Page 65 - 1619 Project Curriculum

August 18, 2019

an. 1, 1863: President Abraham ⬤ July 30, 1866: During a constitutional
Lincoln issues the Emancipation convention called for by abolitionist

Proclamation, freeing enslaved African- leaders, in response to the Louisiana

Americans in rebelling states. Legislature’s refusal to give black men

The text is read aloud at thousands of the vote, armed white people attack
people die, mostly

gatherings, including at a Union Army a crowd. More than 35
encampment in Port Royal, S.C. black men.

Imagine the scene I cannot write. The Colonel steps onto the plat- The bodies all around began to cook and swell in the heat: fingers

form, reciting to himself: I’ll tell you how the sun rose, a ribbon at a time. the size of pickles, forearms rising like loaves until as big and gamy

as

It is New Year’s Day. The president has signed the historic war measure. hams festering in the noontime sun. When the Secesh police began their

The Colonel was not alone in his feeling that after the disgrace of Bull rounds, Lazarus got to crouching, then creeping, until — at last — he had

Run, the Union needed to take Port Royal Island, and after the slaughter to lie down among the dead, coffining himself between two fallen neigh-

at Fredericksburg, Port Royal needs this convocation. White women in bors, readying himself for the shot to the head.

bonnets and white men in vests crowd the platform. The Colonel studies Just hours earlier, all of colored New Orleans in their finest had come

the First South Carolina Volunteers arrayed before him. It is the first black out: veterans from the Louisiana Native Guards had amassed at the pro-

unit. The men of his regiment adore campfires, spelling books and tobac- cession’s front, joined by one or more bands that began to blaze and

co, but none of them drink. Most have freed themselves. Take a ride on a bray their trumpets and trombones once struck up by some hidden con-

federal gunboat and join the Cause. Everywhere, the Colonel sees black certmaster. Seamstresses, maids, cooks, bricklayers and longshoremen:

Roudanez, owner of the black folks’
women in their Sunday kerchiefs. God’s blessings are on dress parade. They’d all come out at the behest of

The Colonel hands the Emancipation Proclamation to a penitent paper, as well as Dostie, the radical Republican dentist Democrats de-

white man who used to be called Master over in Beaufort. The Colonel clared a race traitor and nigger lover. The white Republicans could not get

said Oof when he first got his copy. The orderly’s breathing told him votes over the Confederate Democrats without colored men, nor could

that he, too, had read the Proclamation, had felt power naked, actual the colored man get the vote without the whites who fought against the

armed-rebellion naked, suppressing said rebellion naked, shall be free Confederate Redeemer cause.

naked, maintain freedom of said persons naked. ‘‘Thirty-seven niggers dead,’’ Lazarus had heard someone say while he

The prayer is over. The former master of cotton is no orator, but the played possum. ‘‘And that fella Dostie.’’

Colonel is Such a pus and rot he’d never smelled before. Needling choruses of
where power and freedom are forging God’s naked sword. He

marvels at the Lord’s invention, the sheer darkness of his men. Is it not gallinippers hiving above yards of bursting flesh. Rodents hurrying forth

glorious to be handsome. with their ratchet scratching at wounds. Midges inspecting tonsils on

The Colonel receives regimental colors and the Union flag from a display. Then there was the nearly silent sound of worms at work, under-

New Yorker who will not cease addressing him. Ten cows revolve on world missionaries unsewing men from their souls.

spits, and the New Yorker will not be still. The Colonel fights to remain It wasn’t until 3 o’clock that the military finally came and gave orders as

in this sacred place where every heart desires the same thing. Beyond to what should be done; the wounded were to go to the Freedmen’s Hos-

the live oaks, another steamer arrives on the blue water. pital, which had once been Marine Hospital. The dead were to lie out in

Seated nearby are the camp’s brilliant surgeon and its most beautiful the hundred-degree heat until another wagon became available, and there

schoolteacher, the Colonel’s friends from home, Boston. The Surgeon was to be martial law for the rest of the night, lasting who knew until when.

reads his wife’s letters to the Schoolteacher. It is not that she is a black The ride to the Freedmen’s Hospital killed a few who weren’t yet dead.

woman and he a white man. A free black woman whose family is richer A jolting ride over cobblestones, banquettes, undone roads, bricks from

than either of theirs, the Colonel did not say. The Surgeon’s beard is the riot left in the middle of the street, while the whole hospital was filled

shining, and the Schoolteacher’s head is uncovered. with big moans, the smell of grease and camphor, wet wool and kerosene.

The New Yorker will not yield the flag. The Colonel’s wife is an inval- They rolled him onto a flat cot, then put yet another man on top of him

id, and the Surgeon’s wife is plain. The Schoolteacher is an unfair qua- and jostled them both through a dark corridor. The blood from the man

droon beauty, the Colonel has told his friend. She and the Surgeon love on top of him seeped into Lazarus’s eyes, ran in thin tickling trickles into
their love for horses, moonlight and the Cause.
to talk of his ears, clumped in thick waxy clots in his nose, his hair.

The Colonel has the flag in the silence. He slowly waves the flag, It scared him to death to be so in the dark, and try as he might to push

thinking this is the first time it may hold true meaning for them. An the dead man off him, he could not. They carried him into a room, a place

elderly black voice begins, My country, ’tis of thee. A few black women that was even more foul-smelling than the stench of bodies swelling in

add their voices. Suddenly, many. The Colonel quiets the white people the sun. When his cot passed the threshold, the men who’d been carrying

so that only black people are singing. it dropped it, sending the dead man falling to the floor, only the sound

The Schoolteacher continues to sing, and so does the Surgeon. Let didn’t sound like Lazarus expected it to, but more like a clank and clatter,

freedom ring. This is war, the Colonel smiles. as though the heavy doors of an armoire or

chifforobe had been banged
shut. The men who’d been holding the cot retched, one, then the other.

Packer
By Darryl Pinckney By ZZ
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