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Southern Friend

Journal of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society

Volume XX Spring 1998 Number 1

Introduction to this issue

"to spend some time as a missionary

among the colored people'':

The Civil War Writings

of an Indiana Quaker in the South

Edited by Daniel J. Salemson

Book Review:

The Quakers and the American Revolution Arthur J. Mekeel

Announcement:

Quaker Historians and Archivists 12th biennial conference

niVWiTY SCHOOL LIBRARY rR»C 2770S

The Southern Friend

Journal of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society

The Southern Friend is published semiannually in spring and autumn by the North Carolina Friends Historical Society, P.O. Box 8502, Greens- boro, NC 27419-0502. Members of the society, for whom the annual dues are $15, receive the journal without charge. Single issues for Volumes 1- XII may be purchased for $3 per number; subsequent issues are $5 per number.

Editorial Policy

The editors welcome articles on any aspect of the history of Friends in the Southeast. Articles must be well written and properly docu- mented. All copy should be typed double-space, and should conform to the most recent edition of The Chicago Manual of Style and Kate L. Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Disser- tations. The author-date form of referencing is preferred. See section 15:4ff in Chicago Manual. Articles and correspondence should be ad- dressed to Carole E. Treadway, Hege Library, Guilford College, 5800 West Friendly Avenue, Greensboro, NC 27410-4175.

Index

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts, America: History andLife, and Periodical Source Index (PERSI).

Editorial Board

Carole E. Treadway, editor, Gertrude Beal, Judith W. Harvey, Jane Miller, Joan Poole, Ann Trueblood Raper, Jeanette Wilson.

The Southern Friend Advisory Board

Howard Beeth, Kenneth Carroll, Thomas Hamm, Damon Hickey, Steven Jay White.

Cover Illustration

"Friends' Meeting House at New Garden, North Carolina, 1869. Erected in 1791." Lithograph by John Collins. Courtesy of the Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College.

The

Southern Friend

Journal of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society

Volume XX Spring 1998 Number 1

Contents

Introduction 3

"to spend some time as a missionary among the colored people":

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

Edited by Daniel J. Salemson

Introduction 5

Excerpts from Elkanah Beard's writings 21

Book Review 76

Announcement 79

Introduction

In the last issue of The Southern Friend, Thomas Kennedy of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville related the story of the rise and decline of a black monthly meeting in Southland, Arkansas near Helena. This was the third article we have published by Kennedy on the work of Friends in establishing and maintaining an orphanage, a school (the Southland Col- lege), and a community of freed blacks. A key figure in the early days of that movement was Elkanah Beard, a Friend from Indiana who was called in 1864 to establish an orphanage for dozens of lost or abandoned children.* Beard was famiUar with the conditions because of his missionary trip the year before to visit the contraband camps of destitute freed slaves in the Missis- sippi River Valley. He kept an account of that trip in a journal and made frequent written reports to Friends magazines and his sponsors at home in Indiana.

Elkanah Beard's journal was transferred to the Friends Historical Collec- tion from the Friends Collection at Earlham College several years ago because of its bearing on the Quaker presence in the South. We are, in this issue, presenting excerpts from the journal along with excerpts from Beard's other writings that report on his observations and actions during his trip. Daniel Salemson has transcribed the journal and uncovered the other material and combined it with the journal excerpts to give more thorough coverage than either source does alone. His introduction to the writings gives important information for understanding the context of Beard's work as well as something about the remarkable life of service of Beard and his wife Irena.

* "The Rise and Decline of a Black Monthly Meeting: Southland, Arkansas, 1864- 1925," by Thomas C. Kennedy. The Southern Friend. Vol. XIX, no. 2, Autumn 1997. The two previous articles were "Southland College: The Society of Friends and Black EducationinArkansas." Vol. VII,no. 1, Spring 1985; "The Last Days of Southland." Vol. VIII, no. 1, Spring 1986.

3

"to spend some time as a missionary among the colored people'':

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

Edited by

Daniel J. Salemson^

When Elkanah Beard departed for the Mississippi Valley in June 1863, he inaugurated a Quaker relief effort that would have an impact on the region for more than sixty years. Between 1863 and 1869, Elkanah and his wife Irena labored among the recently freed slaves, providing food and clothing, education, and religious services. The writings of Elkanah Beard during this time offer a rare glimpse into the front lines of a relief effort that nationwide occupied thousands of volunteers and millions of dollars, and into the mind of a man who devoted his life to missionary work.

As reflected in his writings, Elkanah Beard, a lifelong member of the Society of Friends, placed supreme emphasis on religion. Bom on October 28, 1833, and reared in the small community of Lynn, Randolph County, Indiana, he was educated in Quaker schools, including Friends Boarding School (now Earlham College) in Richmond, Indiana. Following his 1852 marriage to Irena Johnson, also of Lynn, he considered a number of careers, including law, pohtics, and teaching, ultimately settling on a mercantile trade. Throughout his youth he maintained an active membership in Cherry Grove (Randolph County) Monthly Meeting of Friends, but his growing missionary impulse did not find an outlet until after the outbreak of the Civil War. When members of New Garden Quarterly Meeting, to which Cherry Grove belonged, began considering the possibility of a relief effort for the large number of slaves liberated by the Union army, Elkanah seized the opportunity. In June 1863, he departed for a six-week tour of refugee camps along the Mississippi River. His formal appointment in October as field agent

Daniel J. Salemson, a graduate student in history at North Carolina State University, is currently completing his masters thesis, "The Quiet in the Storm: North Carolina Quakers in the Civil War Era, 1850-1870."

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The Southern Friend

Elkanah Beard and Irena Johnson Beard (Friends Historical Collection)

for Indiana Yearly Meeting's Executive Committee on Freedmen resulted in his recognition as a minister shortly thereafter. When Elkanah and Irena Beard left for the Mississippi Valley at the end of October, in what proved to be a six-year tour of duty, it marked the beginning of a lifetime of missionary work.2

6

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

On Independence Day 1863, Confederate commanders at Vicksburg, Mississippi, surrendered the last southern stronghold on the Mississippi River. The entire Mississippi Valley, with a black population estimated at over 700,000, fell under northern control. Over the previous two years, as the northern army advanced down the valley, tens of thousands of slaves had liberated themselves behind Union lines. This crush of humanity quickly threatened to disrupt military operations, as the refugees crowded into makeshift camps and around cities, often living in destitute conditions and suffering tremendous mortality from disease. Union commanders, who at first viewed the "contraband" as a liability, provided limited rations but little else.

With the signing of the fmal Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, declaring all slaves in rebel territory to be free, African Americans became an integral part of the northern war effort. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton quickly ordered all able-bodied ex-slaves taken into the service of the army, either as troops or as laborers. Women, children, and the unfit were to be placed on abandoned plantations. The War Department's adjutant general, Lorenzo Thomas, hoped to lease the plantations to Northern settlers who, enticed to the region by high cotton prices, would hire the refugees at minimal, government-established wages. The government maintained the refugee camps as points of collection and distribution.^ A Philadelphia Quaker who toured the valley in 1863 described the ongoing "settlement of negroes:"

During the early months of the war, large numbers of fugitive blacks crossed the Ohio and Mississippi, and herded together in the border towns. The President's Proclamation of Freedom, which had been so anxiously looked for by the friends of humanity, not only stopped this exodus from the slave States into the free, by giving them protection wherever the Federal forces advanced, but also gave birth to a new spirit in the National Government. Although slow to act and not always meeting the demands of the hour, it is now endeavoring to make some compensation for stolen labor and outraged rights. The establishment of camps for the reception of the freedmen was soon seen to be a necessity, and suitable points having been selected on the great river, officers were appointed to have them in charge, and a work began which can end only when the last vestige of slavery has disappeared from the land.4

However efficient Thomas's system may have been in quickly relocating freedmen to new occupations, the government did little for the uplift of those recently escaped from slavery. Across the North, hundreds of aid and relief societies organized to fill the humanitarian need. The bewildering patch- work of benevolent associations provided crucial relief to people who

7

The Southern Friend

owned themselves, but often little else. Beginning in 1861, these societies sent supplies — food, clothing, books, and agricultural implements consti- tuted the bulk of the material aid — and teachers to colonies of freedpeople across the South. Most of the larger relief associations eschewed sectarian labels, yet religious principles drove many of the members. Almost every denomination embraced the relief effort, often combining relief aid with missionary work. Some religious groups joined in cooperative efforts through organizations such as the American Missionary Association, which operated on behalf of the Congregational, Free- Will Baptist, Wesleyan Methodist, and Reformed Dutch churches, but a greater number of denominations instituted their own rehef services. By 1875, the aid societies had expended over $7.5 million, employed thousands of field agents, and provided education to more than a half million former slaves. Perhaps more importantly, the public awareness the societies fostered mobilized the resources of the federal government. Between 1865 and 1872, the federal Freedmen's Bureau defended the rights of African Americans in the uncertain period after the war. In addition to enforcing contracts and mediating disputes between black laborers and their white employers, the Bureau played a significant role in education. It secured government buildings for the use of the aid societies, constructed hundreds of schools from scratch, and established eleven colleges and universities and sixty-one teachers' colleges for its charges.^

For the Society of Friends, the pUght of the freedpeople offered a unique opportunity to put rhetoric into action. Quaker doctrine nourished an egalitarian view of humanity unmatched by any other sect. To whatever extent Friends may have fallen short of their own ideals — black membership in the Society was almost nonexistent, for example — their devotion to the rights of African Americans was widely acknowledged by the time of the Civil War. The Society had worked for a peaceful end to slavery and discrimina- tory laws since the American Revolution. During the antebellum period, individual Friends involved themselves in the Underground Railroad, de- spite a doctrinal ban on such extra-legal activities. Decades before the Civil War, every yearly meeting established standing committees to provide assistance to blacks within its limits. When war came, Quakers played no small role in the relief effort, quickly organizing and supporting private and official Quaker relief associations.*^

Indiana Friends felt the pull of the humanitarian prospects the strongest, as the plight of African Americans had shaped the development of Indiana Yearly Meeting. Nearly all members traced their roots to the great exodus

8

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

from the southeastern states beginning in the late-eighteenth century. Emigres to Indiana — Quakers and non-Quakers aUke — usually belonged to the lower and middle classes of society, and often moved to escape the economic competition, as well as the moral taint, of slave labor. Between 1800 and 1860, at least six thousand Quakers relocated from the southern states to the Old Northwest, where slavery was prohibited by law. "So great was the movement northward," historian Jacquelyn Nelson has noted, "that by 1850 one-third of Indiana's population was composed of first- and second-generation North Carolinians." ^

The issue that brought the Society of Friends to Indiana also proved divisive. The rise of abolitionism in the 1830s split the Quaker community. In 1843, approximately two thousand Friends seceded from Indiana Yearly Meeting, which had censured the confrontational tactics of abolitionists, to form the activist Indiana Yearly Meeting of Anti-Slavery Friends in Newport. For more than a decade, the upstart body vigorously denounced slavery and colonization. By the mid 1850s, however, mainstream Quaker doctrine began to move toward the antislavery position and the schism quietly healed.^

The acceptance of abolitionist activism reflected larger changes in midwestem Quaker practice during the middle of the nineteenth century. In the late antebellum period, austere Friends found themselves anachronistic in an increasingly commercialized and cosmopolitan North. The high quality of Quaker education, the growth of towns and cities, and the inclusion of the midwestem states into the national economy all stimulated Friends to take a more active part in local and national events. Competition from other denominations also forced Quakers to adopt a more dynamic world view, as the evangelical revolution in the mainstream Protestant churches, with its proletarian preachers and charismatic religious experiences, lured younger members bored with the staid practices of the Society.^

The Civil War intensified the transformation within American Quaker- ism. The secession of the southern states in 1861, and the ensuing conflict, forced many Indiana Friends into a painful confrontation between their historic commitment to pacifism and their political loyalty. "Since most leading evangelical Quakers deeply sympathized with the Union cause and supported the Repubhcan party," historian Richard Wood has noted, "it was often difficult for them to avoid endorsing the war and for their sons to resist enlistment in the army." Religion did not always triumph. Over twelve hundred Hoosier members, or more than twenty-six percent of eligible male Friends, volunteered for military service. Individuals provided money and supplies to equip militia units, supported the Indiana Sanitary Commission,

9

The Southern Friend

and ministered to sick Union troops and Confederate prisoners. The corpo- rate body of the Friends distributed religious tracts to soldiers and organized relief efforts for Southern refugees and needy families of soldiers.

For Quakers who would not fight, relief work among those recently liberated from slavery offered a morally acceptable alternative to further the Union cause. The 1864 revision of Indiana Yearly Meeting's Discipline, the set of rules governing almost all aspects of Quaker life, reflected the long tradition of concern for African Americans. The Discipline strictly forbade the accommodation of slavery in any manner and exhorted members to work for the emancipation and uplift of the black population:

As a religious Society, we have found it to be our indispensable duty to declare to the world our belief of the repugnancy of slavery to the Christian religion. - It therefore remains to be our continued concern, to prohibit our members from holding in bondage our fellow men. . . .The slow progress in the emancipation of this part of the human family, we lament; but nevertheless do not despair of their ultimate enlargement. And we desire that Friends may not suffer the deplorable condition of these, our enslaved fellow beings, to lose its force upon their minds, through the delay which the opposition of interested men may occasion in this work of justice and mercy; but rather be animated to consider, that the longer the opposition remains, the greater is the necessity, on the side of righteousness and benevolence, for our steady perseverance in pleading their cause.

In late 1862, midwestem Friends began organizing private relief societies for the refugees in the Mississippi basin. The Cincinnati Contraband Relief Association (CCRA) formed in November in the wake of Union military successes along the Mississippi River. While not a Quaker organization per se, many of its leaders, including famed abolitionist Levi Coffin, and much of its support came from the Society of Friends; it looked to Quaker meetings around the United States and in England for the majority of its fiscal support. The CCRA also benefited from Cincinnati's proximity to the western theater of the war, serving as the distribution agent for many smaller relief organi- zations. Over a period of two years, the CCRA expended more than $150,000 in cash and supplies. In December 1864, in the face of growing duplication of effort, the CCRA disbanded and transferred its assets and relief programs to Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends. ^2

Indiana Friends did not institute a serious corporate effort on behalf of the freedpeople until 1863. In October of that year, Indiana Yearly Meeting's "Committee on the Concerns of the People of Color," reported that one of its members had visited the Mississippi Valley and "labored a short time among these poor neglected people." The committee concluded that

10

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

taking into consideration the change of circumstances in relation to the colored man in our country since the organization of the committee, and the vast field that is open for labor among those that have recently acquired their freedom, the committee is united in suggesting to the yearly meeting the propriety of taking the whole subject into consideration, and, if way opens, provide either through this or a new committee for more effectual and organized labors for their relief.

The yearly meeting subsequently formed a standing "Executive Commit- tee on Freedmen" to mobilize the resources of Indiana Friends. The young man who had recently visited the Mississippi Valley volunteered to return as the first field agent. In late October, a few days shy of his thirtieth birthday, Elkanah Beard headed south once again.

There is no definitive account of the Quaker relief effort along the Mississippi River, but midv^estem Friends labored in over thirty camps in Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Quak- ers also performed relief work in middle Tennessee and Alabama. Members of Indiana Yearly Meeting provided the bulk of the support, contributing almost $30,000 in the first year alone. To coordinate its efforts with those of other midwestem Quakers, the Indiana Executive Committee joined with similar committees from Iowa, Ohio, and Western yearly meetings in Sep- tember 1864, to establish a "Board of Control" at Cincinnati. The Board oversaw the relief work for midwestem Friends, collecting the necessary funds from the Executive Committees and directing resources to the most needy areas. To promote the growing effort, the Indiana Executive Committee began publication of a monthly newspaper. The Freedmen's Record, in December 1865. Between 1863 and 1870, Indiana Quakers contrib- uted over $150,000 through the Executive Committee to aid the former slaves; the other midwestem yearly meetings expended a similar combined total. 15

Friends focused their energies toward three undertakings: relieve the immediate suffering within the refugee camps, institute a series of schools for the freedpeople, and provide ministerial services for their uplift. Relief aid presented the most immediate challenge. Entering a region still at war, Elkanah Beard found the suffering of black refugees severe. In an age of primitive medical knowledge, with thousands of individuals crowded into marshy areas that often flooded, with almost no sanitation and only primitive shelter, epidemics ran rampant. Scores of people died each month in the camps. Most freedpeople lacked even a change of clothing and lived in filthy makeshift huts that barely sheltered them from the elements.

In November 1863, Beard selected the encampment at Young's Point,

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The Southern Friend

Louisiana, ten miles above Vicksburg, as his main base of operations. The need there, as elsewhere, was overwhelming. Colonel Samuel Thomas, who oversaw the military's efforts for the freedpeople in the Vicksburg and Natchez regions, described Young's Point in 1863 as "avast chamel house — thousands of the people dying, without well ones enough to inter the dead." For several months, Beard could do little more than distribute clothing to the most needy and offer ministerial comfort to the sick and dying. ^'^

Slowly, the material aid provided by the relief organizations and the government allowed Elkanah Beard to attend to more long-term needs. The Executive Committee's appointment of James and Sarah Smith to assist Beard at Young's Point freed him to investigate the situation along other parts of the Mississippi. Samuel Shipley, who toured the Mississippi Valley in late 1863 on behalf of the Friends' Association of Philadelphia, noted that after Beard was relieved at Young's Point, " [a] 11 the camps will then be visited in succession, and his ability to distribute judiciously will be increased."^^

The pitiful plight of black orphans captured the attention of Friends. In early 1864, Elkanah Beard relayed to the Executive Committee a request from General Napoleon Bonaparte Buford, Union commander at Helena, Arkansas, to establish an "orphan asylum" for the hundreds of children wandering that city. The orphanage, the first in the state, opened on April 19, 1864, and was soon followed by similar institutions at Little Rock, Arkansas, and Lauderdale, Mississippi.^^

Education constituted an important aspect of the Quaker relief effort. Slave education had been a crime in the pre-war South, leaving many of the freedpeople illiterate. Over sixty members of Indiana Yearly Meeting served as teachers during the Civil War. The example of Arkansas suggests the scope of the relief societies' commitment to education in the Mississippi Valley. During the Reconstruction years of 1867 and 1868, the American Missionary Association and Northern Quakers together contributed more than half of the state's entire educational budget; the federal Freedmen's Bureau, by contrast, accounted for just six percent in 1868. Friends main- tained a school at the Helena orphanage until early 1866, when the govern- ment ordered the buildings returned to their original owners. Rather than see the orphanage and school discontinued. Colonel Charles Bentzoni, the new commandant at Helena, and soldiers of the 56th United States Colored Infantry Regiment purchased thirty acres of land outside of the city and constructed several buildings for a new orphanage. Indiana Yearly Meeting subsequently acquired an additional fifty acres of land, and, with funds from

12

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

the Freedmen's Bureau and Quaker organizations, in 1869 transformed the institution into Southland College, a boarding school for blacks. Although hardly a college in the traditional sense, the school combined Christian education with a Normal school curriculum; by 1886, Southland counted more than three hundred graduates teaching in Arkansas and adjacent states. Despite uncertain finances, internal divisions, and local white op- position. Southland continued until 1925, a testament to the Quaker humani- tarian ideal.

The religious development of the freedpeople constituted the final — and for Elkanah Beard, the most important — aspect of the Quaker activities. Samuel Shipley emphasized the importance of religion to the former slaves: "The religious element among the Freedmen is active, in this, the time of their great trial. At most of the camps and in the towns, there is evidence of increased interest in their churches, and the universal testimony is, that it is not a mere sentiment, but works a perceptible effect upon their daily lives." Historian Thomas Hamm has suggested that most "Quaker workers showed little interest in proselytizing among the former slaves," instead preferring to focus on "the humanitarian aspects of relief." Elkanah Beard's writings make clear, however, that religious service played a vital role in his activities. From the outset of his labors in the South, Beard ministered to individuals and conducted camp prayer sessions. He organized at least one permanent non- denominational congregation, the "Union Camp Church" at Young's Point, in December 1863. After the formation of Southland College in 1866, a number of African Americans petitioned for membership in the Society of Friends. Whitewater (Indiana) Monthly Meeting accepted seven black members from Southland in 1868, and the next year established a preparative (subordinate) / meeting at the school. The integration of African Americans into the Society continued with the recognition of Daniel Drew, an ex-slave and army veteran, as a minister in 1870. The Southland congregation increased in number until, in 1873, it was granted full monthly meeting status, the first majority-black monthly meeting in the history of the Society of Friends. After reaching a peak membership of around two hundred in the 1890s, the meeting dechned until it disbanded with the closing of the school.^^

By 1870, the Quaker relief effort to the freedpeople was on the wane. With the exception of Southland College, most of the schools and orphanages organized by Friends had been closed or transferred to the state govern- ments. The Indiana Executive Committee received only $1 1,000 in contribu- tions that year, less than one-quarter the amount donated five years earlier. Despite its brief existence, the relief effort fundamentally altered orthodox

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The Southern Friend

Quakerism. The work in the southern states had exposed dozens of younger Friends, like the Beards, to the practices of other denominations. Imbued with a missionary spirit, they gained an appreciation for dynamic rehgion that proved difficult to forget. During the late 1860s and 1870s, as the Quaker missionaries assumed leadership roles in the Society of Friends, they fos- tered what Thomas Hamm has identified as a revival movement in American Quakerism. Indiana Yearly Meeting acknowledged the importance of the relief work in 1869 when it replaced the Executive Committee on Freedmen with a permanent "Missionary Board" to encourage spiritual activism by Friends."^

Elkanah and Irena Beard completed their final tour of reUef duty in the South in February 1869. They had both felt the stress of missionary life. Elkanah's health, delicate since childhood, forced him to take several extended sabbaticals. Guerrilla attacks, which claimed the lives of scores of freedpeople and at least two northern whites, forced him to move his operations on several occasions. The changing nature of the relief effort also proved less satisfying over time. The drama of the work in the camps in 1863 and 1864 gave way to less exciting but more fundamental tasks, such as coordinating relief shipments and superintending the orphanages. Elkanah's appointment as general agent for the Mississippi Valley for the Friends' Board of Control in 1864 significantly increased his workload, forcing him to spend more time on administrative duties and less preaching. By early 1866, Elkanah confided to his diary that "I feel that I do not amount to much anywhere," and that he had become "nothing more than lackey boy or servant" to the teachers he supervised.^^

Despite the hardships, the work in the Mississippi Valley prepared Elkanah and Irena Beard for a lifetime of missionary adventure. In 1869, they departed for two years of educational service around Benares, India. They later engaged in a series of extended visits among the pioneer Quaker communities on the west coast of the United States and spent a year working with Native Americans in Oklahoma in 1877. During the late 1880s, they returned to the Mississippi Valley to assume the positions of superintendent and matron of Southland College. Ill health forced Elkanah to retire in 1891. He died on August 2, 1905, at Biloxi, Mississippi, in the land that had defined his life's work. Irena Beard survived him by fifteen years, passing away in Lynn, Indiana, on July 29, 1920.^4

The writings that follow are drawn from a number of sources. The diaries of Elkanah Beard deposited at the Friends Historical Collection, Hege Library, Guilford College, Greensboro, North Carolina (cited as "Elkanah

14

The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

BeardJoumal, FHC-GC"), and the Quaker Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana (cited as "Elkanah Beard Diary, FC-EC") com- prise the bulk of the material. The remainder consists of printed letters that appeared in the Quaker pubhcations Friends' Review (Philadelphia) and The Freedmen 's Record (Richmond, IN) and in the Report of Indiana Yearly Meeting's Executive Committee for the Relief of Colored Freedmen (Rich- mond, IN: Holloway & Davis, 1864) (cited as Indiana Executive Committee, Report). The reader should keep in mind that the printed writings usually doubled as fundraising appeals and as such may not be as candid as Elkanah's private thoughts.

Clearly a man of considerable education, Elkanah Beard wrote well, with legible penmanship and generally correct spelling. Usually writing in hurried conditions or after a long day of labors, he often dispensed with standardized punctuation and capitalization in his diaries. To provide consistency, this transcription capitalizes the first letter of every sentence and includes standardized punctuation, regardless of Beard's practice. The emendation "[sic]" marks the transcription only where the error might be ascribed to the editor. Beard frequently wrote "to" for "too." The error has been left without comment.

With the exception of dates, abbreviations in the text ("ere," "oer," "reeve," "recvd," "&," "&c.") have been silently expanded. Orthodox Quaker practice eschewed the use of the common names, derived from pagan origins, of the days of the week and months of the year. The transcription retains Beard's dating system (number of the month, number of the day and year) in view of its essential religious nature. The full name of the month and the year are added in brackets where Beard failed to record his own version.

Where Beard wrote a word twice by accident (i.e.: over a page break), the transcription records the word only one time. Those deliberately split ("any thing," "inso much" "break fast") are transcribed as written, but words split across line or page breaks are transcribed as one word. Words lost in the original due to smearing of the ink are noted in brackets; words deliberately scratched out are omitted silently from the transcription.

The transcription omits sections of Beard's diary that add little to the understanding of his experiences, or discuss activities not related to his work in the Mississippi Valley. A series of three bracketed ellipses, [. . .], denote text that has been removed within an entry. Five stars, * * * * *^ indicate that one or more entries has been omitted.

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The Southern Friend

Notes

^ The editor would like to thank Carole Edgerton Treadway, librarian of the Friends Historical Collection, Hege Library, Guilford College, Greens- boro, North Carolina, and Dr. Thomas D. Hamm, curator of the Friends Collection, Lilly Library, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana, for their assistance in identifying material and verifying facts related to Elkanah Beard. Dr. John David Smith of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, kindly critiqued a draft of this introduction.

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1996 Graduate Conference on Southern History at the University of Mississippi, Oxford.

2 Cherry Grove Monthly Meeting of Friends, Birth and Death Records (Microfilm F472(b)2, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis), 21, 181; Willard Heiss, ed., Abstracts of the Records of the Society of Friends in Indiana (7 vols. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1965), 2: 227, 258; "Data from the Elkanah Beard Bible," (Typescript, Beard Collection [FMS 33], Friends Collection, Earlham College); Luke Woodard, "A Short Sketch Concerning the Late Elkanah Beard," The American Friend, 12 #11 (March 16, 1905): 182-183; EdiiXhdim. College, Souvenir of Friends' Boarding School (Richmond, IN: Nicholson Printing & Mfg. Co., 1897), 45.

Elkanah's first diary entry, not transcribed here, traces his personal history up to 1857 or 1858. He belonged to a family with deep Quaker roots. The Beard family had been among the earliest Quaker settlers in America, emigrating from England to Massachusetts in the 1670s, and moving to North Carolina fifty years later. Elkanah's father, William, migrated to Indiana in 1827. Elkanah was related to famed American historian, Charles Beard.

Cherry Grove Monthly Meeting "acknowledged" Beard as a minister on October 10, 1863. Cherry Grove Monthly Meeting of Friends, Men's Minute Book III (Microfilm F472(b)2, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis), 431. Orthodox Quaker doctrine rejected the use of paid clergy, insisting that the divine spirit could be manifested in all persons. The Society routinely conferred the honorary title of "minister" on members who exhibited particular religious dedication. The designation connoted no real duties within the sect. See Indiana Yearly Meeting, The Discipline of the Society of Friends of Indiana Yearly Meeting, (Richmond, IN: E. Morgan & Sons, Print., 1864), 96-103, for a description of the qualifications and obligations of recognized ministers.

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The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

^ Louis S. Gerteis, From Contraband to Freedman: Federal Policy Toward Southern Blacks, 1861-1865, Contributions in American History, No. 29 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1973), 119-133; Martha Mitchell Bigelow, "Freedmen of the Mississippi Valley, 1862-1865," Civil War His- tory S#\ (March 1962): 38-44; John Eaton, Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 18-61. Of the more than 186,000 African Americans who served in the Union army, approximately 80,000 came from the Mississippi Valley. Bigelow, "Freedmen of the Missis- sippi Valley," 43.

4 Friends' Association of Philadelphia, Statistics of the . . . Friends' Association of Philadelphia, and its Vicinity, for the Relief of the Colored Freedmen. (Philadelphia: Inquirer Printing Office, [1864?]), 9.

^ Ronald E. Butchart, Northern Schools, Southern Blacks, and Recon- struction: Freedmen's Education, 1862-1875, Contributions in American History, No. 87 (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1980), 3-12; G. K. Eggleston, "The Work of Relief Societies During the Civil War," Journal of Negro History 14 #3 (July 1929): 272-299; Julius H. Parmelee, "Freedmen's Aid Societies, 1861-1871," United States Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education, Bulletin No. 38 (1916): 268-301; George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's Bureau (New York: Octagon Books, 1974 [1944]), 136-184.

^Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), 85-166; Eggleston, "The Work of Relief Societies," 286-289; Francis Charles Anscombe, "The Contributions of the Quakers to the Reconstruction of the Southern States" (Ph.D. dissertation. University of North Carolina, 1926), passim. Ronald E. Butchart identified eight separate Quaker organizations sponsored by New England, New York, Philadelphia (2), Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Western yearly meetings. Butchart, Northern Schools, 7.

^ Charles Fitzgerald McKiever, Slavery and the Emigration of North Carolina Friends (Murfreesboro, NC: Johnson Pubhshing Co., 1970), 44-54; Jacquelyn Nelson, Indiana Quakers Confront the Civil War (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991), 3.

^ibid., 4-5; Thomas D. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quak- erism: Orthodox Friends, 1800-1907 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 32-33.

^ Richard E. Wood, "Evangelical Quaker Acculturation in the Upper Mississippi Valley," Quaker History , 76 #2 (Fall 1987): 128-134; Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism, 36-66.

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The Southern Friend

Wood, "Evangelical Quaker Acculturation," 138; Nelson, Indiana Quak- ers Confront the Civil War, 20-21, 59-73.

Indiana Yearly Meeting, Discipline, 48-49.

^"In January, 1863, a faction desiring greater emphasis on education for the freedpeople split from the CCRA to form the Western Freedmen's Aid Commission. This new organization did not retain its Quaker orientation — although many Friends supported its efforts — quickly falling under the control of evangelical ministers and establishing an affihation with the nondenominational American Missionary Association. Joseph E. HoUiday, "Freedmen's Aid Societies in Cincinnati, \S&Z-\S70,'' Bulletin of the Cincin- nati Historical Society 22 #3 (July 1964): 169-185.

^'^In 1862, Indiana Yearly Meeting forwarded $100 to Friends in Kansas to relieve former slaves moving into that area from Missouri and other slave states. Indiana Yearly Meeting, Minutes of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, 1862 (Cincinnati: E. Morgan and Sons, 1862), 32 (hereinafter cited as Indiana Yearly Meeting, Minutes).

14 Indiana Yearly Meeting, Minutes, 1863, 27-29, 49-50; Indiana Yearly Meeting, Report of Indiana Yearly Meeting's Executive Committee for the Relief of Colored Freedmen (Richmond, IN: Holloway & Davis, 1864), 4-5 (hereinafter cited as Indiana Yearly Meeting, Report). At the 1863 Yearly Meeting, Elkanah Beard served on the committee that established the Executive Committee on Freedmen.

1^ Linda B. Selleck, Gentle Invaders: Quaker Women Educators and Racial Issues During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1995); "Minute Book of Board of Control for Freedmen's Relief Committees of the Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and Western Yearly Meetings of Orthodox Friends, 9 mo. 1864 to 5 mo. 1867," (MS, Friends Collection, Earlham College) (hereinafter cited as Board of Control, "Minute Book"). Financial data compiled from the reports of the Executive Committees contained in the respective printed yearly meeting minutes, 1863-1870. Charles Anscombe places the total figure around $350,000, although the veracity of his information is unclear. Anscombe, "Contributions of the Quakers," 182.

An incomplete file of The Freedmen's Record (Richmond, IN), 1865- 1866, can be found in the Friends Collection at Earlham College. The New- England Freedmen's Aid Society (Boston) published a journal with the same title between 1865-1874.

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The Civil War Writings of an Indiana Quaker

For firsthand accounts of the work of Indiana Quakers in Tennessee and Cairo, Illinois, see Frank R. Levstik, ed., "A Journey among the Contrabands: The Diary of Walter Totten Carpenter," Indiana Magazine of History, 73 #3 (Sept. 1977), 204-222; Elizabeth Nicholson, "A Contraband Camp," Indiana History Bulletin 1 #11-12 (Sept. 1924): 131-140; and Martha N. Lindley, "Reminiscences," ibid., 140-143.

Eastern Friends, who directed most of their energies toward the south- eastern states, also contributed material aid to the work along the Missis- sippi. For a discussion of the activities of eastern Friends, see Youra Quails, " 'Successors of Woolman and Benezet': The Beginnings of the Philadelphia Friends Freedmen's Association," Bulletin of Friends Historical Associa- tion, 45 #2 (Autumn 1956): 82-104; Henrietta Stratton Jaquette, "Friends' Association of Philadelphia for the Aid and Elevation of the Freedmen," ibid. , 46 #2 (Autumn 1957): 67-83; and Richard L. Morton, " 'Contraband' and Quakers in the Virginia Peninsula, 1862-1869," Virginia Magazine of His- tory and Biography, 69 (1953): 419-429.

i^For an overview of the health care crisis faced by freedpeople along the Mississippi Valley, see Randy Finley, "In War's Wake: Health Care and Arkansas Freedmen, 1863-1868," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 51 #2 (Summer 1992): 135-163; and Marshall Scott Legan, "Disease and the Freed- men in Mississippi during Reconstruction," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 28 (1973): 257-267.

John Eaton, Report of the General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Tennessee and the State of Arkansas for 1864 (Memphis, TN: n.p., 1865), 10.

Friends' Association of Philadelphia, Statistics, 17-18.

^9 Anscombe, "Contributions of the Quakers," 174; Indiana Yearly Meet- ing, Minutes, 1864, 19; ibid., 1865, 42; Indiana Yearly Meeting, History of Southland College (Richmond, IN: The Nicholson Press, 1906), 9. Elkanah Beard supervised the orphanage at Lauderdale, Mississippi, from 1867 until its transfer to the Freedmen's Bureau the next year.

2^ Randy Finley, From Slavery to Uncertain Freedom: The Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas, 1865-1869 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 127; Thomas C. Kennedy, "Southland College: The Society of Friends and Black Education in Arkansas," Arkansas Historical Quar- terly, 43 #3 (Autumn 1983): 206-237; Indiana Yearly Meeting, History of Southland College, 10-14. Elkanah and Irena Beard assumed control of the school between 1886 and 1888, and 1889 and 1891. In 1921, Indiana Yearly

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Meeting named a scholarship fund in their honor. Kennedy, "Southland College," 236-237.

-1 Friends' Association of Philadelphia, Statistics, 22-23. Hamm includes Elkanah and Irena Beard among the group of Friends who expressed an active interest in converting freedpeople to Christianity, if not to the Society itself. Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism, 69-71; Indiana Yearly Meeting, Minutes, 1865, 22-23; Thomas C. Kennedy, "The Rise and Decline of a Black Monthly Meeting: Southland, Arkansas, 1864-1925," Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 50 #2 (Summer 1991): 115-139,

22 Hamm, TTie Transformation of American Quakerism, 74-97; Indiana Yearly Meeting, Miniates, 1869, 60-61.

23 Board of Control, "Minute Book," entry for 10th mo. 13, 1864; Elkanah Beard Journal, 1862-1867 (MS 484, Friends Historical Collection, Guilford College), entries for 1st mo. 1, and 2nd. mo. 20, 1866.

24 Woodard, "Short Sketch," 182-183; "Irena S. Beard," The American Friend 27 #37 (9thmo. 9, 1920): 831; Heiss, Abstracts, 2: 227; Marjorie Sykes, Quakers in India: A Forgotten Century (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), 55-59. An account of the Beards' stay in the United Kingdom before leaving for India appeared in the Quaker magazine Herald of Peace (Chicago, 111.) 3 #11 (7th mo. 1, 1869): 146, and 4 #1 (8th mo. 1, 1869): 10. The Quaker publication Christian Worker published a number of Elkanah's letters from India during 1871.

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The Civil War Writings of Elkanah Beard

[Elkanah Beard Journal, FHC-GC]

Lynn Indiana 2nd Mo 14th 1862^

At home.

My mind having been unusually impressed for several months, and from some cause I hope not entirely selfish, I have felt induced to take in this form a few notes of what I conceive to be the working of the Holy Spirit upon me. Not with any desire or expectation that they will be published but rather for my future reference. [. . .]

Being now in my 24th year I find the mercantile business in which I am engaged does not admit of my giving as much time to reading, meditation and secret prayer as would be best, and often feeling deep remorse of conscience for having so much neglected that for which I was created, I have resolved to quit the business for a while so soon as practicable [. . .].

6th mo. 1st 1863

Having been under a religious engagement of mind for several months, to spend some time as a missionary among the colored people encamped on or near the Mississippi River who have been lately liberated from Slavery by the Presidents proclamation,^ I have concluded to lay the matter before my friends for their consideration at our next monthly meeting^ at which there will be a committee appointed at our last quarterly meeting"^ to consider the propriety of our engaging to work among this people for their social, moral, and religious improvement.

I feel very much cast down under the weight of the concern it being so momentous and my abilities the poorest of the poor who are called to labor in the vineyard, but beUeving my present and future happiness depends upon

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my faithfulness to Him who calleth all men into repentance I endeavor in fear and trembling to submit to His call.

6th mo 16th [1863]

Having obtained the concurrence of and proper certificates from friends to visit the encampments of colored people in the southwest I purpose setting out early to morrow morning. [. . .]

Memphis Tenn 6th mo. 21st [1863]

First day eve.

Arrived at this place at 7 o'clock last night.

To day I have visited Holly Springs [Mississippi] encampment of colored people. At 3 o'clock by my request there was a large number of them convened together in a meeting capacity and were very orderly and attentive and they gladly heard the word which I had to communicate. A favored time it was, many were tendered to tears and some of the more noisy shouted louder than was pleasant to me. [. . . ] I am now at Chaplain Fiskes^ in Memphis he is sub commander of the camps here.

My way thus far has been more pleasant than I expected when leaving home for which I desire to return devout thanks unto God.

[June] 23rd