Photography Courtesy of Angela da Silva, Library of Congress
An unidentified African-American soldier at Benton Barracks. Photo taken in 1863 by Enoch Long, 1823-1898.
President Abraham Lincoln is experiencing something of a revival, 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Last year, film directors Steven Spielberg and Tim Burton portrayed the man most synonomous with the stovepipe hat as a skilled fighter—of both politicians and vampires. Bestselling books, including Timothy O’Brien’s The Lincoln Conspiracy and Louis Masur's Lincoln's Hundred Days, have also recently depicted the 16th president in a new light.
This weekend, the 11th Annual Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Celebration will explore another aspect of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, with a departure from the typical yearly festivities at Missouri’s first nationally recognized Underground Railroad site.
“We’re doing something totally different,” says Angela da Silva, of the National Black Tourism Network and a professor of American Studies at Lindenwood University. “We’re hosting a Camp of Induction.”
She refers to the seventh paragraph of Lincoln’s famous proclamation: “And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.”
Or, in 21st-century terms, African-American men could join the military.
By January 1864, a year after the proclamation, thousands of black men from across the Midwest gathered at Benton Barracks, the site where Fairground Park sits today. “This was the black induction center,” says da Silva, who's done an immense amount of research on the topic. “A lot of the men ran away from their masters—we’ve heard incredible stories of what they risked to get behind Union lines to get here.”
Contraband camps—comprised of escaped slaves, women, and children—also formed near the Mississippi River, and businesses supporting the troops sprung up along what’s today Grand Boulevard.
Following the war, members of two military units, the 62nd and 65th (formerly part of the United States Colored Troops), gave their mustering-out pay to their commanding officers to buy land for a "normal school" to help educate newly free citizens. That act marked the beginnings of Lincoln University.
To symbolize that history this weekend, actors representing the 62nd will present the unit’s flag to an actor portraying Frederick Douglass, who will in turn hand the flag to a Lincoln reenactor, who will give the flag to Lincoln University’s president.
“We’re really focusing on that arc,” says da Silva, “from slave to citizen soldier, from past to present.”
And to fully tell that story, the Freedom Crossing Celebration will involve hundreds of re-enactors. The Blue Gray Alliance, a Civil War reenactment group, will help reconstruct Benton Barracks, complete with calvary shows and cannons. “We are recreating exactly what would have been in 1863,” says da Silva.
That’s not to mention myriad other festivities: a Civil War-era fashion show, a recreated freedman’s school, a medicine show from entertainer Sanford Lee, a blacksmith shop, a choir singing Civil War-era songs, banjo-playing, docents, hands-on activities, a barn dance… “There’s just a lot that will be going on this year,” says da Silva.
And what about Mary Meachum, the woman who helped a group of slaves attempt to cross the Mississippi River to freedom in 1855?
“Mary Meachum will still be a part of it,” says da Silva, “but remember that this is her dream come true.”
The 11th Annual Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing Celebration will be held Saturday, May 18, with entertainment starting at noon. Click here for directions and additional details about the site. You can also contribute to the event via kickstarter.com.
