Global Environments Working Group

We will discuss Sanjay Paul’s paper titled “Yankee Pests: The 1864 “Army Worm” Infestation, Power, and the Twists and Turns of the Transition to Free Labour along the Lower Mississippi River”

During 1864, the United States Treasury Department initiated the first experiment with free labour in the Lower Mississippi River Valley. While the U.S. Civil War raged elsewhere, Northern capitalists and former slaveholders leased out over 450 plantations between Memphis and Vicksburg. Approximately 60,000 freedpeople agreed to work this land and return to cotton agriculture. Treasury officials had great expectations for the 1864 experiment. One Treasury agent estimated a crop worth "160,000,000 dollars" and many more hoped for a symbolic victory to demonstrate the superiority of free labour to slavery. By early October, however, all expectations had been dashed. Midway through August, a mysterious pest that officials called the "army worm" appeared, "swept the fields," and ruined the "prospect for an unusually large crop." By the end of the fall, one agent reported that "no Planter will realize a full crop, and the most of them will not make over a sixth." The infestation ruined the plantation leasing experiment and had long-term significance for what emancipation would mean in the Mississippi Valley. Who was this "army worm"? How did it come to play an important role in the history of Reconstruction? What role did it play in the great drama of emancipation? This essay seeks to answer these questions.

Please email nathanielmoses@g.harvard.edu to RSVP and receive a copy of the paper.