"She is a very smart woman and a great trader"

-Testimony of Martha Scott, Claim of Emily Frazier, Limestone County, AL, Allowed Claims, #19479, 26-27, Southern Claims Commission Records, Fold3.com

When the first Union troops arrived in Limestone County, Alabama, Emily Frazier was ready. She went to work purchasing whiskey from locals in the countryside and bringing it back to sell at a profit to U.S. troops. She sold milk, cakes, and pies to the federal army during the war. Taking enormous risks, Frazier earned large sums of money by sending her cart with a hired driver out into the rolling terrain of northern Alabama to seize stores of rebel cotton; a treacherous undertaking for anyone during the American Civil War, but exponentially so for Frazier, an enslaved woman contending with poor health.

Prior to the outbreak of the war, Frazier had negotiated with her enslaver to earn money on her own account. She did so by washing, sewing, and raising and hiring hogs in northern Alabama and southern middle Tennessee. At the onset of the war, Frazier pivoted her knowledge, networks, and property to carve out space to survive, to provide support for her family, and to join the fight to destroy the institution of slavery. When she appeared before the Southern Claims Commission in hopes of gaining compensation for her property that the U.S. Army eventually confiscated, Frazier testified her belongings were worth $526--more than $12,800 today. Frazier relied upon witnesses to help her establish her claim; each one in turn affirmed Frazier's astute business acumen. Testifying before the commission agents, her friend and neighbor Martha Scott averred: "She is a very smart woman and a great trader."

Frazier's and Scott's testimony provides a very rare and very special window into a forgotten aspect of southern United States history. Their words are preserved within the hundreds of thousands of pages that make up the Southern Claims Commission records. The Southern Claims Commission (or SCC for short) was formed by Congress in 1871, in order to repay southern citizens for property that the United States Army confiscated for the Union war effort during the American Civil War (1861-1865). This property included animals for transportation and sustenance, like horses, mules, cows, and chickens; groceries and other edibles, like corn, rice, cakes, and honey; and lumber taken from fences, stables, and even claimants' homes.

In order to file a successful claim, claimants had to have lived in a southern state that had seceded from the Union during the war; prove they had been loyal to the U.S. government for the duration of the war; establish their ownership of the property that was taken; and show that the U.S. had formally contracted for that property. When the commission was formed, its creators and agents did not expect to receive compensation claims filed by formerly enslaved individuals, much less formerly enslaved women. Yet claimants like Emily Frazier did appear before the SCC, and their testimony and that of their witnesses can reveal much about how enslaved women were able to claim property and even fiscal credit in the antebellum era.

I recently had an article published in the Journal of the Civil War Era, which highlights formerly enslaved and free Black women's SCC testimony, and which describes how and why they were able to claim property and credit within their communities before emancipation. You can read my article here: https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/12/article/905167