Slavery In the North
In the North, freedom from slavery was traded for no rights as free men.
The Abolitionists movement did not start to spread until the
1830s. All through the Civil War, Abolitionists were viewed as a loud and often
extreme minority. While Abolitionists
fought to free the enslaved, most still thought blacks were an inferior
race and should not have all the privileges of whites.
A good modern analogy might be PETA -People for Ethical Treatment of
Animals—movement. Most people agree in general animals should not be treated
cruelly, but few people even in PETA believe goats, snails, chimpanzees or
gorillas should be given the right to vote or testify in court.
Negroes in Indiana
September 12, 1858
Rising Sun Visitor newspaper
In the Floyd
Circuit Court, recently, the Judge decided the law forbidding the introduction
of Negroes in this State unconstitutional. The Judge of the Circuit is
certainly not very conversant with the decisions of the Supreme Court of the State,
or else he would have withheld such a decision. We can refer him to a case in
which the law has been fully sustained by the Supreme Court, in a singular
instance of the application of its provisions. In that case a negro by the name
of Arthur Barkshire, long a resident of Rising Sun, married a negro woman in
Ohio, in 1854, and brought her to this city and maintained her. He was found
guilty in the Common Pleas Court of Ohio county, for bringing in and harboring
a negress, and was fined $10.
The poor
fellow thinking he had a right to harbor his own wife, took an appeal to the
Supreme Court, but they not only affirmed the decision, but told him he had no
wife, because by the sixth section of the act in question, all contracts made
with negroes unlawfully declared void; this was in the May term of 1856. The Supreme Court sustains the law, but the Floyd
Pleas Court will not.
TWO TO ONE AGAINST THE NEGROES—The vote in the Republican Convention in Minnesota on striking out the word “white” in the clause conferring political rights to “citizens” was yeas 17 and nays 34. The Convention unanimously resolved that negroes were born free and equal to the white man, but refused by a vote of two to one to admit the negroe to the enjoyment of the equality to which they say he was ‘born.’ Either they do not believe their own doctrine, or they fly in the face of God, who, they say, created the negroe “free and equal,” and endowed him with “inalienable rights.”
Before 1808, Boston, Massachusetts was the hub of slave trading in the United States. Slaves were generally brought up from the West Indies and quickly sold south at a profit of about ten percent.
Slaves in the North tended to be house servants or coachmen. Estimates are about 40 % of New York City families middle and upper class owned at least one, but not more than 4 slaves around 1800. The figure was 6% in Philadelphia and only 2% in Boston.
Two reasons accounted for the abolition of slavery above most of the Mason-Dixon Line. Often cited is simply the North was not suited to growing cotton and tobacco. Pennsylvania and the midwestern states found growing grain far more profitable. Fewer workers were needed to grow and harvest grains.
The second reason was a seemingly endless supply of English and German “indentured servants” for five year stretches immigrating to the United States. Many European peasants considered five years labor fair exchange for the right to then buy or claim vast stretches of farmland beyond anything imaginable in the old country.
Northern manufacturers could hire immigrants and/or indentured servants and not have to support them in old age. Such workers became known as "free labor," though "paid labor" or simply "employee" would be better terms.
While most—not all--Northern states
had abolished slavery long before 1860, nearly all enacted very harsh “black
codes” restricting black voting, property, work, and harsh punishment against
any black who assaulted or was “impudent” to a white man or woman. Nineteen of
the twenty four Northern states enforced “black codes” until 1865!
All slavery laws abolished in the North, save Vermont’s, were abolished on practical economic grounds. (Vermont’s constitution of 1777 forbade slavery and granted full rights to blacks and whites. Vermont carried this over when admitted as the 14th state.)
Some Northern states abolished slavery, but left their “indentured servant” laws or “apprenticeship” laws in its place. Others enacted “gradual manumission,” such as New York in 1827, under which a state declared any son or daughter of a slave born after a certain date to be free at the age of 25 for women or 28 for men. The age limit was imposed so “the owner could get back the cost of raising the slave.”
Manumission was much easier in Northern states for a while, but this was found to be a worse problem than slavery. Northern slave owners simply freed and turned out old slaves or ones unable to work. Homeless, indigent, elderly and crippled former slaves became steadily more numerous. Non slave owners resented paying taxes for what little public welfare existed and the proliferation of homeless beggars.
The
Northwestern Territories Act of 1795 forbade bringing slaves into what would
become Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—but slaves already there remained slaves. As
the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois were formed, each enacted
laws prohibiting slavery and banning any free blacks from settling or having
any rights.
A Kentucky slave owner bought 400 acres in Southern Illinois in the late 1840s and moved forty of his slaves there to work the land. He quickly fell afoul of the Illinois constitution prohibiting "anyone from bringing a person one fourth or more Negro into the state for the purpose of working." The Kentuckian hired Abraham Lincoln to defend him. Lincoln did so and won. The ungrateful slave owner then hurriedly moved his slaves back to Kentucky and refused to pay Lincoln's bill.
The
Fugitive Slave Act required Northern law enforcement and simple citizens to help recapture runaway slaves. This law was opposed by Northerners more often on grounds of
convenience rather than morality. The act required the Northerners to help
slave hunters and slave owners capture and return runaways, imposing grave Federal penalties on anybody in "free states" who did not comply.
Fugitive Slave in Ohio
CLEVELAND, Ohio, May 11—Langston, one of the men arrested
for being engaged in the attempt to rescue a fugitive slave, has been tried in
the District Court, and the jury have returned a verdict of guilty.
ZANESVILLE, Ohio, May 11—Reuben Johnson, the negro leader of
the gang who attempted to rescue the fugitive Jackson, has been arrested for
attempting to shoot Deputy Marshal Campbell. His pistol missed fire and saved
the Marshal.
Pennsylvania resented the burden of
Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware’s slaves escaping to them. (Yes, NJ and
Delaware were slave states through the Civil War. New Jersey freed the last
sixteen slaves under the thirteenth amendment in 1865 as did Delaware.) Runaway
slaves constituted a disproportionate part of the criminal population in
Pennsylvania’s view. Public records do point to far more blacks charged with
drunkenness, robbery, theft and so on in the years leading up to 1861. Of
course, illiterate people escaping into “freedom,” whatever that meant to them,
were going to have far more likely to be charged and convicted. The idea education
and fair laws might alleviate this problem, was not popular amongst
Pennsylvanians or other Northerners.
A Rare Kindness
Unwelcome in Iowa
April, 1857
Keokuk Gate City
A FAST CITY—The following notice which was cut from the Keokuk
Gate City shows what kind of business the Marshal of that would-be great City is
at present engaged in. The Council and Marshal undoubtedly have been reading
Judge Taney’s decision in the case of Dred Scott:
“To--------,
a free Negro:---You are hereby notified to leave the State of Iowa, within
three days from the date of this service of this Notice, and unless you do so,
you will be arrested and dealt with in the manner provided in a Statute of this
State, entitled, “An Act to prohibit the immigration of Free negroes into this
State” Approved Feb. 5, 1851
Unwelcome in Ohio
A NEGRO ON THE STUMP IN SENECA COUNTY—A colored man by the
name of Day made speech in this city Saturday evening last, at the Court House,
in favor of “brudder Chase.” This is part of the programme: Negro stump
speakers! Negro voters!! Negro jurors!!! Negro officeholders!!!!
No Negro Votes in Ohio
Mr. Jewett of the Ohio 16th district contests the seat of Cuttle (Republican) on the ground that negro votes were cast for Cuttle. Congress will rectify this matter as they did in the case of Vallandingham versus Campbell by rejecting negro support.
In fact, Africans found on slave ships the US Navy intercepted were automatically sent to Liberia. Ironically, as the newspaper article below points out, cutting off the supply of slaves from Africa to Cuba just made slaves the more valuable and encouraged more men to enter the slave trade.
1,569 Slaves intercepted by the US Navy
MORE SLAVES CAPTURED—The U.S. steamers stationed off the coast of Cuba are
doing an active business, a third prize having been taken with…..to be returned
to African continent at the expense of the government treasury. The captures
for the last few weeks are as follows:
April 26 Bark Wildfire,
519 negroes
May 9 Bark William,
550 negroes
May—French Bark, 500 negroes
Total 1,569
This is a pretty fair business but is likely to have very little
perceptible effect in discouraging the slave-trade, as the market price of
negroes in Cuba will advance as the supplies are cut off, and so will bring out
fresh adventurers. Yet, these captures will subject the general government to
heavy cost. The British government, in disposing of captured negroes, has
decidedly the advantage, as they are immediately landed in her tropical
colonies, and made to supply a demand for labor which has been severely felt. Thus a revenue is produced that goes far to
reward the philanthropy supposed to be exercised on the part of the British
nation. When the Empire of Brazil was engaged in suppressing the slave trade,
all captives were appropriated as labor for a term of years on the public works,
to which the naval forces employed wee, in some degree, made self sustaining.
The United States on the contrary “work for nothing and find themselves.”
The
government has made a contract for two steamships to transport Africans
recently captured in the Wildfire and the Williams to Liberia, under the
auspices of the American Colonization Society.
Lincoln felt it more important to preserve the Union than slaves’ rights. Moreover, the Republican Party platform of 1860 was not against existing slavery, rather it was against any further expansion of slavery into new states. Lincoln contended he was putting down rebellion not slavery.
In the fall of 1861, Lincoln
proposed to a congressman from Delaware the Federal government buy all the
slaves in that state at a cost of around $900,000 and free them to either be
sent to a future African colony or allowed freedom within the black codes.
There were only 1,800 slaves in Delaware, eighty percent of them in one southern county.
If slave holders in the border
states of Maryland and Kentucky saw the Federal government would buy their slaves
for a fair price, Lincoln hoped they could be kept in the Union
Lincoln urged quick passage of his
proposal on the Delaware legislature before more blood was shed and before the
cost of the war became too high for the Federal government to afford to buy
Delaware’s slaves. The bill failed by one vote, a vote cast by the largest
slave owner in Delaware.
Lincoln met with prominent black leaders at the start of the war, promising them a great deal of support and subsidy if the government freed slaves and all blacks could "return to their own country." Lincoln was surprised the men all refused such a proposal on the grounds "America, not Africa, was their home."
At the start of the war Lincoln had to countermand a Union general, Jon Fremont, who declared all slaves behind his lines in Missouri as freed. Lincoln feared Fremont's policy would stampede slave owners in border states such as Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware to join the Confederacy.
Union General Benjamin Butler – an expert
civil law attorney before the war—found a way around declaring slaves free men.
Butler used Southern logic on Southerners. If slaves were “property,” then slaves
already behind his lines or escaping to his area were declared “contraband
property” and seized as such. Butler put them to doing what the slaves had been
doing for the Confederate Army-- building fortifications.
Lincoln had to wait until after the battle of Antietam in April 1862 to proclaim emancipation of slaves but only in those counties still in rebellion.
Northern black codes presented a very thorny problem in1865 at the end of the Civil War. Freed Southern slaves were to be allowed to vote, testify in court, enter any profession they wished, live wherever they chose, become educated. Blacks in the North were allowed few or none of those rights.
Keep in mind that the abolition of
slavery did not mean Northern states were willing to allow the
newly freed blacks license to come North. It did not mean the
newly forming territories and states in the West would tolerate their presence either.
Quite the opposite. Both proposed plans and popular opinion was the freedmen
should be given parts of the plantations on which they had labored. This would
be both revenge on their former masters and keep the blacks in the South.
The political cost of granting full rights to blacks in the North was an explosive issue as the 1863 race riots in New York City demonstrated. But, if the North decided to treat the freed slaves in the South as they were treated in the North, then the old planter aristocracy would take over again and the country would nearly be back to the status quo ante bellum.
A decision had to be made quickly. With the war over, most soldiers wanted to go home, not play policeman between whites and blacks for some hazy indefinite time.
There was still strong sentiment to ship all blacks back to Africa when things settled down. Of course, nobody thought through the simple mechanics of rounding up four million people and providing, transportation, food and supplies, to help set up a new black nation. Anyway, the very definition of “Black” and “White” varied from state to state so who could stay and who was to be deported? Would families be broken up because some were black and others not?
Land seizure and re distribution
brought up other problems.
Would there be enough tools and
livestock to go around if the slaves were given farm property? And the house
servants with no training in farming? And the elderly and disabled former
slaves? What about former slaves with skills such as blacksmithing, carpentry,
brick masons and so on. Would they be allowed to practice their trades on their
own now? In some Northern states, blacks were forbidden to enter those trades.
Would turning over a large portion
of land and agricultural production to nearly four million illiterate, innumerate
former slaves simply wreck the entire economy of the South, forcing even more
expenditure and soldiers to keep order? If this happened, surely millions of
white Southerners would stream northwards or westwards.
A large minority of slave owning planters were Union loyalists. Should their plantations be subject to seizure? If so, should they be compensated for the land lost? At what price? If Union loyalists were impoverished, who would run the states when the troops left?
The debate then turned to whether
or not to use the “colored regiments” to occupy the South. Officially, many of
the Union officers viewed the colored regiments as the best disciplined and
best suited for the task.
The unofficial counter argument was
it would incite riot and fierce opposition from white Southerners who might
accept the end of slavery, but would never accept equality with blacks, let
alone take any orders from them. To many Northerners, this was a compelling
argument. Northern whites were happy to see slavery gone, the major cause of
the rebellion removed. But Northern Whites, too, would not accept black
equality nor would they accept orders from any black.
And the counter argument to that was white Northern regiments tended to show more deference to any white’s word or accusation than any black’s. The white regiments were very sympathetic to the Southerners’ resentment of black equality, allowing far more leeway to white crimes than black crime.
Effects of Emancipation
by a Northerner
1853
(from the New Journal of Commerce)
Effects of Emancipation—Examples of Hayti, Jamaica, etc.
Why is it
our Abolitionist and would-be-thought philanthropists of the North are
apparently so ignorant of the practical effects of emancipation, and the misery
that resulted therefrom by unwise legislation and blind fanaticism?
Why do they
not, instead of standing afar from these “benighted people” advocating
chimerical dogmas, go among them, and by teaching prepare them to occupy a more
exalted position, if they are really capable of so doing, as they would have us
believe! Is there not enough for them in Liberia, in Jamaica, and the Danish
Islands, instead of creating discord at home; and, above all, in Hayti, once
the “Queen of the Antilles,” and now a mass of corruption, abounding in all
that is revolting to civilized and refined minds, both morally and intellectually!
The island
has since the revolt of the blacks in 1792, been steadily retrograding, with
the exception of Boyer’s administration, and even then, no advancement, no
progress. There is not a parallel case
in the annals of history where a people starting, as the blacks did in Hayti …a country the richest and most productive in
the world of its …, that has sunk in so short a time into absolute poverty.
In 1789
there were, according to reliable statistics, exported 141,506,000 pounds of
sugar and the export of coffee was 78,835,219 pounds; of cotton 7,004,271
pounds; of indigo 758,628 pounds, and the abundance of luxuries produced
enabled the inhabitants to live in a style unequaled elsewhere, even in the
Tropics.
Before I
speak of the present condition of the island let me repeat an anecdote in
illustration related to me while there not long since by an old resident, an
American by birth, who has lived long enough to become impoverished like the
rest.
He was
formerly a merchant, having frequently as many as a dozen vessels in his own
consignment. Some twenty years since, at a dinner party given by him on the anniversary
of our independence to the American merchants and shipmasters in port, he spoke
of the changes that had already taken place, and, among other things, remarked
he expected to see the day when, instead of sweetening their coffee with sugar
produced on the island as they were then doing, it would be with sugar produced
in the United States. The remark was
received with loud acclamations as a grand joke, for my friend had the
reputation in those days of being somewhat of a humorist. Let us see how his words have been verified.
At the
moment there is not one pound of sugar exported from the island and all that is
used is imported from the United States. Some friends of mine have attempted to
make sugar in a small way within a few years past, but for the lack of labor
were obliged to abandon the project with loss. There is not raised at the very
most, as I have been credibly informed by those employed in the custom houses,
more than 40,000,000 pounds of coffee and the amount decreases yearly. With the
exception of Gogaives, there is not a pound of cotton produced and only a very
limited quantity there barely sufficient for consumption; and, instead of
exporting, as formerly, indigo, they import all they use from the United
States. The people this moment exist (not live) under the most tyrannical and
corrupt government known among the civilized nations.
I speak
from knowledge of facts, having resided formerly some time on the island, and
some of the many circumstances that come to my knowledge shall I hereafter
speak of.
I am, as I
have ever been, opposed to slavery, in the abstract, and believe it not only a
moral wrong, but a greater misfortune to the master than the slave, but I am
opposed to the still greater wrong, both moral and social, that must
immediately arise from immediate emancipation. How has it resulted in the
English colonies! Was the mere nominal sum paid to the master for his slaves by
the English government all that was required due to him? Was the liberty given
to the slave all he had a right to ask? I think and it seems almost a dream
when one compares the beautiful estates that formerly adorned these islands to
the few and miserably cultivated ones that are now in existence. The negro was formerly as happy and contented
as nature designed he should be, with all is physical wants supplied, supported
and protected by a master upon whom the laws imposed an obligation to protect and
support him in return for his labor, and indulged and encouraged in is innocent
holiday amusements. He became intoxicated at finding himself free, and, under
no obligations to himself and master, lost all desire of self cultivation, if
he ever had any, or to cultivate the soil; and he has year by year degenerated,
until now he is lower in the scale of humanity than those of his own people who
roam the deserts of Africa; for they “know not what to do,” whereas the negro
of Jamaica has systematically learned vice and become a ready pupil, and is now
unfitted for any position above the lowest sensualist, and is even looked upon
with contempt, to my personal knowledge and observation, by the degenerate
natives of Hayti.
NORTHERNER
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