My 3GGF was an itinerant Methodist minister. As a young man, he lost his right hand to a farming accident, which limited his career options to working with his head and heart rather than his hands. We are fortunate to have his journal, which just happens to include the period of the Civil War.
The family narrative is that great-great-great-Grandpa was a peaceable "freedom fighter." He was what was then called an abolitionist, because he believed slavery was wrong and should not be permitted.
And he acted. In 1852, his home in Galena, Illinois (where he lived with his toddler son and pregnant wife) was a stop on the Underground Railroad. He was not alone; his accomplices included a Justice of the Peace, a German housemaid, and an unnamed man with a team who would take an escaped slave to Canada.
"My wife prepared a bed for her in our garret, and she was beyond the reach of her pursuers. Nobody had suspected me of being an abolitionist, nobody crept around under our windows to eavesdrop, and the police never came to search our house, though many houses were searched. The whole police force were on the lookout for our guest. We asked no questions that night. We only knew she was a human being panting for freedom."
In 1860, he journals that he proudly cast his vote for Abraham Lincoln.
But he did more. He volunteered as a minister during the Civil War because he believed slavery was wrong, and his education and faith meant he understood this was the fight to right that wrong. With a wife and young kids at home, he was sent off to Tennessee to report on troop morale. Early fighting was brutal, and in spite of heavy losses, he was moved by slaves crossing battle lines to join the Union army. He signed on as the white minister to the 7th U.S. Colored Artillery Regiment.
Noting that the wives of black soldiers were not considered wives because their plantation marriages had no force of law, he set about marrying as many black soldiers as possible to prevent their placement in a refugee camp. This action also insured their future veteran's (and widow's) benefits.
In the years after the war he realized that his efforts were only the beginning of the struggle for equality. He saw education as a key to changing the oppressive systems. With another pastor, he opened a small school in 1876 in a wooden building in Dallas. Two months after opening, the school was torched by the KKK. They rebuilt it in an act of defiance.
Eventually the school moved to Austin, where it became a liberal arts college for African Americans, called Samuel Huston College. The college exists today as Houston-Tillotson University. He lived long enough to see the college prosper at the dawn of the twentieth-century, and to see two of his children take up the cause of his life among the ex-slaves.
Did his actions make others uncomfortable? The stories of his journal make it clear that others' reactions were most certainly motivated by fear and discomfort. But the tone of his words in his journal is never hissy-fit angry; rather, he was moved to overcome fear and comforted in his righteousness by his deep faith.
But I realize that I am spitting angry: even though George spent most of his life doing these things, none of them—not hiding an escaped slave, voting for Lincoln, ministering for dying soldiers, marrying families to preserve their freedom, even founding and teaching at the college—none of these moved the needle on the racism at the heart of the problem. Yes, it made a difference to those individuals whose lives he touched, but it barely moved the needle. So, yes, I’m angry, but mostly frustrated that we still have so far to go, both individually and collectively.
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