It’s hard to preserve history. The paper that holds the stories crumbles or sticks together, stored in damp basements or behind walls. Officials throw files away, burn them, or shove them into unlabelled boxes. People die without telling us what happened.
Yet at the same time, it’s not so simple to erase what happened, not with a wave of a wand or the stroke of an expensive pen. Stories once told take on a life of their own. Files are rediscovered; skeleton bones fall out of closets. History can’t simply be ripped off the wall. If you hadn’t heard, a school official recently took Harriet Tubman posters down in advance of a visit from Trump government officials. As if that would remove what Harriet Tubman was or what she did.
If we choose to remember, if we work to remember–dig underneath the bland encyclopedia entries to uncover what we must remember–then nothing will erase the real stories. February is still Black History Month, whether there are posters or not.
I came across the remarkable life of Susie King Taylor, looking for an appropriate subject to write about this month, somewhat discouraged about writing at all. You can read a few paragraphs about her on Wikipedia, at the Library of Congress, or via the National Park Service. She was the first African-American nurse in the Civil War, the first Black woman to teach at a school in a Union camp, the first woman to write about life in the camps. The “first” business doesn’t really matter. The point is that she did things and wrote her story, proving how important a task that is.
In her relatively brief memoir, which you can read here in full, much is left unsaid. I wanted to try and provide a little more context, to highlight what is written between the lines. I want to set what Susie wrote against what was happening at the time, to show how her family endured the years of violence and oppression, a manual showing how we all might persevere in the face of the unimaginable.
My great-great-grandmother was 120 years old when she died…
Family History
Susie opens with her family history–a blur of names and dates. I found myself trying to construct the family tree and marveling, for several reasons. She doesn’t give us the complete record, as a census or Bible might. But she says that her great-great grandmother Dolly lived to be 120 and had sons that served in the Revolutionary War, which means her life encompassed the birth of America and the end of the Civil War. Dolly (the elder, there are two Dollys) was “half Indian” and so old that she had to be put in the sun to “prolong her vitality.” Dolly passed on her longevity though, since all the women live well into or past their 60s, despite lives of hardship. Susie’s description is also matrilineal. She tells us about her mothers and grandmothers, and little about the fathers beyond their names.
We might be tempted to assume that Dolly’s five sons who fought in the Revolutionary War did so for the colonies, but it’s not a given. The British promised freedom to slaves, many of whom fled to Europe after the War with their Loyalist supporters. Twice as many Blacks fought for the British as for the colonists, notably some 5000 from Savannah, where Susie grew up. It’s quite possible that her great-great uncles fought for the Tories.
Dolly’s youngest girl Susanna was Susie’s great-grandmother, born perhaps as her elder brothers began deciding which side to fight for. Susanna would gain fame as one of the best midwives in Savannah, which may explain how she managed to give birth to 24 children, 23 of them girls.
With the dates Susie provides, midwife Susanna must have been giving birth into her forties. This is especially remarkable since it was customary for all the girls to wed and begin child-bearing as early as age 13. Susie does not say whether her grandmother and greats were enslaved, but they were Blacks in Georgia, so it seems likely. We do know that Dolly Reed, Susie’s grandmother, was a free woman by the time Susie came along, although we don’t know the circumstances. When Susie was born, her grandmother was 28.
Dolly only had two children: James, who died at age twelve, and Hagar Ann, Susie’s mother. Hagar Ann was enslaved by the Grest family, owners of a small farm outside of Savannah, though Susie calls her mother a “waitress.” Hagar had nine children, though three died in infancy. The Grest family seemed quite fond of Susie and her brother, letting the children sleep (like pets) at the foot of Mrs. Grest’s bed when her husband was away. The Grests eventually let Susie and two siblings leave the plantation and move in permanently with Grandmother Dolly in town. We don’t know why, but Dolly took advantage and quickly arranged for the children to attend school.
We wrapped our books in paper to prevent police or white people from seeing them…
The (Non) Legal Standing of Blacks in the 1850s
In the Savannah of 1855, when Susie was seven, it was illegal for Blacks to be taught to read or write. To fool neighbors, Dolly’s friend Mrs. Woodhouse had the children arrive and leave one at a time, with their work wrapped in parcels as if they were learning a trade. Susie recalls that the children would meet up after the secret school, regrouping to walk home together, catching laurel leaves and popping them in their hands.
Such free spirits contrasted greatly with the reality of the time. Not only was educating Blacks illegal in Georgia, but Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. This law meant any enslaved person found in free American territories could be recaptured and sent back into slavery. Blacks anywhere at any time were subject to search and seizure, and it could be nearly impossible to disprove an accusation that you were a fugitive. Any “free” Black, even in the north, could be made unfree.
Susie’s education continued. After Mrs. Woodhouse, Susie continued her studies with another of Dolly’s friends, Mrs. Beasley; after exhausting Beasley’s knowledge, she coaxed lessons out of a white playmate, Katie, who attended a convent school. Her landlord’s white son, James Blouis, also passed on some of his high school knowledge.
Even as James was letting her read some of his textbooks, the Supreme Court was further denying legal status to Blacks. In the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Court ruled against Dred Scott, an enslaved man who had been brought legally into free territories by his owner. Scott had lived several years as free, but when the benevolent owner died, the family wanted to sell him with the estate, despite Scott claiming that he had been effectively made free. Chief Justice Taney wrote for the Court that Blacks were not citizens but property, whether enslaved or free. As property, Scott could never be free and, not being a citizen, had no legal rights to argue otherwise.
Even wishing for freedom was risky. Grandma Dolly attended a quasi-abolitionist church service where hymns to freedom were sung. The police raided the service, arresting the congregation, and Dolly had to be freed by her “guardian,” a white sponsor in town. Thus, while Susie and her grandmother were granted some liberties, those could be un-granted as easily.
“My uncle took the seven of us to St. Catherine’s Island…”
The “Counter-State” of Freedom
While Dolly and her grandchildren might have skirted the law at times, as soon as escape was an option, they went. War broke out in 1861, and, in 1862, Union forces began capturing forts and islands along the Atlantic coast in what was called the “Anaconda” strategy. Union General Winfield Scott’s plan was for the north to capture the ports down the Mississippi river, across the Gulf of Mexico, and up the Atlantic coast. Cut off the south’s ability to export cotton, and it would kill their source of funds.
Hence, when Susie says that her uncle took her and seven family members over to St. Catherine’s and then St. Simon’s Island in April 1862, she means that the Union army had arrived on the Georgia coast. Even so, a simple escape across Union lines did not necessarily lead to liberty. As soon as war broke out, enslaved Blacks began crossing Union lines. They viewed territory in the south captured by the Union as a “counter-state” of freedom, a place where they would be freed. The Union–Congress, Lincoln, etc.–didn’t see it that way. In the early months, the Union army chained up Blacks who fought their way across battle lines. Union commanders sent the escapees back to their southern plantations.
Lincoln and the Congress had said from the outset that they were not trying to end slavery, merely trying to keep the States United. This deportation policy was proof. However, actions by the southern army changed the policy. At captured sites like Fort Sumter and Fort Pulaski, Union officers discovered that slaves had been used to dig ditches, construct barriers, and, in some cases, fight. Union generals claimed that this forfeited the federal “protection of property,” which they had been honoring by returning escaped enslaved Blacks.
By the end of 1861, Union army commanders began to let escaping Blacks stay, effectively creating emancipation in the camps. In August, a few people crossed to Fort Monroe in Virginia, then 47 more the next day. Within a couple of months, there were 900 in the camp, an army camp now one of refugees. As the Army gained footholds through the Anaconda strategy, on islands from South Carolina to Florida, the camps became the Army’s new problem.
Refugees and Contraband
After Susie’s uncle took the family across army lines, they were put on another boat headed for St. Simon’s Island, about 80 miles south of Savannah. On the ship, the captain was surprised to find that Susie was literate, asking her to demonstrate her writing skills as well as her sewing and other domestic tasks. When they arrived at the island, the Commander was told of her capabilities and she was asked to set up a school for the children in the refugee camps, a number that was growing by the day.
Legally, the United States was still fussing over whether those who crossed into the camps had any status. They were officially non-citizens. But they were confiscated property, as Union commanders argued the South had given up the right to the escaped Black families because the “property” had been used in the war efforts. The refugees–able-fighting men, women, and children–became “contraband.” The men formed army corps, unpaid for nearly two years. With no incoming salary, they could not make purchases at the commissary, so their wives earned money by doing the laundry, cooking, and other domestic tasks for the white officers. Even contraband needed to eat, and there were now 600 on St. Simon’s, mostly women and children. Susie persuaded the commander to get some books for the school. She found herself involved with everything, teaching the children, but also laundress and nurse. Whatever was needed, she did.
I assisted in cleaning the guns and used to fire them off, to see if the cartridges were dry, before cleaning and reloading, each day. I thought this great fun.
A few months in, rumors came that freedom might be coming. Someone had heard that the south was negotiating to make their slaves work only half a week, then leave them free the other half. (?WTF?) Another said that all Blacks would be shipped to Liberia–a favored Republican plan that Lincoln briefly considered. None of these proposals was realistic, but rumors were far more plentiful than food.
Smallpox and other diseases raced through camp, but Susie and others had been vaccinated and were able to withstand the milder version, called varioloid. She chalked her survival up to drinking lots of sassafras tea. Tea did not save everyone, as some in the camp succumbed. She also nursed the wounded, at one point using a can of condensed milk and turtle eggs to make custard for the soldiers in the camp hospital.
During her time with the Union army, she moved among several camps, from South Carolina to Georgia to Florida. The commander, Lt. Col. Trowbridge, clearly found her so useful that she went with the army, eventually attaching herself to the 33d United States Colored Troops of Late 1st S. C. Volunteers. The full account of her life in camp is a fascinating mix of peril and occasional acts of comedy and grace. She nearly drowns twice. There is a pet pig let loose. Once, when the men leave for a battle, she is nearly eaten by all the remaining fleas. She meets Clara Barton. Her memory is meticulous, full of striking details.
Outside of the fort [long after the battle] were many skulls lying about; I have often moved them one side out of the path. The comrades and I would have quite a debate as to which side the men fought on.
When the Emancipation Proclamation is signed in January 1863–midway through the war–Susie delights in hearing a guest speaker read it to the corps. Yet freedom was still years away, as they would endure three more years before war’s end. Susie stayed as camp laundress, nurse, and teacher long past the surrender at Appomattox in 1865. Finally, in February 1866, the corps disbanded, and she headed for home to Savannah.
War’s End, Different Troubles
Susie had married a soldier in camp, Edward King, in 1863. She avoided pregnancy during the war but was expecting a child shortly after they returned home in 1866. Edward had trained as a carpenter but could not find skilled labor as such and worked as a longshoreman. He died in a docking accident only a few months after their return, when Susie was pregnant with her only son. She was still only 18 years old.
She opened a school at home in Savannah and taught dozens of Black children for a while, taking a “dollar a day” from her students, who were barred from the white schools. However, other free Black schools opened. For whatever reason, Susie was not hired as a teacher, and the free schools pushed hers out of the market. She was forced into domestic service, ultimately living with a family and leaving her baby with her mother, who had opened a store in town.
All this time my interest in the boys in blue had not abated. I was still loyal and true, whether they were black or white.
The post war years remain eventful. Susie appeals to the army for her husband’s back pay and wins a small sum. She marries again, Russell Taylor, although both Russell and her son–who is never named in her memoir–die before she does. Eventually, she goes to Boston in the 1870s, her last move. She does travel to see her grandmother’s end in 1889, her son’s in 1898, her husband’s in 1901, but she remains living in the north, saying that she found a freedom in Boston unlike anywhere else. She organizes the Women’s Relief Corps in support of Union war veterans from Massachusetts and takes an active interest on behalf of “Afro-Cubans” refugees from the Spanish-American War. At age 59, she is persuaded to write her extraordinary memoir, and wonders, at the end, whether life for Blacks had advanced.
I sometimes ask, “Was the war in vain? Has it brought freedom, in the full sense of the word, or has it not made our condition more hopeless?” … All we ask for is equal justice.
Tomb of a Different Unknown Soldier
Susie King Taylor died in 1912, at 64, roughly my age, though she lived a dozen lifetimes’ worth by then. She was buried next to Russell Taylor in Boston. However, her resting place was unmarked, as no one was available at the time to pay for changing the Taylor headstone.
While her story has led over the years to several memorials–a YA biography, a historical center with her name, highway signs–the headstone remained unmarked until 2019. A graduate student of history turned up the cemetery records while researching Susie King Taylor as part of the Suffrage Centennial. A Massachusetts Civil War Veterans’ civic group gathered the funds for the marker, and a collaboration among SKT fans ensured that she would be remembered where she rested.
Right now, histories like this seem poised on a knife‘s edge. Some would like to bury certain stories, put them back in unlabelled boxes, rip them from the walls, toss them into the trash. The least we can do is to read the stories and pass them around. What happened in our history can not be executive-ordered away.
Nurse. Teacher. Laundress. Gun cleaner. President of the Women’s Relief Corps. None of the official labels do Susie sufficient justice, even though she was all of those things. What Susie King Taylor was, above all, was a historian. That makes her a national treasure.