American Negro Slavery by Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

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These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions
which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which
colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some
of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly
when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent.
Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess
among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored
inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio
to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding
prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were
about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern
whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of
actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the
discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables,
magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro
was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under
circumstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial
discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of
destitution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of
negro criminality there.

[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective
populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored
(with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and
28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_,
p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's
Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855),
p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.]

In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law.
Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a
man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his
trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches,
a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of
a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in
slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class.
"In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but
the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all
through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased
number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search
the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free
mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a
magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an
organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was
appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held
session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out.
Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro
hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to
have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial
subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter.

[Footnote 82: Washington _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North
Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.]

Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly
refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman
was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They
submitted to the regime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course,
because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there
were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had
reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry
themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks,
together with such of their mulatto confreres as were similarly inert,
had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South
commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of
both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among
the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in
fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly
their own.

The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress
upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were
doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the
whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these
institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers.
There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless
slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the
colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and
conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual
aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of
them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership
confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free
blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings
of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent
cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits
of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a
free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were
thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from
thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85]

[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York,
1909), p. 6.]

[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.]

[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.]

The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the
constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New
Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers
were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and
six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month.
Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to
its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow
members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to
wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears
of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a
subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the
duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the
official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to
see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from
the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have
charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members
as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent
of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule.
Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of
a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse
and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge
was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin,
hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all
told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify
that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as
sociable as an Irish wake.

[Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of
Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).]

Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree
in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves
intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social
strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear
to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would
not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage
the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand
the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prostitutes, or in more
favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts
particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon balls," was
a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations
to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless
cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though
clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of
some of those who to this day take the seats assigned to colored passengers
in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing
the line" has not in all such breasts been a mastering ambition.

[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.]

[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.]

The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored
element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously
disposed on the ground of their competition, the interest and inclination
of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those
whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these
men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the
freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were
enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One
of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes
and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness
of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and
contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies
of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The
general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the
virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the
influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection
that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground
of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more
than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A
citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91]
"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of
Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality
with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor
and proneness to villainy. Men of this class are peculiarly dangerous in
a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of
their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked
and deep laid plots."

[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated
against the Southern and Western States respecting the institution and
existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822),
pp. 84, 85.]

[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.]

[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12,
1819.]

CHAPTER XXII

SLAVE CRIME

The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and
customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being
enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived
of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of
individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that
their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites
who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks,
however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the
reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well
founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no
special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt.

Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were
commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and
often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences
of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the
penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious
infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict
slave regime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for
investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the
premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials
of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812
Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie
Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom,
convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each
cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each
of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816
John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill
was sentenced to whipping in similar fashion. In 1818 Aleck was found
guilty of an assault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty
lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced
for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of
manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be
given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged
with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court
had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of assault
upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded.
In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of
burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on
the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the
same day the same slave was sentenced to death for assault upon a white
man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of
burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received
sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for
murderous assault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with assault
with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the
charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's
George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was
likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832
Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous assault, was given a
whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive
days.[2]

[Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and
Social Science_, XVIII, 132.]

[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin
County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the
court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American
Historical Association _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation
and Frontier_, II, 123-125.]

A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave
circumstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as
the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy
as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became
skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the
whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro
midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time
a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was
missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its
two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky,
charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to
receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of
four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the
law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that class. The
striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are
examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of
sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the
perpetrators.

[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.]

In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of
criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that
in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave
convicts at a cost of L15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and
that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans,
much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South,
state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available
for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the
laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable
impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its
penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates
comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the
slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life
terms.[6] Classed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3
for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for
poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for assault with intent to kill, 2
for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person,
1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7]
This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content.
While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of
rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as
compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there
were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the
negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the
slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore
there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse
stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape.

[Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.]

[Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the
Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For
this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.]

[Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any
slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the
extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.]

[Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary,
January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2
slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for assault
with intent to kill.]

The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes
among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in
pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal
and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced
to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864,
except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime
rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and
tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was
1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves
convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one
woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20,
and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers
24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how
the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this
the vouchers fail to tell.

[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State
Library. They have been statistically analyzed by the present writer,
substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX,
336-340.]

For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the
master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120;
upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were
killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the
murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison,
including the administering of ground glass, 40 men and 16 women were
convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for
administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous assault there
were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male
offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed
against colored victims.

For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total
of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the
territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater
district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave
crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and
its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the
contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes
among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least
two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if
one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion
of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned
among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never
violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private
cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained
record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run
away after being punished.

[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertisement, reprinted
in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.]

For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in
Henrico County in 1800 for participation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831,
mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest
mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and unclassified cases there was one
slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery
writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes.
Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a
slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and
manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services
connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt.

As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely
silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found
in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered
a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road.
In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record
execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the
original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the
cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the
commutations were to labor on the public works.

The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given,
refute the oft-asserted Southern tradition that negroes never violated
white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be
drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester,
Massachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to
death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at
rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor
issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a
slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in
1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others,
found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white
female in the peace of God and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly
hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape
at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Washington County confessed after capture
that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her
horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circumstances
too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was
sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In
Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the
woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The
criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16]