Between Slavery and Freedom

by Julie Winch

  White Americans have taken great pains to try to prove that we are cowards . . . The black man is not a coward . . . Nothing but a superior force keeps us down. And when I see the slaves rising up by hundreds annually, in the majesty of human nature, bidding defiance to every slave code and its penalties, making the issue Canada or death, I am disposed to ask if the charge of cowardice does not come with an ill-grace . . . Our fathers fought nobly for freedom, but they were not victorious. They fought for liberty, but they got slavery. The white man benefitted, but the black man was injured. I do not envy the white American the little liberty which he enjoys . . . But I would have all men free . . . Sooner or later, the clashing of arms will be heard in this country, and the black man’s services will be needed: 150,000 freemen capable of bearing arms, and not all cowards and fools, and three quarter of a million slaves, wild with the enthusiasm caused by the dawn of the glorious opportunity of being able to strike a genuine blow for freedom, will be a power which white men will be “bound to respect.” Will the blacks fight? Of course they will. The black man will never be neutral . . . White men may despise, ridicule, slander and abuse us, and make us feel degraded; they may seek as they always have done to divide us and make us feel degraded; but no man shall cause me to turn my back upon my race.

  Source: Liberator (Boston), March 12, 1858

  Using Wealth to Buy Political Influence (1858)

  St. Louis native Cyprian Clamorgan (1830–1902) was the grandson of a French adventurer, Jacques Clamorgan, and his black concubine, Susanne. Cyprian’s early life was chaotic, and he remained illiterate until he was in his late teens, but once he learned to read and write there was no holding him back. In 1858, he authored a witty and perceptive analysis of the situation of free people of color in the city of his birth—a city where slavery flourished, but where there were several thousand free black people, some of them wealthy and well-connected. His message was clear enough: money equaled power, and affluent free blacks could make their voices heard. Even if they could not vote or run for office, they could influence their white tenants and people they did business with to support candidates who favored antislavery and equal rights.

  [T]he colored people of St. Louis command several millions of dollars; and everyone knows that money, in whose hands soever it may be found, has an influence proportioned to its amount. Now, although our colored friends have no voice in the elections, they are not idle spectators. They know what parties and what individuals are most favorable to their interests, and they are not slow in making friends with those who are able and willing to serve them. . . . [T]he wealthy free colored men of St. Louis . . . know that the abolition of slavery in Missouri would remove a stigma from their race, and elevate them in the scale of society. . . . When slavery is abolished, where will be found the power of excluding the colored man from an equal participation in the fruits of human progression and mutual development? What political party will then dare to erect a platform on which the black man cannot stand side by side with his white brother? . . . The colored men of St. Louis have no votes themselves, but they control a large number of votes at every election. Many of them own houses which are rented to white voters, and others trade extensively with white dealers. It is an easy matter to them to say to their white tenants . . . “[V]ote this ticket or seek another place of abode.” It is no less easy for them to tell the merchant that, unless he votes for certain men, he will lose a large custom, and no one acquainted with human nature will deny that such requests are usually complied with.

  Source: Julie Winch, ed., Cyprian Clamorgan’s “The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis” (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), pp. 47–48.

  “Being a Citizen of the United States” (1859)

  Even before the Dred Scott decision declaring that blacks were not and never had been citizens, the U.S. State Department routinely refused to issue a passport to anyone whose paperwork indicated that they were black. Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894), the daughter of Salem, Massachusetts, businessman John Remond, went to England in 1858 as an antislavery lecturer. Before she left the United States she applied for a passport. In an era before photographs, a written description sufficed—and Remond’s simply stated that she was of a “dark complexion.” Officials in Washington assumed she was white and she got her passport. Trouble ensued, however, when Remond went to the U.S. embassy in London to get a visa to travel to France.

  Sarah P. Remond to Hon. George M. Dallas, Dec. 12, 1859

  Sir—I beg to inform you that a short time since I went to the office of the American embassy to have my passport visaed for France. I should remark that my passport is an American one, granted to me in the United States, and signed by the Minister in due form. It states—what is the fact—that I am a citizen of the United States. I was born in Massachusetts. Upon my asking to have my passport visaed at the American embassy, the person in the office refused to affix the visa on the ground that I am a person of color. Being a citizen of the United States, I respectfully demand as my right that my passport be visaed by the Minister of my country . . .

  Sarah P. Remond

  Legation of the United States, London, Dec. 14, 1859

  To Miss Sarah P. Remond

  I am directed by the Minister to acknowledge the receipt of your note . . . and to say in reply, he must, of course, be sorry if any of his countrywomen, irrespective of color or extraction, should think him frivolously disposed to withhold from them facilities in his power to grant for travelling . . . but when the indispensable qualification for an American passport—that of the “United States citizenship”—does not exist, when, indeed, it is manifestly an impossibility by law that it should exist, a just sense of his official obligations . . . constrains him to say that the demand . . . cannot be complied with.

  benj. moran, Assistant Secretary of Legation

  Sarah P. Remond to Benjamin Moran

  sir—I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter . . . The purport of your communication is most extraordinary. You now lay down the rule that persons free born in the United States, and who have been subjected all their lives to the taxation and other burdens imposed upon American citizens, are to be deprived of their rights as such, merely because their complexion happens to be dark, and that they are to be refused the aid of the Ministers of their country, whose salaries they contribute to pay.

  Source: New York Herald, January 24, 1860

  Notes

  Chapter One

  1. Louisiana Code Noir (1724), article 54, in B. F. Finch, ed., Historical Collections of Louisiana: Embracing Translations of Many Rare and Valuable Documents (New York: D. Appleton, 1851), vol. 3, p. 95.

  2. William Waller Hening, comp., Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619 (Richmond: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1819–1823), vol. 2, p. 267.

  3. “An Act Concerning Negroes & Other Slaves,” in “Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, September 1664,” Archives of Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883), vol. 1, p. 533.

  4. Hening, comp., Statutes at Large of Virginia, vol. 3, p. 86.

  5. See, for example, American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia), September 23–30, 1736.

  6. Pennsylvania Gazette, March 5, 1751.

  7. Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), www.winthropsociety.com/liberties.php (accessed March 15, 2013)

  8. Boston News-Letter, August 18, 1768.

  Chapter Two

  1. Summation of John Adams in Rex v. Wemms, in Legal Papers of John Adams, vol. 3, case 64, Massachusetts Historical Society, Adams Papers, Digital Edition (www.masshist.org, accessed September 6, 2013).

  2. “Crispus Attucks” (1888), in James Jeffrey Roche, ed., The Life of John Boyle O’Reilly, Together with His Complete Poems and Speeches (New York: Cassell, 1891), 410.

  3. Broadside, “Circular letter signed in behalf of our fellow slaves in this province, and by order of this
committee, by Peter Bestes and others” [Boston, 1773], in Early American Imprints, series 1, no. 42416.

  4. Constitution of Vermont, 1777, chapter 1, article 1, http://Vermontarchives.org/govhistory/constitute/con77.htm (accessed September 6, 2013)

  5. “Minutes from the Case of Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison,” www.lexisnexis.com/academic/1univ/hist/aa/aas_case.asp (accessed September 6, 2013). Jennison claimed ownership of Walker.

  6. New Hampshire Gazette, July 15, 1779.

  7. New Hampshire Constitution (1783), articles 1 and 2, www.nh.gov/constitution/constitution.html (accessed September 6, 2013).

  8. The Act was reprinted in a number of Massachusetts newspapers. See, for instance, Hampshire Chronicle (Springfield), April 30, 1788.

  9. The letters exchanged between the Newport and Philadelphia societies are reprinted in William Douglass, Annals of the First African Church in the United States of America, Now Styled the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1862), 25–29.

  Chapter Three

  1. Federal Gazette, July 16, 1810.

  2. Copy of a Letter from Benjamin Banneker to the Secretary of State with his Answer (Philadelphia: Daniel Lawrence, 1792), 8.

  Chapter Four

  1. 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.

  2. Peter P. Hinks, ed., David Walker’s “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World” (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 31.

  3. John B. Russwurm to R. R. Gurley, May 7, 1829, ACS Correspondence, Incoming (American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress).

  4. Liberator, March 2, 1833.

  5. 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, p. 381.

  6. For the text of David Wilmot’s speech see http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1247 (accessed July 12, 2013).

  Chapter Five

  1. Editorial in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, August 20, 1852.

  2. Quoted in Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon, 1974), 164.

  3. 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), 203.

  4. “Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois,” in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), vol. 3, pp. 145–46.

  Suggested Readings

  A generation ago, anyone hoping to learn very much about the lives of free black people in America from the colonial era to the Civil War faced a real challenge. By and large, this was uncharted territory. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Over the past few decades scholars have mined a wide array of historical records to reveal the complexity of the “in between” world of those Americans who were not slaves but lacked the fundamental freedoms that whites considered to be their birthright.

  Leon F. Litwack’s North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961) and James and Lois Horton’s In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) are excellent surveys of black life in the supposedly “free” North. On the South, Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Pantheon, 1974) is a model of careful scholarship. William Loren Katz’s The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Expansion of the United States (1971; reprint New York: Harlem Moon, 2005) is essential reading for anyone in search of a more inclusive account of life on the frontier.

  Community studies give us insight into how black people struggled to win and then maintain their freedom at the local level. The following list is not meant to be exhaustive but simply to indicate how wide-ranging the scholarship is.

  Baltimore: Freedom’s Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

  Boston: James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton, Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North (2nd ed. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1999).

  Florida: Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

  New Bedford: Kathryn Grover, The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

  New Orleans: Kimberly S. Hanger, Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997).

  New York: Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Slavery in New York (New York: The New Press, 2005).

  Philadelphia: Gary B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720–1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

  St. Louis: Julie Winch, The Clamorgans: One Family’s History of Race in America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2011).

  For an excellent overview of free black life in the cities of the North, the South, and the Midwest, see Leonard P. Curry’s The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

  Although the free black population was a heavily urbanized one by the mid-nineteenth century, most people of color lived in rural areas, as did the vast majority of whites. Melvin Patrick Ely’s Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Freedom (New York: Vintage, 2005) is an intriguing study of one free black enclave and the unique set of circumstances that brought it into being. The experiences of black Midwestern farmers are chronicled in several books, the most accessible of which is Stephen A. Vincent’s Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

  Black Americans were just as eager as whites to share in the American Dream of economic self-sufficiency. Loren Schweninger’s Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990) presents a fascinating picture of ingenuity and determination in the face of often overwhelming odds. W. Jeffrey Bolster’s Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997) looks at the occupation that both challenged and sustained many African-American men and their families. Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark recount the remarkable saga of the wealthy Ellison clan in Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), and in Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Owner (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010) Daniel L. Schafer tells the equally remarkable story of a slave who gained her freedom and became a rich planter with slaves of her own.

  T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes’s “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640–1676 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) is a wonderfully nuanced account of the world the first black settlers to Virginia made for themselves during a time when enslavement for life was not a “given” for every black person. In Black Yankees: The Development of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988) William D. Piersen details the complexities of slavery and freedom in colonial New England, while Ira Berlin’s prize-winning Many Thousands Gone: the First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) is a superb synthesis that explains not only how different slave systems evolved in colonial America but how some black people managed to locate the weak spots in those systems and extricate themselves from bonda
ge.

  On the struggle for independence and the role of African Americans in that struggle, the classic study is Benjamin Quarles’s The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961). Black involvement in the Revolution has continued to intrigue historians, and all of the following books are highly recommended: Edward Countryman, Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012); J. William Harris, The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man’s Encounter with Liberty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Woody Holton, Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era (Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009), Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), and Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution (New York: Harper, 2007).

  On black activism to end slavery and discrimination, see Benjamin Quarles’s Black Abolitionists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) and a more recent work, Patrick Rael’s Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), as well as individual biographies, of which the following are just a sampling:

  Richard Allen: Richard S. Newman, Freedom’s Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers (New York: New York University Press, 2008).

  Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Jane Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

  Paul Cuffe: Lamont D. Thomas, Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

  James Forten: Julie Winch, A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).