Q&A: Historian Edda Fields-Black discusses her new book 'Combee' (2024)

It took her years to research and write this book, a deep-dive into the circ*mstances of the Port Royal Experiment, Harriet Tubman’s experiences in South Carolina and, in particular, the underappreciated Combahee River Raid.

Now Edda Fields-Black’s book “Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War” is out from Oxford University Press. The Post and Courier asked her about it.

Q: This has been an ambitious and time-consuming project for you. What inspired you to tackle this subject?

A: For years now, my research specialty has been the transnational history of West African rice. Rice is not native to the U.S. I am an historian and have written academic books and articles about the development of rice-growing technology by peasant farmers in West Africa (one of two regions in the world where rice was domesticated), the transfer of rice seeds, agricultural technology and skilled laborers to the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry as a result of the transatlantic slave trade, and the experiences of enslaved laborers on rice plantations in the Lowcountry. I came to the Combahee River Raid through my work on rice.

I am also an artist; I collaborate with a classical music composer, John Wineglass, who wrote a contemporary symphony entitled, “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice,” which is about rice and slavery. I wrote the libretto on which John’s original score is based. In working on the libretto, the Combahee River Raid was one of the dramatic scenes I found. At first, the Raid was a section in the libretto and part of a book I wanted to write about the history of the Gullah Geechee. I found new primary sources researching the Raid for both projects, which had not been used previously by historians. Then, I realized the Combahee River Raid would be the subject of my next book.

Q: What is the most significant historical discovery you made, something that changed the way you understand Harriet Tubman and her accomplishments, or the Beaufort-based war effort?

A: Harriet Tubman, of course, is central to the story. Tubman is best known for her extraordinary work as the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She made approximately 13 rescue missions, liberating approximately 70 people and gave specific instructions to approximately 70 more people, which they used to find their ways safely to freedom. She and the U.S. Army rescued 10 times more enslaved people in six hours during the Combahee River Raid.

The Civil War was the least known chapter of Harriet Tubman’s legendary life. Her biographers wrote of Tubman’s Civil War service, but the details were missing. This was in large part, because Tubman’s Civil War service was not mentioned at all in the official military record, despite the fact that the Union relied on the intelligence from freedom seekers who came to U.S.-occupied territory from behind Confederate lines. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee had to admit less than a month before the raid: “the chief source of information to the enemy is through our Negroes.”

The Combahee River Raid was the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. And, Tubman gathered the intelligence on which the Raid was based. “Combee” sheds new light on Tubman as a military/intelligence leader and as a pivotal, transformational, liberatory figure in the transition from slavery to freedom. Harriet Tubman is positioned as both exemplar and progenitor of a broader social movement engendered by Black people for freedom, liberty and revolution.

Q: The Port Royal area, controlled by federal troops for the length of the Civil War, was a staging ground for Union forces, and also a place where more than 10,000 suddenly liberated enslaved people forced a grand experiment, one that would lead directly to Reconstruction. What was the promise of that experiment?

A: In many ways, the Battle of Port Royal was the beginning of the Combahee River Raid. After the U.S. Navy’s armada drove up Port Royal Sound on November 7, 1861, the plantation owners and slave holders fled, and the U.S. Army occupied Beaufort, Port Royal and the Sea Islands. Planters whose plantations were in Confederate-occupied territory knew they were next after the Battle of Port Royal; this included planters on the Combahee River.

Blacks who remained in bondage in Confederate-controlled territory felt, smelled, heard and then saw the U.S. Navy war ships and they knew getting to U.S.-occupied territory spelled the end of bondage. They did whatever they possibly could and took whatever watercraft they could cobble together to escape bondage and seek protection from the U.S. Army.

The Battle of Port Royal led to the Port Royal Experiment, which brought northerners volunteering as teachers, missionaries and superintendents down to Beaufort, Port Royal and the Sea Islands to open schools and stores, and manage the labor of the 10,000 formerly enslaved people in the area. And, the Governor of Massachusetts sent Harriet Tubman down to serve as a spy and a scout for the U.S. Army Department of the South.

When Tubman arrived in May 1862, she arrived in the midst of the largest social experiment to date in U.S. history. The Port Royal Experiment promised formerly enslaved people would be treated with dignity, taught to read and write, and paid for their labor. But, these promises weren’t always kept.

Q: You discovered that your lineage can be traced to someone who was with Tubman on June 1 and 2, 1863, and participated in the Combahee River Raid. Tell me about that.

My father was the last of his siblings to be born in Green Pond, S.C. I still have many cousins in Green Pond and White Hall (Colleton County), as well as Charleston. But we did not know much about the Fields branch of my family, except they were much smaller in Colleton County today than my paternal grandmother’s side of the family.

Years ago, one of my Fields cousins gave me information he had taken down from the census, which identified Hector Fields as my paternal great-great-great grandfather and his direct descendants (father to son) down to my grandfather. When I tried to find out more about Hector in the census, I found what I thought were many Hector Fields in Beaufort and Colleton counties between 1870 and 1910. So I didn’t think it would be possible to learn more about him and know if any of those Hector Fields were related to us.

But then, through the pension files, I found his brother, Jonas Fields’ pension file. It included testimony from their sister Phoebe, who testified to the names of her two brother, Hector and Jonas, of their parents, and the slave holders who held her family in bondage.

Through his Military Service Record (Hector Fields does not have a pension file), I confirmed he enlisted on March 24, 1863 in the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, which was made up of formerly enslaved men who were freed after the Battle of Port Royal, and enslaved men who liberated themselves in the Combahee River Raid.

Hector Fields fought in the Combahee River Raid. I was thrilled to realize I had a personal connection to this important history.