Mahala Smith is searching for her daughter, Martha Clemens

This ad initially stood out to me because it sparked emotion since the title described a woman searching for her daughter. Once the image of the ad was enlarged, I started to wonder why this ad was significantly more blurry than some of the others I glanced through. Another interesting thought I had was that many of the ads did not have a description of the person that was being sought out, however, this one did. I thought this was due to the fact that it was a mother in search of her daughter. When reading more, there were many other indicators that made me assume the time separated was extremely long because she also wrote her daughter was already eighteen years old and she had last seen her during the “war”, which would be the Civil War in this case. Lastly, the town of St. Louis was one I had heard of before so I also noticed that once analyzing the ad.

The time place for this newspaper ad would be after the end of the Civil War. For context “during the Civil War, St. Louis, Missouri, was a Union-occupied city” (Module 2: Emancipation and Reconstruction). During the slave trade, children were often separated from families for a number of horrible reasons. Military officials were at this time allowed to interfere in St. Louis under martial law. During the last two years of the Civil War, “a number of women applied to the St. Louis district provost marshal for assistance in regaining custody of their children who had been stranded in the Missouri countryside” (Module 2: Emancipation and Reconstruction). One of the most important things that formerly enslaved people did after emancipation was try to put their families back together and St. Louis was a prime example of this.

This ad really shows the trend of searching for loved ones and family members after emancipation. I also believe this shows the stark contrast of what freedom means to those who were formerly enslaved and what freedom means to those never enslaved. Those formerly enslaved were searching for close connections to feel a sense of safety and freedom. While in turn, those in power were already working on laws to limit the freedoms of those formerly enslaved. Once Johnson became president he established such laws, “Under the Black Codes, Blacks were granted certain rights, such as legalized marriage, ownership of property, and limited access to the courts. But they were denied the right to testify against whites, to serve on juries, to serve in state militias, and to vote” ((Module 2: Emancipation and Reconstruction). The ideas of freedom were completely different which clearly shows blatant injustice. To conclude, earlier I was curious as to why this ad was blurrier than the others I viewed before it. I believe this was because women began searching for their children in St. Louis two years before the Civil War ended, while a lot of the other ads do take place after the war completely ended.

Discussion Question: Did the Emancipation Proclamation grant freedom to slaves or just freedom from slavery?