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After an arduous journey that challenged her romantic notions of voyage at sea, Charlotte Forten arrived at Port Royal on October 1862. From that moment on, Forten became a student of nature and character. She turned to her journal as a creative outlet. She prayed for liberation, her own as well as the slave's, and in the Southern heat she at times exulted over it. She longed to understand and help the newly emancipated slaves. That meant trying to force black residents of the Sea Islands into literary tropes, as when she wanted to hear some oarsmen sing Whittier's “Song of the Negro Boatman.” Helping the freedmen cause also meant inspiring her students to achieve great things and introducing them to the middle-class values she believed they would need to get ahead. She was enraptured by the culture of the blacks, by the stories of struggle and triumph, and by the deep spirituality that permeated the lives of freed slaves.

This chapter focuses on Charlotte Forten, one of the first African American teachers to venture South and work with black refugees behind Union army lines, and how her sense of duty was forever transformed while on St. Helena Island. In the summer of 1862, with teaching experience in Salem and Philadelphia, Forten set out to teach among contraband slaves, of whose “sad . . . sufferings” she had heard moving accounts. This undertaking, she related, would offer the “delights of travel” while enabling her to find her “highest happiness” in doing her “duty.” Through the auspices of the Port Royal Relief Association, the young teacher secured a position on St. Helena Island, where she remained until poor health and her father's death drew her back to Philadelphia in late 1864.

This chapter unfolds a study of antislavery verse that appeared in The Liberator and reached its best forms in Charlotte Forten, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell. It argue that these poets explicitly modeled their vocation after Milton and, much like William Lloyd Garrison and the journalists of the Liberator, situated their work within a prophetic Puritan lineage. Here too the results captivated readers, but Lowell in particular opens a window onto the risks of this project as he came to regret his “violent imagination” after the Civil War claimed three of his nephews.

This chapter lays out the organizing principle of slave culture in North America and underscores the centrality of the ancestral past to the African in America. The most important African ritual in slavery, the Ring Shout, is revealed in some detail. With the ring a symbol of unity and counter-clockwise dance and rhythm consciousness as common starting points, different ethnic groups on plantations of the South began moving toward unity almost before being aware of it. Children were especially drawn to the ring, helping to transmit the Shout over generations. African practices and values are related to specific academic disciplines to make slave behavior comprehensible. Slave art in the form of tales, music and dance are in dispensable to the analysis that establishes far more similarities between slave culture in the North and south than previously thought.

By the end of 1865, all twenty-six of the northern black regiments were mustered out of service and returned home to their families. The first was the 54th Massachusetts Infantry, which mustered out on August 20, 1865, and discharged in Boston on September 1. The last northern black regiment mustered out in December 1865. The reception once they arrived home was one of exuberance and joy for most northern black regiments. Large crowds of admirers welcomed them home. Once back where the regiment was organized, the regiment settled their final business with the paymaster and then officially disbanded. The soldiers then went home to their families. Northern black soldiers went home with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. They had successfully defended their country against rebellion, helped to put an end to slavery, shown both skill and bravery, and proved their worth to their country. In return for their loyalty, blacks felt that their actions justified equal treatment in American society. Black men and women were optimistic and continued to strive for better lives as they settled into their post-war lives. The voices of most northern black women became more silent since they were no longer writing letters to military officials.