American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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In the compendium of the United States census of 1850 there are printed in
parallel columns the statistics of occupations among the free colored males
above fifteen years of age in the cities of New York and New Orleans. In
the Northern metropolis there were 3337 enumerated, and in the Southern
1792. The former had 4 colored lawyers and 3 colored druggists while the
latter had none of either; and the colored preachers and doctors were 21
to 1 and 9 to 4 in New York's favor. But New Orleans had 4 colored
capitalists, 2 planters, 11 overseers, 9 brokers and 2 collectors, with
none of any of these at New York; and 64 merchants, 5 jewelers and 61
clerks to New York's 3, 3 and 7 respectively, and 12 colored teachers to 8.
New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as
many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted
with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers,
tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in
much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed,
were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to
mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas
at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male
domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable
to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess
of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a
reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the
places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated
in virtually all the classes but that of unskilled laborers. New York's
poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the
greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a
strain of negro blood.

This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more
severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked
that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in
proportion as they are emancipated." Fanny Kemble, in her more vehement
style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed,
but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own
despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not
tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free
certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offscum and the
offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to
thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the
most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn
the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall
Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that
prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a
prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the
African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded
a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River
steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He
said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily
and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he
preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from
white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than
in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after
buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had
promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh,
I don't like dat Philadelphy, massa; an't no chance for colored folks dere.
Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I
couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an'
cum back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were
prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had
bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the
state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public
meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would
not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up
the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored
girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded
free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were
already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes clustered numerously, from Boston
to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded
from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether
from mobs or individual persecutors.[56]

[Footnote 51: Frances Anne Kemble, _Journal_ (London, 1863), p. 7.]

[Footnote 52: Marshall Hall, _The Two-fold Slavery of the United States_
(London, 1854), p. 17.]

[Footnote 53: _Seaboard Slave States_, p. 636.]

[Footnote 54: _Ibid_., p. 104.]

[Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p.
20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.]

[Footnote 56: J.P. Gordy, _Political History of the United States_ (New
York, 1902), II, 404, 405; John Daniels, _In Freedom's Birthplace_ (Boston,
1914), pp. 25-29; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_ (Washington,
1911), pp. 143-168, 195-204, containing many details; F.U. Quillin, _The
Color Line in Ohio_, pp. 11-87; C.G. Woodson, "The Negroes of Cincinnati
Prior to the Civil War," in the _Journal of Negro History_, I, 1-22; N.D.
Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.]

In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the
practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was
there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an
attitude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their
descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen
petitioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain
in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of
commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern petitions were
of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city
council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that
your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our
midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated.
We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may
readily be guessed that these petitioners were more moved by the interest
of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern
protests of another class, to be discussed below, against the toleration
of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public
security, not by personal dislike.

[Footnote 57: Cf. N.S. Shaler, _The Neighbor_ (Boston, 1904), pp. 166,
186-191.]

[Footnote 58: _E. g_., J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp.
152-155.]

[Footnote 59: J.H. Martin, _Atlanta and its Builders_ ([Atlanta,] 1902), I,
145.]

Although the free colored numbers varied greatly from state to state,
their distribution on the two sides of Mason and Dixon's line maintained
a remarkable equality throughout the antebellum period. The chief
concentration was in the border states of either section. At the one
extreme they were kept few by the chill of the climate; at the other
by stringency of the law and by the high prices of slave labor which
restrained the practice of manumission. Wherever they dwelt, they lived
somewhat precariously upon the sufferance of the whites, and in a more or
less palpable danger of losing their liberty.

Not only were escaped slaves liable to recapture anywhere within the United
States, but those who were legally free might be seized on fraudulent
claims and enslaved in circumvention of the law, or they might be kidnapped
outright. One of those taken by fraud described his experience and
predicament as follows in a letter from "Boonvill Missouria" to the
governor of Georgia: "Mr. Coob Dear Sir I have Embrast this oppertuniny of
Riting a few Lines to you to inform you that I am sold as a Slave for 14
hundard dolars By the man that came to you Last may and told you a Pack
of lies to get you to Sine the warrant that he Brought that warrant was a
forged as I have heard them say when I was Coming on to this Countrey and
Sir I thought that I would write and see if I could get you to do any thing
for me in the way of Getting me my freedom Back a Gain if I had some Papers
from the Clarkes office in the City of Milledgeville and a little Good
addvice in a Letter from you or any kind friend that I could get my freedom
a Gain and my name can Be found on the Books of the Clarkes office Mr Bozal
Stulers was Clarke when I was thear last and Sir a most any man can City
that I Charles Covey is lawfuley a free man ... But at the same time I do
not want you to say any thing about this to any one that may acquaint my
Preseant mastear of these things as he would quickly sell me and there
fore I do not want this known and the men that came after me Carried me to
Mempears tenessee and after whiping me untill my Back was Raw from my rump
to the Back of my neck sent me to this Place and sold me Pleas to ancer
this as soon as you Can and Sir as soon as I can Get my time Back I will
pay you all charges if you will Except of it yours in beast Charles Covey
Borned and Raized in the City of Milledgeville and a Blacksmith by trade
and James Rethearfurd in the City of Macon is my Laller [lawyer?] and can
tell you all about these things."[60]

[Footnote 60: Letter of Charles Covey to Howell Cobb, Nov. 30, 1853. MS. in
the possession of Mrs. A.S. Erwin, Athens, Ga., for the use of which I am
indebted to Professor R.P. Brooks of the University of Georgia. For
another instance in which Cobb's aid was asked see the American Historical
Association _Report_ for 1911, II, 331-334.]

In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse.
That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always passed as
free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another
black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre
was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had
been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had
sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir
of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre
group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and
that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure
possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In
a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed.
About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupee Parish had permitted his slave
Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and
thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual
freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get
official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and
desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal
sale of them to a relative under pledge of emancipation. When this man
proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and
the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for
freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state
supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in
strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall
suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in
this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of
action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be
a runaway or fugitive."[62]

[Footnote 61: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, May 25, 1849.]

[Footnote 62: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the
New Orleans _True Delta_, Dec. 16, 1854.]

Kidnappings without pretense of legal claim were done so furtively that
they seldom attained record unless the victims had recourse to the courts;
and this was made rare by the helplessness of childhood in some cases and
in others by the fear of lashes. Indeed when complexion gave presumption of
slave status, as it did, and custody gave color of ownership, the prospect
of redress through the law was faint unless the services of some white
friend could be enlisted. Two cases made conspicuous by the publication of
elaborate narratives were those of Peter Still and Solomon Northrup. The
former, kidnapped in childhood near Philadelphia, served as a slave some
forty years in Kentucky and northern Alabama, until with his own savings he
bought his freedom and returned to his boyhood home. The problem which he
then faced of liberating his wife and three children was taken off his
hands for a time by Seth Concklin, a freelance white abolitionist who
volunteered to abduct them. This daring emancipator duly went to Alabama
in 1851, embarked the four negroes on a skiff and carried them down the
Tennessee and up the Ohio and the Wabash until weariness at the oars drove
the company to take the road for further travel. They were now captured
and the slaves were escorted by their master back to the plantation; but
Concklin dropped off the steamboat by night only to be drowned in the Ohio
by the weight of his fetters. Adopting a safer plan, Peter now procured
endorsements from leading abolitionists and made a soliciting tour of New
York and New England by which he raised funds enough to buy his family's
freedom. At the conclusion of the narrative of their lives Peter and his
wife were domestics in a New Jersey boardinghouse, one of their two
sons was a blacksmith's apprentice in a neighboring town, the other had
employment in a Pennsylvania village, and the daughter was at school in
Philadelphia.[63]

[Footnote 63: Kate E.R. Pickard, _The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, being the
personal recollections of Peter Still and his wife Vina after forty years
of slavery_ (Syracuse, 1856). The dialogue in which the book abounds is,
of course, fictitious, but the outlines of the narrative and the documents
quoted are presumably authentic.]

Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until
in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers
offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington.
Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free
papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans.
Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River,
lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter
had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's
commission from the governor of New York. With the assistance of the local
authorities Northrup's identity was promptly established, his liberty
procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his
wife and children at Saratoga.[64]

[Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New
York, 1853). Though the books of this class are generally of dubious value
this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation
life and labor are of particular interest.]

A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William
Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had
come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had
been offered passage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de
Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had
ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his
papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was
sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring
merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston
accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold
to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of title, refused
payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F.
Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the
British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed
his whole narrative that it might "assist the plaintiff to prove his
freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65]

[Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.]

Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping
and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among
which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66]
Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally;
but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential
value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many
thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there
were 83,942 of this class in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North
Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large.

[Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the
society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington,
Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.]

A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude,
whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under
an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two
years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions
ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various
states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to
default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects.

[Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.]

A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who
had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state
petitioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was
doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband
"from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering
as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds
William Bass petitioned the South Carolina general assembly in 1859,
reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom
he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied
man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not,
committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives
a thousand times harder and in more destitution than the slaves of many
planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act
to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive
him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such
occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted
laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at
their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to
enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia
law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any
creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which
protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master
to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia
archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely
scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from
$300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations
of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years
old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature.
An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July,
1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five
hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free
wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer
escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears
to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio
than among the whites.

[Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.]

[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.]

[Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of
negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro
who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain
his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not
thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.]

[Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.]

[Footnote 72: American Historical Association _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.]

[Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New
Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial
Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.]

Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands
were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily
maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian
government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that
republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana
proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in
1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking
colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as
well as free transportation to such as could not pay their passage.[77] But
these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to
whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose
bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done
Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to
others that they knew not of.

[Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins
University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).]

[Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the
Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions
to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and
Frontier_, II, 155-157.]

[Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States
to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and documents
furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of
British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By "A friend to the
Colored People" (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840,
advertisement.]

[Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, "The Free Negro in Louisiana" (MS.), citing the
New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.]

Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally
at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the
white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion
of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of
the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made
complete by the action of the constitutional convention of North Carolina
in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807
and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention
of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80]
Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was
likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the
North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license
and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon
movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the
procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good
behavior.

[Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently
described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior
to 1861_ (New York, 1915).]

[Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro
Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series,
III, no, I).]

[Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of
the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh
of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).]