American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more than
rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work days assumed
a grandiloquence of manner when they donned their holiday clothes. The
gayeties of the colored population were most impressive to visitors from
afar. Thus Adam Hodgson wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I
was pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this day in
their best attire, and was amused with their manners towards each other.
They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing each other, and make the
most formal and particular inquiries after each other's families."[45] J.S.
Buckingham wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays, when the
slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they move about in
every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily dressed than the whites.
The females wear white muslin and light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets,
ribbons and feathers; some carry reticules on the arm and many are seen
with parasols, while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief
before them in the most fashionable style. The young men among the
slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed hats, and carry
walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying and greetings in the
highway one might almost imagine one's self to be at Hayti and think that
the coloured people had got possession of the town and held sway, while the
whites were living among them by sufferance."[46] Olmsted in his turn found
the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the whites,[47]
and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia. The town ordinances,
while commonly strict in regard to the police of slaves for the rest of the
year, frequently gave special countenance to negro dances and other festive
assemblies at Christmas tide.

[Footnote 45: Adam Hodgson, _Letters from North America_, I, 97.]

[Footnote 46: J.S. Buckingham, _Slave States_, II, 427.]

[Footnote 47: _Seaboard Slave States_, pp. 101, 103. Cf. also _DeBow's
Review_, XII, 692, and XXVIII, 194-199.]

Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to occasional
complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans recited in 1813, among
matters needing correction, that loitering slaves were thronging the grog
shops every evening and that negro dances were lasting far into the night,
in spite of the prohibitions of the law.[48] A citizen of Charleston
protested in 1835 against another and more characteristic form of
dissipation. "There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week,
funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes ... who
disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood of burying grounds in Pitt
street near Boundary street. It appears to be a jubilee for every slave in
the city. They are seen eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters,
and such is frequently the crowd and noise made by them that carriages
cannot safely be driven that way."[49]

[Footnote 48: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 153.]

[Footnote 49: Letter of a citizen in the _Southern Patriot_, quoted in H.M.
Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in South Carolina_ (Emory, Va., 1914),
p. 144.]

The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified in
some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending September 1,
1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all, were followed in 138 cases
by prompt magisterial discharge, by fines in 309 cases, and by punishment
in the workhouse or by remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264
of the remainder. The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or
committed to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for being out at
night without tickets or being found in the dram shops or other unlawful
places. The fines imposed did not in general exceed $1, and where corporal
punishment was inflicted it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark
that of the 460 cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were
prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303 cases, and in
118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by a previous examination
421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen in the same period numbered 78, of
which 27 were followed by discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence
to the workhouse, and 10 by remandment.

In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests for being
"out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets, fighting and rioting
in the streets, following military companies, walking on the battery
contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden places, theft, or other
violation of the city and state laws" advanced for some unexplained reason
to an aggregate of 1424. Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged
after examination, 330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted
or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the fines were
paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners or guardians, 115
were runaways who were duly returned to their masters or otherwise disposed
of according to law, and the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners'
orders.[50]

[Footnote 50: Official reports quoted in H.M. Henry, _The Police Control of
Slaves in South Carolina_, pp. 49, 50.]

At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping
of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but
complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its
discontinuance. For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard
labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing
substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53]

[Footnote 51: _Columbian Herald_ (Charleston), June 26, 1788.]

[Footnote 52: Charleston _City Gazette_, Feb. 2, 1826.]

[Footnote 53: Grand jury presentments, _ibid_., May 15, 1826.]

In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their
worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes habitually participated
with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the
long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the
pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist
whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own
tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The
white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of
the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu
eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when
dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own
manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly
conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate
congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in
which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly
filled by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar
talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty
in tones to reach His ears though afar off. There the sisters might sway
and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the
spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There
not only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead of
the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon
would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm.

[Footnote 54: A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington: "On
one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in
their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was
'young King Jesus,' I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her
out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics
among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even
blasphemous. Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took
her back again. The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational
and consistent member of the church." Joseph Travis, _Autobiography_
(Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.]

In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character of
secession. An example in this line had been set in Philadelphia when
some of the negroes who had been attending white churches of various
denominations were prompted by the antipathy of the whites and by the
ambition of the colored leaders to found, in 1791, an African church with
a negro minister. In the course of a few years this was divided into
congregations of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered
to such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist Episcopal
Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other neighboring cities
included within its jurisdiction.[55] Richard Allen as its first bishop
soon entered into communication with Morris Brown and other colored
Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved at this time by the loss of
their autonomy. In former years the several thousand colored Methodists,
who outnumbered by tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had
enjoyed a quarterly conference of their own, with the custody of their
collections and with control over the church trials of colored members; but
on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled in 1815. A secret
agitation then ensued which led on the one hand to the increase of the
negro Methodists by some two thousand souls, and on the other to the visit
of two of their leaders to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained
for Charleston pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as
to the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended
stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave up their papers
simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of their six thousand
fellows withdrew their membership from the white Methodist churches. "The
galleries, hitherto crowded, were almost completely deserted," wrote a
contemporary, "and it was a vacancy that could be _felt_. The absence of
their responses and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those so
long accustomed to hear them.... The schismatics combined, and after
great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat church building.... Their
organization was called the African Church," and one of its ministers was
constituted bishop. Its career, however, was to be short lived, for the
city authorities promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a
number of participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with a
warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800 prohibiting
the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental instruction without
the presence of white persons; next by refusing, on the grounds that both
power and willingness were lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a
special dispensation; and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at
another of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen
exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from the state,
others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church nevertheless
continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence of the discovery of a
plot for insurrection among the Charleston negroes the city government had
the church building demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where
he afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole Charleston
project was ended.[56] The bulk of the blacks returned to the white
congregations, where they soon overflowed the galleries and even the
"boxes" which were assigned them at the rear on the main floors. Some of
the older negroes by special privilege then took seats forward in the main
body of the churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in
such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After complaints on
this score had failed for several years to bring remedy, a crisis came
in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833 when Dr. Capers was to preach. More
whites came than could be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused
to vacate their seats for them; and a committee of young white members
forcibly ejected these blacks At a "love-feast" shortly afterward one of
the preachers criticized the action of the committee thereby giving the
younger element of the whites great umbrage. Efforts at reconciliation
failing, nine of the young men were expelled from membership, whereupon
a hundred and fifty others followed them into a new organization which
entered affiliation with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[57]
Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless thereafter more
placid.

[Footnote 55: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington, 1911),
pp. 134-136.]

[Footnote 56: Charleston _Courier_, June 9, 1818; Charleston _City
Gazette_, quoted in the _Louisiana Gazette_ (New Orleans), July 10, 1818;
J.L.E.W. Shecut, _Medical and Philosophical Essays_ (Charleston, 1819),
p. 34; C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_ (Nashville
[1857]), pp. 212-214, 232; H.M. Henry, _Police Control of the Slave in
South Carolina_, p. 142.]

[Footnote 57: C.F. Deems ed., _Annals of Southern Methodism for 1856_, pp.
215-217.]

In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers were ordained
and their congregations instituted under the patronage of the whites.
At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom of the slave Henry Francis was
purchased by subscription, and he was ordained by white ministers at the
African Baptist Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of
Augusta, the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting his faith
in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the sacred ministry
and his ideas of church government. Giving entire satisfaction on these
important points, he kneeled down, when the ordination prayer with
imposition of hands was made by Andrew Bryant The ordained ministers
present then gave the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was
forthwith presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr.
Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in
this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers
of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later
decades. Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of
$7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation
to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the
city. The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of
white persons. The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty
white men and women as its teaching staff.[59]

[Footnote 58: Henry Holcombe ed., _The Georgia Analytical Repository_ (a
Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21. For further data concerning
Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the _Journal of Negro
History_, I, 60-92.]

[Footnote 59: J.H. Thornwell, D.D., _The Rights and Duties of Masters: a
sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C.
for the benefit and instruction of the colored population_ (Charleston,
1850).]

Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the
Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To relieve the
congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and St. Philip's, a separate
congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership.
While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob
demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation. When
the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises
the congregation dispersed. The mob's action was said to be in protest
against the doings of the "bands" or burial societies among the Calvary
negroes.[60]

[Footnote 60: _Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the
Religious Instruction of Slaves_ (Charleston, 1850).]

The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was
obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted
to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free
negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and
several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the
whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction
for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature withheld
its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished
when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law
provided it had a white pastor. At that time the First Baptist Church
of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to
accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes. The
latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister
and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee. In 1855,
when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the
Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of
government.[61]

[Footnote 61: J.B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in
Virginia_ (Charlottesville, 1914), pp. 72-83. For the similar trend of
church segregation in the Northern cities see J.W. Cromwell, _The Negro in
American History_ (Washington, 1914). pp. 61-70.]

At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations, with slave and
free membership intermingled, several of which had colored ministers;[62]
and by 1847 the number of churches had increased to thirteen or more,
ten of which were Methodist.[63] In 1860 there were two or more colored
congregations at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying
salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[64] and in Atlanta
a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of the negro church
building to relieve its congestion.[65] By this time a visitor in virtually
any Southern city might have witnessed such a scene as William H. Russell
described at Montgomery:[66] "As I was walking ... I perceived a crowd
of very well-dressed negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick
building which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into which
white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic servants, or
persons employed in stores, and their general appearance indicated much
comfort and even luxury. I doubted if they all were slaves. One of my
companions went up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green
ribbon trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and
a rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious
crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She replied, 'I b'long to
Massa Smith, sar.'"

[Footnote 62: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.]

[Footnote 63: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, p. 206.]

[Footnote 64: D.R. Hundley, _Social Relations in our Southern States_ (New
York, 1860), pp. 350, 351.]

[Footnote 65: Atlanta _Intelligencer_, July 13, 1859, editorial commending
the purpose.]

[Footnote 66: W.H. Russell, _My Diary North and South_ (Boston, 1863), p.
167.]

CHAPTER XXI

FREE NEGROES

In the colonial period slaves were freed as a rule only when generous
masters rated them individually deserving of liberty or when the negroes
bought themselves. Typical of the time were the will of Thomas Stanford of
New Jersey in 1722 directing that upon the death of the testator's wife
his negro man should have his freedom if in the opinion of three neighbors
named he had behaved well,[1] and a deed signed by Robert Daniell of
South Carolina in 1759 granting freedom to his slave David Wilson in
consideration of his faithful service and of L600 currency in hand paid.[2]
So long as this condition prevailed, in which the ethics of slaveholding
were little questioned, the freed element remained extremely small.

[Footnote 1: _New Jersey Archives_, XXIII, 438.]

[Footnote 2: MS. among the probate records at Charleston.]

The liberal philosophy of the Revolution, persisting thereafter in spite of
reaction, not only wrought the legal disestablishment of slavery throughout
the North, but prompted private manumissions far and wide.[3] Thus Philip
Graham of Maryland made a deed in 1787 reciting his realization that the
holding of his "fellow men in bondage and slavery is repugnant to the
golden law of God and the unalienable right of mankind as well as to
every principle of the late glorious revolution which has taken place in
America," and converting his slaves into servants for terms, the adults
to become free at the close of that year and the children as they reached
maturity.[4] In the same period, upon his coming of age, Richard Randolph,
brother of the famous John, wrote to his guardian: "With regard to the
division of the estate, I have only to say that I want not a single negro
for any other purpose than his immediate liberation. I consider every
individual thus unshackled as the source of future generations, not to say
nations, of freemen; and I shudder when I think that so insignificant an
animal as I am is invested with this monstrous, this horrid power."[5]
The Randolph estate, however, was so cumbered with debts that the desired
manumissions could not then be made. At Richard's death in 1796 he left a
will of the expected tenor, providing for a wholesale freeing as promptly
as it could legally be accomplished by the clearance of the mortgage.[6] In
1795 John Stratton of Norfolk, asserting his "full persuassion that freedom
is the natural right of all men," set free his able-bodied slave, Peter
Wakefield.[7] Robert K. Moore of Louisville mingled thrift with liberalism
by setting free in 1802 two pairs of married slaves because of his
conviction that involuntary servitude was wrong, and at the same time
binding them by indenture to serve him for some fourteen years longer in
consideration of certain small payments in advance and larger ones at the
ends of their terms.[8]

[Footnote 3: These were restricted for a time in North Carolina, however,
by an act of 1777 which recited the critical and alarming state of public
affairs as its occasion.]

[Footnote 4: MS. transcript in the file of powers of attorney, I, 243,
among the county records at Louisville, Ky.]

[Footnote 5: H.A. Garland, _Life of John Randolph of Roanoke_ (New York,
1851), I, 63.]

[Footnote 6: _DeBow's Review_, XXIV, 285-290.]

[Footnote 7: MS. along with many similar documents among the deed files at
Norfolk, Va.]

[Footnote 8: MSS. in the powers of attorney files, II, 118, 122, 127, at
Louisville, Ky.]

Manumissions were in fact so common in the deeds and wills of the men of
'76 that the number of colored freemen in the South exceeded thirty-five
thousand in 1790 and was nearly doubled in each of the next two decades.
The greater caution of their successors, reinforced by the rise of slave
prices, then slackened the rate of increase to twenty-five and finally to
ten per cent. per decade. Documents in this later period, reverting to the
colonial basis, commonly recited faithful service or self purchase rather
than inherent rights as the grounds for manumission. Liberations on a large
scale, nevertheless, were not wholly discontinued. John Randolph's will set
free nearly four hundred in 1833;[9] Monroe Edwards of Louisiana manumitted
160 by deed in 1840;[10] and George W.P. Custis of Virginia liberated his
two or three hundred at his death in 1857.[11]

[Footnote 9: Garland, _Life of Randolph_, II, 150, 151.]

[Footnote 10: _Niles' Register_, LXIII, 245.]

Still other large proprietors while not bestowing immediate liberty made
provisions to bring it after the lapse of years. Prominent among these were
three Louisianians. Julien Poydras, who died in 1824, ordered his executors
to sell his six plantations with their respective staffs under contracts to
secure the manumission of each slave after twenty-five years of service
to the purchaser, together with an annual pension of $25 to each of those
above sixty years of age; and years afterward a nephew of the testator
procured an injunction from the supreme court of the state estopping the
sale of some of the slaves by one of their purchasers in such way as would
hazard the fulfilment of the purpose.[12] Stephen Henderson, a Scotch
immigrant who had acquired several sugar plantations, provided as follows,
by will made in 1837 and upheld by the courts: ten and twenty slaves
respectively were to be chosen by lot at periods five and ten years after
his death to be freed and sent to Liberia, and at the end of twenty-five
years the rest were to fare likewise, but any who refused to be deported
were to be kept as apprentices on the plantations.[13] John McDonogh, the
most thrifty citizen of New Orleans in his day, made a unique bargain with
his whole force of slaves, about 1825, by which they were collectively to
earn their freedom and their passage to Liberia by the overtime work of
Saturday afternoons. This labor was to be done in McDonogh's own service,
and he was to keep account of their earnings. They were entitled to draw
upon this fund upon approved occasions; but since the contract was with the
whole group of slaves as a unit, when one applied for cash the others must
draw theirs _pro rata_, thereby postponing the common day of liberation.
Any slaves violating the rules of good conduct were to be sold by the
master, whereupon their accrued earnings would revert to the fund of the
rest. The plan was carried to completion on schedule, and after some delay
in embarkation they left America in 1842, some eighty in number, with
their late master's benediction. In concluding his public narration in the
premises McDonogh wrote: "They have now sailed for Liberia, the land of
their fathers. I can say with truth and heartfelt satisfaction that a more
virtuous people does not exist in any country."[14]