- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Children and the Sectional Conflict
- 1 “Waked Up to Feel”
- 2 “Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go”
- 3 “What Is a Person Worth at Such a Time”
- Part II Children of War
- 4 A “Rebel to [His] Govt. and to His Parents”
- 5 Thrills for Children
- 6 “Good Children Die Happy”
- 7 Children of the March
- 8 Love in Battle
- Part III Aftermaths
- 9 Caught in the Crossfire
- 10 “Free Ourselves, but Deprived of Our Children”
- 11 Reconstructing Social Obligation
- 12 Orphans and Indians
- Part IV Epilogue
- 13 Preparing the Next Generation for Massive Resistance
- Documents: Through the Eyes of Civil War Children
- “I Hope by My Next Birthday We Will Have Peace in Our Land”: Carrie Berry Endures the Fall of Atlanta
- “A Strenuous and Tragic Affair”: Life on the Northern Home Front
- “The Threshold of a New Year”: High School Journalists Weigh In on the Civil War
- “Sports in the Days of the Sixties”: War and Play
- “De drums wus beatin’”: Caroline Richardson Meets the Yankees
- “A Momentous and Eventful Day”: Freedom Comes to Booker T. Washington
- “Born in the First Smoke of the Great Conflict”: Hamlin Garland’s Father Comes Home
- Questions for Consideration
- Suggested Readings
- About the Contributors
- Index
Caught in the Crossfire
Caught in the Crossfire
African American Children and the Ideological Battle for Education in Reconstruction Tennessee
- Chapter:
- (p.145) 9 Caught in the Crossfire
- Source:
- Children and Youth during the Civil War Era
- Author(s):
Troy L. Kickler
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
This chapter discusses the education of black children in Reconstruction Tennessee. It details the efforts of Freedmen's Bureau agents and Northern missionaries to establish schools across Tennessee to prepare young former slaves for freedom. In the Sabbath schools, Bureau and missionary day schools, and public schools, freed children were taught religious and Victorian values and civic duties. In all three black children were taught what educators believed were correct interpretations of Christianity and citizenship, and learned how to live independent and industrious lives—essentially how to be free. To get along in these schools, students had to conform their thoughts and actions to Northern middle-class standards. As a result, many black children, as part of the first free generation of African Americans, matured into Protestant Christians who exhibited a fervent and particular American nationalism and a belief in free labor.
Keywords: African American children, youth, black children, education, Tennessee, former slaves, Freedmen's Bureau, missionaries, Christianity, citizenship
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Part I Children and the Sectional Conflict
- 1 “Waked Up to Feel”
- 2 “Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go”
- 3 “What Is a Person Worth at Such a Time”
- Part II Children of War
- 4 A “Rebel to [His] Govt. and to His Parents”
- 5 Thrills for Children
- 6 “Good Children Die Happy”
- 7 Children of the March
- 8 Love in Battle
- Part III Aftermaths
- 9 Caught in the Crossfire
- 10 “Free Ourselves, but Deprived of Our Children”
- 11 Reconstructing Social Obligation
- 12 Orphans and Indians
- Part IV Epilogue
- 13 Preparing the Next Generation for Massive Resistance
- Documents: Through the Eyes of Civil War Children
- “I Hope by My Next Birthday We Will Have Peace in Our Land”: Carrie Berry Endures the Fall of Atlanta
- “A Strenuous and Tragic Affair”: Life on the Northern Home Front
- “The Threshold of a New Year”: High School Journalists Weigh In on the Civil War
- “Sports in the Days of the Sixties”: War and Play
- “De drums wus beatin’”: Caroline Richardson Meets the Yankees
- “A Momentous and Eventful Day”: Freedom Comes to Booker T. Washington
- “Born in the First Smoke of the Great Conflict”: Hamlin Garland’s Father Comes Home
- Questions for Consideration
- Suggested Readings
- About the Contributors
- Index
