Between Slavery and Freedom (3 page)

1814           
Free men of color in New Orleans join Andrew Jackson in fighting off the British Army

1816           
American Colonization Society (ACS) founded to encourage free people to leave America for Africa

1817           
Free blacks in the North and Upper South begin protesting against the ACS

1818           
Illinois outlaws slavery, but (1819) limits rights of free blacks

1821           
New York restricts black voting rights
ACS founds the colony of Liberia in West Africa and begins
recruiting
settlers

1822           
Free black craftsman Denmark Vesey heads a conspiracy in
Charleston
, South Carolina, to destroy slavery. South Carolina enacts a series of repressive laws

1824           
Anti-black violence in Providence, Rhode Island

Mid-1820s
Thousands of free blacks leave for Haiti. Most ev
entual
ly
return
to the United States

1826           
Race riot in Boston

1827           
First black-owned newspaper,
Freedom's Journal
, published in New
York City
Emancipation of all remaining slaves in New York

1829           
In Boston David Walker publishes his
Appeal to the
Colour
ed Citizens of the World
Race riot in Cincinnati, Ohio. Many black residents leave f
or Canad
a

1830           
In Philadelphia, Bishop Richard Allen chairs the first black national convention

1832           
Boston's Maria W. Stewart becomes the first African-Am
erican
woman to lecture in public to both men and women.
She speaks
on black rights and women's rights

1834           
Racial unrest in New York City and Philadelphia
In Canterbury, Connecticut, harassment from local whites forces Prudence Crandall to close her school for “young ladies and little misses of color”

1835           
African-American men lose voting rights in North
Carolina

1837           Colored American
newspaper begins publication
in New York City

1838           
Pennsylvania disfranchises African Americans

1840s         
Southerners protest when several Northern states pass “p
ersona
l liberty laws” giving black people arrested as fugitives more
opportunities
to prove that they are in fact free

1841           
Black men in Rhode Island regain voting rights lost in 1822

1842           
Three-day race riot in Philadelphia

1845           
Texas enters the Union as a slave state and passes laws to
control
free black people

1850           
Passage of a harsher federal fugitive slave law sparks fears that free black people will be kidnapped and enslaved

1852           
Black writer Martin R. Delany urges free people to rethink their
opposition
to emigration

1855           
Massachusetts enacts a school integration law

1857           
U.S. Supreme Court declares in the
Dred Scott
case that black people have no rights that whites are “bound to r
espec
t”

1859           
Arkansas expels its entire free black population

1860           
Restrictions on free black people increase in Southern states

1861           
Civil War begins. Free black men volunteer for m
ilitar
y service throughout the North and West but the U.S. g
overnmen
t refuses to let them enlist

CHAPTER ONE

Property or Persons

Black Freedom in Colonial America, 1513–1770

Over the two-and-a-half centuries from the founding of the first permanent European colony in North America to the beginning of the American Revolution, hundreds of thousands of black people arrived on this continent. Many Europeans set sail for America in the colonial era to escape abject poverty, religious or ethnic persecution, or the prospect of the gallows. Even the least free—indentured servants who had agreed to work for a period of time in return for passage to America, or criminals who had traded death sentences for transportation to the colonies—could anticipate that one day they would be at liberty to make a new start on a new continent. Not so black women and men. While some came voluntarily and seized the opportunities the New World offered, most crossed the Atlantic as slaves, with no prospect of freedom, and none for their American-born descendants. Bondage in perpetuity was to be
their
reality in America, unless they could find a way to “remake” themselves as free people. The nature of black freedom and the routes to that freedom varied greatly over time and space in colonial America. Blacks searched constantly for the weak places in the slave systems the different European and colonial governments had devised, determined to transform themselves from “property” to “people.”

The Spanish made their first foray to the mainland of North America in 1513. Within a couple of decades they were carving out settlements and bringing in both black and white people to make them profitable and productive. The different sets of circumstances under which black people came to North America in the service of the Spanish determined how they
fared. Free black men, who already spoke Spanish and had lived for years in Spain itself or on the Spanish Caribbean islands of Hispaniola or Cuba, came as soldiers, artisans, and interpreters. With the white conquistadors they trekked across the American Southeast and Southwest in search of the fabled Fountain of Youth and the Seven Cities of Gold. Like some of the white men they served with, an unknown number eventually settled as free farmers on the fringes of the vast Spanish Empire, intermarrying with Native American or black women.

These men and their families were the fortunate ones. Most black people in Spain's American dominions were slaves. The Spanish made extensive use of slave labor in the Caribbean and South and Central America, and they soon introduced the system to North America. They were as brutal in their exploitation of Africans and their descendants as any of their colonial rivals. Spanish law did, however, confer upon the enslaved some rights. The medieval Spanish code known as the
Siete Partidas
(Seven-Part Law)
required masters to pay attention to their slaves' physical and spiritual welfare. More importantly, it offered slaves a path to freedom.

Under the principle of
coartación
,
a slave could ask the authorities to name a price for his liberty, and his owner had to agree to it. Once a slave had scraped together part of his purchase price, he could hire himself out a few hours each week and earn more money. A larger payment gained the slave the right to move away from his owner's home. More freedoms came with more money, until the day when the slave paid the price in full and became a free person.

Throughout Spanish North America, in Texas and California, and most especially in Florida, slaves achieved their freedom in other ways as well. Relatively few white women came to the Spanish colonies, so white men routinely cohabited with enslaved women. The law forbade it, and so did the Catholic Church, but slaveholding merchants and planters ignored the secular and religious authorities when it came to their private lives. In some instances, they freed their concubines and their children and provided for them financially. Other slaves got their liberty because of their skills as craftsmen. Slave artisans were much more likely than field hands to be able to earn enough money to start the process of
coartación.
They might in time be able to buy not only themselves but their wives and children.

Other black men in Spanish territory fought their way to freedom. In 1565, Spain established the settlement of St. Augustine in Florida. The authorities quickly realized that to protect their beleaguered outpost from Native attacks, they had to call upon every able-bodied man, regardless of race. Thus they turned to their slaves, promising them freedom in return
for military service. What began as a short-term survival tactic resulted in the creation of a sizable free black and
pardo
(mixed-race) fighting force. Wherever the Spanish founded settlements, sooner or later they recruited their slaves to help defend those settlements, and they accepted the reality that no man would risk his life if he knew he had to remain a slave. Military service led to freedom. Eventually the authorities in Florida organized their free black and
pardo
soldiers into formal military companies. Although the Spanish tried to keep these forces under white control, they could not do so. Black and mixed-race
men rose through the ranks to become officers, and they led the men under their command into battle with the enemies of Spain. In the process, they claimed many of the same rights that other Spanish subjects enjoyed, insisting that their courage and loyalty entitled them to nothing less.

By the middle of the eighteenth century the black and
pardo
population of Spanish North America was a complex one. While Spain's slave system was undeniably brutal, it was loose enough to allow some people to gain their freedom. Throughout Spanish territory African and African-American men and women maneuvered, negotiated, and fought their way out of slavery. Those who became free began seeking ways to prosper as landowners, as business owners, and in some instances as slave owners.

While the Spanish were asserting their rights to all of North America, other Europeans were making
their
presence felt on the continent. Their settlements also relied, to varying degree, on the labor of enslaved black people. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the French spread steadily north from the Gulf of Mexico and south from Canada down the Mississippi. In the vast Louisiana Territory, French colonists engaged in raising sugar cane in the swampy, humid lands around the Mississippi Delta, cultivating grain in the Midwest (the so-called “Illinois Country”), and trading furs for European manufactured goods with Native peoples. With a constant need for workers, settlers enslaved Indians. They also brought in black slaves from Africa and the West Indies. Regardless of the race of their slaves, French settlers treated them with appalling cruelty. They met every act of rebellion or defiance, real or imagined, with savage reprisals.

Securing one's freedom in French territories proved more difficult than in Spanish territories, in part because there was no French equivalent of
co
artació
n.
A slave could attempt to bargain for his or her freedom, but a master or mistress had no obligation to agree to any kind of arrangement. Theoretically, the French slave system did not allow slaves to own property or earn money, hence depriving them of the means to purchase their liberty. In practice, though, some slaves
were
able to buy themselves. The port of
New Orleans, for instance, could never attract enough skilled white artisans. That spelled opportunity for slaves whose masters arranged for them to be trained in a specific trade and then permitted them to hire their time. Cohabitation was also as common in French settlements as it was in Spanish ones. Some Frenchmen took Native American “wives.” Others took enslaved women as their “housekeepers,” and in some instances they freed them. And, like the Spanish, the French recognized the wisdom of employing black men as soldiers, and granting them freedom for their service.

In 1729, the French in and around New Orleans began freeing some of their slaves and arming them to help repel attacks by the Natchez Indians. The black soldiers met a vital need and fought well. Yet the French were no more committed to freedom than the Spanish, but did what they had to for their own security. As the influence of the black troops increased with every challenge to French power in the region, the authorities found they could not do without them. Eventually French colonial administrators followed the lead of the Spanish and organized the soldiers into military companies commanded by their own officer corps. The soldiers, and especially their officers, became not only free but in some instances wealthy.

Once France began acquiring colonies and importing black people to labor in them, the French king and his ministers crafted a series of laws that set down the rights and obligations of masters and slaves. The so-called
Code Noir
(Black Code) concentrated power in the hands of white slaveholders and made slaves subservient in basically every aspect of their lives. Theoretically, there were two classes in the colonies, white slave owners and black slaves, but the
Code Noir
did not entirely ignore the presence of a third class, the
gens de couleur libres
, or free people of color.