>> This program was made possible by: ♪ [ Music and gunfire ] ♪ ♪ >> NARRATOR: Indiana was largely spared from the destruction of the Civil War, but soldiers from Indiana did fight and die in many battles of the war, including Gettysburg, Antietam, and Vicksburg.

The Civil War had been called a brothers war, but it touched the members of every family in the North and South.

The war itself and its aftermath affected the people of Putnam County, Indiana, a county that was typical of much of the state and the North during the period before the war.

>> No one place is going to be completely representative of the entire North, but Indiana can be seen as kind of a microcosm of the North.

It's an agricultural state.

It has strong settlement, not only from the north but from the upland south, in particular.

So it's got a mixture of Northerners and Southerners.

Indiana does not have a large immigrant or African American population.

>> NARRATOR: Indiana was not a slave state, but it was a Black law state with legal codes that discriminated against African Americans.

There were strong sympathizers for the Confederate cause in Putnam County, where many people had longstanding family ties to the southern enslavers.

>> Putnam County, within Indiana, is a fairly representative community.

And Putnam County, also like Indiana, has this mixture of very strong support for the Civil War and a lot of antiwar activity.

>> NARRATOR: The objective of the war for the North was to preserve the Union.

For the South, it was to maintain and expand slavery.

Neither side sought to encourage social or political change.

Women took care of the home and were dependent on men.

Men provided for the family, and White men could vote.

Black people mostly worked for White people.

Few expected that the war would upset these traditional roles.

♪ Indiana entered the Union as a free state in 1816.

The land that became Putnam County was inhabited by the Eel River, Miami, Delaware, and Potawatomi tribes.

By the time White settlers arrived, most Native Americans had been removed.

♪ Most of these newcomers to Putnam County were farmers from the South and from the East.

Their strong differing allegiances and backgrounds greatly affected their relationships to each other and their attitudes about the coming war.

With a population of about 4,000, the county was organized by the state in 1821 with Greencastle as the county seat.

♪ Putnam County was a beautiful place with a moderate climate, heavily forested, with many large creeks.

♪ The opposition to alcohol, called the temperance movement, was the most explosive issue of the pre-Civil War period.

Sure to insight deep feelings and resentments.

♪ It divided political parties as well as families.

Drinking was under attack by church and community leaders.

The first temperance lecture in Putnam was delivered by Dr.

A.C.

Stevenson.

>> It is true that men from an early age look forward with beating hearts to the attainment of the favorite object of their ambition, but what will the possession be worth if you are intemperate?

As a doctor, I can tell you that despite what some people say [ Cheers ] or hoot, liquor is not needed to do hard work.

All it takes is the will to work.

Wealth, honor, character, friends, all vanish before this foul destroyer.

Whomever you are, if you drink a drop of intoxicating liquor, you are in danger of contracting the fatal habit of intemperance.

There is no safety but in the practice of total abstinence.

>> A.C.

Stevenson was a prominent farmer.

He was a doctor in Putnam County.

He came originally from Kentucky.

>> You will be drinking behind the door.

>> And he became well-known in Indiana, and even sort of internationally, as a breeder of fine livestock.

His parents, Margaret and James, came to Indiana, followed him to Indiana.

And the Peters family, who had been enslaved by the Stevensons in Kentucky, came with them.

♪ >> African Americans are following their former masters to Indiana for social and economic connections.

♪ Some of these masters, they'll buy their former slaves land, animals, you know, set them up.

And of course, that's incredibly important, because Indiana may be a free territory, there may not be slavery, but there's a whole lot of discrimination, the antiblack laws and that whole environment.

So having that sort of economic and social connections were very important for many African Americans who were showing up as a way to -- to get started.

♪ >> In 1828, a Kentuckian named James Townsend became convinced that slavery was wrong.

James Townsend freed his slaves and moved with his family to Putnam County.

Several of the formerly enslaved people came with Townsend and took Townsend as their surname.

They were known locally as the Black Townsends.

One of the younger members of the family was a youth named Luke.

On a rainy night in the 1830s, the water was high on Deer Creek, just east of Putnamville.

A slave trader tried to cross the creek with a wagon full of human property and could not make it.

Citizens turned out to help.

One of the surviving slaves was a little 12-year-old girl named Charity.

Young Luke Townsend saved Charity from the flood.

A local White minister bought Charity from the slave trader, freed her, and then several years later presided over her marriage to Luke.

>> NARRATOR: At the time, there were two major political parties in the state and Putnam County, the Democrats and the Whigs.

Congress feared the growing divide between North and South over slavery.

So it passed the Compromise of 1850.

This was a sort of truce, an attempt to avoid civil war.

>> The Compromise of 1850 is an important marker here because it includes this notorious fugitive slave law, which outrages many White Hoosiers.

It allows slave catchers to come into Indiana, to use the courts and the legal systems to return African Americans they claim are escaped slaves.

>> It essentially legalized the kidnapping of African Americans.

If someone was accused of being a fugitive slave, they really had no recourse.

They had no right to a trial by jury.

They had no right to an attorney.

They couldn't call witnesses.

>> NARRATOR: The Fugitive Slave Act led to increasing division among people across the state.

The compromise would prove to be only a temporary truce in the festering national conflict over slavery.

♪ In Indiana, like Southern states, African Americans could not vote, serve on juries, marry Whites or testify against Whites in court.

Then in 1851, the state went even further.

It adopted a new constitution, which contained Article 13, the so-called Black exclusion clause.

At the time, there were only about 11,000 Blacks in the state.

Nonetheless, many delegates to the convention were concerned about alleged hoards of Blacks poised to enter the state from slave states.

To prevent this from happening, Article 13 said: >> NARRATOR: There was little debate about Article 13, either in the legislature or locally.

In Putnam County, 96% approved.

>> When you think about these laws, really the kind of way that they are enforced is a black face appears in the community.

It all depends on the White folks in that community, whether they want to file a complaint or not.

So these laws weren't really that effective.

>> It was never enforced.

It was impossible to enforce it, but it conveys the sentiments of White Hoosiers regarding African Americans in 1851, better than any other source that we have.

>> Whig A.C.

Stevenson served in state government and was a county delegate to the 1851 Constitutional Convention.

>> Gentlemen, Mr.

A.C.

Stevenson from Putnam County.

[ Applause ] >> His comments at the convention went well beyond just supporting the Black exclusion clause.

>> Now, I contend that you can never elevate the Negro to an exact equality with the Whites in this country.

I want Indiana and this country's people possessed and governed by a pure White race.

[ Applause ] Black people in Indiana have the mistaken notion that this is their home.

Let us, in this convention, pursue such a policy and adopt such measures, as will have the effect to induce the Negro not to remain in this country, but to emigrate back to Africa.

Thank you.

[ Applause ] ♪ >> NARRATOR: Most Blacks living in Indiana in the 1850s, had no tie to Africa, and no desire to go there.

>> The idea was that Blacks and Whites couldn't live together.

It would be a race war, kind of social chaos.

For the most part, African Americans did not want to be removed.

They didn't want to leave.

They saw themselves as Americans.

>> The 1850s is a period where all through the northern part of the United States, African Americans are going to Canada, and many of them choose to go to Liberia.

It's just a bad time.

♪ The entire Peters family went to Liberia.

There were ten of them.

Pretty much the entire African American population of Putnam County is gone by 1860, except for the Townsend family Luke and Charity and their children.

>> Democratic Judge Delana Eckels was an influential lawyer and politician in Putnam County, a strong supporter of colonization.

He was also one of the most strident and influential voices in support of slavery.

>> NARRATOR: Eckels meant enslavement not only in existing states, but in states and territories yet to be created.

>> The question of what to do about slavery in the territories was a complicated, complex question.

>> NARRATOR: The fight over slavery was not new to the United States.

After the American Revolution, northern states began to pass emancipation laws, but the southern states became increasingly dependent on enslavement to maintain their economic and political order.

As the nation grew, new states were created.

Would they be slave or free?

In 1820, when Missouri applied for statehood, it sparked a bitter national debate about slavery.

Later in 1850, the acquisition of territory from Mexico required another compromise.

Settlers and entrepreneurs were itching to move West.

In 1854, Congress opened territory for settlement by passing the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

>> So the problem with the Kansas-Nebraska Act is popular sovereignty.

Popular sovereignty allowed the people in the territories to decide for themselves whether the new territory would be slave or free.

And that outraged many Hoosiers because it meant the possibility of slavery expanding in the West.

The other concern among White Hoosiers was that these slave workers, whether they were in Alabama or Kansas, would be competition for agricultural labor and other kinds of labor in Indiana and in the North.

>> NARRATOR: Opponents did not want to open the western territories to southern enslavers because they felt that it would be impossible for free White farmers to compete.

Continual comments from A.C.

Stevenson and others were not encouraging.

>> As the Blacks feel their strength, whether in numbers or in grant of greater privileges, they are disposed to abuse them instead of being discreet and modest and refined, and thus more agreeable to the dominant race.

>> NARRATOR: In their racism, the people of Indiana and Putnam County were very much like the rest of the North.

But over the course of the Civil War era, a striking change in race relations and attitudes would occur.

Not only did political loyalties change, but so did relationships among women, men, and even young children.

Entire families and communities would adjust as they were forced to cope with the transformative experience of a generation at war.

♪ In 1860, Abraham Lincoln ran against Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, Southern Rights candidate John Breckinridge, and Constitutional Unionist John Bell for President of the United States.

In a bitterly divisive election, Lincoln and other Republicans won Putnam County, the state, and the country.

>> Indiana's swing into the Republican column in 1860 marks kind of a rise of the Republican party.

So Indiana is an important northern state and a representative northern state.

>> NARRATOR: Although Republicans pledged not to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, they were strongly opposed to its expansion into the territories.

But the South saw this expansion as essential to the growth of its slave economy.

Previous threats of succession had been resolved by compromises.

So far as the South was concerned, Lincoln's victory made further compromises impossible.

[ Drums ] Within just a few months of the election, the Confederate flag rose over the Union's Fort Sumter and the Civil War began.

Both sides hoped for a quick and decisive victory.

It was said that it would be a 90-day war.

[ Explosion ] The first major battle of the Civil War was on July 21st, 1861, near a small stream named Bull Run in Virginia.

Union soldiers attacked Confederate forces that were guarding a vital railroad junction.

♪ Many people gathered at the telegraph office in Greencastle to follow news of the battle.

At the fringe of the crowd was Judge Eckels.

>> General McDowell's divisions have crossed Bull Run and attacked the Confederates.

[ Gunfire ] The boys in blue attacking rebels on Henry Hill.

Confederates have been driven off Henry Hill.

More Union troops continue to push.

Union forces under fire from artillery and calvary.

[ Gunfire ] >> Oh, no!

Oh, that's horrible.

>> Union forces quickly retreating towards Washington.

♪ >> NARRATOR: The Union Army was out generalled, out fought, and routed.

For anyone who thought that this would be a 90-day, relatively bloodless war with victory to the North, Bull Run proved them wrong.

The war forced Putnam County men of fighting age to decide whether to volunteer or stay home.

Others had to decide whether to support or oppose those who did fight.

The war forced personal decisions that affected their generation for the rest of their lives.

>> Lucius, I do not believe that I could live and bid you good-bye to enlist into the Army.

How can you think of such a thing?

Can you leave me?

Can you leave our babes?

All whom are ill?

No, no, no.

>> NARRATOR: Alice's strong protests were unusual.

Public opinions strongly condemned women who were not willing to sacrifice, even their menfolk for the war.

Lucius did enlist in the 4th Indiana Calvary.

And while he detested slavery, calling it a dark blot, his letters showed that he did not enlist to end it or to preserve the Union or for glory.

>> Many times in the day, my heart turns to the dear ones at home.

Only necessity can put me in the Army.

>> NARRATOR: His necessity was to earn enough money to pay his considerable debt and support his family.

The war required soldiers, tens of thousands of them.

In Indiana, over half of adult Hoosier men, mostly young and single, signed up.

About 2,000 were from Putnam County.

Women always had an enormous workload on a farm, and now it increased.

They helped produce the food, cook it and preserve it.

They cleaned the house, made, repaired and laundered clothes.

Now women were forced to also carry the men's home responsibilities.

The Putnam community issued an appeal for people to provide the necessities of life while husbands are engaged in fighting for the Union.

But even this assistance was not enough, often because soldiers were not paid on time.

It was especially hard for Alice and Lucius.

[ Baby crying ] >> While Lucius was still training at Camp Holloway in Indianapolis, their infant son became extremely ill.

Lucius took a leave to come home.

An hour after he arrived, the baby died.

After Lucius returned to the front, he and Alice attempted, by letters, to cope with their situation.

Ally has been talking to herself.

>> Got no papa.

Poor papa gone.

Gone to war.

Gone to fight the rebels.

I love my papa.

Little brother gone up to heaven to God.

I only wanna see papa.

>> NARRATOR: With these letters, Alice sent socks, shirts, bread, cakes, even hard-to-get butter.

>> I am so glad to hear from you, my dear one.

You have been faithful in sending me letters.

You love your husband.

If I am permitted to return home in peace to my family, it will take something more than I now know to induce me to leave my home again.

My little girl will be in her sixth year.

Will I know her?

♪ >> NARRATOR: John Applegate of Greencastle joined the 71st Indiana Infantry Regiment in July 1862.

>> John Applegate, in his letters, he's a blacksmith in his mid-30s, who volunteers for the war.

He and Elizabeth have had several children who have died, and they have only one surviving child, Ali.

He writes a lot.

He wants Ali to be a good girl, to mind her mother, to write to him.

>> You ought to be happy and thank God that you do not live in this unhappy country.

I have seen little girls like you, turned out of their homes at midnight, and everything they own burned up.

>> From his letters, he just seems like a very down-to-earth, honest, good man.

He was captured around Atlanta in the summer of 1864.

He survived Andersonville, which was a terrible experience.

>> NARRATOR: Andersonville prison was only in operation for 14 months, but during that time, 45,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned there, and nearly 13,000 died from disease, starvation or exposure.

>> Elizabeth had no idea that John had been captured.

After Andersonville was liberated, a lot of the survivors took the steamship Sultana back up the Mississippi River.

[ Explosion ] The Sultana exploded.

John Applegate nearly drowned.

He had to cling to a piece of planking to make it to shore.

He comes back from all of these horrible experiences with chronic diarrhea, which was a very common medical condition that soldiers came out of the war with.

And so he dies just a couple of years after the war is over with, and he's only in his 40s and Ali is still a little girl.

I was reading the Putnam County newspaper for 1867, and I ran across John Applegate's obituary.

I was sitting there in the Ball State microfilm room crying over the obituary of a man who had died 150 years ago.

He was just such a good person.

♪ >> NARRATOR: The war only slowly changed gender roles, but it significantly changed the position of African Americans in the county, state and nation.

The increasing role that Blacks played in the war, threatened the racial order of society.

>> When the Civil War began, the Townsends, including Luke, Charity and their son Robert, were the only Black family left in Putnam County.

Robert worked hard, especially when his father became crippled with rheumatism.

He worked at home.

He worked for other farmers and at a stone quarry, but he turned his wages over to the family.

♪ >> NARRATOR: He would soon embody what was considered one of the greatest threats to White supremacy, becoming a uniformed soldier in the U.S.

Army.

♪ Nearly 200,000 African Americans would fight for the Union.

>> When the war started in 1861, African Americans, they couldn't enlist in the Union Army.

From the North's perspective, from Lincoln's perspective as leader of the war, he didn't want to make the war about ending slavery.

It was just about keeping the Union together.

July of 1862, the Union passes something called the Militia Act, and this made it legal to start enlisting African Americans into the Union Army.

But it's not until we get to the Emancipation Proclamation, that's passed in January of 1863, that the Union begins to bring troops into the Union Army in earnest.

>> On September 22nd, in 1862, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared that all slaves in the States in rebellion against the Union shall be forever free.

Lincoln turned the war from not only a struggle to preserve the Union, but also one to end slavery.

>> May of 1863 is the creation of the United States Colored Troops.

There are about 170 or so of these units.

They are artillery units, infantry, calvary.

>> NARRATOR: For almost a year, Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton made no move to enlist Black soldiers, but during this time, other states came into Indiana and did recruit them.

Finally, with support of local Black leaders, Morton took action in December 1863.

He presented this idea to White Hoosiers, arguing that if Black men fought, fewer White men had to.

♪ >> When we think about the everyday experience of African American soldiers in the Union Army, even though they compose an important part of the Union forces, about 180,000 or so African American men fought, they are kind of treated like second-class soldiers, really for the most part.

They were paid less than a White soldier.

A Black private was paid $10.

A White private was paid $13.

♪ They were led by White officers.

♪ >> NARRATOR: One of the hundreds of Black volunteers was 20-year-old Robert Townsend from Putnam County.

He went to Indianapolis and enlisted as a private in the newly formed 28th U.S.

Colored Troops, Indiana's only Black regiment.

In the spring of 1864, Indiana's 28th Regiment paraded through Indianapolis on its way to the front in Virginia.

♪ The 28th went into action alongside White soldiers at the Battle of the Crater, where they would suffer from the broiling heat and a lack of water and ammunition.

Confederate soldiers shot them from the edge of the crater, as close as a few feet away.

Black soldiers were not given the opportunity to surrender.

They were butchered if they even made the attempt.

Some Black troops were even shot by White Union soldiers, who feared being taken prisoners with Blacks.

The Battle of the Crater was a bloody loss for the Union, with over 500 dead, including two officers and 22 soldiers of Indiana's 28th Regiment.

>> Robert Townsend was not part of any of the defeats or triumphs of his regiment.

While he was in training in Indianapolis, he became violently sick.

The Abolitionist's press reported stories that people were deliberately tampering with food and selling it to Black troops.

An Army surgeon believed that Robert was suffering from food poisoning and sent him to the hospital, but he didn't get better.

Finally, friends from Greencastle came and took him home.

>> When my Robert got home, I had trouble recognizing my own son.

He was wasted away to almost nothing, weak as a kitten.

They say he had a bad heart and ate some bad pie.

I don't know.

>> Well, momma, I guess -- I guess I won't be at the courier behind the meal no more.

I'm sorry.

>> It's all right, son.

We'll get along just fine.

The Lord's taking care of us.

>> In his obituary, Charity described him as lingering along with great suffering.

He died in May of 1865.

He is buried in the Putnamville cemetery.

♪ >> NARRATOR: In spite of the contribution made by its Black soldiers, Indiana did not formally amend its state constitution to reflect changes in Black rights until 1881.

♪ >> NARRATOR: While many Hoosier families were making huge personal sacrifices supporting the war, Indiana was also a hotbed for antiwar activities, which fiercely divided communities, including Putnam County.

>> Republicans used epitaphs for these antiwar democrats who were sympathetic to the Southern cause, and they called them Copperheads, copperhead being a dangerous snake, which people need to be weary of.

They were a real threat for a variety of different reasons.

There were tens of thousands of members.

These groups planned seditious acts against the government to undermine the United States' ability to prosecute the war, and they often attacked draft enrollment officers.

These were significant plots that threatened the viability of the United States.

>> NARRATOR: There were both citizens loyal to the Union, but also Copperheads living in Putnam County.

The leading Copperhead was a familiar name, Judge Delana Eckels.

He was quoted as saying in response to possible emancipation: >> There are 2,000 men in Putnam County, just awaiting the tap of the drum to rise up against the administration.

>> NARRATOR: In 1863, Congress passed a conscription act that required all males between 20 and 45 to register for military draft.

The draft became one of the most controversial issues affecting the homefront.

Democrats believed the law was unconstitutional and tyrannical.

The Republicans believed that opposition to the draft was treasonous, and that Copperheads were arming themselves in order to resist the draft.

>> Let liberty be your watch word, and let it resound from every stump in Indiana.

[ Applause ] Organize and arm yourselves with pikes and sides, with long guns with a fight for liberty!

>> NARRATOR: Unionists complained that gangs of deserters and Copperheads burned their houses and killed their livestock in Putnam County.

Draft enrollment officers were local citizens, throughout the North, legally responsible for identifying men who could be drafted into the Union Army.

The most notorious assault of a draft officer in Putnam County was on James Sill and his family.

[ Dog barking ] Sill was a local lawyer.

His support of the Union caused a breach with some old friends.

In June 1863, using the previous year's paperwork as a guide, Sill had just completed the new enrollment list for the county.

>> What are you looking at, father?

>> Oh, Candace, it's nothing.

It's nothing, I'm sure.

I thought I saw something.

Candace, would you please put these enrollment papers in the salt barrel?

They will be safer there.

>> I'll be right back.

>> How do you like your book?

>> Oh, it's great.

Look at this page here.

[ Voices outside ] >> James?

>> They're here.

♪ They want the new enrollment papers.

Go out the back, leave with the girls.

Hide.

Hurry!

>> James, be careful!

>> Father, I won't leave you.

I'll stay.

[ Shouting ] >> What are all of you traitors doing here?

Get off my land!

>> You know why we're here, right, men?

>> Yeah!

>> Damn it to hell, Sill!

Get the damn papers, or we'll burn this place to the ground.

>> Yeah!

>> I'm not giving you anything.

>> You got three minutes or we'll shoot you where you stand.

>> Yeah!

>> Wait.

Wait.

There's no need for that.

I'll be back.

>> It's all right, father, I'll be fine.

Look at all you brave and patriotic citizens.

Shame on you.

And it takes all of you and your guns and your whiskey to subdue the four of us.

You are nothing but cowards and Copperheads.

[ Crowd grumbling ] >> We got them!

Let's go!

[ Cheers ] >> I'm so sorry, father.

>> Those were last year's enrollment papers.

♪ >> But the violence in the county continued.

>> Dearest Matilda, you asked me what I think about the present traitorous movements in Indiana.

The soldier's life is a hard one, but I would rather serve my country for nothing, than be at home and listen to the treasonable utterances while so many are yielding up their lives by exposure, by hardship, and by the rebel bullet.

>> NARRATOR: The greatest gulf between soldiers and people back home was the reality and stress of impending death, ugly death.

During the war, Lucius Chapin, for example, lost two brothers in combat.

23-year-old Josiah Williams and his uncle, George Whitfield Reed, were both from Putnam County.

They fought 10 feet from each other in Virginia at the Battle of Cedar Mountain, where bullets flew like hail.

>> Uncle Whit was killed by being shot in the left ear or near there.

I saw him throw up his hands by his head and fall forward upon his face.

As our men were falling back thick and fast, and the regiment getting back, I had not time to get him from the field or see to his things.

I made a diligent but fruitless search for Uncle Whit's body.

>> NARRATOR: Even with his eyewitness account, Josiah's parents simply did not believe him without a body to bring back to Putnam.

For most homefront people of this generation, fighting often was something abstract, happening far away.

For those doing the fighting, it was real, horrible, and seared forever into who they were.

♪ The war effectively came to an end when General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9th, 1865.

Black troops, including survivors of the 28th Indiana Regiment were among the first to enter Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy.

A few days later, they were in a victory parade there with President Lincoln.

♪ A serious price had been paid.

Over 25,000 Indiana soldiers died.

More than 17,000 were disabled.

321 of the dead were from Putnam County.

Many of those who did return left part of themselves on the battlefields, both physically and mentally, with memories that would not let them or their families forget.

>> Lucius Chapin did return home after nearly three years.

He would remain unwell for his lifetime, yet he became an attorney and mayor of Greencastle.

He made sure every Putnam County Civil War soldier, regardless of race, was honored in the cemetery.

After the war, Alice Chapin became president of the local ladies temperance league.

She made speeches, led the picketing, and even sit-ins of Greencastle saloons, often blocking the doors.

Lucius usually accompanied her.

>> NARRATOR: Women of both races had made major sacrifices to save the Union.

>> You have someone like Elizabeth Applegate, who was widowed.

And so often, what that meant for women in the 1800s, is you had to remarry, or you had to be reliant on family if you didn't have sufficient money.

And the Applegates were not well-to-do.

She raises her daughter.

She does take in boarders in Greencastle, but the bulk of her income is coming from her widows pension as a Civil War widow.

And that allows her to live a kind of independent life that wouldn't have been possible before the Civil War.

>> NARRATOR: The same was not true for Blacks.

>> It was far more difficult for African American Union veterans to get a pension than their White counterparts.

And I would say that probably most African American veterans didn't get a pension.

You should have affidavits from your physician.

You should have affidavits from fellow soldiers.

And even when African American troops got these, they were oftentimes just ignored.

>> Charity Townsend took in washing and ironing, but that did not pay very much.

Finally, after struggling for 20 years, she received a mother's pension of $8 a month, and back payments dating from Robert's death.

>> NARRATOR: Indiana Republicans continually reminded Hoosiers of the horrors the war brought, and in their view, the disloyalty of leading Democrats and Copperheads.

Putnam Republicans never forgot that Delana Eckels was the leading Copperhead in the county.

The Greencastle Banner again recalled that: >> Late 19th century, African Americans emancipated, but not free in Alabama and Mississippi and across the South because of Jim Crow segregation discrimination, because of lack of economic opportunity.

Sharecropping and other jobs were not sufficient for many families.

They wanted an education for their children.

They wanted opportunities.

And to do that, for most African Americans in the South, they had to move North.

>> Some Hoosiers encouraged Blacks to come to Indiana.

There was a need for cheap labor.

♪ >> NARRATOR: A growing Black population in the county allowed them to form their own churches.

In 1872, Luke and Charity Townsend founded the Bethel AME Church in their home.

The heart and soul of the community was the church.

It was a place of connection and celebration for families and friends.

It was a place for people to assert themselves as citizens.

They recruited Reverend John Henry Clay.

Reverend Clay was an activist.

He was determined to build a real church building for his new Putnam County congregation.

Reverend Clay wrote a circular printed in The Greencastle Banner and circulated in North Carolina, encouraging Blacks to settle in Indiana.

♪ >> We want honest and industrious men, with the know-how and are willing to work hard on the farms, and the same class of women, to do the housework.

We do not want loafers.

Loafers are not wanted.

In Indiana, we all are equal under the law.

Come, gather your things, and come join us in Indiana.

>> NARRATOR: And they did come!

They were called Exodusters, echoing the Biblical story in the book of Exodus, describing the liberation of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.

And like the Israelites, their journey was often difficult and dangerous.

George Langsdale, the editor of The Greencastle Banner supported the Exodusters.

>> A party of 14 Colored persons arrived from North Carolina on Wednesday of last week.

Greencastle now occupies a prouder position than ever in the state.

>> Any changes in racial attitudes are going to be partial by 21st century standards.

The Civil War didn't change everybody's attitudes.

So when Exodusters come in, you've got some White Hoosiers who have encouraged this migration, welcomed the chance for more laborers and more Republican voters in the county, but Exodusters faced a certain amount of harassment, as did their employers.

>> NARRATOR: Remember, at the 1851 State Constitutional Convention, A.C.

Stevenson had said that Blacks in Indiana should go back to Liberia.

>> Black people in Indiana have the mistaken notion that this is their home.

>> These men, who back in 1850 and 1851, had believed that African Americans should go to Liberia, are now welcoming in and recruiting African Americans from North Carolina to move into Putnam County in 1879 and 1880.

>> A thousand men brought into the county today wouldn't get the fences reset, the briars cut out of the fence rows, and the logs burned off the pastures, in a year.

Labor is the great want of the county.

>> NARRATOR: But some felt threatened and did not agree.

>> Every dollar that is paid out for Colored labor is taking that much from the poor White man.

♪ >> In addition to work, Exodusters also wanted their children educated.

Indiana law required segregated schools where there were enough Black students to justify a separate school.

Putnam did not have enough.

So they attended school with the White students.

>> Putnam County has good schools for our children.

>> My children go to a White school, and they receive the same treatment as the White children.

>> Schoolhouses are plenty with good teachers too.

They run six to nine months every year, Colored and White children getting the same education.

♪ >> By 1880, nearly 600 Blacks and people of mixed race lived in Putnam County.

Under Pastor Clay's leadership, Bethel AME became the largest Black church in the county.

This church, started by Luke and Charity Townsend, served the Black community for nearly 90 years until a declining membership forced its closing in 1980.

>> NARRATOR: Indiana did not provide the economic benefits or work prospects that Exodusters had expected.

And while there was less outright legal discrimination than in the South, there remained serious racial prejudice.

As a result, by 1890, Putnam County's Black population fell to 357.

It is nonetheless remarkable that so many White Putnam County residents initially welcomed the Exodusters.

>> Before the Civil War, African Americans were not even really thought of as Americans or legitimate Hoosiers.

The Civil War changes all that.

Now African Americans are, indeed, Americans.

And I think the crucial element that caused that change was Black military service.

So there's a sense of African Americans have contributed to saving the Union, and they are a real part of the community.

♪ >> NARRATOR: After the war in Putnam County, partisanship over many issues continued.

Alcohol remained a constant source of conflict.

>> In the 1870s, the women's temperance crusade involves really explicitly going into the very male domain of the saloon.

This dramatic insertion of women into the public realm was not only closed off to them, but was where decent women did not go.

So the temperance crusade shows the evolution of women's roles, but the change was not as dramatic as it was for African Americans.

♪ >> NARRATOR: Before the Civil War, Indiana prohibited intermarriage, African American voting, Black testimony against Whites in court, integrated education, and even Black migration into the state.

The 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S.

Constitution allowed Blacks to vote, testify in court, and move where they wanted.

>> For me, the big difference is the way the -- the Civil War really changes the nature of the conversation about African American rights.

White Americans, White Hoosiers, didn't accept African Americans often as citizens of the same country, didn't believe they should have social rights equal with Whites, certainly not political rights.

And then the Civil War brings about this dramatic change where African Americans are not only free, but they are citizens.

>> So we see northern states beginning to get rid of some of these antiblack laws.

We have courts in the North that are ruling in favor of African Americans who are filing suit.

So I guess what I would say here is that there is a lot of optimism for African Americans in the North after the war.

There's this short period after the Civil War, where it looks like things are gonna change for African Americans in the South but also in the North, but the door closes in both areas.

>> There was progress.

There was great progress, but at the end of the day, that opportunity was missed.

Full legal equality for African Americans was an opportunity not fully taken during the period of Reconstruction.

>> Industrialization.

Economic panics make economic issues become more important and start to divert Northerners' attention away from the sort of Civil Rights and political issues that had been raised during the Civil War generation.

♪ >> NARRATOR: The Civil War generation in Putnam County, and the rest of the North, went through unprecedented change, both political and personal.

The war reshaped their lives and their nation.

It was impossible for people simply to pick up the pieces and continue the life they had known before.

♪