Garrison Frazier: Difference between revisions

Garrison Frazier (1798? - 1873), known in some records as "Garrison Fraser", was a prominent African-American Baptist minister and public figure during the U.S. Civil War. He is best known as the main spokesman for the twenty 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 on January 12, 1865. General Sherman and Secretary Stanton invited Frazier and fellow church leaders to meet at General Sherman’s Green-Meldrim House headquarters in Savannah, Georgia where they discussed the African-American refugee crisis in Savannah: tens of thousands of formerly-enslaved African-Americans had abandoned Georgia and South Carolina plantations and followed Sherman’s army during the infamous "March to the Sea" through Georgia. This meeting is widely regarded as the "Savannah Colloquy" or the "Forty acres and a mule" meeting.

Frazier’s sheer eloquence and enormous presence inspired Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15 or the “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: a total of 400,000 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

One account has Frazier's birth place as Granville County, North Carolina, located just north of Durham, North Carolina. Scholarship also places Frazier's birthplace in Virginia.

Both of these brethren were of pure African blood, and they added great strength to the church and its cause

Where it is not clearly documented who owned him, Frazier and his wife Diana Williams were brought to Georgia around 1850. Having been enslaved for sixty years, Frazier purchased his and his wife’s freedom in 1856, paying $1,000 in gold and silver. Another record has Frazier's birth place in Virginia.

Though he initially joined the Methodist Church in Georgia, Frazier later became convinced "that the Baptist faith was according to the Bible." He was baptized at Savannah, Georgia's Third African Church (later renamed the First Bryan Baptist Church), which ordained him to the ministry as pastor in December, 1851. He wasFirst Bryan Baptist Church's 8th pastor, serving from December 1851 to 1860. Overall, Frazier served in the ministry for 35 years.

He was known to be "endowed with fair natural gifts, a commanding presence, and a good voice." As a preacher, Frazier was plain and impressive. Though not learned in theology, Frazier understood and could explain the doctrines of Christ quite clearly.

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 meeting, succeeded Frazier as the 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 considered Frazier a highly knowledgeable leader and respected elder.

First Bryan Baptist Church had more representatives at the “Forty acres and a mule” meeting than any other church.

Historic Meeting with Union Army Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman

On January 12, 1865, twenty African-American Baptist and Methodist ministers met with Military Division of the Mississippi Union Army Major-General William Tecumseh Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. Selected by his fellow clergyman as spokesperson, Frazier eloquently answered twelve questions related to the African-American southern refugee crisis and the desires of formerly enslaved African-Americans fleeing chattel enslavement. Frazier is most known for the following colloquy:

Major 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."

Major 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 formerly enslaved African-Americans 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.

Later Life, Death

Soon after the historic “Forty acres and a mule” meeting, Frazier became somewhat enfeebled from age. Though he did some missionary work among the country churches a few years, Frazier passed away in 1873.

Legacy

Dr. Charles Elmore, professor emeritus of humanities at Savannah State University and the world's foremost authority on Garrison Frazier, believed that both Frazier's presence and eloquence had an significant impact on General Sherman, sufficient enough 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.''"

Memorial

In 2014, the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a Historical Marker at First Bryan Baptist Church, highlighting the roles former First Bryan Baptist Church 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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