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L2 - CIVILISATION

History of African-American

slavery (1609-1865)

Anne-Claire Faucquez

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THE HISTORY OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

WEEK 1 – THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND THE MIDDLE PASSAGE WEEK 2 – COLONIAL SLAVERY WEEK 3 – SLAVERY AND THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE WEEK 4 – THE ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY WEEK 5 - THE SLAVES’ DAILY LIFES WEEK 6 – MIDTERM EXAM WEEK 7 – URBAN SLAVERY WEEK 8 – RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY WEEK 9 – ABOLITIONISM WEEK 10/11 – THE ROAD TO SECESSION AND THE CIVIL WAR

Assessment: Presence/Participation: 20% Midterm exam: 30% Final exam: 50% My contact information : Email : anne-claire.merlin-faucquez@univ-paris8.fr Blog : acfaucquez@wordpress.com

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Reading primary sources: An introduction for students Primary sources are sources that were created during the historical period that you are studying. Just about anything that existed or was created during that time period can count as a primary source — a speech, census records, a newspaper, a letter, a diary entry, a song, a painting, a photograph, a film, an article of clothing, a building, a landscape, etc. Primary sources are documents, objects, and other sources that provide us with a first-hand account of what life was like in the past. Of course you could learn about the past by reading your textbook or the conclusions of other historians but when you read a secondary source, you are essentially taking someone else’s word for what happened and trusting them to approach the subject objectively. But you can never know whether what that other person wrote about the past is valid, accurate, or thoughtful unless you’ve explored the evidence for yourself. In short, primary sources allow you to be your own historical detective, piecing together the puzzle of the past by using materials created by the people who lived it. 1. IDENTIFY THE SOURCE - What is the nature of the source? A newspaper, an oral history account, a diary entry, a government document, etc. - Who created this source, and what do I know about him/her/them? What biases have they ? What is their relationship to the things they described in the source ? - When and where was the source produced?

2. CONTEXTUALIZE THE SOURCE What do you know about the historical context for this source? What do I know about how the creator of this source fits into that historical context? Why did the person who created the source do so? 3. EXPLORE THE SOURCE What factual information is conveyed in this source? What opinions are related in this source? What is implied or conveyed unintentionally in the source? What is not said in this source? What is surprising or interesting about the source? 4. ANALYZE THE SOURCE How does the creator of the source convey information and make his/her point? How is the world described in the source different from my world? How might others at the time have reacted to this source? 5. EVALUATE THE SOURCE How does this source compare to other primary sources? How does this source compare to secondary source accounts? What do you believe and disbelieve from this source? What do you still not know — and where can you find that information?

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KEY DATES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN SLAVERY 1619 First group of twenty Africans arrives in the English settlement of Jamestown,

Virginia 1641 Massachusetts becomes the first colony to give slavery statutory recognition;

other colonies to follow include Connecticut (1650), Virginia (1661), Maryland (1663), New York and New Jersey (1664), South Carolina (1682), Rhode Island and Pennsylvania (1700), North Carolina (1715), and Georgia (1750)

1672 Creation of the Royal African Company, which monopolizes the transatlantic slave trade for the next 50 years

1688 1705

Quakers publish pamphlets condemning slavery in the colonies First slave code in Virginia

1739 Stono Rebellion in South Carolina: 100 enslaved conspirators rebel unsuccessfully and are either killed in battle or hanged

1773 Phyllis Wheatley becomes the first African American to publish a book: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

1774 Massachusetts becomes the first American colony to ban importation of slaves 1776 Declaration of Independence is adopted 1777 Vermont becomes the first U.S. territory to abolish slavery 1784 Rhode Island and Connecticut pass gradual-emancipation laws 1787

U.S. Constitution is adopted, prohibiting the importation of slaves after 1808; declaring each slave to be three-fifths of one white, or free, person (“Three-Fifths Clause”); and demanding the return of fugitive slaves to their masters Richard Allen and Absalom Jones form the Free African Society, the first civil rights organization in the United States

1789 Freed slave Olaudah Equiano publishes his autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African

1791 Haitian revolutionary Toussaint-L’Ouverture leads a successful slave revolt in St. Dominique (present-day Haiti)

1792 A colony of 1,200 black ex-slaves, formerly of Nova Scotia, resettle in Freetown, Sierra Leone

1793

Eli Whitney’s cotton gin greatly improves cotton production, stimulates Southern economies, and increases demand for slave labor U.S. Congress passes the first Fugitive Slave Law, which sanctions slave extradition and makes harboring a runaway slave a criminal offense

1815 Wealthy African American shipping merchant Paul Cuffe starts campaign to resettle free blacks in West Africa; successfully transports 38 free blacks from the United States to Sierra Leone

1816 Richard Allen convenes a conference of black Methodists in Philadelphia to establish the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church, the first independent black denomination, and presides as bishop

1820 American Colonization Society charters the ship Elizabeth for an expedition to resettle 86 blacks and build Liberia as a black republic in West Africa

1821 Missouri Compromise allows Maine to enter the Union as a free state and Missouri as a slave state; also prohibits slavery in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase

1822 Denmark Vessey, a free African American carpenter, organizes a slave revolt against an arsenal in Charleston, South Carolina; a house servant betrays the plot, resulting in the capture and hanging of Vessey and his followers

1827 State of New York abolishes slavery 1831 Nat Turner leads approximately 70 fellow slaves in a major slave rebellion in

Southampton, Virginia; some 60 whites are killed before several state forces suppress the uprising; Turner and his followers are hanged; Thomas R. Gray edits and publishes The Confessions of Nat Turner

1832 Abolitionists led by William Lloyd Garrison form the New England Anti-Slavery

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Society in Boston; Garrison expands this organization into the American Anti-Slavery Society the following year

1839 John G. Birney organizes the Liberty Party, the first U.S. antislavery political party, in Warsaw, New York

1841 African American orator, writer, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivers his first antislavery speech in Nantucket, Massachusetts

1843 Frederick Douglass publishes Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the first of three autobiographies

1848 Antislavery politicians organize the Free Soil Party to oppose the extension of slavery into western territories

1849 Harriet Tubman escapes slavery in Maryland; later, using the Underground Railroad— a hidden network of people, places, and modes of transportation used to provide fugitive slaves safe passage to the North and Canada—she returns to the South 19 times to convey 300 slaves to freedom

1850 Compromise of 1850 admits California into the Union as a free state but also toughens the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, granting federal officials authority to apprehend and return runaway slaves who escape to free states and paying a reward for these services

1852 Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sentimental antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin arouses sympathy for the abolitionist cause; it sells over 300,000 copies in the first year

1857 U.S. Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott v. Sanford that Scott cannot sue for his freedom while in a free state with his master, for a slave is the property of his or her slaveholder; this ruling denies citizenship to African Americans and extends the jurisdiction of slave-state laws to include the Northern states

1859 Militant white abolitionist John Brown, with a band of black and white rebels, unsuccessfully raids a federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia; Brown and others are hanged

1860 After the election of antislavery president Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina secedes from the Union, followed by Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to form the Confederate States of America

1861 Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Union forces at Fort Sumter, South Carolina

1863 Emancipation Proclamation frees all slaves in Confederate-held territories 1865

Civil War ends with the defeat of the South Congress ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery in the U.S.

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Can you match these 10 myths on African-American slavery with the facts?

Myths Facts 1. New World slaves came exclusively

from West Africa. a. Slaves arrived in Spanish Florida in the 16th century.

2. Kidnapping was the usual means of enslavement.

b. Sugar mills were the first true factories in the world; slaves were widely used in cities (New York) and in various kinds of

manufacturing and crafts. 3. Most slaves were imported into what

is now the United States. c. Resistance took a variety of forms ranging from day-to-day resistance, economic bargaining, running away, maroonage

and outright rebellions. 4. Slavery played a marginal role in the

history of the Americas. d. While deculturation was part of the “project” of slavery,

African music, dance, decoration, design, cuisine, and religion exerted a profound, ongoing influence on American culture.

5. The first slaves arrived in what is now the United States in 1619.

e. Well over 90 percent of slaves from Africa were imported into the Caribbean and South America.

6. Plantation life, with its harsh labor, unstable families, and high mortality,

made it difficult for Africans to construct social ties.

f. Europeans did engage in some slave raiding but the majority of slaves had been enslaved by Africans in Africa. War was the

most important source of enslavement. 7. Slaveholders sought to deculturate

slaves by forbidding African names and languages and obliterating African

culture.

g. Much of the labor performed by slaves required high skill levels and careful, painstaking effort.

8. Slavery was incompatible with urban life and factory technology.

h. African nations and communities persisted in America well into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

9. Slaves engaged almost exclusively in unskilled brutish field labor.

i. Slave labor made it profitable to mine for precious metal and to harvest sugar, indigo, and tobacco; slaves taught whites

how to raise such crops as rice and indigo. 10. Africans were transformed into

docile, passive figures j. Half of all New World slaves came from Central Africa.

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WEEK 1 – THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE AND THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

The Slave Deck of the Bark "Wildfire", June 2, 1860 issue of Harper's Weekly, illustrated how Africans traveled on the upper deck of the ship.

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v Olaudah Equiano Recalls the Middle Passage, 1789

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797), also known as Gustavus Vassa, was born in Benin (in west Africa). When he was about ten years old, he was kidnapped by Africans known as Aros and sold into slavery. After being sold multiple times, he was purchased by Europeans who shipped him to Barbados and then to Virginia. Ultimately, Equiano gained his freedom, moved to England, became a Christian missionary and abolitionist, and wrote his life story. In the excerpt below, he recounted his experience of the brutal “middle passage” across the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

Until recently, most historians trusted Equiano’s autobiography. However, in Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (University of Georgia Press, 2005) Vincent Carretta presents evidence that suggests that Equiano was probably born in South Carolina. Although this possibility certainly undermines one’s confidence in the truthfulness of Equiano’s narrative, it seems likely that he drew on stories that he had heard of the middle passage—if indeed he did not experience it first-hand. –D. Voelker

[1] The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was then riding at anchor, and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew; and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, (which was very different from any I had ever heard) united to confirm me in this belief. …

[2] Soon after this the blacks who brought me onboard went off, and left me abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of all chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore, … I was soon put down under the decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life: so that, with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick and low that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste any thing. I now wished for the last friend, death, to relieve me; but soon, to my grief, two of the white men offered me eatables; and, on my refusing to eat, one of them held me fast by the hands, and laid me across I think the windlass, and tied my feet, while the other flogged me severely. I had never experienced any thing of this kind before; and although, not being used to the water, I naturally feared that element the first time I saw it, yet nevertheless, could I have got over the nettings, I would have jumped over the side, but I could not; and, besides, the crew used to watch us very closely who were not chained down to the decks, lest we should leap into the water: and I have seen some of these poor African prisoners most severely cut for attempting to do so, and hourly whipped for not eating. …

[3] The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The

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shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable. Happily perhaps for myself I was soon reduced so low here that it was thought necessary to keep me almost always on deck; and from my extreme youth I was not put in fetters. ...

[4] At last we came in sight of the island of Barbados, at which the whites on board gave a great shout, and made many signs of joy to us. We did not know what to think of this; but as the vessel drew nearer we plainly saw the harbor, and other ships of different kinds and sizes; and we soon anchored amongst them off Bridge Town. Many merchants and planters now came on board, though it was in the evening. They put us in separate parcels, and examined us attentively. They also made us jump, and pointed to the land, signifying we were to go there. We thought by this we should be eaten by these ugly men, as they appeared to us; and, when soon after we were all put down under the deck again, there was much dread and trembling among us, and nothing but bitter cries to be heard all the night from these apprehensions, insomuch that at last the white people got some old slaves from the land to pacify us. They told us we were not to be eaten, but to work, and were soon to go on land, where we should see many of our country people. This report eased us much; and sure enough, soon after we were landed, there came to us Africans of all languages. We were conducted immediately to the merchant’s yard, where we were all pent up together like so many sheep in a fold, without regard to sex or age. . . .

[5] We were not many days in the merchant’s custody before we were sold after their usual manner, which is this: On a signal given, (as the beat of a drum) the buyers rush at once into the yard where the slaves are confined, and make choice of that parcel they like best. The noise and clamor with which this is attended, and the eagerness visible in the countenances of the buyers, serve not a little to increase the apprehensions of the terrified Africans. … In this manner, without scruple, are relations and friends separated, most of them never to see each other again.

SOURCE: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, the Africa (London, 1789).

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WEEK 2 – COLONIAL SLAVERY

v SLAVE AUCTIONS

Dealers Inspecting an African American at a Slave Auction in Virginia, Harper's Weekly; February 16, 1861

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WEEK 3 – SLAVERY AND THE AMERICAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

v Letter from Alexander Hamilton to John Jay, President of the Continental Congress, March 14, 1779. Source: Kurland, P. and Ralph Lerner, R. ed., (1987) The Founders' Constitution, 1:527.

“Col. Laurens, ... is on his way to South Carolina, on a project, which I think, in the present situation of affairs there, is a very good one and deserves every kind of support and encouragement. This is to raise two three or four battalions of Negroes; with the assistance of the government of that state. ... I have not the least doubt, that the Negroes will make very excellent soldiers, with proper management. ... I mention this, because I frequently hear it objected to the scheme of embodying Negroes that they are too stupid to make soldiers. This is so far from appearing to me a valid objection that I think their want of cultivation (for their natural faculties are probably as good as ours) joined to that habit of subordination which they acquire from a life of servitude, will make them sooner become soldiers than our White inhabitants. Let officers be men of sense and sentiment, and the nearer the soldiers approach to machines perhaps the better.

I foresee that this project will have to combat much opposition from prejudice and self-interest. The contempt we have been taught to entertain for the blacks, makes us fancy many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience; and an unwillingness to part with property of so valuable a kind will furnish a thousand arguments to show the impracticability or pernicious tendency of a scheme which requires such a sacrifice. But it should be considered, that if we do not make use of them in this way, the enemy probably will; and that the best way to counteract the temptations they will hold out will be to offer them ourselves. An essential part of the plan is to give them their freedom with their muskets. This will secure their fidelity, animate their courage, and I believe will have a good influence upon those who remain, by opening a door to their emancipation. This circumstance, I confess, has no small weight in inducing me to wish the success of the project; for the dictates of humanity and true policy equally interest me in favor of this unfortunate class of men.”

Questions 1. Who is Colonel Laurens? 2. Why did Hamilton want enslaved Africans to become American soldiers? 3. In your opinion, why is there opposition to this proposal? 4. In your opinion, why would enslaved Africans being willing to fight for the Americans?

v General George Washington Discusses the Status of Escaped Slaves, April 30, 1783

During the winter and spring of 1783, General George Washington was headquartered at Newburgh, New York. Washington objected to British plans to evacuate formerly enslaved Africans as a violation of the provisional peace agreement and sought to find and reacquire people he claimed as his own property. Fifty-six formerly enslaved Africans sailed from New York to Halifax, Nova Scotia in October, 1782. “I transmitted the list of your Slaves to a Gentleman; a worthy active Man, of my acquaintance in New York and requested him to use his endeavors to obtain and forward them to you. All that can be done, I am sure he will do, but I have but little expectation that many will be recovered; several of my own are with the Enemy but I scarce ever bestowed a thought on them; they have so many doors through which they can escape from New York, that scarce any thing but an inclination to return, or voluntarily surrender of themselves will restore many to their former Masters, even supposing every disposition on the part of the Enemy to deliver them.”

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Source: John C. Fitzpatrick, Editor. The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources 1745-1799, Vol. 26, January 1, 1783 - June 10, 1783. Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office.

Questions

1. What occurred in October, 1782?

2. Why did Washington have personal interest in what had occurred?

3. What is Washington and others attempting to do?

4. Why might Washington’s actions in the Revolutionary War be considered hypocritical?

v THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND THE DEBATE OVER SLAVERY

When Thomas Jefferson included a passage attacking slavery in his draft of the Declaration of Independence it initiated the most intense debate among the delegates gathered at Philadelphia in the spring and early summer of 1776. Jefferson's passage on slavery was the most important section removed from the final document. It was replaced with a more ambiguous passage about King George's incitement of "domestic insurrections among us." Decades later Jefferson blamed the removal of the passage on delegates from South Carolina and Georgia and Northern delegates who represented merchants who were at the time actively involved in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Jefferson's original passage on slavery appears below.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Sources: Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and other Writings, Official and Private (Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1853-1854)

v THE FUGITIVE SLAVE ACT Chap. VII. — An Act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters. Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That whenever the executive authority of any state in the Union, or of either of the territories northwest or south of the river Ohio, shall demand any person as a fugitive from justice, of the executive authority of any such state or territory to which such person shall have fled, and shall moreover produce the copy of an indictment found, or an affidavit made before a magistrate of any state or territory as aforesaid, charging the person so demanded, with having committed treason, felony or other crime, certified as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the

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state or territory from whence the person so charged fled, it shall be the duty of the executive authority of the state or territory to which such person shall have fled, to cause him or her to be arrested and secured, and notice of the arrest to be given to the executive authority making such demand, or to the agent of such authority appointed to receive the fugitive, and to cause the fugitive to be delivered to such agent when he shall appear: But if no such agent shall appear within six months from the time of the arrest, the prisoner may be discharged. And all costs or expenses incurred in the apprehending, securing, and transmitting such fugitive to the state or territory making such demand, shall be paid by such state or territory. Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That any agent, appointed as aforesaid, who shall receive the fugitive into his custody, shall be empowered to transport him or her to the state or territory from which he or she shall have fled. And if any person or persons shall by force set at liberty, or rescue the fugitive from such agent while transporting, as aforesaid, the person or persons so offending shall, on conviction, be fined not exceeding five hundred dollars, and be imprisoned not exceeding one year. Sec. 3. And be it also enacted, That when a person held to labour in any of the United States, or in either of the territories on the northwest or south of the river Ohio, under the laws thereof, shall escape into any other of the said states or territory, the person to whom such labour or service may be due, his agent or attorney, is hereby empowered to seize or arrest such fugitive from labour, (b) and to take him or her before any judge of the circuit or district courts of the United States, residing or being within the state, or being any magistrate of a county, city or town corporate, wherein such seizure or arrest shall be made, and upon proof to the satisfaction of such judge or magistrate, either by oral testimony or affidavit taken before and certified by a magistrate of any such state or territory, that the person so seized or arrested, doth, under the laws of the state or territory from which he or she fled, owe service or labour to the person claiming him or her, it shall be the duty of such judge or magistrate to give a certificate thereof to such claimant, his agent or attorney, which shall be sufficient warrant for removing the said fugitive from labour, to the state or territory from which he or she fled. Sec. 4. And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labour, or shall rescue such fugitive from such claimant, his agent or attorney when so arrested pursuant to the authority herein given or declared; or shall harbor or conceal such person after notice that he or she was a fugitive from labour, as aforesaid, shall for either of the said offences, forfeit and pay the sum of five hundred dollars. Which penalty may be recovered by and for the benefit of such claimant, by the action of debt, in any court proper to try the same; saving moreover to the person claiming such labour or service, his right of action for or on account of the said injuries or either of them. Approved, February 12, 1793 Sources: Statutes at Large, 2nd Congress, 2nd Session, Ch. 7, p. 302.

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WEEK 4 –SLAVERY AND CAPITALISM

v Slavery in numbers

• 666,000 before the Congressional ban in 1808 • U.S. imported 7% of the total 10 million slaves imported to the Western

Hemisphere • Brazil 36%; Caribbean 40%; Spanish America 17% Mainland U.S. 7% • Sugar drove the world slave trade • Tobacco drove the U.S. market for slaves in the 18th century • Cotton drove the U.S. market for slaves following the cotton gin – 1793 • Distribution in 1825: U.S. 36%; Brazil 31% Caribbean 21%; and Spanish America

11% • U.S. had the highest rate of domestic population growth and the Caribbean the

slowest. • In 1860 U.S. slave population almost 4 million representing 53% of the Southern

population • Mortality in the U.S. less than in Caribbean, or Latin America – largely due to

latitude • Fertility rates in the U.S. high: for women who lived through child-bearing years (

50) avg of 9.24 children – near the natural limit • Encouragement of births but no clear evidence of breeding – average age of slave

women for first birth 21 years. Average age for northern white farm women was 24

• Slave families: 2/3 lived in nuclear families but threat of seperation remained • Treatment of Slaves – Caveat: well-being entails more than physical treatment –

freedom is essential for adult well-being • Adult diet (adequate): high in calories and nutrition: pork, beef, milk and sweet

potatoes • Meat consumption 180 lbs/year for slaves; Massachusetts workers (1873) 121

lbs/year; • Slave infants and children malnourished • Low birth rates – 5.1 lbs • Infant mortality (0-1) – 350/1000; double the rate of whites; infants moved

quickly to solids and unsanitary formulas • Child mortality (1-4 years) 201/1000; again double the rate of whites; little meat

for children; unprofitable? • Good nutrition: result - tall people n U.S. – born slaves 67.2 inches n African-

born slaves 64.2 inches • Mortality rates for Adults equal for slaves and whites

What is the specificity of North American slavery ?

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Slave Collar, c. 1840. The sound of this belled collar made any slave wearing it easier to locate. Resourceful slaves silenced the bells by stuffing them with mud.

Muzzle used to prevent slave from eating or drinking too much, 1839.

Eli Whitney's cotton gin, 1793

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v The economics of slavery Rapid Natural Increase in U.S. Slave Population §1 How did the U.S. slave population increase nearly fourfold between 1810 and 1860, given the demise of the trans-Atlantic trade? They enjoyed an exceptional rate of natural increase. Unlike elsewhere in the New World, the South did not require constant infusions of immigrant slaves to keep its slave population intact. In fact, by 1825, 36 percent of the slaves in the Western hemisphere lived in the U.S. This was partly due to higher birth rates, which were in turn due to a more equal ratio of female to male slaves in the U.S. relative to other parts of the Americas. Lower mortality rates also figured prominently. Climate was one cause; crops were another. U.S. slaves planted and harvested first tobacco and then, after Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton. This work was relatively less grueling than the tasks on the sugar plantations of the West Indies and in the mines and fields of South America. Southern slaves worked in industry, did domestic work, and grew a variety of other food crops as well, mostly under less abusive conditions than their counterparts elsewhere. MARKETS AND PRICES §2 Market prices for slaves reflect their substantial economic value. Prime field hands went for four to six hundred dollars in the U.S. in 1800, thirteen to fifteen hundred dollars in 1850, and up to three thousand dollars just before the Civil War. Even controlling for inflation, the prices of U.S. slaves rose significantly. By 1860, Southerners owned close to $4 billion worth of slaves. Slavery remained a thriving business on the eve of the Civil War. Slave markets existed across the antebellum U.S. South. Established dealers prospered alongside itinerant traders who operated in a few counties, buying slaves for cash from their owners, then moving them to the lower South. Over a million slaves were taken across state lines between 1790 and 1860 with many more moving within states. Some of these slaves went with their owners; many were sold to new owners. Slaves who lived in the upper South faced a very real chance of being sold for profit. From 1820 to 1860, an average of 200,000 slaves per decade moved from the upper to the lower South, most via sales. A contemporary newspaper, The Virginia Times, calculated that 40,000 slaves were sold in the year 1830. Determinants of Slave Prices §3 The prices paid for slaves reflected two economic factors: the characteristics of the slave and the conditions of the market. Important individual features included age, sex, childbearing capacity (for females), physical condition, temperament, and skill level. In addition, the supply of slaves, demand for products produced by slaves, and seasonal factors helped determine market conditions and therefore prices. Age and Price §4 In the U.S. South, infant slaves sold for a positive price because masters expected them to live long enough to make the initial costs of raising them worthwhile. Prices rose through puberty as productivity and experience increased. In nineteenth-century New Orleans, for example, prices peaked at about age 22 for females and age 25 for males. Girls cost more than boys up to their mid-teens. The genders then switched places in terms of value. In the Old South, boys aged 14 sold for 71 percent of the price of 27-year-old men, whereas girls aged 14 sold for 65 percent of the price of 27-year-old men. After the peak age, prices declined slowly for a time, then fell off rapidly as the aging process caused productivity to fall. Compared to full-grown men, women were worth 80 to 90 percent as much. One characteristic in particular set some females apart: their ability to bear children. Fertile females commanded a premium. The mother-child link also proved important for pricing in a different way: people sometimes paid more for intact families.

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Source: Fogel and Engerman (1974) Other Characteristics and Price §5 Skills, physical traits, mental capabilities, and other qualities also helped determine a slave's price. Skilled workers sold for premiums of 40-55 percent whereas crippled and chronically ill slaves sold for deep discounts. Slaves who proved troublesome -- runaways, thieves, layabouts, drunks, slow learners, and the like -- also sold for lower prices. Taller slaves cost more, perhaps because height was considered as healthiness. In New Orleans, light-skinned females (who enjoyed greater popularity as concubines) sold for a 5 percent premium. Fluctuations in Supply §6 Prices for slaves fluctuated with market conditions as well as with individual characteristics. U.S. slave prices fell around 1800 as the Haitian revolution sparked the movement of slaves into the Southern states. Less than a decade later, slave prices climbed when the international slave trade was banned, cutting off legal external supplies. Interestingly enough, among those who supported the closing of the trans-Atlantic slave trade were several Southern slaveowners. Why this apparent anomaly? Because the resulting reduction in supply drove up the prices of slaves already living in the U.S and, hence, their masters' wealth. U.S. slaves had high enough fertility rates and low enough mortality rates to reproduce themselves, so Southern slaveowners did not worry about having too few slaves. Fluctuations in Demand §7 Demand helped determine prices as well. The demand for slaves derived in part from the demand for the commodities and services that slaves provided. Changes in slave occupations and variability in prices for slave-produced goods therefore created movements in slave prices. As slaves replaced increasingly expensive indentured servants in the New World, their prices went up. In the period 1748 to 1775, slave prices in British America rose nearly 30 percent. As cotton prices fell in the 1840s, Southern slave prices also fell. But, as the demand for cotton and tobacco grew after about 1850, the prices of slaves increased as well. PROFITABILITY, EFFICIENCY, AND EXPLOITATION §8 That slavery was profitable seems almost obvious. Much like other businessmen, New World slaveowners responded to market signals -- adjusting crop mixes, reallocating slaves to more profitable tasks, hiring out idle slaves, and selling slaves for profit.

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Fogel and Engerman's Time on the Cross §9 Carrying the banner of the "slavery was profitable" camp is Nobel laureate Robert Fogel with his most controversial book ever written about American slavery is Time on the Cross, published in 1974. Fogel's and Engerman's research led them to conclude that investments in slaves generated high rates of return, masters held slaves for profit motives rather than for prestige, and slavery thrived in cities and rural areas alike. They also found that antebellum Southern farms were 35 percent more efficient overall than Northern ones and that slave farms in the New South were 53 percent more efficient than free farms in either North or South. This would mean that a slave farm that is otherwise identical to a free farm (in terms of the amount of land, livestock, machinery and labor used) would produce output worth 53 percent more than the free. On the eve of the Civil War, slavery flourished in the South and generated a rate of economic growth comparable to that of many European countries. They also discovered that, because slaves constituted a considerable portion of individual wealth, masters fed and treated their slaves reasonably well. Although some evidence indicates that infant and young slaves suffered much worse conditions than their freeborn counterparts, teenaged and adult slaves lived in conditions similar to -- sometimes better than -- those enjoyed by many free laborers of the same period. Gang System §10 The use of the "gang" system in agriculture contributed to profits in the antebellum period. In the gang system, groups of slaves performed synchronized tasks under the watchful overseer's eye, much like parts of a single machine. Masters found that treating people like machinery paid off handsomely. Antebellum slaveowners experimented with a variety of other methods to increase productivity. They developed an elaborate system of "hand ratings" in order to improve the match between the slave worker and the job, categorizing slaves by age, sex, and intelligence. Use of Positive Incentives §11 Masters offered positive incentives to make slaves work more efficiently. Slaves often had Sundays off. Slaves could sometimes earn bonuses in cash or in kind, or quit early if they finished tasks quickly. Some masters allowed slaves to keep part of the harvest or to work their own small plots. In places, slaves could even sell their own crops. To prevent stealing, however, many masters limited the products that slaves could raise and sell, confining them to corn or brown cotton, for example. Yet these practices may have helped lead to the downfall of slavery, for they gave slaves a taste of freedom that left them longing for more. Slave Families §12 Southern planters encouraged slaves to have large families because U.S. slaves lived long enough -- unlike those elsewhere in the New World -- to generate more revenue than cost over their lifetimes. But researchers have found little evidence of slave breeding; instead, masters encouraged slaves to live in nuclear or extended families for stability. Profitability and African Heritage §13 One element that contributed to the profitability of New World slavery was the African heritage of slaves. Africans, more than indigenous Americans, were accustomed to the discipline of agricultural practices and knew metalworking. Some scholars surmise that Africans, relative to Europeans, could better withstand tropical diseases and, unlike Native Americans, also had some exposure to the European disease pool. Ease of Identifying Slaves §14 Perhaps the most distinctive feature of Africans, however, was their skin color. Because they looked different from their masters, their movements were easy to monitor. Denying slaves education, property ownership, contractual rights, and other things

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enjoyed by those in power was simple: one needed only to look at people to ascertain their likely status. Using color was a low-cost way of distinguishing slaves from free persons. For this reason, the colonial practices that freed slaves who converted to Christianity quickly faded away. Deciphering true religious beliefs is far more difficult than establishing skin color. Other slave societies have used distinguishing marks like brands or long hair to denote slaves, yet color is far more immutable and therefore better as a cheap way of keeping slaves separate. Skin color, of course, can also serve as a racist identifying mark even after slavery itself disappears. Did Slavery Retard Southern Economic Development? §15 Gavin Wright (1978) called attention as well to the difference between the short run and the long run. Although slavery might have seemed an efficient means of production at a point in time, it tied masters to a certain system of labor which might not have adapted quickly to changed economic circumstances. Although the South's growth rate compared favorably with that of the North in the antebellum period, a considerable portion of wealth was held in the hands of planters. Consequently, commercial and service industries lagged in the South. The region also had far less rail transportation than the North. Yet many plantations used the most advanced technologies of the day, and certain innovative commercial and insurance practices appeared first in transactions involving slaves. What is more, although the South fell behind the North and Great Britain in its level of manufacturing, it compared favorably to other advanced countries of the time. Ultimately, the South's system of law, politics, business, and social customs strengthened the shackles of slavery and reinforced racial stereotyping. As such, it was undeniably evil. Yet, because slaves constituted valuable property, their masters had ample incentives to take care of them. And, by protecting the property rights of masters, slave law necessarily sheltered the persons embodied within. In a sense, the apologists for slavery were right: slaves sometimes fared better than free persons because powerful people had a stake in their well-being. Source:https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/

a. Find synonyms in the text of the following words and expressions

- the end of the trade = to lend = - exhausting work= reimbursement, profit = - worker in a field= production= - a growing business= plentifully = - large economic value= to work productively= - before the war = to pay with a service, not money - ability of the slave= to avoid = - to furnish with slaves = to raise (animals) = - a bonus = religious conversion declined = - handicapped = to interpret = - s.o. who had been violently hit = to mark s.o. by burning him= - the prices dropped = to be behind = - the movement was caused by the revolution = the chains= - the prices went up= motivation= - what the slaves provided = to protect s.o.=

b. What do the following figures from the text correspond to?

5%= 1793= 35%= 1800= 40-55%= 1860= 53%=

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c. Answer the following questions:

1. What were the differences between slavery in the South and other parts of the New World? 2. How is slavery characterized in the second paragraph? Make a list of all the words (lexical field) expressing that idea? 3. Which factors determined the slaves’ prices? 4. Why did some slaveowners support the end of the slave trade? 5. How did prices evolve according to age and sex? 6. How did demand determine slaves’ prices? 7. What were Fogel’s conclusions on the profitability of slavery in the South? 8. How did slaveowners try to increase productivity? 9. Why would masters give positive incentives to the slaves? 10. Why were Africans favored to Native Americans? 11. How did racism emerge from slavery? Do you agree? 12. What were the drawbacks and advantages for the South of relying exclusively on slavery?

v George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters, Richmond, Va.: A. Morris, 1857.

[W]e not only boast that the White Slave Trade is more exacting and fraudulent (in fact, though not in intention) than Black Slavery, but we also boast that it is more cruel, in leaving the laborer to take care of himself and family out of the pittance which skill or capital have allowed him to retain. When the day’s labor is ended, he is free, but is overburdened with the cares of family and household, which make his freedom an empty and delusive mockery.

But his employer is really free, and may enjoy the pro ts made by others’ labor without a care or a trouble as to their well-being. The Negro slave is free, too, when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body, for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family. The master’s labors commence just when the slave’s end. No wonder men should prefer white slavery to capital, to Negro slavery, since it is more profitable, and is free from all the cares and labors of black slave-holding.

The Negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The Negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides, they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui, but Negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour, and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. “Blessed be the man who invented sleep.” ’Tis happiness in itself — and results from contentment with the present, and con dent assurance of the future. We do not know whether free laborers ever sleep. They are fools to do so, for whilst they sleep, the wily and watchful capitalist is devising means to ensnare and exploit them. The free laborer must work or starve. He is more of a slave than the Negro because he works longer and harder for less allowance than the slave and has no holiday, because the cares of life with him begin when its labors end. He has no liberty, and not a single right.

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But, reader, well may you follow the slave trade. It is the only trade worth following, and slaves the only property worth owning. All other is worthless, a mere caput mortuum [worthless remains], except insofar as it vests the owner with the power to command the labors of others — to enslave them. Give you a palace, ten thousand acres of land, sumptuous clothes, equipage, and every other luxury; and with your artificial wants, you are poorer than Robinson Crusoe or the lowest working man if you have no slaves to capital, or domestic slaves. Your capital will not bring you an income of a cent, nor supply one of your wants, without labor. Labor is indispensable to give value to property, and if you owned everything else and did not own labor, you would be poor. But fty thousand dollars means, and is, fifty thousand dollars worth of slaves. You can command, without touching on that capital, three thousand dollars’ worth of labor per annum. You could do no more were you to buy slaves with it, and then you would be cumbered with the cares of governing and providing for them. You are a slaveholder now, to the amount of fty thousand dollars, with all the advantages, and none of the cares and responsibilities of a master.

Public opinion unites with self-interest, domestic a ection and municipal law to protect the slave. The man who maltreats the weak and dependent, who abuses his authority over wife, children or slaves, is universally detested. at same public opinion which shields and protects the slave encourages the oppression of free laborers — for it is considered more honorable and praiseworthy to obtain large fees than small ones, to make good bargains than bad ones (and all fees and pro ts come ultimately from common laborers) — to live without work by the exactions of accumulated capital, than to labor at the plough or the spade, for one’s living. It is the interest of the capitalist and the skillful to allow free laborers the least possible portion of the fruits of their own labor, for all capital is created by labor, and thesmaller the allowance of the free laborer, the greater the gains of his employer. To treat free laborers badly and unfairly, is universally inculcated as a moral duty, and the sel shness of man’s nature prompts him to the most rigorous performance of this cannibalish duty.

Questions :

1. What is the « white slave trade » ? 2. What denitions of freedom are implied in Fitzhugh’s second paragraph? 3. Based upon Fitzhugh’s de nitions of freedom, why are laborers not free? Why are employers free? Why are slaves free? Are the slave owners free? Why or why not? 4. What image of slavery does Fitzhugh create paragraph 3? 5. How does he portray capitalists? 6. Compare Fitzhugh’s portrayal of slaves with that of free laborers. 7. According to Fitzhugh, why does the purchase of labor turn an investor into a slave owner? 8. According to Fitzhugh, why is the system of free labor more cruel than slave labor?

v "The Universal Law of Slavery," by George Fitzhugh He the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic or criminal. The master occupies toward him the place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell on this view, for no one will differ with us who thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we might argue till dooms-day in vain, with those who have a high opinion of the negro's moral and intellectual capacity. Secondly. The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery. In the last place, the negro race is inferior to the white race,

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and living in their midst, they would be far outstripped or outwitted in the chaos of free competition. Gradual but certain extermination would be their fate. We presume the maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's providence of habits and money-making capacity at all to compare to those of the whites. This defect of character would alone justify enslaving him, if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals. At the North he would freeze or starve. We would remind those who deprecate and sympathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here relieves him from a far more cruel slavery in Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace humanity; and that it christianizes, protects, supports and civilizes him; that it governs him far better than free laborers at the North are governed. There, wife-murder has become a mere holiday pastime; and where so many wives are murdered, almost all must be brutally treated. Nay, more; men who kill their wives or treat them brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime, and the calendar of crime at the North proves the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill their wives. If it be objected that legally they have no wives, then we reply, that in an experience of more than forty years, we never yet heard of a negro man killing a negro woman. Our negroes are not only better off as to physical comfort than free laborers, but their moral condition is better. The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and, in some sense, the freest people in the world. The children and the aged and infirm work not at all, and yet have all the comforts and necessaries of life provided for them. They enjoy liberty, because they are oppressed neither by care nor labor. The women do little hard work, and are protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters. The negro men and stout boys work, on the average, in good weather, not more than nine hours a day. The balance of their time is spent in perfect abandon. Besides' they have their Sabbaths and holidays. White men, with so much of license and liberty, would die of ennui; but negroes luxuriate in corporeal and mental repose. With their faces upturned to the sun, they can sleep at any hour; and quiet sleep is the greatest of human enjoyments. "Blessed be the man who invented sleep." 'Tis happiness in itself--and results from contentment with the present, and confident assurance of the future. A common charge preferred against slavery is, that it induces idleness with the masters. The trouble, care and labor, of providing for wife, children and slaves, and of properly governing and administering the whole affairs of the farm, is usually borne on small estates by the master. On larger ones, he is aided by an overseer or manager. If they do their duty, their time is fully occupied. If they do not, the estate goes to ruin. The mistress, on Southern farms, is usually more busily, usefully and benevolently occupied than any one on the farm. She unites in her person, the offices of wife, mother, mistress, housekeeper, and sister of charity. And she fulfills all these offices admirably well. The rich men, in free society, may, if they please, lounge about town, visit clubs, attend the theatre, and have no other trouble than that of collecting rents, interest and dividends of stock. In a well constituted slave society, there should be no idlers. But we cannot divine how the capitalists in free society are to put to work. The master labors for the slave, they exchange industrial value. But the capitalist, living on his income, gives nothing to his subjects. He lives by mere exploitations. The Black American, A Documentary History, Third Edition, by Leslie H. Fishel, Jr. and Benjamin Quarles, Scott, Foresman and Company, Illinois, 1976,1970

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WEEK 5 - THE SLAVES’ DAILY LIFES

A Slave Cabin in Barbour County, near Eufala, Alabama

v Josiah Henson, Uncle Tom's Story of His Life: An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson (London, 1877).

I was born June 15th, 1789, in Charles County, Maryland, on a farm belonging to Mr. Francis Newman, about a mile from Port Tobacco. My mother was a slave of Dr. Josiah McPherson, but hired to the Mr. Newman to whom my father belonged. The only incident I can remembered which occurred while my mother continued on Mr. Newman's farm, was the appearance one day of my father with his head bloody and his back lacerated. He was beside himself with mingled rage and suffering. The explanation I picked up from the conversation of others only partially explained the matter to my mind; but as I grew older I understood it all. It seemed the overseer had sent my mother away from the other field hands to a retired place, and after trying persuasion in vain, had resorted to force to accomplish a brutal purpose. Her screams aroused my father at his distant work, and running up, he found his wife struggling with the man. Furious at the sight, he sprung upon him like a tiger. In a moment the overseer was down, and, mastered by rage, my father would have killed him but for the entreaties of my mother, and the overseer's own promise that nothing should ever be said of the matter. The promise was kept-like most promises of the cowardly and debased- as long as the danger lasted.

The laws of state states provide means and opportunities for revenge so ample, that miscreants like him never fail to improve them. "A nigger has struck a white man;" that is enough to set a whole county on fire; no question is asked about the provocation. The authorities were soon in pursuit of my father. The fact of the sacrilegious act of lifting a hand against the sacred temple of a white man's body...this was all it was necessary to establish. And the penalty followed: one hundred lashes on the bare back, and to have the right ear nailed to the whipping- post, and then severed from the body. For a time my father kept out of the way, hiding in the woods, and at night venturing into some cabin in search of food. But at length the strict watch set baffled all his efforts. His supplies cut off, he was fairly starved out, and compelled by hunger to come back and give himself up.

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The day for the execution of the penalty was appointed. The Negroes from the neighboring plantations were summoned, for their moral improvement, to witness the scene. …

***

For two or three years my mother and her young family of six children had resided on [Dr. McPherson's] estate; and we had been in the main very happy.... Our term of happy union as one family was now, alas! at an end. Mournful as was the Doctor's death to his friends it was a far greater calamity to us. The estate and the slaves must be sold and the proceeds divided among the heirs. We were but property- - not a mother, and the children God had given her. …

My brothers and sisters were bid off first, and one by one, while my mother, paralyzed by grief, held me by the hand. her turn came, and she was bought by Isaac Riley of Montgomery County. Then I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted by the thought of parting forever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where Riley was standing. She fell at his feet and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother only could command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one, at least of her little ones. Will it, can it be believed that this man, thus appealed to, was capable not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging himself from her with such violent blows and kicks, as to reduce her to the necessity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with the sob of a breaking heart? As she crawled away from the brutal man I heard her sob out, "Oh, Lord Jesus, how long, how long shall I suffer this way!" I must have been then between five and six years old. I seem to see and hear my poor weeping mother now. This was one of my earliest observations of men; an experience which I only shared with thousands of my race, the bitterness of which to any individual who suffers it cannot be diminished by the frequency of its recurrence, while it is dark enough to overshadow the whole after- life with something blacker than a funeral pall.

v Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Ferick Douglas, 1845

“The night, however, was shortened at both ends. The slaves worked often as long as they could see, and were late in cooking and mending for the coming day, and at the first gray streak of the morning they were summoned to the field by the overseer’s horn. They were whipped for over sleeping more than for any other fault... The overseer stood at the quarter door, armed with a stick and whip, ready to deal heavy blows upon any who was a rush for the door for the hindermost [last] one was sure to get a blow from the overseer. Young mothers who worked in the field were allowed an hour about ten o’clock in the morning to go home to nurse their children. This was when they were not required to take them to the field with them, and leave them ...in the corner of the fences...”

“The men and the women slaves on Col. Lloyd’s farm received as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pickled port, or its equivalent in fish. The pork was often spoiled, fish, they had five them one bushel of Indian meal...of which quite fifteen per cent was more fit for pigs then for men. With this one pint of salt was given and this was entire monthly allowance of a full-grown slave, working constantly in the open field from morning till night every day in the month except Sunday. There is no kind of work, which really requires a better allowance of clothing was not more ample than the supply of food. It consisted of two tow-linen shirts, on pair of trousers of the same coarse material,

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for summer, and a woolen pair of stockings and a pair of shoes for the coarsest description. Children under ten years old had neither shoes, stockings, jackets, nor trousers. They had two coarse tow-linen shirts per year, and when these were worn out they went naked till the next allowance day – and this was condition of the little girls as well as the boys.”

v Rev. L.E. Lowery, Life on the Old Plantation in Ante-Bellum Days, 1850.

“On some plantations it was the custom to have all the slaves...to the white folks’ house on Christmas morning and receive a dram as ‘a Christmas present.’ Old and young, male and female, came forward for the ‘Christmas dram.’ It was certainly a lively time with the slaves on the old plantation. Those who came early to the yard would have to wait until all came. And while they waited they would whistle, jig, or dance. It was the custom on all plantations around to give at the beginning of the winter each male among the slaves a new outfit, consisting of shoes, pants, coat and a cap. The women and girls got shoes and dresses. Mr. Frierson made it a point to give out these on Christmas morning.”

v Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, 1853.

“The day’s work over in the field, the baskets are ‘toted’ or in other words, carried to the gin house where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be – no matter how much he longs to sleep and rest- a slave never approached the gin house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight – if it has not performed the full task appointed him - he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten to twenty pound, in all probability his master will measure the next day’s task accordingly...”

v Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, 1901.

“I was born in a typical log cabin, about fourteen by sixteen feet square. In this cabin I lived with my mother and a brother, and sister till after the Civil War, when we were all declared free. The cabin was not only our living place, but was also used as the kitchen for the plantation. My mother was the plantation cook. The cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side, which let in the light, and also the cold chilly air of winter. There was a door to the cabin that is, something that was called a door- but the ...large cracks in [the door]...to say nothing of the fact that was too small made the room a very uncomfortable one. There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the center of the earthen floor there was a large deep opening covered with boards, which was used to as a place to store sweet potatoes during the winter. There was no cooking stove on our plantation, and all the cooking for the whites and slaves my mother had to do over a open fireplace, mostly in pots and ‘skillets.’ While the poorly built cabin caused us to suffer with cold in the winter, the heat from the open fireplace in summer was equally uncomfortable.”

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v Slaves in wills

1720. Will of Richard Smith of Smithtown

... Item I give unto my son Richard my young Negro boy called Stephen Item I give unto my son Nathaniel my Negro boy called John Item I give unto my wife Hannah the use of my two Negro men also a young Negro girl as long as she remains my widow Item my will is that after my wife’s death or marriage that the use of the Negro girl shall descend to my eldest Daughter Sarah. Item I give unto my son Richard after ye marriage or decease of my wife my Negro man called Harry Item My will is that if my mulatto Dick continues villainous and stubborn then my overseers shall dispose of him and ye effects to be employed for the use of my wife and children ...

1754. Will of Thomas Moore

... I give to my Beloved wife Hannah ... my Negro woman called Hagar During the Time she shall remain my Widow and my Negro man called Pompeii if he behaves well. but if otherwise then my Executors to sell him & the money to be Disposed of by my Executors for the Good of my Estate at their Discretion.

Source: A Forgotten People: Discovering The Black Experience In Suffolk County. Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, 93 North Country Road, Setauket, N.Y. 11733, p. 77.

1. What kind of document is it ? 2. What do we learn about slavery ?

v SLAVE CODES

Virginia, 1639, Act X. All persons except Negroes are to be provided with arms and ammunitions or be fined at the pleasure of the governor and council.

Maryland, 1664, That whatsoever free-born [English] woman shall intermarry with any slave. . . shall serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of such free-born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.

Virginia, 1667, Act III. Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth. . . should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted that baptism does not alter the condition to the person as to his bondage or freedom; masters freed from this doubt may more carefully propagate Christianity by permitting slaves to be admitted to that sacrament.

Virginia, 1682, Act I. It is enacted that all servants. . . which [sic] shall be imported into this country either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the time of their first purchase by some Christian. . . and all Indians, which shall be sold by our neighborign Indians, or any other trafficing with us for slaves, are hereby adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any law, usage, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.

Virginia, 1705 – "If any slave resists his master...correcting such a slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction...the master shall be free of all punishment...as if such accident never happened."

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South Carolina, 1712 - "Be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, That no master, mistress, overseer, or other person whatsoever, that hath the care and charge of any negro or slave, shall give their negroes and other slaves leave...to go out of their plantations.... Every slave hereafter out of his master's plantation, without a ticket, or leave in writing, from his master...shall be whipped...."

Louisiana, 1724 - "The slave who, having struck his master, his mistress, or the husband of his mistress, or their children, shall have produced a bruise, or the shedding of blood in the face, shall suffer capital punishment."

Arkansas - Sec. 23. “Any gun or other offensive or defensive weapon found in the possession of a slave, without having the written permission of his master to carry the same, may be seized by any person, and upon proof of such seizure before a justice of the peace of the county where the same shall have been made, such gun or weapon shall be by the order of such justice, adjudged and forfeited to the seizor [sic] for his own use, and such slave shall receive by the order of such justice, any number of stripes not exceeding thirty.”

Alabama, 1833, section 31 - "Any person or persons who attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read, or write, shall, upon conviction thereof by indictment, be fined in a sum not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, nor more than five hundred dollars."

Alabama, 1833, section 32 - "Any free person of color who shall write for any slave a pass or free paper, on conviction thereof, shall receive for every such offense, thirty- nine lashes on the bare back, and leave the state of Alabama within thirty days thereafter..."

Alabama, 1833, section 33 - "Any slave who shall write for any other slave, any pass or free-paper, upon conviction, shall receive, on his or her back, fifty lashes for the first offence, and one hundred lashes for every offence thereafter..."

Georgia, 1848 : ...for the first offence suffer such punishment as the said justice or justices shall in his or their discretion think fit, not extending to life or limb; and for the second offence, suffer death: but in case any such slave shall grievously wound, maim , or bruise any white person, though it shall be only the first offence, such slave shall suffer death.

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WEEK 7 – URBAN SLAVERY

1703 White Black

Households with slaves / Number of households

% of households with slaves

Total population

% of Black people

Number of slaves per household

East Ward 919 214 97/213 45% 1 138 18,8% 1,9 Dock Ward 625 197 84/127 66% 828 26,3% 2,3 South Ward 557 172 68/119 57% 740 23,2% 2,5 West Ward 529 88 34/134 25,3% 624 14,1% 1,3 North Ward 783 58 29/183 16% 853 6,8% 2,5 Out Ward 254 72 25/52 48% 338 21,3% 2,8

Total 3 667 801 350/827 42% 4 521 18,4% 2,4

Proportion of Blacks in New York, 1703.

v Laws Restricting Enslaved Africans (1742)

Law to Restrain Negroes From Going to Fetch Water on A Sunday Other Than to the Next Well or Pump to Their place of Abode and Riding Horses Through the Streets or out of Town on a Sunday. Be It Ordained ... That no Negro Mulatto or Indian Slave within this City after the Publication hereof Shall on any Lords Day or Sunday Presume to fetch any water other than from the Next well or pump the place of their Abode or Shall Presume to Ride any Horse through any of the Streets of this City or on the Common. Every Slave So Offending Shall be Whipped at the Public Whipping Post at the Discretion of any one justice of the Peace Not Exceeding forty Lashes Unless the Master: Mistress or Owner of Such Slave So offending pay the sum of Three Shillings.

Law for Appointing Establishing and Regulating a Good and Sufficient Night Watch in the City of New York. Whereas there now is and of Late years hath been by Reason of Great Numbers of people Coming into this City from all parts Some whereof are Suspected to be Convict felons Transported from Great Britain and Ireland And to prevent the Conspiracy Insurrection or plotting of Negro’s & other Slaves great Necessity of A Strong and Sufficient Night Watch to be Kept Every Night within this City for the Safety Security and peace of the Said City and the Good Inhabitants thereof.

Source: Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York.

Questions

1. What is the purpose of these laws? 2. In your view, why did the municipal government pass these laws? 3. What happened to enslaved Africans who disobeyed these laws?

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WEEK 8 – RESISTANCE TO SLAVERY

v Letter from Governor Robert Hunter, June 23, 1712. Source: E.B. Callaghan, ed. (1885). Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York. Vol. V, p. 341-342.

I must now give your Lordships an account of a bloody conspiracy of some of the slaves of this place, to destroy as many of the inhabitants as they could. It was put in execution in this manner, when they had resolved to revenge themselves, for some hard usage they apprehended to have received from their masters (for I can find no other cause) they agreed to meet in the orchard of Mr. Crook in the middle of the town, some provided with fire arms, some with swords and others with knives and hatchets. This was the sixth day of April, the time of meeting was about twelve or one clock in the night, when about three and twenty of them were got together. One . . . slave to one Vantilburgh set fire to [a shed] of his masters, and then repairing to his place where the rest were, they all sallied out together with their arms and marched to the fire. By this time, the noise of the fire spreading through the town, the people began to flock to it. Upon the approach of several, the slaves fired and killed them. The noise of the guns gave the alarm, and some escaping, their shot soon published the cause of the fire, which was the reason that not above nine Christians were killed, and about five or six wounded. Upon the first notice, which was very soon after the mischief was begun, I ordered a detachment from the fort under a proper officer to march against them, but the slaves made their retreat into the woods, by the favor of the night. Having ordered sentries the next day in the most proper places on the Island [Manhattan] to prevent their escape, I caused the day following, the militia of this town and of the country of West Chester to drive [to] the Island, and by this means and strict searches in the town, we found all that put the design in execution, six of these having first laid violent hands

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upon themselves[committed suicide], the rest were forthwith brought to their trial before ye Justices of this place, who are authorized by Act of Assembly to hold a court in such cases. In that court were twenty seven condemned, whereof twenty one were executed, one being a woman with child, her execution by that means suspended. Some were burnt, others hanged, one broke on the wheel, and one hung alive in chains in the town, so that there has been the most exemplary punishment inflicted that could be possibly thought of.

Questions

1. How effective was the slave revolt? 2. How many slaves were involved in the uprising? 3. What were some of the punishments that rebels faced? 4. In your opinion, why did colonial officials punish people in these ways?

v NAT TURNER’S REBELLION IN CONTEXT Document 1 : "Nat Turner Preaches Religion"

1. What aspects of slave religion does this painting of Nat Turner portray? Document 2 : The Confessions of Nat Turner In my childhood a circumstance occurred which made an indelible impression on my mind, and laid the groundwork of that enthusiasm which has terminated so fatally to many, both white and black, and for which I am about to atone at the gallows. It is here necessary to relate this circumstance. Trifling as it may seem, it was the commencement of that belief which has grown with time; and even now, sir, in this dungeon, helpless and forsaken as I am, I cannot divest myself of. Being at play with other children, when three or four years old, I was telling them something, which my mother, overhearing, said it had happened before I was born. I stuck to my story, however, and related some things which went, in her opinion, to confirm it. Others being called on, were greatly astonished, knowing that these things had happened, and caused them to say, in my hearing, I surely would be a prophet, as the Lord had shown me things that had happened before my birth. And my mother and grandmother strengthened me in this my first impression, saying, in my presence, I was intended for some great purpose, which they had always thought from certain marks on my head and breast.

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2. What does this document reveal about the religious aspect of African slave culture? 3. How might this childhood event have influenced other slaves to join Turner in rebellion? Document 3 : The Richmond Enquirer, August 30, 1831 We cannot say how long they were organizing themselves, but they turned out on last Monday morning early (the 22nd) upon their nefarious (sinful) expedition. They were mounted to the number of 40 or 50; and with knives and axes, knocking on the head, or cutting the throats of their victims. They had few fire-arms among them, scarcely one, if one, was fit for use. But as they went from house to house, they drank ardent spirits (alcohol) and it is supposed, that in consequence of their being intoxicated, or from mere fatigue, they paused in their murderous career about 12 o'clock on Monday. 4. How many slaves participated in the rebellion? 5. The census of 1830 states that there were 7,756 slaves in Southampton County where the rebellion occurred. Why did such a small percentage of slaves participate in the rebellion? 6. How does this passage describe the rebelling slaves and their actions? Document 4 : The Constitutional Whig, August 29, 1831 Various parties (White Militias) have scoured the country, and a number of the insurgents (rebelling slaves), have been killed or taken. There are thirteen (13) prisoners now at this place, one or more of them severely wounded. At the Cross Keys, summary justice in the form of decapitation has been executed on one or more prisoners. The people are naturally enough wound up to a high pitch of rage, and precaution is even necessary to protect the lives of the captives. Scouring parties are out, and the insurrection may be considered already suppressed. 7. What does this rage and violence of the ruling white class reveal about their attitudes towards Africans and slaves? Document 5 : Trial of Nathan, Tom, and Davy Question being asked by the Court relative to the ages of the prisoners it appeared that the oldest was not more than 15 years, the other two much younger, the oldest very badly grown. The Court after hearing the testimony and all the circumstances of the case are unanimously of opinion that the prisoners are guilty in manner and form. Tuesday the 20th day of September instant on which day between the hours of ten o'clock in the morning and two o'clock in the afternoon they be taken by the Sheriff to the usual place of execution and there to be hanged by the neck until each of them be dead and the Court from all the circumstances of the case do recommend to the Governor to commute the punishment of the said Nathan, Tom and Davy to transportation. And the Court doth value the said slaves to the sum of three hundred (300) dollars each. 8. How does the action of not sentencing the children to death strengthen the institution of slavery? Document 6 : American Beacon, November 2, 1831 He (Nat Turner) acknowledges himself a coward and says he was actuated to do what he did, from the influence of fanaticism, he says the attempt originated entirely with himself, and was not known by any other Negroes, but those to whom he revealed it a few days before, and then only 5 or 6 in number! -- he acknowledges now that the

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revelation was misinterpreted by him, and says it was revealed to him not to follow the inclination of his spirit -- he is now convinced that he has done wrong, and advises all other Negroes not to follow his example. He was taken about 12 o'clock on Sunday, in a Cave that he had just finished and gotten into; and while in the very act of fixing the bushes and bows to cover him, a gentleman by the name of Benjamin Phipps, walked up near the spot, and was only led to examine it by accidentally seeing the brush shake; after removing the covering he discovered Nat., and immediately pointed to kill him with his gun, but he exclaimed "don't shoot and I will give up," he then threw his sword from the Cave, that being his only weapon, and came out and went with Mr. Phipps, until they reached some other gentlemen, when after staying at the Keys all night they proceeded here today. 9. How does the author describe Nat Turner? 10. What does the author's description of Nat Turner reveal about white society's view of slaves? Document 7 : Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself Not far from this time Nat Turner's insurrection broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion. Strange that they should be alarmed when their slaves were so "contented and happy"! But so it was. By sunrise, people were pouring in from every quarter within twenty miles of the town. I knew the houses were to be searched; and I expected it would be done by country bullies and the poor whites. I knew nothing annoyed them so much as to see colored people living in comfort and respectability. Those who never witnessed such scenes can hardly believe what I know was inflicted at this time on innocent men, women, and children, against whom there was not the slightest ground for suspicion. Colored people and slaves who lived in remote parts of the town suffered in an especial manner. In some cases the searchers scattered powder and shot among their clothes, and then sent other parties to find them, and bring them forward as proof that they were plotting insurrection. Everywhere men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet. Some received five hundred lashes; others were tied hands and feet, and tortured with a bucking paddle, which blisters the skin terribly. 11. In what ways does this passage illustrate the white slaveholder's fear of Africans and blacks? 12. Why are poor whites allowed to harass Africans and inspect their homes?

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WEEK 9 – ABOLITIONISM

v William Lloyd Garison, The Liberator: "To the Public", January 1, 1831

In the month of August, I issued proposals for publishing "THE LIBERATOR" in Washington city; but the enterprise, though hailed in different sections of the country, was palsied by public indifference. Since that time, the removal of the Genius of Universal Emancipation [Benjamin Lundy's anti-slavery newspaper] to the Seat of Government has rendered less imperious the establishment of a similar periodical in that quarter. During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting the minds of the people by a series of discourses on the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave fresh evidence of the fact, that a greater revolution in public sentiment was to be effected in the free states -- and particularly in New-England -- than at the south. I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stubborn, and apathy more frozen, than among slave owners themselves. Of course, there were individual exceptions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, but did not dishearten me. I determined, at every hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birth place of liberty. That standard is now unfurled; and long may it float, unhurt by the spoliations of time or the missiles of a desperate foe -- yea, till every chain be broken, and every bondman set free! Let southern oppressors tremble -- let their secret abettors tremble -- let their northern apologists tremble -- let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. I deem the publication of my original Prospectus unnecessary, as it has obtained a wide circulation. The principles therein inculcated will be steadily pursued in this paper, excepting that I shall not array myself as the political partisan of any man. In defending the great cause of human rights, I wish to derive the assistance of all religions and of all parties. Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American Declaration of Independence, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights -- among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I shall strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Park-street Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented to the popluar but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My consicence in now satisfied. I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my influence, -- humble as it is, -- is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and

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shall be felt in coming years -- not perniciously, but beneficially -- not as a curse, but as a blessing; and posterity will bear testimony that I was right. I desire to thank God, that he enables me to disregard "the fear of man which bringeth a snare," and to speak his truth in its simplicity and power. And here I close with this fresh dedication: Oppression! I have seen thee, face to face, And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow; But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now -- For dread to prouder feelings doth give place Of deep abhorrence! Scorning the disgrace Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, I also kneel -- but with far other vow Do hail thee and thy hord of hirelings base: -- I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins, Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand, Thy brutalising sway -- till Afric's chains Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, -- Trampling Oppression and his iron rod: Such is the vow I take -- SO HELP ME GOD!

William Lloyd Garrison

v Frederick Douglass, What to the Negro is the Fourth of July? July 5, 1852

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable—and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say, I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence, I will proceed to lay them before you. This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom ... There is consolation in the thought, that America is young.—Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

... The simple story of it is, that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects ... You were under the British Crown ... But, your fathers ... They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to ... To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy ... but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men’s souls ... On the 2d of July, 1776, the old Continental Congress, to the dismay of the lovers of ease, and the worshippers of property ... in the form of a resolution ... it may refresh your minds and help my story if I read it. “Resolved, That these united colonies are, and of right, ought to be free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection

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between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved.” Citizens, your fathers made good that resolution. They succeeded; and to-day you reap the fruits of their success. The freedom gained is yours; and you, therefore, may properly celebrate this anniversary. The 4th of July is the first great fact in your nation’s history—the very ring-bolt in the chain of your yet undeveloped destiny …

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival ...

Behold the practical operation of this internal slave-trade, the American slave-trade, sustained by American politics and American religion ... Fellow-citizens, this murderous traffic is, to-day, in active operation in this boasted republic ... I see the bleeding footsteps ... on the way to the slave-markets, where the victims are to be sold like horses, sheep, and swine ... My soul sickens at the sight ... But a still more inhuman, disgraceful, and scandalous state of things remains to be presented. By an act of the American Congress ... slavery has been nationalized in its most horrible and revolting form ... The Fugitive Slave Law makes MERCY TO THEM, A CRIME; and bribes the judge who tries them. An American JUDGE GETS TEN DOLLARS FOR EVERY VICTIM HE CONSIGNS to slavery, and five, when he fails to do so ... Let this damning fact be perpetually told ... that, in tyrant-killing, king-hating, people-loving, democratic, Christian America, the seats of justice are filled with judges, who hold their offices under an open and palpable bribe ... I take this law to be one of the grossest infringements of Christian Liberty, and, if the churches and ministers of our country were not stupidly blind, or most wickedly indifferent, they, too, would so regard it ... they are utterly silent in respect to a law which robs religion of its chief significance, and makes it utterly worthless to a world lying in wickedness ... Allow me to say, in conclusion ... I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope.

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WEEK 10/11 – THE ROAD TO SECESSION AND THE CIVIL WAR

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v The Missouri Compromise When the territory of Missouri applied for admission to statehood, the Congress and the nation were confronted with a unique substantive question that had far-reaching implications both for the settlement and for the future political status of all the states that might be carved from the vast area acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Should slavery be allowed in the new state of Missouri? The fact that southern slaveholders had already migrated into the Missouri territory made the question more than academic. When the bill for admission came before the House, Congressman James Tallmadge of New York offered an amendment that would have prohibited the further introduction of slavery and would have eventually freed the progeny of slaves then in the territory. Tallmadge's remarks in defense of his amendment refer to the excitement and bitterness that his proposition elicited from slavery advocates. While he justified his position on the grounds of Congressional authority, there was also an indication of northern reluctance to see the extension of southern political advantage by inflated representation (tied to the three-fifths compromise of the federal Constitution). The Tallmadge amendment passed the House but was rejected by the Senate. The issue was resolved by a two-part compromise. First, Missouri gained admission to the Union as a slave state, with a provision that portions of the Louisiana Territory lying north of 36' 30' north latitude would be free. (This limitation was later overturned by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act and by the 1857 Dred Scott case, 19 How. 393 ) Second, Maine was simultaneously admitted to statehood, which enabled the Senate to maintain the balance between slave and free state representation -- twelve of each. The enabling act of March 6, 1820, made it clear, however, that fugitive slaves could be apprehended north of the compromise line and returned to their owners. Civil Rights and the Black American, A Documentary History, edited by Albert P Blaustein and Robert L. Zangrando, published by Washington Square Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.,1968.

v The Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863 On January 1, 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln went into effect. The Proclamation, written the previous September, declared free all enslaved people in the Confederate States (or portions of those states) who resided in territory still in rebellion against the United States. From that point forward as the Union Army captured more Confederate territory it would also liberate all enslaved people living in that territory.

By the President of the United States of America: A Proclamation.

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. … Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this

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first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion against the United States, the following, to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued. And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. And I further declare and make known, that such persons of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. … By the President: Abraham Lincoln William H. Seward, Secretary of State.

v AMENDMENT XIII Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

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What’s Wrong with Reparations for Slavery ?

Should Americans of African Descent Receive Financial Damages?

STEFAN SPATH June 30, 2010

There has been much debate recently about reparations for slavery. According to its proponents, the federal government should award Americans of African descent financial damages solely because slavery, as an institution, existed in the United States from the founding until almost a century later. Three principal arguments are offered: (1) The legacy of slavery has hindered the economic progress of blacks in America; (2) reparations would serve as a damage award that would rectify a historical wrong committed by the United States; and (3) reparations would give poor blacks more disposable income, which would increase their living standards and lift entire black communities. On the surface, these arguments seem to have a modicum of legitimacy. However, because of the potential divisiveness that the issue is sure to have, it is important to closely examine the premise on which these arguments are based. … Has Slavery Hindered the Economic Progress of Blacks? Economist Thomas Sowell, in his seminal work Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality, concluded after exhaustive statistical research that the vast majority of whites and blacks believe there are a higher percentage of blacks in poverty than there actually are. Indeed, when surveyed, most whites and blacks believe three-quarters of black Americans live below the official poverty line, when in reality only one in four do, according to the 2001 Census. Why is there so much confusion? Part of the problem is the perception that “black” and “poor” are synonymous. In the 1960s it was politically expedient to associate the state of being poor, uneducated, and oppressed with being black. The civil rights establishment found this association rhetorically necessary to focus public attention on the plight of southern blacks and to engage the emotions of the white majority against overt southern racism. However, this political strategy had an unexpected impact on the emerging black middle class. According to the black-equals poor logic, when the black middle class achieved more opportunity and became more educated and affluent, it essentially became less “black.” … Unfortunately, the image of poverty stricken blacks in need of government handouts to get by is still perpetuated by race demagogues like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who stand to gain politically by fostering that stereotype. It is a truism of politics that charlatans in search of political power will always benefit from having a constituency with a chip on its shoulder.… In addition to being a wealthy demographic group (richer than 90 percent of the people in the world), blacks in America have a longer life expectancy than African and Caribbean blacks, as well as whites in many parts of Eastern Europe and Latin America. Black Americans have higher rates of literacy and achieve more postsecondary degrees as a percentage of the population than blacks in Africa. Black Americans’ upward mobility from Reconstruction to the present is a testament to their creativity and ability to adapt. Reparations are not only unnecessary as a financial corrective, but they would also be an insult to the multitudes of successful black Americans who lifted themselves out of poverty before and after the civil rights movement. … Who Gets What? If the proponents of reparations take to the courts, it will be interesting to see their principle for determining who is entitled to what. For many reasons that will be a Herculean task. Because of centuries of migration, conquests, and intermixing, racial purity is more of a

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social construct than a biological fact. Intermarriage between whites and blacks in America over the past two centuries has produced a large population of individuals who defy the stark dichotomy. … In an effort to deny inheritance rights to illegitimate progeny born by slave women, racist plantation owners in the antebellum South created the dreaded “one-drop rule” to discourage the courts from calling their miscegenational offspring anything but Negro. The nomenclature of this racist practice has survived to this day and is embraced by both blacks and whites, who for the most part are unaware of its discriminatory beginnings. Consider how Vanessa Williams and Colin Powell are labeled black despite their interracial heritage. With so much racial intermixture, will those who dole out the potential reparations demand certificates of racial purity? The thought is preposterous. Another quagmire in paying reparations is that a small percentage of blacks were free before slavery ended, having bought their freedom or having had it bequeathed to them by sympathetic slave owners. Are their descendants eligible for reparations? In antebellum New Orleans it wasn’t uncommon for freemen of color to own slaves. That blacks owned slaves has been a hotly debated point. It is true that a vast majority of blacks who bought slaves did so to emancipate relatives and friends. However, there are several well-documented cases of black slave owners in Louisiana who kept their slaves in servitude for life. Then there is the case of African and Caribbean émigrés from the post-Civil War era. It is estimated that this subgroup of the black community comprises between 3 to 5 percent of the total black population in the United States. Will they pay or receive reparations? More Reparations? In some respects one could argue that reparations for slavery have already been paid. These implicit reparations, the argument goes, have taken the form of direct monetary transfers such as welfare payments or nonmonetary benefits such as hiring and admission quotas. Indeed, policies based on racial preferences such as affirmative action have allowed hundreds of thousands of blacks to enter universities and obtain employment based on criteria different from those applied to other groups of people. … Are Current Taxpayers Culpable? Of the three primary arguments for reparations, the argument for damages is the most irrational. Though slavery was widespread in the southern United States, slave ownership was not. It is estimated that less than 10 percent of whites owned slaves. The vast majority did not; they had neither financial nor agricultural resources to warrant slave labor. Slave ownership was restricted to a highly concentrated group of wealthy southern elites—the landed aristocracy. Today we live in a country with a population of 285 million people. Because of immigration, it is safe to argue that the majority of white people in this country are descended from post-Civil War immigrants who had nothing to do with slavery. Many ethnic groups that arrived on American shores in the early twentieth century, including the Irish, European Jews, and Chinese, were subject to severe discrimination. However, with every passing generation, ethnic groups developed the occupational skills, knowledge, and cultural norms necessary to fully assimilate and rise to higher socioeconomic levels within the mainstream American culture. Why, then, should the descendants of these groups, let alone first-generation Americans, be financially liable to blacks as a group? In the American legal system, damages hinge on the principle of cause and effect — one pays for the damage one causes. In the case of slavery, there is no culpable person alive to pay for the crime. Perhaps the most important error made by those who argue for reparations is not economic at all but philosophical. The idea of achieving justice by taking money from one group to pay another for an act that was neither committed nor suffered by the parties is a collectivist affront to the American ideal of individualism. People are not interchangeable pawns but individuals responsible for their own actions. Slaves and slave owners are dead, and we cannot bring them back. Our Constitution provided the

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framework for legal equality for all individuals, and later legislation eliminated remaining race-based government barriers to freedom, assuring that blacks, like whites, can be beneficiaries of this great system. Thus the only solution to the race problem in America is a commitment to individualism.

1. Who should get financial reparations and why? 2. Why are Black people believed to be poorer than Whites? 3. What happened to the black middle class? 4. Who are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton ? Why are they considered as

demagogues ? 5. How do Black Americans compare with other black communities ? 6. Why is it difficult to determine who is entitled to reparations (4 reasons)? 7. Why was the one-drop rule initially created? 8. Why is it almost impossible to determine who will pay? 9. Can you explain what the author means by “a collectivist affront to the American

ideal of individualism » ?