Transcript Lecture 4: The Slave South - University of California, Irvine

Teaching American History
Race, Slavery & Citizenship
January 10, 2011
Standards
• 11.1 Students analyze the significant events in the
founding of the nation and its attempts to realize the
philosophy of government described in the Declaration of
Independence.
– 11.1.3 Understand the history of the Constitution after 1787 with
emphasis on federal versus state authority and growing
democratization
• 8.7.2 Trace the origins and development of slavery; its
effects on black Americans and on the region's political,
social, religious, economic, and cultural development;
and identify the strategies that were tried to both
overturn and preserve it (e.g., through the writings and
historical documents on Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey).
• Does American citizenship extend to
African Americans in the early nation?
• How does slavery emerge in the New
World? What came first racism or
racialized slavery?
• How does slavery persist and flourish
in a republic premised on principles of
natural rights?
Anthony Johnson
The deposition of Capt. Samll. Goldsmyth taken in open court 8th of
March [16]54 sayeth that being att ye house of Anth. Johnson Negro
about ye beginning of November last to receive a Hogsd of tobac, a
negro called Jno. Casor came to this depo[nen]t & told him yt hee came
into Virginia for seaven or eight years of Indenture; yt hee had
demanded his freedome of Antho. Johnson his mayster & further sd yt
hee had kept him his serv[ant] seaven years longer than hee should or
ought; and desired that this Depont would see yt hee might have noe
wronge; whereupon your depont demanded of Anth. Johnson his
Indenture. the sd Johnson answered hee never saw any. The negro
Jno. Casor replyed when hee came in he had an Indenture. Anth.
Johnson sd hee had ye Negro for his life, but Mr. Robert & George
Parker sd they knewe that ye sd Negro had an Indenture in one Mr.
S[andys?] hand on ye other side of ye Baye. Further sd Mr. Robert
Parker & his Brother George sd (if the sd. Anth. Johnson did not let ye
negro go free) the said negro Jno Casor would recover most of his
Cows from him ye sd Johnson. Then Anth. Johnson (as this dept. did
suppose) was in a great feare. . . . Anth. Johnsons sonne in Law, his
wife & his own two sonnes persuaded the old negro Anth. Johnson to
sett the sd. Jno. Casor free . . . more sth not.
March 8, 1654
Anthony Johnson
•
By virtue of a writt granted to me from
[names listed here, which are illegible]
John Stringer Escheator for the
countys of Northhampton and
Accomack to enquire what lands
Anthonio Johnson late of Accomack
County either in his life tyme. . . a jury
of free. . . in the said Accomack
County to enquire. . . doth declare that
the said Anthony Johnson lately
deceased in his life tyme was seized of
fifty acres of land now in the
possession of Rich. Johnson in the
County of Accomack aforesaid and
further that the said Anthony Johnson
was a negro and by consequence an
alien and for that cause the said land
doth escheat to this . . . .
--August 1670
History of Slavery
• Slavery in history: Egyptians, Greeks, Vikings,
Christianity & Islam
• Beginnings of Transatlantic Slave Trade:
– Portuguese & Spanish
– Trade across Sahara
– 15th Century: sea trade to Iberian peninsula
– Gold & Sugar
– Pre-existing slave trade
The Triangle Trade
The Middle Passage
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9-11 Million
5m South America
4m West Indies
400K North America
1/3 die en route
Middle Passage
Indentured Servitude
“Grinding at the mills, and attending the furnaces, or digging in this
scorching island; having nothing to feed on…besides the bread and
tears of their own afflictions; being bought and sold still from one
planter to another, or attached as horses and beasts for the debts of
their masters, being whipt at the whipping posts (as rogues) for their
masters’ pleasure and sleeping in sties worse than hogs in
England.”
Observers“found the indentures to be ‘sold for slaves at public sale’
and “subject nearly to the same laws as the Negroes [with] the same
coarse food and clothing.’
Richard Freethorne’s Letter
How does racialized slavery?
When does black=slave?
• Ideological reasons (racism) vs. Economic
reasons
– Winthrop Jordan
– Edmund Morgan
•
The earliest English descriptions of West Africa were written by adventurous traders,
men who had no special interest in converting the natives or, except for the famous
Hawkins voyages, in otherwise laying hands on them. …Englishmen found the
natives of Africa very different from themselves. Negroes looked different; their
religion was un-Christian; their manner of living was anything but English; they
seemed to be a particularly libidinous sort of people. All these clusters of perceptions
were related to each other, though they may he spread apart for inspection, and they
were related also to circumstances of contact in Africa, to previously accumulated
traditions concerning that strange and distant continent, and to certain special
qualities of English society on the eve of its expansion into the New World.The most
arresting characteristic of the newly discovered African was his color. Travelers rarely
failed to comment upon it; indeed when describing Negroes they frequently began
with complexion and then moved on to dress (or rather lack of it) and manners. At
Cape Verde, "These people are all blacke, and are called Negros, without any
apparell, saving before their privities.”… Englishmen actually described Negroes as
black-an exaggerated term which in itself suggests that the Negro's complexion had
powerful impact upon their perceptions. In England perhaps more than in southern
Europe, the concept of blackness was loaded with intense meaning. Long before they
found that some men were black, Englishmen found in the idea of blackness a way of
expressing some of their most ingrained values. No other color except white
conveyed so much emotional impact. As described by the Oxford English Dictionary,
the meaning of black before the sixteenth century included, "Deeply stained with dirt;
soiled, dirty, foul .... Having dark or deadly purposes, malignant; pertaining to or
involving death, deadly; baneful, disastrous, sinister .... Foul, iniquitous, atrocious,
horrible, wicked .... Indicating disgrace, censure, liability to punishment, etc." Black
was an emotionally partisan color, the handmaid and symbol of baseness and evil, a
sign of danger and repulsion. By Winthrop Jordan From: White Over Black (1968)
Ideological reasons:
-Robert Baker’s Poem meeting with
representatives in Guinea, 1562:
– Black as evil “the
handmaid and symbol of
baseness and evil, a sign
of danger and repulsion.”
– Africa un-Christian
– Sons of Ham
And entering in we see
A number of blacke soules
Whose likenliness seem’d me to be,
But all as blacke as cloes.
Their Captaine comes to me as
naked as my naile,
Not having witte or honestie
To cover once his taile.
By which I doe here gesse
And gather by the way,
That he from man and manlinesse
Was voide and cleane astray.
Economic Explanation
• Bacon’s Rebellion
– Completion of tenure
and denial of “freedom
dues”
– Increasing need for
labor (tobacco)
– Restless and
dangerous lower class
whites rebel
– Turn towards slavery:
permanent identifiable
labor group
– Enslaved status of
blacks enhances
meaning of whiteness
• A free society divided between large landholders and small was
much less riven by antagonisms than one divided between
landholders and landless, masterless men. With the freedman’s
expectations, sobriety, and status restored, he was no longer a man
to be feared. That fact, together with the presence of a growing
mass of alien slaves, tended to draw the white settlers closer
together and to reduce the importance of class difference between
yeoman farmer and large plantation owner …The rise of liberty and
equality in this country was accompanied by the rise of slavery. That
two such contradictory developments were taking place
simultaneously over a long period of our history, from the
seventeenth to the nineteenth, is the central paradox of American
history.
Edmund Morgan, Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox
Virginia, 1639
• Act X. All persons except Negroes are to be provided with arms and ammunitions or
be fined at the pleasure of the governor and council.
Maryland, 1664
• That whatsoever free-born [English] woman shall intermarry with any slave. . . shall
serve the master of such slave during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of
such free-born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.
Virginia, 1667
• Act III. Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children that are slaves by birth. .
. should by virtue of their baptism be made free, it is enacted that baptism does not
alter the condition to the person as to his bondage or freedom; masters freed from
this doubt may more carefully propagate Christianity by permitting slaves to be
admitted to that sacrament.
Virginia, 1682
• Act I. It is enacted that all servants. . . which [sic] shall be imported into this country
either by sea or by land, whether Negroes, Moors [Muslim North Africans], mulattoes
or Indians who and whose parentage and native countries are not Christian at the
time of their first purchase by some Christian. . . and all Indians, which shall be sold
by our neighborign Indians, or any other trafficing with us for slaves, are hereby
adjudged, deemed and taken to be slaves to all intents and purposes any law, usage,
or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.
Race:
• Social Construction
• Groupings according to physical
characteristics
– No cluster of genes specific to races
– More diversity within than between
• 19th century conception
• an ideology that justifies superiority and
exclusions.
Historical and regionally specific
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Revolution—1/4
1/16th then 1/8th
Some states 1/24th
“one drop” rule
Mexicans “mongrol” then “white”
“Race doesn’t travel.”
Rhetoric of the Revolution
• “There are but two sorts of men in the world, freemen and
slaves…the very definition of a freeman is one who is bound by no
law to which he has not consented” and that the capitulation to
Parliament could make Americans “not only…slaves. But the most
abject sort of salves to the worst sort of masters.”
John Adams
• “They who are taxed at pleasure by others cannot possibly have any
property…they who have no property, can have no freedom, but are
indeed reduced to the most abject slavery.”
Stephan Hopkins 1764
• “Those who are taxed without consent are slaves.”
John Dickenson of Pennsylvania
• “We won’t be there [Britain’s] negroes. Providence never designed
us for negroes. I know, for it and it would have given us black hides
and think lips…which it han’t done, and therefore never intended for
slaves.”
John Adams
Voices of Dissent
• Benjamin Rush, James
Otis, Thomas Paine
• Asked how Americans
could “complain so loudly
at attempts to enslave
them while they hold so
many hundreds of
thousands in slavery and
annually enslave many
thousands more.”
• “How is it that we hear
the loudest yelps for
liberty from the drivers of
negroes”? Samuel
Johnson
Contradictions in Revolutionary
Rhetoric
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George Mason
Thomas Jefferson
John Locke
“Fully encased in white identity”
Slavery made republican freedom possible
by establishing economic independence
• Racial Reasoning
Notes on the State of Virginia
Founding Documents
• Constitution
– “Slavery” absent
– End of slave trade
– Necessary
compromise/
necessary evil
– Dying out?
• Naturalization Act of
1790
– Restricts citizenship to
“free white persons”
– Civic vs. Ethnic
nationalism
• Although I have never sought popularity by animated
Speeches or inflammatory publications against Slavery of
the Blacks, my opinion against it has always been
known...and never in my life did I own a Slave. The
Abolition of Slavery must be gradual and accomplished with
much caution and Circumspection. Violent means and
measures would produce greater violations of Justice and
Humanity than the continuance of the practice. Neither...[of
you], I presume, would be willing to venture on exertions
which would probably excite Insurrection among the Blacks
to rise against their Masters.... There are many other evils
in our Country which are growing, (Whereas the practice of
slavery is fast diminishing) and threaten to bring
punishment on our Land, more immediately than the
oppression of the blacks. That Sacred regard to Truth in
which you and I were educated, and which is certainly
taught and enjoyed from on high seems to be vanishing
from among us.
John Adams, 1801
Consequences of American
Revolution for Slaves
• Lord Dunmore’s
Proclamation
• 5,000 fight with
Washington
• 50,000 gain freedom
The “contagion of liberty”
spreads
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1770s: Freedom Petitions in North
Address “Natural rights to our freedom”
“We expect great things from men who have made such a noble stand
against the designs of their fellow-men to enslave them.” Wrote four Boston
slaves.
“How could America seek release from English tyranny and not seek the
same for disadvantaged Africans in her midst?”
Stopped paying taxes
1770s-80s fugitive slaves increase (some estimates at 50% fled)
Southern slaveholders (VA & MD) manumit slaves
– 1784 Virginia Methodist condemned slavery as “contrary to the Golden
Law of God on which hang all the Laws and Prophets, and the
unalienable Rights of Mankind, as well as every principle of the
Revolution.”
“Freedom” in North
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1777-1804 Northern States Emancipate slaves
“Post Nati Emancipation” Do not free slaves in bondage, but children
Many labor until 26-28, then freed
Restricted liberties
– “Warning Out Laws”
– Banned from voting, militia, juries
• Joanne Pope Melish: Northern claims to moral superiority
historically inaccurate
• Racial distinctions grow in importance as slavery ends
Bobalition
1800 Expansion of Slavery
• “…people live in cotton
houses and ride in cotton
carriages. They buy
cotton, sell cotton, think
cotton, eat cotton, drink
cotton, and dream cotton.
They marry cotton wives
and unto them are born
cotton children…”
• British visitor Hiram
Fuller’s views of Mobile,
AL in 1858
Are we a “post-racial” nation?