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Trailblazer: the Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism

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Trailblazer: the Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History Volume 1 Issue 1 Article 5 August 2015 Trailblazer: The Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism Jordan O. Alexander Liberty University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ljh Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Alexander, Jordan O. (2015) "Trailblazer: The Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism," Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History: Vol. 1 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. Available at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ljh/vol1/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Crossing. It has been accepted for inclusion in Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History by an authorized editor of Scholars Crossing. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Trailblazer: The Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner During the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crowism Abstract When the Civil War began in 1861, the conflict ve oked feelings of pride, patriotism, and hatred in both blacks and whites. As the war raged on, Reverend Henry McNeal Turner ministered to his brethren serving in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), segregated units of the Union Army. Although slavery ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction died with his assassination. The Ku Klux Klan and ex–Confederates not only regained control of the South but also resisted the federal government’s early attempts at civil rights legislation by intimidating, murdering, and disenfranchising ex–slaves. In response to the brutality and the rise of Jim Crowism, Turner served as a beacon of hope for thousands of freedmen while respectively serving in state and local politics. Bishop Henry M. Turner’s story deserves more attention because he is an overlooked transitional figure in American history. This paper will examine Turner’s contributions to the A.M.E. Church, politics, and civil rights. Keywords Henry M. Turner, A.M.E. Church, chaplain, politician, emigration, civil rights, Supreme Court, Plessy v. Ferguson This article is available in Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/ljh/vol1/ iss1/5 Alexander: Trailblazer: The Legacy of Bishop Henry M. Turner When the Civil War began in 1861, the conflict evoked feelings of pride, patriotism, and hatred in both blacks and whites. As the war raged on, African–American chaplains ministered to their brethren serving in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), segregated units of the Union Army. Although slavery ended in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, Lincoln’s plans for Reconstruction died with his assassination. The Ku Klux Klan and some ex– Confederates not only regained control of the South but also resisted the federal government’s early attempts at civil rights legislation. In response to this retaliation, Henry M. Turner, a distinguished African–American chaplain, served as a beacon of hope for thousands of freedmen while respectively serving in state and local politics.1 Turner’s inspirational preaching and exemplary political career encouraged African–Americans to persevere during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rise of Jim Crowism. Henry M. Turner was born free, in South Carolina, in 1834. When Turner was a young boy, his father died. This made Turner eligible to work in a plantation owner’s cotton fields under the Guardianship Ordinance.2 Turner worked alongside slaves and despised the humiliating work. He also worked as a blacksmith and carriage maker. Even though he was born free, he saw the injustices and abuses that slaves experienced on a firsthand basis. Thus, Turner’s experiences as a young man probably laid the foundation for his jeremiad preaching style and bitter rhetoric denouncing white Americans, both northerners and southerners, in later years.3 In 1851, at age seventeen, Turner received salvation under the preaching of a Methodist Episcopal Church missionary named Samuel Leard. He was later licensed in the Methodist Episcopal Church as an itinerant preacher.4 Turner eventually left the Methodist Episcopal Church after experiencing racism and prejudice. He later joined the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and found his home.5 Turner received a modest education from two lawyers in a law firm, because the black slave laws in the Confederacy, especially South Carolina, prevented blacks from learning how to read and write. In spite of Turner’s circumstances, Daniel Payne, the head bishop of the AME Church mentored Turner and encouraged him to study Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and theology in Baltimore, Maryland under the direction of black and white ministers at Trinity College. They all recognized the young man was destined for greatness. The ministers also observed that Turner’s humility, potent preaching style, oratorical abilities, intelligence, 1 Gregory Mixon, “Henry McNeal Turner Versus the Tuskegee Machine: Black Leadership in the Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of Negro History 79.4 (Autumn 1994): 363–365.Turner’s story deserves more attention because he is an overlooked transitional figure in American history. 2 Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African–American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992), 14–15; Jane Herndon, “Henry McNeal Turner’s African Dream: A Re–Evaluation,” Mississippi Quarterly 22.4 (Fall 1969): 328; Melbourne S. Cummings, “The Rhetoric of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner,” Journal of Black Studies 12.4 (June 1982): 457. State laws in South Carolina required free blacks to have a white guardian, or patron, to advocate for their honorable behavior. Furthermore, free blacks were required to keep documentation with their guardian’s testimony and signature if slave patrollers, bounty hunters, or police stopped them while traveling. Turner’s guardian during his boyhood years is unknown. 3 Herndon, 327–328; Jordan Alexander, “Henry M. Turner,” in African–American Chaplains in the Civil War, research booklet, (2014), 19; Cummings, 457–461; J. Minton Batten, “Henry M. Turner, Negro Bishop Extraordinary,” Church History 7.3 (Sep. 1938): 232– 234. 4 Angell, 14–15. Before embarking on his journey as a Methodist circuit preacher in 1854, the Court of Common Pleas assigned John McLauren as Turner’s guardian. 5 Herndon, 327–328; Alexander, 19; Cummings, 457–461; Batten, 232– 235. Turner joined the AME Church in either 1857 or 1858. Published by Scholars Crossing, 2015 1 Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History, Vol. 1, Iss. 1 [2015], Art. 5 hard work ethic, passion for learning, love for God, and desire to help people would inspire slaves and free blacks.6 Surprisingly, not many authors have written on Bishop Turner. Stephen Ward Angell published Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African–American Religion in the South in 1992, the first book to treat Turner’s life and work in depth.7 Many of the journal articles and newspaper accounts of Turner focus on his legislative and ministerial work, but downplay his work in social justice and as a civil rights advocate. In addition, these accounts of Turner focus more on his rhetoric and less on his actions to advance the cause of civil rights. Turner created controversy with his critical statements regarding the stagnated pace of racial relations in the United States, but his disparity was a response to the apathy of many white Americans to aid disenfranchised African-Americans and the unwillingness of some black Americans to actively resist Jim Crowism. Thus, Turner sought to bridge the divide between blacks and whites by using his rhetoric not only in the political arena but also in the pulpit. In 1862, Turner became the pastor of Israel Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., which enabled him to establish friendships with Republican congressional representatives, especially Senator Charles Sumner.8 Turner’s emerging political influence and relationships in the city, as a young pastor, brought many Republican congressional representatives, along with army officers, to the church to hear him preach.9 Along with abolitionist Frederick Douglass and several Republican senators, Turner petitioned President Abraham Lincoln to allow ex–slaves to serve in the Union Army. The young pastor strongly believed that blacks had an equal commitment to the Union as much as their white counterparts had and should be allowed to serve the Union Army.10 Therefore, he vigorously petitioned for African–Americans’ opportunities to fight on behalf of the Northern cause.11 Lincoln reluctantly agreed, and in 1863, he selected Henry M. Turner to be a chaplain for the Union Army.12 When he received his appointment, Turner became the first African-American chaplain to serve in the Union Army.13 Pastor Henry M. Turner served as the chaplain to the First Infantry Regiment of the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. The War Department vaguely defined the roles and duties of Union chaplains, both black and white.14 The chaplains were expected to fulfill their roles based on their abilities, the officers’ needs, the soldiers’ concerns, and the regiments’ interests.15 Despite the hardships of army life, Turner excelled in his chaplaincy 6 Herndon, 328; Redkey, 337; Cummings, 458. 7 Stephen Ward Angell, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African–American Religion in the South (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992). 8 E. Merlton Coulter, “Henry M. Turner: Georgia Negro Preacher–Politician during the Reconstruction Years,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 48.4 (Dec. 1964): 372; Batten, 236; Herndon, 328; Redkey, 336–360; Stephen W. Angell, “A Black Minister Befriends the ‘Unquestioned Father of Civil Rights’: Henry McNeal Turner, Charles Sumner, and the African–American Quest for Freedom,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 85.1 (Spring 2001): 29–31, 33, 36. Turner and Senator Sumner had a friendship for twelve years that ended with Sumner’s death in 1874.
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