Transcript The wartime destruction of slavery

Estimates of Africans arriving in the Americas, 1500-1870
Source: Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (Cambridge 1999), 210-211
Spanish America
Brazil
British West Indies
French West Indies
British North America and the US
Total
(00s)
1,662.4
4,029.8
1,635.7
1,699.7
559.8
10,247.5
% of total
16.2
39.3
16.0
16.6
5.5
Origins of Africans arriving in Virginia in the era of the slave trade
Source: Eltis et al, The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Database on CD-Rom
(Cambridge 1999)
Origin
Unknown
Bight of Biafra
Senegambia
West-central Africa
Gold Coast
Other
Total embarked
Total disembarked
Average mortality
% male
Number
39,081
28,159
11,294
10,110
5,401
7,880
101,925
84,247
22.6 %
71.3 %
% of total
38.3
27.6
11.1
9.9
5.3
7.7
Enslaved Africans being Carried to a Slave Ship, Gold Coast, late 17th cent., from
Thomas Astley (ed.), A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels (London,
1745-47), vol. 2, plate 61.
Fixing the legal status of slaves in Virginia.
(Source: Rose, Documentary History, 19)
Virginia Statutes at large, 1662
Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got bu any Englishman uon a
negro woman should be slave or free, Be it therefore enacted and declared by this
present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country, shalbe held bond or
free only according to the condition of the mother. And that if any Christian shall
committ fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall
pay double the fines so imposed by the former act.
Virginia Statutes at large, 1667
Whereas some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by
the charity and peity of their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacraments of
baptisme, should by vertue of their baptisme be made free; It is enacted and
declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of
baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or freedom;
that diverse masters, freed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavor the
propagation of Christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of
greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament.
Benjamin Latrobe, “An Overseer Doing His Duty,” 1798.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, from query 18 on
“Manners”
(This document can be found at
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/JefVirg.html.)
And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who
permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other,
transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the
morals of the one part, and the amor patriae of the other. For if a slave
can have a country in this world, it must be any other in preference to
that in which he is born to live and labour for another: in which he must
lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as far as depends on his
individual endeavours to the evanishment of the human race, or entail
his own miserable condition on the endless generations proceeding from
him. … And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we
have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the
people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when
reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that
considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the
wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events:
that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty
has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
Clauses relating to slavery in the original Constitution of the United
States
(The Constitution is available online at
http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html.)
Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3. Representatives and direct taxes shall be
apportioned among the several States which may be included within this
Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined
by adding the whole number of free persons, including those bound to
service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths
of all other persons.
Article 1, Section 9, Clause 1: The migration or importation of such
persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit,
shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808, but a tax
or duty may be imposed on such importations, not exceeding 10 dollars
for each person.
Article 4, Section 2, Clause 3: No person held to service or labour in one
state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such
service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labour may be due.
Southwestern expansion of slavery, 1790-1860:
Source: Henretta et al., America’s History Vol 1: To 1877 (Bedford/St. Martin, 4th Ed., 2000), 293
Slave population in North America
Source: Berlin, Generations of Captivity (Harvard 2003), table 1
Year Slave Population
1700
28, 958
1750 246,648
1790 717,021
1840 2,487,439
1860 3,953,760 (12.6% of total US population)
Distribution of slaveowners and slaves in the United States in 1860
by size of holding.
Source: Kochin, Unfree Labor (Harvard 1987), 54.
1-9
% of slaveowners 71.9
% of slaves
25.6
10-19
16.0
21.6
20-49
9.3
27.9
50-199
2.6
22.5
>199
.1
2.4
Illustration from Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave (1853), p. 88.
“And on the 12th of May, 1828, I heard a loud
noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly
appeared to me and said the Serpent was
loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he
had borne for the sins of men, and that I should
take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the
time was fast approaching when the first should
be last and the last should be first. Ques. Do you
not find yourself mistaken now? Ans. Was not
Christ crucified.”
Status of slavery in the western territories
Cumberland Landing, Va. Group of "contrabands" at Foller's house, May 14, 1862.
Testimony of Capt. Charles B. Wilder, Superintendent of
Contrabands at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, May 9, 1863.
(Source: Berlin et al, Free At Last, 108-9)
When I got at the feelings of these people I found they were not afraid of
the slaveholders. They said there was nobody on the plantations but
women and they were not afraid of them. One woman came through 200
miles in Men’s clothes. … Colored men will help colored men and they
will work along the by paths and get through. In that way I have known
quite a number who have gone up from time to time in the neighborhood
of Richmond and several have brought back their families; some I have
never heard from. As I was saying they do not feel afraid now. The
white people have nearly all gone, the blood hounds are not there to hunt
them and they are not afraid …
Arlington, Va. Band of 107th U.S. Colored Infantry at Fort Corcoran, November 1865
Source: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwphome.html
Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865
(Lincoln’s speech can be found online at
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html.)
The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of
offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by
whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is
one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs
come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now
wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible
war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern
therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in
a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do
we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until
every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn
with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be
said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."