American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  House servants enjoyed better food and clothing than field hands, because they received the leftovers from the master’s table and the family’s castoff clothing. Yet they had to pay a heavy psychological price for their greater material comforts. Living in such close proximity to whites, they were under constant surveillance. They had always to acknowledge their master’s supremacy by deference and docility. Some house servants were obsequious; others put on a mask of submissiveness and spied on the master and his family for their fellow slaves in the quarters. Others openly resisted. In such cases, the responsibility of the driver to discipline his own people for the benefit of the white master made his life ambiguous and difficult. Jane, an eighteen-year-old house servant of Reverend Jones, gave “constant trouble.” Jane’s mother and father, Phoebe and Cassius, had also “occasioned trouble” before. Cato had earlier reported that “Cash has given up going to prayers” and was “cited before the next Meeting” for swearing.

  Mary Jones, Reverend Jones’s wife, wished to sell Jane because of her tendency to run away, but would not separate her from her family. Mary Jones especially valued Jane’s mother, Phoebe, an accomplished house servant. “Much as I should miss the mother,” Mary Jones wrote, “I will not separate them if I can help it.” Jane eventually did run away, took the name of Sarah, and with the help of black friends found work as a house servant in Savannah. She pretended that her master had allowed her to find work in the city and pay him her wages. This was known as “hiring her time.” The city constable learned of her runaway status and arrested her, receiving a thirty-dollar reward. On learning of her arrest, the Jones family had her sent to a slave broker and the auction block.

  Slavery seriously compromised black family life. The power of owner over slave was absolute, and if a bondman ran away, the owner, not the law, administered punishment. Whether he administered it benevolently or harshly depended upon his nature. Rather than trifling with slaves who showed any inclination to flee, planters often sold them with or without their families, sometimes into the Deep South, where there was little or no chance for escape to freedom.

  Since owners could sell slaves away from families at any time, there were no legal marriages among the bonded, and planters occasionally pressured a slave woman to cohabit with a black man not of her choice, to breed new slaves. Many years later, when she was in her nineties and blind, Rose Williams still hated a Texas owner, Hall Hawkins, who kept her family together but wanted her to “marry” a man she despised:

  Dere am one thing Massa Hawkins does to me what I can’t shunt from my mind. I knows he don’t do it for meanness, but I allus holds it ’gainst him. What he done am force me to live with dat nigger, Rufus, ’gainst my wants.

  After I been at he place ’bout a year, de massa come to me and say, “You gwine live with Rufus in dat cabin over yonder. Go fix it for livin’.” I’s ’bout sixteen year old and has no larnin’, and I’s jus’ igno’mus chile. I’s thought dat him mean for me to tend de cabin for Rufus and some other niggers. Well, dat am start de pestigation for me.

  I’s look charge of de cabin after work am done and fixes supper. Now, I don’t like dat Rufus, ’cause he a bully. He am big and ’cause he so, he think everybody do what him say. We’uns has supper, den I goes here and dere talkin’, till I’s ready for sleep and den I gits in de bunk. After I’s in, dat nigger come and crawl in de bunk with me ’fore I knows it. I says, “What you means, you fool nigger?” He say for me to hush de mouth. “Dis my bunk, too,” he say.

  “You’s teched in de head. Git out,” I’s told him, and I puts de feet ’gainst him and give him a shove and out he go on de floor ’fore he knew what I’s doin’. Dat nigger jump up and he mad. He look like de wild bear. He starts for de bunk and I jumps quick for de poker. It am ’bout three feet long and when he comes at me I lets him have it over de head. Did dat nigger stop in he tracks? I’s say he did. He looks at me steady for a minute and you’s could tell he thinkin’ hard. Den he go and set on de bench and say, “Jus’ wait. You thinks it am smart, but you’s am foolish in de head. Dey’s gwine larn you somethin’.”

  “Hush you big mouth and stay ’way from dis nigger, dat all I wants,” I say, and jus’ sets and hold dat poker in de hand. He jus’ sets, lookin’ like de bull. Dere we’uns sets and sets for ’bout an hour, and den he go out and I bars de door.

  De nex’ day I goes to de missy and tells her what Rufus wants and missy say dat am de massa’s wishes. She say, “yous am de portly gal and Rufus am de portly man. De massa wants yu-uns fer to bring forth portly chillen.”

  I’s thinkin’ ’bout what de missy say, but say to myse’f, “I’s not gwine live with dat Rufus.” Dat night when he come in de cabin, I grabs de poker and sits on de bench and says, “Git ’way from me, nigger, ’fore I busts you brains out and stomp on dem.” He say nothin’ and git out.

  De nex’ day de massa call me and tell me, “Woman, I’s pay big money for you and I’s done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chillens. I’s put yous to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn’t want whippin’ at de stake, yous do what I wants.”

  I thinks’bout massa buyin’ me offen de block and saving’ me from bein’ separated from my folks and ’bout bein’ whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I’s to do? So I ’cides to do as de massa wish and so I yields.

  Rose had two children by Rufus and then left him. “I never marries,” she said later, “cause one ’sperience am ’nough for this nigger.”

  The black infant mortality rate was almost double that of whites, yet the slave population between 1830 and 1860 grew by 23 percent every ten years. Slaves married earlier. Many slave women bore children when they were thirteen and fourteen years of age, so that by twenty some had produced five children. Planters gave bounties and prizes to women who boosted the slave population. Mothers had little opportunity to develop a real attachment to their children, since the usual practice was to press the mother back into service one month after childbirth and put the baby in the plantation nursery, where old slave women or slave children cared for the very young.

  Because Reverend Jones considered marriage vows among blacks as sacred as among whites, he decided to sell the disobedient family of Phoebe and Cassius as a unit, for “we cannot consent to separate them.” The slaves would have brought much more money if sold separately, but Jones resolved to take an economic loss. Jones then priced the family: “Cassius, Senior, age 45, good field hand, $800; Phoebe, Mother, age 47, accomplished house servant, $1,000; Cassius, Junior, good field hand, age 20, $1,000; Jane, daughter, age 18, house servant, $900; son, field hand, age 16, $800; daughter, Victoria, age 14, active field hand; Lafayette, age 12, smart active boy.…”

  Wright, the slave broker, returned much lower estimates to the Joneses for the slaves (approximately $750 apiece), saying: “The estimates given must necessarily be subject to greater or less modification. The size, soundness of teeth, etc. are all to be considered.” Jones wrote that he must have $800 for each, and they must be kept together. He had engaged a man to take them to Savannah by wagon: “Jackson says he will put them in a yard and feed them where he usually stops, and they will be safe, and at a trifling expense.”

  Slaves were a large investment, and slave-trading was a profitable business. The price for prime field hands was $1,250 in Virginia and $1,800 in New Orleans by the late 1850s owing to the high demand for slaves in the new cotton fields of the Gulf states. Slave traders often earned commissions and profits of from 5 to 30 percent on the sale price of slaves.

  Pressing for the speedy sale of his slaves, but wanting his price too, Jones wrote his son in Savannah to spruce up the appearance of the family for sale, as was the common practice. “You did right in procuring the shoes, and I wish you get of Mr. Lathrop striped Negro winter cloth the same as we bought for the people: six and a half yards apiece, and three yards of cotton homespun apiece and some buttons and thread, and have it given to them. Phoebe and Jane c
an make it up in a few days.” The expense of keeping them at Wright’s ran to $200 and Jones wrote his son to accept an offer of $4,000 supposedly from an up-country planter who would keep the entire family on his plantation. A professional slave trader, however, quietly bought the family through an agent and took them to New Orleans for separate sale.

  Phoebe dictated a message from New Orleans to her adult daughters, Clarissa and Nancy, who, married with families of their own, were left behind on the Jones plantation. Her letter reveals the love that blacks held for their families. “Please tell them that their sister Jane died the first of Feby we did not know what was the matter with her.…Clarissa, your affectionate mother and Father sends a heap of Love to you and your Husband and my Grand Children Phebea. Mag. and Cloe. John. Judy. Sue.,” wrote Phoebe from the slave trader’s quarters in New Orleans. Many slaves, such as Jane, lost their lives in the slave trade. Others resisted. Some tried economic sabotage and covertly slowed down their work or maimed animals or broke tools or stole goods from the master. To run, to conspire, to revolt—these were the more dramatic ways of fighting back.

  As a young slave, Nat Turner had fled a cruel and demanding overseer. He hid in the dark swamps of Southampton County, Virginia, to escape the slave patrols and bloodhounds. Thirty days later, Turner walked out of the swamps, not to freedom but back to slavery on the plantation of his master, Benjamin Turner. When asked why he returned, Nat Turner told his astonished fellow slaves, “The Spirit appeared to me and said I had my wishes directed to the things of this world, and not to the kingdom of heaven, and that I should return to the service of my earthly master.” He had returned to lead his people, as an “exhorter” at their religious gatherings. Five feet seven inches tall, slender at 150 pounds, Turner seemed to mesmerize with his blazing, deep-set eyes and spellbinding oratory.

  In 1822, Nat Turner was sold away from his wife and children to a new master, Joseph Travis, who demanded heavy, backbreaking labor in the fields. He did allow Turner to preach on Sundays to meetings in neighboring slave churches, which enabled him to learn the Virginia countryside and to tell many free blacks of a judgment day when he and all of his followers “should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons.”

  Turner and his followers met, August 21, 1831, deep in the Southampton County woods to plan their revolt. It was a steamy, hot day, and they knew the whites would be tired that evening from a Sunday of visiting and drinking. The slaves waited. At midnight they struck, taking farm after farm by complete surprise. Beginning with Nat Turner’s own master and his family, the band killed seventy white men, women, and children within twenty-four hours. State and federal militia finally overpowered them and jailed them in Jerusalem, the seat of Southampton County. Slave-hunting patrols killed more than two hundred blacks, many of whom had no knowledge of Turner. He himself escaped into the woods again, but this time he was captured. On November 11, after a short trial, Nat Turner was hanged as an immense crowd watched.

  Now the planters closed ranks. The southern slave system became so repressive that no more rebellions broke out after Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831. If he, a trusted slave, could mount such a terrifying rebellion, so might others. States enlarged their patrol and militia systems. Slaves caught without passes could expect twenty lashes from the patrols. The South passed laws abridging freedom of the press and speech for all. In Virginia, anyone printing or circulating literature for the purpose of persuading slaves to revolt was subject to prosecution. The slave codes tightened against not only bondmen but also free blacks throughout the South. In Mississippi, as in much of the lower South, no black person could own a grocery, inn, or tavern or any place where blacks could meet and plot rebellion. It was against the law for a free black to sell liquor or work in a printshop. If detected, the printer was liable to a fine, the black person to the death penalty.

  In the North, free blacks managed a meager existence, often little better than in slavery. Northern whites segregated freedmen in the North even as they condemned slavery in the South. The number of free blacks North and South increased slowly from 434,000 in 1850 to 482,000 in 1860. Every new state admitted after 1819 restricted voting to whites. Only five New England states—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont—provided for equal voting rights for black and white males. Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and California prohibited black testimony in court if whites were a party to the proceeding. Massachusetts, though advanced in voting rights for blacks, banned intermarriage of whites with blacks and enforced segregation in hotels, restaurants, theaters, and transportation. A black man noted that “It is five times as hard to get a house in a good location in Boston as it is in Philadelphia, and it is ten times as difficult for a colored mechanic to get work here as in Charleston.”

  Whatever the discrimination in the North, to thousands of slaves it was still the place of liberty, or at least of hope. A few escaped, traveling at night, sleeping in barns, stealing corn from fields along the way, sometimes taking weeks and even months to reach safety. Some escapes were carefully plotted. Slaves stole horses, forged identity cards, wore disguises, sometimes boldly traveled by steamboat or stayed at the best hotels. Some had themselves shipped in large wooden boxes and a few of these almost suffocated. Some escaped simply by walking north, at night following the North Star. Relatively few fugitives were assisted by the mysterious Underground Railroad. Reputed to speed thousands of slaves north through hidden depots, midnight journeys, telegraphed messages, this “railroad” consisted rather of sporadic local efforts, significant more for raising abolitionist morale than for channeling armies of slaves to freedom. Most slaves made it on their own, or through black communities with the help of other blacks, slave or free. Despite southern fears and abolitionist claims, probably not more than a thousand slaves escaped to freedom in a typical year.

  One of these was Fred Bailey; his escape indicated the possibilities and problems facing a black seeking to flee even from a border state with a large population of freedmen. Brought up by grandparents, he had never known his father and barely known his mother. He had luck enough to be sent to Baltimore, where his mistress, a kind and pious woman, began to teach him his letters, until her husband angrily told her to stop, for reading would “spoil the best nigger in the world.” A chip of fate, Frederick was thrust back and forth from plantation and household, but in the process he learned to read, to teach other blacks, to become expert as a ship’s caulker, and even to stand his master off physically to avoid a beating. The master hired him out to a Baltimore shipyard, where white workers tolerated him only because his wages went to his owner. Becoming increasingly independent, self-reliant, and proud, he borrowed papers given to free black seamen coming ashore in southern ports, donned sailor’s clothes, and boarded a train for Philadelphia and freedom. Abolitionists in New York helped him move on to New Bedford and its shipyards.

  Frederick Douglass, as he now called himself, could not ply his trade there because white workers threatened to strike, so he had to pick up odd jobs as a common laborer. Finding the Methodist Church segregated, he joined the Zion Methodists, where he became a class leader. Soon he was reading Garrison’s Liberator, attending abolitionist meetings, and talking with his friends at church.

  In the summer of 1841, abolitionists held an antislavery convention on the island of Nantucket. Douglass attended—mainly for the holiday, he said later—and was invited to speak. How the crowd was electrified by this dynamic young man with his rich, commanding voice—how they were mesmerized by the story of his years in bondage—how he was hired on the spot to speak for the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society—how he spent years on the abolitionist speaking circuit, with Garrison often sharing the platform—how he broke with Garrison and founded his own newspaper, North Star—how for years he gave other blacks a forum in his paper for their opinions—all this and much else became the stuff of one of the great personal histories of the nineteenth century.


  Still, abolitionism was faltering even as Douglass, Garrison, and others were achieving their greatest renown. Nothing seemed to thwart Slave Power—not abolitionism or colonization or compromise or slave escapes or revolts. No single effort or strategy was enough to overcome the system of slavery. Could a united effort on the part of all major reformist and deprived elements overcome that system? Perhaps the most remarkable fact about Frederick Douglass, who might well have spent his life absorbed in the cause only of blacks, was that he reached out to other groups—especially to women and their rights.

  WOMEN IN NEED

  At about the same time that the horn was sounding outside the slave quarters of Montevideo, women on millions of farms throughout the nation were starting their day’s chores in kitchens and outside. Despite the rise of the factory system, most American working women by mid-century were still farm women, and most farm women were still drudges. While their husbands bought steel plows, mowers, threshers, seed drills, and cultivators, farm wives shared little in labor-saving advances. The box stove that came into use in the late 1830s freed some city women of certain vexatious aspects of cooking, but stoves were not yet common in the country. While city women could import Frederic Tudor’s ice from Boston, the country woman had no refrigeration except perhaps a nearby spring or family icehouse. Meat was preserved by curing and smoking it for thirty or forty hours. Milking, churning, pickling, preserving, and sun-drying of vegetables were also the lot of the country woman. On the frontier, women were scarce and hence highly valued but often had to shoulder men’s tasks. On wagon trains going west, they could be seen with ankle-length skirts often hanging in tatters as they yoked cattle, pitched tents, loaded wagons, lifted heavy iron pots onto crossbars over the campfires.