American History Week 5

"Marsa never sot Aunt Rebecca down": enslaved women, religion, and social power in the antebellum south

Annie Williams, the unofficial biographer of Aunt Rebecca, had been a slave of Robert Coles of Powhatan County, Virginia, during the antebellum era. When interviewed decades later as a part of the Virginia Works Progress Administration (WPA) effort, her description of some of the religious practices of her owner, his family, and his slaves emerged. According to Williams, Coles was a religious man who prayed with his family "ev'y single night." His prayer meetings were mandatory for his slaves who had to "come to de parlor same as de whites." Among this body of black participants, one woman's presence struck Williams as particularly noteworthy. (1) Aunt Rebecca was an elderly enslaved woman who, not only attended the meetings, but actively participated. She often would give lengthy, passionate prayers garnering the attention and respect of other congregates. Williams was struck by this phenomenon for two reasons--Aunt Rebecca was a woman, and she was a slave. It was especially unusual, Williams suggested, because of Rebecca's gender: "Aunt Rebecca used to git up an' pray regular," Annie explained. "Didn't let women do much prayin' in dem days." (2) Annie's conclusion regarding the lack of prominence of women in southern religious traditions was largely correct. It was especially so for slave women. (3) "[B]ut Marsa never sot Aunt Rebecca down," she continued. "Pray sometimes fo' half-hour an' white folks would sit there jus' as 'spectful as if she was de white preacher." (4) So too, no doubt, did the other enslaved men and women who were present. Williams clearly was impressed with the respect from her master and his family that Aunt Rebecca commanded, becoming keenly aware of the apparent transformative power that Rebecca's religiosity had on the elderly slave woman's social status. While praying, neither slaveholders nor slaves responded to her as a social inferior. Traditionally, a southern enslaved woman's race, gender, and certainly her slave status would have isolated her fundamentally from this type of social reception among slaveholding whites. Yet, Master Coles clearly was moved by Rebecca's passionate expression of her Christian faith--he and his family enjoyed hearing her pray. They also, no doubt, wanted her acceptance of "their religion" to be an example to their other slaves. What's more, Robert Coles probably felt secure that Rebecca's prayers would not undermine his command as master. He was, after all, present at these meetings and could have stopped them if he felt the need to do so. Moreover, Rebecca's gender may have reassured him that her prominence was quite a limited one. The phenomenon of Aunt Rebecca's reception as a spiritual leader among the Coles's slaves was equally complex, but for different reasons. In many instances, Rebecca's gender would have limited her accessibility to public power within her slave community, particularly in slave communities where women were not in the majority. Yet, her advanced age, her obvious knowledge of religious text, and perhaps both the "memory" and contemporary "practice" of female "leaders" in traditional African religions allowed social space for female religious leadership in slave communities, even in those communities where their masters did not order them to attend worship services. (5) No matter how Aunt Rebecca came to her position on the Coles's estate, her social visibility and acceptance at this biracial meeting that cut deeply across entrenched social and cultural lines was more than a little impressive. Indeed, it is clear that from both the perspective of her master and that of the enslaved, Aunt Rebecca was an important bridge, socially and culturally, between the white and black worlds they inhabited. This unique role meant that she experienced a heightened social presence and status, a kind of social power, albeit situationally bound, that was rare for enslaved women. "Social power" within this context means merely the ability of enslaved women to have a social presence and influence that was recognized beyond traditional boundaries. Usually, the "social power" of slave women was relegated to that of her family, immediate and extended. As wives, daughters, and particularly as mothers, slave women exerted significant social influence within their black households. They were, after all, the primary caretakers and most responsible for the socialization of their children. Their children, of course, collectively were the vast majority of youth who became the generations of southern slaves. Enslaved mothers, therefore, were responsible for shaping the social dynamics of slave life--teaching through example, moral tales, lecture, and responsive punishment, the dos and don'ts of slave social life within and outside their families and communities. Elderly enslaved women also wielded some social power, derived from the African tradition of reverence for the elderly and ancestral. African American women who were religious leaders crafted a social influence that was rooted both in maternal and elderly reverence, but which also derived from the deep respect many enslaved people, and small numbers of whites, held for someone of obvious spiritual enlightenment and moral superiority. Whites, for example, viewed women as especially capable of great spiritual strength and moral purity. It was, after all, the role of the white wife and mother to lead her husband and children to Christian salvation. (6) It is not certain what Aunt Rebecca's "social" ambitions might have been when she took the floor every night to pray at the Coles's farm. It is not definite that she had any at all or, if she was socially ambitious, that her aspirations figured into her animated presence at the prayer meetings. What is reasonable to surmise, however, is that a slave woman's religious beliefs and expression, her religiosity if you will, provided her with unique opportunities to redefine herself socially vis-a-vis others, both slaves and slaveholders. Taking on the cloak and substance of a religious persona endowed them with the power to craft for themselves a new category of socially redemptive identity, that of "religious woman." A comprehensive definition of that term cannot be located in one isolated primary source such as the Annie Williams biographical narrative; nor can it be exhaustively detailed here. Yet antebellum slave women's texts collectively suggest that for a bound woman to be "religious," in the various sacred traditions that they were actively creating and/or sustaining, meant taking on a number of personal and personality traits that had layered meaning and significance in their lives. As women of religion, slave female converts exhibited in their daily interactions and activities that they were trustworthy, generous, pious, and selfless, yet filled with self-esteem. They believed in the ability of their God or gods to "transform" and "save" them from "evil"; and to embolden them to be fearless in the face of "evil." (7) Being a part of a "religious womanhood," therefore, gave enslaved women the opportunity to expand, both vertically and horizontally, the traditional social space reserved for them in southern "slave society." It united them in a distinct "community" that was not necessarily bound by race and class. Moreover, their affiliation with this community of religious women empowered them not only to construct different social identities for themselves individually, but also to undermine, resist, and challenge the racism and misogyny that were endemic in their lives. (8) This essay is an exploration of three interrelated phenomena: the presence of women in antebellum spiritual communities among the enslaved, primarily those of Christian origin; the public manifestation of religious womanhood among slaves, particularly with regard to its impact on self-images and the "traditional" role of motherhood; and some of the origins and boundaries of the leadership roles that these religious women were afforded in their spiritual communities. (9) ENSLAVED WOMEN, RELIGION, AND SPIRITUAL COMMUNITIES Many antebellum slave women clearly enjoyed and appreciated tremendously their individual religiosity and that which they shared with other African Americans. The importance of religion in their lives, as individuals as well in their communities, was part of a long tradition derived from their indigenous and Islamicized African past and sustained through their introduction to Christian texts and practices. (10) It was a tradition in which they were instructed to embrace religious beliefs, practices, and public demonstrations as central to one's own and one's community identity. As a fundamental cultural marker that could be manifest and transferred visually and orally, religious beliefs and practice styles were some of the most portable, and significant, of cultural attributes for slaves across the generations. African women and men could, and did, take the ideal that religion was a central component of one's identity with them from West Africa to the mainland colonies during the era of the African slave trade, and then again along the roadways from the upper to the lower South and Southwest as part of the domestic trade in human beings. (11) As such, it is of little surprise that long after slavery had ended, ex-bondswomen remembered their preparation, transportation to, and participation in religious gatherings with a sense of pride and celebration. "In slavery days Sundays was one day we glad to see come," former slave Alice Marshall of Nottoway County, Virginia, explained. "Yes, we went to church. Had to walk four or five miles, but we went. We took our shoes in our hands an' walked barefooted. When we got near de church door, den we put on our shoes." (12) "On Sunday's you should o' seen us in our Sunday bes' gon' ter church 'hind de missus coach," Henrietta McCullers of Wake County, North Carolina, added. "We can't read de hymns ebben iffen we had a book 'cause we ain't 'lowed ter have no books, but we sung jist the same." (13) A woman who had been enslaved in Alabama noted similarly that, "All de *****hs love to go to church an' sing." John, who had been enslaved in Georgia, remembered that when his wife Nancy "got religion," it was a joyous occasion for everyone around her. "Nancy cried out in church when she was converted, and said, 'Glory be to God and the Lamb forever! I am washed clean by the blood of Jesus,'" he explained. "Nancy shouted, and was so happy we could hardly get her home that evening. She shouted all along the road as we walked. We all got happy on our way back that night." (14) That the religious practices of women who were enslaved helped to determine their social identities, status, and power within their communities and outside of them as well, is certain. The religiosity of Aunt Rebecca, after all, is literally the only record of her life that remains. Much the same is true for many others. Elizabeth Sparks, for example, remembered many things about her mother, but her parent's religious fervor was one of her most detailed and endearing recollections. "She wuz very religious an' all white folks set store to 'er," she reminisced. Charles Grandy also recalled a devout slave female worshiper, but not as fondly. Millie Jeffries attended the same religious services as Grandy when the two were enslaved. The meetings were held secretly in a local tobacco barn. According to Grandy, the woman "would stick her haid in de pot an' shout an' pray all night whilst de others was bustin' to take dere turn. Sometimes de slaves would have to pull her haid out dat pot so's de others could shout." (15) Grandy's annoyance at Sister Jeffries's monopoly of the "hush pot" notwithstanding, slaves, at least the significantly large numbers who were "religious," overwhelming appreciated those who were devout, committed to the spiritual experience, provided moral guidance, and whose personal control was an example to others. (16) Religious gatherings, whether at church or at some private or clandestine place, however, were not just times to learn about and publicly revere God. They also were events which bolstered social and spiritual bonds among African American worshipers. On the most fundamental level, therefore, the religiosity of slave women, whether leaders or not, created for them a new social identity among those who were enslaved, differentiating their membership in the larger black community--at least philosophically, spiritually, and intellectually--and establishing them as part of a subculture or alternative communities of worshipers or devotees. (17) When Isaiah Jeffries's mother "got religion" at a camp meeting, for example, her first impulses were to embrace her new community of converts and to get her old acquaintances to do likewise, to become, in essence, a part of her new "community." "She shouted and sung fer three days," Jeffries recalled, "going all over de plantation and de neighboring one, inviting her friends to come to see her baptized and shouting and praying fer dem. She went around to all de people dat she had done wrong and begged dere forgiveness. She sent fer dem dat had wronged her, and told dem dat she was born again and a new woman, and dat she would forgive dem. She wanted everybody dat was not saved to go up wid her." (18) These were communities, then, born of the links that religious women were able to make across color, gender, generational, and occupational lines; communities that also could be exclusive of those who expressed different or no religious beliefs and moral philosophies. They bound the living with ancestors of similar faith and were the site of the creation of dynamic rituals and cultural expressions. They served both sacred and social needs. Consider, for example, the religious history of Charlotte Brooks who was sold from Richmond, Virginia, to Louisiana when she was a young teen. She often thought fondly about her life in the upper South, because she had lived there with her mother and other family members. An essential part of the communal life she had experienced in Virginia was her expression of faith, attending church regularly and the religious text and hymns that she had learned and shared with her family and community. Charlotte Brooks was not just a black Christian, she was a Protestant, and she detested the Catholicism of her new owner in Louisiana. "My mother used to take her children to church every Sunday," she recalled.</p> <pre> But when I came to Louisiana I did not go to church any more. Everybody was Catholic where I lived, and I never had seen that sort of religion that has people praying on beads. That was all strange to me. The older I got the more I thought of my mother's Virginia religion. Sometimes when I was away off in the cane-field at work it seemed I could hear my mother singing the 'Old Ship of Zion.' I could never hear any of the old Virginia hymns sung here.... (19) </pre> <p>One day, Brooks explained that she heard another enslaved woman from Virginia had arrived at a nearby plantation, and she hoped that she was one of her family. When Brooks finally got to meet Aunt Jane Lee, she was disappointed to find that she was not any of her kin, but glad to know that Jane also spoke English (as opposed to French) and was a Protestant (instead of Catholic) who was able to read biblical text, lead their religious meetings, and convert those who were so inclined. Charlotte Brooks soon came to view Aunt Jane as a surrogate mother and the others enslaved there and who worshipped with them as her new community. (20) Members of these religious communities, like those of Brooks and Lee's, studied and worshipped, exhorted and shouted, sang and hummed songs in praise of, and prayed to an otherworldly God or gods. Yet they centered much of their energy on enjoying, improving, or just protecting their lives and those of their loved ones. Their "religion" helped them to do so. Indeed, many religious slave women did not differentiate the spiritual from the secular, but rather recognized their fundamental symbiotic connection. Certainly their social, psychological, and physical vulnerability as slave women enhanced the attractiveness of a religion or religious traditions that addressed their concerns for moral and spiritual guidance and promised them a wonderful afterlife, while also helping them practically and presently by providing them comfort and protection in the face of the violence and brutality that was endemic to their experience. One woman formerly enslaved in Franklin, Tennessee, explained that she first sought God as a means of protection from her brutal mistress. "I was a slave and started to pray when I was nine years old," she noted. Trained as a domestic when quite young, her constant contact with her ailing mistress rendered her a life that was barely tolerable. "My mistress was mean to me and one day she said, 'I am going to kill you. Go and eat and come back to me, for I am going to kill you.'" The girl started to the kitchen as her mistress had directed, but stopped to pray, asking God to spare her life. "I went back in the house, and she didn't touch me," she added. "From then on I prayed more and more." (21) For the next several years, through her adolescence and early adulthood, she used the power derived from her belief in God to survive her mistress's daily doses of physical and verbal abuse. Hattie, who was enslaved in Louisiana, was the victim of sexual and physical abuse. She ran away to avoid a beating and then suffered terribly from the cold, and the want of food and medical attention. When a fellow slave woman asked her how she had managed to survive and give birth to a child in the woods all alone, she answered: "All I can tell, God took care of me in these woods." (22) Even when abused slave women of religion became so desperate that they took their own lives, it was so they finally could be with God. So it was with Aunt Nellie, enslaved in Virginia, who told her friend before she committed suicide: "Fannie, I don' had my las' whippin'. I'm gwine to God." (23) The religion and religious communities that enslaved women embraced often provided spiritual and practical solutions to the most devastating experiences of their lives, but they also were the source of much of their happiness. "De most' fun we had was at our meetin's," Clara Young recalled. "De peacher I lakked de bes' was name Matthew Ewing. He was a comely ******, black as night, an he sho' cud read outter his han'. He neber learned no real readin' an' writin', but he sho' knowed his Bible, an' wud hole his han out an' mek lak he wuz readin', an preach de purt'est preaching's you ever heard. De meetin's last from early in de mawnin' till late at night." (24) Emily Dixon felt similarly about the religious gatherings she had attended as a slave, but asserted in particular the importance of culturally-bound worship traditions which attracted enslaved women to racially segregated slave meetings, rather than to integrated services. "On Sundays," she noted, "us would git together in de woods an' have worship. Us could go to de white folks' church, but us wanted to go where us could sing all de way through, an' hum 'long, an' shout--yo all know, jist turn loose lak." (25) As Clara Young suggests, enslaved Africans and African Americans, who met separately from whites, often did not have Bibles to read and, if they had them, could not read them; and if they could read them, they chose different passages to emphasize. The songs that they created oftentimes substituted for biblical text and a minister's sermon. "They say us can carry de song better than white folks," Dinah Cunningham explained. "Well, maybe us does love de Lord just a little bit better, and what in our mouth is in our hearts." (26) Minerva Grubb concurred. While reminiscing about how those enslaved on her plantation combined religious worship with field work, Grubb emphasized the permeable walls between the spheres of secular and sacred activity that characterized their worship style and belief systems. She also emphasized important differences in black and white worship styles that promoted separate meetings. The slaves, she noted, "would git to singin', prayin, an' a shoutin'. When de overseer hear 'em, he always go make 'em be quiet ... You see de white folks don't git in de spirit. Dey don't shout, pray, hum, an' sing all through de services, lak us do." Grubb also explained that slave religion was not just centered on Christianity, but beliefs from other religious traditions, particularly those derived from their African ancestral past. These were traditions that whites did not understand or sanction. "Dey don't believe in a heap o' things us ******s knows 'bout. Dey tells us dey ain't no ghos', but us knows better'n dat." (27) The creation of these religious communities with their own belief systems and styles of worship, by virtue of their existence and expression outside of the guise and control of owners, was a profound act of resistance that gave its members, both female and male, a sense of personal and communal control. (28) It also offered them hope for a future characterized by other kinds of empowerment, especially freedom. The newly converted mother of Fannie Moore shocked one of her South Carolina slaveholders, for example, when she told her that one day she would escape her abuse. "No matter how much yo' all done beat me an' my chillun de Lawd will show me de way," she asserted. "An' some day we nevah be slaves." (29) Her belief of eventual freedom was one that enslaved religious women routinely held. The connection between heavenly and earthly freedom was so important that many slaves rejected ministers and churches which were opposed to such aspirations. It certainly was the reason why Loredo rejected her Louisiana Catholic Church.</p> <pre> I made my first communion when I was fifteen years old in the Catholic Church, and I was Catholic for a long time. I tell you, I used to think no other religion was good like mine.... I'd tell the priest everything I did wicked. But,... one time I had a cousin that told the priest he wanted to get free, and asked him to pray to God to set him free, and,... the priest was about to have my cousin hung ... from that day on I could not follow my Catholic religion like I had. (30) </pre> <p>Slaveholders realized that the promise of "freedom" was an important tenet of most slave religion and, accordingly, often did not allow slaves to hold religious services without a white person present who could censure this kind of discourse. Those enslaved oh her plantation could go to church separately from whites, Marrinda Jane Singleton asserted, but a "white preacher would be the overseer." (31) Many owners did not allow separate meetings at all, but insisted that slaves worship with them, if they worshipped. "When Mammy was converted she jined the white folks church and was baptized by a white preacher 'cuse in dem days slaves all went to de same churches wid deir marster's famblies," Alice Green of Georgia noted. (32) Of course, some enslaved African Americans were not opposed to worshipping with whites. Mary Frances Brown, who was a domestic slave in South Carolina, for example, remembered the religious instruction of her mistress fondly. "My missis was good to me," she noted, "teach me ebbery ting, and take the Bible and learn me Christianified manners, charity and behaviour and good respect, and it with me still." (33) Some slaveholders allowed their enslaved workers religious privileges only rarely; some not at all. "Church was something we seldom went to," former slave Caroline Hunter of Virginia explained. "We could sing an' shout 'round de house as much as we chose, but massa always said if we went to church, we wouldn' keep our min's on our wuk durin' de week an' he would have to beat us. When we did go to church it was in de basement of de church dat massa an' missus went to." (34) "I did not know anything about the Bible and God.... I was almost grown before I had ever heard the Bible read and the word of God explained," another formerly enslaved woman explained. "When a slave I didn't know nothing but my earthly marster and mistress. We had to call them mars' and missey as soon as they were born, so I hadn't learnt anything about a heavenly Father and Marster of all." (35) When the local patrollers heard slaves worshipping in their secret meetings, they would "horse whip ev'ry las' one o' dem, jes' 'cause de poor souls was prayin' to God to free 'm f'om dat awful bondage ...", former slave Minnie Folkes asserted. "All dis was done to keep you f'om servin' God an' do you know some o' dem devils was mean an' sinful 'nough to say, 'Ef I ketch you heah agin servin' God, I'll beat you. You havn't time to serve God. We bought you to serve us." (36) Yet enslaved women and others of like faith and practices persisted in their efforts, and the secrecy that surrounded the meetings that they held became ritualized and mythologized, strengthening the social hold that this communal phenomenon had on its participants. Thus, the special codes employed to denote the times of meetings or to warn of a possible security breach, the use of hush pots, their secret meeting places, the songs that they created, their shouts, the unique styles of a preacher's sermon delivery, and certainly the themes of those sermons, which often made reference to freedom on earth and in the afterlife, bolstered a profound sense of unity and community among fellow worshipers. Given the centrality of their religious beliefs to their lives, it is not surprising that it was within their spiritual communities that many enslaved females crafted various aspects of their social identity and status. RELIGIOUS WOMANHOOD AMONG THE ENSLAVED: ENHANCING ROLES, CHALLENGING IMAGES An enslaved woman's expression of her sacred beliefs gave her the opportunity to construct a social identity that was personally significant to the maintenance of her self-esteem and a respectable social status--at least among her peers, but sometimes among whites as well. The examples of Aunt Rebecca and Elizabeth Sparks's mother, for whom "all white folks set store to" because they were "very religious," are exceptional to be sure, but their examples of religiosity, nonetheless, inspired other enslaved females, and affected the manner in which they thought about themselves and each other. (37) As religious women, enslaved African Americans could embrace a self-image of moral worth and even superiority that defied popular notions of them as social nonentities, intellectual inferiors or moral pariahs, symbolized in constant references to them as work animals, breeders, wenches, and prostitutes. (38) The image of an enslaved woman as devout and holy was a revolutionary challenge to popular discourse. In quite profound ways, therefore, religious womanhood humanized, feminized, and moralized enslaved women, suggesting that they had intellectual and emotional capabilities and needs, and implying that they held ideals of appropriate feminine behavior, such as devoted motherhood and sexual purity, that were strikingly similar to white female prescriptions. Religious womanhood, in fact, was an important tool that enslaved women could, and did, utilize to construct positive, even powerful, social identities. As religious women, they became moral agents in their families and communities, offering comfort and advice. Devotion to family, and especially to children, was central to the validity of one's claim of righteous womanhood. Moreover, their displays of religious sanctity strengthened their case for maternal control in the wake of slave masters and mistresses who acted on the premise that enslaved children, like all other enslaved, should be under their direct control. Traditionally, enslaved women were responsible for much of the day-to-day care and nurture of their children. While the actual duties of mothers varied with the individual designations of child care determined by owners, most mothers, whether in matrifocal, nuclear, or extended households, attended to many of the physical and psychological needs of their offspring. Socialization of one's child to slave life was one of an enslaved mother's most important responsibilities, both from the perspective of the enslaved and the slaveholder. Women accomplished this extremely difficult task through careful instruction and example. The religiosity of mothers, female kin, and other influential female figures also provided them additional tools--coping strategies--to help their offspring find some peace in a life otherwise dominated by fear, unpredictability, and brutal exploitation. Fannie Moore, for instance, was proud to relay the story of how her mother's conversion had allowed her to withstand the awful whippings she and her children had to endure on a South Carolina plantation. Her mother was a powerful example of the strength and resolve to resist the dehumanizing attributes of enslavement that religious conversion provided enslaved women, an example that Fannie could emulate in her own life. "One day she [her mother was] plowin' in de cotton fiel'. All sudden like she let out a big yell," the younger Moore explained. "Den she start singin' an' a shoutin' an' a whoppin' an' a hollerin'. Den it seem she plow all de harder." When she returned to her owner's house that evening, a member of his family asked her why she had been making so much noise and accused her of using her religious outburst as an excuse not to work. "My mammy jes grin all over her black wrinkled face," Moore continued, "and say: 'I's saved. De Lawd done tell me I'se save. Now I know de Lawd will show me de way." The slaveholding woman to whom she was speaking immediately became angry and began to whip her, "but mammy nebber yell," her daughter added. "She jes go back to the fiel a singin." (39) Another former slave woman recalled her mother's expression of faith and the influence that her parent's example had had on her own religious conversion. Watching her mother, who was a Baptist, singing and shouting, attracted her to a tradition which seemingly could produce such feelings of happiness and freedom in the face of her oppression as a slave. "I went to church and tried to get religion," she explained, "because I wanted to shout like Mama." (40) Still another enslaved woman also revealed, in a lengthy explication of her own conversion experience, how her mother and her aunt's examples of religious womanhood had influenced her. "My mother was a good old time Christian woman," she began. (41) Not only was she impressed with her mother's example and felt a desire to imitate her, but she also was drawn to the notion of a spiritual experience that produced the kind of obvious comfort her mother and aunt derived from their faith. "Me and my sister used to lay in bed at night and listen to her and my aunt talk about what God had done for them," she noted. "From this I began to feel like I could be a Christian." (42) As she progressed through her conversion ordeal, she again relied on her mother's support to guide her through the psychologically wrenching experience. "I got so I felt heavy and burdened down," she added. "My mother noticed it and asked me what was the matter. I told her I had heard a voice, and that I had been trying to pray. She clapped her hands," and said, "Pray on daughter, for if the Master has started working, he will not stop until he has freed your soul." (43) A formerly enslaved woman from Tennessee also recalled how her mother had reassured her about the authenticity of her conversion visions, convincing her that God actually had spoken to her. (44) Through their deeds and words, enslaved religious women provided valuable service to their families and communities, while their example of religious womanhood and motherhood effectively challenged, at least in their estimation, and among many of their enslaved peers as well, derogatory images of slave women. They held up their lives as shining examples of spiritual and moral wellness, a powerful counter to slaveholding whites' descriptions of them as lazy, mindless, sassy, and promiscuous. (45) It was the latter image--that of the promiscuous black slave female, the most widespread and popular image of southern black womanhood--that religious womanhood especially assaulted. Indeed, white men and women, and not just of the South, seemed to have signified on the "slave woman" all the dreadful sins associated with womanhood from Eve through time. Frederick Law Olmstead was one of many who perceived nothing redeemable in the mind and soul of the female slave, all the while being struck (repulsed and attracted) by what he saw as her undeniable sexuality. Passing a gang of working slave women repairing muddy roads in South Carolina, Olmstead's description belies the hard, backbreaking, dirty work these women were doing and centers on, instead, what played out in his imagination as their grotesque, erotic nature: "Clumsy, awkward, gross, elephantine in all their movements; pouting, grinning, and leering at us; sly, sensual, and shameless, in all their expressions and demeanor; I never before had witnessed, I thought, anything more revolting than the whole scene." (46) The southern "slave woman" was popularly thought of as an evil, manipulative temptress who used her insatiable sexual appetite for personal gain. She was seducer, adulteress, ***** for hire, all wrapped up in one--the bane of her mistress, the damnation of her master, or any man who fell under her spell. Few men could resist the erotic wiles of black female sexuality, from Presidents to the lowliest overseer, from "venerable old gentlemen," to young masters returning from college. The lore about the sexual prowess of slave women permeated every rank of southern slave society. Mary Chesnutt's statement about "slave women" was popular sentiment: "We live surrounded by prostitutes." (47) Even some slaves ascribed to the myth. "Marse Sid ain't got but one weakness an' dat am pretty yaller gals," Chaney Spell, a former slave from North Carolina, admitted. "He just can't resist them. Finally Mis' Mary found it out an' it pretty near broke her heart." (48) The vast majority of enslaved women, however, had a radically different opinion as to where the moral fault lay. Articulate religious women were quick to make the connection between images of slave women's promiscuous sexual behavior and the moral debasement of the white men supposedly seduced by them. Harriet Jacobs is perhaps the most famous spokesperson on this phenomenon, but she was only one of thousands. In her narrative, she asserted that it was not just the men, but also the corrupt institution of southern white religion, which not only condoned the widespread sexual assault and harassment of enslaved females, but sanctioned the discourse which laid the blame for miscegenation on its victims. "There is a great difference between Christianity and religion at the south," Jacobs concluded. "If a man goes to the communion table and pays money into the church, no matter if it be the price of blood, he is called religious. If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church dismisses him, if she is a white woman; but if she is colored, it does not hinder his continuing to be their good shepherd." (49) It had been Jacobs's experience that an appeal to the religious commitments of white slaveholding males, or even presenting oneself as a religious woman who would not, on moral grounds, lower herself to sexual acts outside the sanctity of marriage, did little, if anything, to quell the pursuit of black women's sexual submission. Slaveholders, like George Carter, one of the wealthiest in early 19th century Virginia, concurred. While he was embarrassed that his family had discovered his pedophilic craving for slave girls, and thought it a sin that he would have to answer to God for committing, he clearly did not intend to relent. (50) Sexual promiscuity, of course, was not the only image problem that enslaved women had, or that religious women attacked. Viewed as generally immoral and dishonest, black women of faith went on the defensive, employing a number of moral imperatives with which to indict masters and to congratulate themselves in comparison. "Humph, old Mr. Tim an de ****** Drivers [overseers] all de time tellin' de black folks it wrong to lie an' steal," Josephine Howard, who had been enslaved in Alabama, added indignantly. "But de white folks do plenty lyin' an' stealin' an' dat's de truth. Why didn't white folks steal my mamma an ' gran'ma [from Africa]?" (51) They were keen observers of slaveholders' activities and practices, often contrasting the moral regimen whites tried to impose on them, with the hypocritical, errant behavior they witnessed their owners exhibiting. Speaking of her owner in Mississippi and Texas, for example, Eliza Holman quickly noted the problems of this slaveholder who also was a minister: "When him am preachin' in de chu'ch,... he am honey man den. Yous know, it am easy to tell de true way, but it am hard to act it. Dat am one of de troubles wid de Marster. He could tell de truth in de chu'ch, but 'twas hard fo' him to act it at home." (52) Elizabeth Keckley's pronouncements regarding the moral failings of her owner, the Reverend Robert Burwell, eloquently indicts from within the same moral context. Keckley recalled that both her mistress and master elicited the use of a church member to "break" her--to beat out her "stubborn pride" and self-esteem. When this effort failed, "he who preached the love of Heaven, who glorified the precepts and examples of Christ, who expounded the Holy Scriptures Sabbath after Sabbath from the pulpit," himself beat Keckley with the handle of a broom so severely that she was confined to bed for a week. It was only after his second attempt and failure that he repented and promised not to beat her again. By firmly resisting her owner's attempt to destroy her self-esteem, Keckley credits herself with demonstrating to this slaver his own moral error, and her moral superiority. She also believed that she, a "slave woman," had set an example of martyrdom that had impressed much of the small Hillsboro, North Carolina, community, concluding that "the actions of those who had conspired against me were not viewed in a light to reflect much credit upon them." (53) Other religious enslaved women's testimony underscored their belief in their moral superiority. "Dat ole white preachin' wasn't nothin'," Nancy Williams, for one, retorted. "Ole white preacher used to talk wid dey tongues widdout saying' nothin'[;] but Jesus told us slaves to talk wid our hearts." (54) Charlotte Brooks's assessment of her mistress's religious practices in relation to her own were clear: "Mistress's religion did not make her happy like my religion did. I was a poor slave, and everybody knowed I had religion, for it was Jesus with me everywhere I went. I could never hear her talk about that heavenly journey." (55) Matilda Perry went even further in delineating the differences between black and white religiosity. For her, the two races did not even worship the same God. "White folks can't pray right to de black man's God," she explained. "Cain't nobody do it for you. You got to call on God yourself when de spirit tell you to and let God know dat you bin washed free from sin." (56) One of their most constant themes of indictment was the manner in which slaveholders distorted Christian text and rituals to benefit themselves. Sarah Douglass rendered a typical complaint when she explained the process by which black worshipers at her church became members. After telling their "determination" to join the church and stating that they believed that God had forgiven their sins, the minister would ask their master and mistress of their "judgment" in the matter. "They would git up and say, 'I notice she don't steal, and I notice she don't lie as much, and I notice she works better.' Then they let us join. We served our mistress and master in slavery time, not God," she added angrily. (57) Sister Robinson complained that those enslaved on her plantation were not allowed to go to the "regulah" Sunday school, but they had to memorize a "catechism" just the same: "Be nice to massa an' missus, don't tell lies, don't be mean, be obedient, an' wuk hard." (58) Enslaved women were particularly critical of the discouraging impact that slaveholding whites had on their attempts to voice and practice their own religious beliefs. According to them, some whites were the antithesis of Christian virtue; they were instead "hell cats" and "devils" who had abandoned their religious beliefs and commitments. (59) Indeed, it was these Old Testament characters in the form of slave masters and mistresses, they asserted, which assaulted their own attempts to be good Christians. "We knowd hit was de wrong thing to do," Marrinda Singleton concluded about her stealing food from her owners, "but hunger will make you do a lot of things." (60) "[M]istiss Sally had plenty, but we ain' fared de bes' by no means," one ex-slave woman noted while trying to explain her mother's penchant for stealing. "She ain' never give us 'nough to eat; so my mother had to git food de bes' way she could." (61) Slavery, these women believed, proved to be the ultimate moral test in their struggle to be good Christians; slaveholders, the most sadistic and persistent of serpents. FEMALE RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP IN ENSLAVED COMMUNITIES: SOME ORIGINS, SOME LIMITS</p> <pre> "She said people must give their hearts to God, to love him and keep his commandments; and we believed what she said." (62) </pre> <p>Some, but not many, enslaved women emerge from the autobiographies and in the folklore of enslaved African Americans as important figures within their religious communities. They were afforded identities as leaders and, accordingly, the extraordinary social power derived from their leadership status, because of their faith and its "virtuous" manifestation in their service to others. Their numbers were small, for most leadership positions within slave religious communities, as in the larger slave community, were held by men. But the experiences of these extraordinary women suggest the possibility of a social identity for slave women that was otherwise unavailable. Their claim that their religious leadership was deemed from God was essential to their acceptance in this role. It is not surprising, then, that God-ordained authority was a primary theme within their conversion narratives. Mary, who had been enslaved in Tennessee, for example, noted that, while being converted to Christianity, she heard a voice demanding that she "Go tell the world I have freed your soul." She was only 9 years old at the time and refused to relate her experience to others because she "was ashamed and ... didn't think they would believe her." During a later vision, she saw herself being baptized by "Jesus himself" who commanded her to "go in yonder world" and to "open your mouth, and I will speak through you." She then was convinced of her spiritual authority and the necessity of her leadership. (63) Another enslaved woman from Huntsville, Alabama, also spoke of her religious authority as a dictate from God that she received upon her conversion. "Mary and Martha put a robe on me and dressed me up," she recalled of her vision. "I sat down to a table with a host of angels.... A voice said, 'you are born of God. My son delivered your soul from hell, and you must go and help carry the world. You have been chosen out of the world....'" (64) This phenomenon of female religious leadership may have been particularly prominent among those small rural slaveholdings in which women were the majority, or even on larger farms where those openly practicing religion were predominantly female. Yet female spiritual leadership hardly was a foreign concept for the enslaved. This kind of role for women was usual among conjurers and healers whose faith and powers linked them to an African religious past. In many slave communities, even those of the late antebellum era, those women who could prove a connection between their spiritual powers and their previous lives in Africa or an African ancestral past were especially revered. "[M]y mammy, Junny, wuz a queen in Africa," and a "witch," a formerly enslaved woman born in 1835 in Wake County, North Carolina, asserted. "Yes, she wuz a queen, an' when she tol' dem ******s dat she wuz dey bowed down ter her. She tol' dem not ter tell hit an' dey doan tell, but when dey is out of sight of de white folkses, dey bows down ter her an' does what she says." Junny probably exhibited an array of powers to her devotees, but they especially appreciated her ability to predict the future through an interpretation of signs. "A few days 'fore de surrender," Junny's daughter added, "mammy ... says ter dem dat she sees hit in de coffee grounds dat dey am gwine ter be free so all' o' us packs up an' gits out." (65) Laura Towne, in her account of her life among contrabands in the South Carolina Sea Islands, wrote of Maum Katie "an old African woman, who remember[ed] worshipping her own gods in Africa." According to Towne, Maum Katie was more than one hundred years old and was a "spiritual mother," "fortune teller or,... prophetess,... a woman of tremendous influence over her spiritual children." (66) On the plantation of Frances Kemble, Sinda was another enslaved woman, perhaps an African as well given her name, who also exerted much religious power over those who believed that she could predict the future. Kemble noted that Sinda lost much of her following when her prediction of an "imminent" end to the world proved incorrect. (67) While some enslaved "Christians" rejected various aspects of African-derived religious beliefs and practices that Junny, Sinda, Maum Katie and others promoted, others did not. Indeed, one of the most profound characteristics of African American religious life among the enslaved is the overlapping terrain derived from a variety of West African and European religious mores. The religion of enslaved Africans and African Americans, after all, was not distinctly "Christian" or "African." Instead, it operated between the complex array descriptive of both traditions, often sharing, but not perhaps in totality, the same forms, beliefs, practices, cosmologies, and even perceptions of who could or could not be prominent within a community of devotees. Being an enslaved "Christian" did not mean, therefore, that one did not believe in some attributes of Voodoo or Hoodoo. (68) Female Christian leadership in the slave community benefited from the continued viability of these ancestral-derived religious traditions because many of the accepted leading practitioners within these traditions, particularly as they were manifest in the Americas, were female. The tradition of females being revered as Voodoo or Hoodoo priestesses, witches, and prominent devotees paved the way for African American women holding similar status in their Afro-Christian communities. Attachment to a practice which resonated with their cultural past, however, was only one of the reasons that female spiritual leadership was significant. Enslaved African American women, and men, were attracted to the powers of female spiritualists, conjurers, and prophetesses, as they were to female Christian/African Christian preachers and persons of impressive faith. This was the case for various combinations of reasons, including ritualized conversion experiences that confirmed their connection to a supreme being or beings; displays of extreme commitment to spiritual ideologies and practices; proof of their ability to combat threatening forces; service to the needs of their followers; and because of the initiative that these women took to promote religious practice in their quarters, in finding fellow worshipers, planning and administering meetings, converting others, and providing spiritual texts and rituals. (69) Charlotte Brooks, for example, loved and admired Aunt Jane Lee as a religious leader in her antebellum Louisiana community because she provided many services for her and the other enslaved black Protestants. According to Brooks, Lee held secret prayer meetings, read them religious text and hymns--some of which compared their plight as an enslaved people to that of the biblical Jews in Egypt--and helped convert those willing to become fellow congregants. "Aunt Jane was the cause of so many on our plantation getting religion," Brooks explained. "We did not have any church to go to, but she would talk to us about old Virginia, how people done there. She said them beads and crosses[,] we saw everybody have[,] was nothing. She said people must give their hearts to God, to love him and keep his commandments; and we believed what she said." (70) Brooks was so moved by Lee's leadership, that she too wanted to lead. "Sometimes I felt like preaching myself," she admitted. "It seemed I wanted to ask everybody if they loved Jesus when I first got converted." (71) Brooks did become somewhat of a leader after Lee's master moved to Texas, taking her with him. "We felt lost, because we had nobody to lead us in our little meetings," she recalled. "After a while I begun to lead, and then some of the others would lead." (72) Caroline Harris, born in 1843 in Caroline County, Virginia, asserted that she and the rest of the African Americans on her plantation respected "Ant Sue," not only because of her advanced age, but also because she was a spiritual and moral leader for them. It was Aunt Sue, after all, and not their owner, who helped them to create their most important social institution--their families--by sanctifying their marriages. Harris recalled that when she and her prospective husband approached the powerful woman for her blessing of their planned nuptials, "She tell us to think 'bout it hard fo' two days, 'cause marryin' was sacred in de eyes of Jesus." After following her instructions carefully, Caroline and Mose (the would-be-fiance), returned to Aunt Sue and reaffirmed their commitment to marry. Sue then gathered the other members of the black community that were among her following and requested that they "pray fo' de union dat God was gonna make. Pray we stay together an' have lots of chillun an' none of 'em git sol' way from de parents." The couple soon married in a customary broomstick ceremony, at which Aunt Sue officiated. (73) Aunt Jane Lee and Aunt Sue's biographies are indicative of how some slave women preachers and religious teachers were able to gain the respect and even reverence of like-minded individuals. Still, the phenomena that sanctioned the leadership positions of these women clearly endowed them with a "power" that had its limits--popularly, legally, and spatially. Female spiritual leaders, for example, primarily occupied this role within the sociocultural world that African Americans of like religious beliefs created, not among those who adhered to other spiritual traditions; and not usually in the religious institutions that whites occupied. Robert Coles, for example, may have accepted Aunt Rebecca's long prayer sessions in his home chapel in Powhatan County, Virginia, or perhaps at an occasional camp meeting, but few organized churches in the antebellum South would have allowed her to act in that manner. Aunt Jane Lee, as important as she was to the enslaved men and women whom she converted and taught, did not have the support of her owner or the enslaved Catholics in the vicinity. Her owner was not even aware of her significance to Charlotte Brooks and the others she led in worship. If he had been, he probably would have stopped her from acting in such a capacity. As such, many of their activities had to be conducted in secret. In order to maintain the secrecy, only small numbers could be involved. "If old marster heard us singing and praying he would come out and make us stop," Charlotte Brooks added to her history of Jane Lee's religious leadership. "I was so afraid old marster would see Aunt Jane," she added. "I knew Aunt Jane would have to suffer if her white people knew she was off at night Marster used to say God was tired of us all hollering to him at night." (74) Lee's status among her small band of followers then did not, of course, affect those aspects of her life that her owner claimed his to control. When he decided to move his operations west, Lee, along with the others enslaved, went with him. She bade her fellow worshipers good-bye, making them all promise to meet her in heaven. "La, me! such crying there in that little cabin that night! Aunt Jane cried and we cried too." (75) Jane Lee's leadership status created for her a circle of devoted black friends and followers who placed their spiritual destiny in her hands. Her earthbound destiny, however, was hemmed in by her owner. The social, cultural, and moral spaces that female spiritual leaders were able to craft for themselves were, accordingly, limited by the dictates of their masters. Ironically then, female religious enthusiasts like Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Keckley, Eliza Holman, and others who were not "leaders" among the enslaved in any discernible way, but who nonetheless were part of the public spectacle of black religious womanhood, may have been able to utilize their religiosity in more open defiance of southern white attitudes regarding black female morality, spirituality, and ultimately womanhood. Indeed, owners could, and did, manipulate the responsibility that both "leaders" and their "followers" felt toward one another to make certain that their expressions of religiosity did not undermine their masters' control. In many instances slaveholders were successful; but the voices of enslaved women reveal that sometimes they failed. NOTES (1) Charles L. Perdue, et al., eds., Weevils in the Wheat: Interviews with Virginia Ex-Slaves (Charlottesville, VA, 1976), 185-86, 203, 287); George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Biography (Westport, CT, 1972), Georgia Narratives, 33. (2) Perdue, et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 287. (3) Jean Friedman, for example, asserts in The Enclosed Garden, 69, that: "The slave system and Afro-American culture circumscribed relationships beyond the family, and the subordinate position of women became clear in family culture and evangelical religious symbolism." Betty Wood notes of the hierarchial structure of enslaved evangelists in their Savannah churches in Women's Work, Men's Work that while women were esteemed because of their great piety or age, "as in the other African American and biracial Baptist churches, the offices of pastor and deacon, with the formal authority they entailed, not least in the disciplining of congregations, were filled by men." Betty Wood, Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Athens, GA, 1995), 171. Important works which discuss the religious practices of the enslaved and the roles of women include Jean Friedman, The "Enclosed Garden:" Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1860 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), especially 67-91; Margaret Washington, "A Peculiar People": Slave Religion and Community Culture Among the Gullah (New York, 1988), especially 259-303; Cynthia Lyerly, "Religion, Gender and Identity: Black Methodist Women in a Slave Society, 1770-1810," in Discovering the Women in Slavery: Emancipating Perspectives on the American Past, Patricia Morton, ed. (Athens, GA, 1997), 203-21; and Brenda E. Stevenson, "Gender Conventions, Ideals and Identity Among Antebellum Virginia Slave Women," in More Than Chattel: Black Women and Slavery in the Americas, ed. Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Bloomington, IN, 1996), 169-90. Of great importance to the continuing discussion of enslaved women's religiosity, identity formation/transformation and community implications are general studies on slavery, religion, and community. Among the most important, are Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: 'The Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South (New York, 1987); Mechal Sobel, Trabelin' On: The Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith (Princeton, NJ, reprint edition, 1988); and The World They Made Together: Black and White Values in Eighteenth Century Virginia (Princeton, NJ, 1987), 180-203; Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998); Betty Wood, Women's Work, Men's Work: The Informal Slave Economies of Lowcountry Georgia (Athens, GA, 1995), esp. 160-77; Sylvia Frey, "Shaking the Dry Bones: The Dialectic of Conversion," in Black and White Cultural Interaction in the Antebellum South, ed. Ted Ownby (Oxford, MI, 1993), 23-44; Also see Frey's larger work: Water From the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 243-325; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 159-285; V. P. Franklin, Black Self-Determination: A Cultural History of African American Resistance (Brooklyn, NY, 1992), 29-67; John C. Willis, "From the Dictates of Pride to the Paths of Righteousness: Slave Honor and Christianity in Antebellum Virginia," in The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia, ed., Edward Ayers and John C. Willis (Charlottesville, VA, 1991), 37-55; John Blassingame, Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, rev. ed., (New York, 1979), 130-48; and Sterling Stuckey, Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America (New York, 1987), 3-97. Also see for general context purposes: William Andrews, ed., Sisters of the Spirit: Three Black Women's Autobiographies of the Nineteenth Century (Bloomington, IN, 1986), 1-22; Donald Matthews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago, IL, 1977); John Boles, The Great Revival, 1787-1805: The Origins of the Southern Evangelical Mind (Lexington, KY, 1972); and Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, MA, 1990). (4) Perdue, et al., Weevils in the Wheat, 287. (5) Viewing the 19th century Christian church, regardless of the race of its members, as a patriarchal entity, scholars generally have asserted the importance of enslaved leadership within Christian churches as a boost to African American manhood. Albert Raboteau, for example, notes that, while it was certain that "Whites as well as blacks fell under the powerful preaching of eloquent 'brethren in black.'" "More common was the day-to-day presence of the black minister in his community, slave or free, preaching funerals, weddings, prayer meetings, Sabbath sermons, with a force that uplifted blacks and proved the ability of black men," Raboteau goes on to argue that, "The ineluctable tendency of the black evangelical ethos was in the direction of asserting 'manhood' rights, which were understood as a vital form of self-governance." Charles Joyner notes: "To Christian slaves, the slave preachers were men of status." Albert Raboteau, "The Black Experience in American Evangelicalism: The Meaning of Slavery," in African American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, (New York, 1997), 94; Charles Joyner, "'Believer I Know:' The Emergence of African-American Christianity" in Religion and American Culture, A Reader, ed. David G. Hackett, (New York, 1995), 193. Jacqueline Jones asserts, however, that enslaved women, especially those who were older, "often gained influence [among other slaves] by virtue of the knowledge of herbal medicine, poisons, conjuring, and midwifery." Jacqueline Jones, "Status of Slave Women," in Slavery and Freedom in the Age of the American Revolution, ed. Ira Berlin and Herbert Gutman, (Charlottesville, VA, 1983), 320. Betty Wood contends that enslaved women in the First African Church in Savannah "might have enjoyed a certain prestige and influence within the church by virtue of their age or piety...." Wood, Women's Work, Men's Work, 171; Also see: Brenda E. Stevenson, Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (New York, 1996), 227-28. (6) For more information on enslaved women and childrearing, particularly within the context of moral and/or religious socialization, see: Wilma King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth Century America (Bloomington, IN, 1998), 80-90; Thomas L. Webber, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the Slave Quarter Community, 1831-1865 (New York, 1978), 80-130 passim; Brenda E. Stevenson, "Distress and Discord in Virginia Slave Families, 1830-1860," and "Gender Convention, Ideals, and Identity Among Antebellum Virginia Slave Women," in In Joy and In Sorrow: Women, Family and Marriage in the Victorian South, 1830-1900, ed. Carol Bleser (New York, 1990), 103-24, 174-80. Scholars have noted the "social power" of black female religious leaders within the growing historiography on this subject. The vast majority of these scholars have centered their analysis on the generations of black religious women who came after the end of slavery. See, for example, the work of Elizabeth Brooks Higginbotham in Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, MA, 1993); Cheryl Townsend Gilkes, "The Roles of Church and Community Mothers: Ambivalent American Sexism or Fragmented African Familyhood?" Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 2 (Spring 1986): 46-55; Jualynne E. Dodson, "Power and Surrogate Leadership: Black Women and Organized Religion," SAGE (Fall 1988): 37-52; Judith Weisenfeld, "Introduction: We Have Been Believers: Patterns of African-American Women's Religiosity," and "Who Is Sufficient For These Things?: Sara G. Stanley and the American Missionary Association, 1864-1868"; Stephen Ward Angell, "The Controversy over Women's Ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church During the 1880s: The Case of Sarah Ann Hughes"; and Nell Irvin Painter, "Representing Truth: Sojourner Truth's Knowing and Becoming Known"; in This Far by Faith: Readings in African-American Women's Religious Biography, ed. Judith Weisenfeld and Richard Newman (New York, 1996), 1-20, 203-19, 94-109, 262-99. "The large degree to which personal religious experience, the bonds of communities of faith, and sacred traditions all afforded African-American women access to varieties of power should not be underestimated," Judith Weisenfeld asserts. While power is conventionally construed as derived from institutions and hierarchies, it is the case that African-American women most often created and utilized power in ways that do not appear significant according to traditional standards. Weisenfeld relies on Jualynne Dobson's analysis to underscore her own point: "[D]espite the access to formal positions of religious leadership in most Christian churches, African-American women understood their power to rest not in these positions exclusively, but also in their overall impact on their communities, through their ability to mobilize people and financial resources, for example. Weisenfeld, "Introduction," This Far by Faith, 3-4. I certainly agree, but again the work of Dobson and Weisenfeld centers on black women beyond the slavery era. The power that devout enslaved women derived from their obvious religiosity and religious leadership was to challenge prevailing white views of their moral depravity, and thus worthlessness, as women, black women. (7) Clifton H. Johnson, ed., God Struck Me Dead: Religious Conversion Experiences and Autobiographies of Ex-Slaves (Philadelphia. PA, 1969), xvii-xix, 62, 65-67; Rawick, ed., The American Slave, vol. 15 #2, (North Carolina), 130-33, 230-31, vol. 12 (Texas), 1559-1560, 1564; (Georgia Narratives), 254, 262; Purdue, et al., ed, Weevils in the Wheat, 32-49, 63, 190, 257, 273-75, 319-20; Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, ed. James Olney (New York, 1988), 38-39; Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written By Herself, ed. Jean Fagan Yellin (Cambridge, MA, 1987), passim, especially p. 313; Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Georgia Narratives, 33. (8) There is an established tradition within the historiography of African American religion of linking practice to an ethos of resistance. See, for example, James H. Cone, Liberation: A Black Theology of Liberation (Philadelphia, PA, 1970), 17-34, Franklin, Black Self-Determination, 49; Vincent Harding, "Religion and Resistance Among Antebellum Slaves, 1800-1860," in African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, ed. Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau (New York, 1997), 111-26; Joseph R. Washington, Black Religion (Boston, 1964), 33; Raboteau, Slave Religion, 294-97; Blassingame, Slave Community, 137, 141-45; Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, NC, 1998), 648-52; Cheryl J. Sanders, "Liberation Ethics in the Ex-Slave Interviews," in Cut Loose Your Stammering Tongue: Black Theology in the Slave Narratives, ed. Dwight N. Hopkins and George

The Expansion of Slavery, 1816-1846 PLANTATION CULTURE AND THE EXPANSION OF SLAVERY (OVERVIEW)

From the introduction of African slaves into Virginia until emancipation, the institution of slavery and Southern agriculture interacted in ways that produced continual change both in labor systems and in methods of cultivating crops. The expansion of slavery was directly related to the profitability and development of new staple crops in the South. Tobacco During the 17th century the agriculture of the Chesapeake region, based largely on tobacco and corn, made slavery there different from slavery elsewhere in the Americas. Because the cultivation of the staple crop, tobacco, required continuous but not physically taxing labor, women and older children were almost as useful as men in the tobacco fields. The African American population of the tobacco colonies became the first to reproduce itself. Moreover, tobacco farms and plantations, unlike sugar plantations, were self-sufficient in food, and the tobacco slaves were better fed than slaves elsewhere in the Americas. Tobacco cultivation made less strenuous labor demands on workers than did tropical crops, which meant that slaves in the Chesapeake did not experience so harsh a discipline as slaves on the sugar islands. So efficient were the 18th-century slave-worked tobacco plantations that they first displaced white family-operated farms and then flooded the market with cheap tobacco. Falling prices and increasing indebtedness caused planters of the Early Republic to lose faith in both the tobacco plantation and the institution of slavery. Rice In the low country of South Carolina the rice industry flourished with slave labor from about 1725 until the Civil War. In the mid-1700s planters learned how to cultivate rice on the borders of inland swamps from slaves who grew rice in West Africa. Soon afterward, they developed the technology of irrigating rice fields beside tidal rivers with a combination of levees and floodgates. The construction of such works required large capital investments and sizable work forces, factors that effectively limited the rice industry to large planters. Because rice plantations had to be situated along the lower reaches of tidal rivers where fresh water levels rose and fell with the ocean tides, the number of rice plantations was relatively small, and, though efficient, those plantations never saturated the market. Slaves on rice plantations lived and worked under vastly different conditions than slaves on tobacco plantations. Flooded rice fields were perfect breeding grounds for mosquitoes carrying malaria and yellow fever. Most whites, having less resistance to these diseases than blacks, could not survive on the rice plantations during the warm months of the year. Because whites could not supervise rice plantations during the sickly season, these enterprises had to be nearly self-operating. African American drivers directed the day-to-day operations of the plantations, assigning tasks to individual workers. Under the task system of managing labor developed on the rice coast, incentives more than threats of punishment were used to obtain the cooperation of slaves. With minimum interference in their daily lives by whites, the large populations of slaves on rice plantations were able to preserve much of their cultural heritage and develop their own social institutions. Indigo During the 1740s indigo became a staple crop second in importance only to rice in coastal South Carolina, and from there spread into Georgia and Florida. Indigo, a shrubby annual plant from which a blue dye was obtained, was cultivated on the barrier islands, on high ground adjacent to rice plantations, and in the interior river valleys. Because the nearby rice plantations were successfully employing the task system of managing slave labor, indigo planters applied the same system to their plantations both on the coast and in the interior. In the coastal region indigo planters, like rice planters, had to rely upon slave drivers because living conditions were untenable for whites during the warm months. As a result, indigo slaves, like rice slaves, were relatively free of white supervision. They also were as exposed to unhealthy working conditions as were slaves on rice plantations. Independence from Britain and the loss of British subsidies dealt a blow to the American indigo industry, although it lingered on for several decades. However, American indigo growers found two new crops to replace indigo during the 1790s: a long-staple cotton that produced well on the Sea Islands, and short-staple cotton that flourished on the uplands. Between 1795 and 1800 all of the indigo plantations on the barrier islands were converted to the black-seeded long-staple cotton, soon known as sea-island cotton, while the river valley plantations shifted to growing green-seeded short-staple cotton. Cotton The short-staple cotton industry, originating simultaneously during the 1795- 1800 period in the South Atlantic states and in the lower Mississippi Valley, became the most significant agricultural industry in the Old South. From its dual points of origin the culture of short-staple cotton spread from middle South Carolina through East Texas. It became the principal element in the southern economy and employed more than half of the region's slaves. Most of these slaves hailed from the Upper South, for the cotton industry had developed after the close of the overseas slave trade. Experienced in growing tobacco, these slaves made the transition to cotton. Nevertheless, working conditions worsened for slaves when they moved southward from established tobacco plantations to new cotton plantations. During the 1840s and 1850s an agricultural revolution transformed the institution of slavery in the upland cotton belt. Falling cotton prices in the early 1840s compelled cotton growers to increase production of both cotton and foodstuffs by introducing a family of horse-drawn implements devised originally in Pennsylvania and adopted in Virginia and Maryland during the 1820s and 1830s. With the aid of these sweeps, cultivators, double shovels, and seed planters, slaves, on average, were able to cultivate 20 acres in cotton and corn, plus small grains, sweet potatoes, fruits, and garden vegetables. Mechanization with horse-drawn equipment also released women from the fields for spinning, weaving, and garment making. Also during this decade farmers and planters adopted a superior variety of cotton, called Mexican or Petit Gulf cotton, bred by planters in the lower Mississippi Valley. The new variety tripled the amount of fiber that workers could harvest during a picking season. Sugar An important sugar industry developed in the lower South after 1795, when immigrants from Saint-Dominque introduced improved varieties of sugar cane and techniques for crystallizing the juice. Some sugar cane was grown on plantations in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, but most of the American crop was produced in southern Louisiana. In the lower Mississippi Valley sugar plantations were situated on rich alluvial lands of the Mississippi and its tributaries. As these lowlands were subject to flooding, planters erected levees and constructed elaborate drainage systems, in many instances utilizing steam-powered pumps. Establishing large sugar plantations required heavy capital investments in lands, slaves, mules, oxen, and machinery. The sizes of Louisiana sugar plantations varied more than rice plantations, but larger, better-equipped, and more efficient units tended over time to displace less well capitalized competitors. Aided by federal protective tariffs on sugar, some sugar planters became extremely wealthy.

How Slavery Fueled Business in the North

Full Text: The German Parliament hoped to discourage a wave of lawsuits -- and close the door on an ugly past -- when it voted to support a fund through which corporations will compensate people who worked as slave laborers in Germany during World War II. But by agreeing to pay reparations, corporations like DaimlerChrysler, Deutsche Bank, Siemens and Volkswagen are tacitly admitting that German corporate wealth rests at least partly on slave labor extracted from Jews during the commission of crimes against humanity. This has been a big year for institutional contrition, with the Vatican apologizing for misdeeds of the past -- extending back to the Inquisition -- and Swiss banks seeking atonement for appropriating the accounts of Holocaust victims. But in the United States Congress, a bill that would bring about a similar reckoning with regard to two and a half centuries of slavery may never see the light of day. Legislation sponsored by Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan calling for a study of reparations has failed to reach the House floor, even after being submitted to Congress every year for more than a decade. The failure of Congress to take this bill seriously reflects the sense among Americans as a whole that slavery has no economic bearing on the nation as it exists today. But if a 34-year-old lawyer named Deadria Farmer-Paellmann has her way, a broader debate about reparations and the links between modern corporations and the slave economy may be on the way. A part-time musician and amateur historian, Ms. Farmer-Paellmann attended law school solely to develop a legal argument for reparations. After scouring corporate archives, she has turned up connections between modern corporations and predecessor companies that seem clearly to have profited from the slave trade, in some cases obliquely but often quite directly. Inspired by the German case, Ms. Farmer-Paellmann is planning to sue a dozen corporations for ''unjustly enriching'' themselves and has already begun distributing archival records that provide provocative examples of corporate involvement in the trade. The planned lawsuits are novel. But the news articles about her first few discoveries have already broadened public awareness of the extent to which the United States depended on slaves to build the national as well as the Southern economy. Charles Ogletree, a Harvard Law School professor, is among those paying attention. He says he is considering both litigation and legislation and is helping to plan a conference scheduled this fall on the reparations issue. Modern-day Northerners tend to view slavery as confined to the Confederacy, thinking of the Northeast as made up of ''free states.'' Americans are for the most part unaware that slavery covered all of the original colonies and their successor states and began to loosen its grip in the North only in the early 1800's, when personal liberty laws went into effect. New York City was a capital of human bondage, with more slaves than any other city with the possible exception of Charleston, S.C. New England survives in the history books as the hotbed of abolitionism and the home of the crusading anti-slavery novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe. But Ms. Farmer-Paellmann has turned up documents revealing a different New England, one in which corporate founders and respected businessmen trafficked in slaves, even after aspects of the slave trade were made illegal. One of the most serious offenders was the Rhode Island businessman John Brown, who founded Providence Bank, an early predecessor of the modern FleetBoston Financial Corporation. The Fleet corporate history portrays Brown as a ''respected merchant.'' But Ms. Farmer-Paellmann has unearthed records showing that Brown owned ships that embarked on several slaving voyages and that he was prosecuted in federal court for participating in the international slave trade after it had become illegal under federal law. Records show that Providence Bank lent substantial sums to Brown, and Ms. Farmer-Paellmann suspects that the bank both financed and profited from the founder's illegal slave trading. For its part, FleetBoston contends that incomplete records make a conclusion impossible. The most disturbing document to emerge so far reveals that the Aetna Insurance Company of Hartford actually insured slave owners against the loss of their human chattel. That Aetna knew the horrors of slave life is evident in a rider through which the company declined to pay the premium for slaves who were lynched, worked to death or who committed suicide. Aetna says that incomplete records forbid its knowing how many such policies were written. After the policy came to light, the company apologized for having been involved in the slave trade. Ms. Farmer-Paellmann claims to have found similar documents concerning more than a dozen corporations still doing business in this country and has promised to file several lawsuits charging these companies with unjustly enriching themselves at the expense of slaves. Whether or not the lawsuits succeed is almost beside the point. This exercise will have done its job if it reveals to the public the role of slavery in shaping American life. More than a few modern fortunes rest on the suffering of human beings who once accounted for a large portion of American wealth and lived in chains here for 250 years.

The free black experience in antebellum Wilmington, North Carolina: refining generalizations about race relations

IN ISRAEL ON THE APPOMATTOX: A SOUTHERN EXPERIMENT IN BLACK Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War, Melvin Patrick Ely laments that the study of free blacks in the antebellum South has become "a catalogue of what was done to them." Far too often, Ely asserts, historians have emphasized the legal restraints placed on southern free blacks and have failed to chronicle their achievements. Ely studies free blacks at Israel Hill, a community of ex-slaves in Prince Edward County, Virginia, living on land bequeathed to them by their former owner. He finds that they were treated "fairer than we typically think, more often than we think." In Prince Edward County, at least, "a society predicated on racial subordination never became as ruthlessly discriminatory toward its free black members as it repeatedly proclaimed itself to be." Ely concludes that "the years of national tension before the Civil War brought relative prosperity, progress, and even, in some cases, the fulfillment of dreams" to these free black residents. (1) Reviews of Israel on the Appomattox acknowledge the significance of its findings but question their applicability elsewhere in the South. (2) Christopher Phillips states, "Ely's book ... challenges virtually all historical assumptions about race and slavery during this time." (3) In the opinion of other reviewers, Israel Hill was unique. Gregg D. Kimball, for example, suggests that "southern urban history ... cuts against ... [Ely's] analysis. While urban studies have emphasized black agency and attempts to assert greater autonomy, such works are also full of real repression and antagonism." Kimball concludes that "the overall tenor of the [southern] city, based on current knowledge, seems considerably more hostile to free people of color than Ely's Prince Edward County." (4) Wilmington, North Carolina, provides an opportunity to test Ely's conclusions about the treatment of free blacks in a southern town. Located in New Hanover County, Wilmington was North Carolina's largest town during the antebellum period, with a free black population of 6 to 9 percent between 1840 and 1860 (see Table 1). And Wilmington did not have a reputation for racial harmony. John Hope Franklin once wrote that its white residents manifested a "peculiar hostility to free Negroes" before the Civil War. (5) As Ely found at Israel Hill, there was far more to the experience of free blacks in Wilmington than one can discern from a "catalogue" of state and local laws. (6) Generalizations based on legislative acts fail to appreciate the disparity between the intent of these regulations and the reality of daily life. State and local officials did not uniformly enforce all laws passed by the North Carolina General Assembly, and not all free blacks fled the state, as the laws encouraged them to do. Moreover, they were not passive participants; some remained in Wilmington, worked, and accumulated property. The story of Wilmington's free blacks must also acknowledge their hard work, their perseverance, and for some, their prosperity. Their ability to endure in spite of legal restrictions in a society based on racial stereotypes requires further study. As happened elsewhere in the South, North Carolina enacted legislation to restrict the rights and freedoms of the state's free black population during the antebellum period. White North Carolinians, like white southerners in general, were intent on "protecting the slave population from the 'evil and insidious influences' of the free Negro[es]." (7) Because Wilmington was North Carolina's best port and an important link in north/south land travel, local residents feared that their slaves would be even more susceptible to these "'evil and insidious influences.'" As early as 1785, the North Carolina General Assembly required the free black population of four towns, including Wilmington, "to register ... and wear an arm band with the word 'Free' on it." (8) After 1800, white North Carolinians became more concerned as the number of free blacks in the state grew due to natural increase, in-migration, manumission, and slaves purchasing their freedom. Of these factors, the two easiest to control were manumission and in-migration. Before 1800, North Carolina slave owners could emancipate their slaves in three ways: by will, by the decision of a county court (if it determined a slave had performed meritorious service), and by legislative act. (9) Over time, the General Assembly imposed limitations on county courts and individuals intending to free slaves in their wills. The legislature in 1830 began requiring newly freed slaves to leave the state within ninety days and mandated that only slaves over age fifty could be emancipated for meritorious service. In January 1861--just a few months before North Carolina seceded from the Union--the General Assembly prohibited state residents from freeing slaves in their wills. (10) And free blacks had to work. An 1826 North Carolina law stipulated that any able free black person "in idleness and dissipation" could be arrested and hired out for no more than three years "to reform him or her to habits of industry and morality." (11) The General Assembly also tried to limit the size of the state's free black population by preventing free blacks born in other states from migrating into the Tar Heel State. By 1827 free blacks born elsewhere who entered North Carolina had to leave within twenty days. If they failed to do so, they were fined $500. If they were unable to pay the fine, they were forced into servitude for a period up to ten years. (12) Any resident free blacks who left the state for more than ninety days were not allowed to return. (13) The General Assembly restricted opportunities for free blacks who remained. They were unable to serve in the North Carolina militia except as musicians. (14) In 1841 additional legislation denied free blacks the opportunity to own a weapon unless they were granted a license. A new state law in 1861 ended the practice of granting these licenses and made the ownership of arms by free blacks punishable as a misdemeanor. (15) In North Carolina, it was not Nat Turner's rebellion that prompted additional restrictions on the free black population, but the 1829 publication of David Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World. (16) Born in Wilmington in 1785 to a slave father and a free black mother, David Walker moved to Boston in the 1820s. There he authored a pamphlet advocating slave rebellion. Within a year of its publication, a copy reached Wilmington. (17) The General Assembly responded by enacting additional laws further limiting the rights and freedoms of the state's free blacks. They were prevented from selling goods outside their county of residence without first purchasing a license. (18) Free blacks were also forbidden to marry whites, cohabitate with or marry slaves, teach slaves to read or write, or play "any game of chance or hazard" with slaves. (19) In addition to dealing with these legal restrictions, Wilmington's free black population could not always depend on justice from local courts. In late January 1839 Nicholas C. Robinson, a white Wilmington resident, stabbed a free black man to death. Robinson was tried for murder in the Superior Court of New Hanover County, but he was found guilty only of manslaughter. He was then sentenced to serve six months in jail and to have the letter M branded on his left thumb. The presiding judge, describing Robinson as "a lawless and dangerous man," chastised the jury for not finding the defendant guilty of murder. But as one contemporary later recalled, "the times then--: What jury could hang a white man for killing a negro?" (20) Conversely, punishments for free blacks found guilty of crimes could be severe. In 1847 Nathan Connor pled guilty to "buggery." The court sentenced him to be twice given thirty-nine lashes at "the public whipping post" and imprisoned for six months. Similarly, James Campbell was convicted of petit larceny in 1855 and sentenced to be lashed fifteen times and remain in jail until he paid a fine and court costs. (21) However, in Wilmington, as elsewhere in the South, enforcement of state laws and local regulations was often lax. (22) In 1847, for example, the Wilmington Town Commission had to remind its police officers that it was their duty "to pursue Promptly all negroes found working out without badges & [to] enforse [sic] the penalty of the ordinances." (23) Seven years later, the town council again reminded the police to collect taxes from free black residents who had not applied "to have their names registered, and receive a badge." (24) Similarly, despite legislation intended to limit free blacks' access to weapons, licenses for gun ownership were routinely granted. As late as the 1850s, Wilmington free black resident William Kellogg annually received permission to own a firearm. While local free blacks were occasionally arrested for "keeping and carrying fire arms" without permission, their punishments were minimal. The Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County fined Lewis Martin only a dollar in 1849, and it "suspended [punishment of Reuben Moore] on payment of costs" in 1850. (25) Despite the stated intent to reduce the size of the state's free black population, the General Assembly and the local superior court continued to grant Wilmington slaves their freedom. James G. Hostler, for example, was freed for aiding one of his white coworkers. On two different occasions, Hostler and Thomas Hall Yates were working on a scaffold more than twenty feet above the ground when Yates had a seizure. Both times, Hostler prevented Yates from falling. In honor of Hostler's heroism, thirty-nine Wilmington residents signed a petition to the legislature requesting his freedom. (26) Isaac Gilliam, another Wilmington slave, was freed after rescuing his mistress from a fire. (27) Other Wilmington slaves emancipated by the General Assembly included Isaac Belden and Isabella and Jane Allen. (28) In 1848 Nicholas N. Nixon requested that the legislature emancipate Sam, one of his slaves. Although that petition apparently failed, two years later the Superior Court of New Hanover County agreed to Nixon's request. A jury concluded that Sam was over fifty years of age and had performed meritorious service. (29) As late as 1859, the same court granted Robert W. Gibbs's petition to emancipate one of his slaves named William. The court determined that William had fulfilled all the criteria required by state law. (30) Free blacks also emancipated slaves. In 1824, for example, Henry Sampson freed his slave John based on meritorious service. Five years later, another Wilmington free black resident, Roger Hazell, emancipated Betsey. (31) Free black men and women had ample job opportunities as skilled, semiskilled, and unskilled laborers (see Table 2). (32) They provided labor that the local white population needed and would not or could not provide themselves. One free black resident who was interested in emigrating to Liberia, for example, told an American Colonization Society agent that he could not leave because he had too much work under contract. (33) As in other southern towns and cities, there was a shortage of skilled labor in Wilmington. (34) The town's population growth and a series of devastating fires during the 1840s provided numerous opportunities for free black skilled laborers, particularly in the building trades. (35) Wilmington resident John D. Bellamy later recalled that the carpentry work done on his father's house during the 1850s "was performed by negroes, chiefly free negroes." (36) According to the 1850 census, twenty-six free black men in Wilmington worked as carpenters, nine as masons, and eight as painters. The number of free blacks employed in construction remained fairly constant between 1850 and 1860. Forty-three free blacks worked in these occupations in 1850 and thirty-seven in 1860. Most of the decline was among painters; there were eight free black painters in 1850 and only three in 1860. (37) Free blacks in the building trades, such as James D. Sampson, Solomon W. Nash Sr., and the Artis and Howe families, were influential members of their community. Born in 1801, Sampson, the son of a white plantation owner and a slave woman in Sampson County, came to Wilmington in 1819. Sampson was freed by his father, who established him in Wilmington as a carpenter. Sampson's business flourished, and he subsequently trained numerous slaves (some of whom he owned) and free blacks as carpenters. By 1850 he was the wealthiest person of color in town. Solomon W. Nash Sr. also prospered. Born a slave in 1779 and manumitted in 1827, he eventually settled in Wilmington and worked as a carpenter. Later, he hired slaves and free blacks and apprenticed orphans to work for him. The Howe brothers, Alfred and Anthony, and Elvin Artis were also successful local carpenters. (38) At times, there was enough work in Wilmington, often related to construction, to attract free black skilled laborers from other parts of the state. James Boon was a prominent free black builder in Louisburg, North Carolina. He sent his brother and other workers to Wilmington in the late 1840s, when Boon learned that there was work in the town. (39) For the men in Boon's crew, it was expedient to have a white "protector" and local references. Unlike free blacks who had lived in Wilmington for decades, Boon's men were unknown locally. William O. Jeffreys, a white Wilmington businessman, served as their patron. He authored a letter that endorsed Boon's character and the quality of his work. Jeffreys wrote that the "bearer of this ... comes highly recommended to me ... as an excellent carpenter and a man who has uniformly conducted himself with the utmost propriety." (40) Many free black men and women received occupational training as apprentices. In 1826 the North Carolina General Assembly authorized county courts to apprentice free black children living with pa ... s who did not work. Other apprentices were orphans or became apprentices with their parents' consent. (41) Between 1828 and 1843, Solomon W. Nash Sr. apprenticed at least ten carpenters. Similarly, James D. Sampson indentured more than a dozen carpenters and one seamstress between 1838 and 1858. White residents of New Hanover County also indentured free black children as barbers, painters, wheelwrights, servants, housekeepers, and farmers. (42) Apprenticeships could be mutually beneficial. Employers acquired labor, and some free black children learned a trade and established an enduring relationship with a patron or benefactor. (43) The 1860 census allows historians to gain an even broader understanding of free black employment than is possible for earlier in the antebellum period. That census was the first to identify the occupations of free black female workers, dramatically changing the occupational totals compared with 1850 (see Table 2). (44) In 1860 in Wilmington, more free black women (118) than men (104) were employed (see Table 3). Women worked to support themselves or to supplement their family income. (45) While just over 6 percent of the jobs held by free blacks in 1850 were in semiskilled occupations, that percentage increased to nearly 37 percent by 1860. Much of that change was attributable to the inclusion of female workers. Of the eighty-two individuals working in semiskilled occupations in 1860, sixty-five (or 79.27 percent) were women employed in occupations such as laundress (forty-six) and washerwoman (ten). Forty-five other women, including thirty-nine seamstresses, worked in skilled occupations (see Table 3). Free blacks could also earn a living in Wilmington in ways other than the construction trades or laundry and sewing services. "Madam" Mary Cruise, later described by contemporaries as a "Creole--dark yellow" born in Guadeloupe, operated a "sailor boarding house ... [with] entertainment." Patrons were encouraged to ask for "what you don't see." (46) Business must have been good: by 1850 Cruise had accumulated $1,200 of real property. (47) Through their labor or the financial support of white fathers, some free blacks in Wilmington accumulated property. Across the South, property ownership remained a fight unaffected by legislation. (48) In 1836 several free blacks in Wilmington were assessed taxes based on their ownership of land and/or town lots. Nathan Green's seven town lots, for example, were valued at $960. (49) By 1845 the number of free blacks who appeared on the town's tax list, as well as the value of their property, had increased significantly. That year, Nathan Green owned 500 acres of land worth $1,000 and six town lots worth $1,110. Other property owners included George Moore, who owned 572 acres worth $572; Maria Stately, who owned one town lot worth $150; and James Sampson, who owned four acres worth $1,000 and six town lots worth $2,000. (50) The wealth of Wilmington's free blacks increased between 1850 and 1860. In 1850 thirty-two free black residents of Wilmington owned $42,950 of real property (see Table 4). Their average wealth in realty ($1,342) was, however, less than that of free blacks in most major southern cities: in Charleston the average was $4,268; New Orleans, $3,623; St. Louis, $3,103; Louisville, $1,518; Baltimore, $1,361; and the District of Columbia, $611. (51) The wealthiest free black person in Wilmington was James Sampson, who owned $14,000 of real property. (52) By 1860, not only had Sampson's real estate holdings increased to $26,000, but also more free blacks owned real property. (53) On the eve of the Civil War, forty-three free blacks in Wilmington (see Table 4) owned $61,300 of realty (an average of $1,426). (54) They had also accumulated wealth in personal property (see Table 5). (55) In 1860 eighty-four free blacks reported owning $29,720 of personal property (an average of $354). James Sampson again owned the most ($10,000). (56) While the average value of real and personal property held by whites and free blacks differed dramatically, the extent of property ownership among the two races did not. In 1860 the average value of real property owned by white property owners in Wilmington was $7,949--over five times the average for free blacks. Similarly, white personal property owners held an average of $6,946 of personal property--nearly twenty times the average for free blacks with personal property. But 7.50 percent of the free black population owned real property, compared with 10.25 percent of Wilmington's white population. And 14.66 percent of the free blacks owned personal property, while 17.38 percent of the local white population did. (57) The wealth accumulated by free black residents of Wilmington in 1860 exceeded figures for free blacks throughout North Carolina. John Hope Franklin has calculated that the average total wealth in real and personal property among free black property owners in North Carolina in 1860 was $287 and that the per-capita wealth for all of North Carolina's free black residents was $34. For Wilmington, these figures were $910 and $159, respectively. (58) Wilmington's free black property owners were more affluent than free black property owners statewide. This disparity may have resulted from better employment opportunities for Wilmington's free black population. The percentage of Wilmington's free blacks who owned property compares favorably with free blacks in other southern cities. In 1850, 4.91 percent of the free black residents of Wilmington owned real property. Leonard P. Curry, in The Free Black in Urban America, calculates the percentage of free blacks owning real property in other southern cities in 1850: New Orleans (6.56 percent), Louisville (4.10 percent), District of Columbia (2.18 percent), Charleston (1.37 percent), St. Louis (1.14 percent), and Baltimore (0.40 percent). (59) Wilmington's free black population rivaled even that of New Orleans in the ability of individuals to accumulate real property. Ownership of realty was not limited to men. In 1850, 37.50 percent of Wilmington's free black owners of real estate were women, and that percentage increased to a majority (53.49 percent) by 1860. In comparison, Curry finds that in 1850 women accounted for 46.46 percent of free blacks owning realty in New Orleans, 31.17 percent in Louisville, 19.66 percent in the District of Columbia, 17.02 percent in Charleston, 12.50 percent in St. Louis, and 9.90 percent in Baltimore. Curry's explanation for the extent of property ownership among free women of color points to their relationship with former white masters. He concludes that "the concubinage system ... and a closely related practice of settling property upon slave mistresses when emancipating them" resulted in unexpected amounts of real estate owned by free black women. (60) For Wilmington, employment opportunities provide a better explanation. In 1860 most free black women who owned real property worked in occupations catering to the town's white population. Of the twenty-three free black women who owned real property in 1860, nineteen (82.61 percent) worked. Of the four who did not, two were sixty years old, one sixty-seven, and another eighty. Of those with jobs, seven were seamstresses, five were laundresses, five were washerwomen, one was a housekeeper, and one was a market woman. (61) Free black women in Wilmington likely accumulated real property as a result of their own labor rather than gifts from former masters. Some of the real property held by Wilmington's free blacks was in the form of slaves. That some free blacks in the South owned slaves is undeniable; the practice had existed since the seventeenth century. There is, however, less certainty about the extent of slave ownership among free blacks and about those owners' motives for personal economic benefit or for benevolent reasons. In 1924 Carter G. Woodson analyzed the 1830 census in an attempt to determine both the number of free black slaveholders in the South and their motivation. (62) Woodson reported that in 1830 in New Hanover County there were eleven free black slaveholders, who owned a total of sixty-eight slaves. One man, John Walker, owned forty-four. More recently, Darin J. Waters has reexamined the validity of Woodson's research in five North Carolina counties, including New Hanover County. Waters could only verify that two of the eleven slave owners identified by Woodson were actually free blacks. Those two men, Henry Sampson and Roger Hazell, each owned two slaves. Waters also identifies another free black who held slaves--Wilmington resident James D. Sampson. (63) Waters was able to determine the motivation for only one of these three men. He concludes that because Henry Sampson's will stipulated that his slaves be hired out after his death, he owned slaves for his financial benefit. (64) Yet other free black residents of Wilmington also owned slaves. Solomon W. Nash Sr., for example, owned at least some slaves for other than compassionate reasons. His will stipulated that his slave Venice be hired out for ten years after Nash's death. The money generated by her labor was to be divided among his daughters. (65) By 1850 at least seven free black residents of Wilmington owned slaves. The two with the largest holdings were James D. Sampson with seven and Nathan Green, a wheelwright, with six. None of the other five owned more than three. (66) While all seven of the owners were mulattoes, 81.82 percent of the slaves they owned were black. (67) Like many Americans during the antebellum period, Wilmington's free blacks enjoyed some degree of geographical mobility. Only 96 of the 652 (14.72 percent) free blacks living in Wilmington in 1850 still resided there a decade later. Undoubtedly, some died. Wilmington had a reputation as a sickly place, particularly during the summer months. The combination of heat and humidity, stagnant water, and a constant flow of travelers who passed through town increased the risk of epidemics. Other free blacks did not appear in the 1860 census because they had moved. Mary Howe and her son, for example, left Wilmington during the 1850s and went to Brooklyn, New York. (68) During the 1850s, at least two groups of free black Wilmingtonians boarded ships bound for Africa. In 1852 nine residents left on the Joseph Maxwell; twenty-eight more boarded the Elvira Owen in 1856. (69) Several characteristics distinguished those free blacks who still lived in Wilmington in 1860. Most were in family units. Clara Campbell and her five children and seven Larringtons, five brothers and two sisters, remained in 1860. Family units undoubtedly provided comfort and security. Employment opportunities and the ability to accumulate wealth undoubtedly enticed others to stay. Sixty of the seventy-seven persisters (77.92 percent) over fifteen years of age were employed. If the accumulation of realty and/or personality was indicative of their affluence, many enjoyed economic success. Of the sixty-nine persisters over the age of eighteen in 1860, four owned real property, twelve owned personal property, and fifteen owned both. (70) Analyzing literacy rates provides additional insight into the lives of free blacks in 1860. White southerners had long tried to suppress literacy among both slaves and free blacks. The ability to read, in particular, provided slaves access to abolitionist literature and, therefore, whites believed, increased the risk of resistance and rebellion. Similarly, the ability to write facilitated a slave's ability to escape. Whites were also suspicious of literate free blacks because of the information they might pass on to slaves. (71) Given these views, one might expect that few free blacks would be literate. In 1860, 63.53 percent of Wilmington's free blacks over age twenty reported that they could neither read nor write. (72) These results do not compare favorably with literacy rates for whites in Wilmington or for whites and free blacks statewide. In 1860 only 6.78 percent of Wilmington's white residents over age twenty were illiterate. (73) Statewide, 23.98 percent of the white population over twenty and 53.40 percent of the state's free blacks over twenty were illiterate. (74) The disparity between the extent of illiteracy of Wilmington's free blacks and free blacks statewide was the result of the high illiteracy rate among Wilmington's free black women. Statewide, 54.95 percent of the free black women and 51.61 percent of the free black men over age twenty were illiterate. (75) In Wilmington, the illiteracy rate among free black men over twenty was 47.62 percent, but the rate among free black women was 73.91 percent. (76) Occupational opportunities may explain some of this difference. More men may have learned to read and write as apprentices or as part of their job training. Until 1838, state law required that apprentices, regardless of race, be taught to read and write. (77) Among Wilmington's free black residents, there was some correlation between literacy and occupation. Those men and women over age twenty who held semiskilled or unskilled jobs or who were not employed were more likely than skilled laborers to be illiterate (see Table 6). Among men, twelve of the twenty carpenters (60.00 percent) were literate, and all four of the wheelwrights were literate. Conversely, only six of the twenty-one male and female unskilled laborers and day laborers (28.57 percent) were literate. (78) It is impossible, however, to determine if literacy was learned on the job or was a prerequisite for some jobs. Free blacks used a variety of strategies to acquire an education. In many southern cities, they were prohibited from attending public schools. After 1835, the North Carolina General Assembly denied access to public schools "to any descendant of Negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive." (79) Attempts to limit free blacks' access to education in the 1830s, however, apparently failed. Among Wilmington's free black residents over age twenty, literacy rates differed little by age. The percentage of illiterate men and women in their twenties was about the same as for men and women seventy and over. (80) Opportunities for education also existed elsewhere. Across the South, some churches taught reading and writing to free black children and adults as part of their Sunday School programs. (81) In addition, James Sampson hired a tutor and established a private school in Wilmington for both free and enslaved black children. (82) At times, parental attitudes seem to have been crucial. In 1860 Sampson, his wife, and his two sons were literate, and all three of his daughters attended school. (83) Conversely, George Moore, who like Sampson was a carpenter, was illiterate; all the other adults in his household were illiterate; and his two children did not attend school. (84) Just as some free blacks achieved an education in spite of laws against doing so, some white residents of Wilmington treated the town's free blacks in ways that challenge historians' descriptions of repression. At least some whites avoided stereotyping all free blacks and distinguished between individuals within the free black community. For example, in 1835 North Carolina became the last southern state to disenfranchise its free black population. However, the delegates representing New Hanover County at that year's state constitutional convention opposed the change. During the debate, Owen Holmes, one of two men representing the county, encouraged his fellow delegates not to deny the state's free blacks the right to vote. He suggested that those free blacks who "possess property, and are of good standing, ought to be distinguished from those of the class who are vicious and disorderly." In his opinion, an additional benefit was that free blacks would be more likely to report possible slave revolts if they retained the right to vote. (85) When the new constitution denied the franchise to qualified free black residents, the People's Press and Wilmington Advertiser described the decision as "impolitic and unjust." (86) White attitudes toward the town's free blacks can also be discerned in the religious programs established by local white-controlled churches. (87) As early as the 1830s, the Front Street Methodist Episcopal Church of Wilmington had a sizable number of black members--both enslaved and free. (88) The church sponsored "Colored Prayer Meetings" each Sunday at sunrise, "Colored Love Feasts" the last Sunday of each month, "Colored Society Meetings" the second Sunday of each month, "Colored Leader Meetings" every Saturday, and "Colored Ladies Meetings" every Thursday. (89) Free black members included Roger Hazell, Harry Merrick, John Moore, and James D. Sampson. Merrick, Moore, and Sampson also served as leaders of the African American portion of the congregation. (90) There were, therefore, opportunities for free blacks to assume positions of responsibility in the church. (91) The First Baptist Church rivaled Front Street Methodist in its appeal to the religious needs of Wilmington's African American population. (92) Church minutes from that period frequently refer to "colored" residents being received into the church. (93) Others were called before the "Colored Members Conference" to respond to accusations of spousal abuse, disorderly conduct, or other infractions. (94) Like Front Street Methodist, the First Baptist Church offered programs catering to its parishioners of African descent. A conference of African American members met every Sunday afternoon, and there was a Sabbath School. "Reading the Scriptures, Singing, & prayer" accompanied each conference. Black congregants aided those less fortunate through contributions to a "collection for the Poor" distributed by "the Colored Deacons." (95) Episcopal churches in town also made provisions for African American residents. White members of St. James Episcopal Church "provided segregated seating and afternoon services for their African-American brethren." Free black members of St. James included Alfred and Mary Howe, Charles T. Jackson, James H. and Elizabeth A. Jackson, James E. Jackson, Maria McRae, Eliza Mosely, Caroline Sampson, Mary Ann Sampson, and John Walker. (96) In the late 1850s, St. Paul's Episcopal Church was established as "a free Church for a mixed congregation." There was a "gallery ... given up to the Colored people," a "colored choir," and a "Sunday School for colored children." As was common in other churches during the period, African American communicants "were orally taught the Church catechism, and to sing psalms and Hymns." (97) During the antebellum period, free blacks in Wilmington also enjoyed some degree of legal protection. White juries were, at times, impartial in cases involving free blacks, and some free blacks employed the judicial system for their own benefit. In 1828 Michael Burke was confined in the Wilmington jail, suspected of being a runaway slave. He was later released when local authorities concluded that he was actually a free person of color. (98) In 1846 Green Harriss, accused of petit larceny, was found not guilty and released. Two years later, Lewis Martin, charged with the same crime, was also found innocent. (99) In 1859 local authorities accused two free blacks of kidnapping a local slave and concealing him in a schooner bound for New York. The editors of the Wilmington Journal anticipated that "these men will get a fair trial, [but,] if proved guilty[,] we trust that no mawkish sensibility--no legal quibble will be allowed to divert the law from its due course." Subsequently, the trial of one of the men was transferred to a neighboring county, and a New Hanover County jury found the other crewman not guilty. (100) Free blacks in Wilmington also used the local court system to their own advantage. In 1833 local authorities prosecuted a man who facilitated the escape of a slave owned by Nathan Green, a free black resident, and in 1853 James Sampson sued the estate of Solomon Nash Sr. (101) The most cordial relations were generally between whites and free mulattoes. When Solomon Nash St. (a mulatto) died in 1846, the local press characterized him as "a very respectable man of his class" and noted that he "carried on a large business on his own account." A decade later, another local newspaper similarly praised James Sampson, also a mulatto. The Wilmington Journal described him as "well known here as a very worthy man, and his family enjoy[s] the same character." (102) Another mulatto, local wheelwright William Kellogg, admitted that "mulattoes ... is [sic] stronger alli[e]d to the white man than they are to the Blacks." Where laws based on race existed, he continued, "Blacks do not like the mulattoes." Kellogg acknowledged that he would "rather fall into the hands of my Superiors [whites] than into the hands of my inferiors [blacks]." (103) Local slaves also distinguished between mulattoes and other persons of color. John H. Jackson, a Wilmington slave, later recalled that mulattoes were "called 'Shuffer Tonies.'" Although the exact meaning of Shuffer Tonies is uncertain, there is no doubt that its connotation was derogatory; tony means "stylish and snobbish." Perhaps Jackson's disdain resulted from the fact that some Wilmington mulattoes owned slaves or that free blacks' social standing depended on their ability to differentiate themselves from slaves. (104) Not all white residents of Wilmington maintained a "peculiar hostility to [that town's] free Negroes," as John Hope Franklin asserted. Most of Wilmington's free black population avoided the stereotyping endured elsewhere as the town's whites commended individual free blacks whom they considered industrious. (105) There were few antebellum instances of violent racial hostility. In the 1830s, white officials and the local press supported allowing some free black men to continue to vote. Later, an 1850 editorial in the Wilmington Weekly Commercial concluded that although many free blacks "are entirely worthless ... some of them are very worthy persons." (106) Another indication of white attitudes was the reaction of the Wilmington press to an attack on a free person of color in Raleigh. The Wilmington Chronicle reported an 1842 incident in which a free black man was taken from his home in North Carolina's capital city and "dreadfully beaten, bruised, and mangled." The editors described what happened as "a disgraceful occurrence" and a "high handed outrage upon law and order" that "has excited a great deal of feeling here." (107) Ultimately, the most interesting question is how free blacks in Wilmington and elsewhere survived in a region where their freedom and accomplishments challenged the dominant society's racial construct that people of African descent were "lazy, indolent, and thievish." (108) Free blacks in Wilmington shared much with their white neighbors, and the two races interacted on a daily basis. Some were kin; some were coworkers; some worshipped at the same church; some served together on the town's local fire company; and some paid taxes. (109) White men involved in commerce respected men such as Solomon Nash Sr. and James Sampson who were successful businessmen. Perhaps most important, free blacks provided the skilled and semiskilled labor required by the town's white residents. (110) Free black carpenters and masons built homes and businesses, and free black laundresses, washerwomen, and seamstresses offered services to affluent white families. All residents, regardless of their race, were members of the Wilmington community in spite of restrictive legislation passed by the General Assembly in Raleigh. Like the rural free blacks in Virginia studied by Melvin Patrick Ely, the free black men and women of Wilmington, aided by the humanity of some white residents, endured and even prospered through hard work. The experience of Wilmington's free blacks reinforces the need for additional research on the strategies employed by free blacks elsewhere in the antebellum South. (1) Melvin Patrick Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War (New York, 2004), 438 (first quotation, italics in original), 344 (second and third quotations), 399 (fourth quotation). See also ibid., 283, 436-37. Other historians have observed similar attitudes among some antebellum white southerners. See Loren Schweninger, Black Property Owners in the South. 1790-1915 (Urbana, 1990), 89-90, 140; Joshua D. Rothman, Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861 (Chapel Hill, 2003), 4-5, 7; and Diane Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill, 2004), 103-4. (2) See reviews by Daniel W. Crofts in Journal of Southern History, 71 (November 2005), 879-81; Gregg D. Kimball in American Historical Review, 111 (February 2006), 169-70; and Christopher Phillips in Journal of American History, 92 (December 2005), 978-79. (3) Phillips, review of Israel on the Appomattox, 979. (4) Kimball, review of Israel on the Appomattox, 170. (5) John Hope Franklin, "James Boon, Free Negro Artisan," Journal of Negro History, 30 (April 1945), 150-80 (quotation on 166). (6) Ely, Israel on the Appomattox, 438. For an introduction to the experience of free blacks and slaves in Wilmington before the Civil War, see Alan D. Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861 (Jefferson, N.C., 2003), 125-41. (7) John Hope Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860 (1943; reprint, New York, 1971), 184. See also Leonard P. Curry, The Free Black in Urban America. 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream (Chicago, 1981), 18; and James Howard Brewer, "Legislation Designed to Control Slavery in Wilmington and Fayetteville," North Carolina Historical Review, 30 (April 1953), 155-66. (8) Franklin, "James Boon," 164. See also "An Additional Act to Amend the Several Acts for Regulating the Town of Wilmington, and to Regulate and Restrain the Conduct of Slaves and Others in the said Town, and in the Towns of Washington, Edenton, and Fayetteville," December 29, 1785, in William L. Byrd III, Against the Peace and Dignity of the State: North Carolina Laws Regarding Slaves, Free Persons of Color, and Indians (Westminster, Md., 2004), 95; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 59-60; and Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, pp. 36, 127. (9) Chapter XXIV, "An Act Concerning Servants and Slaves," Section 56, 1741; Chapter 6, "An Act to prevent domestic Insurrections, and for other Purposes," 1777; and Chapter 453, "An Act to amend, strengthen and confirm the several acts of Assembly of this State against the emancipation of slaves," 1796, all in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 34, 67, 132-33; James Blackwell Browning, "The Free Negro in Ante-bellum North Carolina," North Carolina Historical Review, 15 (January 1938), 23-33. In Louisiana, manumission for meritorious service was a way to free slaves under the age of thirty who had saved the life of their master or a member of their master's family. H. E. Sterkx, The Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana (Rutherford, N.J., 1972), 119. (10) "An act to regulate the emancipation of slaves in this State," 1830-1831; and "An Act to Prohibit the Emancipation of Slaves by Will," January 31, 1861, both in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 214-15, 429; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 20-21, 27; John Hope Franklin, "Slaves Virtually Free in Antebellum North Carolina," in Franklin, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938-1988 (Baton Rouge, 1989), 73-91. Similar laws mandating that manumitted slaves had to leave the state were passed in Louisiana, Maryland, and Virginia. See John H. Russell, The Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865 (Baltimore, 1913), 70; Russell, "Colored Freemen as Slave Owners in Virginia," Journal of Negro History, 1 (June 1916), 233-42; Tommy L. Bogger, Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia, 1790-1860." The Darker Side of Freedom (Charlottesville, 1997), 29; Sterkx, Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana, 121, 143; and Judith Kelleher Schafer, Becoming Free, Remaining Free: Manumission and Enslavement in New Orleans, 1846-1862 (Baton Rouge, 2003), 6, 147. (11) "An act to prevent free persons of colour from migrating into this State, for the good government of such persons resident in the State, and for other purposes," 1826, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 200-201. See also Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 63-64. (12) "An act to prevent free persons of colour from migrating into this State, for the good government of such persons resident in the State, and for other purposes," 1826, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 199; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 43; Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 128. (13) "An act to amend an act, passed in the year one thousand eight hundred and twenty six, entitle[d] 'an act to prevent free persons of colour from emigrating into this State, for the good government of such persons resident in the State, and for other purposes,'" 1830-1831, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 218. Similar restrictions were passed in other states as well. See E. Horace Fitchett, "The Origin and Growth of the Free Negro Population of Charleston, South Carolina," Journal of Negro History, 26 (October 1941), 421-37; and Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, 107-8. (14) "An Act concerning the Militia of this State," 1836-1837, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 270; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 102-3; Browning, "Free Negro in Ante-bellum North Carolina," 26. (15) "An Act to prevent Free Persons of Colour from carrying Fire arms," January 11, 1841; and "An Act to Amend Chapter 107, Section 66, of the Revised Code, Relating to Free Negroes Having Arms," February 23, 1861, both in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 313, 428; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 76, 78. (16) Charles M. Wiltse, ed., David Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble to the Coloured Citizens of the World ... (New York, 1965); Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 70, 72. In Louisiana, more restrictions also followed the discovery of copies of Walker's pamphlet. Sterkx, Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana, 98-99. (17) Charles M. Wiltse, "Introduction," in Wiltse, ed., David Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles, vii; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 64, 66; Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 128. (18) "An act to amend the first section of an act, passed in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty, which authorises free persons of colour to hawk and peddle out of the limits of the county in which they reside," 1831-1832, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 226-27. (19) "An act more effectually to prevent intermarriages between free negroes or free persons of colour and white persons and slaves, and for other purposes," 1830-1831, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 212; Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974), 402; "An act to prevent all persons from teaching slaves to read or write, the use of figures excepted," 1830-1831, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 213; Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill, 2005), 15,206; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 187; "An act to prevent the gaming of slaves, and to prevent free persons from gaming with them or suffering them to game in their houses," 1830-1831, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 216-17 (quotation on 217). The law against gaming was occasionally enforced. In 1840, for example, Robert Gibson was arrested and found guilty of playing cards with slaves. See State v. Robert Gibson and Jim Jaeobs, Spring 1840 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County (North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, N.C.; hereinafter NCSA), microfilm. (20) State v. N[icholas] C. Robinson, Spring 1839 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County (first quotation); Nicholas W. Schenck Reminiscences, photocopy (Historical Society of the Lower Cape Fear, Wilmington, N.C.), 136 (second quotation). See also Wilmington Advertiser, February 1, May 3, 1839. (21) State v. Nathan Connor, Fall 1847 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County (quotation); State v. James Campbell, September 1855 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County (NCSA), microfilm. (22) Sterkx, Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana, 117; Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York, 1974), 331; Browning, "Free Negro in Ante-bellum North Carolina," 33; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 81,192-93, 195. (23) Entry for June 7, 1847, in "Wilmington Town Minutes, 1847-1855," typed transcript, p. 9 (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library, Wilmington, N.C.). (24) Entry for January 17, 1854, ibid., 123. (25) State v. Reuben Moore, March 1850 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County (quotations). See also State v. Lewis Martin, Spring 1849 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County; Court Orders, December 1857 Term, December 1858 Term, December 1859 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County. (26) North Carolina General Assembly act, February 16, 1855, New Hanover County Records of Slaves and Free Persons of Color (NCSA); "An Act to emancipate James G. Hostler, a slave," January 16, 1855, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 408; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 33; Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 126. (28) "An Act to emancipate Isaac, a slave," December 14, 1836; and "An Act to emancipate Isabella and Jane, two negro slaves belonging to the estate of James Allen, deceased," 1812, both in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 272, 162; North Carolina General Assembly acts, June 1837, June 14, 1844, New Hanover County Records of Slaves and Free Persons of Color; Receipt of bond, June 1837 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County. (29) Entry for December 1, 1848, in Journals of the Senate and House of Commons, of the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina at Its Session in 1848-49 (Raleigh, 1849), 412; Nicholas N. Nixon ex parte, Spring 1850 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. For another example, see William M. Kennedy ex parte, Spring 1828 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. (30) Robert W. Gibbs v. [sic] ex parte, Spring 1859 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. (31) Henry Sampson ex parte petition, Spring 1824 Term; and Roger Hasell [sic] ex parte petition, Spring 1829 Term, both ibid. (32) The number of free black apprentices was greatly underreported. Census enumerators recorded the occupations of men and women over the age of fifteen. Many free black apprentices were younger. (33) Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 140. (34) Ibid., 142; Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784-1860 (New York, 1984), 97. (35) Watson, Wilmington. North Carolina, to 1861, pp. 109-10; Catherine W. Bishir, "Black Builders in Antebellum North Carolina," Narth Carolina Historical Review, 61 (October 1984), 423-61. (36) John D. Bellamy, Memoirs of an Octogenarian (Charlotte, N.C., 1942), 8. (37) Manuscript Census Returns, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, New Hanover County, North Carolina, Schedule 1, Free Inhabitants (hereinafter cited as 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab.), National Archives Microfilm Series (hereinafter cited as NAMS) M-432, reel 638, frames 593-612; Manuscript Census Returns, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860, New Hanover County, North Carolina, Schedule 1, Free Inhabitants (hereinafter cited as 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab.), NAMS M-653, reel 907. (38) Solomon Nash emancipation, July 26, 1827, New Hanover County Records of Slaves and Free Persons of Color; Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 137; James B. Browning, "James D. Sampson," Negro History Bulletin, 3 (January 1940), 56; Bishir, "Black Builders," 451, 456n116; Nancy H. Beeler, "Solomon Nash," Lower Cape Fear Historical Society Bulletin, 38 (May 1994), n.p.; Browning, "Free Negro in Ante-bellum North Carolina," 28; "Wilmington Town Minutes," 192; William M. Reaves, "Strength through Struggle": The Chronological and Historical Record of the African-American Community in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1865-1950 (Wilmington, N.C., 1998), 375,408-9, 411,444, 460. John Hope Franklin contends that Sampson was the wealthiest free black individual in the state by 1860; he owned over $15,000 more real and personal property than the state's next wealthiest free black person. Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 228-29; John Hope Franklin, "The Free Negro in the Economic Life of Ante-bellum North Carolina [Part 2]," North Carolina Historical Review, 19 (October 1942), 359-75, esp. 370. (39) Carter Evans to James Boon, January 20, 1848; Carter Evans, W. Mitchel [sic], and W. Dunston to James Boon, March 6, 1848, both in James Boon Papers, PC99 (NCSA); Franklin, "James Boon," 164-65; Bishir, "Black Builders," 453; Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 137. (40) Will. O. Jeffreys letter, March 22, 1848, Boon Papers (quotation). See also Carter Evans to James Boon, January 20, 1848, ibid.; and Franklin, "James Boon," 165. The use of such endorsements was also a common practice elsewhere. See Schweninger, Black Property Owners, 88. (41) "Revised Statutes of North Carolina, Chapter 71," 1836-1837, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 304; Franklin, "James Boon," 152; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 123, 130; Bishir, "Black Builders," 428-29, 448. (42) See New Hanover County Apprentice Bonds and Records, 1797-1889 (NCSA), microfilm; and Beeler, "Solomon Nash." (43) Franklin, "James Boon," 154. (44) The 1850 census collected occupational data only for males over fifteen years of age. The occupation of only one free black woman in Wilmington (a laborer) was identified that year. By 1860 the instructions had changed: enumerators were required to record the occupations of all males and females over fifteen. See "Instructions to Marshals and Assistant Marshals--Census of 1850," in Senate Documents, 56 Cong., 1 Sess., No. 194: The History and Growth of the United States Census, Prepared for the Senate Committee on the Census (Serial 3856; Washington, D.C., 1900), 152; and "[Instructions to Marshals and Assistant Marshals--]Census of 1860," ibid., 154. (45) This was true throughout the South. See Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 221; Bernard E. Powers Jr., Black Charlestonians: A Social History, 1822-1885 (Fayetteville, Ark., 1994), 41; and Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, 101. (46) Schenck Reminiscences, 127. Beginning in 1847, Mary Cruise applied for and was granted liquor licenses almost every year until her application was rejected in 1854. Chapter 107 of the revised Code of North Carolina that year made it illegal for free blacks to sell alcohol to slaves or free persons. "Revised Code of North Carolina," Chapter 107, 1854, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 399; entries for September 11, 1847, September 8, 1848, September 7, 1849, January 9, 1850, September 6, 1851, September 9, 1853, and December 8, 1854, in "Wilmington Town Minutes," 12, 29, 47-48, 51, 76, 111, 143. (47) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frame 594. (48) Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 97. (49) "New Hanover County, North Carolina, Tax List, 1836," typed transcript (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library). (50) "New Hanover County, North Carolina, Tax List, 1815 & 1845," typed transcript (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library). (51) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frames 593-612; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 267. (52) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frame 608. Because Sampson's wealth skews the mean, the median might be more informative. The median wealth in real property of Wilmington's free blacks in 1850 was $700. (53) On Sampson, see 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907, p. 381. This increase was evident throughout the upper South. See Schweninger, Black Property Owners, 63, 72, 125. (54) The median wealth in real property in 1860 was $600. 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (55) Personal property was first reported in the 1860 census. (56) The median wealth in personal property in 1860 was $200. t860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. On Sampson, see ibid., p. 381. (57) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653. reel 907. (58) Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 159; Franklin, "Free Negro in the Economic Life of Ante-bellum North Carolina [Part 2]," 372-73; 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (59) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frames 593-612; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 268; Christopher Phillips, Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore. 1790-1860 (Urbana, 1997), 99, 154. (60) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frames 593-612; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 44 (quotation), 269. Suzanne Lebsock reports that in Petersburg, Virginia, 45.9 percent of the free blacks who owned real estate in 1860 were women. Lebsock, Free Women of Petersburg, 103-4. (61) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (62) Carter G. Woodson, comp., Free Negro Owners of Slaves in the United States in 1830, Together with Absentee Ownership of Slaves in the United States in 1830 (Washington, D.C., 1924). (63) Ibid., 25; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 236; Darin J. Waters, "Black Slaveowners in North Carolina in 1830: Testing the Woodson Thesis" (Master's thesis, North Carolina State University, 2001), 2, 82, 87-88, 90, 93, 99-101; Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 460. (64) Waters, "Black Slaveowners in North Carolina," 109-10. (65) Solomon W. Nash Sr. last will and testament, September 15, 1838, December 1846 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County; Beeler, "Solomon Nash," n.p.; Bishir, "Black Builders," 440n54. (66) Compiled from Manuscript Census Returns, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850, New Hanover County, North Carolina, Schedule 2, Slave Population, NAMS M-432, reel 654, frames 256-99. (67) Ibid. Similar racial patterns were evident elsewhere. See Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Jefferson, N.C., 1985), xiii; and Powers, Black Charlestonians, 50. (68) 1850 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-432, reel 638, frames 593-612; 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907; Volume 4, African-American Family History, Series 1, William Reaves Collection (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library); Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 415. (69) "Emigrants to Liberia," New York Daily Times, November 29, 1852, p. 2; "List of Emigrants," African Repository, 29 (January 1853), 25; "List of Emigrants by the Ship Elvira Owen," African Repository, 32 (August 1856), 250-51. (70) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. On the Campbell family, see ibid., p. 340; and on the Larrington family, see ibid., p. 373. (71) Williams, Self-Taught, 13: Leonard P. Curry, "Free Blacks in the Urban South, 18001850," Southern Quarterly, 43 (Winter 2006), 35-51; Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, 144; Luther Porter Jackson, Free Negro Labor and Property Holding in Virginia, 1830-1860 (New York, 1942), 19. (72) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. Census enumerators in 1860 asked residents over the age of twenty if they were illiterate. While a question about illiteracy was also included on the 1850 census form, local enumerators did not complete that information for Wilmington's free black population. Christopher Phillips reports that only 45.1 percent of the free blacks over age thirteen in three Baltimore wards were illiterate in 1860. More educational opportunities existed in Baltimore than Wilmington. See Phillips, Freedom's Port, 163-68. (73) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (74) U.S. Census Office, Population of the United States in 1860, Compiled from the Original Returns of the Eighth Census, under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C., 1864), 350-53; U.S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States, (Including Mortality, Property, &c.,) in 1860: Compiled from the Original Returns and Being the Final Exhibit of the Eighth Census, under the Direction of the Secretary of the Interior (Washington, D.C., 1866), 508. (75) U.S. Census Office, Population of the United States in 1860, pp. 350-53; U.S. Census Office, Statistics of the United States, (Including Mortality, Property, & c.,) in 1860, p. 508. (76) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (77) "An Act for the better Care of Orphans, and Security and Management of their Estate," 1760, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 50-51; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 129, 165. (78) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (79) Sterkx, Free Negro in Ante-Bellum Louisiana, 268; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 148; Carter G. Woodson, Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830 together with a Brief Treatment of the Free Negro (Washington, D.C., 1925), li (quotation). (80) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907. (81) Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 168; Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 74, 144; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 155; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 403; Phillips, Freedom's Port, 167. (82) Browning, "James D. Sampson," 56; Watson, Wilmington. North Carolina, to 1861, p. 141: Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 460. (83) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907, p. 381. John Hope Franklin found the presence of free black children in school to be "one of the most puzzling problems in the history of antebellum North Carolina." Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 169. (84) 1860 U.S. Census, New Hanover County, N.C., Free Inhab., NAMS M-653, reel 907, p. 380. (85) Debate of June 12, 1835, in Debates of the Convention of North-Carolina, Called to Amend the Constitution of the State, which Assembled at Raleigh, June 4, 1835 ... (Raleigh, 1836), 72. This debate was reprinted in People's Press and Wilmington Advertiser, July 8, 1835. See also North Carolina Constitution, 1835, in Byrd, Against the Peace and Dignity, 265; Franklin, Free Negro in North Carolina, 113, 115, 192-93; and Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, pp. 128-29. (86) People's Press and Wilmington Advertiser, November 6, 1835. (87) John B. Boles, ed., Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, 1740-1870 (Lexington, Ky., 1988); Charles F. Irons, The Origins of Proslavery Christiania.. White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia (Chapel Hill, 2008), 153-58; Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South (New York, 1978), 136-38; Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 286-87; Curry, Free Black in Urban America, 174-75. As elsewhere in the South, societal restraints and/or financial limitations precluded the establishment of separate black churches in Wilmington until after the Civil War. (88) Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 94. (89) Records of Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, Wilmington, North Carolina (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library), microfilm. (90) Ibid.; Browning, "James D. Sampson," 56. (91) Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 74; Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 286. (92) Across the South, free blacks "preferred the evangelical sty|e of the Baptist[s] and Methodist[s]." Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 299 (quotation), 66. (93) See, for example, entries dated September 1839; March 20, 23, April 13, May 4, July 3, 1842; July 27, August 31, 1845; July 26, November 29 1846; January 31 March 28 October 31 November 28, 1847; and March 26, 1848, in "First Baptist Church, Wilmington, North Carolina (1833-1847): Church Minutes, History Sketch, Official Records," typed transcript, pp. 6, 9-11, 38-39, 45, 47-49, 51-52, 54 (copy at Duke University Libraries, Durham, N.C.). (94) See, for example, entries dated October 26, November 30, December 28, 1845; January 26, September 27, October 25, 1846; and May 30, 1847, ibid., 40-42, 46, 49. (95) Entries dated November 30, 1845; and January 26, 1846, ibid., 40 (first quotation), 42 (second and third quotations). See also entries dated January 2, May 26, 1845; February 22. 1846; and June 27, 1847, ibid., 16, 37, 42-43, 50. (96) Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 74, 125 (quotation); St. James Episcopal Church, Wilmington, North Carolina, Historical Records, 1737-1852, typed transcript (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library). (97) History of St. Paul's Episcopal Church (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library), microfilm. See also vestry minutes, June 9 1858, in St. Paul's Episcopal Church Records (North Carolina Room, New Hanover County Public Library); Reaves, "Strength through Struggle," 126; and Watson, Wilmington, North Carolina, to 1861, p. 141. (98) Court Order, June 1828 Term, Minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of New Hanover County. (99) State v. Green Harriss, December 1846 Term. ibid.; State v. Lewis Martin, Fall 1848 Term, Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. (100) Wilmington Journal (weekly edition), August 19 (quotation), November 4, 1859; and April 21, May 17, November 1, 1860; State v. William Tubbs, William Summers, John Williams, and Thomas Lanfield, Fall 1859 Term; State v. William Tubbs and Thomas Lanfield, Spring 1860 Term; and State v. William Tubbs, Fall 1860 Term, all in Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. (101) State v. Edmund, April 1833 Term; and James Sampson v. M. N. Leary (executor of Solomon Nash Sr. estate), Fall 1853 Term, both in Minutes of the Superior Court of New Hanover County. (102) Wilmington Chronicle, July 1, 1846 (first and second quotations); Wilmington Journal (weekly edition), May 1, 1857 (third quotation). (103) William Kellogg to [William McLain?], October 6, 1852, Records of the American Colonization Society (Manuscript Division, Lib

The Expansion of Slavery, 1816-1846 KING COTTON (OVERVIEW)

Long-staple cotton needs good soil and ideal growing conditions. In return, it gives the grower a good harvest, with fibers separating easily from seeds. Short-staple cotton grows in many more types of soil, but harvesting is difficult. Sticky seeds cling to the short fibers. In 1790, plantation farmers grew rice, indigo, and long-staple cotton in coastal areas of the southeastern United States. Inland farmers, with less fertile soil, were limited to small farms and subsistence crops. Short-staple cotton was not economical. The amount of labor required for harvest was too great. Cotton Gin Slaves gin cotton In 1792, Eli Whitney graduated from Yale University and headed south to work as a private tutor on a plantation. His employer, Catherine Greene, encouraged the young man to investigate ways of making short-staple cotton profitable. In a secret workshop on the plantation, Whitney invented a machine that could separate the cotton fibers from their sticky seeds. He called it the cotton gin. A small version of the cotton gin could be operated by a hand crank. Larger versions could be powered by water or horses. Whitney immediately applied for a patent for his invention and wrote to his father, "'Tis generally said by those who know anything about it, that I shall make a Fortune by it." Whitney and his business partner found it difficult to make a fortune, in large part because so many people copied their gin instead of paying them royalties or fees. Growing Money Whitney's machine transformed Southern agriculture. In each decade after 1800, cotton production doubled. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution brought textile mills to the North and to England, multiplying the demand for cotton. By 1850, the South was growing 75% of the world's cotton and exporting most of it to the Northern states and to England. In this regard, cotton fed the expansion of textile manufacturing which was integral to the emergent transatlantic Industrial Revolution, making slavery an integral part of this development. John Rankin house, Ripley, Ohio Small farmers became plantation owners; plantation owners made their fortunes. If cotton was king, the Southern planters saw themselves as aristocrats, members of King Cotton's royal court. A new, leisurely lifestyle developed, as described years later by a Southern doctor: "And if fate left us good wine, good dinners, fine horses, and money enough to go abroad every summer, we asked no more of gods or men." Built on Slavery Nat Turner's Rebellion Large cotton plantations depended on slave labor. As cotton cultivation increased, so did the importance of slavery. Slaves planted, cultivated, and picked cotton. Once the cotton was picked, it went through the cotton gin for cleaning. Solomon Northup was a free man living in New York in 1841. He was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana. In later years, he described the condition of slaves: The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be until the order to halt is given by the driver. The day's work over in the field, the baskets are "toted," or in other words, carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be—no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest—a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. Despite the universal repression, slaves rebelled, both in small, daily acts and in organized military actions, like those led at different times and in different places by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner. Slaves were not the only oppressed group in the South. Native Americans, from the Creeks of Alabama to the Cherokees of Georgia to the Seminoles of Florida, were driven from their homes and robbed of their lands as the cotton gin and short-staple cotton made those lands valuable to American settlers. Driving the need to gain more land, the cotton crop led to westward expansion, which started in the South with a desire for more cotton land.

"Notorious in the Neighborhood": An Interracial Family in Early National and Antebellum Virginia

ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1796, THOMAS WEST, AWARE OF THE ILLNESS THAT would kill him just a few months later, wrote his last will and testament. West, a white blacksmith, owned land in both Amherst and Albemarle Counties, including ten half-acre lots in the town of Charlottesville, which amounted roughly to one-fifth of the town at the time of his death. In his will, West named two of his children--James Henry West and Nancy West--as heirs. Both children were free people of color born of a relationship between the elder West and a woman named Priscilla, who at one point in her life had belonged to her children's father. West left all of his land, livestock, and furniture, as well as his eight slaves, to James Henry West and his family. His fourteen-year-old daughter Nancy West was left only the annual interest on forty pounds held by her guardian, local merchant Thomas Bell, until she turned twenty-one, at which time she would receive the principal.(1) Among the witnesses to Thomas West's will was David Isaacs, another local merchant. Isaacs, born in 1760 in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, had immigrated to the United States and moved to Charlottesville sometime in the early 1790s from Richmond, where he and his brother Isaiah had been traders in Cohen and Isaacs, one of the city's largest mercantile firms. Both Jewish, the Isaacses were also among the founders of Beth Shalome, the capital's first synagogue. In Charlottesville, the brothers lived downtown on land rented from Thomas West.(2) While David Isaacs had a direct economic relationship with Thomas West for the few years that he lived in Charlottesville before West's death, he had an even more significant, lasting, and unusual relationship with West's daughter Nancy. Between 1796 and 1817, David Isaacs and Nancy West had seven children together. By the time of David Isaacs's death in 1837 he and Nancy West (who occasionally, though rarely, used Isaacs's last name) had maintained a familial relationship for over forty years and had lived in a single household for seventeen of those years in downtown Charlottesville, where Isaacs owned a mercantile business and West ran a bakery. Between them the couple amassed substantial wealth, and by 1850 Nancy West owned real property valued at $7,000, enough to make her the richest non-white person in Albemarle County.(3) Interracial sex per se was not illegal in early national and antebellum Virginia, but laws prohibiting interracial marriages had been in place since the colonial era and anti-fornication laws punished all offenders having sex outside of marriage whether or not it crossed the color line.(4) In this legal environment, a stable, successful, and familiar couple like David Isaacs and Nancy West--a relationship that, to us, might seem improbable if not impossible for that era--nonetheless thrived. An investigation of their financial dealings, land transactions, and courtroom encounters provides a rare glimpse at how an interracial couple operated and even prospered within the legal and social boundaries of a Virginia that discouraged their sexual activities and frowned upon their family, but which lacked either the motivation or the power to end their relationship. Examining the lives of exceptional couples at the margins like Isaacs and West is essential to understanding the rules of race, sex, gender, and class in the South before the Civil War--and to appreciating that unusual circumstances like theirs came with rules all their own. The example of West and Isaacs also reinforces arguments made in the work of recent historians, who have complicated our understandings of racial and sexual relations in the early national and antebellum South with studies of multiracial families, coerced and consensual interracial sex involving both free people and slaves, and the lives of free people of color. Collectively, these scholars have demonstrated that there were significant gaps between the ideals white southerners often projected about themselves and their world and the experience of life on the ground in their society.(5) The story of David Isaacs and Nancy West adds valuable details to this evolving historical portrait of multiracial families and their peculiar positions in early national and antebellum southern communities. In particular, it reveals how intricately and inextricably connected the couple's domestic and financial arrangements were, and how their economic position influenced precisely when members of the white community in Charlottesville chose to revoke the toleration they usually demonstrated for West and Isaacs's relationship. Additionally, West and Isaacs's story shows their ingenious ability to turn laws of race, gender, marriage, and property designed primarily for legally married white couples to their distinct pecuniary advantage. What stands out most about Isaacs and West's sexual association is that, relative to the law, it was less directly oppositional than it was startlingly ambiguous. For example, when the couple altered their domestic arrangements around 1820, they threatened both the moral sensibilities and the economic interests of some whites. When they were subsequently accused of violating Virginia's laws against illicit sex, however, not even the highest court in the state would find them susceptible to criminal prosecution. Cautiously, at some risk, but with a consistent strategy, David Isaacs and Nancy West exploited their unique status by sneaking through legal loopholes, thus ensuring both their own economic stability and the financial futures of their children. Still, no matter how financially successful they became, nearly being branded as criminals reminded them that they were perpetually vulnerable to legal harassment by whites. Although West and Isaacs never faced the possibility of criminal charges again, the same kinds of jealousy and resentment toward the couple's economic stature that provoked their original legal troubles seethed well into the 1840s. They learned that there would always be some whites who would try to take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the couple's relationship in pursuit of their own economic gain. Rather than indicating the strength of interracial families in Virginia before the Civil War and the protections afforded to them, the experience of Nancy West and David Isaacs actually highlights the ultimate fragility and tenuousness of their status. That the couple managed to evade each obstacle placed before them is a testament not only to their shrewdness, intelligence, and foresight, but also to their enormous luck. Property and wealth can bring power, stability, and security. They can also provoke envy, greed, and hostility. For Nancy West and David Isaacs, they brought both. On October 11, 1822, the grand jury sitting at the Albemarle County Court, on evidence provided by two witnesses, presented David Isaacs and Nancy West for "umbraging the decency of society and violating the laws of the land by cohabitating together in a state of illicit commerce as mall and wife."(6) There are no extant descriptions of the testimony that brought about the presentment, but presumably the most germane facts were simply that the couple lived in the same house and acted as a married couple. Nineteen months later, on May 13, 1824, the court found the facts of the evidence against Isaacs and West to be true and asked the couple to show cause why Jonathan Boucher Carr, the local commonwealth's prosecuting attorney, should not bring an indictment against them for the crime of fornication. West and Isaacs's lawyer argued that, even conceding the facts in the presentment, the language used by the Grand Jury failed to accuse the couple of violating any particular statute, and he questioned whether the state could prosecute them on a fornication charge at common law. This legal strategy baffled the county court. Uncertain "whether, admitting the facts presented by the Grand Jury to be true, an Information will lie for the said offence at the suit of the Commonwealth," the court determined the case had to be sent to the General Court in Richmond for decision. West and Isaacs objected, probably because they hoped the County Court would dismiss the case on the spot, but were overruled.(7) In November 1826 their case finally worked its way onto the docket of the General Court in Richmond, where the justices ruled that the state of Virginia could not prosecute David Isaacs and Nancy West on any charge as presented by the grand jury.(8) On May 8, 1827, nearly five years after the original presentment, the Albemarle County Court dismissed all cases against Isaacs and West.(9) The two witnesses who appeared before the grand jury in 1822 would have had to have been white, because David Isaacs was not black and Virginia law only allowed the testimony of people of color against other people of color. A fire in 1865 burned nearly all the original case papers of the General Court, precluding any precise knowledge of the witnesses' identities, but even without such specific information it seems extraordinarily curious that anyone would air a sexual grievance against Isaacs and Nancy West in 1822. Charlottesville was a small town with just 260 residents in 1810, and it had grown little by the early 1820s. Much of the town's population lived within a few blocks of the couple.(10) By 1822 a significant percentage of Charlottesville's residents must have known that David Isaacs and Nancy West were carrying on a long-term sexual relationship. The couple had already had all seven of their children, the oldest of whom (their daughter Jane) was twenty-six years old. Clearly Isaacs and West were in long-standing violation of anti-fornication laws that prohibited sexual intercourse between unmarried persons, yet for more than twenty-five years no one had chosen to do anything about it. David Isaacs's own economic clout, along with that of his network of business colleagues (many of whom were also prominent in local social and legal circles), might have prompted hesitation among people tempted to complain publicly about his relationship with West. Isaacs was a successful merchant and an esteemed member of the local business community. Among his associates were merchants John Kelly, John Winn, Twyman Wayt, James and Samuel Leitch, and John R. Jones, all of whom had been appointed by the county court during the 1810s to assist him in his capacity as executor of the will of his brother Isaiah, who had died in 1806.(11) Kelly, "a man of sterling integrity and a decided christian gentleman," was a founder of the town Presbyterian church in the 1820s. Winn owned the enormous Belmont estate, traded in real estate, and served for a time as town postmaster, a position in which he was succeeded by Twyman Wayt. John Jones, who was later noted for his exceptionally "energetic and industrious life," served as a county magistrate beginning in 1819, acted as the financial agent for numerous local planters, and eventually became the first president of the Albemarle branch of the Farmers' Bank of Virginia.(12) David Isaacs also counted Opic Norris and Alexander Garrett among his close friends in town, naming both as co-executors of his own will.(13) Norris drew especial respect from Charlottesville residents, one of whom wrote after his death that he was "a man of mark ... as useful and beneficial to this community as any man that ever lived here." A merchant who also served as a county magistrate, Norris was a town trustee for many years, secretary-treasurer of a local turnpike company, and at one point in his life the owner of a blacksmith shop as well as a popular tavern. Garrett, meanwhile, dealt in real estate and spent most of his life in public office, serving as deputy sheriff and then as clerk for both the county and circuit courts. He also became the first bursar of the University of Virginia, married the daughter of one of Thomas Jefferson's nephews, and was named an executor of Jefferson's estate in 1826.(14) In addition to having influential friends in town, Isaacs had prominent customers throughout Albemarle County, not the least of whom was Jefferson himself, who bought all sorts of items from Isaacs ranging from meat, butter, and cheese to books and a horse. Jefferson's nephew, Dabney Carr Jr., had been friends with Isaiah Isaacs, serving as a witness to a codicil of his will. Thomas Jefferson also made purchases from many other local merchants, but the long-standing patronage of prominent planters like him helped establish David Isaacs as a worthy, reputable, and respectable businessman.(15) As a Jewish immigrant, however, David Isaacs would always be somewhat of an oddity in Charlottesville. Around 2,700 Jews lived in the United States in 1820 out of a total population nearing ten million, and only 300 or so lived in Virginia. A few Jews other than David Isaacs lived in Charlottesville in the early nineteenth century, including merchant Isaac Raphael and lawyer Nathaniel Wolfe, but two-thirds of Virginia's Jewish population lived in Richmond.(16) Being a Jew in antebellum America meant numerical near-insignificance but also often entailed cultural marginality and social prejudice. The anti-Semitism that Jews faced in the antebellum United States paled in comparison to that confronted by Jews in Europe and was tempered by political, economic, and religious tolerance. Nevertheless, bigotry was widespread in America. Throughout the country the word "Jew" was used both as a generic pejorative and specifically as a synonym for a cheat. Overt hostility and violence toward Jews was rare, but white Christian churches consistently preached that Judaism was an inferior religion. Jews were unusual and therefore exotic and interesting, but most gentiles also viewed Jews suspiciously and stereotypically as untrustworthy and avaricious. As historian Jacob Marcus writes, early-nineteenth-century Americans were ambivalent toward Jews, and tolerance and acceptance frequently coexisted with rejection and a strong sense of Jewish difference. No matter the precise position of Jews, though, they "resigned themselves to the inevitable; there would always be a dividing line between Jews and Christians."(17) David Isaacs's position as an outsider among white Christian society may have made his relationship with Nancy West--who, as a free woman of color, was also an outsider--less offensive to other whites than had her partner been a white gentile. In the 1820s most Americans believed Jews were probably racially white, and they were treated as white under Virginia law, but the racial position of Jews was never entirely fixed due to centuries-old European folklore and stereotypes about distinct Jewish physiognomy.(18) In addition, Isaacs's religion certainly distanced him from many of his white Christian neighbors. They might not have expected him to adhere to as high a moral standard as that to which they believed they held themselves. If a distinction of faith helped at all in keeping David Isaacs and Nancy West out of a courtroom, however, such a distinction also meant that regardless of his economic standing, Isaacs could never fully integrate himself into Charlottesville's business and legal communities, which were held together as much by familial as by financial links. Samuel and James Leitch were brothers. John R. Jones's brother-in-law and his first business partner was Nimrod Bramham, another merchant and a man who later became legally entangled with David Isaacs. After parting ways with Jones, Bramham joined fortunes with his son-in-law, William Bibb. John Kelly's son-in-law was none other than Opie Norris, while John Winn and Twyman Wayt were not only partners but had also married two sisters from the same family. John Winn's oldest son Benjamin would grow up to marry the daughter of Ira Garrett, Alexander Garrett's brother.(19) Without access to these sorts of connections, David Isaacs could be deeply immersed in Charlottesville's mercantile world, yet he would never be entirely of it. It seems most likely, in fact, that one or more of Isaacs's fellow merchants instigated court proceedings against him and Nancy West in 1822. While changes that the couple made to their relationship in 1819 and 1820 may have prompted some complaints to be made on the basis of moral concerns, a closer look at the accusations brought against them suggests that economic interests probably played a significant role as well. Nancy West's economic position suddenly and dramatically improved beginning in 1819. Members of the merchant class frequently shared the same economic concerns, but they were also in competition with one another, which could breed jealousy and vindictiveness, especially when finances got tight. In the wake of the Panic of 1819, merchants who found it very difficult to collect debts owed them even as they tried to pay off debts of their own would have felt particularly vulnerable. Certainly it is not hard to imagine their antagonism toward the economic success of a free woman of color at such a time, especially when they perceived her as having procured that success in large part through an illegal sexual relationship with a white man. Perhaps the local mercantile elite felt that it was time to remind the couple that they lived free of social and legal harassment mostly at the behest of the white community, and that there were limits to what they could and could not do.(20) During most of the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Isaacs and West carried on their relationship and continued to have children while living in separate homes and owning their own independent businesses. In 1799 Nancy West turned seventeen. Able to convince Thomas Bell to forward the forty pounds left to her by her father, she purchased a half-acre of land--lot number 46 near Charlottesville's southern boundary--from her brother, James Henry West (see map). She probably took up regular residence there around the time she turned twenty-one in 1803 and began raising her family and establishing herself professionally as a baker.(21) Isaacs himself lived just one block north and one block west on his own land on Main Street, lot 36, which he had purchased in 1802. A two-story wooden building on the property served both as his home and his mercantile store.(22) On the 1810 census, Nancy West and David Isaacs are listed as heads of different households. Isaacs lived alone, and West lived with five other free people of color, four of whom were probably the children she and Isaacs had at the time--Jane, Thomas, Hays, and Tucker.(23) This arrangement began to change beginning late in 1819. In December Nancy West put the land she lived on up for sale.(24) Six months later she purchased the bulk of lot 33, which was on Main Street just a few lots east of where David Isaacs lived, and she began renting out the property to assorted businesses.(25) In addition, the 1820 census reveals that Nancy West was no longer the head of a household, but that David Isaacs suddenly had ten free people of color living in his home. As many as eight of these individuals were Nancy West and the couple's children, who now totaled seven after the births of Frederick, Julia Ann, and Agness between 1812 and 1817. West began running her bakery out of this building as well, next to David Isaacs's store-front.(26) Less than two years later, the grand jury brought its presentment against the couple. For more than twenty years after they had their first child together, then, David Isaacs and Nancy West had maintained separate households; technically, they even lived in separate parishes of Albemarle County.(27) It seems that so long as the couple kept their relationship a strictly illicit one and pretended that it did not exist, Charlottesville's white community was willing to let it go unchallenged. Only when the couple started living together as a single family unit did some members of the community find their arrangement unacceptable. Throughout the early national and antebellum periods, interracial sexual activity, especially between a slaveowner and his female property but also between free people, could generally be tolerated so long as certain proprieties were observed, one of which was never to flaunt such relationships as if they were legitimate. West and Isaacs's sudden public pretense to being a family thus probably played a role in provoking the charges against them. When the grand jury presented Isaacs and West, it also presented two other couples (at least one of which was also interracial and cohabitating) for fornication charges, which suggests that their case may have been part of a small crusade by whites intent on rooting out sexual relationships that represented, in the words of Albemarle County judge Archibald Stuart, offenses "against good morals."(28) Probably not coincidentally, the other interracial couple, Joshua Grady and Betsy Ann Farly, lived on lot 26, property owned by David Isaacs just two blocks west of where he lived with Nancy West. Grady was a white blacksmith and Betsy Ann Farly was a free woman of color whose father was Daniel Farly, a free man of color. Daniel Farly resided at the east end of Main Street and was himself the oldest son of Mary Hemings, Sally Hemings's older sister. Mary Hemings lived across the street and half a block west of West and Isaacs in a house on lot 23 she had shared with Thomas Bell (formerly Nancy West's legal guardian) from the late 1780s until Bell's death in 1800. Bell had purchased Mary Hemings and her two children by him (Daniel Farly not among them) from Thomas Jefferson at her request in 1792 and informally freed her. By 1822 Mary Hemings also lived with her and Bell's daughter Sally Jefferson Bell and Sally's husband Jesse Scott, a man descended from whites and Native Americans. A number of Isaacs and West's children would later marry into the Hemings family as well. When Isaacs and West began living together, then, they not only presented themselves to Charlottesville as a legitimate family, but they also bolstered an interracial community on Main Street that had been growing since the eighteenth century. Their presence may have brought the size of that community to a critical mass that finally provoked one or more Charlottesville whites to take action against it by striking at its newest and therefore most vulnerable members.(29) It is impossible, however, to discount the significance of Nancy West's improved economic position, which was coterminous with her new living arrangements. Before 1819 she had been marginalized within the Charlottesville community spatially, socially, and economically. West was a free woman of color who owned property and a business, and who carried on a sexual relationship with a white man, but at least she was peripheral to the public gaze. She may have lived just a few blocks from David Isaacs, but her land sat at the edge of town. As late as 1820 her original property, including the structures on it, was valued at only $400, at a time when most lots nearer the courthouse, even those just a block closer, were worth at least three times that amount. Before 1820 Nancy West posed no serious or visible threat, literally or figuratively, to the economic standing of other members of the white community. After that year, however, she not only lived openly as the wife of a white man, but she was accumulating capital and occupying valuable, centrally located real estate alongside other whites. The lot Nancy West purchased on Main Street in 1820 was practically across the street from her original location, but it was worth nearly $1,900, which represented economic strength on a completely different scale than that she had previously enjoyed.(30) For some Charlottesville residents, then, Nancy West and David Isaacs had crossed the boundaries of acceptability in numerous ways--not least of which was economic--and it was time to call them to account for it. The Albemarle County grand jury, however, seemed confused as to how to proceed against West and Isaacs, a confusion that was especially apparent in their failure to specify the precise nature of the charges they wanted the court to bring against the couple. The language of the presentment alleged that the couple violated "the laws of the land," but it contained what appeared to be contradictory accusations. On the one hand, Isaacs and West supposedly had committed the crime of engaging in the "illicit commerce" of a sexual relationship outside of marriage, with the legal implication that they were in violation of anti-fornication statutes. Yet simultaneously, according to the presentment, the offensiveness of their relationship lay in their "cohabitation as man and wife"; that is, acting as if they were married. Given their respective races, this phrasing could be interpreted as an accusation of another crime altogether, namely that of racial intermarriage. In its opinion on West and Isaacs's case delivered in November 1826, the General Court refused to entertain such vagaries of the presentment. In a case it had only recently decided, the court held that a single act of fornication could not be prosecuted at common law without other circumstances which in and of themselves would qualify as misdemeanors.(31) If, for example, a couple had sexual intercourse in public, the court argued that it "would be indeed an enormous indecency, and so grossly offensive and shocking to the feelings of society, as to entitle it to severe legal animadversion." Such circumstances, though, did not attend to West and Isaacs's case, and the Albemarle County grand jury never claimed that they had. The General Court suspected that the grand jury had included language about the couple living together to intimate that by sharing a household, the couple made their offense against society particularly outrageous. The grand jury presumably meant to imply that, insofar as the nature of their relationship had become so obvious, West and Isaacs had "aggravate[d] its malignity." For their part, however, the justices of the General Court felt that the facts that the couple "occupied the same chamber, ate the same board, and discharged towards each other the numerous common offices of husband and wife" were "in themselves harmless and inoffensive." In short, the court determined that a couple living together as husband and wife could not be said to be acting contrary to public morals. At least at common law, anti-fornication statutes could be used to punish flagrant and public acts of sexual indiscretion, but not (regardless of a lack of formal validation from the state) a marriage-style relationship. If the Albemarle County grand jury wanted to try and charge Nancy West and David Isaacs with violating the state law against fornication, which technically had nothing to do with the egregiousness of the circumstances surrounding the sexual behavior, it could try. Under the presentment before the court, however, the justices ruled that the couple had committed no recognizable crime.(32) In part, the leniency shown to West and Isaacs can be explained by the specifics of their case as it related to the judicial interpretation of the common law, the principles of which easily gave the General Court a defensible rationale for not punishing an interracial couple guiltless of either flagrantly fornicating or of being legally married. The Albemarle County grand jury badly bungled its presentment against the couple, partially because the white community as a whole had failed to do anything about West and Isaacs for so long. Whites in Charlottesville had allowed the couple to carry on their relationship unchallenged so long as the couple did not pretend it was legitimate. Once Isaacs and West did suggest legitimacy by their new living arrangement, however, it was too late to find a court that would do anything about it. Also, while the presentment ostensibly attacked violations of both racial and sexual mores, it effectively attacked neither. To claim there had been a criminal violation of the racial order meant acknowledging the semblance of marriage in which West and Isaacs lived, but to attack the violation of the sexual order required challenging that very acknowledgment. In other words, Nancy West and David Isaacs either could be married or could be fornicators, but they could not be both. The General Court, presented with this legal and social conundrum, chose to leave the relationship as it was. Still, even though the General Court rejected the validity of the charge against West and Isaacs on reasonable grounds, the couple had escaped mostly on a technicality. In other cases involving interracial sex, high courts across the South did sometimes demonstrate a willingness to override common law traditions to express their own or the community's disgust. Had sex across the color line truly appalled the justices of the General Court, surely they could have broadened the interpretation of common law to envelop the Charlottesville case and thereby closed the loophole that enabled even the most thinly veiled interracial sexual relationships to go unchecked. That they refused to do so in part suggests a judicial lack of motivation to take action against sexual activity between white men and black women in Virginia, especially when conducted entirely in private. More specifically, there were relationships like that of Isaacs and West all across Virginia, some of which surely involved more prominent individuals than a Jewish merchant from a small hinterland town. Had the justices deemed interracial sex behind closed doors susceptible to prosecution in this instance, no one could predict how many other white men might be exposed to similar charges.(33) The decision of the General Court still begs the question of why the grand jury did not present the couple as being in violation of some specific statute. Surely a statutory case, either for fornication or for interracial marriage, might have had a better chance of success. Prosecuting the couple for violating the statute against interracial marriage would have done the most severe damage to West, Isaacs, and their family together. In 1822 the white party to an interracial marriage faced six months in jail and a $30 fine, and any member of the clergy performing a marriage ceremony between people of different races had to pay a fine of $250.(34) But proving a charge of interracial marriage here probably would have proved exceedingly difficult. There is no evidence West and Isaacs ever married, and given the potentially severe legal repercussions of such an act it would have been foolish for them to have done so. Additionally, their marriage would have been a violation not only of state law but of Jewish law as well, since Nancy West was not Jewish. It is worth observing that, even if the couple had been married, ambiguities surrounding Nancy West's status might have made it difficult to bring a case of a racial nature against her and Isaacs. To be defined as mulatto under Virginia law in 1822, a person had to have at least "one-quarter" African ancestry.(35) Nancy West's father, Thomas West, was white. To use the fractional language of the time, his daughter therefore would have been, at most, "half-black." But perhaps she was even less than that. Whites in her community certainly appear to have known her ancestry, and in numerous documents she is described as a "free mulatto woman." Yet when she registered as a free person of color with the county court in 1837, she was described as being of "light complexion."(36) Her brother James legally married a white woman, Susannah Harlow, in Albemarle County in 1794, suggesting that his (and Nancy's) mother's racial ancestry may have been mixed enough for her children with a white man to become legally white.(37) Had a case of interracial marriage been brought against West and Isaacs, then, proving conclusively that West fell within the guidelines of the racial definition statute making her a mulatto, while possible, might have been complicated. Once the "blood" aspect of her racial identity became an admissible legal question, then how the white community treated her would have played a role in further determining her status. At least two of her children were educated with white children in local schools, and one local man testified in a separate lawsuit that her nieces and nephews were "esteemed, received and accepted as white men, were educated with white children and required to perform and did perform Militia and other duties, required only of white men, and allowed to intermarry without objection on the score of blood, with white women."(38) Perhaps a case could be made that Nancy West, too, was effectively a white woman. In antebellum Virginia, race may have been fixed according to law, but it was far more malleable in practice. It has become a standard trope of historical treatments of race that the category itself is a fiction, constructed and reconstructed socially, legally, culturally, economically, and in a multitude of other ways. While the limitations of the public record make it difficult to speculate about how Nancy West and her family envisioned their own racial identities, West's color, ancestry, and local standing all would have complicated the possibility of using race against her in a prosecution for racial intermarriage.(39) Proving a statutory case of fornication, on the other hand, should have been relatively easy and straightforward. That the couple had had sexual intercourse was evident, and even the General Court conceded that, given the evidence presented by the grand jury, "the existence of a statutory offence may be inferred."(40) It is not entirely clear why the Albemarle County grand jury chose not to pursue a charge based on the infraction of the anti-fornication statute. Possibly it was just a tactical legal mistake, but perhaps the grand jury wanted to use its presentment to express a broader sense of moral outrage than was suggested by the language of the fornication statute, which included nothing specifically about race. From this perspective, trying to bring West and Isaacs up on charges was less about punishing them than about publicly rebuking and humiliating them with a reminder that although they might consider their family legitimate, the white community did not. Ultimately, even if West and Isaacs had been found guilty of violating anti-fornication laws, their punishment would have been mild, just a ten-dollar fine.(41) Despite the revulsion that white Virginians expressed publicly toward sex across the color line, there was very little the law could do to stop it. Since West and Isaacs were not married and there were no laws specifying penalties for interracial sexual acts of any sort, no one really could prevent the couple from living together and building a family--unless the community was literally willing to run them out of town. When confronted with interracial sexual relationships, however, whites in Charlottesville, like whites in general across the state before the Civil War, seem to have had no inclination to take such extreme action.(42) Even if some people were so inclined, West and Isaacs probably had enough support from other members of the white community to prevent it. More than anything else, the charges against Nancy West and David Isaacs demonstrate that their family was always vulnerable to legal harassment and that its legitimacy could always at least be called into question. The case brought against them was mostly a psychological ploy, intended to anger and instill insecurity precisely at a time when West, Isaacs, and their children were trying to build a new sense of familial intimacy by sharing a household. Ironically, with its decision the General Court effectively, if not legally, recognized the relationship of David Isaacs and Nancy West as what we might call a common-law marriage. No statutory case of fornication was ever made against them, but living under the duress of pending criminal charges for nearly five years may well have wrought psychological damage against the couple and their family nonetheless. Surely David Isaacs and Nancy West knew that attempting to live together and establish adjacent businesses openly as husband and wife might arouse the hostility of some of their neighbors and possibly even invite criminal prosecution. The question remains why they made such a move despite this awareness. Certainly Isaacs and West wanted to live together with their children because they were a family. Moreover, immediate practical concerns may have played a role, since David Isaacs's house was much bigger than Nancy West's, which may have been very cramped with so many children--at least two of whom, Jane and Thomas, were themselves actually adults--trying to live in it along with their mother. In fact, between 1802 and 1833, David Isaacs added one-story wings onto either side of his home, no doubt in part to make room for the increasing number of residents.(43) Yet it is clear that the couple also had long-term concerns about their family's economic stability and security, concerns that could be alleviated considerably through their new arrangement. Solidifying their relationship as domestic partners was part of a conscious effort to strengthen the security of their respective--and subsequently, their collective--finances. That they did so successfully solely because of the illegality of their relationship could only have antagonized their white accusers even more. By 1820, if David Isaacs's economic position was established, it was not necessarily stable. As a merchant, if he were smart and careful he could prosper, but the assumption of debt and extensions of credit that accompanied his enterprise also entailed a great deal of risk. Misfortune or carelessness could produce financial ruin. David Isaacs was very familiar with the vagaries of the market, having sued at least seven different people for debt between 1810 and 1822 alone.(44) However, in addition to the uncertainties inherent to his business, David Isaacs faced other potential threats to his financial stability. When his brother Isaiah died in 1806, he had left behind not only his estate of real and personal property but also four young children, for whom David Isaacs took primary responsibility. Although two of Isaiah's children had died by the early 1820s, David Isaacs's entanglement of his own financial affairs with those of his deceased brother and his surviving niece and nephew made his economic situation even more precarious than that of other merchants.(45) With no bankruptcy laws in Virginia in the 1820s, what a man in David Isaacs's position needed perhaps more than anything else was a form of insurance--some sort of knowledge that he had somewhere to turn for support and assistance should catastrophe befall him. As a free person of color, Nancy West also needed security above anything else. In some ways, by 1819 she was fortunate. Both capital and land were typically beyond the reach of free blacks in Virginia, most of whom lived in dire poverty at the very bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Free women of color in particular confronted severely restricted employment opportunities, but throughout her life, Nancy West had been able to rely on white male patrons--her father, Thomas Bell, David Isaacs--to help shield her from trying economic circumstances. Still, her relationship with Isaacs was tenuous to the extent that it was not recognized by law, meaning that she could be assured of Isaacs's protection only so long as he lived. Despite having some of her own resources, had David Isaacs died anytime before 1819, Nancy West would have been left very heavily dependent on his estate for survival. The debts inevitably accrued by Isaacs as a merchant and as an executor would have to be paid in the event of his death. There was therefore no guarantee that West could rely on inheritance for financial stability.(46) Nancy West's financial interests, in turn, were inextricable from those of her children, for if she could not survive economically, neither could they. Free women of color frequently had to rear their families alone, since they generally outnumbered free black men and were usually too poor to purchase enslaved spouses. Again, West was in a privileged position in this regard so long as David Isaacs lived, but in 1819 he was nearly sixty years old and had five children with West who were still under age thirteen. Jane Isaacs, the couple's oldest daughter, was twenty-three and a milliner, enabling her to assist her mother both financially and as a secondary caregiver if necessary, but without Isaacs's support the entire family would have to struggle like so many other free families of color.(47) In addition to their individual interests, then, David Isaacs and Nancy West shared collective concerns regarding their children. Together they faced the anxieties of continuing to support their offspring until they all reached maturity, as well as of guaranteeing the security of their children's futures as they came of age.(48) The structure of Isaacs and West's relationship after 1819 nicely served their mutual financial interests and concerns. For David Isaacs, having Nancy West by his side both domestically and economically meant that he had some financial security should disaster strike. He could rely on her as an outside source of capital to vouch for him, provide security in case of debt, and even support him if he went completely bankrupt. Living, working, and owning land alongside David Isaacs, meanwhile, operated to Nancy West's distinct advantage as well. She not only gained access to greater wealth and potential income, but, more significantly, to some degree of independence. If anything were to happen to David Isaacs after these maneuvers, Nancy West was now assured of having sufficient means to support herself. This improved financial relationship also served the interests of the couple's children. If Isaacs lost his money or died or both, West was in a better position to support the couple's children as they grew, and by helping her to increase her wealth and landholdings over time, it allowed West to pass some or all of that property on to her children as they got older and needed financial footholds of their own. Throughout her life Nancy West always acquired land from members of her own family or that of David Isaacs, and Isaacs himself repeatedly facilitated West's economic mobility by actively helping to ensure that she had significant resources independent of his own wealth. The lot West bought in downtown Charlottesville in 1820 was, like the property she procured in 1803, land that had originally belonged to her father. Thomas West had rented the lot to Isaiah Isaacs during his lifetime and bequeathed it in his will to James Henry West's four children, each of whom held one-quarter interest. Between 1817 and 1819 David Isaacs purchased three-quarters of the lot from Nancy West's nieces and nephews. Just over a year later, Isaacs sold his entire share to Nancy West for $600, who herself purchased the final quarter from her niece Susannah in 1823.(49) By the time West bought Isaacs's portion of the property in 1820, she had sold her land on the outskirts of town to a free man of color named William Spinner for exactly $600, but there had been legal complications in the exchange. Consequently, she had not yet received any payment for that land, and would not until 1829.(50) She was earning her own money as a baker, but it still seems unlikely that West would have had $600 saved from her own income alone to pay Isaacs for the land. Instead, it appears that David Isaacs purchased most of the land in pieces, specifically for the purpose of then transferring it to Nancy West, with her purchase money then either given or loaned by him. At the very least, it was an unusual exchange, one made much easier for West by Isaacs's intervention. In his will, despite the fact that he had already sold the land legally to West, Isaacs made a specific point of relinquishing "all the right, title, interest, claim or demand" he had in the plot. Presumably this was to be certain that no one would question the land transfer or suggest that Nancy West's land was in reality still owned in any way by Isaacs or paid for with his funds. It was important that anyone who asked know that this property belonged exclusively and entirely to Nancy West.(51) In 1824 West paid $400 for the northern half of another lot, number 19, directly across the street from the land she had bought in 1820. By this time it is certainly possible that she had enough money saved both from her business and from rents and profits collected on her property to conduct the transaction entirely on her own accord.(52) Still, David Isaacs mediated this exchange as well, since the seller was his nephew Hays Isaacs, for whom David continued to be partially responsible as executor of his brother's will.(53) David Isaacs no longer needed to be a financial backer for West, but this familial connection gave her privileged access to a land purchase she might not have had otherwise. Finally, in 1827 West purchased another Charlottesville property, lot 25, directly from Isaacs, who had bought it from a member of the Taliaferro family, who had purchased it from the estate of Thomas West.(54) David Isaacs did not have to sell land to Nancy West at all. But the couple astutely realized that dividing accumulated wealth between them ultimately was more stable and secure than simply aggrandizing Isaacs's estate. The only other time Nancy West ever came into land ownership was when David Isaacs bequeathed her in his will partial interest in his property, some of which she eventually purchased outright from his estate.(55) Obviously, every free family, white or black, worried about the state of its finances, and many of both races kept property ownership within their extended families. In this respect there was nothing especially unusual about David Isaacs and Nancy West.(56) The couple was unusual, however, because even as antebellum Virginia law deprived them of an official marriage, they were not only effectively married but the law gave them an ability to stabilize their finances and hedge against economic peril that few white couples could ever have. In most Virginia families, married women had practically no authority to hold or dispose of property until 1877. Instead, by law every wife became a feme covert, meaning that upon marriage a woman surrendered ownership of all her personal and real property to her husband. A husband could not sell his wife's real estate entirely at will, but he was entitled to use it as he chose and keep all profits derived from it. That same property, though, could then be lost by both parties to a marriage in the event that creditors came calling. One of the few ways for a married woman to retain any property rights was to have a trust established for her in equity by someone else (usually by her father)--but almost invariably a trust came with conditions that precluded the full range of its use. The legalities of trusts were so complicated that, over time, the equity system yielded increased litigation.(57) Yet because of the unusual nature of their relationship, Nancy West and David Isaacs effectively circumvented and subverted the restrictions of the Virginia property laws. West could never claim a dower right in Isaacs's estate as a legally married woman might, but since she and Isaacs were not married she eluded the restrictions of coverture. Even more valuable than a dowry, perhaps, she could own her own property outright without interference or conditions on its use and thus did not need the protection for women that a dowry provided. Race and gender barriers in antebellum Virginia may have limited Nancy West's ability to accumulate real estate and other forms of wealth, but, with regard to property rights, Virginia law actually made Nancy West's position stronger precisely by the means it attempted to restrict her. She was a free woman of color who, specifically because she was "married" (in fact but not in law) to a white man, had more economic independence, strength, and mobility than nearly any married white woman. Furthermore, while white families could protect a married woman's property from creditors through equity, the delimited conditions of its use restricted the free flow of capital both for families and the larger society, and almost always precluded strategies of cooperation that might otherwise maximize a couple's and their family's economic potential through more flexible and collective uses of capital. Nancy West and David Isaacs were not bound by any such fetters. Many white couples, in fact, may have wished they could have enjoyed the economic dynamics of this relationship. In fact, it may have been especially galling to them that West and Isaacs could structure their financial lives so advantageously even as (and, ironically, because) they lived and worked together but stayed unmarried.(58) West and Isaacs's financial arrangements would be put to the test even before the General Court handed down its opinion in the state's case against the couple. In the spring of 1826 a number of Charlottesville merchants sued Isaacs for debts they believed he owed them in his capacity as executor of his brother's will. By the mid-1830s over half a dozen Charlottesville business owners sued Isaacs in three different lawsuits that dragged on through the courts for twenty years, past the time of Isaacs's death. As the suits progressed, the various plaintiffs demonstrated their willingness to use West and Isaacs's relationship against them in order to head off their defense. That they tried at all demonstrates again how white men in conflict might use evidence of an interracial sexual relationship instrumentally, as a means of attack in pursuit of a larger goal. That they failed reinforces the notion that while whites might have some success in harassing an interracial couple by using the law, they had greater difficulty in using it to produce more tangible consequences. When David Isaacs's nephew Hays Isaacs turned twenty-one in February 1824, he came into his full inheritance from his father Isaiah. It seems he celebrated by going on a spending spree, mostly in Charlottesville. Local merchants and tradesmen familiar with both the young man and his financial situation willingly extended him credit, and Hays accumulated debts at numerous establishments totaling well over $1,000. Unfortunately, Hays was a financially inexperienced and irresponsible young man, more comfortable with buying and spending than with saving and accounting. By the end of 1824 some of the Charlottesville merchants tried to collect, only to have Hays refuse to pay, claiming he had no money. Nimrod Bramham and William Bibb consequently sued him for debt in Richmond, where he had also purchased some items from that branch of Bramham and Bibb's mercantile firm. In March 1826 a court in Henrico County ruled in favor of the plaintiff, at which point Hays Isaacs promptly left Virginia and never returned.(59) Just a month later Joel Yancey, another Charlottesville merchant, filed suit in chancery in Albemarle County against David Isaacs. Yancey believed that David Isaacs, as the executor of Isaiah Isaacs's estate, still held a large sum of money for Hays Isaacs. Since Hays owed Yancey more than $400 but was unable or unwilling to pay his debts (and for that matter, could not even be located), Yancey's suit maintained that David Isaacs ought to be held responsible for paying his nephew's creditors. In June 1826 the merchant John R. Jones, who owned a store directly across the street from Isaacs and Nancy West, filed a lawsuit similar to Yancey's, and their cases were eventually joined together. In 1830 Bramham and Bibb, along with five other men to whom Hays owed money, sued David Isaacs as well.(60) John R. Jones filed a statement that detailed his individual claims but also spoke to the complaints all the creditors had about how Isaacs had administered his nephew's inheritance. Hays Isaacs had signed away to David Isaacs all claims to his inheritance very soon after he came of age. Jones argued, however, that Isaacs had hurried his nephew--who in any event was "totally without experience" in analyzing financial accounts--through the release process, even paying an attorney $100 just to get Hays's signature quickly. David Isaacs, Jones alleged, had mishandled the accounting for his brother's estate and wanted to procure his nephew's release "for the purpose of closing the door to any investigation" into the accounts. Furthermore, Jones claimed that David Isaacs knew that Hays had amassed substantial debts. By getting Hays to relinquish his rights the elder Isaacs hoped to avoid having to fulfill his nephew's obligations and instead keep what remained of Hays's inheritance himself. Jones demanded that Hays's debts to him be paid from David Isaacs's accounts.(61) Isaacs responded in March 1827. First, he argued that he had never wanted to be his brother's executor at all. The other men named as executors had "declined incurring the trouble and responsibility." As Isaiah's only brother and closest relative David Isaacs felt a "sacred duty" to take the job on himself, but he claimed he "indulged no hope or expectation" that it would be "either safe or profitable to him." Isaacs further claimed that he had never cheated his nephew out of what rightfully belonged to him. He explained that Hays "was and had been unsettled and itenerant [sic]" and was considering leaving Virginia when he turned twenty-one. In addition, the accounts of Hays's inheritance suggested to both uncle and nephew that when Hays came of age, the amount being held for him would be roughly equivalent to bills that still had to be paid and to money owed David Isaacs in his capacity as executor. Consequently, they had mutually agreed that Hays would release his claims and let his uncle work out the details. David Isaacs insisted that the $100 paid to his attorney was for services accumulated over time and not merely to obtain Hays's signature, as Jones's suit alleged. Furthermore, he had wanted to make a final settlement of Hays' s accounts because he feared he might become responsible for the young man's future entanglements and possibly suffer "loss and, probably, great injustice." Rather than using any "undue means" to procure Hays's release, trying to swindle his nephew, or avoid investigation, David Isaacs contended that he had tried to end his financial connection to Hays precisely so he would never have to face the kind of lawsuit he now confronted. So far as he was concerned, his dealings with Hays Isaacs and his inheritance were complete, and he maintained that he could not be held responsible for any additional debts Hays had incurred.(62) Witness testimony in the case centered on two issues. The first was Hays Isaacs's alleged incompetence concerning financial matters. V. W. Southall, David Isaacs's lawyer, testified that Hays had seemed satisfied with his uncle's handling of his accounts. Although he did not know Hays very well, Southall believed Hays seemed capable of making his own financial decisions, but he conceded that Hays did not "take time to examine the items composing the account." The merchant Isaac Raphael testified that Hays would not do blindly whatever David Isaacs told him to, but that Hays was also not "capable of investigating complicated accounts and of making judicious contracts about his property." Daniel Keith, Charlottesville's constable, lived one block from David Isaacs and was asked whether he thought Hays capable of handling money or property. Keith answered, "I knew him well. And think him incapable of managing either." Keith also found him generally to be "foolishly extravagant."(63) As the plaintiffs' lawyer probed these white community members for their assessments of Hays Isaacs, he also hammered away at David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West and their daughter Jane. Opie Norris was asked if Nancy West and Jane Isaacs were "both members of the family" of David Isaacs, "the first in the character of wife, and the second as daughter." Norris, giving an honest but disingenuous answer, probably in an effort to protect his friends, replied that Nancy and Jane lived in Isaacs's house but that he did not know for certain "that Nancy West is the wife of the defendant Isaacs or Jane Isaacs the daughter--only from public rumor." Daniel Keith, meanwhile, said that he knew Nancy and Jane and that "Nancy lives with [David Isaacs] as wife and Jane is called the daughter." Keith, Norris, and Isaac Raphael all also testified that they believed that around the time Hays turned twenty-one Nancy West had purchased his house and land in Charlottesville and that both she and Jane might have received some slaves from him.(64) David Isaacs and Nancy West had had their fornication charge dismissed just six months prior to the witness testimony in the Yancey and Jones lawsuit, only to find themselves confronted with an antebellum catch-22. Their original legal troubles had them trying to answer the accusation that they were not a legitimate family. Now Yancey and Jones argued that lsaacs's financial transactions were of questionable legality because he and Nancy West were in fact a family. The point of clarifying that David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West was one of husband and wife was never overtly made in the case papers, but the implication was obvious: David Isaacs had taken advantage of his unusual relationship with Nancy West to acquire real and personal property from his nephew for himself. By making West the purchaser, the argument went, Isaacs was trying to avoid the obvious charge of a conflict of interest that might arise had he purchased the property directly, but since West was effectively if not legally Isaacs's wife he could still enjoy the benefits from its use. Similarly, while Jane Isaacs nominally owned some of the slaves once belonging to Hays Isaacs, in reality David Isaacs had merely boosted his own holdings through his daughter's ownership. These transparent ruses, Yancey and Jones suggested, were clear abuses of David Isaacs's power as executor of Isaiah Isaacs's estate. He had exploited his inexperienced nephew's finances for his own personal aggrandizement. It is impossible to know how well or how poorly Hays Isaacs understood his financial affairs or, for that matter, how much of an effort David Isaacs made to keep his nephew informed. At the very least, numerous aspects of the situation looked suspicious. David Isaacs's own lawyer admitted that Hays hardly looked over his uncle's accounts before relinquishing his claims. That Nancy West and Jane Isaacs purchased land and may have procured slaves from Hays in December 1824, just as Bramham and Bibb were filing a suit against the young man in Richmond, suggests perhaps that David Isaacs and Nancy West indeed colluded to protect Hays's assets from being lost to pay off his debts. These transactions were certainly a conflict of interest for David Isaacs, since even if they were undertaken at some level to protect Hays, any economic improvements in the lives of Nancy West and Jane Isaacs represented improvements in David Isaacs's life as well. Jones and Yancey had a point when they drew attention to the peculiarities of the Isaacs-West family finances.(65) David Isaacs's own defense offered only weak responses to the accusations made against him. Undoubtedly, he was being honest when he said he wanted to be rid of any financial responsibility for his nephew. Hays's reckless spending placed David Isaacs at enormous risk, and we have already seen how greatly the elder Isaacs valued security. Ultimately, though, David Isaacs's only substantive response to the charges of Hays's creditors was a demand that the letter of the law be upheld. Regardless of what others might think of Hays's fiscal capacities, David Isaacs argued, he had never coerced Hays into signing anything. He and Hays Isaacs had a legally binding agreement between them, and no third party ought to have the authority to challenge its legitimacy. As David Isaacs pointed out in his response to Bramham and Bibb's lawsuit against him, elaborating on an argument made in his response to Yancey and Jones, Hays had never attempted to retract his agreement to the arrangement between them, nor had Hays ever intimated that he believed he might have made a mistake. Consequently, David Isaacs claimed he could not "see the principle of equity which authorizes other and third persons to impugn or question the right and authority of a legatee or distributee ... after their arrival to age, upon considerations sufficient to themselves, to release and acquit an executor or guardian of any claim."(66) The Albemarle County Circuit Superior Court of Law and Chancery ruled against David Isaacs on May 16, 1834. Based on its own readings of Isaacs's accounts, the court found that he still owed Hays over $2,500 of his inheritance from Isaiah Isaacs. It ordered that the young man's debts be paid from this sum and that David Isaacs turn over to Hays directly what remained. Essentially, the court accepted the claims of Yancey, Jones, Bramham and Bibb, and Hays's other creditors, all of whose cases the court ruled on together. Hays Isaacs's release to his uncle was technically legal, but the court ruled it could not be construed to have a negative impact on any parties aside from David and Hays. David Isaacs, the court agreed, had procured his nephew's release "as a protection against the claims of the creditors." Additionally, the court took David Isaacs to task for his handling of his nephew's estate, suggesting he had done an injustice to his nephew for his own convenience and probably his own gain. David was not guilty of any criminal activity, but the court asserted that Hays's release was "not founded on an actual settlement, in which every thing is explained; but obtained, as it would seem, with the view of preventing the necessity of such a settlement." The court mentioned nothing about David Isaacs's relationship with Nancy West or the financial transactions between her and Hays Isaacs.(67) David Isaacs immediately looked to appeal the court's verdict. In order to do so, however, he had to have someone post security equivalent to at least double the amount of the judgment issued against him. If Isaacs lost his appeal and then had insufficient funds to fulfill the court's decision, whoever posted security for him would be obliged to pay. Nancy West was available to assist, as was Jane, who now went by Jane West after having married her cousin Nathaniel H. West in 1832. On June 27, 1834, Nancy, Jane, and Nathaniel West all entered into a bond with David Isaacs, Hays Isaacs, and his creditors. The Wests collectively pledged over $7,000 as security, the entirety of their estates. Once again, David Isaacs and Nancy West proved their relationship provided them with financial strength and a degree of mutual reliance unavailable to others. Yet because they derived their strength only from being inextricably connected to one another, their fortunes still rose and fell together. Here, the Wests' gesture entailed enormous risk.(68) The same day that Isaacs filed his appeal, Hays Isaacs's creditors jointly filed a bill of exceptions with the Albemarle court claiming that the security posted by the Wests was invalid. First, they argued that Nancy West, though a "woman of colour," was "the wife de facto of David Isaacs ... now living, and for many years having lived with the said David Isaacs as his wife, and which connection is notorious in the neighborhood in which they reside." Second, they claimed that any property West claimed to own in reality belonged to Isaacs. She may have purchased the land herself, but they alleged she did so entirely "with the funds of the said David Isaacs." The creditors further tacked on the assertions that Jane West could not enter into a valid contract because she was a feme covert as a result of her marriage to Nathaniel West, and that Nathaniel West, in turn, was himself "notoriously insolvent" and owned no property at all. Taken as a whole, the intent of these objections was to head off David Isaacs's appeal of the judgment against him altogether by accusing him of trying to post security for himself, since all the pledged money really belonged to him. Being from Charlottesville, Hays's creditors knew that David Isaacs's most realistic sources of sufficient security lay in his own family. If they could demonstrate a reason for the court to reject the legitimacy of the Wests' security, David might well be unable to find another person to put up any money in their place. He would have to start paying off his nephew's debts immediately.(69) Nathaniel and Jane West paid no land taxes in Charlottesville in 1834 and could have only contributed little to David lsaacs's security. The crux of the matter, then, was whether Nancy West actually had any estate legally distinc

Abolitionism, 1816-1846 SOLOMON NORTHUP: TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE (1853), EXCERPT

Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York, was kidnapped into slavery in 1841 and spent 12 years in captivity. His autobiographical memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, recounts his kidnapping and life as a slave. Northup's chronicle of his experience of slave life in the antebellum American South offers a glimpse into the expansion of plantation slavery into the Deep South and its reliance on the domestic slave trade. Some may find the language in this entry offensive* Next day many customers called to examine Freeman's "new lot" [of slaves]. The latter gentleman was very loquacious, dwelling at much length upon our several good points and qualities. He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave's back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale. One old gentleman, who said he wanted a coachman, appeared to take a fancy to me. From his conversation with Freeman, I learned he was a resident of the city [New Orleans]. I very much desired that he would buy me, because I conceived it would not be difficult to make my escape from New Orleans on some Northern vessel. Freeman asked him $1500 for me. The old gentleman insisted it was too much, as times were very hard. Freeman, however, declared that I was sound and healthy, of a good constitution, and intelligent. He made it a point to enlarge upon my musical attainments. The old gentleman argued quite adroitly that there was nothing extraordinary about the ******, and finally, to my regret, went out, saying he would call again. During the day, however, a number of sales were made. David and Caroline were purchased together by a Natchez planter. They left us, grinning broadly, and in the most happy state of mind, caused by the fact of their not being separated. Lethe was sold to a planter of Baton Rouge, her eyes flashing with anger as she was led away. The same man also purchased Randall. The little fellow was made to jump, and run across the floor, and perform many other feats, exhibiting his activity and condition. All the time the trade was going on, Eliza [the mother] was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy him unless he also bought herself and Emily. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived. The man answered that he could not afford it, and then Eliza burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. Freeman turned round to her, savagely, with his whip in his uplifted hand, ordering her to stop her noise, or he would flog her. He would not have such work—such sniveling; and unless she ceased that minute, he would take her to the yard and give her a hundred lashes. Yes, he would take the nonsense out of her pretty quick—if he didn't, might he be d—d. Eliza shrunk before him, and tried to wipe away her tears, but it was all in vain. She wanted to be with her children, she said, the little time she had to live. All the frowns and threats of Freeman could not wholly silence the afflicted mother. She kept on begging and beseeching them, most piteously, not to separate the three. Over and over again she told them how she loved her boy. A great many times she repeated her former promises—how very faithful and obedient she would be; how hard she would labor day and night, to the last moment of her life, if he would only buy them all together. But it was of no avail; the man could not afford it. The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall must go alone. Then Eliza ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her—all the while her tears falling in the boy's face like rain. *Disclaimer When reading this document, it is important to remember the context. Although some of the language used may be offensive to the modern reader, we have not edited or removed objectionable material from the texts in order that they remain an accurate reflection of the attitudes of their time and place.

The Emergence of Free Black Communities, 1800-1816 SLAVE RESISTANCE AND REBELLION

Throughout the Americas, forms of slave resistance, from rebellion to revolution, articulated the intolerable conditions of enslavement and asserted the rights of slaves to be free. Word of such revolts spread to other slave communities, demonstrating the influence of such knowledge on other rebellions and revolts. Rebellion includes a range of responses, both covert and open. Hidden and indirect forms of rebellion included day-to-day resistance, such as work slowdowns, deliberately poor work performance, attacks on property, the creation of slave cultures, and literacy practices. Methods of open defiance included refusals to work, demands for concessions, rejections of orders, threats, violence, escape, and revolt. Slaves' knowledge of revolts in other regions and countries enhanced their own determination to rebel and seek liberation. Haitian Revolution Haitian revolutionaries execute French soldiers The slave uprising of Saint-Domingue, beginning in 1791, was the largest and most successful slave revolt in world history. The insurgency was on a massive scale unprecedented in the Atlantic world, and by 1792, the colony was engulfed in revolution, due in part to the arming of slaves by conflicting factions of whites and free colored people with various alliances and goals. Saint-Domingue had half a million enslaved Africans, comprising 80% of the population. The 1793 emancipation in Saint-Domingue was unusual in that it provided immediate emancipation and granted the former slaves citizenship as well as freedom. Toussaint Louverture became the leader of Saint-Domingue after emancipation, and in 1804, the new republic of Haiti signed its Declaration of Independence. The Haitian Revolution was a significant example for slaves abroad and a source of fear to all slave owners. Information about the Haitian Revolution made its way to slaves in the United States despite slave owners' attempts to control information that might encourage insurgencies. U.S. political leaders advised against the public discussion of slave revolts, but they could not suppress the messages about freedom taught by the revolutions in Haiti, France, and the United States. Major Rebellions in the U.S. South The presence of Haitian refugees in Virginia also contributed to slave unrest. In 1800, Gabriel Prosser, a literate blacksmith knowledgeable about revolutionary political currents, planned to capture Richmond, Virginia. He gathered 900 people together at one time, but the conspiracy unravelled due to a torrential thunderstorm. Prosser was reported captured, and, along with approximately 30 fellow rebels, was hanged. Several other slave rebellions in the following decades became linchpin moments for slaves working against the system that oppressed them. Capture of Nat TurnerIn 1822, Denmark Vesey conspired to take control of Charleston, Virginia, ultimately gathering 600 to 900 supporters. Vesey, a literate carpenter and sailor, had been inspired by the Haitian Revolution, and he had traveled widely in the Caribbean. Although able to buy his own way to freedom in 1800, Vesey was not allowed to buy his family members out of slavery. Vesey decided to take action when white people closed down his church in 1821. But the tremendous number and diversity of recruits resulted in an information leak that halted his efforts to capture arms and ammunition and then take Charleston, and Vesey was arrested, along with other leaders. Another major slave revolt was organized by Nat Turner in 1831 in Virginia. Turner gathered 60 to 80 men and set forward to the ammunition stores of Southampton. More than 50 white people were killed along the way, and vigilante retaliation by angry whites resulted in the death of more than 200 black people, regardless of their connection with Nat Turner. Federal troops were sent in to prevent additional slaves from joining Turner's Revolt. After escaping capture, Turner surrendered. His final statements, expressing his beliefs and reminding his captors of how Jesus Christ had been crucified, became famous. Because Turner had been a preacher and could read, slave states tightened their laws against literacy and restricted black preachers. The fear that Turner's and Vesey's rebellions engendered brought long-lasting reprisals against slaves. New laws made the manumission or emancipation of slaves nearly impossible. Slaveholders increased regulations of free blacks, and they rejected any situations that would increase the number of free black people anywhere in the nation. Southern state lawmakers instituted curfews for slaves and free blacks and forbade slaves to assemble together for any reason, even religious. Heightened tensions contributed to slave owners' hysteria about the possibility of slave revolts, and slave owners sought greater political power in order to protect their investments in the bodies of slaves. Methods of Resistance While slaves who risked their lives to join revolutionary movements challenging slavery became important examples to other slaves, there were other methods of resistance. Fugitive slaves operated individually or in clusters to create secret patterns of everyday resistance, such as poor work performance, misleading the slave owners, and gaining skills of which their masters were unaware. Slaves developed a range of ways to undermine the slavery system. Ultimately, self-removal from the slavery system was an important method for slaves regaining ownership of themselves. Running away to a place where slavery was not legal was a common strategy. The border states between slave and free states—Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, and Delaware—had even more runaway attempts than the Deep South. Escape disguises and methods were numerous and diverse, with slaves masquerading as free blacks or as whites, men posing as women, or women posing as men. Most runaways set out alone or with only a few others. Slave owners' advertisements for runaway slaves described them in ways that reveal important details about the fugitives, such as skills in trade; the ability to read, write, and speak other languages; appearance; and attempts to reach family members.