Testimony before the Joint Committee on Reconstruction on Atrocities in the South against Blacks

Glossary

• Colonel Campbell Colonel Thomas Campbell, the provost marshal for Williamsburg, Virginia
• Freedmen's Bureau The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, established in 1865 to aid newly emancipated African Americans
• General Hooker Joseph Hooker, a major general in the Union army
• General Kearney Philip Kearny, Jr., a brigadier general in the Union army
• General McClellan George McClellan, the commander of all Union forces early in the Civil War
• Jeff. Davis Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War
• President Tyler John Tyler, the tenth U.S. president
• proclamation the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863
• slab-houses houses sided with rough-hewn planks of lumber
• “to pull the chestnuts out of the fire” to rescue someone
• Uncle Sam a common nickname for the United States
• underground railroad the informal system of routes, safe houses, and guides who led slaves to the North prior to the Civil War
• Wise's raid a raid by the Confederate cavalry led by General Henry A. Wise on a Union command post in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1862
• Yankees a common nickname for northerners