The Bone and Sinew of the Land

by Anna-Lisa Cox

  Since those heady early days just after the Revolution, when almost all state constitutions had inclusive language where suffrage was concerned, whites had been working hard to separate free African Americans from their right to vote. Delaware had denied African Americans the vote in 1792, but soon more states took the same action to strengthen exclusion and prejudice: Kentucky in 1799, Maryland in 1801, Washington, DC, in 1802, New Jersey in 1807, Connecticut in 1818. And now there were so many new states, with new constitutions, all of them with white residents who were working to create exclusion. Whites in each one of the Northwest Territory states had added in exclusion clauses barring African Americans from voting, from Ohio in 1803 to Illinois in 1818. As the free African American population grew and started to rise, whites in states across the new nation fought to exclude their fellow Americans from the vote. Whites in Mississippi did so in 1817, Alabama in 1819, and Missouri in 1820. Whites in Michigan, which was not even a state yet, decided to exclude African Americans from voting in 1835, possibly because African Americans had already started to settle and vote in that territory under the guidelines of the Northwest Territorial Ordinance.26

  Indeed, whites in the Northwest Territory states helped to lead this attack on African American voting rights. When these territories became states, none of them kept the voting rights of the original 1787 ordinance, an ordinance that never mentioned color, only gender and property ownership as the definition of a citizen. All of the whites who created their state constitutions in the Northwest territories discussed and agreed that they should add in the words “white” when describing who could vote. And these decisions did not happen without a debate. There was always a dissenting voice arguing for equality. This meant that whites were very thoughtfully and deliberately withdrawing the right of citizenship from African Americans.27

  These prejudiced actions in the Northwest Territory states had national significance. In fact, the Northwest Territory states and their exclusion laws were cited by Tennessee lawmakers in the 1830s to strengthen their arguments for prejudiced laws against free African Americans in Tennessee.28

  This exclusion was a terrible injustice, and it was known and resisted. As African Americans in Ohio demanded of the white politicians and voters of their state, “We ask that the word ‘white’ in the State Constitution be stricken out at once and forever, and of course that the privileges growing out of such a striking out be restored to us.”29

  And these losses hit the South. Whites in Tennessee had excluded the Lyles men and any other men with African blood in their veins from the right to vote in 1834; similar measures followed quickly in North Carolina in 1835. And whites in the Arkansas Territory, which bordered the Lyles family’s home state of Tennessee, were working on doing the same.30

  This was about more than a few white men in a back room arguing over a new constitution. True, they did argue. They often debated fiercely about the removal of equal rights and the creation of exclusion in these documents. But in the end it was about the whites in these states going to the polling stations to cast votes approving the destruction of the rights of their neighbors just because of skin color or blood.

  During the revolutionary era and the few decades that followed, the nation seemed poised to embrace liberty and equality, but it was being replaced with a darker vision.

  The loss of voting rights was especially bitter in North Carolina. While only about 4,500 free African American men, women, and children lived within Tennessee’s borders in 1830, North Carolina had almost 20,000, most of them rural and farming families like the Lyles family. And they had been voting.31

  Indeed, John Chavis, a free African American school founder and teacher in Raleigh, North Carolina, not only voted but often wrote to Willie P. Mangum, one of his white former students, who was now a federal congressman, giving him advice and even criticizing some votes and decisions Mangum was making. In July 1832 Chavis wrote to Mangum, “I disapprove of three of your votes… but my greatest grief is that you should be in favor of the reelection of General Jackson for the Presidency.… Let G.J. be elected and our government is gone and even in its present situation it would require a Hamilton, a Jay, and an old Adams bottomed upon G. Washington to repair its ruins.” He could not know just how ruinous things would get when “G.J.” was reelected.32

  Leory Pitford knew firsthand the sorrow of losing civil rights. He and his daughter Mary Anne had left for Indiana from their home in Wake County, North Carolina, in 1838, just after whites in that state had stolen his right to vote. He had made careful plans, ensuring that both he and Mary Anne had their free papers. He had told the official in North Carolina of his plans, and the man had duly written on the free papers that the Pitford family planned on “removing to Indiana or some other northwestern state.” Sure enough, soon after he and Mary Anne arrived in Jefferson County, Indiana, they were forced to file their free papers and their bond. Whether it was actually $500 in cash, or just the promise of it, the amount was a terrible sum. And Leory Pitford knew that at any point that bond could be used against him. Any white person in the county who decided his land was a bit too good or he was doing just a bit too well could levy some false accusation, and the justice of the peace—whom Leory would have no say in electing—could make sure that that bond came due.33

  As the white clerk registered them, he wrote a description of Pitford. In front of his daughter, Mary Anne, the clerk wrote that Pitford was “stout and well made.” The clerk may have thought he was complimenting Pitford, for the term “stout” was the description given to the strongest and healthiest men of the day, men who were filled out with muscle. But it was also how enslaved people were described at the auction block to bring up their value, and this was written—and possibly said aloud—in front of Pitford’s daughter. Before the clerk finished up, Pitford informed that clerk that he had been a property owner and a citizen back in North Carolina, insisting that the clerk add the words, “He has voted for members of Assemblys.”34

  This information may have surprised the clerk—after all, no African American had voted in Indiana since it had become a state, no matter how much property he had. But those words stayed in that deed book, preserving Leory Pitford’s pride in the civil right he had once had and the pain of his loss.

  Back in 1791, Abraham Bishop, an advocate of equal rights in America, had warned of the ways in which white men like himself could try to force their way into a position of privilege, writing, “We glory in the equal rights of men, provided that we white men can enjoy the whole of them.” Now, forty-five years later, whites across the South were finally enjoying “the whole of them,” and they were being joined by whites in the North, eager to strip African Americans of their right to equality.35

  No, this was not going to get better. This was not 1823; this was 1838, and the Lyles family and their extended kin could see that it was only going to get worse.

  And there were the children to consider, the next generation. Maybe it was not just the loss of rights but the growing horrors of slavery that their children were now witnessing that decided them.

  They knew that they had to leave, but they would not flee. They would go with dignity, with their wealth intact. And they were determined to go somewhere where this would never happen again.36

  They could take the strong encouragement and funding of Tennessee whites and be “colonized” to Liberia or some other foreign shore. But terrible reports of disease, death, and general chaos were coming back from Liberia, and being exiled from their own land had never been a popular notion with these successful property-owning farmers. They already had good land, and it was as American as they were.

  Some had gone to Canada, which was now finally free of slavery. But the short growing season, the different crops, and the cold presented a real challenge. Free African Americans knew it was a haven for refugees from slavery, but they were free, with free papers, and they still had a legal right to settle in many northern states.37

  An
d certainly not a city. Free African Americans in the cities of the North were being constrained, forced to live in certain neighborhoods, and were now being targeted for horrific violence. And what would they do in a city? They were farmers, and good ones.38

  They knew they could get ahead in the country, even the frontier. They had done it before; they would do it again.

  They were not alone in their hope in the rural and frontier spaces of the United States. As African American farmers urged their urban brethren, “Agriculture is the bone and sinew of our country: Therefore be it resolved, that we recommend it to our people as best calculated to promote their rise and progress.” Their urgings were not based on a dream, they were based on their experience.39

  The Lyles family and their kin must have hoped that there were still places where a family who was experienced at living on their own land and farming it well could still garner some respect. For a while this could win a man much more than respect, it could gain him citizenship. Maybe in their new home they could work to regain that right.

  They might have to leave their land, even their state, but they were not going to leave their nation.

  Quite a few of the families moving out of the slave states had roots that went so deep into the American past that their ancestors included all the people living in the New World in the seventeenth century. Some could just as easily call themselves Dutch as Igbo, or could claim the Native American people who were their ancestors as much as they could the Scottish. But it all depended on who was looking at them, and with what sympathies, or lack thereof. And for many of these people, the backlash of the 1830s caught them up and labeled them “colored,” which was enough to bar them from citizenship in the land they had lived in for so long.40

  The Lyles family, their kin, and their friends were deeply rooted in their nation and wanted to stay there. They could see that things were going wrong, but Daniel’s and Nancy’s grandparents and parents had seen, however briefly, just how right their nation could be—how, when inspired, Americans of all colors and backgrounds could uphold and work for the ideals of freedom and equality.

  They wanted to stay in the United States, in a new place where they could put down roots and work to return their country to its better nature.

  And right now they needed to be safe, they needed their children to be safe, and they needed to be able to thrive.

  They were not the only dark-skinned Americans leaving Tennessee at this time. The Cherokee were being forced to leave their land, some with enslaved people in tow. No matter how “civilized” the Cherokee had become, with their big homes, fine farms, and slaves, President Andrew Jackson wanted them gone to make room for more whites and their enslaved people.41

  In the end the Lyles family and many of the free families around them decided on the state of Indiana, due north. It offered less than they would have liked but more than they had now.

  They knew they were not the only southerners to leave for the Northwest Territory states. Many were leaving the South, regardless of their ancestry, because they were southerners who stood for freedom.42

  And now their South was dividing. Not along state lines, but within the states, dividing within counties, within churches, even within families.

  And many had been leaving for the frontier of the Northwest territories and states, to try to root their southern vision of freedom in a new land.

  This pioneering movement was integrated. Some, like the white Reverend James Grier from Virginia, came with people they wanted to see free. In other cases long-free African-descended people and whites moved together, bonded by a common belief in freedom. They chose to support each other, traveling together as they made the difficult journey to the frontier.43

  Upon arrival in the new land, they sometimes divided, creating separate settlements and communities. Sometimes white prejudice lay at the heart of this separation—a common belief in freedom did not always come with a common belief in equality. But while some black and white pioneers separated once they reached the Northwest Territory states, some continued on together, forging a common bond in the causes of liberty and equality, a bond shared with others whether they were from Connecticut or the Carolinas.44

  As free African American pioneer Thomas Hedgebeth said when explaining his choice to move from North Carolina to Indiana around this time, “The white people did not seem so hostile altogether, nor want the colored people to knuckle quite so low. There were more white people who were friendly than in North Carolina. There were more who wished colored people to have their rights than in North Carolina.”45

  Despite the fact that the lands of the Northwest Territory and states were filling up with millions of whites, despite the fact that in the cities and some rural areas prejudiced whites were attacking their African American neighbors, there were still rural regions with decent neighbors and good land to be had.

  As an abolitionist newspaper reported in 1837, in a farming community in Ohio, “there are several families of colored people, most of them doing very well, and they are highly esteemed by their white neighbors.… [F]rom conversations with several gentlemen, I did not learn that colored people were looked on any differently from white people of the same character.” The author does add, however, “This is the only village that I know of [in Ohio] where the colored children are admitted without opposition in the district schools.”46

  No, the Northwest Territory was far from perfect, but the Lyles family, like many southerners at this time, were deciding that it would do.

  But before risking their children and families on the journey, they would have sent someone to find the best place to settle. They were not going to move to just any place. The Lyles family, and those who came with them, could afford to be picky. Their scouts—brothers, sons, and husbands—would have had a lot of questions, and good ones, when they came to Indiana.

  They were looking for good land, with a growing season not too far off from what they were used to. They would have wanted to be close to a river or waterway for ease of transportation and a good source of water. And if there were whites nearby, the pioneers needed to know those settlers would not burn them out. They were going to move in a large group, so they did not need a lot of help; they just needed to not be hindered.

  They knew how to find the land, and they wanted the best, that desirable good land near the Wabash River and the Ohio, in Indiana. But for much of the information and advice they needed, they had to talk to the African Americans who were already there. Somehow they found Charles and Keziah Grier. As a founding family, the Griers could help new families settle in, locate the best land that someone might consider selling, introduce them to the neighbors, and show them how to get their goods to the lucrative markets of Louisville, Saint Louis, and Cincinnati. This was the kind of home place the Lyles family was looking for.

  Of course, the Griers would have warned them that while Indiana was a free state, it had its troubles, and the Lyles family would probably not get the right to vote again any time soon. But they would have the right to own a gun, to worship freely, and to educate their children without the terrors of slavery closely surrounding them.

  And thousands like them were making the same decision. Long-free people from Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and so many other southern states where whites were stripping away rights.47

  But all of them knew that both coming into and settling on the northwestern frontier constituted a formidable challenge to free people of African descent. Not the least of their challenges was the cost.

  There were the wagons, and often an ox team to invest in. Many of these pioneers were coming from well-cleared land that a horse could plow, but they would need oxen to clear the frontier land they were going to.

  Then, once they got there, they had to buy the land and start a farm. Estimates vary, but in the late 1830s, establishing a 160-acre farm in frontier Illinois—enough land to allow its owner to become a successful commercial farmer—cost close to $1,
000. Of course, the Lyles family and their group may have planned to buy improved land that was already cleared or even purchase settled farms. And that would make their move even more expensive.48

  But it was an expense some free African Americans were prepared to pay in order to start from a good position in the Northwest. And not a few were leaving large and thriving farms and could afford the best land that money could buy.

  Arthur Allen had decided to leave North Carolina even before it turned its back on voting rights, drawn by word of the good farming land available in Illinois. He and his wife were in their forties with eight children when they moved from Northampton County, North Carolina, to Illinois in the late 1820s. They were free and came with enough money to pay cash for a settled farm of eighty acres including a house and a barn that a white family was selling. At his death in 1840, Arthur Allen owned 320 acres and had loaned over $700 to local farmers. In addition, four of his sons and a son-in-law owned over 1,000 acres of farmland combined, making the Allen family the equivalent of landed gentry in that county.49

  Another group of wealthy free African American families fled the area around Richmond, Virginia, just after Nat Turner’s rebellion. While they traveled together, once they arrived in Ohio they scattered across the countryside, finding the farmland that suited them best. Abraham and Mary Goode-Depp choose Concord Township, in Delaware County, where they bought around six hundred acres worth $7,500 by 1850.50

  Their fellow pioneers, Pleasant and Catherine Litchford, bought a similar massive estate in the township of Perry in Franklin County. Pleasant Litchford had been born around 1789, and like Arthur Allen and many of his fellow travelers, he was approaching middle age when he and his family arrived in the Old Northwest. In 1850, his land was worth $8,000, making him one of the four wealthiest landowners of any color in his Ohio township.51

  Of course, the very act of buying land could put African Americans at risk of further costs, for those whites responsible for selling government land could decide to enforce Black Code bonds, adding perhaps $500 or $1,000 to their financial burden.52