Between Slavery and Freedom Read online

  New Jersey took longer than New York to start dismantling the institution of slavery. Not until 1804 did that state pass a gradual abolition law—and it was very gradual. Well into the 1830s, New Jersey had more slaves than any other Northern state, and black freedom was almost a contradiction in terms because the state continued to impose so many limitations on what African Americans could and could not do. However, in freedom as in slavery, black residents of New Jersey banded together, determined not to be marginalized politically or economically.

  By 1805, every one of the Northern states had set slavery on the path to extinction. That did not mean that in any of those states black people could expect the same treatment as whites. Dissatisfied though black Northerners were with half-measures, few would have disputed that even limited freedom was preferable to enslavement. Individually and collectively, they struggled to move beyond the lowly status that so many whites thought should be theirs in perpetuity, even when they ceased to be slaves. Black people in the South were equally determined, although the challenges they faced were much greater.

  If slavery was dying in the North, it was getting a new lease on life in the South. However, the South was not a single entity. In terms of population, economy, and ideology, the Upper and the Lower South were very different, and for several decades it seemed possible that freedom would become the norm for black people in Virginia and the surrounding states, even as South Carolina and Georgia clung tenaciously to the institution of slavery. Numbers alone suggest that the Upper South was committed to emancipation. But if the number of free people was rising, so was the number of slaves. Even so, the three decades following the Revolution witnessed a dramatic transformation of free black life in the Upper South. Free communities emerged in localities where none had existed previously. People struggled to make a living for themselves and their families. They organized churches and schools and self-improvement societies. Above all, they made it clear to their white neighbors that they would do whatever they needed to do to safeguard their own freedom and help other black Southerners extricate themselves from bondage.

  In the immediate post-Independence years tens of thousands of slaves in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and Delaware had gained their freedom. Slave owners had responded to a number of imperatives, from religious impulses to the Revolutionary rhetoric of liberty for all, from the need for black troops to fight the British to the economic upheavals that made slavery less profitable than it had been. By the 1790s, however, things were changing. Religious denominations like the Baptists and the Methodists that had once denounced slavery were back-pedaling, and prices for slaves in the expanding Cotton Kingdom in the Lower South were rising. If an owner in Virginia or North Carolina did not have enough work for all of his slaves, he could sell them to a trader. He need not set them free.

  Throughout the Upper South, emancipations declined and restrictions on free people intensified as whites began to feel uneasy when they realized just how large a segment of the black population was in fact free. The various state legislatures crafted laws to make securing one’s liberty more difficult. No longer was it sufficient for an owner simply to decide to free a slave. New regulations obliged masters and mistresses to prove in court that a slave had earned his or her freedom through “meritorious service.” Some courts interpreted that very loosely, while others routinely turned down all requests to approve manumissions. After 1806, Virginia required all newly-freed slaves to leave the state. Some managed to secure waivers from the courts. Those who did not have any influential white friends to intercede for them simply stayed put and hoped to avoid detection. Other states throughout the region adopted similar exclusion laws, since they did not want hundreds of ex-slaves from Virginia crossing over their borders and taking up residence.

  Ironically, for a brief moment white Virginians had debated the wisdom of wholesale emancipation. In 1800, they had been horrified to learn that a trusted slave craftsman, Gabriel, had been planning a massive rebellion. It reminded them all too vividly of what had happened on Saint Domingue. They executed Gabriel and all of his co-conspirators and then began asking what they could do to prevent future insurrections. A few bold souls maintained that the wisest course would be to give the slaves what they wanted, namely their liberty. That prompted questions about what the racial landscape would look like in Virginia if slavery ceased to exist. Few whites were willing to live alongside free black people as equals. They silenced the antislavery radicals. Instead of emancipation they demanded harsher punishments for any acts of disobedience on the part of the slaves and tighter controls on free blacks to limit their abilities to conspire with the slaves.

  Although the laws became more restrictive, the free community of color in the Upper South kept growing. It grew as the region itself grew. Kentucky and Tennessee joined the Union in the 1790s. Both entered as slave states and both patterned their laws on those of the older states, Tennessee on the North Carolina code and Kentucky on that of Virginia. Neither Kentucky nor Tennessee wanted to encourage free black settlers, but the repressive laws could not keep black people out of the new states. They were as eager as white people to lay claim to good farmland or, if they had skilled trades, to seek employment in the fledgling townships of Lexington, Louisville, and Nashville.

  In both the older and the newer states of the Upper South the free black population continued to grow as free couples formed stable family units and had children, as owners turned their slaves loose without bothering with the formalities, and as runaways quietly blended in among those who were legally free. For the Upper South’s free people of color, life was full of contradictions. Their sheer numbers gave them opportunities to organize, to develop community institutions, and to try to build secure futures, even as their assertiveness and their very presence perturbed their white neighbors.

  The situation in the Lower South was strikingly different. Georgia and South Carolina proved as hostile to black freedom as they had ever been, and new laws made the lives of free blacks even more difficult. In 1792, South Carolina began requiring all free people between ages sixteen and sixty to register and pay a special tax. The courts had the power to levy a substantial fine on anyone who flouted the law and bind them out if they could not or would not pay—a penalty that could reduce a free black man or woman to a situation little better than slavery. Georgia did not lag far behind when it came to making free people register as free.

  Holding on to liberty required constant vigilance and the stoic acceptance of demeaning and discriminatory laws regarding everything from dog ownership to nighttime curfews. It meant abiding by certain social conventions, for instance, always giving a white person the right of way in the street. Nevertheless, some free people fared better in South Carolina and Georgia, where whites had never seriously contemplated wholesale emancipation, than they did in the Upper South. They derived a measure of protection from their ties to prominent white families, even when no one openly acknowledged that those ties existed. The practice of emancipating concubines and biracial kin had begun in colonial days and it continued. The laws on the books were strict. By 1820 in both South Carolina and Georgia only the legislature could confer freedom upon a slave. In spite of the almost total ban on manumissions, some owners ignored the law and permitted a favored slave to live as if he or she were free. However, a compliant slaveholder’s heirs might decide to end the arrangement or an angry white neighbor might inform the authorities and someone who had long thought of themselves as free could wind up on the auction block. In some instances, “free” people of color discovered that they were in fact slaves because their mothers had never been legally emancipated and they had inherited their unfree status.

  At the time of the 1790 census the Lower South comprised just two states, Georgia and South Carolina. By 1820, it was much larger and its plantation economy was beginning to fuel the growth of much of the nation. The introduction of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1794, as well as the demand for raw cotton in the facto
ries of Great Britain, and the eagerness of Northern shippers and merchants to share in the riches of the Cotton Kingdom combined to transform many aspects of commercial life. None of this growth would have been possible without Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of the vast Louisiana Territory in 1803. The doubling in size of the United States at the stroke of a pen profoundly altered the lives of free people of African descent.

  The French were willing to sell the Louisiana Territory because they could not crush the rebellion on Saint Domingue. Napoleon Bonaparte had pressured the Spanish into surrendering the Territory to France in 1800 in the confident expectation that his army could regain control of Saint Domingue and force the slaves back to work on the island’s sugar and coffee plantations. The farms of the Territory would produce the food to feed the island colony’s slaves and their masters. Everything fit seamlessly together in Napoleon’s grand scheme, until the French suffered a humiliating reverse on Saint Domingue and he decided to jettison the Territory now that he had no use for it. In 1803, American and French negotiators struck a deal in Paris and overnight the United States gained millions of acres of real estate. What President Jefferson and his administration paid little heed to was the complex racial situation the nation was inheriting.

  The southern part of the Louisiana Territory was home to a numerous and thriving “free colored” population that had grown even larger as a result of the uprising on Saint Domingue. Many gens de couleur had headed to the United States. Many more had gone to New Orleans. As French-speaking Catholics they thought they would be happier there than in the overwhelmingly Protestant, English-speaking United States.

  The Spanish authorities were already becoming uneasy about the free community of color in and around New Orleans. Even before the arrival of the gens de couleur from the West Indies, the number of free people was increasing and so was their assertiveness. The French were worried when they regained control of Louisiana from Spain. They distrusted both the refugees from Saint Domingue and the native-born free people, with their militia companies, their growing affluence, and their insistence that they had rights almost equal to those of their white neighbors. When the region changed hands yet again, the Americans were no less wary. Louisiana’s free people of color presented a challenge to the growing idea in the United States that all individuals of African descent should be subordinate to whites in every facet of their lives.

  In 1804, the U.S. government split the enormous Louisiana Territory in two to make it easier to administer. What is today the state of Louisiana became the Orleans Territory, while everything north of that became the Missouri Territory. In the Orleans Territory racial tensions simmered. Many whites, both long-term residents and newcomers from the United States, despised free people as a class and complained loudly to the newly-appointed territorial governor, William Claiborne, about their arrogance. The free people themselves assured Claiborne of their loyalty, adding that they looked forward to enjoying the same rights as other Americans now that they, too, were American citizens. Claiborne did not regard them as citizens, although he was cautious about telling them that. The members of the new territorial legislature were much more forthright. When the legislature met for the first time, representatives weakened significantly the “colored” militia companies and slashed away at the privileges of free people of color in general. They also made it far more difficult for owners to emancipate any more slaves. If the lawmakers could not actually re-enslave free people, they could at least limit the number of slaves who gained their freedom.

  In 1811, a massive slave revolt erupted not far from New Orleans. Governor Claiborne turned not only to whites but to the mixed-race militiamen for help to put down the uprising. The “colored” forces performed well, and Claiborne was appreciative. The legislature was less enthusiastic. Although lawmakers knew they needed the militia companies, given that a war with Britain was looming, they still wanted them firmly under white control. If the rank and file militiamen were dangerous, the officer corps was even more threatening. Whites feared that every “free colored” officer was another Toussaint L’Ouverture. They could not grasp the fact that many of these elite men were themselves slaveholders, and they had as much to fear from a successful slave rebellion as any white slave owner.

  The War of 1812 witnessed a true test of the courage and the loyalty of the free colored militia. In the autumn of 1814 General Andrew Jackson hurried to Louisiana to fend off a massive British assault on the Gulf of Mexico. Jackson realized that he had to gain the trust of the free colored militiamen. He also feared that if he did not call upon them to join him they might become so resentful that they would side with the British. He was right to consider the feelings of these proud fighting men. The shabby treatment they had received thus far had left them feeling highly indignant. Jackson made an impassioned plea to them as brothers-in-arms and as fellow Americans and they responded by taking up their weapons and marching out to join him and his troops.

  The Battle of New Orleans produced mixed results for the militiamen. Jackson praised them for their valor, but he was powerless to get them the equal pay he had promised them. On the other hand, their willingness to fight prompted some white residents to look more favorably upon them. It was not only the heroism of the black and mixed-race soldiers in defense of New Orleans that weighed with white citizens. The spectacular commercial growth of the city after 1815 meant that free people of color with skilled trades became increasingly valuable to the economy. To keep them down, especially when they showed no signs of fomenting rebellions, might have resulted in an exodus of useful and productive artisans. The new law code that Louisiana adopted allowed free people to move about the state at will and testify against whites in court—rights people of color did not have elsewhere in the Lower South. It also assumed that light-skinned people were free unless there was overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Everywhere else in the region, the burden of proof of free status rested upon the individual man or woman of color. When the Louisiana legislature finally did enact a series of restrictive laws, it exempted those people who had lived in Louisiana prior to statehood.

  The growth of the United States continued. Mississippi joined the Union in 1817 and Alabama in 1819. Slavery was firmly rooted in both states, and with the demand for cotton continually increasing, slave owners were not prepared to give up valuable members of their labor force. Free people of color made up a miniscule segment of the population. By 1820, Mississippi and Alabama had a combined total of 1,029 free people—fewer than Richmond, Virginia, which had 1,235. The free black communities of the two new states also had to confront some of the most draconian laws in force anywhere in the South.

  The situation that free blacks in the southern half of the Louisiana Territory had experienced after the transition from Spanish and French control was replicated in Florida when it became part of the United States in 1819. Free men and women of color in Spanish Florida feared they would lose the privileges they had had under Spanish law and be scarcely any better off than the slaves. They were somewhat more fortunate, given that white racial attitudes, harsh though they were, permitted some members of the free colored community a little more latitude. After the transition to American rule, Mobile, which had been in Spanish Florida, became part of Alabama, but free people there retained certain rights and privileges. The same was true in Pensacola, even when Florida lawmakers hacked away at the rights of free people in general across the state. To be free in either Mobile or Pensacola did not make free blacks citizens in the same way that whites were, but it did mean that life was somewhat better than it was for free people elsewhere in the Lower South.

  If the South proved treacherous terrain for free people to navigate, the Midwest did not prove much more hospitable. In the early years of the new century the Old Northwest was transformed from one large territory into separate territories, which eventually became states. Although the Northwest Ordinance explicitly banned slaveholding in any state formed out of the territory betwee
n the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, the absence of slaves did not translate into a warm welcome for free blacks anywhere in the region. In 1803, Ohio entered the Union as a “free” state. It did so with a body of laws in place that barred African Americans from voting, holding public office, or serving in the state militia. The following year the legislature informed free blacks that if they wanted to live in Ohio they must post a $500 bond for every member of their household, including infants and children. The situation in neighboring Indiana was no better, while in Illinois some white residents thought they should be able to keep the slaves they already owned, regardless of what the ordinance said. Even though Illinois became a “free” state, the racial climate was distinctly hostile and its laws with regard to black people were very repressive. As difficult as life was for free black people throughout the Midwest, some braved those difficulties. When all was said and done, they had often endured just as much discriminatory treatment back East.

  The territorial growth of the United States since the 1790s onwards had affected the population of the entire nation in economic and political terms, but whether or not a particular state joined the Union as “free” or “slave” obviously had a tremendous impact on black Americans. As the extent of slave territory increased, so did the demand for slaves. In the summer of 1807, Congress prohibited the importation of any more slaves into the United States after January 1, 1808. The opponents of slavery, black and white, were overjoyed. They believed this was the first step toward total emancipation. On New Year’s Day 1808 free people of color from Boston to Baltimore celebrated and held services of thanksgiving in their various churches. The January First observances continued for a number of years until the realization dawned that the end of the overseas trade had given way to a brisk domestic slave trade. Slavery was not in its death throes, and slaveholders in the Upper South had endorsed the federal ban on importations because it drove up prices for their own slaves when they shipped them off for sale in New Orleans and the other major slave markets. It also encouraged unscrupulous individuals to claim as fugitives black men and women who were legally free. Every move that strengthened slavery jeopardized the liberty of every member of the free community of color. Outside the ranks of the most zealous opponents of slavery, most whites either did not understand or simply did not care. However, the implications of the spread of slavery were about to stir up a nationwide debate.