. “You may talk with a planter upon almost any subject, and you will find him affable and gentlemanly. He will scorn to misrepresent an event, and will speak with commendable charity of his neighbors. The moment, however, the conversation edges towards slavery, his demeanor changes. He either grows reticent, and refuses to say a word; or else becomes angry, and openly insults you on the spot.”
He continued, “There is no such thing as a calm discussion of the subject with him: he seems to think that any assertion, true or false, is fair. If he can adduce facts, he will pile them up; until, at last, you begin to think the best thing the Almighty can do is to get up an extra generation of negroes for the use of the Southern sugar-planter. If the facts are not readily handled, he hammers away at the Old Testament; quoting verse after verse, trying to prove that the venerable book has no higher mission than to afford favorite texts for the slaveholder. … If you suggest that the thralldom of a race impedes civilization, and is an inhumanity done to the enslaved, he harangues you on the value of the institution as a missionary society,” elevating “a whole people from the depths of barbarity.”
By contrast, Hepworth reserved the highest praise for the Union rank and file after a tour of camps in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., about six months before he joined the army. “I conversed with many of the privates,” he explained, “and I found everywhere a degree of enthusiasm which surprised me.” He continued, “Their purpose is not conquest. They know they are fighting for more than twelve dollars a month—it is for principle.”
Hepworth also shared his observations of people of color in Louisiana: “For four months my business brought me into constant contact with the negroes. I have seen them under nearly all circumstances: when they were listening to the twang of the banjo, and enjoying the luxury of a Saturday-afternoon dance; and when they have, glum, silent, sullen, just come from the whipping-house with their backs well scored. I have seen favorite house-servants, who were proud of their ability to read and write; and the old field-hands, who, trembling with age, fumbled their charms, and told me of the adventures and exploits of Lafitte. I have tried impartially to answer that question, which the North now puts to every man who has travelled in the South, ‘Are the blacks ready for freedom?’ It may be a question fraught with many a difficulty: still I will say, that, for one, I am not afraid to have the experiment tried. I am troubled about no such results as are held up as bugbears in every argument. The negroes are far more fit to be free than many people who enjoy that inestimable privilege: they are fitter to be free than to be slaves.”
He continued: “Of one thing I am sure: the slaves everywhere have an intense longing to possess their own bodies, and to govern their own fortunes. No one could have accompanied our forces through the Têche without being deeply impressed with this fact. They crowded to the highway to see us pass; and clapped their hands, and sang and prayed, as banner after banner, beneath whose folds to-day there are no slaves, went by.”
After his service, Hepworth went on to serve as a pastor in New York City, and later became a Trinitarian. He left the ministry in 1885 to work as a journalist for the New York Herald, and authored numerous books. He died in 1902.
I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.
In 1863, a U.S. Army Chaplain Interviewed Slaves and Enslavers. Here’s Some of What He Learned.
Imperial carte de visite by Mathew B. Brady of New York City. Chaplain George Hughes Hepworth arrived in Louisiana with the rest of the 47th Massachusetts Infantry on the last day of 1862. Though in uniform only a month, he later wrote, “I had already begun to feel that my chaplaincy tended to confine rather than give ample scope to my desire for work.”
Having met the overall commander of Union forces in the region, Maj. Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks, Hepworth requested and received an assignment as first lieutenant in the 4th Louisiana Native Guards. Banks placed Hepworth on his staff with orders to investigate and report on labor in Louisiana.
Hepworth, 29, brought his Harvard education, Unitarian faith and ardent abolitionism to bear as he traveled Louisiana during the immediate aftermath of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. Over the remaining months of his enlistment, he chronicled plantation culture in his book, The Whip, Hoe, and Sword; The Gulf-Department in ’63. He summarized his experience in the introduction: “If I talk a great deal of slavery, it is because I have seen a great deal of it. If I say no good thing of it, it is because I found no good thing in it. I learned to pity the slaveholder and the slave, and to thank God and the genius of the age for the Proclamation.”
In his book, published before the end of 1863, Hepworth directed his harshest criticism to those who enslaved people. “You may talk with a planter upon almost any subject, and you will find him affable and gentlemanly. He will scorn to misrepresent an event, and will speak with commendable charity of his neighbors. The moment, however, the conversation edges towards slavery, his demeanor changes. He either grows reticent, and refuses to say a word; or else becomes angry, and openly insults you on the spot.”
He continued, “There is no such thing as a calm discussion of the subject with him: he seems to think that any assertion, true or false, is fair. If he can adduce facts, he will pile them up; until, at last, you begin to think the best thing the Almighty can do is to get up an extra generation of negroes for the use of the Southern sugar-planter. If the facts are not readily handled, he hammers away at the Old Testament; quoting verse after verse, trying to prove that the venerable book has no higher mission than to afford favorite texts for the slaveholder. … If you suggest that the thralldom of a race impedes civilization, and is an inhumanity done to the enslaved, he harangues you on the value of the institution as a missionary society,” elevating “a whole people from the depths of barbarity.”
By contrast, Hepworth reserved the highest praise for the Union rank and file after a tour of camps in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., about six months before he joined the army. “I conversed with many of the privates,” he explained, “and I found everywhere a degree of enthusiasm which surprised me.” He continued, “Their purpose is not conquest. They know they are fighting for more than twelve dollars a month—it is for principle.”
Hepworth also shared his observations of people of color in Louisiana: “For four months my business brought me into constant contact with the negroes. I have seen them under nearly all circumstances: when they were listening to the twang of the banjo, and enjoying the luxury of a Saturday-afternoon dance; and when they have, glum, silent, sullen, just come from the whipping-house with their backs well scored. I have seen favorite house-servants, who were proud of their ability to read and write; and the old field-hands, who, trembling with age, fumbled their charms, and told me of the adventures and exploits of Lafitte. I have tried impartially to answer that question, which the North now puts to every man who has travelled in the South, ‘Are the blacks ready for freedom?’ It may be a question fraught with many a difficulty: still I will say, that, for one, I am not afraid to have the experiment tried. I am troubled about no such results as are held up as bugbears in every argument. The negroes are far more fit to be free than many people who enjoy that inestimable privilege: they are fitter to be free than to be slaves.”
He continued: “Of one thing I am sure: the slaves everywhere have an intense longing to possess their own bodies, and to govern their own fortunes. No one could have accompanied our forces through the Têche without being deeply impressed with this fact. They crowded to the highway to see us pass; and clapped their hands, and sang and prayed, as banner after banner, beneath whose folds to-day there are no slaves, went by.”
After his service, Hepworth went on to serve as a pastor in New York City, and later became a Trinitarian. He left the ministry in 1885 to work as a journalist for the New York Herald, and authored numerous books. He died in 1902.
I encourage you to use this image for educational purposes only. However, please ask for permission.