SCHMOLL/HISTORY231/DOCUMENT BASED WORK ON SLAVERY
1. One Englishman, William Harrison, wrote, (wm
harrison) "As for slaves and bondmen, we have none, naie such is the
privilege of our countrie, by the especiall grace of God and bountie of our
princes, that if anie come hither from other realms, so soone as they set foot
on land they become so free of condition as their master , whereby all note of
servile bondage is removed from them."
(1577, written about England)
2. Sarah Frances Shaw Graves, Age 87 
"I was born March
23, 1850 in Kentucky, somewhere near Louisville. I am goin' on 88 years right
now. (1937). I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old, along with my
mama, who was a slave owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man
named Jimmie Graves, who came to Missouri to live with his daughter Emily
Graves Crowdes. I always lived with Emily Crowdes."
"I was born March
23, 1850 in Kentucky, somewhere near Louisville. I am goin' on 88 years right
now. (1937). I was brought to Missouri when I was six months old, along with my
mama, who was a slave owned by a man named Shaw, who had allotted her to a man
named Jimmie Graves, who came to Missouri to live with his daughter Emily
Graves Crowdes. I always lived with Emily Crowdes."
The matter of allotment was confusing to the interviewer
and Aunt Sally endeavored to explain.
"Yes'm. Allotted? Yes'm. I'm goin' to explain that,
" she replied. "You see there was slave traders in those days, jes'
like you got horse and mule an' auto traders now. They bought and sold slaves and
hired 'em out. Yes'm, rented 'em out. Allotted means somethin' like hired out.
But the slave never got no wages. That all went to the master. The man they was
allotted to paid the master."
"I was never sold. My mama was sold only once, but
she was hired out many times. Yes'm when a slave was allotted, somebody made a
down payment and gave a mortgage for the rest. A chattel mortgage. . . ."
"Allotments made a lot of grief for the
slaves," Aunt Sally asserted. "We left my papa in Kentucky, 'cause he
was allotted to another man. My papa never knew where my mama went, an' my mama
never knew where papa went." Aunt Sally paused a moment, then went on
bitterly. "They never wanted mama to know, 'cause they knowed she would
never marry so long she knew where he was. Our master wanted her to marry again
and raise more children to be slaves. They never wanted mama to know where papa
was, an' she never did," sighed Aunt Sally.
3. Sarah Gudger, Age 121 
I 'membahs de time when mah mammy wah alive, I wah
a small chile, afoah dey tuck huh t' Rims Crick. All us chillens wah playin' in
de ya'd one night. Jes' arunnin' an' aplayin' lak chillun will. All a sudden
mammy cum to de do' all a'sited. "Cum in heah dis minnit," she say.
"Jes look up at what is ahappenin'," and bless yo' life, honey, da
sta's wah fallin' jes' lak rain.* Mammy wah tebble skeered, but we chillen
wa'nt afeard, no, we wa'nt afeard. But mammy she say evah time a sta' fall,
somebuddy gonna die. Look lak lotta folks gonna die f'om de looks ob dem sta's.
Ebbathin' wah jes' as bright as day. Yo' cudda pick a pin up. Yo' know de sta's
don' shine as bright as dey did back den. I wondah wy dey don'. Dey jes' don'
shine as bright. Wa'nt long afoah dey took mah mammy away, and I wah lef'
alone.
4. Charley Williams, Age 94
When de day begin to crack de whole plantation
break out wid all kinds of noises, and you could tell what going on by de kind
of noise you hear.
Come de daybreak you hear de guinea fowls start
potracking down at the edge of de woods lot, and den de roosters all start up
'round de barn and de ducks finally wake up and jine in. You can smell de sow
belly frying down at the cabins in de "row," to go wid de hoecake and
de buttermilk.
Den purty soon de wind rise a little, and you can
hear a old bell donging way on some plantation a mile or two off, and den more
bells at other places and maybe a horn, and purty soon younder go old Master's
old ram horn wid a long toot and den some short toots, and here come de
overseer down de row of cabins, hollering right and left, and picking de ham
out'n his teeth wid a long shiny goose quill pick.
Bells and horns! Bells for dis and horns for dat!
All we knowed was go and come by de bells and horns!
5. SOME SLAVERY STATISTICS:
Slaves as a percentage
of Virginia's total population in 1680: 7
Slaves as a percentage of
Virginia's total population in 1720: 30
Slaves as a percentage of Virginia's total population in 1770: 42
Number of slaves in Virginia in 1750: 100,000
Number of slaves in Virginia in 1850: 200,000
Slaves as a percentage of Virginia's total population in 1770: 42
Number of slaves in Virginia in 1750: 100,000
Number of slaves in Virginia in 1850: 200,000
6.
7.
8.
10.
Slavery In Early America's
Colonies: Seeds of Servitude Rooted in The Civil Law of Rome
by Charles P.M. Outwin (1996)
The question of definable humanity
in the slave continued to plagued the courts. Though his Negroes were
impersonally "salable," an owner was not allowed arbitrarily to kill
one "as he could an ox." Indeed, in 1706 it was determined that
"the common law takes no notice of negroes (sic) for being different from
other men. By common law no man can have property in another, except in special
instances ....” The opinion handed down by Sir Philip Yorke, Attorney-General
of the realm at the end of 1729, stated that
a slave, by coming from the West
Indies, either with or without his master, to Great Britain or Ireland, doth
not become free; and that his master's property or right in him is not thereby
determined or varied; and baptism doth not bestow freedom on him, nor make any
alteration in his temporal condition in these kingdoms.This was an unfortunate decision, because by
then American and British legal practice had already begun to diverge along the
lines of economic expediency, supported by resort to Roman civil code. American
courts in the South were to look more and more to Roman law concerning
propertied interest for antecedents. The common law, then, had become victim of
its own flexibility.
12.
13. “The
Universal Law of Slavery," by George Fitzhugh (most important advocate of slavery) 1857
He the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro's moral and intellectual capacity.
Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.
We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife-murder has become a mere holiday pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be brutally treated. Nay, more; men who kill their wives or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime, and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill their wives. If it be objected that legally they have no wives, then we reply, that in an experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro woman. Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their moral condition is better.
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides' they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society are to put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations.
He the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro's moral and intellectual capacity.
Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race, and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve.
We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife-murder has become a mere holiday pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be brutally treated. Nay, more; men who kill their wives or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime, and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill their wives. If it be objected that legally they have no wives, then we reply, that in an experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro woman. Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their moral condition is better.
The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides' they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future.
A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society are to put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations.
The Black American A Documentary History, Third Edition, by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles, Scott, Foresman and Company, Illinois, 1976,1970
14. Theodore
Dwight Weld, 1839, Slavery as it Really Is
Reader, you are
empaneled as a juror to try a plain case and bring in an honest verdict. The
question at issue is not one of law, but of fact--"What is the actual
condition of the slaves in the United States?" A plainer case never went
to a jury. Look at it. Twenty seven hundred thousand persons in this country,
men, women, and children, are in slavery. Is slavery, as a condition for human
beings, good, bad, or indifferent?...
Two millions
seven hundred thousand persons in these States are in this condition. They are
made slaves and are held such by force, and by being put in fear, and this for
no crime!...
As slaveholders
and their apologists are...flooding the world with testimony that their slaves
are kindly treated; that they are well fed, well clothed, well housed, well
lodged, moderately worked, and bountifully provided with all things needful for
their comfort, we propose--first, to disprove their assertions by the testimony
of a multitude of impartial witnesses, and then to put slaveholders themselves
through a course of cross-questioning which shall draw their condemnation out
of their own mouths. We will prove that the slaves in the United States are
treated with barbarous inhumanity; that they are overworked, underfed,
wretchedly clad and lodged, and have insufficient sleep; that they are often
made to wear round their necks iron collars armed with prongs, to drag heavy
chains and weights at their feet while working in the field, and to wear yokes,
and bells, and iron horns; that they are often kept confined in the stocks day
and night for weeks together, made to wear gags in their mouths for hours or
days, have some of their front teeth torn out or broken off, that they may be
easily detected when they run away; that they are frequently flogged with
terrible severity, have red pepper rubbed into their lacerated flesh, and hot
brine, spirits of turpentine, &c., poured over the gashes to increase the
torture; that they are often stripped naked, their backs and limbs cut with
knives, bruised and mangled by scores and hundreds of blows with the paddle,
and terribly torn by the claws of cats, drawn over them by their tormenters;
that they are often hunted with blood hounds and shot down like beasts, or torn
in pieces by dogs; that they are often suspended by the arms and whipped and
beaten till they faint, and when revived by restoratives, beaten again till
they faint, and sometimes till they die; that their ears are often cut off,
their eyes knocked out, their bones broken, their flesh branded with red hot
irons; that they are maimed, mutilated, and burned to death over slow fires....
We will establish all these facts by the testimony of scores and hundreds of
eye witnesses, by the testimony of slaveholders in all parts of the slave
states, by slaveholding members of Congress and of state legislatures, by
ambassadors to foreign courts, by judges, by doctors of divinity, and clergy
men of all denominations, by merchants, mechanics, lawyers and physicians, by
presidents and professors in colleges and professional seminaries, by planters,
overseers and drivers.
15. David Walker's Appeal
My dearly beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens.
Having
travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in
the course of my travels, taken the most accurate observations of things as
they exist -- the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken
conviction, that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most
degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world
began; and I pray God that none like us ever may live again until time shall be
no more. They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of
the Roman Slaves, which last were made up from almost every nation under
heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations, were, in
comparison with ours, under this enlightened and Christian nation, no more than
a cypher -- or, in other words, those heathen nations of antiquity, had but
little more among them than the name and form of slavery; while wretchedness
and endless miseries were reserved, apparently in a phial, to be poured out
upon, our fathers ourselves and our children, by Christian Americans!
...
I call upon the professing Christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call
upon the very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or
profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the Egyptians
heaped the insupportable insult upon the children of Israel, by telling
them that they were not of the human family. Can the whites deny this
charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of
slaves under their feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of
Monkeys or Orang-Outangs? O! my God! I appeal to every man of
feeling-is not this insupportable? Is it not heaping the most gross insult upon
our miseries, because they have got us under their feet and we cannot help
ourselves? Oh! pity us we pray thee, Lord Jesus, Master. -- Has Mr. Jefferson
declared to the world, that we are inferior to the whites, both in the
endowments of our bodies and our minds? It is indeed surprising, that a man of
such great learning, combined with such excellent natural parts, should speak
so of a set of men in chains. I do not know what to compare it to, unless, like
putting one wild deer in an iron cage, where it will be secured, and hold
another by the side of the same, then let it go, and expect the one in the cage
to run as fast as the one at liberty. So far, my brethren, were the Egyptians
from heaping these insults upon their slaves, that Pharaoh's daughter took
Moses, a son of Israel for her own, as will appear by the following.
The world
knows, that slavery as it existed was, mans, (which was the primary cause of
their destruction) was, comparatively speaking, no more than a cypher,
when compared with ours under the Americans. Indeed I should not have noticed
the Roman slaves, had not the very learned and penetrating Mr. Jefferson said,
"when a master was murdered, all his slaves in the same house, or within
hearing, were condemned to death." -- Here let me ask Mr. Jefferson, (but
he is gone to answer at the bar of God, for the deeds done in his body while
living,) I therefore ask the whole American people, had I not rather die, or be
put to death, than to be a slave to any tyrant, who takes not only my own, but
my wife and children's lives by the inches? Yea, would I meet death with
avidity far! far!! in preference to such servile submission to the
murderous hands of tyrants. Mr. Jefferson's very severe remarks on us have been
so extensively argued upon by men whose attainments in literature, I shall
never be able to reach, that I would not have meddled with it, were it not to
solicit each of my brethren, who has the spirit of a man, to buy a copy of Mr.
Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia," and put it in the hand of his son.
But
let us review Mr. Jefferson's remarks respecting us some further. Comparing our
miserable fathers, with the learned philosophers of Greece, he says: "Yet
notwithstanding these and other discouraging circumstances among the Romans,
their slaves were often their rarest artists. They excelled too, in science,
insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their master's children;
Epictetus, Terence and Phaedrus, were slaves, -- but they were of the race of
whites. It is not their condition then, but nature, which has
produced the distinction." See this, my brethren! ! Do you believe that
this assertion is swallowed by millions of the whites? Do you know that Mr.
Jefferson was one of as great characters as ever lived among the whites? See
his writings for the world, and public labours for the United States of
America. Do you believe that the assertions of such a man, will pass away into
oblivion unobserved by this people and the world? If you do you are much
mistaken-See how the American people treat us -- have we souls in our bodies?
Are we men who
(15
CONTINUED)have any spirits at all? I know that there are many swell-bellied
fellows among us, whose greatest object is to fill their stomachs. Such I do
not mean -- I am after those who know and feel, that we are MEN, as well as
other people; to them, I say, that unless we try to refute Mr. Jefferson's
arguments respecting us, we will only establish them.
Are we MEN! ! -- I ask
you, 0 my brethren I are we MEN? Did our Creator make us to be slaves to dust
and ashes like ourselves? Are they not dying worms as well as we? Have they not
to make their appearance before the tribunal of Heaven, to answer for the deeds
done in the body, as well as we? Have we any other Master but Jesus Christ
alone? Is he not their Master as well as ours? -- What right then, have we to
obey and call any other Master, but Himself? How we could be so submissive
to a gang of men, whom we cannot tell whether they are as good as ourselves or
not, I never could conceive. However, this is shut up with the Lord, and we
cannot precisely tell -- but I declare, we judge men by their works. The whites
have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty
set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.
...to my no ordinary
astonishment, [a] Reverend gentleman got up and told us (coloured people) that
slaves must be obedient to their masters -- must do their duty to their masters
or be whipped -- the whip was made for the backs of fools, &c. Here I pause
for a moment, to give the world time to consider what was my surprise, to hear
such preaching from a minister of my Master, whose very gospel is that of peace
and not of blood and whips, as this pretended preacher tried to make us
believe. What the American preachers can think of us, I aver this day before my
God, I have never been able to define. They have newspapers and monthly
periodicals, which they receive in continual succession, but on the pages of
which, you will scarcely ever find a paragraph respecting slavery, which is ten
thousand times more injurious to this country than all the other evils put
together; and which will be the final overthrow of its government, unless
something is very speedily done; for their cup is nearly full.-Perhaps they
will laugh at or make light of this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you
speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone! ! ! ! !
Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from
our country. America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have
enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America
have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they drive us from our
property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must look
sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans
have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the
God of armies. But let the go on.
Surely, the Americans must think that we are
brutes, as some of them have represented us to be. They think that we do not
feel for our brethren, whom they are murdering by the inches, but they are
dreadfully deceived.
I declare to you, while you keep us and our children in
bondage, and treat us like brutes, to make us support you and your families, we
cannot be your friends. You do not look for it do you? Treat us then like men,
and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my mind, but that the
whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will
become a united and happy people. The whites may say it is impossible, but
remember that nothing is impossible with God.
I count my life not dear unto
me, but I am ready to be offered at any moment, For what is the use of living,
when in fact I am dead. But remember, Americans, that as miserable, wretched,
degraded and abject as you have made us in preceding, and in this generation,
to support you and your families, that some of you, (whites) on the continent
of America, will yet curse the day that you ever were born. You want slaves,
and want us for your slaves ! ! ! My colour will yet, root some of you out of
the very face of the earth ! ! ! ! ! ! You may doubt it if you please. I know
that thousands will doubt-they think they have us so well secured in
wretchedness, to them and their children, that it is impossible for such things
to occur.
See your Declaration Americans! ! !
Do you understand your won language? Hear your languages, proclaimed to the
world, July 4th, 1776 -- "We hold these truths to be self evident -- that
ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! ! that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness! !" Compare your own language above, extracted
from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders
inflicted by your cruel and unmerciful fathers and yourselves on our fathers
and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least
provocation! ! ! ! ! !
16.
17. Lewis Clarke
Lewis
Clarke, the son of a Scottish weaver and a slave mother, was born in Kentucky
in 1815. Despite an agreement that she was to be freed upon her husband's
death, Clarke's mother and her nine children remained in slavery. After he
learned that he was going to be sold in New Orleans, Clarke successfully fled
through Ohio across Lake Erie to Canada in 1841. In an account of his life
published in 1846, he provided answers to questions he was frequently asked
about the impact of slavery upon slave families.
[Question]
Are families often separated? How many such cases have you personally known?
[Answer] I
never knew a whole family to live together till all were grown up in my life.
There is almost always, in every family, some one or more keen and bright, or
else sullen and stubborn slave, whose influence they are afraid of on the rest
of the family, and such a one must take a walking ticket to the south.
There
are other causes of separation. The death of a large owner is the occasion
usually of many families being broken up. Bankruptcy is another cause of
separation, and the hard-heartedness of a majority of slave-holders another and
a more fruitful cause than either or all the rest. Generally there is but
little more scruple about separating families than there is with a man who
keeps sheep in selling off the lambs in the fall. On one plantation where I
lived, there was an old slave named Paris. He was from fifty to sixty years
old, and a very honest and apparently pious slave. A slave-trader came along
one day, to gather hands for the south. The old master ordered the waiter or
coachman to take Paris into the back room pluck out all his gray hairs, rub his
face with a greasy towel, and then had him brought forward and sold for a young
man. His wife consented to go with him, upon a promise from the trader that
they should be sold together, with their youngest child, which she carried in
her arms. They left two behind them, who were only from four to six or eight
years of age. The speculator collected his drove, started for the market, and,
before he left the state, he sold that infant child to pay one of his tavern
bills, and took the balance in cash....
[Question]
Have you ever known a slave mother to kill her own children?
[Answer]
There was a slave mother near where I lived, who took her child into the cellar
and killed it. She did it to prevent being separated from her child. Another
slave mother took her three children and threw them into a well, and then
jumped in with them, and they were all drowned. Other instances I have
frequently heard of. At the death of many and many a slave child, I have seen
the two feelings struggling in the bosom of a mother -- joy, that it was beyond
the reach of the slave monsters, and the natural grief of a mother over her
child. In the presence of the master, grief seems to predominate; when away
from them, they rejoice that there is one whom the slave-killer will never
torment.
Source: Interesting Memoirs and
Documents Relating to American Slavery, and the Glorious
Struggle Now Making
for Complete Emancipation (London, 1846)
18. Thomas James
Thomas
James was an African-American minister sent by the American Missionary Society
to care for the families of black Union soldiers in Louisville. He gave this
stirring account of the conditions for slaves and freedmen in Louisville during
the Civil War.
I returned
to Rochester in 1856, and took charge of the colored church in this city. In
1862 I received an appointment from the American Missionary Society to labor
among the colored people of Tennessee and Louisiana, but I never reached either
of these states. I left Rochester with my daughter, and reported at St. Louis,
where I received orders to proceed to Louisville, Kentucky. On the train,
between St. Louis and Louisville, a party of forty Missouri ruffians entered
the car at an intermediate station, and threatened to throw me and my daughter
off the train. They robbed me of my watch. The conductor undertook to protect
us, but, finding it out of his power, brought a number of Government officers
and passengers from the next car to our assistance. At Louisville the
government took me out of the hands of the Missionary Society to take charge of
freed and refugee blacks, to visit the prisons of that commonwealth, and to set
free all colored persons found confined without charge of crime. I served first
under the orders of General Burbage, and then under those of his successor,
General Palmer. The homeless colored people, for whom I was to care, were
gathered in a camp covering ten acres of ground on the outskirts of the city.
They were housed in light buildings, and supplied with rations from the
commissary stores. Nearly all the persons in the camp were women and children,
for the colored men were sworn into the United States service as soldiers as
fast as they came in.
My first
duty, after arranging the affairs of the camp, was to visit the slave pens, of
which there were five in the city. The largest, known as Garrison's, was
located on Market Street, and to that I made my first visit. When I entered it,
and was about to make a thorough inspection of it, Garrison stopped me with the
insolent remark, "I guess no nigger will go over me in this pen." I
showed him my orders, whereupon he asked time to consult the mayor. He started
for the entrance, but was stopped by the guard I had stationed there. I told
him he would not leave the pen until I had gone through every part of it.
"So," said I, "throw open your doors, or I will put you under
arrest." I found hidden away in that pen 260 colored persons, part of them
in irons. I took them all to my camp, and they were free. I next called at
Otterman's pen on Second Street, from which also I took a large number of
slaves. A third large pen was named Clark's, and there were two smaller ones
besides. I liberated the slaves in all of them. One morning it was reported to
me that a slave trader had nine colored men locked in a room in the National
hotel. A waiter from the hotel brought the information at daybreak. I took a
squad of soldiers with me to the place, and demanded the surrender of the
blacks. The clerk said there were none in the house. Their owners had gone off
with "the boys" at daybreak. I answered that I could take no man's
word in such a case, but must see for myself. When I was about to begin the
search, a colored man secretly gave me the number of the room the men were in.
The room was locked, and the porter refused to give up the keys. A threat to
place him under arrest brought him to reason, and I found the colored men
inside, as I had anticipated.
One of
them, an old man, who sat with his face between his hands, said as I entered:
"So'thin' tole me last night that so'thin' was a goin' to happen to
me." That very day I mustered the nine men into the service of the government,
and that made them free men.
So much
anger was excited by these proceedings, that the mayor and common council of
Louisville visited General Burbage at his headquarters, and warned him that if
I was not sent away within forty-eight hours my life would pay the forfeit. The
General sternly answered them: "If James is killed, I will hold
responsible for the act every man who fills an office under your city
government. I will hang them all higher than Haman was hung, and I have 15,000
troops behind me to carry out the order. Your only salvation lies in protecting
this colored man's life."
During my
first year and a half at Louisville, a guard was stationed at the door of my
room every night, as a necessary precaution in view of the threats of violence
of which I was the object. One night I received a suggestive hint of the
treatment the rebel sympathizers had in store for me should I chance to fall
into their hands. A party of them approached the house where I was lodged
protected by a guard. The soldiers, who were new recruits, ran off in afright.
I found escape by the street cut off, and as I ran for the rear alley I
discovered that avenue also guarded by a squad of my enemies. As a last resort
I jumped a side fence, and stole along until out of sight and hearing of the
enemy. Making my way to the house of a colored man named White, I exchanged my
uniform for an old suit of his, and then, sallying forth, mingled with the
rebel party, to learn, if possible, the nature of their intentions. Not finding
me, and not having noticed my escape, they concluded that they must have been
misinformed as to my lodging place for that night. Leaving the locality they
proceeded to the house of another friend of mine, named Bridle, whose home was
on Tenth Street. After vainly searching every room in Bridle's house, they
dispersed with the threat that if they got me I should hang to the nearest
lamp-post. For a long time after I was placed in charge of the camp, I was
forced to forbid the display of lights in any of the buildings at night, for
fear of drawing the fire of rebel bushwhackers. All the fugitives in the camp
made their beds on the floor, to escape danger from rifle balls fired through
the thin siding of the frame structures.
I
established a Sunday and a day school in my camp and held religious services
twice a week as well as on Sundays. I was ordered by General Palmer to marry
every colored woman that came into camp to a soldier unless she objected to
such a proceeding. The ceremony was a mere form to secure the freedom of the
female colored refugees; for Congress had passed a law giving freedom to the
wives and children of all colored soldiers and sailors in the service of the
government. The emancipation proclamation, applying as it did only to states in
rebellion, failed to meet the case of slaves in Kentucky, and we were obliged
to resort to this ruse to escape the necessity of giving up to their masters
many of the runaway slave women and children who flocked to our camp.
I had a
contest of this kind with a slave trader known as Bill Hurd. He demanded the
surrender of a colored woman in my camp who claimed her freedom on the plea
that her husband had enlisted in the federal army. She wished to go to
Cincinnati, and General Palmer, giving me a railway pass for her, cautioned me
to see her on board the cars for the North before I left her. At the levee I
saw Hurd and a policeman, and suspecting that they intended a rescue, I left
the girl with the guard at the river and returned to the general for a detail
of one or more men.
During my
absence Hurd claimed the woman from the guard and the latter brought all the
parties to the provost marshal's headquarters, although I had directed him to
report to General Palmer with the woman in case of trouble; for I feared that the
provost marshal's sympathies were on the slave owner's side. I met Hurd, the
policeman and the woman at the corner of Sixth and Green streets and halted
them. Hurd said the provost marshal had decided that she was his property. I
answered -- what I had just learned that the provost marshal was not at his
headquarters and that his subordinate had no authority to decide such a case. I
said further that I had orders to take the party before General Palmer and
proposed to do it. They saw it was not prudent to resist, as I had a guard to
enforce the order.
When the
parties were heard before the general, Hurd said the girl had obtained her
freedom and a pass by false pretenses. She was his property; he had paid $500
for her; she was single when he bought her and she had not married since.
Therefore she could claim no rights under the law giving freedom to the wives
of colored soldiers. The general answered that the charge of false pretenses
was a criminal one and the woman would be held for trial upon it. "But,"
said Hurd, "she is my property and I want her." "No,"
answered the general, "we keep our own prisoners." The general said
to me privately, after Hurd was gone: "The woman has a husband in our
service and I know it; but never mind that. We'll beat these rebels at their
own game." Hurd hung about headquarters two or three days until General
Palmer said finally: "I have no time to try this case; take it before the
provost marshal." The latter, who had been given the hint, delayed action
for several days more, and then turned over the case to General Dodge. After
another delay, which still further tortured the slave trader, General Dodge
said to me one day: "James, bring Mary to my headquarters, supply her with
rations, have a guard ready, and call Hurd as a witness." When the slave
trader had made his statement to the same effect as before, General Dodge
delivered judgment in the following words: "Hurd, you are an honest man.
It is a clear case. All I have to do, Mary, is to sentence you to keep away
from this department during the remainder of the present war. James, take her
across the river and see her on board the cars." "But, general,"
whined Hurd, "that won't do. I shall lose her services if you send her
north." "You have nothing to do with it; you are only a witness in
this case," answered the general. I carried out the order strictly, to
remain with Mary until the cars started; and under the protection of a file of
guards, she was soon placed on the train en route for Cincinnati.
Among the
slaves I rescued and brought to the refugee camp was a girl named Laura, who
had been locked up by her mistress in a cellar and left to remain there two
days and as many nights without food or drink. Two refugee slave women were
seen by their master making toward my camp, and calling upon a policeman he had
then seized and taken to the house of his brother-in-law on Washington street.
When the facts were reported to me, I took a squad of guards to the house and
rescued them. As I came out of the house with the slave women, their master
asked me: "What are you going to do with them?" I answered that they
would probably take care of themselves. He protested that he had always used
the runaway women well, and appealing to one of them, asked: "Have I not,
Angelina?" I directed the woman to answer the question, saying that she
had as good a right to speak as he had, and that I would protect her in that
right. She then said: "He tied my dress over my head Sunday and whipped me
for refusing to carry victuals to the bushwhackers and guerrillas in the
woods." I brought the women to camp, and soon afterwards sent them north
to find homes. I sent one girl rescued by me under somewhat similar
circumstances as far as this city to find a home with Colonel Klinck's family.
Up to that
time in my career I had never received serious injury at any man's hands. I was
several times reviled and hustled by mobs in my first tour of the district
about the city of Rochester, and once when I was lecturing in New Hampshire a
reckless, half-drunken fellow in the lobby fired a pistol at me, the ball
shattering the plaster a few feet from my head. But, as I said, I had never
received serious injury. Now, however, I received a blow, the effects of which
I shall carry to my grave. General Palmer sent me to the shop of a blacksmith
who was suspected of bushwhacking, with an order requiring the latter to report
at headquarters. The rebel, who was a powerful man, raised a short iron bar as
I entered and aimed a savage blow at my head. By an instinctive movement I
saved my life, but the blow fell on my neck and shoulders, and I was for a long
time afterwards disabled by the injury. My right hand remains partially
paralyzed and almost wholly useless to this day.
Many a sad
scene I witnessed at my camp of colored refugees in Louisville. There was the
mother bereaved of her children, who had been sold and sent farther South lest
they should escape in the general rush for the federal lines and freedom;
children, orphaned in fact if not in name, for separation from parents among
the colored people in those days left no hope of reunion this side the grave;
wives forever parted from their husbands, and husbands who might never hope to
catch again the brightening eye and the welcoming smile of the help-mates whose
hearts God and nature had joined to theirs. Such recollections come fresh to me
when with trembling voice I sing the old familiar song of anti-slavery days:
Oh deep was
the anguish of the slave mother's heart
When called from her darling forever
to part;
So grieved that lone mother, that broken-hearted mother
In sorrow
and woe.
The child was borne off to a far-distant clime
While the mother was
left in anguish to pine;
But reason departed, and she sank broken-hearted
In
sorrow and woe.
I remained
at Louisville a little over three years, staying for some months after the war
closed in charge of the colored camp, the hospital, dispensary and government
stores.
Wonderful Eventful Life of Rev.
Thomas James, by himself
Third Edition, Rochester, NY: Post-Express Printing
Company, Mill Street. 1887.
19. George
Browder
George
Browder was a slave-holding minister in Logan County. This is his account of
the day all his slaves ran away.
June 8,
1864
A day of
strange feelings! Found my plantation entirely deserted by negroes - not one
left! Abram, Bob, Jeff, George & Ellen, Dolly Underwood, William, Ida,
Nicholas, & Lucy all gone! Took my wagon, old carriage, two horses &
two mules. We felt lighter some how than usual, felt poorer, but freer, more
dependent, yet more self-reliant. Lizzie got breakfast & I milked the cows.
The children seemed gleeful & at the family prayer we earnestly involved
Gods blessing guidance and good providence in our new circumstances. William
& I with a number of others set out in search of our horses and wagons. Ten
negroes left me -- 3 from father -- 8 from Nelson Waters -- six from McCulloch,
3 from John Vick & others in a different neighborhood. We met part of the
troop arrested and brought back -- & had a vast deal of trouble and vexation
in separated & deciding what to do with them. George & Ellen & all
mine except Jeff and Abe escaped leaving their clothes & all their goods.
We put the men under guard to send to Louisville & just as my wagon and
carriage got in with the baggage, my brother William came with all the rest of
the fugitives -- looking worn, sad and confounded. They had been overtaken in a
few miles of Clarksville. We whipped Jeff & Bob & Lucy, & Ellen
made herself sick -- quite sick -- in the long tramp through heat, mud &
rain, after they left the wagons.
Poor
unfortunate creatures, how I pity them, deceived & misled as they have
been, yet listening to strangers rather than those who have raised & cared
for them. They have been greatly abused in their minds. I should have been glad
if they had gotten safe into Clarksville without my responsibility.
The Heavens
Are Weeping: The Diaries of George R. Browder
Edited by Richard R. Troutman
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Books. 1987.
20. Jane Giles
Jane Giles
was a slave belonging to Margaret Preston of Lexington. While on a trip to New
York, Jane ran away. Later she wrote to her former mistress to explain why.
Another letter tells us that life as a free African American during these times
was not comfortable. These letters were not written during the Civil War, but
six years before.
Jane Giles
(New York) to Margaret Wickliffe Preston
(Washington D.C.), February 8th 1854
Mrs William Preston
Madam. I
take this oppertunity to wright you these few lines to inform you that I am
well at this time and I hope you are the same. Dear madam I sopose you wonder
why that I left you. Well I will tell you the Reason one Reason was because you
Parted me and my housbond as tho we had no feeling and the Next Reason was
because you accused me of stealing Money and I was not gilty of it but because
I am coulard You sopose that I have not got any feelings I have feelings thank
god as well as you and I sopose you feel the Loss of me as much as I do the
loss of you. I worked for you when I was with you and dear madam I am working
for my Sealf and let me inform you that I Loved my housbond as well as you do
yours if I never see him again in this world but I am in hopes to meet him in
Haven
I sopose
you will call this impedance But I do not I have nothing Against Mr. Preston he
treated me well he would not have sent my husbound away had it not been for you
and I would have been yet with you. But Never mind Every boddy must have
trubble
I Remane
Yours
Jane Giles
(Box 49)
21. John
Fee
John Fee
was a minister who was sent to tend to the needs of the families of
African-American soldiers who enlisted in the Union army at Camp Nelson.
There was
another phase of the work at Camp Nelson, then of interest to me, and connected
by principle and effect with the work at Berea. The enlistment of colored men
at Camp Nelson was soon followed by the coming of their wives and children.
These were at first driven out of the camp at the point of the bayonet. Thus
sent back, they were exposed to the cruelty of their former masters. I saw
indignation rising in the hearts and showing itself in the actions of the
colored soldiers. I went to the officials and said to them, "This driving
back of wives and children will breed mutiny in your camp unless you
desist." The reply was, "What will you do? - will you leave the women
and children with the soldiers? That will never do." I said, "No; I
would draw a picket line and put the women in the west end of the camp, which
is abundantly large and encircled by Kentucky river and cliffs four hundred feet
high. Such a natural fortification, high, beautiful, and well-watered, was not
anywhere else found in the State." "But," said the
Quartermaster, "I can do nothing in the way of shelter without an order
from the Secretary of War." I replied, "I know Secretary Chase
personally. I will prepare a paper to be sent to his care." "Do
so," said the Quartermaster, "and I will sign it." The paper was
forwarded. Quickly an order came from Stanton, the Secretary of War, for the
construction of buildings; and in a short time the Quartermaster had ninety-two
cottages erected as homes for families, two larger buildings as hospitals for
sick women and children, and other buildings as school-rooms and offices,
boarding hall, and dormitory for teachers, steward and family.
From Autobiography of John Fee
22. Charleston Mercury, Oct.
11, 1860
The Terrors of Submission
A few days since, we endeavored
to show, that the pictures of ruin and desolation to the South, which the
submissionists to Black Republican domination were so continually drawing, to
"fright us from our propriety," were unreal and false. We propose now
to reverse the picture, and to show what will probably be the consequences of a
submission of the Southern States, to the rule of Abolitionism at Washington,
in the persons of Messrs. LINCOLN and HAMLIN, should they be elected to the
Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States.
1. The first effect of the
submission of the South, to the installation of Abolitionists in the offices of
President and Vice-President of the United States, must be a powerful
consolidation of the strength of the Abolition party at the North. Success,
generally strengthens. If, after all the threats of resistance and disunion,
made in Congress and out of Congress, the Southern States sink down into
acquiescence, the demoralization of the South will be complete. Add the
patronage resulting from the control of ninety-four thousand offices, and the
expenditure of eighty millions of money annually, and they must be irresistable
in controlling the General Government.
2. To plunder the South for the
benefit of the North, by a new Protective Tariff, will be one of their first
measures of Northern sectional domination; and, on the other hand, to exhaust
the treasury by sectional schemes of appropriation, will be a congenial policy.
3. Immediate danger will be
brought to slavery, in all the Frontier States. When a party is enthroned at
Washington, in the Executive and Legislative departments of the Government,
whose creed it is, to repeal the Fugitive Slave Laws, the underground railroad,
will become an over-ground railroad. The tenure of slave property will be felt
to be weakened; and the slaves will be sent down to the Cotton States for sale,
and the Frontier States enter on the policy of making themselves Free States.
4. With the control of the
Government of the United States, and an organized and triumphant North to
sustain them, the Abolitionists will renew their operations upon the South with
increased courage. The thousands in every country who look up to power, and
make gain out of the future, will come out in support of the Abolition
Government. The BROWNLOWS and the BOTTS', in the South, will multiply. They
will organize; and from being a Union party, to support an Abolition
Government, they will become, like the Government they support, Abolitionists.
They will have an Abolition Party in the South, of Southern men. The contest
for slavery, will no longer be one between the North and the South. It will be
in the South, between the people of the South.
5. If, in our present position
of power and unitedness, we have the raid of JOHN BROWN -- and twenty towns
burned down in Texas in one year, by Abolitionists -- what will be the measures
of insurrection and incendiarism, which must follow our notorious and abject
prostration to Abolition rule at Washington, with all the patronage of the
Federal Government, and a Union organization in the South to support it? Secret
conspiracy, and its attendant horrors, with rumors of horrors, will hover over every
portion of the South; while, in the language of the Black Republican patriarch
-- GIDDINGS -- they "will laugh at your calamities, and mock when your
fear cometh."
6. Already there is uneasiness
throughout the South, as to the stability of its institution of slavery. But
with a submission to the rule of Abolitionists at Washington, thousands of
slaveholders will despair of the institution. While the condition of things in
the Frontier States will force their slaves on the markets of the Cotton
States, the timid in the Cotton States, will also sell their slaves. The
consequence must be, slave property must be greatly depreciated. We see
advertisements for the sale of slaves in some of the Cotton States, for the
simple object of getting rid of them; and we know that standing orders for the
purchase of slaves in this market have been withdrawn, on account of an
anticipated decline of value from the political condition of the country.
7. We suppose, that taking in
view all these things, it is not extravagant to estimate, that the submission
of the South to the administration of the Federal Government under Messrs.
LINCOLN and HAMLIN, must reduce the value of slaves in the South, one hundred
dollars each. It is computed that there are four million, three hundred
thousand, slaves in the United States. Here, therefore, is a loss to the
Southern people of four hundred and thirty millions of dollars, on their slaves
alone. Of course, real estate of all kinds must partake also in the
depreciation of slaves.
8. Slave property, is the
foundation of all property in the South. When security in this is shaken, all
other property partakes of its instability. Banks, stocks, bonds, must be
influenced. Timid men will sell out and leave the South. Confusion, distrust
and pressure must reign.
9. Before Messrs. LINCOLN and
HAMLIN can be installed in Washington, as President and Vice-President of the
United States, the Southern States can dissolve peaceably (we know what we say)
their union with the North. Mr. LINCOLN and his Abolition cohorts, will have no
South, to reign over. Their game would be blocked. The foundation of their
organization, would be taken away; and, left to the tender mercies of a
baffled, furious and troubled North, they would be cursed and crushed, as the
flagitious cause of the disasters around them. But if we submit, and do not
dissolve our union with the North, we make the triumph of our Abolition enemies
complete, and enable them to consolidate and wield the power of the North, for
our destruction.
10. If the South once submits
to the rule of Abolitionists by the General Government, there is, probably, an
end of all peaceful separation of the Union. We can only escape the ruin they
meditate for the South, by war. Armed with power of the General Government, and
their organizations at the North, they will have no respect for our courage or
energy, and they will use the sword for our subjection. If there is any man in
the South who believes, that we must separate from the North, we appeal to his
humanity, in case Mr. LINCOLN is elected, to dissolve our connection with the
North, before the 4th of March next.
11. The ruin of the South, by
the emancipation of her slaves, is not like the ruin of any other people. It is
not a mere loss of liberty, like the Italians under the BOURBONS. It is not
heavy taxation, which must still leave the means of living, or otherwise
taxation defeats itself. But it is the loss of liberty, property, home, country
-- everything that makes life worth living. And this loss, will probably take
place under circumstances of suffering and horror, unsurpassed in the history
of nations. We must preserve our liberties and institutions, under penalties
greater than those which impend over any people in the world.
12. Lastly, we conclude this brief statement of the terrors of
submission, by declaring, that in our opinion, they are ten-fold greater even
than the supposed terrors of disunion.
23. Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama, to Gov. Beriah
Magoffin of Kentucky
Sent in December of 1860
Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man,
be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror
contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters,
in the not distant future, associating with free negroes upon terms of
political and social equality, and the white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring
hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority over the black race which God
himself has bestowed? In the Northern States, where free negroes are so few as
to form no appreciable part of the community, in spite of all the legislation
for their protection, they still remain a degraded caste, excluded by the ban
of society from social association with all but the lowest and most degraded of
the white race. But in the South, where in many places the African race largely
predominates, and, as a consequence, the two races would be continually
pressing together, amalgamation, or the extermination of the one or the other,
would be inevitable. Can Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God
forbid that they should.
24.
Which Slave Wrote His Way Out of Slavery?
By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Posted: November 26, 2012 at 12:02 AM
From
the time when they first landed in Florida in the early 1500s, African
Americans did their best to run away from the inhumane conditions of slavery.
Over the course of slavery in the United States between 1513 and 1865, tens of
thousands of people managed to escape, first south from the Carolinas
and Georgia to the haven afforded by Spanish Florida before 1763, and later, north
from the Southern colonies and states across the Mason-Dixon Line. More than a
hundred of these "fugitive slaves," as they were called, even wrote
or dictated books about their deliverance from bondage, detailing how they were
able to escape. While each escape was something of a miracle, some of the
methods that they used are astonishing.
Everyone
has their favorite slave narratives, as the genre of books is called. My own short
list includes the stories of Henry Brown, William and Ellen Craft and Frederick
Douglass. In 1838 Frederick Douglass donned a sailor's uniform, sewn by his
soon-to-be wife, who was free, and rode a train from Baltimore to Philadelphia
disguised as a free man using papers he had obtained from a free black seaman.
In 1848 Ellen Craft, who had a very light complexion, did a double cross-dress
as white man and, accompanied by her dark-complexioned husband, rode to freedom
on a train ride from Macon, Ga., to Philadelphia, masked as master and slave. A
year later Henry "Box" Brown actually had himself nailed into a
wooden, claustrophobic, coffin-like box, and then shipped from slavery in
Richmond to freedom in Philadelphia.
But
the oddest way that a slave escaped from slavery, to me, without a doubt, is
the story of Ayuba.
Ayuba wrote
his way out of slavery. As incredible as this may seem, this is literally true.
The man who came to be known in England as "Job ben Solomon" was born
Ayuba Suleiman Jallo (or, in French, "Diallo") into a prominent
family in Bundu, an independent, precolonial country located in current-day
Senegal. Bundu was situated where the Falémé River meets the Senegal River, and
it was a strictly Muslim country.
Ayuba
was a member of the Fulbe ethnic group. As his biographer Allen Austin tells
us, Ayuba was a highly learned man, adept at both Koranic and Arabic studies.
And, as the historian John Thornton explained to me, "he was a religious
cleric who, like so many other Africans at the time, sold people as slaves,
along with [selling] other things, as a way of participating in the
international economy of his day, as an incidental element of his
life."
Some
time in February 1730, he left his home on a two-week journey to purchase paper
and other goods in exchange for two slaves. Mandingo slave traders captured and
sold him to an English captain whom he had angered over the terms of sale of
those two slaves. Ayuba survived the Middle Passage on board the slave ship
Arabella (voyage 75094 in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Database) and ended up
enslaved on a tobacco plantation on Kent Island, near Annapolis, Md.
Now
renamed Simon by his master, Ayuba managed to run away, only to be recaptured
and imprisoned. As luck would have it, he was visited by a lawyer named Thomas
Bluett, who became fascinated by stories of this man's insistence on praying,
refusing to eat pork or consume alcohol and most of all, by the habit of an African
man writing on the wall of his prison cell in some unknown language.
And
then the strangest thing happened: Ayuba sat down one day, and -- hope against
hope -- wrote a letter addressed to his father, back in Senegal. The letter was
written entirely in Arabic. I have no idea what possessed this brother
to do such a crazy thing, something completely impossible to achieve. After
all, there wasn't exactly a postal service delivering letters from slaves back
home to their relatives in the motherland, was there? But this is what this man
did. And, incredibly, it worked!
Ayuba
gave the letter, which implored his father to come to America and rescue him
from slavery, to his master, Alexander Tolsey, who in turn gave it to Vachel
Denton, who sent it by boat to Henry Hunt, an English merchant in London for
whom Denton was a factor or agent. Hunt worked with a Captain Pyke, the man who
had sold Ayuba into slavery in the first place. (It was a very small world!)
Pyke in turn showed the letter to General James Oglethorpe, the founder of the
colony of Georgia. Oglethorpe contacted his friend in the Royal African
Company, Sir Bibye Lake, who had the bright idea of sending it to John Gagnier,
a professor who held the Laudian Chair of Arabic at the University of Oxford, asking
him to translate it. And what the letter revealed astonished them.
Amazed
that an African was literate and well-educated, obviously so very intelligent
and of noble lineage, Oglethorpe got the Royal African Company (which possessed
a monopoly on the slave trade) to purchase Ayuba and ship him from Annapolis to
London! Ayuba sailed for London with Thomas Bluett in March 1733. In London,
the exotic Ayuba, dressed in his native garb, as we can see in his portrait by
William Hoare, was the toast of the town. Called Job ben Solomon, he was
befriended by a host of English notables, including the physician to the king,
Sir Hans Sloane, the antiquarian Joseph Ames and the Duke of Montagu, who
become one of his patrons, among many others. Ayuba had an audience with King
George II and Queen Caroline, and was even made an honorary member of the
Spalding Gentlemen's Society, in which Isaac Newton and Alexander Pope were
members.
These
friends raised the funds to purchase his freedom from the Royal African Company,
giving him the freedom to return home. At his request, Bluett wrote and
published a memoir in 1734 detailing the strange circumstances of Ayuba's
enslavement and freedom, including an explanation of the Anglicization of his
name from the original Arabic "Hyuba, boon Salumena, boon Hibrahema,"
to Job, the Son of Solomon (ben Solomon), the Son of Abraham, the name Bluett
used in his book.
As the
African-American food historian Michael Twitty told me, with only a hint of
exaggeration and a dash of anachronism, "Job ben Solomon was essentially
the first slave to FedEx himself back to Africa." (One is tempted to quote
that sage philosopher of the people, Don King: "Only in America," but
Thornton points out that a few examples of this can also be found in the history
of slavery in Brazil.)
And in
a final twist in a most ironic life, Ayuba did indeed return to Senegal,
arriving on Aug. 8, 1734, the year in which his book was published, on board
the Dolphin Snow, but now as an employee of the
Royal African Company. He assisted the company in its bid to compete with the
French commercial presence in Senegambia, including, presumably, the slave
trade. One of the first things he did after he had landed was to trade some of
the gifts his English patrons had given him to purchase two horses and,
incredibly, a female slave.
Ayuba
died in Gambia in 1773, the same year that the Boston slave Phillis Wheatley,
who wrote fondly of "Pleasing Gambia" as her own native land, would
become the first person of African descent to publish a volume of poetry in
English.
Like
her metaphorical countryman, Wheatley would be freed by her master because of
the power of her literary skills, some 40 years after Ayuba became the first
African-American slave to write his way out of slavery.
25. Which
Slave Mailed Himself to Freedom? Really!
By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Posted: May 6, 2013 at 12:36 AM
From
the Collection of the New-York Historical Society
What
is one of the most novel ways a slave devised to escape bondage?
Here
you see a man by the name of Henry Brown,
Ran away from the South to the
North,
Which he would not have done but they stole all his rights,
But they'll
never do like again.
Chorus: Brown laid down the shovel and the hoe,
Down
in the box he did go; No more slave work for Henry Box Brown,
In the box by
Express he did go.
--"Song Composed by Henry Box Brown on His Escape
From Slavery," Narrative of the Life of Henry Box
Brown, Written by Himself
Job
ben Solomon, as we saw in an earlier column, was the first and
probably the only slave who literally wrote his way out of American slavery. He
penned a letter in Arabic to his father, from his jail cell in Maryland, which
led quite circuitously to its translation at Oxford, England, and then to his
purchase, release and repatriation to Senegambia in 1734 -- only after a stop
in London where he was feted by British royalty and the intellectual elite, had
his portrait painted and a book about his remarkable escapades published.
But
another slave plotted his own escape from bondage in even more astonishing and
harrowing way, and his name was Henry Brown.
If Job
ben Solomon expressed his desperate quest for freedom in a letter, Henry Brown
expressed his own desperate desire to be free in an even more novel form: He
actually mailed his own body from slavery to freedom, from Richmond to
Philadelphia, from the slave state of Virginia to the free state of
Pennsylvania, a distance of 250 miles.
Brown
was the ultimate "escape artist," as Daphne Brooks brilliantly labels
him in her book Bodies in
Dissent. He was a precursor, she argues, to Houdini. And as we
shall see, he not only performed his amazing -- and quite dangerous -- escape
once, but reprised part of the journey during a lecture tour in England. But I
get ahead of my story.
Henry
Brown was born into slavery on a plantation called "The Hermitage" in
Louisa County, Va., around 1815, fairly close to Charlottesville, where Thomas
Jefferson was still living at Monticello. Upon his master's death, when Brown
was 15, he was sent to work for his late owner's son, William, in his tobacco
factory in Richmond. In about 1836, he married another slave (curiously, with
their owners' consent), a woman named Nancy, who was owned by a bank clerk.
Brown was able to rent a house for his family. Together, they had three
children.
Over
time, Nancy was sold twice. Her third owner, Samuel Cottrell, actually charged
Brown $50 a year to keep Nancy from being sold. But in August 1848, Cottrell
sold Nancy anyway, along with their three children, to a Methodist minister in
North Carolina. Brown raced to the jail where his family was being held, but it
was too late. As they were shuffled through the streets of Richmond, Brown held
Nancy's hand for four miles. Nancy and the three children were marched on foot
along with 350 other slaves, in the horrendous second Middle Passage, all the way to North
Carolina. Nancy was pregnant with their fourth child. The two would never see
each other again.
Brown
tells us in his slave narrative that he begged his own
master to purchase his family but his master refused: "I went to my Christian
master … but he shoved me away."
Devastated
and overcome with the most acute sense of his own sheer powerlessness, Brown
sought solace and guidance through prayer. "An idea," he reported,
"suddenly flashed across my mind." And what an idea it was! Perhaps
only God -- or an official at the expanding express delivery service in America
-- could have fashioned such a bizarre plan: "Brown's revelation,"
Paul Finkelman and Richard Newman write in their entry on him in The African American National Biography,
"was that he have himself nailed into a wooden box and 'conveyed as dry
goods' via the Adams Express Company from slavery in Richmond to freedom in
Philadelphia."
How
was he to realize such a bold, and wild, idea? How would he avoid suffocation
in this coffin-like encasement? What about claustrophobia? How long could a
human being live in a box without dehydration? Not to mention deal with his
body functions? As Brown's biographer, Jeffrey Ruggles, explains in The Unboxing of Henry Brown, Adams
Express advertised the one-day trip from Richmond to Philadelphia, a distance
of 250 miles -- but only if the package encountered no glitches, no delays. If
so, the trip could take much longer. Could a human being survive such a trip?
Or would his crate turn into his casket?
How
He Did It
Though
only 5 feet, 8 inches tall, Brown at the time weighed 200 pounds, so this was
not going to be an easy thing to accomplish, and impossible, of course, without
a lot of assistance. Two friends, both named Smith, decided to help Henry with
this crazy scheme: James Caesar Anthony Smith, a free black man who sang with
Brown in the choir of First African Baptist Church, introduced Brown to Samuel
Alexander Smith, a white shoemaker and gambler. Brown paid Samuel Smith $86 to
help him.
Through
James Smith's intervention, a black carpenter named John Mattaner built the
wooden box -- "complete with baize lining, air holes, a container of water
and hickory straps" -- to fit Brown's rotund frame. Samuel Smith
corresponded with James Miller McKim, the Philadelphia abolitionist (and the
father of future famed architect, Charles McKim) for guidance. McKim asked
Smith to address the package to James Johnson, 131 Arch Street.
As
Henry Brown scholar Hollis Robbins writes in a 2009 American Studies article, "Smith's
correspondence with McKim about the timing of the trip, particularly his
attention to the breakup of the ice on the Susquehanna [River], indicates his
-- and perhaps Brown's -- practical understanding of the conditions necessary
for the box to arrive swiftly enough for Brown to survive the journey."
The entire box measured only 3 feet 1 inch long, 2 feet wide and 2 feet 6
inches high. Brown burned his hand with sulphuric acid (oil of vitriol) so he
could justify taking the day off without raising suspicion. He took along a few
biscuits, or crackers, and a small bladder of water to sustain him.
With
"This Side Up With Care" painted on the container, at 4:00 a.m. on
March 23, 1849, Brown's friends loaded his boxed self onto a wagon, and
delivered it to the depot. In his slave narrative, Brown describes his
harrowing journey, including the sickening effect of traveling much of the
journey upside-down, head-first, in spite of the label on the box. One wrong
move, one unguarded sound or smell, would lead to his detection, capture,
imprisonment and return to slavery, and perhaps to the Deep South.
Brown
nearly died on the 27-hour trip: At one point, he was turned upside-down for
several hours. His sole relief came when two passengers, wanting to talk,
tipped the box flat to sit on it. The box was flipped again when it was boarded
on a train in Washington, D.C. Brown had no choice but to remain silent and not
move, no matter how the box was positioned.
Some
24 hours later, as Robbins describes, traveling by wagon to the depot, hefted
by express workers from wagon to railcar, to steamboat, to another wagon, to
another railcar, to a ferry and the once again by railcar, Brown finally
arrived at the depot in Philadelphia. Three hours later, Brown's box was taken
by wagon to the Anti-Slavery Committee's offices on North Fifth Street in
Philadelphia. No one could know if their cargo was alive or dead. The four
waiting abolitionists, including McKim, tapped on the lip of the crate four
times, the signal that all was clear.
Finkelman
and Newman describe what happened next: "A small, nervous group, including
William Still, the African-American conductor of Philadelphia's Underground
Railroad, pried open the lid to reveal … the disheveled and battered Henry
Brown, who arose and promptly fainted," but not before exclaiming,
"How do you do, gentlemen!" Revived with a glass of water, Brown sang
Psalm 40: "Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me!" McKim noted that the
trip "nearly killed him," and that "Nothing saved him from
suffocation but the free use of water … with which he bathed his face, and the
constant fanning of himself" with his hat. He managed to breathe through
the three small holes that he bore in the box with a gimlet. Brown called his
trip "my resurrection from the grave of slavery."
Henceforth,
the word "Box" would become Henry's self-chosen legal middle name,
with no quotation marks around it. His friend, James Smith, however, did gain a
nickname from the adventure: He became known as James "Boxer" Smith.
How
His Fame Grew
Henry
Box Brown had done what no slave anywhere had ever done before: He had mailed
himself to freedom. Overnight, Brown became quite the celebrity on the
abolitionist lecture circuit, much to Frederick Douglass' annoyance. He and his
friend James Smith became a standard feature at abolitionist rallies, reciting
the incredible saga of his escape, singing songs he wrote, as well as his psalm
of deliverance, and selling his book, which was published just a few months
after his escape. Woodcuts of his head popping out of the wooden crate were
widely circulated. Even a children's book contained a chapter about his
incredible escape.
Brown
was not only an effective speaker; you might say that he was also the
entrepreneur of entrepreneurs on the fugitive-slave circuit. In an email, his
biographer Jeffrey Ruggles said that "Brown's imagination and creativity
were akin to his entrepreneurial contemporary," P.T. Barnum, though on a
much smaller scale, of course. With a loan of $150 from the wealthy white
abolitionist, Gerritt Smith, and in collaboration with the artist Josiah
Wolcott, Brown created a "large, didactic panorama, 'The Mirror of
Slavery,' which consisted of thousands of feet of canvas, divided into
scores of panels painted with scenes depicting the history of
slavery."
Brown
debuted his routine in Boston, along with James Smith. The panorama was a hit:
As Christine Crater reports, "The Boston Daily Evening
Traveller hailed it as 'one of the finest panoramas now on exhibition … Many
people would walk a long way to see this curious specimen of American freedom …
We wish all the slaveholders would go and view their system on canvas.' "
Accompanied
onstage by Benjamin F. Roberts, a black abolitionist, who would lecture on
"The Condition of the Colored People in the United States," Brown
toured the North testifying about the evils of slavery and repeating the
details of his imaginative mode of escape. Brown -- a great storyteller with a
gifted voice for song -- was for a short time the darling of the abolitionist
circuit.
Douglass'
irritation with Brown stemmed not so much from a sense of rivalry (since
Douglass had dominated the fugitive-slave category on the abolition lecture
circuit since 1845) as it did from Douglass' worry that disclosure of Brown's
novel method of escape might keep other slaves from employing a similar
strategy, alerting authorities to the possibility that crates could contain a
fleeing slave.
But as
Ruggles explains, revelation of Brown's method of escape wasn't really his
fault: "Douglass wasn't entirely correct in blaming the Garrisonians
[abolitionists] for revealing the box method. They had tried to keep quiet
about Brown's escape, but word leaked out in a Vermont newspaper and soon an
article appeared in the New York Tribune. That article alerted the Adams
Express Company and a second box escape from Richmond, attempted by both Smiths
in May, 1849, was intercepted. It was only after articles about that failure
had appeared in many newspapers that the Boston abolitionists went public about
Brown's escape at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention in late May
1849."
Regardless
of how it happened, Douglass proved to be right about the effects of
disclosure: Upon discovery of the rescue attempt of a second slave on May 8,
1849, Samuel Smith, the white shopkeeper who had helped Brown, was arrested,
and served six and a half years in the Virginia state penitentiary for doing
so. A few months later, on Sept. 25, James Smith would also be arrested for an
attempt to help still another slave to escape in the same way, though he would
be acquitted in a trial, after which he joined Brown in Boston. (Another slave,
a woman named Rose Jackson, was willingly smuggled by her owners from Oklahoma
in a box over the Oregon Trail in the same year that Brown escaped, but she was
allowed to emerge each night.)
The
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 put an end, for a time, to Brown's celebrity, at
least on this side of the Atlantic. After being assaulted twice on the streets
of Providence, R.I., Brown -- like many other prominent fugitive slaves -- fled
to England in October 1850, to avoid arrest by a slave-catcher.
There,
he published a second edition of his slave narrative in Manchester in 1851,
this one "written by himself." (The first edition had been dictated
to, and heavily edited by, a white abolitionist named Charles Stearns. John
Ernest's edition, published in 2009, is the authoritative text.)
Ever the showman, Brown soon became a most colorful feature on the British
lecture circuit, traveling with his moving panorama from Liverpool to
Manchester. He even re-enacted his escape, at least partially.
Jeffrey
Ruggles writes that "Ads for Henry Box Brown stated that he would get into
the original box as a part of his exhibition, but the only instance known of
him actually being conveyed in his box was from Bradford to Leeds in May
1851." The Leeds Mercury reported that on May 22, 1851, as Ruggles
discovered, " 'He was packed up in the box at Bradford' and 'forwarded to
Leeds' on the 6 P.M. train. 'On arriving at the Wellington station, the box was
placed in a coach and, preceded by a band of music and banners, representing
the stars and stripes of America, paraded through the principal streets of the
town.' "
Ruggles
explained that this didn't amount to a replication of Brown's original trip,
however: "The distance was much less than Richmond to Philadelphia. For
this event, Brown was in the box for two-and-three-quarter hours, and James
Smith accompanied him outside the box the whole way, so it was neither as long
nor as harrowing as his journey to escape. The box was taken to a theater where
Brown emerged onstage."
How
He Changed With the Times
Brown
was a complicated figure. There is some evidence that he could have purchased
the freedom of his wife, Nancy, and their children, but chose not to. He
married an Englishwoman and returned to the stage, performing for the remainder
of the decade throughout Great Britain, in a traveling one-man version of Black
History Month. The consummate multiplatform performer, Brown created a number
of personas to match his skills as a narrator, singer, magician, hypnotist,
electro-biologist and "boxing" champion, among them "The African
Prince," "The King of All Mesmerizers" and "Professor H.
Box Brown."
Finkelman
and Newman report that Brown's British act featured "a large moving
panorama to depict the history of black people in Africa and America, as he
lectured on 'African and American Slavery.' He often appeared as an 'African
Prince' as he melded antislavery sentiments and propaganda, popular history and
entertaining theatrical production." Not one to miss a marketing
opportunity, Brown took advantage of the raging Civil War, introducing to his
act in 1862 "a new lecture and panorama called the 'Grand Moving Mirror of
the American War.' " Near the end of the war, in 1864, Brown transformed
himself once again, this time into a magician, billing himself as "Mr. H.
Box Brown, the King of All Mesmerisers."
In 1875, at the age of 60, Brown returned to
the United States, touring New England with his show, now called "The
African Prince's Drawing-Room Entertainment." To the end, Brown advertised
himself as "the man 'whose escape from slavery in 1849 in a box 3 feet 1
inch long, 2 feet wide, 2 feet six inches high, caused such a sensation in the
New England States, he having traveled from Richmond, Va. To Philadelphia, a
journey of 350 miles, packed as luggage in a box." The last reference to
Brown appeared in the Brantford, Ontario, newspaper on Feb. 26, 1889,
advertising one of his performances. There is no record of his death -- his
last great disappearing act.
26.
Did Black People Own Slaves?
By: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Posted: March 4, 2013 at 12:03 AM
One of
the most vexing questions in African-American history is whether free African
Americans themselves owned slaves. The short answer to this question, as you
might suspect, is yes, of course; some free black people in this country bought
and sold other black people, and did so at least since 1654, continuing to do
so right through the Civil War. For me, the really fascinating questions about
black slave-owning are how many black "masters" were involved, how
many slaves did they own and why did they own slaves?
The
answers to these questions are complex, and historians have been arguing for
some time over whether free blacks purchased family members as slaves in order
to protect them -- motivated, on the one hand, by benevolence and philanthropy,
as historian Carter G. Woodson put it, or whether, on the other hand, they
purchased other black people "as an act of exploitation," primarily
to exploit their free labor for profit, just as white slave owners did. The
evidence shows that, unfortunately, both things are true. The great
African-American historian, John Hope Franklin, states this clearly: "The majority of
Negro owners of slaves had some personal interest in their property." But,
he admits, "There were instances, however, in which free Negroes had a
real economic interest in the institution of slavery and held slaves in order
to improve their economic status."
In a fascinating essay reviewing this
controversy, R. Halliburton shows that free black people have owned slaves
"in each of the thirteen original states and later in every state that
countenanced slavery," at least since Anthony Johnson and his wife Mary
went to court in Virginia in 1654 to obtain the services of their indentured
servant, a black man, John Castor, for life.
And
for a time, free black people could even "own" the services of white
indentured servants in Virginia as well. Free blacks owned slaves in Boston by
1724 and in Connecticut by 1783; by 1790, 48 black people in Maryland owned 143
slaves. One particularly notorious black Maryland farmer named Nat Butler
"regularly purchased and sold Negroes for the Southern trade,"
Halliburton wrote.
Perhaps
the most insidious or desperate attempt to defend the right of black people to
own slaves was the statement made on the eve of the Civil War by a group of
free people of color in New Orleans, offering their services to
the Confederacy, in part because they were fearful for their own
enslavement: "The free colored population [native] of Louisiana … own
slaves, and they are dearly attached to their native land … and they are ready
to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for abolitionism; no
love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana … They will fight for
her in 1861 as they fought [to defend New Orleans from the British] in
1814-1815."
These
guys were, to put it bluntly, opportunists par excellence: As Noah Andre Trudeau and James G. Hollandsworth Jr. explain, once
the war broke out, some of these same black men formed 14 companies of a
militia composed of 440 men and were organized by the governor in May 1861 into
"the Native Guards, Louisiana," swearing to fight to defend the
Confederacy. Although given no combat role, the Guards -- reaching a peak of
1,000 volunteers -- became the first Civil War unit to appoint black
officers.
When New Orleans
fell in late April 1862 to the Union, about 10 percent of these men, not
missing a beat, now formed the Native Guard/Corps d'Afrique to defend the
Union. Joel A. Rogers noted this phenomenon in his 100 Amazing Facts: "The
Negro slave-holders, like the white ones, fought to keep their chattels in the
Civil War." Rogers also notes that some black men, including those in New
Orleans at the outbreak of the War, "fought to perpetuate slavery."
How
Many Slaves Did Blacks Own?
So
what do the actual numbers of black slave owners and their slaves tell us? In
1830, the year most carefully studied by Carter G. Woodson, about 13.7 percent
(319,599) of the black population was free. Of these, 3,776 free Negroes owned
12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United
States, so the numbers of slaves owned by black people over all was quite small
by comparison with the number owned by white people. In his essay, " 'The Known World' of Free Black Slaveholders,"
Thomas J. Pressly, using Woodson's statistics, calculated that 54 (or about 1
percent) of these black slave owners in 1830 owned between 20 and 84 slaves;
172 (about 4 percent) owned between 10 to 19 slaves; and 3,550 (about 94
percent) each owned between 1 and 9 slaves. Crucially, 42 percent owned just
one slave.
Pressly
also shows that the percentage of free black slave owners as the total number
of free black heads of families was quite high in several states, namely 43
percent in South Carolina, 40 percent in Louisiana, 26 percent in Mississippi,
25 percent in Alabama and 20 percent in Georgia. So why did these free black
people own these slaves?
It is
reasonable to assume that the 42 percent of the free black slave owners who
owned just one slave probably owned a family member to protect that person, as
did many of the other black slave owners who owned only slightly larger numbers
of slaves. As Woodson put it in 1924's Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the
United States in 1830, "The census records show that the majority of
the Negro owners of slaves were such from the point of view of philanthropy. In
many instances the husband purchased the wife or vice versa … Slaves of Negroes
were in some cases the children of a free father who had purchased his wife. If
he did not thereafter emancipate the mother, as so many such husbands failed to
do, his own children were born his slaves and were thus reported to the
numerators."
Moreover,
Woodson explains, "Benevolent Negroes often purchased slaves to make their
lot easier by granting them their freedom for a nominal sum, or by permitting
them to work it out on liberal terms." In other words, these black
slave-owners, the clear majority, cleverly used the system of slavery to
protect their loved ones. That's the good news.
But not all did,
and that is the bad news. Halliburton concludes, after examining the evidence,
that "it would be a serious mistake to automatically assume that free
blacks owned their spouse or children only for benevolent purposes."
Woodson himself notes that a "small number of slaves, however, does not
always signify benevolence on the part of the owner." And John Hope Franklin notes that in North
Carolina, "Without doubt, there were those who possessed slaves for the
purpose of advancing their [own] well-being … these Negro slaveholders were
more interested in making their farms or carpenter-shops 'pay' than they were
in treating their slaves humanely." For these black slaveholders, he
concludes, "there was some effort to conform to the pattern established by
the dominant slaveholding group within the State in the effort to elevate
themselves to a position of respect and privilege." In other words, most
black slave owners probably owned family members to protect them, but far too
many turned to slavery to exploit the labor of other black people for profit.
Who
Were These Black Slave Owners?
If we
were compiling a "Rogues Gallery of Black History," the following
free black slaveholders would be in it:
John
Carruthers Stanly -- born a slave in Craven County, N.C., the son of an Igbo
mother and her master, John Wright Stanly -- became an extraordinarily
successful barber and speculator in real estate in New Bern. As Loren
Schweninger points out in Black Property Owners in the South, 1790-1915,
by the early 1820s, Stanly owned three plantations and 163 slaves, and even
hired three white overseers to manage his property! He fathered six
children with a slave woman named Kitty, and he eventually freed them. Stanly
lost his estate when a loan for $14,962 he had co-signed with his white half
brother, John, came due. After his brother's stroke, the loan was Stanly's sole
responsibility, and he was unable to pay it.
William
Ellison's fascinating story is told by Michael Johnson and James L. Roark in
their book, Black
Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South. At his death
on the eve of the Civil War, Ellison was wealthier than nine out of 10 white
people in South Carolina. He was born in 1790 as a slave on a plantation in the
Fairfield District of the state, far up country from Charleston. In 1816, at
the age of 26, he bought his own freedom, and soon bought his wife and their
child. In 1822, he opened his own cotton gin, and soon became quite wealthy. By
his death in 1860, he owned 900 acres of land and 63 slaves. Not one of his
slaves was allowed to purchase his or her own freedom.
Louisiana,
as we have seen, was its own bizarre world of color, class, caste and slavery.
By 1830, in Louisiana, several black people there owned a large number of
slaves, including the following: In Pointe Coupee Parish alone, Sophie Delhonde
owned 38 slaves; Lefroix Decuire owned 59 slaves; Antoine Decuire owned 70
slaves; Leandre Severin owned 60 slaves; and Victor Duperon owned 10. In St.
John the Baptist Parish, Victoire Deslondes owned 52 slaves; in Plaquemine
Brule, Martin Donatto owned 75 slaves; in Bayou Teche, Jean B. Muillion owned
52 slaves; Martin Lenormand in St. Martin Parish owned 44 slaves; Verret Polen
in West Baton Rouge Parish owned 69 slaves; Francis Jerod in Washita Parish
owned 33 slaves; and Cecee McCarty in the Upper Suburbs of New Orleans owned 32
slaves. Incredibly, the 13 members of the Metoyer family in Natchitoches Parish
-- including Nicolas Augustin Metoyer, pictured -- collectively owned 215
slaves.
Antoine
Dubuclet and his wife Claire Pollard owned more than 70 slaves in Iberville
Parish when they married. According to Thomas Clarkin, by 1864, in the midst of
the Civil War, they owned 100 slaves, worth $94,700. During Reconstruction, he
became the state's first black treasurer, serving between 1868 and 1878.
Andrew
Durnford was a sugar planter and a physician who owned the St. Rosalie
plantation, 33 miles south of New Orleans. In the late 1820s, David O. Whitten tells us, he paid $7,000
for seven male slaves, five females and two children. He traveled all the way
to Virginia in the 1830s and purchased 24 more. Eventually, he would own 77
slaves. When a fellow Creole slave owner liberated 85 of his slaves and shipped
them off to Liberia, Durnford commented that he couldn't do that, because
"self interest is too strongly rooted in the bosom of all that breathes
the American atmosphere."
It
would be a mistake to think that large black slaveholders were only men. In
1830, in Louisiana, the aforementioned Madame Antoine Dublucet owned 44 slaves,
and Madame Ciprien Ricard owned 35 slaves, Louise Divivier owned 17 slaves,
Genevieve Rigobert owned 16 slaves and Rose Lanoix and Caroline Miller both
owned 13 slaves, while over in Georgia, Betsey Perry owned 25 slaves. According
to Johnson and Roark, the wealthiest black person in Charleston, S.C., in 1860
was Maria Weston, who owned 14 slaves and property valued at more than $40,000,
at a time when the average white man earned about $100 a year. (The city's
largest black slaveholders, though, were Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, both
of whom owned 84 slaves.)
In
Savannah, Ga., between 1823 and 1828, according to Betty Wood's Gender, Race, and Rank in a
Revolutionary Age, Hannah Leion owned nine slaves, while the largest
slaveholder in 1860 was Ciprien Ricard, who had a sugarcane plantation in
Louisiana and owned 152 slaves with her son, Pierre -- many more that the 35
she owned in 1830. According to economic historian Stanley Engerman, "In Charleston,
South Carolina about 42 percent of free blacks owned slaves in 1850, and about
64 percent of these slaveholders were women." Greed, in other words, was
gender-blind.
Why
They Owned Slaves
These
men and women, from William Stanly to Madame Ciprien Ricard, were among the
largest free Negro slaveholders, and their motivations were neither benevolent
nor philanthropic. One would be hard-pressed to account for their ownership of
such large numbers of slaves except as avaricious, rapacious, acquisitive and predatory.
But
lest we romanticize all of those small black slave owners who ostensibly
purchased family members only for humanitarian reasons, even in these cases the
evidence can be problematic. Halliburton, citing examples from an essay in the
North American Review by Calvin Wilson in 1905, presents some hair-raising
challenges to the idea that black people who owned their own family members
always treated them well:
A free
black in Trimble County, Kentucky, " … sold his own son and daughter
South, one for $1,000, the other for $1,200." … A Maryland father sold his
slave children in order to purchase his wife. A Columbus, Georgia, black woman
-- Dilsey Pope -- owned her husband. "He offended her in some way and she
sold him … " Fanny Canady of Louisville, Kentucky, owned her husband Jim
-- a drunken cobbler -- whom she threatened to "sell down the river."
At New Bern, North Carolina, a free black wife and son purchased their slave
husband-father. When the newly bought father criticized his son, the son sold
him to a slave trader. The son boasted afterward that "the old man had
gone to the corn fields about New Orleans where they might learn him some
manners."
Carter
Woodson, too, tells us that some of the husbands who purchased their spouses
"were not anxious to liberate their wives immediately. They considered it
advisable to put them on probation for a few years, and if they did not find
them satisfactory they would sell their wives as other slave holders disposed
of Negroes." He then relates the example of a black man, a shoemaker in
Charleston, S.C., who purchased his wife for $700. But "on finding her
hard to please, he sold her a few months thereafter for $750, gaining $50 by
the transaction."
Most
of us will find the news that some black people bought and sold other black
people for profit quite distressing, as well we should. But given the long
history of class divisions in the black community, which Martin R. Delany as early as the 1850s
described as "a nation within a nation," and given the role of African elites in the long history of the
Trans-Atlantic slave trade, perhaps we should not be surprised that
we can find examples throughout black history of just about every sort of human
behavior, from the most noble to the most heinous, that we find in any other
people's history.
The good news, scholars agree, is that by 1860
the number of free blacks owning slaves had markedly decreased from 1830. In
fact, Loren Schweninger concludes that by the eve of the Civil War, "the
phenomenon of free blacks owning slaves had nearly disappeared" in the
Upper South, even if it had not in places such as Louisiana in the Lower South.
Nevertheless, it is a very sad aspect of African-American history that slavery
sometimes could be a colorblind affair, and that the evil business of owning
another human being could manifest itself in both males and females, and in
black as well as white.
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