Garrison Frazier: Difference between revisions

Garrison Frazier (1798? - 18??) was a prominent African-American Baptist minister and U.S. Civil War figure in Savannah, Georgia. He is best known as the spokesman for 20 African-American Baptist and Methodist ministers who met with Military Division of the Mississippi 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 "Forty acres and a mule" meeting.

The meeting was held at Sherman’s headquarters in the upstairs room of the ornate Gothic mansion, the Green-Meldrim House. General Sherman and Secretary Stanton invited Frazier and fellow African-American church leaders to discuss the refugee crisis where tens of thousands of formerly-enslaved African-Americans had abandoned Georgia and South Carolina plantations, following Sherman’s army to Savannah during the infamous November 15 - December 21, 1864 March to the Sea. They discussed 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’s eloquence inspired Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15, or “Forty acres and a mule” order, issued January 16, 1865. This order instructed officers to settle African-American 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 in the Special Order, 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.

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

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 to 1860.

At the time of the January 1865 meeting, and with his health failing, Frazier was no longer in charge of a congregation. {[Ulysses L. Houston]], who also attended the Savannah Colloquy, succeeded Reverend Frazier as pastor of First Bryan Baptist Church. 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 Baptist Church’s pastor until his death in 1889. Nonetheless, the African-American community and Frazier' fellow clergymen still regarded Frazier as a highly respected elder and very knowledgeable leader.

Historic Meeting with General Sherman

Selected by his fellow clergyman as spokesperson for the 20-member contingent, Frazier eloquently approximately twelve questions concerning matters relating to the freedom of enslaved African-Americans. Among his notable responses, Frazier is most known for the following colloquy:

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

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."

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

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 a large expanse of coastal land expropriated from white landowners in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. This land stretched from Charleston, South Carolina, to northern Florida, “for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.” Each family would be allotted “forty acres of tillable ground….in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.” 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

Dr. Charles Elmore, a professor emeritus of humanities at Savannah State University, believed Frazier's presence and eloquence had an significant impact on General Sherman, sufficient to inspire Special Field Orders, No. 15.

“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.”

Historian Kevin M. Levin, highlighting Frazier's critical importance to Civil War history, 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.... [ ] 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.''"

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 roles 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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