American Negro Slavery Part 36

New York had thrice New Orleans' number of colored barbers, and twice as many butchers; but her twelve carpenters and no masons were contrasted with 355 and 278 in these two trades at New Orleans, and her cigar makers, tailors, painters, coopers, blacksmiths and general mechanics were not in much better proportion. One-third of all New York's colored men, indeed, were unskilled laborers and another quarter were domestic servants, not to mention the many cooks, coachmen and other semi-domestic employees, whereas at New Orleans the unskilled were but a tenth part of the whole and no male domestics were listed. This showing, which on the whole is highly favorable to New Orleans, is partly attributable to the more than fourfold excess of mulattoes over the blacks in its free population, in contrast with a reversed proportion at New York; for the men of mixed blood filled all the places above the rank of artisan at New Orleans, and heavily preponderated in virtually all the cla.s.ses but that of unskilled laborers. New York's poor showing as regards colored craftsmen, however, was mainly due to the greater discrimination which its white people applied against all who had a strain of negro blood.

This antipathy and its consequent industrial repression was palpably more severe at the North in general than in the South. De Tocqueville remarked that "the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emanc.i.p.ated." f.a.n.n.y Kemble, in her more vehement style, wrote of the negroes in the North: "They are not slaves indeed, but they are pariahs, debarred from every fellowship save with their own despised race, scorned by the lowest white ruffian in your streets, not tolerated even by the foreign menials in your kitchen. They are free certainly, but they are also degraded, rejected, the offsc.u.m and the offscouring of the very dregs of your society.... All hands are extended to thrust them out, all fingers point at their dusky skin, all tongues, the most vulgar as well as the self-styled most refined, have learned to turn the very name of their race into an insult and a reproach."[51] Marshall Hall expressed himself as "utterly at a loss to imagine the source of that prejudice which subsists against him [the negro] in the Northern states, a prejudice unknown in the South, where the domestic relations between the African and the European are so much more intimate."[52] Olmsted recorded a conversation which he had with a free colored barber on a Red River steamboat who had been at school for a year at West Troy, New York: "He said that colored people could a.s.sociate with whites much more easily and comfortably at the South than at the North; this was one reason he preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from white people, and more insulted on account of his color, at the North than in Louisiana."[53] And at Richmond Olmsted learned of a negro who after buying his freedom had gone to Philadelphia to join his brother, but had promptly returned. When questioned by his former owner this man said: "Oh, I don't like dat Philadelphy, ma.s.sa; an't no chance for colored folks dere.

Spec' if I'd been a runaway de wite folks dere take care o' me; but I couldn't git anythin' to do, so I jis borrow ten dollar of my broder an'

c.u.m back to old Virginny."[54] In Ohio, John Randolph's freedmen were prevented by the populace from colonizing the tract which his executors had bought for them in Mercer County and had to be scattered elsewhere in the state;[55] in Connecticut the citizens of New Haven resolved in a public meeting in 1831 that a projected college for negroes in that place would not be tolerated, and shortly afterward the townsmen of Canterbury broke up the school which Prudence Crandall attempted to establish there for colored girls. The legislatures of various Northern states, furthermore, excluded free immigrants as well as discriminating sharply against those who were already inhabitants. Wherever the negroes cl.u.s.tered numerously, from Boston to Philadelphia and Cincinnati, they were not only brow-beaten and excluded from the trades but were occasionally the victims of brutal outrage whether from mobs or individual persecutors.[56]

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 55: F.U. Quillin, _The Color Line in Ohio_ (Ann Arbor, Mich.), p.

20; _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 143.]

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

Harris, _Negro Slavery in Illinois_ (Chicago, 1906), pp. 226-240.]

In the South, on the other hand, the laws were still more severe but the practice of the white people was much more kindly. Racial antipathy was there mitigated by the sympathetic tie of slavery which promoted an att.i.tude of amiable patronage even toward the freedmen and their descendants.[57] The tone of the memorials in which many Southern townsmen pet.i.tioned for legal exemptions to permit specified free negroes to remain in their communities[58] found no echo from the corresponding type of commonplace unromantic citizens of the North. A few Southern pet.i.tions were of a contrasting tenor, it is true, one for example presented to the city council of Atlanta in 1859: "We feel aggrieved as Southern citizens that your honorable body tolerates a negro dentist (Roderick Badger) in our midst; and in justice to ourselves and the community it ought to be abated.

We, the residents of Atlanta, appeal to you for justice."[59] But it may readily be guessed that these pet.i.tioners were more moved by the interest of rival dentists than by their concern as Southern citizens. Southern protests of another cla.s.s, to be discussed below, against the toleration of colored freedmen in general, were prompted by considerations of public security, not by personal dislike.

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

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

152-155.]

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

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

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

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

In a few cases claims of ownership were resurrected after a long lapse.

That of Alexander Pierre, a New Orleans negro who had always pa.s.sed as free-born, was the consequence of an affray in which he had worsted another black. In revenge the defeated combatant made the fact known that Pierre was the son of a blind girl who because of her lack of market value had been left by her master many years before to shift for herself when he had sold his other slaves and gone to France. Thereupon George Heno, the heir of the departed and now deceased proprietor, laid claim to the whole Pierre group, comprising the blind mother, Alexander himself, his sister, and that sister's two children. Whether Heno's proceedings at law to procure possession succeeded or failed is not told in the available record.[61] In a kindred case not long afterward, however, the cause of liberty triumphed.

About 1807 Simon Porche of Point Coupee Parish had permitted his slave Eulalie to marry his wife's illegitimate mulatto half-brother; and thereafter she and her children and grand-children dwelt in virtual freedom. After Porche's death his widow, failing in an attempt to get official sanction for the manumission of Eulalie and her offspring and desiring the effort to be renewed in case of her own death, made a nominal sale of them to a relative under pledge of emanc.i.p.ation. When this man proved recreant and sold the group, now numbering seventeen souls, and the purchasers undertook possession, the case was litigated as a suit for freedom. Decision was rendered for the plaintiff, after appeal to the state supreme court, on the ground of prescriptive right. This outcome was in strict accord with the law of Louisiana providing that "If a master shall suffer a slave to enjoy his liberty for ten years during his residence in this state, or for twenty years while out of it, he shall lose all right of action to recover possession of the said slave, unless said slave shall be a runaway or fugitive."[62]

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

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

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

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

Solomon Northrup had been a raftsman and farmer about Lake Champlain until in 1841 when on the ground of his talent with the fiddle two strangers offered him employment in a circus which they said was then at Washington.

Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free papers, and delivered to a slave trader who shipped him to New Orleans.

Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's commission from the governor of New York. With the a.s.sistance of the local authorities Northrup's ident.i.ty was promptly established, his liberty procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his wife and children at Saratoga.[64]

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

A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had come from Liverpool as a ship steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had been offered pa.s.sage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of t.i.tle, refused payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F.

Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed his whole narrative that it might "a.s.sist the plaintiff to prove his freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave."[65]

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

Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66]

Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there were 83,942 of this cla.s.s in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large.

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

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

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

A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state pet.i.tioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband "from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering as they are, could not induce her to be separated."[68] On other grounds William Ba.s.s pet.i.tioned the South Carolina general a.s.sembly in 1859, reciting "That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives a thousand times harder and in more dest.i.tution than the slaves of many planters in this district." He accordingly asked permission by special act to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from $300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature.

An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, 1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio than among the whites.

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

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

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

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

[Footnote 72: American Historical a.s.sociation _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made complete by the action of the const.i.tutional convention of North Carolina in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80]

Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good behavior.

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

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