Reconstruction - Benjamin

Today

You and your group members are going to become experts on one person who lived during Reconstruction. Each of these people lived impressive lives were involved in multiple social movements during their lives and had an impact on the United States.

Tomorrow, you will share your knowledge of this person with other people in the classroom as they teach you about the person they became an expert on.
Directions:

1.

Complete the reading on your assigned person with the group. You may want to highlight too, this will make it easier to find information quickly as you talk with other students tomorrow.

2.

Fill out the handout for your assigned person. You should also do this as a group.

3.

When you have completed the handout, I will share tomorrow’s activity with your group.

Benjamin Montgomery

I was enslaved by the family of Jefferson Davis, one of the wealthiest and most influential families in
Mississippi. Jefferson Davis, was the president of the Confederacy. When I was first sold to the Davises I tried to escape but was recaptured. On their plantation I learned to read and write, survey land, repair machines, navigate steamboats, and design buildings. I became a skilled mechanic and invented a steam-operated boat propeller. I applied for a patent but was denied because I was enslaved. Acknowledging my talents, the Davises made me the manager of the plantation store and
eventually the entire plantation.

When the Union Army approached during the Civil War, the Davises fled, leaving me in charge. I tried to help lead the hundreds of enslaved people who stayed behind supervising production of corn and vegetables to feed the community. But after Union soldiers burned the plantation mansion, and Confederate troops burned our crops, it became clear that staying was too dangerous. I took my wife and four children to Ohio until the war ended.

At the end of the war, I headed back to the plantation I had been a slave on and began to farm the land. I leased the land from the Freedmen’s Bureau and quickly tripled my initial investment with a successful cotton crop. We were now free, prosperous, Black farmers on the land that only a few years ago we had worked as slaves.

When President Andrew Johnson pardoned Davis, the title
for the land went back to him. But I had raised enough
money to buy it from him. By 1873, my family was the third
largest cotton producer in Mississippi with an award-winning crop. But when I was appointed justice of the peace, our white neighbors were infuriated at the thought of a Black judge. The increasingly hostile racial politics, combined with falling cotton prices and floods, eventually led me to sell the plantation back to Jefferson Davis. But my son continued the family legacy by co-founding Mound Bayou, a successful all-Black colony in Northwest Mississippi.

Steam-operated Boat Propeller

Mound Bayou Today

Open Ended

Who was Jefferson Davis?  What is his connection to Benjamin?

Open Ended

Do you think Benjamin’s experience as a slave was similar or different to the experiences of most slaves? Use evidence from the reading to support your answer.

Open Ended

What is a patent?  Look the word up. What did Benjamin invent?  Why could he not get a patent for his invention?

Open Ended

How did Benjamin become the owner of Jefferson Davis’ plantation?  

Open Ended

Do you think that Benjamin lived an impressive life?  Why or why not?  Use evidence from the reading to support your answer.