Como-Pickton Jr. High
Enrichment Students Learn About Slavery

 

by: Bobby McDonald

 

Students at Como-Pickton Junior High, in Coach Snyder's Enrichment Class, are learning about the Civil War, Slavery, and the causes and effects of the "bloodiest war" in American History. On Tuesday morning, guest speaker, Bobby McDonald, spoke to the class and brought the Civil War experience "closer to home" as he told the students about what life was like here in Hopkins County, during the Civil War period. McDonald told the students that this area was divided with many Union loyalists in Northeast Texas and the conflict between those who supported the North and those who were true to the Confederacy.

McDonald discussed a series of hangings during and after the Civil War in Sulphur Springs, Gainesville, the McKinney area, and Grayson county, as Confederate loyalists accused the Union sympathizers with treason.

He also presented each of the students with a copy of his "Out of the Darkness....The Black Face of Hopkins County," for their study and reading. He pointed to the chapter that had a listing of all the slave owners in Hopkins County, in 1864, and how you could trace many of the African-American families in Hopkins County to this list of former slaves.

 

 

 

It was denoted how expensive slaves were as assets and how many slave owners brought their families and slaves to Northeast Texas, during the war to protect them from the actual battlefield areas of the South.

McDonald pointed to a number of historic places in Hopkins County, including a historical marker on Highway-19 North, that talks about the period in our history.

The students will learn on Wednesday about the "cotton culture" in Hopkins County and then will make a tour of the "Lincoln Exhibit" at the Sulphur Springs Public Library, and a trip to where the Union Stockade was located in Sulphur Springs, as a part of their studies.

 

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