Wm. Higginbotham, a well-known free man of color, also returned on Saturday morning. He reached Manassas on the morning of the battle, but was denied the privilege of taking a gun and falling into the ranks. He then assisted in removing the dead and wounded, amid a shower of balls that fell around. Such deeds are highly meritorious and deserve much credit.
Editor, Rome Weekly Courier, August 9, 1861
In the aftermath of the first significant Confederate victory of the Civil War, the press in Rome, Georgia, attempted to create the impression that the entire community, including black men like William Barton Higginbotham, was behind the new government, and eager to fight the “Lincolnites.” The truth was quite different. Higginbotham, a prosperous saloon operator at Rome’s Choice House hotel since the early 1850s, did not go to Virginia imbued with a sense of patriotism for the new Confederate nation. He went to free his children.
Higginbotham’s wife and children were the slaves of Dr. Homer V. M. Miller, a surgeon in the 8th Georgia Regiment. Dr. Miller maintained that he would only sell Higginbotham’s children to their father if this proud black man would serve as Miller’s personal servant on the battlefield. Higginbotham agreed and purchased his children in 1862. He was not allowed to purchase his wife.
Higginbotham was an unusual black man in antebellum Georgia. Born free in Virginia in 1817, he was living in eastern Mississippi when he removed to the new settlement at Rome in 1845. By 1860, he had amassed a personal estate worth more than $10,000, and claimed to have loans of nearly twice that amount due to him.
Higginbotham’s wealth placed him among the upper tier of Rome businessmen. “I was sort of a privileged character here at first,” he boasted, “and had some influence with the rebels.” On the day of the 1861 election of representatives to the secession convention, Higginbotham maintained that he changed some white voters’ minds towards supporting the Union ticket.
Even if his political influence was not as great as he was eager to claim, Higginbotham’s prominence in Rome’s business community made him an important symbol to other blacks in the county. Dr. Miller’s secret bargain was carefully crafted to use this black leader as a tool, not only to suggest Rome’s Confederate solidarity, but also to help dispel persistent fears of a slave uprising in the area. The agreement may not have been as one-sided as it seems today. Higginbotham was an abolitionist and could use his money, influence, and even the feigned appearance of loyalty to protect himself from the most violent secessionists and keep himself and his family safe in dangerous circumstances. It was a precarious juggling act. “I know we had to laugh in one hand and cry in the other,” Higginbotham remembered, “when the Yankees were whipped or when the rebels were whipped.” Higginbotham’s color protected him from serving a Confederate cause he did not believe in. His freedom to move about and communicate with enslaved blacks during the war helped to sustain a black community that became even more threatened during such uncertain times.