[Reading-hall-of-fame] A Memorial Day Message

[tsticht at znet.com]

Memorial Day 2005

Remembering the Literacy Teachers Who 
Taught For the Union During the Civil War

Tom Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education

"Outside of the Fort were many skulls lying about; 
I have often moved them one side out of the path.
The comrades and I would have wondered a bit
as to which side of the war the men fought on,
some said they were the skulls of our boys; some 
said they were the enemies; but as there was no
definite way to know, it was never decided which 
could lay claim to them. They were a gruesome sight,
those fleshless heads and grinning jaws, but by this
time I had become used to worse things and did not
feel as I would have earlier in my camp life.
--Susie King Taylor, 1902 (in Lerner, 1972)

Suzie (Baker) King Taylor was born a slave in Savannah, Georgia in 1848. 
She was raised by her grandmother who sent her and one of her brothers to 
the home of a free women to learn to read and write.  As she explained in 
her 1902 book, "We went every day with our books wrapped in paper to 
prevent the police or white persons from seeing them." (Taylor in Lerner, 
1972)

During the Civil War the Union Army initiated the practice of enlisting 
freed African-Americans. But it was soon apparent that there were problems 
in using these men as soldiers. Among other problems,  it was difficult for 
officers to communicate with illiterate former slaves. So promotion and 
advancement in the army was difficult for the African-American soldiers. 
Many of them blamed this situation on their lack of education. In response 
to these needs, many officers initiated programs of education for the 
former slaves. 

One officer, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson of the 33rd U. S. Colored Troops, 
appointed the chaplain as the regimental teacher. Higginson reportedly saw 
men at night gathered around a campfire, "spelling slow monosyllables out 
of a primer, a feat which always commands all ears, " and he observed that, 

"Their love of the spelling book is perfectly inexhaustible,
-they stumbling on by themselves, or the blind leading the 
blind, with the same pathetic patience which they carry into 
everything. The chaplain is getting up a schoolhouse, 
where he will soon teach them as regularly as he can. 
But the alphabet must always be a very incidental 
business in a camp." (Cornish, 1952). 

 One of the people whom the chaplain engaged in teaching soldiers of the 
33rd to read and write was Suzie King Taylor (Blassingame, 1965). She went 
with the regiment to Florida where she reported that "I learned to handle a 
musket very well while in the regiment and could shoot straight and often 
hit the target. I assisted in cleaning the guns and used to fire them off, 
to see if the cartridges were dry, before cleaning and re-loading , each 
day. I thought this was great fun." (Taylor in Lerner, 1972, p. 101). 

According to Taylor, "I taught a great many of the comrades in Company E to 
read and write when they were off duty, nearly all were anxious to learn. 
My husband taught some also when it was convenient for him. I was very 
happy to know my efforts were successful in camp also very grateful for the 
appreciation of my services. I gave my services willingly for four years 
and three months without receiving a dollar." (Taylor in Lerner, 1972)

Throughout the Civil War, thousands of teachers, some modestly paid and 
many volunteers, worked often under very arduous conditions, such as 
described above by Suzie King Taylor, to educate the newly freed slaves who 
came to fight for the preservation of the United States of America. In just 
the Union Army’s  Department of the Gulf (Louisiana, Mississippi, 
Alabama,Texas) by 1864 there were 95 schools with 9,571 children and 2,000 
adults being taught by 162 teachers. By the war’s end it was estimated some 
20,000 African-American troops had been taught to read "intelligently" 
(Blassingame, 1965). 

No one knows how many adult literacy teachers gave their lives in the 
course of their service to the education of those soldiers, both blacks and 
whites, fighting for the preservation of the Union, during the Civil War. 
But this Memorial Day we should remember their service to those they taught 
to read and write, many of whom we can be certain did give their lives for 
our Nation in the war that took more lives than all the wars from the 
Revolutionary War through the Vietnam War combined. 

In all these wars, the literacy teachers were also there. Perhaps, contrary 
to what the progressive Colonel Higginson thought, the alphabet should not 
be considered just " an incidental business in a camp."  It may, instead, 
be central to victory in wars. It may just be true that "the pen is 
mightier than the sword." 

On May 30th let us remember the thousands of literacy teachers who have 
taught hundreds of thousands of troops, the fallen and those who survived 
their wars, how to wield the mightiest sword of victory – the alphabet!

References

Blassingame, J. W. (1965). The Union Army as an educational institution for 
Negroes, 1862-1865. Journal of Negro Education, 34, 152-159. 

Cornish, D. T. (1952). The Union Army as a school for Negroes. Journal of 
Negro history, 37, 368-382. 

Lerner, G. (Ed.) (1972). Black women in white America: A documentary 
history. New York: Pantheon Books-Random house. 

Thomas G. Sticht
International Consultant in Adult Education
2062 Valley View Blvd.
El Cajon, CA 92019-2059
Tel/fax: (619) 444-9133
Email: tsticht at aznet.net