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Ending Free Black Suffrage in North Carolina

Lacy K. Ford, Jr.

in Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South

This chapter analyzes North Carolina's decision to disfranchise all free blacks at its 1835 state constitutional convention. The push for disfranchisement of free blacks in North Carolina was led not ... More

This chapter analyzes North Carolina's decision to disfranchise all free blacks at its 1835 state constitutional convention. The push for disfranchisement of free blacks in North Carolina was led not only by white egalitarians seeking ideological consistency but also by some conservatives eager to free their election districts from the influence of free black voters. These conservatives, who generally opposed constitutional reform, couched their public arguments against free black suffrage in terms of drawing a bright line between white citizens and black denizens much as egalitarians did, though conservatives also expressed the more elitist notion that black disfranchisement would free their election districts from the “corruption” and tendency to mobocracy they associated with free black voting.Less

Tennessee Debates Slavery

Lacy K. Ford, Jr.

in Deliver Us from Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South

This chapter examines Tennessee's debates on slavery. In the middle South, the Turner crisis raised questions about the future of slavery and the position of free blacks in a slaveholding society. ... More

This chapter examines Tennessee's debates on slavery. In the middle South, the Turner crisis raised questions about the future of slavery and the position of free blacks in a slaveholding society. These issues were debated not in the aftermath of a divisive state constitutional convention, as was the case in Virginia, but as Tennessee and North Carolina moved haltingly but inexorably toward state constitutional conventions of their own. These constitutional reform movements were driven by the pressure from white egalitarians eager to democratize state politics as thoroughly as possible despite entrenched conservative opposition. Thus, in the middle South, the debates over slavery and free blacks occurred within the cauldron of a white egalitarian crusade for constitutional revision.Less

Illegal but Tolerated: Slave Refugees in Richmond, Virginia, 1800–1860

Viola Franziska Müller

in Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America

As antebellum Virginia became the main point of departure for the domestic slave trade and enslaved people increasingly ran the risk of being sold and deported to the Deep South, the free black ... More

As antebellum Virginia became the main point of departure for the domestic slave trade and enslaved people increasingly ran the risk of being sold and deported to the Deep South, the free black population of Richmond, Virginia, was substantially augmented by an influx of fugitive slaves from the surrounding countryside who attempted to escape slavery by illegally passing themselves off as free. At the same time, the city became an important industrial site, stimulating an incessant demand for factory workers (both men and women) and domestic servants in the households of the growing white merchant class, thereby significantly expanding employment opportunities for black residents. These developments provided opportunities for slave refugees to hide amongst the free black population, pass for free, and find work in the booming labor markets of the city. Following up on the previous chapter, this chapter zooms in on a specific case study and focuses on the residential and economic integration of slave refugees in the Antebellum South, the interdependence of free blacks and fugitive slaves, and the intermingling of the lower classes within the bustling urban environment of Virginia’s capital city. Drawing from police registers, runaway slave ads, and court documents—all of which reveal illuminating details about the lives of runaway slaves and their interactions with the free black population—it reveals how fugitive slaves navigated an informal freedom in ways similar to the migration experiences of today’s illegal immigrants.Less

A Way Out of No Way: Black Women and Manumission

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers

in Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston

This chapter focuses on Sophia Mauncaut, a resident of Charleston who was accused by authorities of being an illegally freed black woman. With the threat of reenslavement hanging over her head, ... More

This chapter focuses on Sophia Mauncaut, a resident of Charleston who was accused by authorities of being an illegally freed black woman. With the threat of reenslavement hanging over her head, Sophia escaped the auction block by acquiring affidavits from four white Charlestonians, all of whom vouched that she was legally free. Philippe Barreyre, a local merchant, swore that Sophia came to Charleston in 1804 with her mistress, Josephine Catreuille, recently deceased. Joseph Dupont stated that he had known Josephine well and had advised her, when her financial situation was bleak, to sell Sophia. Josephine, however, informed Joseph that Sophia and her children were free people. According to Elias Pohl, Josephine had freed Sophia in Saint-Domingue but filed papers again in Charleston to ensure the woman's freedom.Less

Memory Making on Parade: African American Historical Identity in Reconstruction-Era Natchez

Susan T. Falck

in Remembering Dixie: The Battle to Control Historical Memory in Natchez, Mississippi, 1865-1941

This chapter clarifies that black communities experienced emancipation traditions in different ways. Given the large proportion of blacks in Natchez, and the region’s well-established free black ... More

This chapter clarifies that black communities experienced emancipation traditions in different ways. Given the large proportion of blacks in Natchez, and the region’s well-established free black community, it seemed probable that Natchez would experience a robust emancipation tradition. That was not the case. The grand 1867 Fourth of July parade in Natchez organized by the Union League drew a large crowd of African Americans, suggesting the beginnings of a bold emancipation tradition. Instead, public emancipation celebrations dwindled. By the time of the 1871 Decoration Day observance, leaders stressed reconciliation and a tribute to Confederate as well as Union soldiers, a far different message heard only four years earlier. The erosion of a black emancipation tradition resulted from the unusually close ties that existed between Natchez free blacks and white elites, and the fear among free blacks that it was in their best political interests to suppress such traditions.Less

Chapter 7

Roger G. Kennedy

in Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character

The battle against race-based slavery and racial discrimination began in New York at the White Plains Convention of 1776, at which the colony's revolutionaries gathered to create their new ... More

The battle against race-based slavery and racial discrimination began in New York at the White Plains Convention of 1776, at which the colony's revolutionaries gathered to create their new government, guided toward abolition by John Jay and Gouverneur Morris. Aaron Burr entered into his first working alliance with the Federalists during the 1790s to free New York's slaves and to protect refugee slaves from recapture by slave-stealing gangs operating on the streets of New York. After proposing abolition in New York in 1775, Jay organized the Manumission Society a decade later and joined Burr in the long fight for emancipation in the state government of New York. As for George Washington, in 1782 he assented to the formation of a “Black Corps” and began the slow progression toward manumission which ultimately led him to free his slaves and to endow them to remain in Virginia. For this implication that a multiracial society was possible, Washington was charged with irresponsibility to his class and section; resident free blacks, like resident Indians, would impede a policy of removal.Less

Seeking Freedom in the Midst of Slavery: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum South

Damian Alan Pargas

in Fugitive Slaves and Spaces of Freedom in North America

Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the U.S. South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves. ... More

Slave flight in the antebellum South did not always coincide with the political geography of freedom. Indeed, spaces and places within the U.S. South attracted the largest number of fugitive slaves. From the forests that bordered plantation districts (where slaves remained hidden and maintained by local slave communities) to southern cities (where slaves attempted to pass for free blacks), a majority of fugitive slaves strove for freedom by disguising themselves within the slaveholding states rather than risk long-distance flight attempts to formally free territories such as the northern U.S., Canada, and Mexico. This chapter examines the experiences of fugitive slaves who fled to southern cities between 1800 and 1860. It touches upon themes such as the motivations for fleeing to urban areas (e.g., slave families dodging forced migration), the networks that facilitated such flight attempts, and the ways in which runaway slaves navigated sites of “informal freedom” after arrival in urban areas. Whereas some scholars have approached this group of runaways mainly as “absentees” or “truants” (temporary runaways), this chapter argues that throughout the South, many fugitive slaves who hid out in towns and cities were in fact permanent refugees from slavery—at least by intent, and often by outcome.Less

Optics of Respectability: Women, Vision, and the Black Private Sphere

Jasmine Nichole Cobb

in Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century

This chapter examines emergent visual practices developed by elite free Black women within the confines of Black parlors. Focusing on free Black women's friendship albums, a popular form of ... More

This chapter examines emergent visual practices developed by elite free Black women within the confines of Black parlors. Focusing on free Black women's friendship albums, a popular form of sentimentalism, the chapter investigates how notable Black abolitionist women cultivated an “optics of respectability” and subversively engaged perceptions of free Black womanhood against the backdrop of slavery's visual culture. It also uses the friendship album as a basis for imagining the parlor and the production of privacy (such as interiority) in the lives of Black women who cultivated new self-perceptions in these spaces to coincide with experiences of freedom. Finally, it considers theories of feminist spectatorship to treat the album as a media artifact and to think about private practices of visual culture among free women in the slave era. By analyzing the visual practices of Black parlors, the chapter highlights the ways that free people of African descent transformed Black visuality amid changes happening around them.Less

Lash of the Tongue, Lash of the Whip: The Formation and Transformation of Racial Categories and Practices

Cécile Vidal

in Caribbean New Orleans: Empire, Race, and the Making of a Slave Society

This chapter looks simultaneously at the evolution of the language of race and at the racialization of both the judicial and military systems to analyze how racial categories were formed, inhabited, ... More

This chapter looks simultaneously at the evolution of the language of race and at the racialization of both the judicial and military systems to analyze how racial categories were formed, inhabited, and transformed over time in French New Orleans. The representations of the social order that fueled the language of race both informed and were shaped not only by a discriminatory and violent royal justice that increasingly targeted slaves as the main offenders but also by the exclusion of free blacks from and then by their segregation within permanent militia units. When the Spanish took over the colony, they found a society in which race was more firmly embedded than at the beginning of the French period while fostering more tensions and contradictions.Less

“Look! A Negress”: Public Women, Private Horrors, and the White Ontology of the Gaze

Jasmine Nichole Cobb

in Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century

This chapter examines how White viewers retreated to their parlors and used caricature to retool White dominion over the visual in response to street encounters with free Blacks, including Black ... More

This chapter examines how White viewers retreated to their parlors and used caricature to retool White dominion over the visual in response to street encounters with free Blacks, including Black women. Drawing on existential theories of the “look,” it considers Frantz Fanon's personal experience of the White gaze, captured in the phrase “Look! A Negro,” as a practical observation to linger in the moment of White sight and to assess the effect of Blackness on Whiteness. It also discusses Edward Williams Clay's “Life in Philadelphia” cartoon serial, which mocked free Black Philadelphians for their public displays of freedom and showed unflattering caricatures of Black women. Finally, it analyzes White perceptions of the social changes compelled by gradual emancipation laws and how Whites imagined Black freedom in hostile ways in order to manage anxieties about sharing northern spaces with free Blacks. The chapter shows that free Black women tailored their public appearances to directly counter slavery's visual culture, to reclaim rights to covering and to sacredness.Less

Blood of the Father

Brooke N. Newman

in A Dark Inheritance: Blood, Race, and Sex in Colonial Jamaica

Focusing on the 1730s through the 1750s, chapter 2 considers the relationship between notions of hereditary blood status and the legal redefinition of whiteness and British racial identity in ... More

Focusing on the 1730s through the 1750s, chapter 2 considers the relationship between notions of hereditary blood status and the legal redefinition of whiteness and British racial identity in Jamaica. It shows how demographic crises and ongoing conflicts with the Maroons prompted Jamaican colonial authorities to turn to free blacks, Jews, and persons of mixed ancestry for compulsory assistance. While free blacks and men of mixed ancestry were required to offer military service, and Jews were burdened with extraordinary taxation, a select handful of men and women of mixed ancestry aided the colonial regime by assisting in the legal “whitening” of Jamaica.Less

Policing the Black Criminal

Adam Malka

in Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation

This chapter argues that white Baltimoreans acted on their fears of free black crime all the time, often violently and usually with the municipality’s approval. In the process, it shows that the ... More

This chapter argues that white Baltimoreans acted on their fears of free black crime all the time, often violently and usually with the municipality’s approval. In the process, it shows that the compatibility between professional and popular policing manifested not only in job-busting attacks and home invasions but also in more prosaic moments, such as when an ordinary citizen arrested a black man or protected him from harm. The public authorities were nominally engaged in a broader project of seizing legitimate force for the state alone, but the policing of free black Baltimoreans relied upon informal white power no less than it did upon formal state power. Police officers did not always protect them. Prisons did not always house them. In the age of slavery, Baltimore’s officials preferred to leave the fates of free people of color to ordinary white men. When it came to policing black people, white vigilantes were the police.Less

Creating a Free Black Community in New York during the Era of Emancipation

in In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863

The War of 1812 was a high point in black cross-class support of the various forms of the free black urban presence. Occurring in the midst of the emancipation process, this war seemed to bring more ... More

The War of 1812 was a high point in black cross-class support of the various forms of the free black urban presence. Occurring in the midst of the emancipation process, this war seemed to bring more opportunity for blacks to prove their worth than had the Revolutionary War. The passage of a new state law soon after the end of the war, which guaranteed emancipation in 1827 to all slaves born before July 4, 1799, seemed to signify that New York's blacks had indeed proven themselves worthy of full citizenship. Although New York's 1799 gradual emancipation law freed no adult slaves and gave freedom to the children of slaves only after a lengthy indenture, slaves throughout New York State saw the law as a sign that whites recognized black people's rights to freedom.Less

Peculiar Voice: The Counter Memorial of the Free People of Colour of the District of Columbia and the Unsettling of Colonization’s Deliberative Discourse

Bjørn F. Stillion Southard

in Peculiar Rhetoric: Slavery, Freedom, and the African Colonization Movement

In response to the creation of the American Colonization Society, a Counter Memorial against the group was published by a purported group of free blacks in the District of Columbia. The exact ... More

In response to the creation of the American Colonization Society, a Counter Memorial against the group was published by a purported group of free blacks in the District of Columbia. The exact authorship was called into question by the editors in the paper. This chapter uses the Counter Memorial and the question of authorship to explore the instability of voice as it pertained to blackness and colonization.Less

Urban Slaves and Freed Blacks: Black Women's Objectification and Erotic Taboos

Rafael Ocasio

in Afro-Cuban Costumbrismo: From Plantations to the Slums

“Urban Slaves and Freed Blacks” examines urban Blacks, slave and freed, who were part of a rather large population that worked in a substantial number but limited range of trades and lived in ... More

“Urban Slaves and Freed Blacks” examines urban Blacks, slave and freed, who were part of a rather large population that worked in a substantial number but limited range of trades and lived in marginal neighborhoods throughout Cuban cities. Documentation of Black customs and, in particular, of representative character types, is the focus of the section entitled “Cuban Costumbristas’ Multifaceted Portraits of Black Women.” It presents an analysis of Black women as public figures, often depicted as essential components of a booming Creole Black urban culture. Negative characterization of certain Black female types demonstrates the subversive mechanisms that female slaves or freed Black women had at their disposal to confront the gender-based impositions of mainstream culture. Like Black males, Black women had to live and work in specific urban locales, and their whereabouts as street vendors or as medicine women became favorite themes for Costumbristas. Costumbrista writers followed similar trends observed in popular Cuban visual art, seeking to classify Black women in terms of their supposedly oversexualized behavior, of their acculturation into mainstream Cuban culture, or of the specific jobs they were allowed to engage. One common character is the mulata fina, a figure that acquired literary importance in unpublished abolitionist novels.Less

Rewriting the Free Negro Past: Joseph Lumpkin, Proslavery Ideology, and Citizenship in Antebellum Georgia

Watson Jennison

in Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South

*By the 1850s the debate over slavery had reached its peak. In the midst of growing sectionalism and political conflict, slavery’s defenders and its opponents engaged in a heated battle over the true ... More

*By the 1850s the debate over slavery had reached its peak. In the midst of growing sectionalism and political conflict, slavery’s defenders and its opponents engaged in a heated battle over the true nature of bondage in the U. S. South and its impact on those enslaved. These debates concerned not only the fate of the slave population in the South, but the place of the free black population as well. Their collective condition figured prominently in the discussions over the institution. Although white northerners were similarly hostile to the notion that blacks were equal to whites, most were less inclined to cast free blacks in such unequivocally negative terms or to deprive them of basic rights. Indeed, free blacks retained privileges of citizenship, including the right to vote, in New York and most of New England throughout the antebellum era. One of the leading figures in the assault on free black rights was Justice Joseph Lumpkin of Georgia, a prominent jurist and the legal architect of the state’s antebellum slave regime. In sixty important cases related to those issues during his 21 years on the bench, Lumpkin stood at the vanguard of a southern movement promoting proslavery ideology in the legal realm.Less

A Second Removal?: The Rise and Defeat of Black Colonization

Paul Frymer

in Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion

This chapter examines the question of how the nation would eventually respond to the increasing numbers of free blacks as well as the impending end of legalized African slavery. It considers the ... More

This chapter examines the question of how the nation would eventually respond to the increasing numbers of free blacks as well as the impending end of legalized African slavery. It considers the popularity of black colonization and why this effort at a second removal of a large population was defeated. In particular, it looks at the two-year period in the first congressional session during the Lincoln administration, when the idea of black colonization seemingly had its greatest momentum yet suffered its most resounding defeat. The chapter first provides an overview of colonization schemes in the first two years of the Lincoln administration, Abraham Lincoln's foreign policy adventures, and his Emancipation Proclamation before discussing how the ambitions of American majorities for an all-white nation clashed with the realities of making such an event a reality in the context of a relatively weak American state.Less

“They will never become a people until they come out from amongst the white people”: James Forten and African American Ambivalence to African Colonization

Beverly C. Tomek

in Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania

This chapter focuses on one of the most famous black leaders of the time, the wealthy Philadelphia sailmaker and community leader James Forten. His story reveals the way in which the state's free ... More

This chapter focuses on one of the most famous black leaders of the time, the wealthy Philadelphia sailmaker and community leader James Forten. His story reveals the way in which the state's free black population played a number of important roles in the drama that unfolded as the three branches of antislavery interacted. Though appreciative of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society's (PAS) efforts, black leaders such as Forten were never willing to be controlled. His story bolsters the claims of historians that a number of black Americans were interested in emigration when they thought it would offer true leadership opportunity. But once they saw that blacks would not be granted the level of respect they had hoped for, they changed their minds and became suspicious of white-led colonization efforts. This independent spirit was what led most blacks to ultimately reject the American Colonization Society (ACS). Forten's life shows the changes in Pennsylvania's racial climate through the lenses of the black community as well as the hopes and failures of both gradual abolition and colonization. Through Forten we can also catch a glimpse of the renewed hope that came with the growth of immediatism.Less