Free Negro Heads of Families in The United States in 1830

Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830
together with a
BRIEF TREATMENT OF THE FREE NEGRO
BY
CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.

EDITOR OF THE JOURNAL OF NEGRO HISTORY, AUTHOR OF A CENTURY OF NEGRO MIGRATION, THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO PRIOR TO 1 8 6 1 , THE HISTORY OF THE NEGRO CHURCH, THE NEGRO IN OUR HISTORY, THE MIND OP THE NEGRO AS REFLECTED IN LETTERS WRITTEN DURING THE CRISIS, 1 8 0 0 - 1 8 6 0 , AND NEGRO ORATORS AND THEIR ORATIONS
T H E ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF NEGRO L I F E AND HISTORY, INC. WASHINGTON, D . C .
Copyright 1925 By the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Inc.
FOREWORD This report is the second of a series of documentary studies of the free Negro provided for by a grant which the Director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History obtained from the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial in 1921. It has been an expensive undertaking both with respect to the research required and the cost of publication. It is earnestly hoped that it will have sufficient value to justify the philanthropy and the painstaking effort which it represents. The aim of this report, like that on Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830, is to promote the further study of a neglected aspect of our history. As stated elsewhere, most of these free Negroes "have been forgotten, for persons supposedly well-informed in history are surprised to learn today that about a half million, almost one-seventh of the Negroes of this country, were free prior to the emancipation in 1865. I t is hardly believed that a considerable number of Negroes were owners of slaves themselves, and in some cases controlled large plantations." As an introduction to this study of the despised group the author deemed it wise to publish these statistics from the census of 1830. These facts are early enough to guide one in the study of the Negro in the patriarchal slavery period and late enough to give an index to the situation during the following century when the institution becoming a mere system of exploitation tended to debase also the free Negro. In 1830, moreover, the free Negroes had about reached their highest mark as a distinct class. As the author has stated elsewhere, the reaction which set in earlier in the century restricted their freedom and in many cases expelled them from the South. This census, then, evidently reports the names of a larger number of representative free Negroes than any other census prior to their debasement to a lower status or their migration from the South. This trek reached its highest point between 1830 and 1835. Most of the free Negroes in the North in 1830, therefore, had been there for some years. These facts were extracted from the manuscript schedules returned by those who took the census of the United States in 1830. After the Editor had first copied the record of one state to acquaint himself in detail with the information given in these census reports, the statistics were then copied under his direction by three persons. One of them has had the advantage of two years' normal training after finishing high, school, and two of them have completed college courses at Howard University and at the University of Michigan. The matter thus collected was then verified by Mr. Alrutheus A. Taylor, an alumnus of Michigan and a Harvard Master of Arts in History and Economics, employed as Associate Investigator of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Further verification was made by the Editor.
CARTER G . WOODSON
WASHINGTON, D . C .
September, 1925.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
I.
INTRODUCTION
I. II. III. IV. V.

II.
The Origin of the Free Negro Preventing the Increase of the Free Negroes The Free Negro before the Law Economic Achievement Social Distinctions
v xiv xxi xxxiii xlv

1-192
HEADS OF F R E E NEGRO FAMILIES BY STATES
Alabama Arkansas Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Illinois Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Territory Mississippi Missouri New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee. Vermont Virginia
III. INDEX
1 2 2 7 16 21 21 23 24 26 30 39 40 67 73 73 73 74 74 84 110 123 130 153 155 159 162 163

193
IV
INTRODUCTION
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE F R E E NEGRO
Inasmuch as the Constitution of the United States provided that representation in the House of Representatives should be apportioned according to the population including all free persons except Indians not taxed and three-fifths of all other persons, the census records of the Negroes, although differing a little from those of the other elements of the population, were generally made. The data with respect to the slave and free colored population increased from census to census in the proportion as the schedules became more elaborate. By 1850, moreover, the statistics returned for the free colored population were about as much detailed as those for whites. However, fewer inquiries were made with respect to the slave population. Most of these distinctions in taking the census passed away with the abolition of slavery.1 Prior to 1790, it was almost impossible to figure out exactly how many Negroes were slaves and how many were free. In fact, we do not yet know how many Negroes were actually imported as slaves. According to Carey, the total number up to 1808 aggregated about 340,000. Others believed that there were brought in probably as many as 400,000. Better estimates are impossible here because of the variation in the annual importation as a result of many influences. From 1760 to 1770, there was a decided increase in the number brought in. From 1770 to 1790, however, when the spirit of freedom was strong as a result of the struggle for the rights of man during the American Revolution, this number decreased. After it was decided by the framers of the Constitution in 1787 that the slave trade should be prohibited after 1808, several of the Southern States, feeling that they were dependent upon slave labor, imported as many as possible during the period immediately preceding that date. There were 757,881 Negroes in the United States in 1790 and 59,557 of these were free. Some of the Negroes early reported as slaves, however, never had such a status. At least a few of the first Negroes brought to this country were indentured servants like white persons of this class imported here during the beginnings of the colonies. J. H. Russell expresses this opinion in his Free Negro in Virginia.2 Such Negroes, like the white indentured servants, became free at the expiration of their term of service, took up land, and in some cases became employers of indentured servants and slaveholders themselves. It is highly probable that one of the twenty Negroes brought
1 Unless otherwise stated the population statistics herein mentioned are taken from the corresponding decennial reports of the Bureau of the Census. 2 Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 16-41; see also The Journal of Negro History, VIII, 247283.
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FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES
to Jamestown in 1619 became a slaveholder.3 The higher status of the free Negro is well attested by the fact that although the colonies had special enactments protecting slave property and providing special codes and tribunals for this element of the population, they at the same time recognized free persons of color. After the middle of the century, however, it was difficult for an African immigrant to escape being reduced to slavery. The period in which it was possible for Negroes to come as servants and later acquire freedom terminated near the end of the seventeenth century. The free Negro population thereafter found recruits only from children born of free Negro parents, mulatto children born of free Negro mothers, mulatto children born of white servants or free white women, children of free Negro and Indian mixed parentage, and manumitted slaves. Of the children born of free Negro parents there was a steady increase. This, of course, depended to some extent upon the increase of the number of Negroes of this status. During the seventeenth century there were not many free Negroes in the colonies, and when the change in the attitude of the whites reduced the number of free Negro recruits from the slave population, there was not much of a prospect for an unusual increase in the number of children born of free Negro parents. Yet, as there was observed the Roman law to the effect that the child followed the condition of the mother, this source of increase was the steady factor. The children of white men by free Negro mothers contributed much to the increase in this population. Coming from Europe without their wives, some white men, following the promptings of their nature, cohabited with Indian and Negro women. Such mothers, too, might be more inclined to produce offspring when supported and protected by the fathers, and evidence of this is not wanting. The history of the colonies, especially that of Virginia and Maryland, gives numerous instances of this sort.4 In the course of time, however, lustful white men found it more convenient to purchase slave women whom they could compel to appease their animal passions. There were also mulatto children born of white women servants and free white women. In the absence of social distinctions with respect to race, the distinction as to economic condition obtained. The white servant woman or free white woman, suffering from the same poverty and discrimination as Negro women during the early colonial period, intermingled with Negro men who were sometimes in a better position to support them than men of their own race. This custom endured for generations in spite of penalties which often meant the imposition of a fine, the reduction to servitude of the responsible parents, and the apprenticeship or servitude of the offspring.5
3 Ibid., I, 233-237. 4 See Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 16-41; and Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, 1-93. 5 See Russell's and Wright's works as cited in note 4. See also Woodson's Beginnings of Miscegenation, passim.
THE ORIGIN OF THE FREE NEGRO
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Children born of free Negro and Indian parentage also became a contributing factor. Exactly how much, however, can never be determined until the extent of the miscegenation between the Negroes and the Indians has been scientifically studied. It is known, however, that some Indians did settle among free Negroes and there were cases of Negro fugitive slaves who were welcomed by the Indians. Notice had to be taken of this tendency, for such offspring often became a burden to the public. They were bound out as apprentices as in the case of free mulatto children. Even during the apprenticeship, however, they were always regarded as free Negro population, although their liberty was decidedly restricted because they had no visible means of support.6 In view of the fact that we find the situation of today so different from that of the early colonial period we should probably support these assertions with cases in evidence taken from the laws of the colonies. In Maryland, for example, the preamble of the law covering the case states thus exactly what the situation was: "And forasmuch as divers freeborn English women, forgetful of their free condition, and to the disgrace of our nation, do intermarry with negro slaves, by which also divers suits may arise, touching the issue of such women, and a great damage doth befall the master of such negroes, for preservation whereof for deterring such free-born women from such shameful matches, be it enacted: That whatsoever free-born woman shall intermarry with any slave, from and after the last day of the present assembly, shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issues of such free-born women, so married, shall be slaves as their fathers were." "And be it further enacted: That all the issues of English, or other free-born women, that have already married negroes, shall serve the master of their parents, till they be thirty years of age and no longer." According to A. J. Calhoun, however, all planters of Maryland did not manifest so much ire because of this custom among indentured servants. "Planters," said he, "sometimes married white women servants to Negroes in order to transform the Negroes and their offspring into slaves."7 This was in violation of the ancient unwritten law that the children of a free woman, the father being a slave, follow the status of their mother and are free. This custom gave rise to an interesting case. "Irish Nell," one of the servants sent to Maryland by Lord Baltimore, was sold by him to a planter who had come from England. Following the custom of other masters who held white women as servants, the planter soon married her to a Negro named Butler to produce slaves. Upon hearing this, Baltimore used his influence to have the law repealed; but the abrogation of it was construed by the Court of Appeals not to have any effect on the status of her offspring almost a century later, when William and Mary Butler sued for
6 To get an idea of the extent of this race admixture, read "The Relations of Negroes and Indians in Massachusetts" in The Journal of Negro History, V, 45-62. 7 Calhoun, A Social History of the American Family, p. 94.
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their freedom on the ground that they descended from this white woman. The Provincial Court had granted them freedom; but in this decision the Court of Appeals reversed the lower tribunal on the ground that "Irish Nell" was a slave before the measure repealing the act had been passed. This case came up again in 1787 when Mary, the daughter of William and Mary Butler, petitioned the State for freedom. Both tribunals then decided to grant this petition.8 The act of repeal of 1681, therefore, is self-explanatory. The preamble reads: "Forasmuch as, divers free-born English, or white women, sometimes by the instigation, procurement or connivance of their masters, mistresses, or dames, and always to the satisfaction of their lascivious and lustful desires, and to the disgrace not only of the English, but also of manyother Christian nations, do intermarry with Negroes and slaves, by which means, divers inconveniences, controversies, and suits may arise, touching the issue or children of such free-born women aforesaid; for the prevention whereof for the future. Be it enacted: That if the marriage of any womanservant with any slave shall take place by the procurement of permission of the master, such woman and her issue shall be free." It enacted a penalty by fine on the master or mistress and on the person joining the parties in marriage.9 The effect of this law was merely to prevent masters from prostituting white women to an economic purpose. It did not prevent the miscegenation of the two races. McCormac says: "Mingling of the races in Maryland continued during the eighteenth century, in spite of all laws against it. Preventing marriages of white servants with slaves only led to a greater social evil, which caused a reaction of public sentiment against the servant. Masters and society in general were burdened with the care of illegitimate mulatto children, and it became necessary to frame laws compeling the guilty parties to reimburse the masters for the maintenance of these unfortunate waifs."10 To remedy this laws were passed in 1715 and 1717 to reduce to the status of a servant for seven years any white man or white woman who cohabited with any Negro, free or slave. Their children were made servants for thirty-one years, a black thus concerned was reduced to slavery for life, and the maintenance of the bastard children of women servants was made incumbent upon masters. If the father of an illegitimate child could be discovered, he would have to support his offspring. If not, this duty fell upon the mother who had to discharge it by servitude or otherwise.11 As what had been done to prevent the admixture was not sufficient, the Maryland General Assembly took further action in 1728, making the provisions more stringent.12
8 Harris and McHenry Reports, I, pp. 374, 376; II, pp. 26, 38, 214, 233. 9 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, VI, pp. 249-250. 10 McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland, p. 70. 11 Act of Assembly, Oct., 1727. 12 This law provided: "Whereas by the act of assembly relating to servants and slaves, there is no provision made
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Virginia, which faced the same problem, did not lag far behind Maryland. In 1630 the Governor and Council in Court ordered Hugh Davis to be soundly whipped before an assembly of Negroes and others for abusing himself to the dishonor of God and shame of a Christian by defiling his body in lying with a Negro, a guilt which he was to acknowledge next Sabbath day. In 1662 the colony imposed double fines for fornication with a Negro, but did not restrict intermarriage until 1691.13 The words of the preamble give the reasons for this action, saying: "And for the prevention of that abominable rnixture and spurious issue which hereafter may increase in this dominion, as well by negroes, mulattoes, and Indians intermarrying with English, or other white women, as by their unlawful accompanying with one another, Be it enacted by the authoritie aforesaid, and it is hereby enacted, That for the time to come, whatsoever English or other white man or woman being free shall intermarry with a negro, mulatto, or Indian man or woman bond or free shall within three months after such marriage be banished and removed from this dominion forever, and that the justices of each respective countie within this dominion make it their perticular care, that this act be put in effectuall execution." If any free English woman should have a bastard child by any Negro or mulatto, she should pay the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, within one month after such bastard child should be born, to the church wardens of the parish where she should be delivered of such child, and in default of such payment she should be taken into the possession of the said church wardens and disposed of for five years; and such bastard child should be bound out as a servant by the church wardens until he or she should attain the age of thirty years, and in case such English woman that should have such bastard child be a servant, she should be sold by the church wardens (after her time is expired that she ought by law to serve her master) for five years, and the money she should be sold for divided as before appointed, and the child should serve as aforesaid.14 It was further provided in 1753 that if any woman servant should have a bastard child by a Negro or mulatto, over and above the year's service
for the punishment of free mulatto women, having bastard children by negroes and other slaves, nor is there any provision made in the said act for the punishment of free negro women, having bastard children by white men; and forasmuch as such copulations are as unnatural and inordinate as between white women and negro men, or other slaves. "Be it enacted, That from and after the end of this present session of assembly, that all such free mulatto women, having bastard children, either within or after the time of their service, (and their issue), shall be subject to the same penalties that white women and their issue are, for having mulatto bastards, by the act, entitled. An act relating to servants and slaves. "And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, by and with the advice and consent aforesaid. That from and after the end of this present session of assembly, that all free negro women, having bastard children by white men, (and their issue), shall be subject to the same penalties that white women are, by the act aforesaid, for having bastards by negro men. Dorsey, The General Public Statutory Law and Public Local Law of State of Maryland, from 1692-1839, p. 79. 13 Bullagh, White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia, pp. 72, 73. 14 Hening, The Statutes at Large, I, pp. 146, 552; II, 170; III, pp. 86-88, 252.
due to her master or owner, she should immediately upon the expiration of her time, to her then present master, or owner, pay down to the church wardens of the parish wherein such child should be born, for the use of the said parish, fifteen pounds current money of Virginia, or be sold for five years to the use aforesaid; and if a free Christian white woman should have such bastard child by a Negro, or mulatto, for every such offence, she should within one month after her delivery of such bastard child pay to the church wardens for the time being, of the parish wherein such child should be born, for the use of the said parish, fifteen pounds current money of Virginia, or be by them sold for five years to the use aforesaid; and in both the said cases, the church wardens should bind the said child to be a servant until it should be of thirty-one years of age. And for a further prevention of that "abominable mixture, and the spurious issue, which may hereafter increase in this his majesty's colony and dominion as well by English, and other white men and women, intermarrying with Negroes or mulattoes, as by their unlawful coition with t h e m " it was enacted that whatsoever English, or other white man or woman, being free, should intermarry with a Negro, or mulatto man or woman bond or free, should by judgment of the county court be committed to prison and there remain during the space of six months, without bail or main-prize, and should forfeit and pay ten pounds current money of Virginia, to the use of the parish as aforesaid. It was further enacted that no minister of the Church of England, or other minister or person whatsoever, within that colony and dominion, should thereafter presume to marry a white man with a Negro, or mulatto woman, or to marry a white woman with a Negro or mulatto man, upon pain of forfeiting and paying for every such marriage the sum of ten thousand pounds of tobacco.15 It developed, however, that these laws did not meet all requirements,16for there were in subsequent years so many illegitimate children born of such mothers that they became a public charge and had to be bound out.17 In making more stringent regulations for servants and slaves. North Carolina provided in 1715 that if a white servant woman had a child by a Negro, mulatto or Indian, she must serve her master two years extra and should pay to the church wardens immediately on the expiration of that time six pounds for the use of the parish or be sold four years for the use aforesaid.18 A clergyman found guilty of officiating at such a marriage
15 Hening, Statues at Large, VI, pp. 360-362. 16 Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, I, p. 366. 17 According to Russell, in 1727 it was ordered that David James, a free Negro boy, be bound to Mr. James Isdel "who is to teach him to read ye bible distinctly also ye trade of a gunsmith that he carry him to ye Clark's office and take Indenture to that purpose.'' By the Warwick Coimty court it was "ordered that Malacai, a mulatto boy, son of mulatto Betty be, by the Church Wardens of this Parish bound to Thomas Hobday to learn the art of a planter according to law." By order of the Norfolk County court, about 1770, a free Negro was bound out "to learn the trade of a tanner." Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, pp. 138-139. 18 Bassett, Slavery and Servitude in North Carolina, p. 83.
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should be fined fifty pounds. This law, according to John Spencer Bassett, did not succeed in preventing such unions. Two ministers were indicted within two years for performing such a marriage ceremony. " I n one case the suit was dropped, in the other case the clergyman went before the Chief Justice and confessed as it seems of his own accord. . . . In 1727 a white woman was indicted in the General Court because she had left her husband and was cohabiting with a negro slave. . . . So far as general looseness was concerned this law of 1715 had no force." 19 By the law of 1741, therefore, the colony endeavored to prevent what the General Assembly called " t h a t abominable mixture and spurious issue, which hereafter may increase in this government, by white men and women intermarrying with Indians, Negroes, mustees, or mulattoes." I t was enacted that if any man or woman, being free, should intermarry with an Indian, Negro, mustee or mulatto man or woman, or any person of mixed blood, to the third generation, bond or free, he should, by judgment of the county court, forfeit and pay the sum of fifty pounds, proclamation money, to the use of the parish.20 I t was also provided that if any white servant woman should during the time of her servitude be delivered of a child, begotten by any Negro, mulatto or Indian, such servant, over and above the time she was by this act to serve her master or owner for such offence, should be sold by the church wardens of the parish, for two years, after the time by indenture or otherwise had expired.21 The miscegenation of the whites and blacks extended so widely that it became a matter of concern to the colonies farther north where the Negro population was not considerable. Seeking also to prevent this "spurious mixt issue" Massachusetts enacted in 1705 that a Negro or mulatto man committing fornication with an "English woman, or a woman of any other Christian nation," should be sold out of the province. " A n English man, or man of any other Christian nation committing fornication with a Negro or mulatto woman," should be whipped, and the woman sold out of the province. None of her majesty's English or Scottish subjects, nor of any other Christian nation within that province, should contract matrimony with any Negro or mulatto, under a penalty imposed on the person joining them in marriage. No master should imreasonably deny marriage to his Negro with one of the same nation, any law, usage or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.22 There was much of such contact between the white servants and t h e Negroes in Pennsylvania, where the number of the latter greatly increased during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Turner says a white servant was indicted for this offence in Sussex County in 1677 and a tract
19 Ibid., pp. 58-59. See also Natural History of North Carolina, p. 48; and Hawk's History of North Carolina, II, pp. 126-127. 20 Potter, Revised Laws of North Carolina, I, p. 130. 21 Ibid., I, p. 157. 2 Massachusetts Charters, etc., p. 747; Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, VI, p. 262. 2
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of land there bore the name of "Mulatto Hall." ^^ According to the same writer, Chester County seemed to have a large number of these cases and laid down the principle that such admixture should be prohibited. Referring to a white man, a community complained that "hee contrary to his Masters Consent hath . . . got wth child a certaine molato wooman Called Swart anna." "David Lewis Constable of Haverford Returned a Negro man of his And a white woman for having a Bastard Childe . . . the Negroe said she Intised him and promised him to marry him: she being examined, Confest the same: the Court ordered that she shall receive Twenty-one lashes on her bare Backe . . . and the Court ordered the negroe never more to meddle with any white woman more uppon paine of his life." 24 Advertising for Richard Molson in Philadelphia in 1720, his master said: " H e is in company with a white woman named Mary, who is supposed now goes for his wife, and a white man named Garrett Choise, and Jane his wife, which said white people are servants to some neighbors of the said Richard Tilghman." 25 In 1722 a woman was punished for abetting a clandestine marriage between a white woman and a Negro. In the Pennsylvania Gazette, June 1, 1749, appeared the notice of the departure of Isaac Cromwell, a mulatto, who ran away with an English servant woman named Anne Greene.26 The Assembly, therefore, upon a petition from inhabitants inveighing against this custom enacted a prohibitory law in 1725. This law provided that no minister, pastor or magistrate or other person whatsoever who according to the laws of that province usually joined people in marriage should upon any pretence whatever join in marriage any Negro with any white person on the penalty of one hundred pounds. And it was further enacted that if any white man or woman should cohabit or dwell with any Negro under pretence of being married, such white man or woman should be put out to service as above directed until they come to the age of thirtyone years; and if any free Negro man or woman should intermarry with a white man or woman, such Negro should become a slave during life to be sold by order of the justice of the quarter sessions of the respective county; and if any free Negro man or woman should commit fornication or adultery with any white man or woman, such Negro or Negroes should be sold as a servant for seven years and the white man or woman should be punished as the law directs in cases of adultery or fornication.27 This law seemed to have very little effect on the miscegenation of the races in certain parts. In Chester County, according to the records of 1780, mulattoes constituted one fifth of the Negro population. 28 Further23 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 29-30. 24 Ibid., p. 30. 25 The American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia), August 20, 1720. 26 The Pennsylvania Gazette, June 1, 1749. 27Statutes at Large, IV, p. 62. 28 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 31.
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more, that very year when the State of Pennsylvania had grown sufficiently liberal to provide for gradual emancipation the law against the mingling of the races was repealed. Mixed marriages thereafter became common as the whites and the blacks in the light of the American Revolution realized liberty in its full meaning. Thomas Branagan said in 1805: "There are many, very many blacks who . . . begin to feel themselves consequential, . . . will not be satisfied unless they get white women for wives, and are likewise exceedingly impertinent to white people in low circumstances. . . . I solemnly swear, I have seen more white women married to, and deluded through the arts of seduction by negroes in one year in Philadelphia, than for eight years I was visiting (West Indies and the Southern States). I know a black man who seduced a young white girl . . . who soon after married him, and died with a broken heart. On her death he said that he would not disgrace himself to have a negro wife and acted accordingly, for he soon after married a white woman. . . . There are perhaps hundreds of white women thus fascinated by black men in this city, and there are thousands of black children by them at present." 29 A reaction against this custom thereafter set in during the first decade of the nineteenth century, when fugitives in the rough were rushing to that State, and culminated in an actual campaign against it by 1820. That year a petition from Greene County said that many Negroes had settled in Pennsylvania and had been able to seduce into marriage " t h e minor children of the white inhabitants." 30 This county, therefore, asked that these marriages be made an offence against the laws of the State. Such a marriage was the cause of a riot in Columbia in 1834 and in 1838 the members of the Constitutional Convention engaged in a heated discussion of the custom.31 Petitions were frequently sent to the legislature asking that this admixture be penalized by law, but no such action was ever taken. Relying upon public opinion, however, the advocates of racial integrity practically succeeded. Marriages of whites and blacks eventually became so odious that they led to disturbances as in the case of the riot of 1849, one of the causes of which was that a white man was living with a Negro wife.32 This was almost ineffective, however, in the prevention of race admixture. Clandestine intermingling went on and tended to increase in enormous proportions. The conclusive proof of this is that in 1860 mulattoes constituted one third of the Negro population of Pennsylvania. In some of the slave States it later became a capital offence for a Negro man to cohabit with a white woman. Abdy who toured this country from 1833 to 1834, however, doubted that such laws were enforced. " A man,"
29 Branagan, Serious Remonstrances, pp. 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 102; Somerset Whig, March 12, 1818, and Union Times, August 15, 1834. 30 Journal of Senate, 1820-1821, p. 213; and American Daily Advertiser, January 23, 1821. 31 Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of 1838, X, p. 230. 32 The Spirit of the Times, October 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 19, 1849.
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said he, "was hanged not long ago for this crime at New Orleans. The partner of his guilthis master's daughterendeavored to save his life, by avowing that she alone was to blame. She died shortly after his execution."33 With the white man and the Negro woman the situation was different. A sister of President Madison once said to the Reverend George Bourne, then a Presbyterian minister in Virginia: " W e Southern ladies are complimented with the name of wives; but we are only the mistresses of seraglios." The masters of the female slaves, however, were not always the only persons of loose morals. Many women of color were also prostituted to the purposes of young white men 34 and overseers.35 Goodell reports a well-authenticated account of a respectable " Christian lady " at the South, who kept a handsome mulatto female for the use of her genteel son, as a method of deterring him, as she said, "from indiscriniinate and vulgar indulgences." 36 Harriet Martineau discovered a young white man who, on visiting a Southern lady, became insanely enamored of her intelligent quadroon maid. He sought to purchase her but the owner refused to sell the slave because of her unusual worth. The young white man persisted in trying to effect this purchase and finally informed her owner that he could not Uve without this attractive slave. Thereupon the white lady sold the woman of color to satisfy the lust of her friend.37 The accompUshment of this task of preventing the increase of the free Negroes, therefore, was not easy. In the first place, so many persons of color had risen to positions of usefulness among progressive people and had formed connections with them that drastic action was both inexpedient and undesirable. Exceptions to the hard and fast rules of caste were often made to relieve the people of color. The miscegenation of the races in the South and especially in large cities like Charleston and New Orleans, moreover, had gone to the extent that from these centers eventually went, as they do now, a large number of quadroons and octoroons,38 who elsewhere crossed over to the other race.
II. PREVENTING THE INCREASE OF THE F R E E NEGROES
Persons who professed seriously to consider the future of slavery, therefore, saw that miscegenation and especially the general cohabitation of white men with their female slaves introduced a mulatto race whose numbers would become dangerous, if the affections of their white parents were permitted to render them free.1 The Americans of the future would thereby become a race of mixed breeds rather than continue as a white
33 Abdy, North America, I, p. 160. 34 Child, Anti-slavery Catechism, p. 17; 2 Howard, Mississippi Reports, p. 837. 35 Kemble, Georgian Plantation, pp. 140, 162, 199, 208-210; Olmsted, Seaboard States, pp. 699-600; Rhodes, United States, I, pp. 341-343. 36 Goodell, Slave Code, pp. 111-112. 37 Harriet Martineau, Views of Slavery and Emancipation, p. 13. 38 Featherstonaugh, Excursion, p. 141; Buckingham, Slave States, I, p. 358. 1 Harriet Mart^ineau, Views of Slavery and Emancipation, p. 10.
PREVENTING THE INCREASE OF THE FREE NEGROES
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and a black population. As the lust of white persons for those of color was too strong to prevent this miscegenation, the liberty of emancipating their mulatto offspring was restricted in the slave States but that of selling them remained.2 These laws eventually, therefore, had their desired effect. They were never intended to prevent the miscegenation of the races but to debase to a still lower status the offspring of the blacks who in spite of public opinion might intermarry with the poor white women. They were designed, also, to leave women of color without protection against white men, who might use them for convenience, whereas white women and black men would gradually grow separate and distinct in their social relations. Although thereafter the offspring of blacks and whites did not diminish, instead of being gradually assimilated to the type of the Caucasian they tended to constitute a peculiar class commonly called people of color, having a higher social status than that of the blacks but finally classified with all other persons of African blood as Negroes. Kept as a distinct class, too, there could be more easily observed further reasons for the suppression of free Negroes in slaveholding States. The more seriously the whites thought of the possibilities of this class, the more fearful they became of their holding "tumultuous and unlawful meetings" out of which might come secret plots, dangerous combinations and conspiracies culminating in insurrectionary efforts. Yet although the whites made special laws to prohibit the free Negroes from stirring up the slaves, the master class found it difficult to counteract their influence. Thereafter, then, the effort was directed toward preventing manumission. Prior to this change of attitude a master might liberate a slave whenever he felt so disposed. The Negro under such circumstances obtained his freedom just as easily as an indentured servant became free at the expiration of his term. No official could interfere therewith, for it was a matter which concerned only the master and slave. Such Negroes became a part of the body politic and were regarded as capable of making and enforcing contracts. But even this restricted recruiting of the free Negro population proceeded faster than some of the colonists desired. Manumission was soon objected to as a danger in this respect. While Negroes thereafter still obtained their freedom by last will and testament, and by deed, the legislature also exercised this right and determined the condition under which the individual might do so. To restrict this privilege the courts had to develop the idea that there could be no such thing as private manumission, although such had been frequently indulged in by masters during the earlier period. Manumission became a matter of the sovereign power of the state. The master could not of his own authority make with the slave a contract by which he could obtain
2 Hart, Slavery and Abolition, p. 182; Censuses of the United States.
xvi
FEEE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES
his freedom, for the slave was not a person in this case empowered to make an agreement binding at law. The slave was merely property and could not be given life and personality except by an act of the legislature. The lawmaking body then became the court for decision of such matters, as in Virginia in 1662 when by special act of the legislature this procedure in manumission became a law. Other colonies developed a manumission law somewhat of the same order. In the course of time, then, the status of the Negro was debased. For this social divergence several reasons may be given. In the first place, the Negro as an independent planter or slaveholder was not so acceptable as the white indentured servant, who a few years removed from his inferior status easily lost his identity among the more highly favored whites belonging to the same race. The Negro's color served as a badge to remind the public of his ignoble position, which, in the course of time, tended to attach itself to this particular race. As the agricultural colonies began to feel more dependent upon slave labor, they regarded the presence of the free Negro as an unfavorable influence on the slave. Manumission, therefore, which had at first gone forward with little restriction, tended to decline. Negroes who became free thereafter were thus rewarded by their masters because of unusually faithful service or by the colony or State because of some heroic deed productive of public good. Before this policy with respect to the free Negro could be worked out, however, there came eloquent protests in their favor. Alfonso Sandoval, the Spanish Jesuit of Havana, and the Germantown Friends thus spoke out for emancipation. Some Puritans of New England also took this high ground in spite of the fact that their countrymen in that section engaged in the carrying trade were considerably increasing their fortunes by the slave traffic. They continued their opposition, too, even when such was frowned down upon by British merchants profiting by the traffic much more than the New England slavetraders. The effect of their protest on manumission, however, was largely local. These religious bodies stirred up the majority of their communicants to the point that they freed their own slaves to clear their conscience of what they considered a guilt in the light of the revelation of Holy Writ. But in the strictly commercial and agricultural centers of the colonies this protest had little weight. To carry out the principle which they had learned to espouse, however, some of these moved toward the frontier where they could promote liberal institutions. In this way the Emancipating Baptists migrated to the mountains of Kentucky just before the end of the eighteenth century, and the Quakers of the uplands of Virginia and North Carolina to the Northwest Territory two generations later. Such effective service in behalf of the freedom of the Negro was rendered, by the Methodists from the time of their very beginning in this country that the sect was at first considered anti-slavery. The Presbyterians also in their struggle for religious freedom likewise
PREVENTING THE INCREASE OF THE FREE NEGROES xvii advocated the removal of the restraints from manumission and the gradual emancipation of the slaves.3 During this very period, moreover, there had been set to work certain forces which effected a change in the status of the slave. This was the nascent social compact doctrine of the American Revolution. Men reading the philosophy of John Locke to find an excuse for declaring the independence of the colonies began to assert that all men are created free and equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The patriots were unable to harmonize this doctrine with slaveholding. Needing the support of the Negro in maintaining the independence of this country, too, several of the States, influenced by men who actually believed in equality for all regardless of race or color, contrived to emancipate those Negroes who were then held as slaves. This action was first taken by Vermont, in construing its declaration of rights in 1777 as guaranteeing freedom to all persons at the age of maturity and later abolishing slavery altogether. Virginia removed restraints upon manumission in 1782, and by an act of 1783 she gave to every Negro who fought or served as a free man in the war a pledge of protection of the State in the enjoyment of the freedom he had helped to gain. By 1783, the institution of slavery was prohibited in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Pennsylvania provided for gradual emancipation in 1780 and Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784. It was prohibited from development in the Northwest Territory by the Ordinance of 1787, and by gradual process it came to an end in New York and New Jersey.4 This impetus given manumission by the rights of man movement of the Revolutionary War, however, soon met organized resistance. Settled down to the solution of the problem of readjustment after the war, some raised the question as to what should be done with the rapidly increasing free Negro population. While persons had conceded their natural right to be free, they had never thought of incorporating such a large number of them into the body politic. As most persons then viewed the question, one of two things had to be done. Either the free Negroes would have to be removed from this country when liberated or manumission would have to be prohibited. Legislatures and even the Congress of the United States were memorialized to provide a place of asylum for the free Negro population. Anthony Benezet, Thomas Branagan, Granville Sharp, and other friends of the Negro had advocated their colonization on the western domain near Canada. Not a few persons advocated the deportation of the free Negro to some distant portion of the Western Hemisphere or to Africa. As no feasible plan of colonization was then in sight, the States with a large Negro population either restricted manumission or provided that the slaves liberated should be banished.
3 Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 23-39. 4 Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, 1-9; and The Education of the Negro prior to 1861, Chapter III. 2
xviii
The free Negro population under such circumstances comparatively declined. Together with the anti-free Negro sentiment and the law making banishment an attendant condition of manumission, the change in the economic aspect of slavery as a result of the industrial revolution further aggravated the situation. By the multiplication of mechanical appliances the weaving of cloth had been facilitated. The price being correspondingly reduced had made an increasing demand for cotton fibre, which necessitated an expansion of slavery by the extension of the plantation system, and thus checked manumission. In the North, however, where the act of emancipation had already been accomplished, the free Negro population increased in spite of public sentiment to the contrary. This emancipation in the Northern States, however, did not mean an immediate change in the status of the whole Negro population. With the exception of Vermont and Massachusetts, slaves were reported from all of the States and territories in 1790, although freedom was the normal condition in most Northern communities. As the liberalizing influences of the American Revolution had done so much for emancipation, however, the States north of Maryland were essentially free from the time of the third census in 1810. The unusual effect of the American Revolution on the change of the status of the Negro is clearly eAddent by the fact that between 1790 and 1800 the free Negro population increased 82.2 per cent and between 1800 and 1810, 71.9 per cent. When the reaction resulting from the industrial revolution set in, the manumissions decreased as a general rule so that between 1810 and 1820 the increase was only 25.3 per cent; but between 1820 and 1830, 36.8 per cent. The increase by 1840 was only 20.9 per cent. It dropped to 12.5 per cent in 1850 and still lower to 12.3 per cent in 1860. This tendency of the free Negro population to remain almost constant from 1840 to 1860 is better explained by contrasting therewith the increase in the number of slaves from decade to decade. Whereas the increase in the free Negro population between 1790 and 1810 exceeded that for slaves and the proportion free in the Negro population rose from 7.9 per cent in 1790 to 13.5 per cent in 1810, the per cent of decennial increase of the slave population exceeded that of the free in 1820 although it was a little less than that of the free in 1830. Throughout the three succeeding decades the decennial increase in the slave population so far exceeded that of the free as to leave no question as to the trend of the Negro population in this country. One reason for the probably unexpected increase in the free Negro population between 1820 and 1830 was doubtless the increasing number of fugitives who made their escape from bondage when slavery as a result of the industrial revolution developed all of the horrors of a system primarily intended for human exploitation. Another reason was the ultimate working out of gradual emancipation in the States of New Jersey,
PREVENTING THE INCREASE OF THE FREE NEGROES xix Pennsylvania, and New York. The extension of the area of the census enumeration was another factor. Whatever increase there had been, however, was largely natural by excess of births over deaths. Frequent as were the cases of slaves running away from their masters, there is no direct evidence that this decidedly augmented the number of free persons of color in the Northern States. Furthermore, there was little increase from foreign lands, for only 7,011 free Negroes were reported in 1860 as born abroad and 3,700 or more than one half of these were in the State of New York.5 Giving more accurate information with respect to the effect of manumissions on the increase of free Negro population, the census reports do not encourage the belief that this was considerable. One statistician has figured out that there were 1,467 manumissions the year preceding the census of 1850 when there were reported 1,011 as becoming fugitive. The number of manumissions reported for 1860 was approximately 3,000 and the number becoming fugitive 803. According to the census of 1860 there were probably 20,000 manumissions during the decade immediately preceding. Observing this tendency, the managers of the census of 1860 especially emphasized the disparity between the free Negro population and the slave. It was made clear that the latter was decidedly outstripping the former, there being no proof that the free population was being supplemented very much by accessions from the slave element. In the decade between 1840 and 1850, the percentage increase of the slave population was more than double and in the decade following nearly double that of the free Negro. Commenting upon this, the author of the Compendium of the Seventh Census pointed out " t h e declining ratio of the increase of the free Negro in every section," which in New England "is now almost nothing," and in the Southern States "only one fourth as great as between 1800 and 1810." The author also noted with some interest that the rate of increase of the "free colored " had been gradually declining for several decades " t o 1860 when the increase throughout the United States was but 1 per cent per annum." 6 Accounting for this decline in the rate of increase in the free element in the Negro population, so far below the rate of slave population, the report on Negro population in the United States from 1790 to 1915 explains that " t h e free colored were somewhat older, and on that account naturally subject to a higher mortality rate, and somewhat less normally distributed by sex, and, therefore, probably characterized by a marital condition less favorable to rapid natural increase. Among the free colored at each of the five censuses 1820 to 1860 there were fewer males than females, while in the slave population, on the other hand, at each of these censuses the number of males exceeded the number of females. In 1850, however, the
5 Negro Population in the United States, 1790-1915, p. 54. 6 Ibid., 54.
XX
slave population of over 3,000,000 was so evenly divided by sex that the excess of males over females amounted to less than 1 in 4,000 population. In this year the sex ratio in the free colored population was 924 males to 1,000 females, the relative deficiency of males being practically confined to the population 15 years of age and over; in the slave population it was 1,000 males to 1,000 females; in 1860 the ratio was 922 males to 1,000 females in the free colored, and 1,006 males to 1,000 females in the slave population. The disparity of numbers between the sexes was thus in both years much greater in the free colored population." 7 The distribution of this population is of some interest. Of the free Negro population in 1790, 53.8 per cent was in the South Atlantic division, .8 per cent in the East South Central division, and 45.4 per cent in the North. In 1810, 51.9 per cent of the free Negro population was in the South Atlantic division, 1.8 per cent in the East South Central division, 4.1 per cent in the West South Central division, and 42.3 per cent in the North. In 1830, 47.9 per cent of this population was in the South Atlantic division, 3.6 per cent in the East South Central division, 5.3 per cent in the West South Central division, and 43.2 per cent in the North. By 1860 the distribution was 44.6 per cent in the South Atlantic division, 4.4 per cent in the East South Central division, 3.9 per cent in the West South Central division, 46.2 per cent in the North, and .9 per cent in the West.
DISTRIBUTION OP THE F R E E N E G R O POPULATION IN 1830
Maine New Hampshire Massachusetts Rhode Island Connecticut Vermont New York New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware Maryland Virginia North CaroUna South Carolina
1,190 604 7,048 3,561 8,047 881 44,870 18,303 37,930 15,865 52,938 47,348 19,543 7,921
Georgia Alabama Mississippi Louisiana Tennessee Kentucky Ohio Indiana Illinois Missouri Michigan Arkansas Florida District of Columbia
2,486 1,572 519 16,710 4,555 4,917 9,568 3,628 1,637 569 261 141 844 6,152
In the North where most of the free Negroes were found, they lived in the cities. The proportionately large population of this element in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston further elucidates this point. In 1790, the 3,262 Negroes of New York City constituted a little more than one tenth of this population. Whereas 2,184 of these were slaves, 1,078 were free. The report that year from Philadelphia showed the Negro population of 1,630 with 210 slave and 1,420 free. The 761 Negroes reported from Boston were all free. Baltimore, although a Southern city, but influenced doubtless by the commercial connections with free centers at that time, had a Negro population of 1,578. 1,255 of these were slave and
7 Ibid., 55.
THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW
xxi
323 free. In 1830 notable changes had taken place in the urban free Negro population. There were at that time 1,875 Negroes in Boston; 14,083 in New York City; and 9,796 in Philadelphia. In Baltimore that year there were 14,790 free Negroes; in Charleston 2,106; and in New Orleans 11,906.
III. THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW
The free Negro in the colonies was nominally, and in some cases actually, as much a part of the body politic as was the free white man. What few differences there were became more apparent in those parts where there were many poor whites emerging from indentured servitude and, therefore, finding it easier to associate with Negroes than with their former masters. Certain incidents of color which marked the Negro as member of a decidedly different race, however, gradually brought into colonial custom and law some distinctions from which this class suffered until the more liberal attitude resulting from the struggle for the rights of man during the American Revolution. The status of the free Negro did not materially change for the worse thereafter until the 'twenties and 'thirties of the nineteenth century when practically all of the Southern and Middle States and a few communities in the North began to restrict and, in some cases, to debase the free Negro to a status next to that of the slave. The transition, however, required some time. The feeling against the Negro in Maryland, for example, did not develop rapidly. Although the intermarriage of the races was prohibited there in 1663 1 and the measure was made more stringent by other acts in 1681 2 and 1717,3 the free Negroes could apparently vote and hold office there, for they were not legally deprived of this right until 1810.5 Virginia early endeavored to prevent the miscegenation of the whites and blacks,5 deprived.the latter of the right to hold office in 1705,6 and prohibited them from voting in 1723.7 In North Carolina, the situation was more favorable to the free Negro, although the colony prohibited the intermarriage of the races in 1723 and 1741.8 The Negroes were permitted to vote there until 1835. During the colonial period, too, we find that the free Negro in Pennsylvania was subject to some of the regulations made for Negro slaves in the matter of trials and punishments. 9 Prior to 1700, free Negroes were tried in the same courts in which white men were tried. Thereafter, they were brought before special courts only, although the law should have been
Hurd, The Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, 249. Ibid., 250. 3 Ibid., 253. 4 Kilty, Laws of Maryland, III, p. xxxxviii. 5 Hening, StatiUes at Large, I, 146, 552. 6 Ibid., III, 258, 441. 7 Ibid., IV, 133. 8 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, 295. 9 Turner The Negro in Pennsylvania, 17-23.
2 1
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legally applied to Negroes rather than to free Negroes, but custom would have it as it worked out. Distinctions, too, were made in the penalties for murder, arson, burglary or rape, all of which were punishable by death in the case of the Negro, whereas in the case of the white man up to the year 1718, he would suffer death only if guilty of murder. 10 To prevent vagrancy as a result of the increase in numbers, there was enacted in 1726 a law for binding out able-bodied Negroes who did not work.11 That same year special penalties were imposed for harboring slaves, for the intermixture of the races, for frequenting tippling-houses, for carrying arms, and for assembling in companies. 12 The free Negro in that colony could not travel from place to place without a pass; and if his freedom was questioned, the burden of proof was on his side.13 The situation was better in New York than in Pennsylvania. It did not seem necessary to enact there so many precautionary measures as some other colonies passed. By the time of 1712 when the slave insurrection of that year frightened the people of the city and colony, however, the feeling against the Negro was intensified, and especially so in 1741 when several plots and conflagrations in the city were charged to slaves.14 Yet most of the restrictions in the colonial laws of New York referred to Negroes held as slaves rather than to those who were free; but with the increase of race prejudice, the latter suffered from the same discriminations. In Connecticut, as in New York, there did not develop immediately sufficient racial distinction to proscribe the free Negro rigidly although slavery was recognized and protected by the General Court of that colony. The same may be said in the case of Massachusetts, in spite of the fact that the State prohibited trading with Negroes, mulattoes and Indians in 1698,15 restricted the emancipation of mulattoes and Negroes in 1703 16 that they might not become chargeable, and prohibited their intermarriage with the whites in 1705.17 With the exception of certain regulations for the return of fugitives and the like, free Negroes were not generally disturbed in the enjoyment of the fruits of their labor in New England, although they were not actually accepted as equals of the whites. During the colonial period there arose in certain communities some fear as to what might happen in case of too many firearms in the hands of free Negroes whose contact with the slaves was unrestricted. They were therefore eliminated from the militia altogether or, as in Virginia, for example, in 1755 and 1757,18 the free mulattoes, Negroes and Indians
10 Statutes at Large, I I , 77-79, 233-236. 11 Ibid., IV, 61-64. 1 Ibid., 62. 2 13 Ibid., 59-64. 14 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, I, 277-281. 15 Laws of Mass., 1698, c. 6. 16 Ibid., 1703, c. 2. 17 Ibid., 1705, c. 6. 18 Hening, Statutes at Large, V, 17; VI, 33; and VII, 93.
xxui
belonging to the militia were required to appear without arms. These measures, however, were decidedly modified and some of them repealed altogether during the period of the liberal attitude of the patriots of the American Revolution. At first there was a disinclination to enlist Negroes as soldiers in some of the colonies, and the Council of War decided not to accept them. When they got into a strait during the awful ordeal of the struggle, however, the colonies changed their attitude. 19 Some of them enacted laws granting freedom to all Negroes who would don the colors, and cowardly masters were often willing to have their Negroes go to the front in their places on the same condition. Runaway slaves, pretending to be free, were sometimes accepted as soldiers. This was a new day for the free Negro. Some of the Negro soldiers in the American Revolution served in special units whereas the majority of them went into the ranks side by side with the white companions. Virginia authorized a more liberal manumission of slaves in 1782, and proclaimed free all Negroes who had enlisted with the promise of manumission and had served faithfully. Rhode Island raised a regiment of slaves in 1778. New Hampshire liberated her slaves, enlisted Negroes, and gave to those who served three years the same bounty offered others. Connecticut did likewise in raising a Negro regiment in 1781 and Maryland undertook to raise 750 Negro troops the same year.20 Slavery was instantly abolished in some States. In others, it passed away by gradual emancipation. Thus encouraged, the free Negroes decidedly increased during this period; and there came, too, a change in the attitude toward this class. The very increase, however, was one reason why this did not long continue. Settling down to the problem of working out government in this country, the whites soon forgot the very distinctions against which they had so long fought, and incorporated them into their State constitutions as they later incorporated them into the Federal Constitution in compromising with the less liberal States on slavery. There developed in those States in which the free Negroes were numerous a feeling that the rights and privileges of this class should differ from those of white persons. The States tended, then, to restrict the free Negroes to protect the personal rights of the whites, and to prevent servile insurrection. Finally, an effort was made to stop the growth of the free Negro class or to get rid of it altogether. The regulations with respect to the free Negroes thereafter, therefore, tended to become almost identical with those of the slaves. Most of the States had restrictions having a direct bearing on earning a subsistence. Statutes were enacted to prevent loafing and vagrancy. The children of indigent free Negroes were apprenticed to mechanical trades in some of the States. If a free Negro refused to work and became a public charge, there was usually some way for disposing of him by selling him into servitude for a certain period or into permanent slavery.
19 Journal of Negro History, I, 119-127. 20Ibid.,I, 119-130.
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The right of locomotion of the free Negroes was generally restricted. While they remained at home among their neighbors, their freedom was not questioned; but in going from place to place, they were usually suspected and often imprisoned as fugitive slaves. If the victim claimed to be free, the burden of proof was on his side. In some cases when moving beyond their neighborhood they were reduced to the necessity of obtaining passes very much like those issued to the slaves, but here they needed more. In hostile communities, they were compelled to secure from their manumitter, or from a local official, papers to the effect that they were registered as free. As such certificates could be easily counterfeited, free Negroes in transit through the country were subjected to all sorts of investigation. The penalty for counterfeiting such papers varied from heavy fines to imprisonment. The free Negro, moreover, gradually lost the right of assembly. It was early reported that the Negro assemblies were "tumultuous and rebellious" and legislation to this effect may be found in the early statutes of the colonies providing for the flogging of Negroes found in such meetings. Later, the penalty applied, especially to free Negroes, was that of being fined and imprisoned. However, this did not generally apply to the assembly of Negroes for moral and spiritual uplift on Sundays. Some of these laws enacted by the States after the reaction reflect the spirit of the times. In 1805 Maryland prohibited Negroes from selling corn, wheat or tobacco. 21 In 1806, the State penalized the immigration of free Negroes. 22 Negro evidence against a white man was prohibited in 1809, and in 1810 23 the race was disfranchised. In 1825, instead of merely imprisoning free Negroes for certain crimes, they were to be whipped, imprisoned, and then banished under the penalty of being sold as slaves for a term. 24 Virginia prohibited the coming of free Negroes into the State in 1793,25 required them to be registered in 1800,26 prohibited them from carrying arms without license at the session of the legislature in 1805-6,27 and in 1820 provided that they might be hired out to pay their taxes.28 North Carolina, which in 1777 had already proscribed free Negroes as witnesses except in suits against each other, saw reason in 1786 to enact a law against the entertainment of slaves by free Negroes, and the intermarriage of slaves with free Negroes except with the consent of the masters concerned. 29 By a law of 1812, Negroes could not be mustered into the militia except as musicians. 30 In 1826, there followed an act which
21 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, 20. 22 lUd., 20. 23 Kilty, Laws of Maryland, Vol. I l l , p. xxxviii. 24 Ibid., 21. 25 Shepard, Statutes of Virginia, I, 239. 26 Ibid., I, 300, 417. 27 Ibid., 11, 274. 28 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 8. 29 Ibid., I I , 83. 30 Ibid., I I , 85.
xxv
restricted the right of free Negroes to trade in certain articles and to peddle beyond their county without a license. That same year, the coming of free Negroes into the State was prohibited under the severe penalty of $500.31 As South Carolina with the exception of Charleston had never been very liberal toward the free Negro, there was not any possibility of much change during this period. Georgia found it necessary in 1808 to provide for binding out free persons of color "roving about the country in idleness and dissapation." 32 The State provided for guardians of free Negroes in 1810 and prohibited the immigration of others of this class in 1818.33 Florida prohibited the immigration of free Negroes in 1826, restricted the franchise to whites in 1827,34 and in the general "black code" followed the regulations of Georgia. Tennessee required the registration of free Negroes in 1806, forbade them to retail spirituous liquors in 1813, and prohibited the intermarriage between the two races in 1822.35 Kentucky, enacting in 1808 a measure to prevent the coming of free Negroes to that State and another measure against conspiracies of insurrection in 1810, tended to take over the "black code" of other reactionary States. 36 Farther south and west in the slaveholding territories, where there was a much smaller free Negro population, it was not sufficient for the States of Alabama and Mississippi to follow the fortunes of the seaboard slave States in limiting the franchise to the whites and the like. Endeavoring to keep the free Negroes out altogether, these States added such other provisions as their development of the strictly slaveholding States required; and the number of free Negroes being thus kept down, the problem did not become acute in those quarters. 37 In Lousiana where, under foreign control, there had been an unusual race admixture with the free Negro on the basis of social equality, a different condition obtained. In spite of the rigorous treatment to which the slaveholding regime subjected the blacks, when that territory became a part of the United States, exceptions to the laws applied to free Negroes generally had to be made in the case of those whose equal rights and privileges were guaranteed in the purchase treaty of Louisiana in 1803. Yet, we find Louisiana preventing the introduction of free Negroes in 1807,38 and restricting suffrage to whites in its Constitution of 1812. That same year, however, in the midst of the second war with England, it authorized a military corps of free men of color commanded by whites. In 1815, another act allowed a police corps of free blacks in Natchitoches.''
31 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 86. 32 Cobb's Digest, 985. 33 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 102. 34 Ibid., II, 191. 3 Meig's and Cooper's Code, sections 2714, 2652, 4924^4927. 5 36 Little's Digest, 501 and c. 235. '37 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 142-153. 3 Steele and McCampbell, Ark. Dig., 1835, p. 268. 8 39 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 159.
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By this time, moreover, the States to the north were solving the problem in various ways. In Delaware, according to a law of 1787, a manumitted slave could not vote or hold office nor give evidence against a white man, nor enjoy any other rights of free men other than to hold property and to obtain redress in law and equity for any injury to his or her person or property 40 In 1807, Delaware prohibited free Negroes from coming into the State to reside, forbade intermarriage of the races, and authorized the sale of free Negroes guilty of larceny. 41 The Negroes in Pennsylvania, on the contrary, were nominally given all rights of free men in the year of 1780 when the act of the gradual emancipation of the slaves was passed. That year the old laws were abolished and all restrictions apparently passed away. For the next generation there seemed to have been little change, for as late as 1820 the State enacted a law to prevent the kidnapping of free Negroes.42 In 1798 New Jersey prohibited the immigration of free Negroes without a certificate and prevented free Negroes within that State from going from county to county without such a document. 43 In New York, where gradual emancipation was provided for in 1799, the situation with respect to the rights of the free Negro was about the same as in New Jersey. Although the State enacted a law against the kidnapping of slaves in 1808, the second constitution of that State, which extended free manhood suffrage to the whites, barred Negroes unless they had property of the value of $250.44 Connecticut disfranchised the free Negro in its constitution of 1818 45 and so did Rhode Island in 1822.46 In the States formed out of the Northwest Territory where slavery was gradually eliminated by the sixth article of the Ordinance of 1787, there followed other measures which had to do with the restriction of the free Negro. This was especially true when they began to seek that country as an asylum from the oppression in the South. Ohio, for this reason, found it necessary to begin as early as 1803 to make distinctions between the two races. By its first constitution, the elective franchise was restricted to white persons. At the session of the first legislature convened under this constitution, no free black was to be permitted to reside in the State except he had a certificate of freedom. Those remaining in the commonwealth had to obtain such a document without which they could not be hired by any employer.47 At the session of 1806-7, no free Negro could come into the State without giving a bond not to become a public charge. By the same act, he could not give evidence against a white person.48 At the
40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 Delaware, Laws of, 884. Delaware Laws, IV, 108. Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, 109-120. Patterson's Laws, 307 Rev. Laws, 369, Sec. 1. See Second Constitution of New York. Constituiion of Connecticut of 1818, Art. 6, Sec. 2. Public Laws, 1822, p. 90. Laws of Ohio, II, 63. lbid., V, 53.
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session of 1818-19, however, there was some effort made to protect the Negroes against kidnapping that those actually free might enjoy that status. 49 Indiana prohibited the Negro from being a witness in a case in which a white man was concerned, proscribed the intermarriage of the races,50 required a bond of free Negroes entering the State, 51 and later by the constitution of 1851 deprived the Negro of the right to vote and to serve in the militia. Illinois, in its first constitution, restricted the right of franchise to white persons, in 1819 required a certificate of free Negroes entering the State, 52 in 1829 exacted a bond of those desiring to settle, and forbade the intermarriage of the races the same year. 53 These restrictions were made still more rigid and others of the most cruel sort were enacted during the critical period of the twenties and thirties. As slavery in consequence of the industrial revolution became an intolerable system of exploitation, Negroes here and there arose in servile insurrection. This fear was intensified by the Denmark Vesey Plot in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1822, by the Walker Appeal published broadcast to slaves in 1828 urging them to rise against their masters, and by Nat Turner's Insurrection in Virginia in 1831. When the news of these movements was noised abroad, it struck terror to the very hearts of the slaveholders, forcing many of them to the position of going armed among their slaves and exercising every precaution against the free Negroes. The action of the vario.us States during this crisis is illuminating. In the midst of this excitement, they resorted to further legislation. At the session of the legislature of 1831-32, Maryland endeavored to get rid of free Negroes by a law providing for the removal of free persons of color to Liberia. At the same time it also forbade the immigration of free Negroes into the State, and imposed many disabilities on the resident free people of color so as to force them to go to Liberia.54 At the session of 1835-36, Maryland made the printing of papers calculated to excite and create
49 On the 14th January, 1839, a petition for reUef from certain legal disabilities, from colored inhabitants of Ohio, was presented to the popular branch of the legislature, and its rejection was moved by George H. Flood. This rejection was not a denial of the prayer, b u t an expulsion of the petition itself, as a n intruder into the house. " T h e question presented for our decision," said one of the members, "is simply thisShall human beings, who are bound by every enactment upon our statute book, be permitted to request the legislature to modify or soften the laws under which they live?" Mr. Flood's motion was lost by a majority of only four votes; but this triumph of humanity was as transient as it was meagre. The next day, the House, by a large majority, resolved " T h a t the blacks and mulattoes who may be residents within this state, have no constitutional right to present their petitions to the General Assembly for any purpose whatsoever, and t h a t any reception of such petitions on the part of the General Assembly is a mere act of privilege or policy, and not imposed by any expressed or implied power of the constitution."Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade, 261-262. 50 Revised Statutes, I, 361. 51 Revised Statutes, 1852, c. 92. 52 Session Laws, March 30, 1819, p. 354. 53 Revised Statutes, 1856, p. 737. 54 Laws of Maryland, 1831, c. 323.
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discontentment among people of color a felony and a high offense against the supremacy of the State. 55 The following year, the navigation of vessels under the sole command of Negroes was prohibited by law.56 At the session of 1841-42, it was made a felony for a free Negro to call for, demand, or receive abolition papers. 57 The following year the State prohibited the formation and assemblage of secret societies of Negroes,58 and at the session of 1846-47 more rigidly prohibited the admission of the evidence of Negroes in a case in which a white person might be concerned. 59 In 1854; there followed an act imposing restrictions on free Negroes and their employers in their contracts for services,60and in 1858 another measure to prevent free Negroes and slaves from having or using boats on the Potomac River. 61 Virginia responded to the spasmodic appeal for drastic action. At the session of 1830-31, the legislature prohibited meetings for teaching free Negroes or mulattoes to read and write, penalized whites for holding meetings with Negroes, and proscribed assembly with slaves for such a purpose. 62 The very next year this legislature brought out new enactments against preaching by slaves and free Negroes and against slaves attending any preaching of a white minister at night without written permission. I t was provided that no free Negro or mulatto should be capable of purchasing or otherwise acquiring permanent ownership, except by descent to any slaves, other than his or her husband or wife and their children. For writing or printing anything advising persons of color to rebel, a severe penalty was imposed. 63 In 1834, the restrictions of intermarriage were made more rigid. 64 In 1836, there followed a special act to suppress the circulation of abolition literature for purpose of exciting the Negroes to rise against their masters, 65 and in 1838, free persons of color leaving the State for the purpose of education were prohibited from returning to that commonwealth. 66 The life of the free Negroes having thus been made almost intolerable, the State established in 1833 a Colonization Board to be supported by a poll tax on free Negroes to deport them to Liberia; 67 and in 1856, it enacted a measure providing for voluntary enslavement. 68
55 Ibid., 1835, c. 325. 56 lbid 1836, c. 150. 57 Ii 1841, c. 272. bd 58Ibid.,1842, c. 281. 59 Ibid., 1846, c. 27. 60Ibid.,1854, c. 273. 61 Ibid., 1858, c. 307.
62 Code of 1849, p. 747. 63 Ibid., pp. 458, 746. 64 Ibid., p. 747. 65 Ibid., p. 745.
66 Ibid., p.747.
67 Laws of 1863, c. 55. 68 Laws of 1866, c. 40.
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Following the wake of these other States, in 1831, North Carolina enacted a naeasure prohibiting free Negroes from preaching. 69 Its new constitution, adopted in 1835, limited the franchise to free white men. In 1838, the State declared void all marriages between white persons and Negroes or free persons of color to the third generation. 70 In 1840, free Negroes were forbidden to wear or keep bowie knives and the like without having obtained a license.71 In 1858, there was enacted a measure for the hiring out of free Negroes in the discharge of fines, and by the same law they were prohibited from selling spirituous liquors. 72 Tennessee, from her point of view, thought it necessary to forbid the immigration of free Negroes in 1831, to proscribe the intermarriage of the races, and to prohibit emancipation except on bond being given to remove the emancipated out of the State. 73 Its constitution of 1834 declared that all free Negroes should be exempt from all military duty in time of peace and also from paying a free poll tax. At the session of the legislature in 1855-56, free Negroes were forbidden to peddle or barter market stuffs.74 In 1854, the State provided for the transportation of free persons of color to the west coast of Africa, and in 1857 for the voluntary enslavement of free persons of color.75 South Carolina, too, which had already a sufficiently stringent black code to meet all demands, nevertheless reflected the excitement with a measure in 1831 prohibiting Negroes from the manufacture and the selling of spirits.76 In 1834, it prohibited not only the teaching of slaves, but the employment of a colored person as a clerk or salesman in any shop, store, or house used for trading. 77 In 1844, it provided for the punishment of persons disturbing the peace of the State in relation to slaves or other persons of color, an act which decidedly restricted the social privileges of the free Negroes.78 Georgia, equal to the occasion too, supplemented her black code in 1829 by prohibiting the employment of slaves and free persons of color in the setting of types in printing offices.79 In 1833, they were prohibited from preaching and from carrying firearms.80 In Alabama the excitement culminated in the enactment of a law in 1832 prohibiting the settling of free persons of color in that State, penalizing the teaching of slaves or free persons to spell, read or write, preventing
69 Revised Code, c. 107, sec. 28; Revised Statutes, c. I l l , sees. 31, 32. 70 Revised Code, c. 68, sec. 7. 71 Laws of 1840, c. 30. 72 Laws of 1868, c. 30. 73 Laws of 1831, c. 102; Meig's and Cooper's Code, sees. 2692-2709, 2712, 2725-2727. 74Ibid.,secs. 2737-2746. 75 lbid., secs. 2692-2709, and 2737-2745. 76 Statutes at Large, VII, 467. 77 Ibid., 467. 78 Ibid., 292. 79 Cobb's Digest, 1001. 80 Ibid., 1005.
XXX
F R E E NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES
the writing of passes and Negroes from preaching.81 In 1852, free Negroes were forbidden to sell liquors82and the appointment of guardians for them was authorized.83 Mississippi responded in 1830 with an act providing with punishment by death for persons of color circulating seditious pamphlets. They could not be employed in printing offices nor could they keep a house of entertainment.84 Free Negroes were prohibited fromimmigratingcould not liberate his slaves without removing them from the State.85 Louisiana deemed it expedient in 1830 to enact very stringent measures. These dealt with the coming of free Negroes into the State, the writing, printing, speaking or publishing of what they considered seditious pamphlets, the prohibition of the teaching of free Negroes or slaves, and the prevention of manumission except on the condition that the emancipated be removed from the State.86 Finally, in 1859, the State, like some others, provided for voluntary enslavement of free Negroes.87 Florida enacted measures very much like that of these other States, although it did not act so promptly as the States which were apparently more alarmed. These measures covered the restrictions upon manumission, then the prohibition of the intermarriage of the races, the selling of free Negroes for fines against them, the prevention of their emigration, the provision for the guardianship of free Negroes, the penalization of the sale of drugs to them, and the act for their voluntary enslavement.88 As the institution of slavery had about passed away by gradual process in most of the Northern States at the time of Nat Turner's Insurrection, the precautions required in the economy of the South were unnecessary in the North. These States, however, were unusually frightened by the increased immigration of free Negroes into these commonwealths. Thinking that they might be overrun by such a population, many of the Northern communities became arrayed against the free Negroes already resident, and especially against those seeking refuge from oppression in the South. Pennsylvania, then a place of frequent race riots resulting from this influx of free Negroes, easily became induced to provide for the disfranchisement of Negroes in the new constitution framed and ratified in 1838. In 1823, New York restricted Negro suffrage to such persons as owned $250 worth of property. New Jersey confined suffrage to whites in its constitution of 1834. Connecticut, having already done this in 1833, was moved by the fears of the infiux of the Negroes to take more drastic action because of an
81 Laws of 1832, Jan. 16. 82 Laws of 1851-62, Nos. 14, 17. 83 Laws of 1853-64, No. 52. 84 Hutchinson's Digest, ed. 1848, 949. 85 lbid., 540-542. 86 Laws of Louisiana, 1830, p. 90, sec. 1. 87 Ibid., 1859, c. 275. 88 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 190-195.
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excited multitude at Canterbury in that State where Prudence Crandall decided to admit Negro girls to her school. Connecticut enacted a special law prohibiting such an institution from admitting free persons of color from outside of the State, and imprisoned Prudence Crandall under this law when she dared to violate it.89 In other free States of the West, there was also some evidence of this fear of the influx of Negroes sometimes culminating in riots, but not so much legislation followed for the reason that most of these cases had already been provided for in their respective black codes. Indiana more rigidly exacted a bond of Negroes and mulattoes coming into the State for permanent residence,90 and so did Illinois in 1829 and in 1831, making this more stringent in 1853.91 Michigan's constitution of 1835 limited the elective franchise to the whites. On the whole, however, the fear excited by the insurrection among Negroes was easily abated by the failure of such insurrections and the increasing interest of Northern agitators in the abolition of slavery. During the 'thirties and 'forties there appeared at various points persons in the leadership of ardent abolition like William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Frederick Douglass. Making such a good case for the Negro, they tended to excite sympathy for the fugitives. When the South in its aggressive attitude in the recapture of fugitive slaves violated certain principles of liberty so dear to those who remembered the struggle for the rights of man during the American Revolution, the Northern States became still more sympathetic. They enacted measures against the kidnapping of free Negroes and passed personal liberty laws guaranteeing them the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury. These measures, however, were nullified by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the Dred Scott Decision. On the whole, however, there was a striking difference between the status of the free Negro and that of the slave. The free Negro gradually lost ground during the reactionary period, but he did not become as helpless as the slave. The free Negroes still retained their right to acquire and dispose of property and to do so could employ the general means effecting the transfer of property. The courts early upheld the right of the Negro to devise property to another. Laws to this effect were enacted as were also other measures to validate titles to real estate and other property with the exception of dogs and guns mentioned above. Russell points out that the inviolability of the property rights of the free Negro was an effective argument against the frequent proposals to remove the entire free Negro population from Virginia. It was considered a hardship to bring their property into market all at once to be sacrificed by one precipitate sale.92
89 90 91 92 Hurd, Law of Freedom and Bondage, II, 45-46. Laws of 1831, an act relative to crimes, etc., sec. 12. Laws of 1829, Jan. 17; an act respecting free Negroes, sec. 1; Ihid., 1831, Feb. 1. Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 90.
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This right to own property extended even to that of owning white indentured servants and slaves. Early in the history of the colonies, as in the case of Virginia, in 1670, Negroes and Indians were prohibited from owning white indentured servants, but were still permitted to acquire property in persons of their own color.93 This right to own Negro slaves remained until the reactionary period incident to the fears aroused by Nat Turner's Insurrection during the 'thirties. However, in certain parts, it was never taken away altogether. The reason for the change in attitude was not only that the whites were desirous of maintaining slavery as the normal condition of the blacks, but particularly because free Negroes, for benevolent reasons, often purchased members of their family that they might thereafter be manumitted for a nominal sum. An effort was made to prohibit this by restricting manumission, but free Negroes thereafter continued to purchase their wives, or husbands, or children and to hold them in slavery since they could not manumit them if they were to remain with them. A man, therefore, often purchased his wife, or the wife her husband, or the parents their children. This led to unusual complications upon the death of the free owner if he died intestate. If there were no relatives legally qualified to receive the inheritance, such property escheated to the State, inasmuch as slaves were not considered as persons before the law. Permitted to own property, the free Negro could not escape the burden which was imposed upon property owners. In fact, instead of being exempt from taxation, the free Negro was sometimes required to pay a higher poll tax than the white man. The position taken was that although the free Negroes should not be allowed all the privileges of the whites, they should still be held as liable to carry their part of the burden of the State. There were some exceptions in this case, as it happened in Virginia in 1769, with the exemption of free Negro, mulatto and Indian women and all wives other than slaves of free Negroes, mulattoes and Indians. This, however, left the male free Negroes subject to the payment of the same taxes collected from the white man.94 Virginia made further discrimination in capitation taxes in 1813 when it laid a special poll tax of $1.50 on all free Negroes above sixteen years of age when not bound out as apprentices. The idea here was not so much to increase the revenue of the State as it was to get rid of this class of population.95 However, the records show that the Negroes generally met this obligation and thereby made it impossible for any large number to suffer the penalty of being reduced to a state of servitude. Virginia imposed on the Negroes a special tax to raise funds to deport them to Liberia but used most of this money for other purposes.96 The Negroes in Baltimore paid $500 in school taxes in 1859, although their children could not attend the city schools.
93 Hening, Statutes at Large, II, 280. 94 Hening, Statutes at Large, VIII, p. 393. 95 Acts of 1812-1813, p. 20; 1814-1815, p. 8. 96 Acts, 1849-1850, p. 7.
ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT
IV. ECONOMIC ACHIEVEMENT
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The right of the free Negro to trade and to own property might have enabled him to make much more economic than civic or political progress, had not various forces operated to the contrary. To reenforce the institution of slavery by rendering impossible its overthrow through stimulus to servile insurrection, the economic rights of the free Negroes were restricted during the reactionary period. Furthermore, agricultural labor being furnished by the slaves, the free Negroes in the South as a majority had to be content with the odd jobs and menial service in the cities and towns of the largely non-slaveholding areas, while the fortunate few served as mechanics and artisans. And yet, while availing themselves of these limited opportunities, they were restricted as to locomotion in the South. They could be arrested as vagrants and sold into servitude if they were found beyond the limits of the district in which they had legal residence. In most reactionary States, a slave manumitted had to leave within a certain time; and free Negroes already resident had to go also unless they could find some white man to give bond for their good behavior or unless the legislature granted them a permit to remain.1 In the North the free Negroes were also often handicapped by restrictions on their movements. These appeared either in the actual laws or in the operation of race prejudice most bitterly expressed in the antagonism of trade unions and the attacks of foreigners immigrating into this country to compete with the Negroes in menial service.2 What the free Negroes actually accumulated under these circumstances, moreover, was prematurely lost in their having to leave the South under legal proscription or public opinion, in their being driven from place to place by mobs breaking up Negro settlements already transplanted from the South to the North, and in the undergoing of still another transplantation to Liberia 3 and Canada. The free Negroes in the South as a majority, however, were economically efficient. This is proved by the demand for them as laborers among the very persons who indiscriminately criticised them as vagabonds and lepers of society. These unwarranted statements may be traced largely to the enemies of the race and to the promoters of colonization. Having all sorts of ill-founded fears as to the evils from the residence of free Negroes in their commonwealths, the propagandists often said about the free Negroes almost anything which happened to come to their minds. Some of this criticism, of course, came from those interested in the poor whites who failed in competition with the free Negroes. The latter had a lower standard of living and manifested a tractability which made them more
1 See laws cited above under " The Negro before the Law." 2 Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, Chapter III. 3 Ibid., Chapters IV and V.
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acceptable to their white employers because they could pay them less and make them do more work than could be expected of their competitors.4 The economic worth of the free Negroes in the South is attested especially by the fact that although there were frequent petitions for such a drastic law as to compel the deportation of free Negroes, those States in which this class of the population was most numerous never enacted such a measure, and those which did never rigidly enforced them. There went up to the legislatures, also, word to the effect that, on the whole, the free Negroes were needed to supply the demand for labor. This was especially true of the Seaboard Slave States from which ambitious slaveholders moved to settle in the lower South where free Negroes were few and were not permitted to increase.5 From these very States, too, went also the poor whites of the uplands into the Northwest Territory where slavery was prohibited, and where the migrating whites met the free Negroes in a different atmosphere.6 Evidence as to the actual economic progress of the free Negro in the South, however, is not abundant except in unexploited sources which, for years to come, will doubtless remain unavailable. The facts already collected here and there are convincing, but they leave the investigator feeling that there was much more which cannot be scientifically determined. The master class could not be expected to speak of the economic success of the free Negroes, for that would be a direct argument against the policy of slavery. The active abolitionists were eliminated from the South by 1840 and could study the situation only from afar; and even if they had known of such instances, it would have been foreign to their plans and purposes to emphasize the progress of the Negroes in the land of slavery. The colonizationists deliberately tried to prove the impossibility of social and economic progress of the Negro in the United States to make a strong case for deportation. Yet, from all of these sources there may be obtained unconsciously given evidence to the effect that wherever free Negroes had a chance in the South they substantially grounded themselves in forming a permanent attachment to things economic so as to make their group more and more sufficient unto itself. Using what limited opportunities they had, moreover, some of these free Negroes accomplished what might be considered exceptional. Many of them owned slaves who cultivated their large estates.7 In 1818 a Negro bought a sailmaker in Charleston. Richard Richardson sold a slave woman and child for $800 to Alexander Hunter, guardian of the Negro freeman Louis Mirault of Savannah. Anthony Orddingsell, a free man of color, sold a slave woman in the same city in 1833. Of 360 persons of color in Charleston, 130 of them were assessed with taxes on 390 slaves in 1860.
4 5 6 7 States Ibid., Chapters IV and V. The Journal of Negro History, VIII, 367-383. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, 1-60. For the names of the Negro slaveholders see "Free Negro owners of Slaves in the United in 1830" in the Journal of Negro History, IX ,41-85.
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In some of these cases, as in that of Marie Louise Bitaud, a free woman of color in New Orleans, in 1832, these slaves were purchased for personal reasons or benevolent purposes, often to make their lot much easier. They were sometimes sold by sympathetic white persons to Negroes for a nominal sum on the condition that they be kindly treated. A Charleston Negro who purchased his wife for $700 sold her at a profit of $50 because she would not behave herself. In the same way John Norvell's father of Cumberland County, Virginia, disposed of his wife a few years before the Civil War. A Negro named Creighton, living in Charleston, South Carolina, accumulated considerable wealth which he finally decided to devote to the colonization of the Negroes in Liberia. He disposed of his property, offering his slaves the alternative of being liberated on the condition of accompanying him to Africa or of being sold as property. Only one of his slaves accepted the offer, but he closed up his business in Charleston, purchased for the enterprise a schooner of his own, and set sail for Liberia in 1821. Samuel Martin, a benevolent slaveholder of color residing at Port Gibson, Mississippi, purchased his own freedom in 1829, and thereafter purchased two mulatto women with their four children, brought them to Cincinnati in 1844, and emancipated them. Among the prosperous free Negroes in the South may be mentioned Jehu Jones, the proprietor of one of the most popular hotels in Charleston and owner of forty thousand dollars worth of property. A Negro in Lexington, Kentucky, was worth $20,000 in 1830.. In 1833, Solomon Humphries, a free Negro well known by men of all classes in Macon, Georgia, kept a grocery store there and had more credit than any other merchant in the town. He had accumulated about twenty thousand dollars worth of property, including a number of slaves. There lived Thomy Lafon in New Orleans, where he accumulated real estate to the amount of almost half a million dollars, and in the same city a woman of color owning a tavern and several slaves. Cyprian Ricard bought an estate in Iberville Parish, with ninety-one slaves, for about $225,000. Marie Metoyer, of Natchitoches Parish, possessed fifty slaves and an estate of more than 2,000 acres. Charles Rogues of the same community left forty-seven slaves in 1848. Martin Donato, of St. Landry, died that year, leaving a Negro wife and children possessed of 4,500 arpents of land, eighty-nine slaves and personal property worth $46,000.8 In 1848, S. Wesley Jones of Tuskaloosa, Alabama, had been a successful business man for about ten years. A Negro in St. Paul's Parish, South Carolina, was said to have two hundred slaves, and a white wife and son-in-law, in 1857. These Negroes, however, were exceptions to the rule. Most useful free Negroes in urban communities belonged to the artisan class, and there were more of them than one would think. In Southern cities most of the work in the mechanic arts was done by Negroes, as there was less discrimi8 These evidences of achievement are given in detail in Woodson's The Negro in Our History, Chapters VIII and IX.
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nation in this field in the South than in the North. Contrasting the favorable conditions of Southern Negroes with that of those in the North, a proslavery man referred to Charleston, South Carolina, as furnishing a good example of a center of unusual activity and rapid strides of thrifty free Negroes. Enjoying these unusual advantages, the Negroes of Charleston were ranked early in the nineteenth century by some as economically and intellectually superior to any other group of such persons in the United States. A large portion of the leading mechanics, fashionable tailors, shoe manufacturers, and mantua-makers were free Negroes, who had " a consideration in the community far more than that enjoyed by any of the colored population in the Northern cities." 9 In the South where the majority of white men were too lazy to work, the free Negroes had less competition than in the progressive North. In the South, the free Negroes had served largely as barbers, coopers, carpenters, mechanics, cabinet makers, wheelwrights, chair-makers, bricklayers, plasterers, tanners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, millers, sawyers, wood-dealers, draymen, hucksters, gardeners, confectioners, bakers, fishermen, fishmongers, oysterers, commanders of boats, lead miners, day laborers, attendants of persons, household servants, seamstresses, and laundresses. A few were toiling in the capacities of musicians, merchants, and undertakers. There were some prosperous Negro farmers owning considerable land. Before the reaction, some had distinguished themselves not only as innkeepers of their own group but had been accepted by the whites as teachers, preachers, and physicians.10 A crisis, however, was impending. There arose the desire to exploit the Negro more efficiently in the revolutionized industrial world. Fears of servile insurrection and an intense race prejudice operated to circumscribe, restrict, hamper, and finally to debase the free Negro to a status differing little from that of the slaves. About the only difference between the status of the two was that the free Negroes might own such property as the whites ordained from time to time t h a t they might possess. To keep down the free Negro class, laws restricting manumission were enacted to limit this benevolence of white men by imposing difficult conditions, as in Virginia in 1806. Thereafter these freedmen were to be sent out of the State unless their former masters gave assurance that they would not become a public charge.11 How the economic progress of the Negro was impeded may be seen by the hostile attitude of Southern whites which necessitated a transplantation to free soil in the North. Because the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, was broken up by the whites excited over the Denmark Vesey Plot in 1822, a considerable number of
9 Woodson, The Education of the Negro, 129-130. 10 Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, Chapter V; Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 149, 150; Woodson, The Education of the Negro prior to 1861, 129-130. 11 See laws cited above.
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thrifty free Negroes led by Morris Brown left for the North where they had to start life anew.12 In North Carolina, where the free Negroes enjoyed civic and political privileges longer than in any other Southern commonwealth, the sympathetic Quakers took it upon themselves to transplant to communities in the Northwest Territory a large group of free Negroes who had found the changed conditions in North Carolina so intolerable as to prefer migration.13 Because of the Virginia drastic laws the father of Richard DeBaptiste and Marie Louise Moore, the mother of Fannie M. Richards, led a colony of free Negroes from Fredericksburg to Detroit.14 For about similar reasons, the father of Robert A. Pelham conducted other such progressive Negroes from Petersburg, Virginia, in 1859, the immediate cause being the killing of this man's dog in compliance with the law that free Negroes should not possess firearms, dogs, or poisonous drugs. 15 From Maryland and Virginia, there went many free Negroes as individuals or in families to Philadelphia, Columbia, York, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg as did others from Tennessee and Kentucky to urban centers like Ironton, Portsmouth, and Cincinnati, just across the Ohio.16 With no further possibility for increasing in the South, the North was sought as an asylum from an intolerable situation. Going to the North in such large numbers, however, the free Negroes complicated matters there with a more difficult race problem. The few natives of their color had been assimilated by the Northern communities, but the newcomers in the rough were not acceptable. Most Negroes who became free as a result of manumission had been dependents so long that they had lost their initiative. When thrown upon their own resources in the North where they had to make opportunities, they failed. By increasing the number of those seeking economic opportunities in the North, moreover, they so cheapened the labor as to make it difficult for the free Negroes already there to earn a livehhood. They were, therefore, branded by the writers of that time as the pariahs of society. There was, in fact, as much prejudice against the free Negroes in parts of the North as in the South. This feeling, however, resulted largely from the antipathy engendered by the competition of the Negroes with the large number of Germans and Scotch-Irish immigrating into this country before the Civil War. Some few Negroes facing these conditions returned South early in the nineteenth century and reenslaved themselves rather than starve in the North. A larger number in the South, however, were enslaved against their wills.17 They were ordinarily arrested as suspected fugitives, or for theft, vagrancy, and illegal residence, and finally sold for jail fees. As Negroes in these cases were not allowed to testify in their own behalf, the
12 Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 77-78. 13 Woodson, A Century of Negro Migrations, Chapter II. 14 The Journal of Negro History, I, 23-33. 15 Ibid., 23. 16 Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, Chapter III. 17 See laws above.
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official arresting them generally preferred against them whatever charge best suited the convenience and disposed of the Negroes accordingly. Many free persons of color in the South were sold under the acts justifying such reenslavement.18 Much of this repression was instituted for the intimidation of free Negroes that they might never join with slaves in an insurrection. The actual economic progress of the Negroes in the North under such untoward circumstances is a monument to their initiative. Here the situation was in some respects worse than it had ever been in the South. Competition with Northern whites even in menial service made the life of the Negro more problematic. Free Negroes were willing to do almost anything to earn a livelihood, but too often every door was closed. The abolitionists themselves, who fearlessly denounced slavery, were often silent on the employment of Negroes in the higher pursuits of labor. Sometimes it was necessary for the Negro men to depend upon their wives for support, inasmuch as the latter could find employment as washerwomen and seamstresses when their husbands had to remain idle. In the large cities of the North like New York and Philadelphia, however, where Negroes had been living for generations, not a few of them found opportunities at skilled labor embracing all of the occupations like those of mechanics and artisans followed by persons of color in the South. A few of them functioned in their communities, too, as bakers, shopkeepers, innkeepers, manufacturers, brokers, dealers in real estate, preachers, teachers, physicians, editors, and publishers.19 Some of the cases of enterprise of Negroes in the North may be passed in rapid review. Joseph C. Cassey and William Piatt became rich lumber merchants in Western New York. Henry Topp came forward as a leading merchant tailor in Albany. Henry Scott of New York City founded and promoted for a number of years one of the most successful pickling establishments in that metropolis. Along with him arose Thomas Downing, a caterer, and Edward V. Clark, a prosperous jeweler. Other Negroes were building churches, establishing schools, and editing newspapers promoting the interests of the people of color.20 In Pennsylvania, where Negroes were found in large numbers, more evidences of progress were noted. The Negroes of Philadelphia had taxable property to the amount of $350,000 in 1832, $359,626 worth in 1837, and $400,000 worth in 1847. They had established before emancipation more than a score of churches with which were connected more than a hundred benevolent societies and a number of schools. Five hundred of these Negroes were mechanics, and a considerable number ranked as business men. Among the latter were James Forten, a sail manufacturer,
1 Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland; and Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia. 8 19 Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, 41, 125 n.; Quillin, Color Line in Ohio, 50-52; Haynes, The Negro at Work in New York City, Chapters I and II. 20 Woodson, The Negro in Our History, Chapter IX; ibid.. Chapter IX.
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Joseph Casey, a broker, and Stephen Smith, a lumber merchant. Benjamin Richards of Pittsburgh was accumulating wealth in the butchering business, and Henry M. Collins of the same city was developing a real estate enterprise of considerable proportions.21 The free Negroes, moreover, exhibited not only the power to take care of themselves in old communities, but blazed the way for progress of the race in all but forbidden fields. In the Northwest Territory, where many free Negroes from the South were colonized, their achievements were no less significant. In a few years they took up thirty thousand acres of land in Southern Indiana and about as much in Ohio. A settlement of Negroes in Cass County, Michigan, prospered as thrifty farmers. Then there were outstanding individuals. Luke Mulber came to Steubenville, Ohio, in 1802, hired himself out to a carpenter for ten dollars a month during the summer and went to school in the winter. At the expiration of three years he could do rough carpentry work and had about mastered the fundamentals of education. With this as a foundation he rose to a position of usefulness among the people of his town. Becoming a contractor, he hired four journeymen and gave such satisfaction that he was often called upon to do more than he could. David Jenkins, of Columbus, Ohio, was then a wealthy planter, glazier, and paper hanger. One Hill of Chillicothe was its leading tanner and currier. 22 In Cincinnati, where, as a group, the Negroes had their best opportunity, many made rapid strides forward. By 1840 the Negroes of this city had acquired $228,000 of real estate. One Negro was worth $6,000. Another, who had purchased himself and family for $5,000 a few years prior to 1840, was worth $1,000. Still another had paid $5,000 for himself and family and bought a home worth $800 to $1,000. A freedman, who was a slave until he was twenty-four years of age, then had two lots worth $10,000, paid a tax of $40, and had 320 acres of land in Mercer County, Ohio. His estate altogether was worth about $12,000 or $15,000. A woman who was a slave until she was thirty then had property worth $2,000. She had also come into potential possession of two houses, on which a white lawyer had given her a mortgage to secure the payment of $2,000 borrowed from this thrifty woman. Another Negro, who was on the auction block in 1832, had spent $2,600 purchasing himself and family, had bought two brick houses, valued at $6,000, and had purchased in Mercer County, Ohio, by 1840, 560 acres of land, said to be worth $2,500.23 Out of this group in Cincinnati came some very useful Negroes. Among these may be mentioned Robert Harlan, the horseman; A. V. Thompson, the tailor; J. Presley and Thomas Ball, contractors; and Samuel T. Wilcox, the merchant, worth $60,000 in 1859. There were among them two other successful Negroes, Henry Boyd and Robert
21 Southern Workman, X X X V I I , 158-166. 22 Ibid., pp. 124-152. 23 Ibid., pp. 124-152.
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Gordon. Boyd was a Kentucky freedman who helped to overcome the prejudice in Cincinnati against Negro mechanics by inventing and exploiting a corded bed, the demand for which was extensive throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. He had a creditable manufacturing business, in which he employed twenty-five men.24 Robert Gordon, his contemporary, was doubtless a more interesting character. He was born the slave of a rich yachtsman in Richmond, Virginia. His master placed him in charge of a coal yard, which he handled so faithfully that his owner gave him all of the slack resulting from the handling of the coal. This he sold to the local manufacturers, accumulating thereby in the course of time thousands of dollars. He purchased himself in 1846 and after inspecting several Negro settlements in the North went into the coal business in Cincinnati. Having then about $15,000, Gordon made much more progress in this coveted enterprise than his competitors desired. They thereupon reduced the price of coal so as to make it unprofitable for Gordon to continue in the business. He was shrewd enough to fill all of his orders at the white coal yards by making his purchases through mulattoes who could pass for white. Soon there followed a general freezing on the Ohio River, making it impossible to bring coal down the river. Gordon then sold out his supply at advanced prices, so increasing his wealth that he was later in a position to invest extensively in United States bonds during the Civil War and afterward in real estate on Walnut Hills in Cincinnati.25 In the North, however, the free Negroes were still far from being permanently settled. There developed an increasing race prejudice in the various towns of the North to which the Negroes went. This operated not only to deprive them of opportunities for employment and facilities of education and social uplift, but led to a riotous state of things which jeopardized even the lives of the free Negroes. The culmination of this was a number of riots, one in Philadelphia in 1834, another there in 1838, and still another in 1843. Similar outbreaks took place in New York City and in Palmyra in 1834, and one in Pittsburgh in 1839. On a "Black Friday," January 1, 1830, eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio, at the request of one or two hundred white citizens, set forth in an urgent memorial.26 In Cincinnati, the volcanic state was reached in 1827, repeated in 1836 and again in 1841. The feeling was so intense that hundreds of Negroes were driven from the city.27 Deportation, then, was urged as the only avenue of escape from this situation in the North. To this end persons thus interested had organized the American Colonization Society in 1816 and through various agents had popularized the movement among the whites throughout the country.
24 The Journal of Negro History, I, 1-22. 25 Ibid., pp. 1-22. 26 Evans, A History of Scioto County, Ohio, p. 643. 27 Woodson, The Negro in Our History, pp. 140-144.
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Under such auspices, Liberia was founded as an asylum fox the persecuted free Negroes in the United States and for such slaves as conscience-stricken masters might be impelled to manumit. The republic developed unsatisfactorily. As the free Negroes of the North were too poor and insufficiently pioneering in their make-up to transplant themselves to soil so far away, and the large majority of their group were opposed to the scheme anyway, very few of them availed themselves of such an opportunity. Furthermore, the manumission of slaves in the South did not rapidly increase as was expected. The deportation of the free Negroes to Liberia, therefore, did not materially diminish the free Negro population in the United States.28 Among the Negroes themselves there was more interest in colonization in such other quarters as Texas, Trinidad, Haiti, and Canada. The movement to Canada became considerable during the 'forties and 'fifties. Passing largely through Detroit as a gateway to Canada, most of these fugitives settled in communities of Southern Ontario. These were Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor, Sandwich, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines, Chatham, Riley, Anderton, London, Maiden and Gonfield.29 While most of the Negroes who went to Canada had a better outlook on life and made some progress there, the situation was decidedly different in the case of Liberia. The very movement so far away from the shores of America, although it did not effect the deportation of a large number, tended to drain off a considerable portion of the most progressive part of the Negro population into a wilderness where many of them were lost in the midst of destructive diseases in a country offering few opportunities for their enterprise. Most of these persons going to Liberia had to have some talent or a trade, persons well selected as showing initiative or talent. A few instances 30 as to the class of persons thus interested in going to Liberia will show exactly how most progressive and enterprising Negroes were thus lost to the race. Writing to the Colonization Society in 1847, James Drew of Clarksville, Mecklenburg County, Virginia, mentioned as prospective emigrants to Liberia several families that owned considerable property. Expressing in a letter to the Colonization Society in 1848 the desire to go to Liberia,31 Sherry J. Jackson, of Colchester, Connecticut, said that his father was a wealthy man, but he would not give the son a cent because he wanted to go to Liberia. 32 S. Wesley Jones, residing in Tuskaloosa, Alabama, in 1848, wrote of having a ten years' business to close up before he could sail for that country.33 A. Judson Crane, a white man of Richmond, Virginia, informed the Colonization Society in 1848 of
28 The Journal of Negro History, I, 276-301. 29 Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration, 35-36. 30 Journal of Negro History, I, 301. 31 Ms. of the American Colonization Society, Letters of 1847. 32Ibid.,1848. 33 Ibid., 1848.
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the high character of Edlow Baker whom he recommended as a very gqpd physician. 34 In 1848, Jacob Anderson communicated with the Society at the request of Alfred Evans who had considerable estate. W. H. Burnham, of Louisville, Kentucky, wrote in 1848 that he wanted to take with him to Liberia from $1,000 to $3,000 worth of goods.35 J. B. Jordan, of New Orleans, said in 1850 that several men of property from that city and Mobile were preparing to go, and some three or four men of families, good workmen posessing means and intelligence. He himself was an accountant and in twelve months expected to have $1,300 cash. Another Negro was interested in establishing in Liberia a saw-mill business and had $2,000 in cash to invest in the enterprise.36 John W. West of Rutland, Dane County, Wisconsin, expressed interest in the Society in 1851, but was getting along so well as a farmer among his neighbors, who accepted him and his children on the basis of social equality, that he did not see why he should go.37 J. W. Jones, of Shelby County, Ohio, informed the Colonization Society in 1853 that he would go to Liberia if he could sell his land.38 The Negroes remaining almost as a whole in this country, moreover, were forced to vagrancy not only by custom and local legislation, but by that of the United States Government itself. As a result of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, there set in a trek of the Negro population from the free States in the North into Canada. This movement was evidenced by various comments to this effect appearing in the organs of thought published through these respective States. This migration was effected largely through the Underground Railroad which was put in fine working order by the rigid enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. A few days after President Fillmore had signed the Fugitive Slave Bill, a reporter for The Liberator said that nearly all the waiters in the Pittsburgh hotels had fled to Canada. "Sunday," said he, "30 fled; on Monday, 40; on Tuesday, 50; on Wednesday, 30; and up to this time the number that has left will not fall short of 300." A Hartford correspondent reported that on October 18, 1850, that 5 Negroes had left that place for Canada. On October 2 there came from Utica the news that 16 had thus departed. The EastportSentineloi March 12 carried the report that 12 fugitives had reached that town on the steamer Admiral en route to St. John. The New Bedford Mercury said: " W e are pleased to announce that a very large number of fugitive slaves, aided by many of our most wealthy and respected citizens, have left for Canada and parts unknown and that many more are on the point of departure." The Concord, New Hampshire, Statesman said: "Last Tuesday, seven fugitives from slavery passed through this place
34 Ibid., 1848. 35 Ibid., 1848. 36 Ibid., 1850. 37 Ibid., 1851. 3 Ibid., 1853. 8
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. . . and they probably reached Canada in safety on Wednesday last. Scarcely a day passes but more or less fugitives escape from the land of slavery to the freedom of Canada . . . via this place over the track of the Northern Railroad." 39 In 1850, the colored population of Columbia, Pennsylvania, dropped from 943 to 487.40 The Negro community in the northwestern part of that State where many of them had bought farms was broken up entirely.41 The African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo lost many communicants. Out of a membership of 114, the Negro Baptist Church of Rochester lost 112 including its pastor. About the same time 84 members of the African Baptist church of Detroit crossed into Canada.42 More than 40 members of a fugitive slave congregation of Leonard A. Grimes in Boston, fled to Canada. From Chicago, some years later, more than 100 Negroes left on a single train following the arrest of a fugitive. These fears among the Negroes, moreover, seemed to stimulate rather than stop the escape of fugitive slaves from the South through the rapidly increasing operations of the Underground Railroad, culminating sometimes in such exciting cases as those of Shadrack, "Wellington, Anthony Burns, Jerry McHenry, the Parkers, and the Lemmon Slaves. Exactly how many Negroes were thus displaced it is difficult to determine. Statistics show, however, that there was a movement of the Negroes from the communities of the Southern States near the border line between freedom and slavery toward the Canadian border and then from there into Canada itself. In his article on the Negro migration into Canada after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, Mr. Fred Landon comments thus: "While the free Negro population of the North increased by nearly 30,000 in the decade after 1850, the gain was chiefly in three States, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. Connecticut had fewer free people of color in 1860 than in 1850 and there were half a dozen other States that barely held their own during the period. The three States showing the gains were those bordering on Canada where the runaway slave or the free man of color in danger could flee when threatened. It is estimated that from fifteen to twenty thousand Negroes entered Canada between 1850 and 1860, increasing the Negro population of the British provinces from about 40,000 to nearly 60,000. The greater part of the refugee population settled in the southwestern part of the present province of Ontario, chiefly in what now comprises the counties of Essex and Kent, bordering on the Detroit River and Lake St. Clair." 43 Some contemporary coinments will support this investigator in his conclusion. Hiram Wilson, an American missionary stationed at St.
39 Journal of Negro History, V, 22-36. 40 Siebert, The Underground Railroad, p. 249. 41Ibid.,p. 294. 42 Ibid., p. 250. 43 The Journal of Negro History, V, 22-36.
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Catherine, said in the Liberator, December 13, 1850, "Probably not less than 3,000 have taken refuge in this country since the first of September. Only for the attitude of the North there would have been thousands more." He reported that his church and others in that community were all thronged with fugitives arriving by way of the Detroit River. About one year from that day he reported 17 arrivals in one week. On April 22, 1852, he noted 15 arrivals within a few days.44 These Negroes were often persons of means and they carried considerable property into Canada. According to The Voice of the Fugitive "Men of capital with good property, some of whom are worth thousands, are settling among us from the northern states." In the issue of October 22, 1851, The Voice of the Fugitive reported that "22 from Indiana passed through to Amherstburg, with four fine covered waggons and eight horses. A few weeks ago six or eight such teams came from the same state into Canada. The Fugitive Slave Law is driving out brains and money." Sometime thereafter, this same paper said: " W e know of several families of free people of color who have moved here from the northern states this summer who have brought with them property to the amount of 30,000."45 In spite of these evidences of the ability of the Negro to rise against the teeth of opposition, many writers undertook to prove in characteristic fashion that the free Negro as a class would not work and cited statistics showing that they were prone to criminality. Some of these charges, moreover, were supported by striking truths. The large number of Negroes fleeing from slavery were trying to get away from work. The very system of slavery taught the Negro that work is dishonorable and that the exploitation of one man by another is the objective to be attained. Migrating under such circumstances, the Negro easily drifted into vagrancy. The fugitive, however, was soon disillusioned. Facing the stern realities of life, then, most of them readily settled down to hard labor wherever there was an opportunity; but, as stated above, this they could not always find. These critics, then, blamed not the Northern communities which denied the Negro migrants a chance to earn a livelihood, but blamed the victims of their economic hostility. Most of this criticism was an effort to carry a point in favor of colonization and against abolition. There were those who generalized on the " shiftlessness " of the free Negro population whenever it was made known that one of the group had committed a crime, just as communities massacre or burn up a Negro section of a city today because the criminal is traced to that quarter. Men of just as high order and reflecting just as well the public opinion wrote and spoke to the contrary in referring to the work of various free Negroes in behalf of whom they memorialized the legislature to grant them permits to remain in the State.
44Ibid.,23. 45Ibid.,28.
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It can be easily established that there were improvident free Negroes, criminally disposed and often guilty of theft; but such persons constituted a small percentage of the entire group. It can be proved, too, that there appeared among the free Negroes a disproportionate number adjudged as such undesirables, sometimes twice as many as those of the whites; but the free Negroes were debased to this position by law and custom which they could not control. Such evil tendencies were not inherent in the free Negroes. The chances were rather the other way, for the originally free Negroes were easily assimilated to the standard of the whites; and in spite of the fact that slavery naturally tends to make the bondman a thief, a slave was not usually manumitted until he had demonstrated his honesty and efficiency. When custom and law, however, so proscribed the free Negroes as to restrict them to certain occupations and hamper them in pursuing those left open to them, they could not all provide themselves with necessities of life. Under such circumstances it is the weakness of human nature to steal. The extent to which the Negroes as vagrants resorted to theft, however, cannot be determined by the contemporary comments to this effect nor by the actual statistics compiled to condemn the free Negroes. In the first place, there were at that time few communities in this country which were not downright hostile to free Negroes. They were, therefore, arrested, convicted, and punished under almost any pretext, and too often to deter others from immigrating and to compel those resident to move to some other community. One half of the "crimes" of which Negroes were adjudged guilty, moreover, were offenses for which a white man could not be penalized. Many of the "crimes" of free Negroes, too, were mere deeds of humanity in civilized countries. In Virginia in 1848, for example, ten out of eighty-one free Negroes in the penitentiary were guilty of aiding or abetting slaves to escape from their masters. It is the height of absurdity, then, for any investigator to posit anything on such data, especially when historians agree that the laws were not administered as rigidly against the whites as against the free Negroes. Those making such unwarranted assertions did not take into account that white persons placed in the position of the free Negroes would have had a higher criminal record than the whites sitting in judgment on a class that they despised. To arrive at the truth, one must consider the opinions of the many white persons of that day, who saw the injustice of this and commented accordingly, although they did not have sufficient influence to change the attitude of the majority.
V. SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS
From the very beginning of the colonies there was little social distinction on account of race, very much to the contrary of statements of many misled by the idea of the immigration of the cavalier element into this country. Moreover, there was little, if any, caste originating in the
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social order of the European countries from which the earhest settlers came. Social distinction in this country did follow soon after its settlenaent, but it was based on wealth, on the initiative of men who had the pioneering spirit and blazed the way in the economic exploitation of this new land. The country was in need of men who could conquer the wilderness, and fortunate were those who could perform their part in the struggle with nature. In the agricultural colonies, most of such persons were the planters; in other parts they were the trading and merchant classes. As the Negroes were first brought here as indentured servants and only thereafter were debased to the status of slaves, some of the race became free during this transition, and took their places in the communities with the planters and commercial classes. These fortunate Negroes met all the requirements of the aristocracy of that day. Exactly what proportion of Negroes became thus socially distinguished, however, cannot now be accurately determined. In the first place, a line between the races became more marked as the white indentured servant tended to pass into freedom while the Negro indentured servant approached more and more the status of the slave. 1 In the next place, when slavery finally became accepted as the normal condition of the majority of Negroes, there came with this assumption the inevitable caste of color. Hoping to escape the unfortunate results of this change in attitude, Negro freemen showing little color passed as whites; and holding themselves aloof from the slaves while still in the process of race admixture, most of these Negro aristocrats were lost in the white race before the widening of the great divide.2 Social distinction with respect to race, however, was not immediately effected. It first appeared in the effort to prevent intermarriage, as laws sketched above will attest; but it required much propaganda before these laws availed much. The records show that so much race admixture continued that such legislation had to be reenforced from time to time to prevent miscegenation. It seems that the aristocratic minority making laws for the colony was not supported by the majority of poor whites and the middle classes. The less haughty members of the Caucasian race had to be converted to the idea of caste of color. By the time of the American Revolution, however, most of the colonies had assumed the attitude of making the Negro the lowest element of the social order. But even then the program could not be easily carried out, because this very struggle for the rights of man tended to wipe out caste. In stimulating manumission in the South, and working out emancipation in the North, the movement contributed to the elevation of the Negro in the social order. It was not until the doctrine of all men being created equal had been somewhat forgotten and the Negro became more debased in the changing fortunes of
1 The Journal of Negro History, VIII, 247-283. 2 Ibid., III, 335-353.
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the industrial revolution that the next generation settled down seriously to the task of promoting social distinction.3 The very first aspect of this social equality monster, however, was not so much of a spectre as it is today. While intermarriage became proscribed by law and custom, it did not then seem necessary for a member of one race to treat the other with discourtesy. Whites and blacks continued for some time to visit one another in their homes, to eat together, to attend the same church and the same school. As early teaching in the colonies was often the task of intelligent white indentured servants taken from the prisons of Europe, it was not considered improper for educated Negroes to function in the same capacity among the whites. John Chavis thus served some of the most aristocratic white people of North Carolina as late as a generation before the Civil War.4 Distinctions in religion developed later than those in education. For fear of the wrath of the Almighty the haughty has been a little slower in injecting caste into the church. The aristocratic Anglican Church and its Protestant Episcopal successor never permitted its administration to be influenced by poor whites and Negroes; but after the grant of toleration the evangelical sects appealing directly to these very classes made inroads on the Negroes by accepting all as equal before God and consequently deserving equal and just treatment among men. The Quakers were pioneers in the antislavery movement, and Baptists and Methodists took the same position during their first efforts in the New World. The Negroes were not easily stirred by the doctrines of the Quakers and Presbyterians, but they flocked into the folds of the Methodists and Baptists, who won them by successfully socializing the Gospel, by popularizing the appeal with emotional preaching designed to move the illiterate to repentance. Comparing the situation as thus developed with that of the religious restrictions and persecutions of colonial days, persons thought of the approach of the millennium. Negroes and whites sat in the same pew, preached from the same rostrum, and found their final resting place in the same burying ground.5 Some of these instances of Negroes preaching to whites are interesting. Lemuel Haynes, a soldier of the American Revolution, served as a Congregational preacher to the whites at various points in New England beginning in 1780. About the same time, William Lemmon was called by a white congregation to serve at the Pettsworth or Gloucester church in Virginia. At Portsmouth in the same State, Josiah Bishop, a Negro Baptist preacher, was placed in charge of the First Baptist church in 1795. " Uncle Jack," a preacher from plantation to plantation in Virginia, thus served the whites from the year 1792 for more than forty years. Contemporaneous with "Uncle Jack" was Henry Evans, a free Negro preacher of Virginia. On
3 Ibid., III, 350. 4 Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, 75-76, 116, 117. 5 Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, Chapters II and III.
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his way to South Carolina to work at the trade of shoemaking, he tarried at Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he preached so effectively, converting so many whites, that there could be organized a Methodist church in that town in 1790. Probably the most forceful of these preachers to both races was "Black Harry," who, accompanying Asbury, Garrison, Watcoat and Coke, learned to preach niore eloquently than these gentlemen themselves. Serving both races in the same capacity, John Chavis, otherwise known to fame as a teacher to whites, thus toiled successfully in North Carolina and Virginia 6 until the preaching of Negroes was proscribed by the legislation subsequent to the South Hampton Insurrection in Virginia. Some years later, however, there came a radical change. The poor whites in these evangelical churches developed in the rapid economic exploitation of the country to the extent of becoming slaveholders having the same interests as the aristocratic whites. The white communicants of these churches, then, ceased to attack slavery and began to elbow the Negroes to a special pew or gallery or separate meeting houses. There followed, therefore, a protest from the Negroes who had enjoyed equality in these connections. In 1793, for example, Thomas Jones living near Soldier's Delight, Baltimore County, Maryland, in advertising for a runaway slave, said: " H e was raised in a family of religious persons, commonly called Methodists, and has lived with some of them for years past, on terms of perfect equality; the refusal to continue him on these terms, the subscriber is instructed, has given him offense, and is the sole cause of his absconding." 7 This protest of the Negro, however, became more effective than a mere effort to escape from the condition. There were other workers who declared their independence of the white connections rather than worship with the whites under humiliating restrictions. To meet the special spiritual needs of the Negro, David George, George Liele, and Andrew Bryan began the organization of separate Baptist churches in South Carolina and Georgia as early as 1773. This example was followed by other Negro ministers of this faith in Petersburg, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. The independent church movement, however, assumed organized form under Negro Methodists led by Richard Allen, who along with some others were pulled off their knees while they were in the attitude of prayer in St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Others of this group joined with Absalom Jones to establish the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas in that city. At the same time, Negro Methodists in New York, chief, among whom were James Varick, Francis Jacobs, William Brown, Peter Wilhams, Abraham Thompson, June Scott, Samuel Pontier, Thomas Miller, William Miller, and William Hamilton, withdrew from the John Street Methodist
6 Ibid., 40-70. 7 The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, June 14, 1793.
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Episcopal Church to organize a congregation which eventually developed into the African Methodist Episcopal Zion denomination.8 The independent Methodist movement in the South, however, did not flourish. Because the members of the African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston led by Morris Brown were charged with some connection with the Denmark Vesey Plot of 1822, they were barred from further worship in that city; and the denomination did not have any opportunity for proselyting thereafter in the lower South. The Negro preachers of the other faiths continued their independent work here and there until the reaction made it necessary to proscribe more rigidly this much feared class. Finally they were silenced in most of the South by the legislation enacted as a result of the fears of Nat Turner's Insurrection which was wrongly attributed to the influence of the Negro preacher. Negro slaves and even free Negroes were, thereafter, compelled to accept whatever ministrations the laws of this new epoch permitted. Whether they wanted to do so or not they had to sit in the Negro pew or gallery or were required to attend special services in the same meeting house where the whites worshipped at a different hour.9 Some of these independent Negro churches remained but their preaching was safeguarded with special legislation. In those churches in which the Negro was permitted to function as a minister, he had to be licensed upon the recommendation of well-established church organizations in his community; and then if he preached, he had to do so in the presence of a prescribed number of "wise and discreet" white men. Most of the large Negro churches were assigned to white ministers whom many considered better prepared to preach to the Negro such gospel as they thought best for them than could be expected of a Negro preacher under the most rigid restrictions.10 With respect to the facilities for education, the Negro suffered more than in the case of the church. A distinction in education had come about inadvertently. The frequent acts of manumission and emancipation of the American Revolution period turned loose upon society a large number of Negroes who required education and training in citizenship. Special schools for them were therefore deemed necessary to meet the peculiar needs of these freedmen in the rough. Among the founders of these schools, however, there was no thought of segregation for the sake of caste. Whereas the former education of the Negro had been religious and cultural, these freedmen had to be trained in the practical things of life. The new schools offered courses in the trades along with the fundamentals. While the boys were trained to become mechanics and artisans, girls specialized in home industries. Special schools for the Negroes, then, were established in practically all urban communities of the country. North and South11
8 For a more detailed treatment of these facts see Woodson's History of the Negro Church, Chapter IV. 9 Ibid., 52, 69, 71, 72. 10 Ibid., Chapter VII. 11 Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, 75-76, 116, 117.
In the course of time, however, the whites easily found other reasons for further distinction in education. Feeling that there was always the danger of servile insurrection, planters in the South believed that slavery could be safeguarded only by preventing the Negro from undergoing any mental development. It was pointed out that the leaders of servile insurrections had practically all been enlightened Negroes able to read and write. Discussing the Gabriel Plot in 1800, Judge St. George Tucker said: "Our sole security then consists in their ignorance of this power (doing us mischief) and their means of using ita security which we have lately found is not to be relied on, and which, small as it is, every day diminishes. Every year adds to the number of those who can read and write; and the increase in knowledge is the principal agent in evolving the spirit we have to fear." 12 The officials of South Carolina reported that Denmark Vesey, a man of much ability, was in the habit of sitting around at Negro shops and stores reading to them passages from the newspapers relating to Santo Domingo and the debates on slavery in connection with the admission of Missouri.13 In this way it was reported that he exerted a preponderating influence over the people of color in Charleston. To prevent such enlightened Negroes from thus liberating their fellows, most of the Southern commonwealths enacted measures to deprive the Negro of the opportunity for education. South Carolina and Georgia in 1740 and 1770, respectively, had enacted measures prohibiting the teaching of slaves. In 1829, Georgia strengthened her regulation to this effect, prohibiting the teaching of slaves and free persons of color and their employment in the setting up of types in printing offices. In 1834, South Carolina, in addition to enacting a more stringent law for the prevention of the teaching of Negroes and for the destruction of their schools, provided that persons of African blood should not be employed as clerks or salesmen in or about any shop or store or house used for trading. In 1831, Virginia took the position that the meeting of any free Negroes for teaching them reading or writing was an unlawful assembly. That same year, Mississippi and Louisiana reached this end by depriving the undeveloped members of the race of the helpful contact of the enlightened group in requiring free persons of color of specified ages and characters to leave the State within a certain time. Delaware enacted a measure to the effect that no congregation or meeting of free Negroes or mulattoes of more than 12 persons should be held later than 12 o'clock at night, except under the direction of "three respectable white persons." However, it was not until 1863 that Delaware passed a positive measure to prevent the assemblage of persons of color for instruction. Alabama enacted in 1832 a measure making it unlawful to teach any slaves or free persons of color to spell, read, or write. In 1832,
1 Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, p. 157; and Letter of St. George Thicker in 2 Joshua Coffin's Slave Insurrections. 13 The City Gazette and the Commercial Daily Advertiser, Aug. 21, 1822; and The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, Aug. 30, 1822.
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when Florida merely enacted a law prohibiting the assemblage of Negroes except for divine worship, Alabama enacted a measure imposing a fine of from $250 to $500 on persons who should attempt to educate any Negro whatsoever. After North Carolina assumed its reactionary attitude toward the Negro in its constitution of 1835, it was specifically provided that the benefits of its public school system should not accrue to any descendant of Negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive." In the free States, the distinctions in education were also continued, although the Negro seemed to gain ground in certain parts. In Pennsylvania some assistance of the State to Negro schools was given as early as 1802 when an act was passed providing for free instruction. Additional help came by further legislation in 1804 and 1809 when education was provided for all the poor children of the commonwealth. Negroes, however, did not profit by such measures for the reason that public opinion did not permit them to enter the schools, although there was no special law to the contrary. At Columbia, Pennsylvania, the names of such colored children as were entitled to the benefits of the law for the education of the poor were taken in 1818 to enable them to attend the free public schools. Following the same policy, the Abolition Society of Philadelphia, seeing that the city had established public schools for white children in 1818, applied two years later for the share of the fund to which the children of African descent were entitled by law.15 The request was granted. The Comptroller opened in Lombard Street in 1822 a school for children of color, maintained at the expense of the State. This furnished a precedent for other such schools which were established in 1833 and 1841.16 Harrisburg had a Negro school early in the century, but upon the establishment of the Lancastrian school in that city in the 'thirties, the Negro as well as the white children were required to attend it or pay for their education themselves. The Negroes thereafter endeavored to profit by education at public expense; but, as a majority, they were barred from so doing until after the Civil War.17 In other parts, there seemed to be a more favorable attitude toward Negro education. After 1844, the Negroes of New Jersey were considered entitled to the benefits of the public school fund on the grounds that it was provided for the equal benefit of all people of that State. They were therefore, admitted to the public schools without distinction. However, separate schools still remained in that State.18 In New York, there was adopted the policy of organizing schools exclusively for Negroes as early as 1823. In 1824, the New York Common Council appropriated a portion of its funds to support the African Free Schools which had been established
14 For a more detailed statement of these facts see Woodson's Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, pp. 159-178. '15 Special Report of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 379. 16 Ibid., 379. 17 Wickersham, History of Education in Pa., p. 253. '18 Special Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 400.
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there in 1787 by the New York Manumission Society. In 1841, the New York legislature authorized any district with the approbation of the school commissioners to establish a separate school for Negro children in their locality. In New York City, the manumission schools referred to above were taken over by the New York public school system in 1834. Thereafter, the schools did not do as well as they had done. The administrative part of the work almost ceased, race riots interfered with attendance, the innovation with respect to charity schools did not appeal well to the Negroes, and the system was reduced from an advanced to primary grade. With the transfer of the Negro schools to the Board of Education in 1853, a better system evolved.19 Caste in the public schools, however, was not exterminated until 1900 when Theodore Roosevelt, as governor, signed a bill to this effect.20 Rhode Island provided special schools for Negroes also. Such an institution was established at Providence in 1828. In 1838, the State provided for a more equal distribution of the school fund with respect to the Negro population. In this segregated condition they had the opportunity for acquiring the fundamentals in the city of Providence.21 In Connecticut, at the instigation of the school system, the State authorized the establishment of separate schools for Negroes, a provision from which they derived little benefit, inasmuch as no buildings were provided for in this legislation. In places where the Negroes could make such provisions themselves, as did the pastor of the Negro Congregational church in Hartford in 1846, some benefits were secured to the Negro children. Otherwise, they were without educational facilities. With renewed agitation for adequate support, the separate schools for Negroes were finally amply provided for in measures taken in 1852. They remained as such until 1868 when the schools were declared open to all persons without regard to color.22 In Massachusetts, Boston appeared with the first separate public school for Negro children in the year 1820. Later they were established in Salem, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Lowell. In that State, however, there set in very soon a fight against caste in education which resulted in the admission of Negroes to the public schools open to whites. New Bedford took this position in 1838 and the other smaller towns followed soon thereafter. In Boston, however, there ensued a bitter contest, but the victory was won there finally by 1855 under the leadership of Charles Sumner.23 In other towns in New England where Negro schools had early existed they soon passed away with the development of the public school system which offered educational facilities to all persons without regard to color.
19 Ibid., 366; and Randall, History of Common School System of New York, 24. 20 Ovington, Half a Man, 19; and Laws of New York, 1900, Chapter 492. 21 Stockwell, History of Education in R. I., 51. 22 Special Report of the United States Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 334. 23 Report of the Minority of the Committee of the Primary School Board on the Caste Schools of Boston, 21.
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In the States of the West more trouble was experienced in safeguarding this distinction in education. In Ohio, it was enacted that the amount raised from the taxation provided in the measure to establish schools should be appropriated to the support of common schools in the respective counties and that these schools should be "open to the youth of every class and grade without distinction." 24 As some interpreted this to include Negroes, the State passed a law in 1829 excluding them from the benefits of such system and returning them the amount accruing from the school tax on their property.^25 The Negroes received no benefits from the public school system in that State from that time until 1849 when there followed a measure providing such schools for them.26 They suffered here, however, as they had in the case of Connecticut, in that the law did not make special provisions for buildings and there was a disinclination to turn over to Negro trustees the amount due them in the apportionment of this school fund. The transfer of the schools to the management of the white schools, moreover, did not help things very much. They had still to look to private enterprise and such philanthropies as that which came in the building of a comfortable school for them in 1858 by Nicholas Longworth.27 Distinctions in education were more rigidly made in Indiana than in Ohio. Nominally, white and black children had equal privileges there, but in 1837 it was provided by law that the white inhabitants alone of each congressional township should constitute the local school corporation. When, in 1841, there came to the legislature a petition requesting for the Negroes a share of the school fund, the committee to which the matter was referred reported that legislation on that subject was inexpedient.28 In 1853, when a better system for the education of the whites was worked out, it was specifically provided that in all enumerations the children of color should not be taken, that the property of the blacks and mulattoes should not be taxed for school purposes, and that their children should not derive any benefit from the common schools of that State.29 At the same time, a resolution instructing the educational committee to report a bill for the establishment of Negro schools was overwhelmingly defeated. The reason given was that it was better for the weaker party that no privilege be extended to them, as the tendency to such might be to induce the vain belief that the prejudice of the dominant race could ever be so mollified as to break down the rugged barriers that must forever exist between their social relations.30 While the situation was better in Illinois than in Indiana, it was far from encouraging. The constitution of 1847 excluded Negroes from the
24 Laws of Ohio, X X I I I , 37 et seq. 25 Hickok, The Negro in Ohio, 85. 26 Laws of Ohio, L I I I , 117-118. 27 Special Report of the United States Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 372. 28 Laws of a General Nature of the State of Indiana, 1837, p. 15. 29 Ibid., 1855, p. 161. 30 Boone, History of Education in Indiana, 237.
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benefits of the school law by stipulating the word " w h i t e " throughout the measure. The same law provided that the amount of school taxes collected from Negroes should be returned, but it did not state what was to be done with the amount thus accruing. In districts having control of their local affairs, however, provision was sometimes made for the education of the children of Negroes.31 In other States of the Northwest Territory where Negroes were found in, smaller numbers, the problem offered an easier solution. After 1848, Negroes were legal voters in the school meetings of Michigan. Their children were enumerated with others to determine the basis for the apportionment of the school funds, and were allowed to attend the public schools. Wisconsin granted Negroes equal school privileges. 32 After the adoption of a free constitution in 1857, Iowa determined no man's rights by the color of his skin. Wherever the word white had served to restrict the privileges of persons of color, it was stricken out to make it possible for them not only to bear arms and to vote but to attend public schools. 33 California developed separate schools, too, in the midst of the struggle between the free and slave state factions, but the system finally passed away with the new freedom. The social status of the Negro was further degraded with respect to living conditions. In the country they lived largely in log cabins rudely constructed, without adequate light and ventilation. In urban communities they were compelled to live in the most undesirable and unsanitary districts and in uncomfortable quarters which white persons would not occupy. Their furniture was of the meanest sort in keeping with the wretched huts in which they lived crowded together in squalor very much like the poor in the tenements in the large cities. To aggravate the condition a good many of the free Negroes were unable to obtain adequate food. Suffering sometimes from unemployment because of competition with slave labor, they could not always secure a fare as liberal as that of the bondmen themselves. When, however, they were hired to the employers of the well-to-do class or had connection by marriage with slave women who cooked for such families, their diet was somewhat better. As a rule, their wearing apparel was not of any better quality than that worn by the slaves and sometimes inferior to that of the bondmen. Such meager provision in the midst of a general apathy with respect to the uplift of the free Negro class, moreover, availed little in keeping down the high mortality. In the case of a plague sweeping through the country, the unsanitary Negro district which the city neglected at its own expense was too often the first point where the germ engrafted itself upon the population and desolated it in appalling fashion. The excessive death rate, however, as one writer has pointed out, was obviously the result of
31 Special Report of the United States Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 343. 32 Ibid., 400. 33 Journal of the Const. Conventions of the State of Iowa, 1857, p. 3 of the constitution.
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the operation of the combined forces of physical environment in Negro homes, of dissolute habits, and of the hardship and denials of the life they led. As a case in evidence, he points out that the approach to an equivalent in the rate as between the free Negroes and slaves in Baltimore in the years of 1850 to 1860 was probably due to the improvement of the conditions.34 That neither law nor custom in certain parts encouraged proper marriage relations of free Negroes was a handicap to social betterment. However, in some cities, the legal requirement in this respect was carefully carried out and the marriage of free Negroes recorded like those of the whites. When a free person consorted with a slave, no marital obligation was enforced at law unless the slave had been purchased by the free party to the contract as it sometimes happened. Thus debased with respect to the very essential thing in social relations, chastity was sometimes at a low ebb, for the free Negro men were permitted to run as they pleased, and the women were not only the prey to the scoundrels of their own race but were too often subdued by their lustful white employers. To relieve this deplorable condition welfare associations sometimes offered relief. The free Negroes of the better classes had such organizations themselves and where the Quaker and antislavery element came into contact with them, such whites usually made some provision for moral uplift along with the employment of Negroes and the apprenticeship of their children.35 It might appear from what has been said above that the free Negro was an outcast denied contact with the whites and the slaves and removed by distance from social intercourse with the Indians. In the beginning, however, as stated above, this was not exactly the situation with respect to the whites, as they had to be converted to the idea of social distinction. This task had been very well performed by the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. However, the fact that the mulatto class constituted a large proportion of the Negro population shows that there had been some very close relations of white persons with Negroes prior to that time. With respect to the Indian there were no restrictions as to intermingling. The two races, differing little in condition, despised and rejected alike by the whites, seemed to appreciate that they had much in common. It is to be noted, too, that in attacking the whites the Indians often spared the Negroes. Their close social relations led to the development of a class known as mixed breeds commonly classified in legislation as subject to the same disabilities as those of the free Negroes. At certain points, however, the Negroes and the Indians thus interbreeding constituted communities of considerable size in which they were socially sufficient unto themselves. This is especially true in the case of such groups as the Gingaskin reservation, a settlement of Nottaway Indians, and the Pamunkeys in King
34 Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, 252-256. 35 Constitution of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery.
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William County in Virginia.36 Other striking examples appear in the cases of the Marshpee, the Gay Head, and other Indian reservations in Massachusetts.37 In the reports, then, Negroes are sometimes returned as Indians and vice versa. The free Negroes had their most social contact with the slaves themselves. In the first place, very often the free Negroes were not numerous in a community and some association being necessary, they naturally drifted toward the members of their own race, regardless of their servile condition. In a few cases of a considerable number of free Negroes in the same community, moreover, the line was not distinctly drawn. Although free, the Negro did not have much more education or much more wealth than some slaves; and in communities in which the hostility of the whites was such as to deprive the free Negroes of employment, they were sometimes reduced to the necessity of depending upon what charitable contributions the slaves might make for their support. At times, too, the free Negro and the slave worked side by side at the same task with no difference in status except that the one had all of his wants supplied in return for his labor, whereas the other was paid a wage to provide for himself. 38 This close relation between the slaves and the free Negroes, however, did not always obtain in the towns and large urban centers like Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans. Being of sufficient numbers to make upon the community the impression of a distinct class and to be of mutual benefit to one another in working out their economic and social salvation, they could more easily hold themselves aloof from the slaves, and they were more inclined so to do. Although restricted to certain quarters of the city not kept in as sanitary condition as that for the whites, they were after all better off than the slaves living in the undesirable quarters near their masters' homes or on the plantations. In such centers, moreover, free Negroes established their own churches and schools which served as social centers effective in the general uplift, whereas the slaves were generally denied the privilege of education and had their worship closely restricted under the supervision of the local government. With the coming of the reaction of the industrial revolution, however, the usual privileges once granted to the free Negroes in the South were thereafter taken away except under the rigid control differing little from that of the slaves.39 In the change, however, there was still a factor contributing to the distinction between the free Negroes and the slaves in some urban communities. Laws were enacted depriving the free Negro of the right to associate with slaves in any way whatever; and where such a law did not exist, public opinion usually accomplished the same purpose. The free Negroes were
36 Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 41, 127-130. 37 The Journal of Negro History, V, 45-62. 38 Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 130-137; Wright, The Free Negro in Maryland, 243, 259-260. ^ Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, Chapter VII.
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either required not to associate with the slaves or they were made to feel that being better than the slaves they should not assemble with them. The one was taught to hate the other. The slaves referred to the freedmen as "old issue free" and the free Negroes applied to the slaves such epithets as might best express their haughtiness and superciliousness in dealing with bondmen occupying a lower status than theirs. Although the white man had the idea of widening the gap between the two that they might never join in a servile insurrection, the free Negroes did not have sufficient penetration to divine the purpose of the master class. This distrust and dislike of the free Negro for the slave and the slave for the free Negro, moreover, continued even into freedom. There may be discovered in some of these centers today like Charleston, South Carolina, the same line of cleavage and the same caste as existed there prior to the Civil War, just as the descendants of the master class still look with contempt upon the. poor whites.40
40 This is based on the testimonies of persons who participated in this discrimination.
EXPLANATION OF T H E TABLES These were not all of the free Negro families in this country in 1830, but all of those officially reported as living apart from the whites. Many free Negroes lived in the homes of their employers as did indentured servants or slaves. Some few of these are herein confusingly reported, but such information was not generally given. These records were copied just as those who took the census returned their findings. The only change made in the case of the Free Negro Heads of Families was to write the Christian name first, a rule which these enumerators did not all follow. Some enumerators made no distinction as to race in recording the names, but merely indicated the status of the head of the family under free persons of color. Other enumerators wrote Negro, C, Co., Cold, or Colored, or used F. N. for free Negro, F. of C. for free person of color, F. M. C. for free man of color, F. W. C. for free woman of color, or fb, and fbk. for free black, directly after the name. Other such records of distinction are selfexplanatory. The question mark after a name or a figure or in a column indicates that the record is such that the fact could not be accurately determined. The column giving the AGE does not every time show the age of the head of the family. In some instances the age of the head of the family cannot be exactly figured out. The age here given is that of the oldest person in the family of the sex indicated as the head of the family. In eighty per cent of the cases which the investigator has tested, however, it can be shown that this is the actual age of the head of the family. The record as to sex, moreover, is often confusing. The name of a male is sometimes given as the head of the family while the sex is indicated as female, or vice versa. " 10-24" means 10 years of age and under 24, " 2 4 - 3 6 " means 24 years of age and under 36, " 36-55 " means 36 years of age and under 55, " 55100 " means 55 years of age and under 100. 100 etc. means a hundred or more than a hundred years of age. TOTAL means the number of persons in the family together with all of the slaves. The slaves owned by these families have been accounted for in the Editor's Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830.
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Free Negro Heads of Families in The United States in 1830 - Together With A Brief Treatment of The Free Negro - by Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D.

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Free Negro Heads of Families in The United States in 1830 - Together With A Brief Treatment of The Free Negro - by Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D.

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BRIEF TREATMENT OF THE FREE NEGRO

CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.

T H E ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF NEGRO L I F E AND HISTORY, INC. WASHINGTON, D . C .

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HEADS OF F R E E NEGRO FAMILIES BY STATES

1 2 2 7 16 21 21 23 24 26 30 39 40 67 73 73 73 74 74 84 110 123 130 153 155 159 162 163

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE ORIGIN OF THE FREE NEGRO

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE ORIGIN OF THE FREE NEGRO

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE ORIGIN OF THE FREE NEGRO

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE ORIGIN OF THE FREE NEGRO

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

PREVENTING THE INCREASE OF THE FREE NEGROES

FEEE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

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THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

F R E E NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

THE FREE NEGRO BEFORE THE LAW

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

FREE NEGRO HEADS OF FAMILIES

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