Garrison Frazier: Difference between revisions

Garrison Frazier (1798? - 18??) was a prominent African-American Baptist minister. He is best known as the appointed spokesperson for 20 African-American Baptist and Methodist ministers met with Military Division of the Mississippi U.S. Union Army Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman, and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton in [Savannah, Georgia]] on January 12, 1865. This important meeting is widely known as the Savannah Colloquy or "40 acres and a Mule" meeting.

General Sherman and Secretary Stanton invited the contingent to discuss the refugee crisis where tens of thousands of formerly enslaved African-Americans had abandoned Georgia and South Carolina plantations and followed Sherman’s army to Savannah during Sherman’s infamous “ scorched earth” March to the Sea through Georgia from November 15, 1864 to December 21, 1864. Sherman and Stanton discussed with Frazier and his colleagues the manner by which the newly freed African-American people would live their lives in a country that still clearly saw them as no more than property.

Frazier and his colleagues met with Sherman and Stanton at Sherman’s headquarters in the upstairs room of the ornate Gothic mansion, Green-Meldrim House.

At the time of the meeting, Reverend Frazier was 67 years old.

Frazier’s eloquence formed the basis for Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15, or “Forty Acres and a Mule”, issued January 16, 1865, which instructed officers to settle the refugees on the Sea Islands and inland: 400,000 total acres divided into 40-acre plots. Though mules (beasts of burden used for plowing) were not mentioned, some of its beneficiaries did receive them from the army. Such plots were colloquially known as "Blackacres", which may have a basis for their origin in contract law.

Birth, Early Life, Ministry

Frazier was born in Granville County, North Carolina, located just north of Durham, North Carolina. Where it is not clearly documented where he was enslaved, Frazier had been a slave for sixty years. In 1856, Frazier purchased his and his wife’s freedom, paying $1,000 in gold and silver.

An ordained minister in the Baptist Church, Frazier served in the ministry for 35 years. He became the 8th pastor of the Third African Church (now the First Bryan Baptist Church) in Savannah, Georgia, serving in this capacity from 1852–1860.

At the time of the Savannah Colloquy, and with his health failing, Frazier was no longer in charge of a congregation. He was succeeded by Ulysses L. Houston, who also attended the Savannah Colloquy. Houston, a former enslaved house servant and butcher, became First Bryan Church’s 9th pastor in 1861, taking part in the statewide black convention of 1866, where African Americans in South Carolina demanded the right to vote, equality before the law, and the right to serve in the state legislature. He served as First Bryan Church’s pastor until his death in 1889. Nonetheless, Frazier was regarded by his community and peers a highly respected elder and knowledgeable leader.

Historic Meeting with General Sherman

Selected by his fellow clergyman as spokesperson for the 20-member contingent, Frazier eloquently responded to a series of questions posed by Sherman and his fellow officials. Among his most notable responses to General Sherman's questions, Frazier is most known for the following colloquy:

"State in what manner you think you can take care of yourselves, and how can you best assist the Government in maintaining your freedom."

Garrison Frazier: "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor–that is, by the labor of the women and children and old men; and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare. And to assist the Government, the young men should enlist in the service of the Government, and serve in such manner as they may be wanted. (The Rebels told us that they piled them up and made batteries of them, and sold them to Cuba; but we don't believe that.) We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own."

"State in what manner you would rather live–whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by yourselves."

Garrison Frazier: "I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over; but I do not know that I can answer for my brethren."

Aftermath of Sherman's Meeting, Special Field Orders, Number 15

Four days later, Sherman issued his Special Field Orders, No. 15.

The orders provided for the settlement of 40,000 freed slaves and black refugees on land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Sherman appointed Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton, an abolitionist from Massachusetts who had previously directed the recruitment of black soldiers, to implement that plan.[93] Those orders, which became the basis of the claim that the Union government had promised freed slaves "40 acres and a mule", were revoked later that year by President Andrew Johnson.

Legacy

In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Dr. Charles Elmore, a professor emeritus of humanities at Savannah State University, believed that Sherman and Stanton listened to Frazier and the others. “The other men chose this eloquent, 67-year-old imposing Black man, who was well over 6 feet tall, to speak on their behalf,” Elmore says. “And he said essentially we want to be free from domination of white men, we want to be educated, and we want to own land.”

Rehashing educator Hiram “HD” Hoover’s perspective on Garrison Frazier, Boston-based historian and author Kevin M. Levin notes: “The problem too often with popular discussions of this history is that they focus on a few figures—Lincoln, Johnson, Sherman, etc.—or collapse these complexities into simplistic generalizations—especially about the North vs. the “South.”

"I say this not out of a sense of professional superiority or jealousy, but because I feel strongly that bad history makes bad politics. And it’s very rare to see discussions of the South in politics today that don’t invoke history to some extent (which you seldom see in discussions of other regions, like the Midwest or Mountain states). When I see discussions in the media or blogosphere about “the South,” I know I’m likely to hear mostly if not entirely about the white South. When I read people repeating the popular line that the “South lost the war but won the peace,” it’s clear to me that they don’t have Garrison Frazier in mind.

I don’t mean to suggest that the only problem here is race (though that’s certainly a large part of it). It’s also that complex events get reduced to questions about the judgment or character of an individual, so that the coming of emancipation, for example, gets debated as a question of what Lincoln thought about slavery and race. This is not, let me emphasize, an argument that the great “dead white men” don’t matter (which strikes me primarily as a caricature anyway). Rather, it’s an argument that they need to be understood as part of an historical process—one that connects Lincoln, for example, not just to other politicians and to the northern public, but also to soldiers and officers in the field, to runaway slaves, and to black leaders like Garrison Frazier.

The study of history isn’t a zero-sum game, and recognizing the importance of those other actors isn’t a way to impoverish Lincoln—it’s a way to enrich our understanding of the past.”

Death, Memorial

No information appears to be available regarding Garrison Frazier's death and interment.

In 2014, the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a Historical Marker at First Bryan Baptist Church, noting the role that former pastors Garrison Frazier and Ulysses Houston played in the seminal meeting with General Sherman in January 1865”

“First Bryan Baptist Church - Constituted 1788 First Bryan dates its founding to the constitution of the Ethiopian Church of Jesus Christ under Rev. Andrew Bryan in January 1788, making it one of the nation’s oldest African-American Baptist churches. Known later as First Colored Church, First African, and Third African, the congregation took the name First Bryan Baptist in 1867. Construction of the first church building began here in 1793 on property purchased by Reverend Bryan. The current building was completed in 1874. First Bryan ministers including Garrison Frazier and Ulysses Houston attended the nearby meeting of local black leaders with Gen. Sherman in January 1865 that resulted in Special Field Orders No. 15, promising confiscated coastal land to freed slaves. In the twentieth century, Civil Rights leader W.W. Law taught Sunday School at First Bryan for many years. Erected by the Georgia Historical Society and First Bryan Baptist Church.

External links

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