by Julie Winch
Source: Sarah L. Forten to Angelina Grimké, April 15, 1837, in Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844 (New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), vol. 1, pp. 379–81.
Kidnappers (1840–1841)
Long before the passage of the infamous Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, free blacks knew that whether they lived in the North or the South they had to be on their guard. Empowered by the 1793 federal Fugitive Slave Law, slave owners and their agents roamed communities in every part of the nation hunting for escaped slaves. Professional slave catchers who had only a vague description of the missing slaves could and did make mistakes and claim as fugitives people who were legally free. And sometimes this was anything but a genuine case of mistaken identity on the part of an overzealous slave catcher or a slave owner who did not recall exactly what his slaves looked like. The following two reports speak for themselves. Flora Way was quick-witted and faced down the two men who accosted her in the street. Fred Roberts presumably acted upon the tip from the North Carolina informant and hastily left town.
Look Out for Kidnappers—I
Mrs. Flora Way, who resides in Mercer street, in this city [New York], and is a member of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Anthony street, while walking [along] Broadway on Friday, the 27th ultimo, between White and Walker streets, was accosted by two individuals supposed to be from Georgia, as they thought Mrs. Way was a fugitive slave from that State. Mrs. Way is from Savannah, and knows all about that horrible system which is grinding the souls and bodies of two and a half million of her brethren into the dust; and she gave them to know that she knew of no master but Christ, and that they had better refrain from molesting her.
Source: Colored American (New York), April 4, 1840
Look Out For Kidnappers—II
We have had handed to us a note, post marked Wilmington, N.C., and giving the information that a man by the name of Ricks, somewhere in the interior of this State [New York], has a plan on foot to betray one Fred Roberts, now said to be at work in Buffalo, into the hands of someone who would call himself master, and warning Fred to be upon his guard. We do not know how much truth there may be in this affair, though the letter lays before us, nor how many Ricks there may be in the State, and if many, which of them it may be; but one thing we know, that it is safe to forewarn Fred . . . and advise him that he is safe only in Canada. He may, before he is aware of it, find himself in the hands of a Buffalo constable, and locked up in [a] Buffalo jail.
Source: Colored American (New York), May 1, 1841
Class Differences among Antebellum Black Philadelphians (1841)
Joseph Willson (1817–1895) was born in Augusta, Georgia, one of five children of a wealthy Irish banker, John Willson, and Betsy Keating, a former slave. Before he died in 1822, John Willson wrote a will providing for his family and naming a trusted friend to be their guardian, since in Georgia free people of color were not considered legally competent to manage their own affairs. In the early 1830s, Betsy and her guardian decided that the family must move to the North to escape Georgia’s increasing harsh restrictions on free blacks. They relocated to Philadelphia, where Joseph Willson trained as a printer before becoming a dentist. Well-read and articulate, he hoped that in his Sketches of the Higher Classes of Colored Society in Philadelphia he could enlighten whites about class differences within the African-American community. He was frankly irritated at the tendency of whites to lump all free black people together as poor, lazy, and criminally-inclined.
The public—or at least the great body, who have not been at the pains to make an examination—have long been accustomed to regard the people of color as one consolidated mass, all huddled together, without any particular or general distinctions, social or otherwise. The sight of one colored man with them, whatever may be his apparent condition, (provided it is any thing but genteel!) is the sight of a community; and the errors and crimes of one, [are] adjudged as the criterion of character of the whole body . . .
Taking the whole body of the colored population in the city of Philadelphia, they present in a gradual, moderate, and limited ratio, almost every grade of character, wealth, and . . . education. They are to be seen in ease, comfort and the enjoyment of all the social blessings of this life, and . . . they are to be found in the lowest depths of human degradation, misery, and want. They are also presented in the intermediate stages—sober, honest, industrious and respectable—claiming neither ‘poverty nor riches,’ yet maintaining . . . their families in comparative ease and comfort.
Source: Julie Winch, ed., The Elite of Our People: Joseph Willson’s Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 82–83.
The Antislavery Cause and Guilt by Association (1843)
Joseph Stanly was a member of a prominent free black slaveholding family in New Bern, North Carolina. His father, John Carruthers Stanly, had been born a slave, but as a free man he had no qualms about buying slaves and putting them to work in his barbershop and on the plantations he owned. The elder Stanly’s support of the slave system earned him a measure of respect from influential whites in his neighborhood. However, as a young man, Benjamin Stanly, one of John C. Stanly’s sons, and Joseph’s twin, rejected slavery. He moved to Philadelphia, went into business as a barber, and became a staunch supporter of abolition. The repercussions for Joseph when he returned home to North Carolina after visiting Benjamin in Philadelphia were nothing short of disastrous, as the following letter explained.
Joseph Stanly, (a colored young man of New Bern, North Carolina) a few months ago, came on to this city [Philadelphia] to see a twin brother . . . whom he had not seen for several years. Previous to leaving, he was assured by those “high in authority,” “that there would not be the least difficulty in returning home; that he might stay in Philadelphia just as long as he saw fit, and return and remain here unmolested.” In fact, many said, “Why, Joseph, why need you have any fears of being disturbed: you certainly know your standing in the community, and what a favorable character your father has borne amongst us for the last forty or fifty years; and do you suppose we could be so unkind as to prevent his son from returning home to those whom we have always respected!” Being thus assured, he left his home . . . arrived in Philadelphia, and spent several months with his brother; after which, he returned back to the land of his birth . . . But scarcely had his feet retouched that soil . . . than he received, from the hands of an officer, the very friendly and humane notice, ‘that he must leave the town within 24 hours, never to enter it again.’ ‘Was I not assured, previous to my departure, that I should return and remain here unmolested?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘Well, what does this mean?’ ‘Why, it means this, that we don’t intend to have an abolitionist in this ’ere town.’ ‘But, sir, what evidence have you that I am an abolitionist?’ Whether you are or not, your brother is, and it is reported that he spoke at an abolition meeting . . . That is sufficient, and you must leave.’
Source: Liberator (Boston), January 6, 1843
A Black Southerner’s Experiences in New York (ca. 1845)
James Thomas was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1827. His mother, Sally Thomas, was a slave, and his father, John Catron, was a white lawyer. Catron did nothing for his son, but Sally Thomas ran her own laundry and earned the money to buy James’s freedom. In the mid-1840s, Thomas, by then a successful barber, agreed to close his shop for a while and travel to the North as a servant to a wealthy white Southerner. Thomas was unimpressed with the treatment he received in the “free” North. (Ironically, Thomas’s father became an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and concurred with the majority in the Dred Scott case that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”)
I soon learned something about New York that did not please me. I remarked that I wanted to go to the museum. I was told not to go, that I wouldn’t be admitted unless I was with my b
oss or had one of his children . . . I said I would like to ride up town in an Omnibus. I was told they wouldn’t carry me unless I was with a white person or child. I learned afterwards that if a colored face got inside of an Omnibus, the white passengers would leap out as though a case of small pox or a ghost had entered . . .
It seemed very strange to those colored people from the south who went north the first time. They were grinned and hooted at. Some hoodlum would holler “black cloud rising.” Often thrown at, or jumped on and roughly handled, unless the col[ore]d [man] ran for his life. No where south such things ever occurred, that I saw, which was easy enough to understand. In clubbing or abusing the Negro they would find they had abused a piece of property that had a protector.
Source: Loren Schweninger, ed., From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 123–24.
Tribute to a Civic Leader in California (1848)
A successful merchant, shipowner, land speculator, and diplomat, William Alexander Leidesdorff (1810–1848) was one of the leading citizens of San Francisco in the 1840s. Although he was a naturalized Mexican citizen, Leidesdorff supported the movement to break California away from Mexico and annex it to the United States. This account of Leidesdorff’s short but remarkable life, reprinted in New York from a California newspaper, identifies him as being “of Danish parentage.” That is accurate—to a point. While his father was Danish, his mother was a woman of color. Had Leidesdorff lived longer, he might well have emerged as a major power broker in California politics. He died without heirs, and claimants fought for decades over his vast fortune.
Died, at his own residence, in this place, at 1 o’clock, a.m. on the 18th inst. after an illness of seven days . . . william a. leidesdorff, Esq., late U.S. Vice Consul for this port. Having received the consolations of the Catholic religion during his illness, he was buried yesterday . . . in the Mission Church of Dolores, near San Francisco. One of the largest and most respectable assemblages ever witnessed in this place followed the deceased from his late residence to the place of interment, and every thing was done on the part of the community to evince its deep feeling for the loss it has sustained. All places of business and public entertainment were closed—the flags of the garrison and the shipping were flying at half mast, and minute guns were discharged from the barracks and the shipping as the procession moved from town . . .
Captain Leidesdorff was of Danish parentage, but was a native of the West Indies . . . He was formerly well known as a merchant captain in the ports of New Orleans and New York but for the last seven years he has been in business on this coast, where he has gained a high character for integrity, enterprise and activity. In private life he was social[,] liberal and hospitable to an eminent degree . . . As a merchant and a citizen, he was generous, enterprising and public spirited and his name is intimately identified with the growth and prosperity of San Francisco. It is no injustice . . . to say that the town has lost its most valuable resident . . . His energy of character and business enterprises have so blended his history with that of San Francisco that all classes deplore his death as a great public calamity. While many mourn for his various social virtues, in Capt. Leidesdorff the laboring classes of the community and the poor have lost a munificent patron and a generous friend.
Source: New York Herald, September 27, 1848
Martin R. Delany on African-American Emigration (1852)
Born in Virginia, the son of a free woman and a slave, Martin Robison Delany (1812–1885) moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when he was in his teens and embarked on a remarkable career as a physician, a newspaper editor, and a champion for civil rights. He was very forthright in his 1852 book The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States. It was time for the free black community to reconsider the whole question of emigration, he insisted. As Delany saw it, African Americans had no alternative but to leave the United States because whites had no intention of treating them as equals. While he was not sure where they should go, he believed they must go. “We are a nation within a nation,” he declared. “We must go from our oppressors.” Freedom for black people was a sham, Delany maintained, and they needed to realize that.
[T]he bondman is disfranchised, and for the most part so are we. He is denied all civil, religious, and social privileges . . . and so are we. They [the slaves] have no part . . . in the government of the country, neither have we. They are ruled and governed without representation, existing as mere nonentities among the citizens, and excrescences on the body politic . . . and so are we. Where then is our political superiority to the enslaved? None, neither are we superior in any other relation to society, except that we are de facto masters of ourselves and joint rulers of our own domestic household, while the bondman’s self is claimed by another, and his relation to his family denied him . . .
In . . . the United States, there are three million, five hundred thousand slaves; and we, the nominally free, are six hundred thousand in number; estimating one-sixth to be men, we have one hundred thousand able-bodied freemen, which will make a powerful auxiliary in any country to which we may become adopted—an ally not to be despised by any power on earth. We love our country, dearly love her, but she don’t love us—she despises us, and bids us begone, driving us from her embraces; but we shall not go where she desires us; but when we do go, whatever love we have for her, we shall love the country none the less that receives us as her adopted children.
Source: Martin R. Delany, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States (Philadelphia: The Author, 1852; reprint Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1993), 14–15, 203.
Segregation on Public Transportation (1854)
Generations before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, African Americans in many communities were protesting the discriminatory treatment they routinely received on trains, steamboats, and omnibuses. They paid their fare and were refused passage. They purchased first-class tickets and were sent to the vastly inferior “colored car.” Elizabeth Jennings, a well-connected and genteel teacher in New York City, was on her way to church one Sunday when she and a friend tried to ride the street car. After being forcibly ejected from the all-white car, Jennings successfully sued the street car company. This is her account of the episode that led up to the lawsuit.
Sarah E. Adams and myself walked down to the corner of Pearl and Chatham Sts. to take the Third Ave. cars. We got on the platform when the conductor told us to wait for the next car. I told him I could not wait, as I was in a hurry to go to church.
He then told me that the other car had my people in it, that it was appropriated for “my people.” I told him . . . I wished to go to church and I did not wish to be detained . . . I told him I was a respectable person, born and raised in New York, did not know where he was born, and that he was a good-for-nothing impudent fellow for insulting decent persons while on their way to church. He then said he would put me out. I told him not to lay hands on me. He took hold of me and I took hold of the window sash. He pulled me until he broke my grasp . . . He then ordered the driver to . . . come and help him . . . Both seized hold of me by the arms and pulled and dragged me down on the bottom of the platform.
Source: Frederick Douglass’ Paper, July 28, 1854
Black Life in Charleston (1857)
George E. Stephens (1832–1888), a Northern-born craftsman, was unprepared for what he experienced when he spent a few days in Charleston, South Carolina in 1857. In accordance with South Carolina’s Negro Seamen’s Act, he was arrested and jailed when the ship he was serving on arrived in port. The captain interceded with the authorities and Stephens was eventually set free. Once he was released, he had the chance to “see the sights,” as he recounted in a letter to a friend back home. What he saw and heard disgusted him. Ironically, during the Civil War Stephens returned to Charleston, this time as a soldier in
a black Union regiment.
A few days after my perambulation about the streets of Charleston I met a young man . . . with whom I had become acquainted in Phil[adelphia]. I wished him to take a cigar with me . . . He informed me that it was against the law for a Colored man to smoke a cigar or walk with a cane in the streets of Charleston. And if the streets (sidewalk) are crowded the negro must take the middle of the street. I met several white men, they did not pretend to move an inch—so I had always to give way to them. I have been informed since if I had run against one of them, they would have had me flogged. Poor wretches. Little do they accomplish by such trivial proscriptions. [S]uch miserable oppression serves not one single degree to curb the spirit of even a crushed and injured African.
Source: George E. Stephens to Jacob C. White Jr., 8 January 1858, in C. Peter Ripley et al., eds., The Black Abolitionist Papers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), vol. 4, pp. 371–73.
John S. Rock on the Likelihood of War (1858)
New Jersey native John Swett Rock (1825–1866) was truly a “renaissance man.” A physician and a teacher, he also trained as a lawyer. In 1861, he qualified as a member of the Massachusetts Bar—he had moved to Boston in 1852—and in 1865 he was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was an outspoken advocate of racial equality, a fierce opponent of slavery, and a champion of rights for women as well as men. The following excerpt is from a speech Rock gave in Boston on March 5, 1858, in commemoration of the Boston Massacre. He was certain that there would soon be a war against slavery and that African Americans would determine the outcome of that conflict.