Spottswood Rice: Freedom fighter, landmark visionary

Spottswood Rice was an African-American Civil War soldier with an important Cape Girardeau legacy, but very few locals know anything about him.

Google his name and 93,300 results will populate the search window. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.; Soldiers' Memorial in St. Louis; and Ken Burns' documentary Civil War miniseries all commemorate Rice's legacy.

After the Civil War and long before he was an icon of history, Rice became a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal tradition. He pastored St. James AME Church in Cape Girardeau 1875 to 1876, and under his inspired leadership, the congregation purchased property and built its first and only church house. This same building, located at 516 North St., is the hub of worship and ministry for today's congregation.

After he left Cape, Rice was assigned an itinerate ministry to establish and encourage AME congregations in western Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. As a traveling minister, he provided spiritual guidance to freedmen laborers, railroad workers and settlers as they relocated west. Many western AME churches consider Rice their founding pastor.

But ministry is not the primary reason Rice is remembered. Rather, the action which rightfully places Spottswood Rice into American history was two painstakingly written letters. Letters that capture the emotion of a man once enslaved, but emboldened by freedom.

St. James A.M.E. Church is seen Jan. 11, 2018, in Cape Girardeau.BEN MATTHEWS

For decades before the war, Rice's skill in tobacco manufacturing in Glasgow, Missouri, made his enslaver, Benjamin Lewis, a very wealthy man. Yet, Rice was denied the simplest family rights, because his wife and children were enslaved by others. In May 1864, Rice, his wife and two sons defied slavery, left Glasgow, and Rice enlisted in the Union Army's 67th U.S. Colored Infantry. His daughters, Mary and Caroline, were left behind in Glasgow when Kitty Diggs refused them freedom.

After months of separation, Rice was desperate to reunite his family. From a military hospital in St. Louis in September 1864, the semi-literate Rice wrote two earnest letters.

The first letter addressed Diggs, denounced her claim to keep his children enslaved (despite his offer to purchase them), derided the hypocrisy of her faith and threatened vengeance with the power and authority of the army and the government behind him. The letter sizzled with righteous wrath, the consequences of which could evoke severe punishment, if not death.

The second letter addressed his daughters with tender assurances their father had not forgotten them and would move heaven and earth to reclaim them.

Neither letter reached their intended recipients. Glasgow's postmaster was Diggs' brother, Francis. He intercepted the correspondence, angrily approached the Union Army commander in the region and insisted the writer be located and punished. The letters were simply filed in "Letters Received" with no further action.

In the 1990s, scholars compiled materials for "Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation." Rice's letters were included, which focused renewed attention to the power of his expression of righteous anger. A Google search links to digital images of Rice's letters -- recommended reading.

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Spottswood Rice's Letters to his children and Miss Kitty Diggs

usctchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/03/words-actions-and-life-of-spottswood.html

Rev. Rice's daughter -- Mary A. Bell -- 1939, Library of Congress Slave Narrative:

loc.gov/resource/mesn.100/?sp=30