The Daily Press: Newport News, VA - July 26, 2006 page A4:

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/84011763/moh-recipient-edward-ratcliff/

In 1657, an Englishman named John Hankins received a 200-acre land grant in the New World, in the colony of Virginia. His land was near the southern end of the Chesapeake Bay, along the York River. Hankins moved there, started a family and learned to farm. Many of the new landowners in the region grew indigo, rice and tobacco. The crops were profitable, but they drained nutrients from the soil and their production was labor-intensive. Many of the Europeans were caught in a self-inflicted predicament: They wanted land, but they didn’t want to work on it. Besides, the work soon became too much for one family to do. Great Britain sent convicted criminals over for landowners to employ in the fields. Still, there weren’t enough hands, and indentured servants — people who worked to pay off their passage to America — were still too costly. The labor crisis would pave the way for the formal system of slavery, which was more economical and eliminated concerns about employee turnover. Black men and women were soon stolen and imported from the West Indies, then from Africa. John’s son Charles became the first Hankins to pay taxes on slaves. In 1704, he owned the family’s 10 slaves and 370 acres of land. Charles had seven children, including a son, whom he named after himself. This Charles and his bride, Druisilla, would have four children. Nathaniel, their youngest, was born Feb. 13, 1767. It would be in Nathaniel’s lifetime that Southern farmers would set themselves apart from Northerners. Northerners had begun to use slaves less frequently. Freedom had been the very premise for which the Revolutionary War was fought. How could they keep others in bondage? The need for slaves in the North had also diminished as people there began to rely more heavily on machinery. Better machinery in the North increased the demand for Southern-grown cotton, which further increased the demand for cheap labor. Shortly before 1800, Nathaniel started his own family. He married a woman named Betsy and soon after was given the family’s plantation, 13 cattle and one dozen slaves. More so than his ancestors, Nathaniel made quick economic progress. About 1813, he purchased a two-wheeled carriage, a luxury item at the time. He added to the family’s land and saw the number of slaves increase to 18. The increase might have come through reproduction. There was a high death rate among slaves, and landowners encouraged their slaves to procreate. Some masters promised freedom to women if they had 15 or more children. Or Nathaniel Hankins’ new slaves might have been purchased: During the mid-19th century, slave auctions were common in James City. The county held court on the second Monday of each month. On those days, landowners and their families would flock to town “to sell their farm-grown produce, purchase items and auction off slaves, livestock and land,” a local historian, Martha McCartney, wrote in her book “James City County: Keystone of the Commonwealth.” At auctions, McCartney wrote, “dark-skinned slaves were the most highly prized.” “A good carpenter might go for $400, and a good cook or seamstress for even more. A healthy woman would bring $175 to $200, whereas little children under the age of 8 would sell for $60 to $80.” The men, women and children being sold were often torn from their families. “When your child dies, you know where it is,” one slave said. “But when it is sold away, you never know what may happen to him.” AN INHERITANCE In 1813, Nathaniel and Betsy Hankins had a son, Alexander, who by 1837 was a slave owner himself. He inherited the 400- plus-acre farm and all its properties — including a 2-year-old slave named Edward Ratcliff. It’s hard to determine what kind of owner Alexander became. Some masters controlled their slaves with beatings and violence. Others were more humane. They gave slaves incentives, like money and better jobs, to keep them from running away. Alexander was, however, described by his family as “rather sarcastic,” someone who “did not always look as neat as he should.” He was determined to make money. After he got married, Alexander launched into a renovation of the family’s old farmhouse. He farmed more land — and was able to because, in 1850, he owned 22 slaves, 10 of whom were adults. Edward Ratcliff, at 15, would already have years of experience in the fields. Most slaves started working in the fields at age 6 or 7. As a toddler, Edward would have been left in the care of an elder slave woman while his mother, Hannah, worked. Pregnant women worked until they gave birth, then quickly returned to the fields, though many were permitted to nurse several times a day. Almost every slave was in the field from dusk till dawn. They planted, weeded, mended fences, built their own cabins. During harvest season, their strenuous duties could last more than 18 hours a day. Slave labor proved profitable for Alexander Hankins. He eventually owned a four- wheeled carriage and a watch — a taxable item owned by few men in James City at the time, according to McCartney. In 1854, wanting to further grow his business, Alexander borrowed $2,000 from a family member and mortgaged eight of his slaves, including a woman named Grace. He used that money, combined with his own funds, to buy more land, growing the farm to nearly 700 acres. That same year, John — a slave from a neighboring farm — escaped. John was caught and jailed, but before his trial, while locked up in Middlesex County, just north of Gloucester, he set the jail on fire. Perhaps partly as a result of John’s actions and the actions of other slaves, Virginia’s General Assembly approved stricter black laws. They forbade free blacks from purchasing alcohol, having a dog or owning any slaves other than their children, making it next to impossible for a free man to purchase his still- enslaved wife. Edward Ratcliff had just started to think about a wife then. He’d fallen in love with Grace Randall, likely the same slave that Alexander had mortgaged. On July 9, 1858, Scott Hankins, one of Alexander’s sons, married them. No formal laws defined slave marriage, though most slaves did need permission from their owners. Theirs would have been a simple ceremony. A few words would have been said. Fellow slaves would have stood nearby. And as was done regularly then, Scott Hankins would have pronounced them man and wife after they jumped over a broomstick, an old African tradition. Historical documents suggest that Grace and Edward lived together on the Hankins farm. If they hadn’t, though, it wasn’t uncommon for a slave owner to grant the husband permission to visit his wife Saturday nights. By the time that Grace and Edward celebrated their second wedding anniversary, blacks made up the majority — 54.4 percent — of James City’s population. At the time, there were more slaves in Virginia than any other state. Whites worried about the ratio and continued to enact stricter rules on their slaves. They feared, among other possibilities, an organized revolt. Virginia had quashed one large slave revolt already, led by Gabriel Prosser in 1800. Although it was put down virtually that the moment it began, Gabriel’s rebellion in Henrico County had included slaves from as far west as Richmond and as far east as Norfolk. THE REBELLION In 1861, Alexander Hankins owned about 38 slaves. He had recently purchased a harpsichord or a piano, pushing him into the upper middle class of society. But his world was about to come to an end. On Feb. 9, 1861, the Confederate States of America officially formed, with Jefferson Davis as president. Virginia would join other Southern states and secede in April. Alexander Hankins would side with the rebellious states, as they were called. He considered himself foremost a Virginian and despised anyone who turned their backs on their homes. For example, his son, Scott — who had administered the marriage between Grace and Edward — had been born Winfield Scott Hankins. He’d been named for the famed general who fought in the Mexican- American War. But according to a Hankins family record, “when, after the opening of the War between the States, the general, who had been born in Virginia, refused to resign from the northern army and return to his state, as did most officers from the South — he became very unpopular in Virginia.” Alexander literally cut the name “Winfield” from the family Bible, leaving only “Scott.” Scott did fight for the Confederacy. Alexander Hankins created his own military unit, the James City Artillery. It didn’t travel far afield — moving mostly around the Peninsula, Southampton County and Petersburg — but it remained in service throughout most of the war, providing guard duty at various Confederate forts. It’s hard to say what Edward Ratcliff knew, in that spring of 1861, of the growing tensions in the country. Fields still had to be plowed. Crops had to be planted. And his family was growing. On March 24, 1861, just weeks before the Confederates opened fire on South Carolina’s Fort Sumter, another slave woman’s screams permeated the walls of a small cabin. This time, the woman was Grace, and she was giving birth to the couple’s first child. They named her Hannah. Perhaps, unlike Edward’s mother, these new parents dared to dream of a better life for their child. In May, Union Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler — commander of the Department of Virginia and newly arrived at Fort Monroe — declared runaway slaves to be contraband of war and subject to seizure by the military. They wouldn’t be returned to their owners. Thousands of black families began fleeing to the Union-controlled base in Hampton, calling it Fort Freedom. But Edward Ratcliff had a family to care for. He stayed on the Hankins farm with Grace and Hannah while the war roiled around him. In 1862, the Peninsula campaign stretched from York County to Williamsburg and left almost 4,000 men dead. On Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, which gave the promise of freedom to slaves in Confederate states. The proclamation was read in the South for the first time under the Emancipation Oak in Hampton. By 1864, blacks were encouraged to enlist in the Union’s army — and Hannah was a toddler. Edward Ratcliff left the field and walked away. When he reached Yorktown, he traded his plow for a rifle.