Existing comment:
Heading North:
In anticipation of large numbers of newly freed blacks flocking to Washington DC, the Federal Government established Freedman's Village. The plan was for a temporary settlement providing housing and work to assimilate the freedman. The reality was a semi-permanent home in Arlington, Virginia, for hundreds of people from 1863 to 1900. Others escaped from slavery and headed further north, as Georgia-born Fremont Adams did to Brooklyn, New York. As his compiled military service record indicates, he "came to the north for the purpose of Enlisting" in the Union Army. Adams enlisted as a private in the 1st US Colored Cavalry on March 23, 1865. |