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Edmund Morgan Slavery and Freedom Analysis

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Published: Mar 14, 2024

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Preserving American Freedom

The evolution of american liberties in fifty documents.

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Liberty, diversity, and slavery: the beginnings of american freedom, freedombox 8328.jpg.

Gold box by Clares LeRoux, 1735, given to Alexander Hamilton, Esq., for his defense of freedom of the press in the trial of Peter Zenger. Historical Society of Pennsylvania Treasures Collection (Collection 978), X-88.

The United States of America has a reputation as a beacon of freedom and diversity from the colonial period of its history. From the beginning, however, Americans' freedoms were tied to a mixture of religious and ethnic affiliations that privileged some inhabitants of North America over others. Although European ideas of liberty set the tone for what was possible, those liberties looked somewhat different in colonial North America, where indigenous and African peoples and cultures also had some influence. The result was greater freedom for some and unprecedented slavery and dispossession for others, making colonial America a society of greater diversity—for better and for worse—than Europe.

America's indigenous traditions of immigration and freedom created the context that made European colonization possible. Since time immemorial, the original inhabitants of the Americas were accustomed to dealing with strangers. They forged alliances and exchange networks, accepted political refugees, and permitted people in need of land and protection to settle in territories that they controlled but could share. No North American society was cut off from the world or completely autonomous. Thus, there was no question about establishing ties with the newcomers arriving from Europe. Initially arriving in small numbers, bearing valuable items to trade, and offering added protection from enemies, these Europeans could, it seemed, strengthen indigenous communities. They were granted rights to use certain stretches of land, much in the way that other Native American peoples in need would have been, especially in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania. However, Europeans, and all they brought with them—disease, beliefs regarding private property, ever more immigrants, and, occasionally, ruthless violence—undermined indigenous liberty. When Native Americans contested this, wars erupted—wars they could not win. Those who were able to avoid living as slaves or virtual servants of the Europeans (as some did) were driven from their homes.

Occasionally, a colonial ruler who wanted to preserve peace, like William Penn, would strive to respect the rights of indigenous Americans . However, given that both indigenous and European ideas of liberty rested on access to land and its resources , it was difficult for both Europeans and Native Americans to be free in the same territory at the same time without some sort of neutral arbiter. On the eve of the American Revolution , it seemed as if the British government might be able to play that role. After all, British Americans also looked to the monarchy to guarantee their liberties. American independence ended that option. Thereafter, America's original inhabitants had no one to mediate between them and the people who gained so much from exploiting them. Nor did the Africans brought as slaves to work what had once been their land.

For Africans, as with Native Americans, liberty was inseparable from one's family ties. Kinship (whether actual or fictive) gave an individual the rights and protection necessary to be able to live in freedom. To be captured by enemies and separated from one's kin put a person in tremendous danger. Although some captives could be adopted into other societies and treated more or less as equals, most were reduced to a condition of slavery and had little influence over their destiny. Even before they arrived in North America, Africans brought to the New World as slaves had already been separated from their home communities within Africa. Without kin, they had to forge new relationships with complete strangers—and everyone, including most fellow Africans they encountered, was a stranger—if they were to improve their lot at all. Escape was very difficult, and no community of fugitive slaves lasted for long. Unlike Native Americans, who could find a degree of freedom by moving away from the frontier, Africans had to struggle for what liberty they could from within the British society whose prosperity often depended on their forced labor .

Europeans, particularly those with wealth enough to own land or slaves, possessed the greatest freedoms in early America. The French, Spanish, and Dutch established colonies on land that would eventually become part of the United States. Each brought a distinct approach to liberty. For the French and Spanish, who came from societies where peasants still did most of the work of farming, liberty lay in the avoidance of agricultural labor. Aristocrats, who owned the land and profited from the peasants' toil, stood at the top with the most freedom. Merchants and artisans, who lived and worked in cities free of feudal obligations, came next. In North America, the French fur traders who preferred to spend their lives bartering among Native Americans rather than farming in French Canada echoed this view of freedom. Missionaries attempting to convert those same peoples could be seen as another variant of this tradition of liberty, one unknown to the Protestant British. In every colony, Europeans lived in a range of circumstances, from poor indentured servants to wealthy merchants and plantation owners.

Religion was inseparable from the experience of liberty in the European empires. The French and Spanish empires were officially Roman Catholic and did all within their power to convert or expel those who would not conform. The Dutch, on the other hand, had a different approach, befitting their condition as a small, newly independent, but economically dynamic nation. Though only Reformed Protestants enjoyed the full benefits of Dutch citizenship, they displayed an unusual openness to talented foreign immigrants, like Iberian Jews, while they relegated native-born Roman Catholics to second-class status. It was through their ties to Amsterdam, Dutch Brazil, and the Dutch Caribbean that Jews first staked a claim to live and work in North America .

The English colonies played the definitive role in early America's experience of liberty. As immigrants from Scotland, Germany, France, Scandinavia, and elsewhere became incorporated into the Anglo-American world, they staked a claim to liberty through British culture and institutions. The heritage on which the British Empire rested was complicated, however, encompassing a great deal of political conflict (two revolutions in the seventeenth century alone) and religious diversity. The British colonies in North America were home to the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Roman Catholics of Maryland, as well as to Anglicans, members of the Church of England. Living in America offered an excellent chance to claim the rights and liberties of Englishmen, even when it seemed like those liberties were imperiled back in Europe. Indeed, the desire to preserve those liberties from the threat of a new British government prompted colonists to fight for independence in 1776.

Liberty in eighteenth-century Britain was associated with the national representational body of Parliament and the Protestant religion, which had been declared the official faith of England in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century, a long cycle of constitutional crises, civil wars, and revolution drove home what by the eighteenth century was a commonplace ethos for many Englishmen: liberty depended on Protestantism, property ownership, and a monarchy mixed with representative government. Conversely, Catholicism and absolute monarchy, as existed in Spain and France, brought tyranny and a loss of liberty.

Liberty thus began in America with a peculiar mix of religious, ethnic, political, economic, and legal associations, all of them based on denying civil, religious, and economic liberty to others. Among the free, European-descended, Protestant colonists who enjoyed the most liberty, only men with property—who were deemed eligible to vote and hold public office—gained the full benefits. The liberties of women, children, and men without property depended on their connections to propertied men, whether as relatives, patrons, or employers. As most British colonists understood history, English liberties had been secured only after a long, hard fight, and these liberties were under constant threat—from Roman Catholics, the French, or the greed and corruption that, they thought, inevitably arose when those in government grew too powerful. Liberty, they believed, was limited. The idea that everyone could enjoy similar liberties did not cross their mind; they worried instead about the possibility that everyone in America could be a slave or servant to someone else.

In many ways, the story of American liberty is about how people of different religious and ethnic origins gradually acquired rights that had been associated only with Protestant English men of property. Despite their original association with a particular national, ethnic, and religious group, English liberties proved fairly flexible in America. Americans lived in a society with more chances to attain the ideal of liberty associated with owning property—particularly a farm of one's own—than was possible in England, where property ownership was increasingly restricted to a small elite. Colonies like Pennsylvania granted far more religious freedom than existed in England. The colonial charters granted by the British monarchy protected these liberties, and, in fact, Pennsylvania celebrated the anniversary of these constitutional freedoms guaranteed by the English crown when it the commissioned the liberty bell .

The early American belief in the limited nature of liberty helps us to understand why it was so difficult for those who had it to extend it to others. Americans lived in a world full of slavery—the ultimate opposite of freedom—an institution that had not been present in England for hundreds of years. And yet, the colonial history of America, tied very early to the promotion of slavery, convinced many colonists that the ability to hold non-European people (mostly African, but also Native American) as slaves was a fundamental English liberty. Some even returned to England with their slaves, and expected English laws to protect their property in people as they did in the colonies. Free colonists were surrounded by people—servants and slaves—who either lacked liberty or, as in the case of Native Americans, were rapidly losing it. This paradox helps explain the reluctance of colonial Americans to allow others, like more recent German immigrant s, to share the same liberties they enjoyed. In many ways, their prosperity depended on those peoples' lack of liberty and property. All could try for freedom in colonial America, but not all had equal access to it.

America's history of liberty is inseparable from its history of immigration and colonization dating back to the first Native American treaties. Unfortunately, the liberty Europeans claimed in America was accompanied by slavery and reduced liberties for many others. The possibility of liberty for some was always accompanied by a struggle for freedom for many others.

Evan Haefeli is Associate Professor of History at Columbia University, where he researches and teaches on Native American history, colonial American history, and the history of religious tolerance.

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Slavery and Freedom

Slavery and Freedom explores the complex story of slavery and freedom, which rests at the core of our nation’s shared history. The exhibition begins in 15th-century Africa and Europe, extends up through the founding of the United States, and concludes with the nation’s transformation during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

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An introduction to the David M. Rubenstein History Galleries Slavery and Freedom exhibition by Mary Elliott, NMAAHC Curator of American Slavery.

About the Exhibition

• When: Ongoing
• Where: Concourse 3 (C3), History Galleries
• Curator: Mary Elliott

Through powerful objects and first person accounts, visitors encounter both free and enslaved African Americans’ contributions to the making of America and explore the economic and political legacies of the making of modern slavery. The exhibition emphasizes that American slavery  and  American freedom is a shared history and that the actions of ordinary men and women, demanding freedom, transformed our nation.

Priceless objects provide the visitor with a personal experience with the past. One cannot view Harriet Tubman’s shawl, Nat Turner’s Bible, the small shackles made for the fragile ankles of a child, or a slave cabin without contemplating the individuals who owned or encountered such objects. Such powerful artifacts bring to life the stories of inhumanity and terror, and of resistance, resilience and survival. Objects open up conversations and dialogue and provide a space for Americans to reach out beyond themselves to recognize a shared past.

Main Messages:

• Slavery is a shared story resting at the heart of American political, economic, and cultural life.
• African Americans constantly and consistently created new visions of freedom that have benefited all Americans.
• African American identity has many roots and many expressions that reach far back into our past.

Silk lace and linen shawl given to Harriet Tubman by Queen Victoria, ca. 1897

Exhibition Experience

The exhibition explores the following themes:

• The Making of the Atlantic World (15th -18th centuries)
• African Peoples
• European Peoples
• Trade and Contact
• The Middle Passage and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
• Colonial North America
• The American Revolution
• The Paradox of Liberty and The Founding of America
• Free Communities of Color and the Limits of Freedom
• Slavery and the Making of a New Nation
• The Domestic Slave Trade
• African American Freedom Struggles
• Abolitionist Movements
• Slave Resistance
• Everyday Acts of Rebellion
• Life and Work during Slavery
• The Civil War and the Coming of Freedom
• Emancipation and Reconstruction

Striking a Mighty Blow to Slavery

To freedom: voices of the formerly enslaved.

Searchable Museum

The Museum  launched its newest digital initiative, The Searchable Museum in November 2021. The project’s first digital exhibition to be shared is  Slavery and Freedom , a foundational feature from the museum’s David M. Rubenstein History Galleries, entirely reimagined for the digital space.

Charleston slave badge from 1850 for Porter No. 75

Charleston slave badge from 1853 for Mechanic No. 171

Charleston slave badge from 1857 for Servant No. 2010

Charleston slave badge from 1844 for Fruiterer No. 80

Charleston slave badge from 1811 for Carpenter No. 27

Charleston slave badge from 1823 for Fisher No. 88

Subtitle here for the credits modal..

Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation and Freedom

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Abolitionists, 1780-1865

Lauren Anderson, Harvard College Class of 2021, Social Studies

On March 16, 1827, the Black abolitionists Reverend Samuel E. Cornish and John Brown Russwurm set out on a task: “to plead our own cause.” This phrase became the opening statement of Freedom’s Journal, an abolitionist newspaper owned by the two publishers. Freedom’s Journal provided an outlet for Black authors to insert their voices into a print and literary community largely occupied by White voices, among them editor of the United States first abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator , Elihu Embree and prominent anti-slavery activist William Lloyd Garrison.

As the first Black-owned abolitionist newspaper, Freedom’s Journal and its authors signaled the entrance of Black voices and political ideas into American civic discourse. Inserting their calls for abolition into a growing print news industry, the authors of Freedom’s Journal , alongside other Black abolitionists, thinkers, writers, creatives, and artists, fashioned their collective voices into a public, a group that “sets its boundaries and its organization by its own discourse” to achieve some political end, as noted by literary critic and social theorist Michael Warner. Through narrating and illustrating their cause for abolition, Black writers and artists asserted themselves into a public body, one whose entrance into civic life permanently marked American political culture.

This essay highlights the literary and artistic movements pioneered by Black abolitionists from 1780 until the Civil War’s end in 1865. Until the 1960s and 1970s, much scholarly work on abolition retold this history from the perspective of those not directly affected by slavery’s ills. Building on a recent scholarly consensus towards examining the ideas, lives, and work of Black abolitionists, this essay recounts how Black leaders throughout the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century used print news, visual art, and music to establish their own political culture. Incorporating newly digitized primary sources from Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom , this essay encourages scholars, students, and the public alike to consider how Black leaders shaped abolition into a political and social cause of their own.

Black Voices in News and Print

Four years before William Lloyd Garrison published the first edition of his seminal newspaper, The Liberator , Black authors had already looked to print media as a means of achieving emancipation. While abolitionists like Garrison played a considerable role in galvanizing support for emancipation among White audiences, to decenter the importance of Black authors and artists in the struggle for abolition is to narrate an incomplete story of antebellum America.

Black newspapers enabled the free expression of Black community leaders, political thinkers, and artists, forging a site in which Blacks simultaneously argued their cause for abolition while showcasing literary talents. In addition to providing a home for political discourse, Freedom’s Journal showcased poetry written by cultural titans like Phillis Wheatley alongside religious sermons and transcriptions of public orations.

Freedom’s Journal ceased publication in 1829, coinciding with Cornish and Russwurm’s ideological split over colonization, an idea popular throughout the abolition movement that sought the return of free Blacks to Africa. Although no longer an active publication, the newspaper’s influence continued through the Black writers it had cultivated. In the same year, David Walker, a former writer and subscription sales agent for Freedom’s Journal, published his seminal An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in Boston, Massachusetts. Walker’s Appeal was a fiery attack on slavery and a radical call for immediate abolition. Printed as a pamphlet, the Appeal was widely circulated throughout the United States, prompting unfavorable reactions in southern states. For example, North Carolina’s state legislature levied harsh punishments to anyone who circulated the “seditious” pamphlet, while South Carolina’s governor asked his Massachusetts counterpart to jail Walker.

Multiple Editions of Walker's Appeal

David Walker's landmark pamphlet was published in three editions, including a posthumous 1830 publication. Slavery, Abolition, Emancipation, and Freedom includes three different copies, some of which include the responses of Walker's contemporary readers in the margins.

The text of Walker's Appeal models the body of the United States Constitution and invokes political ideals found in the Declaration of Independence, forging a critique of America’s limited democracy. The pamphlet begins with a preamble, while the body is structured in four articles. Such a rhetorical design facilitates Walker’s examination of the American legal protections Blacks were excluded from. His critique of American democratic principles is further grounded in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century laws that prevented Black people from literacy, effectively prohibiting their participation in a political society established from written texts and constitutions. Walker asks that all “coloured men, women, and children… procure a copy of this Appeal and read it,” rebelling against nineteenth-century slave codes. While he critiques the prohibition of Black literacy, Walker simultaneously creates space for Blacks to enter into a culture of texts, discourse, and civic dialogue.

In the years preceding the Civil War, print remained key in cultivating a Black public that advocated emancipation of its own people. From 1847 to 1851, Frederick Douglass published The North Star , an anti-slavery magazine that promoted the “moral and intellectual advancement of colored people.” In 1859 brothers and abolitionists Thomas Hamilton and Robert Hamilton founded The Anglo-African Magazine . The brothers spent their childhood surrounded by abolitionist discourse; their father, William Hamilton, was an orator who both praised and criticized the placating tactics of White abolitionist newspapers like The Liberator.

The Anglo-African Magazine took a bolder approach in its call for abolition in the United States and the liberation of Blacks across the world. The magazine was radical. Its motto proclaimed that “Man must be free; if not within the law, why then, above the law.” The magazine’s content matched its powerful ambition . The Anglo-African Magazine reported on slave revolts led by enslaved people in the United States and abroad, forging a narrative in favor of transnational Black liberation. The magazine also used religious language, mirroring the growth of Black theology throughout the nineteenth century. References to God and Christianity are recurrent, crafting a moral imperative for rebellion against slavery.

Print Image and Fine Art: A Vision for Emancipation

Images accompanied several texts circulated in both White and Black owned abolitionist publications. Photography became a tool of political rhetoric, one with the potential to shape and challenge Americans attitudes on abolition. Between 1780 and 1865, White abolitionists used photographs and reproducible print images to illustrate their cause and generate sympathy for the plight of enslaved people. Images used by White abolitionists highlighted slavery’s brutality by depicting its violence. A widely circulated example is the “Kneeling Slave,'' first printed in 1837. The print features an enslaved person on their knees, looking upward and pleading to the presumably White reader, “am I not a man and a brother?” Although calling for abolition, the enslaved person is undermined; they are not shown as a full human, but as a subjugated person.

Images that depict the violence faced by enslaved people were also used by White abolitionists. The image “Whipped Peter” was widely circulated in an 1863 edition of the White abolitionist newspaper Harper’s Weekly by White abolitionists to show slavery’s inhumanity. The photograph captures the back of an enslaved man, scarred by whippings. Although intended to bolster the abolitionist’s cause, “Whipped Peter’s” circulation continues to show an enslaved person as someone in need of salvation, not someone with the agency to realize their own emancipation.

Black abolitionists, in contrast, used photography to control their stories and images. This strategy is epitomized by Frederick Douglass’ daguerreotypes. In his lifetime, Douglass sat for more than one hundred and sixty daguerreotype portraits, citing photography’s ability to reclaim identity. The daguerreotype, Douglass believed, would provide Black people the opportunity to forge their civic identities and control their perception by Whites; he envisioned a country in which “photography, painting, poetry, and music” could facilitate emancipation. This belief is reflected in his portraits. In one example, Douglas sits upright and is dressed in a suit. Looking directly at the viewer, he asserts his position as someone poised to engage in civic dialogue and discourse. His portrait is a powerful contrast to White abolitionists' depiction of the Blacks as a subjugated object in need of help. Douglass does not show himself as a victim, but rather as a refined, dignified, and autonomous man.

Black abolitionists' visual call for emancipation was not limited to mass circulated and reproducible images. In the fine arts, Black artists inserted their vision for abolition. Edmonia Lewis, one of the first professional Black sculptors, portrayed contemporary abolitionists using the styles and techniques of academic culture. Within the Houghton’s SAEF collection are newly digitized texts on Lewis’ life and work, including this short biography titled How Edmonia Lewis Became an Artist .

Lewis produced medallion portraits of well-known White abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, and Wendell Phillips. At the height of the Civil War, Lewis sculpted a bust of Colonel Robert Shaw, a white officer who commanded the 54th Massachusetts Infantry composed of Black soldiers, memorializing him in America’s cultural lexicon. Her 1867 sculpture, "Forever Free," celebrates the Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War. A newly freed man stands upright, liberated, while a freedwoman crouches on her knees adjacent to him. Although the woman still kneels, a trope found throughout White abolitionist images, art historians like Kirsten P. Buick have provided an alternative interpretation, instead arguing that the kneeling woman represents the new possibility of marriage and family life for freed Blacks that was denied under slavery.

Music and Abolition

Just as visual art allowed Black abolitionists to assert their own image and presence, music was a significant actor in the abolitionist movement. Since the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade, song had been used to communicate across the disparate languages and cultures enslaved Africans originated from. Throughout enslavement, lyrics were used by enslaved people to subvert the authority of masters, forming a hidden transcript intelligible to only the enslaved. This can be seen in the transcriptions of Gullah-Geechee music made by Thomas Wentworth Higginson during the Civil War, and in Slave Songs of the United States , the first published book of African American spirituals. By the mid nineteenth century, music became an agent of abolition.

Don't You Hear the Trumpet Roar?

Thomas Wentworth Higginson would eventually publish his transcriptions of Gullah-Geechee spirituals in his book Army Life in a Black Regiment. Though interpreted through Higginson's perspective, these songs show the freedom-oriented theology of enslaved and formerly enslaved Black people.

Contained in the SAEF collection is The Anti-Slavery Harp: A Collection of Songs for Anti-Slavery Meetings . Published in 1848, The Anti-Slavery Harp is a collection of abolitionist lyrics compiled and edited by William W. Brown, who describes himself in the songbook’s introductory pages as a fugitive slave. The songbook consists of forty-eight lyrics, most set to the tune of popular songs like “Dandy Jim,” a minstrel favorite, or Auld Lang Syne. Most lyrics in the book were written by abolitionists, not enslaved or freed Blacks. Brown, however, is believed to have written two of the lyrics: “A Song for Freedom” and “Fling Out the Anti-Slavery Flag.” Noteworthy is English scholar John Ernest’s suggestion that Brown’s compilation of The Anti-Slavery Harp forged Brown into a “cultural editor,” compiling different songs and disparate narratives into a larger body of work that reveals the ideas and dialogues on slavery and abolition in antebellum America.

James H. Sweet
Professor, Department of History
University of Wisconsin–Madison
National Humanities Center Fellow
©National Humanities Center

Slave resistance began in British North America almost as soon as the first slaves arrived in the Chesapeake in the early seventeenth century. As one scholar has put it, “slaves ‘naturally’ resisted their enslavement because slavery was fundamentally .” Forms varied, but the common denominator in all acts of resistance was an attempt to claim some measure of freedom against an institution that defined people fundamentally as property. Perhaps the most common forms of resistance were those that took place in the work environment. After all, slavery was ultimately about coerced labor, and the enslaved struggled daily to define the terms of their work. Over the years, customary rights emerged in most fields of production. These customs dictated work routines, distribution of rations, general rules of comportment, and so on. If slave masters increased workloads, provided meager rations, or punished too severely, slaves registered their displeasure by slowing work, feigning illness, breaking tools, or sabotaging production. These everyday forms of resistance vexed slave masters, but there was little they could do to stop them without risking more widespread breaks in production. In this way, the enslaved often negotiated the basic terms of their daily routines. Of course, masters also stood to benefit from these negotiations, as contented slaves worked harder, increasing output and efficiency.

Another common form of slave resistance was theft. Slaves pilfered fruits, vegetables, livestock, tobacco, liquor, and money from their masters. The theft of foodstuffs was especially common and was justified on several grounds. First, slave rations were often woefully inadequate in providing the nutrition and calories necessary to support the daily exertions of plantation labor. Hungry slaves reasoned that the master’s abundance should be shared with those who produced it. Second, slaves recognized the inherent contradiction of the master’s “theft” accusations. How could slaves, who were themselves the master’s property, “steal” anything that the master owned? After all, the master’s ownership claims over the slave meant that he owned everything that the slave “owned.” When a slave staked claim to a master’s chicken, he merely transferred it to his stomach, or as Frederick Douglass put it, the slave was simply “taking [the master’s] meat out of one tub and putting it in another.”

In addition to everyday forms of resistance, slaves sometimes staked more direct and overt claims to freedom. The most common form of overt resistance was flight. As early as 1640, slaves in Maryland and Virginia absconded from their enslavement, a trend that would grow into the thousands, and, eventually, tens of thousands by the time of the Civil War. During the early years of slavery, runaways tended to consist mostly of African-born males. Since African-born men were in the numerical majority through much of the eighteenth century, this should not surprise us. For the most part, these men did not speak English and were unfamiliar with the geographic terrain of North America. Their attempts to escape slavery, despite these handicaps, are a testament to the rejection of their servile condition. If caught, runaways faced certain punishment—whipping, branding, and even the severing of the Achilles tendon. Those lucky enough to evade detection sought sanctuary in a variety of safe havens—Native American communities, marshy lowlands like the Great Dismal Swamp along the Virginia/North Carolina coastal border, and, eventually, Canada and the free states of the American North. By the nineteenth century, the North was a particularly attractive destination for acculturated, American-born slaves. Networks of free blacks and sympathetic whites often helped ferry slaves to freedom via the so-called Underground Railroad, a chain of safe houses that stretched from the American South to free states in the North. Men continued to be predominant among runaways, although women, and even entire families were increasingly likely to test their chances in the flight for freedom. As the Civil War unfolded, many slaves abandoned their masters’ plantations, sometimes joining the Union army in what many perceived to be a war to end slavery forever.

The most spectacular, and perhaps best-known, forms of resistance were organized, armed rebellions. Between 1691 and 1865, at least nine slave revolts erupted in what would eventually become the United States. The most prominent of these occurred in New York City (1712), Stono, South Carolina (1739), New Orleans (1811), and Southampton, Virginia (Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion). Numerous other conspiracies were thwarted before they could be fully realized, including Gabriel Prosser’s (Richmond, VA, 1800) and Denmark Vesey’s (Charleston, SC, 1822). Slaves commandeered weapons, burned and looted properties, and even killed their masters and other whites, but whites were quick to exact a brutal revenge. In the bloodiest American revolt, Nat Turner and several hundred comrades killed sixty whites. Over 100 enslaved were killed, either in the combat or as retribution for the uprising. Another thirteen slaves were hanged, along with three free blacks. If the measure of a revolt’s success was the overthrow of slavery, then none of these revolts succeeded. Ultimately, the only rebellion that succeeded in overthrowing slavery in the Americas was the Haitian Revolution. Slave rebellions in colonial America and the United States never achieved such widespread success; however, the importance of rebellion cannot be overstated. The constant specter of physical violence reminded whites that slavery would never go unchallenged; the possibility of “another Haiti” loomed large, especially in the nineteenth-century American South.

Guiding Student Discussion

An excellent starting point for any discussion of slave resistance is a simple definition. For students (and many scholars), the term “slave resistance” often conjures notions of enslaved peoples on the barricades, taking up arms against their masters in rebellious acts of violence. In the contemporary imagination, it is comforting to think that the enslaved frequently exacted some measure of revenge against the unspeakable horrors that they suffered. Award-winning historical novels highlight the Nat Turner rebellion and the Haitian Revolution. Similarly, Hollywood celebrates the victories of the Amistad Africans and Toussaint L’Ouverture in Haiti. Students will likely begin to define resistance by these historical markers, but they should be pushed beyond slave revolts. To be sure, organized physical violence was one aspect of resistance, and these episodes deserve an important place in the curriculum. Remind them, however, that organized, armed violence was a relatively rare occurrence during the 350-year history of slavery in the United States. Why were armed rebellions so infrequent?

Slave masters monopolized armed power, severely restricting slaves’ access to weapons. Slave masters also closely monitored their slaves’ activities, limiting their movement and freedom of association. Under these circumstances, organization and planning were next to impossible. On those rare occasions when the enslaved escaped their masters’ purview, they faced yet other mechanisms of white control—militias, local patrols, and vigilantes. Rebels who avoided the net of surveillance and enacted their conspiracies were always dealt with in brutal fashion. Public hangings and decapitation were common punishments. Other rebels were gibbeted alive, burned alive, or broken on the wheel. In all of these instances, punishment was meant to demonstrate the totalizing effects of white supremacy, terrorizing those who remained enslaved. Remarkably, some slaves still embarked on what they must have known were suicide missions. Were the men and women who confronted their masters with violence so desperate that they preferred death to living in slavery? Or, did they really believe that they could be the exception and overthrow white supremacy? These are important questions to consider.

These questions also begin to point students toward the psychology of enslavement, an important and often neglected aspect of the institution and responses to it. Psychologically, how did the majority of slaves interpret the institution? (And for that matter, how did whites?) If hardened firebrands like Nat Turner represented one response, then the broken, submissive “Sambo” probably represented another. Slavery impacted negatively on all slaves, but it did not impact all of them equally. The enslaved possessed the range of weaknesses and frailties common to all people. To deny that some suffered deep psychological wounds would be to deny their very humanity, reinforcing the master’s belief that slaves were little affected by the institution’s daily violence. In fact, the vast majority of enslaved probably fell between the two psychological extremes of “Nat” and “Sambo,” coping with the horrors and indignities of slavery as best they could, building lives the corrosive confines of the institution. For this majority of slaves, resistance took a variety of forms.

If organized physical violence was not the solution for most slaves, then how did the majority find ways to address their condition? If they have not already done so, students will usually recognize that running away was the most common way of overtly rejecting slavery. By the nineteenth century, running away to the North offered the virtue of a tenuous freedom; however, failed runaways also met with serious reprisals. Most did not try to escape. For those who remained enslaved, resistance took on more familiar everyday forms. When discussing everyday forms of resistance, challenge students to think about whether strategies like work slowdowns, breaking tools, or even petty theft were actually “resistance.” Here, it is important to distinguish between those acts that were aimed at ending one’s enslavement—running away, rebellion, etc.—versus those that were intended to improve one’s daily condition inside the institution. Ask students: When the enslaved slowed their work or broke tools, were they resisting the overall institution of slavery or just the work of slavery? Can these be distinguished? Remind students that slave masters sometimes begrudgingly tolerated these everyday forms of resistance and even responded positively to slave workplace demands. Why? These negotiated compromises provided slaves with incentives to work, ultimately bolstering the institution. For slave masters, acknowledging these small pin pricks of resistance were a small price to pay in order to secure the survival of the overall institution.

Some students likely will not buy the argument that everyday forms of resistance reinforced the institution. Encourage them to unravel exactly why they think this. The best students will recognize that even the smallest acts of resistance pushed the boundaries of freedom, slowly eroding the institution. Smile at them and then turn to an even more obvious example. What about theft? Of course, stealing from the master MUST have been resistance. But what if a starving slave’s stolen food provided the sustenance that allowed him to work another day? Didn’t this actually reinforce the institution? Even some of the enslaved seemed to acknowledge that this was the case. As Frederick Douglass noted, stealing was simply “taking meat out of one tub and putting it in another.” When slaves rationalized theft in these terms, weren’t they adopting the master’s definition of them as property? Or were they cleverly manipulating the contradictions inherent to the institution?

Finally, as one last consideration of everyday forms of resistance, you might ask your students whether cultural forms like the speaking of African languages, the formation of families, or the practice of religion constituted resistance to slavery. Embedded in each of these were the potential for overt forms of resistance. For instance, those speaking African languages might plan conspiracies or revolts in those languages, thereby hiding their intentions from whites. The formation of families defied notions of property, sometimes making it difficult for masters to sell husbands, wives, and children, who vehemently protested separation from their loved ones. And religion could be used to justify liberation from the “sorcery” or “sin” of enslavement. Some slave masters recognized the potential dangers in these cultural expressions and attempted to curb their practices. Others viewed African and African-American cultural practices as vital ways of appeasing slaves so they would be more efficient workers. Did the master have to prohibit a particular cultural form in order for its practice to be considered resistant? Or were all cultural expressions a form of resistance? Certainly there is an argument to be made that assertion of humanity in an institution that defined one as non-human was an expression of resistance. At the same time, slaves were ultimately human beings and expressed themselves naturally as such, even within the confines of slavery. To suggest that slaves were always on the barricades, consciously resisting at every turn, risks reinforcing the master’s assertions that slaves were less than human.

Students probably will end up disagreeing about the precise definition of slave resistance. Considerations of whether certain behaviors were resistant or not will continuously run into conceptual dead ends. Ultimately, students will turn to the instructor to place some closure on these debates. In concluding this discussion there are two key points that must be emphasized: 1) the distinction between forms of resistance that rejected the institution of slavery (rebellion, running away) and forms of resistance that took place within the institution (everyday forms); and 2) the recognition that the very definition of slavery (“property”) meant that almost any action or behavior on the parts of slaves could potentially be interpreted as resistance.

As a group, slaves constantly pushed their masters and overseers to grant them greater freedoms. This was only natural. When masters refused, slaves punctuated everyday forms of resistance with more overt expressions like running away or rebellion. The threat of flight or violence always hung over the institution, despite the infrequency of such acts. Ultimately, the moral bankruptcy of slavery meant that even the smallest, most mundane acts could be considered resistant, but the enslaved did not live in a constantly reactionary state, awaiting their white masters before determining their next resistant move. The vast majority coped, endured, and lived their lives, avoiding the slings and arrows of white power as best they could.

Historians Debate

The study of slave resistance gained its contemporary impetus from works published in the 1940s and 1950s. Herbert Aptheker’s path breaking (1943) argued that the brutality of slavery provoked more than 200 rebellions and conspiracies in British North America and the United States. Aptheker, who never held a permanent academic position in the United States, was rejected by many as a radical communist. Though he may have exaggerated the number of uprisings, Aptheker’s work squarely challenged the prevailing sentiment in the American academic establishment that slaves responded to their inhumane treatment in a passive fashion. Widely criticized at the time of its publication, the work is now acknowledged as the platform upon which all other studies of slave resistance have been built.

The idea of slaves as submissive and content dated as far back as Ulrich B. Phillips’, (1918) but persisted well into the 1950s, culminating with Stanley Elkins’ (1959). In this work, Elkins concluded that the majority of American slaves adopted the “Sambo” personality—docile, submissive, child-like, loyal, and utterly dependent on their masters. Elkins did not argue that slaves were naturally this way; rather, he argued that the institution of slavery transformed their personalities in much the same way as occurred among prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.

By the late 1960s and 1970s, a number of scholars began assaulting the Sambo monolith. John Blassingame’s (1972) identified a range of personality types among slaves, noting that Sambo and Nat [Turner] were stereotypes so contrary to one another “that the legitimacy of each as a representation of typical slave behavior is limited.”  Other authors focused more directly on rebellion, including John Lofton, (1964), Eugene Genovese, (1968), and William Styron’s fictional account, (1967), which provoked a strong critique from scholars who accused Styron of sanitizing slavery and portraying Turner as sexually depraved. These critiques can be found in John Henrik Clarke, ed., (1968).

For a detailed history of runaway slaves, see John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger, (2000). Also see the remarkable story of Shadrach Minkins, who ran away from slavery in Virginia, only to be captured in Boston in 1851 under the Fugitive Slave Law. Before his case could be heard, a group of black citizens invaded the court room and stole Minkins to freedom in Canada, where he helped establish a community for runaway slaves in Montreal. See Gary Collison, (1998).

Some of best work on slave resistance in recent years focuses on the African backgrounds of the enslaved. Through language, kinship, religion, and so on, Africans recreated aspects of their pasts in North America. Some of these forms were expressed as resistance—through “sorcery,” Islam, running away, and even suicide. For the best works on African forms of resistance in North America, see Sterling Stuckey, (1987), Michael A. Gomez, (1998), and Walter C. Rucker, (2005).

Most scholars now accept that the enslaved “naturally” resisted slavery. That being the case, it is impossible to be exhaustive in describing the numerous approaches and contributions to studies of slave resistance. This overview only barely scratches the surface; students are encouraged to consult more specific works through the bibliographies of the works listed here, as well as through general bibliographies of slavery.

Franklin W. Knight, “Slavery,” in Colin A. Palmer, ed., (New York: Thompson/Gale, 2006), 2066.

Frederick Douglass, (New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, 1855), 189–191.

William Styron, (New York: Random House, 1967), won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968; Madison Smartt Bell, (New York: Pantheon, 1995), was a National Book Award finalist in 1995.

(1997), Director: Steven Spielberg; (forthcoming, 2011), Director: Danny Glover.

John W. Blassingame, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 141.

is associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was a National Humanities Center Fellow in 2006–07. His book, , was the recipient of the 2004 Wesley Logan Prize, awarded by the American Historical Association. Sweet is completing a book manuscript tentatively titled, .

Sweet, James H. “Slave Resistance.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. DATE YOU ACCESSED ESSAY. <https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/slaveresist.htm>

 

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7 Alexander Drive, P.O. Box 12256 Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709 Phone: (919) 549-0661 Fax: (919) 990-8535 Copyright © National Humanities Center. All rights reserved. Revised: April 2010 nationalhumanitiescenter.org

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Slavery, Resistance, Freedom

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Americans have always defined themselves in terms of their freedoms--of speech, of religion, of political dissent. How we interpret our history of slavery--the ultimate denial of these freedoms--deeply affects how we understand the very fabric of our democracy. This extraordinary collection of essays by some of America’s top historians focuses on how African Americans resisted slavery and how they responded when finally free. Ira Berlin sets the stage by stressing the relationship between how we understand slavery and how we discuss race today. The remaining essays offer a richly textured examination of all aspects of slavery in America. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweinger recount actual cases of runaway slaves, their motivations for escape and the strains this widespread phenomenon put on white slave-owners. Scott Hancock explores how free black Northerners created a proud African American identity out of the oral history of slavery in the south. Edward L. Ayers, William G. Thomas III, and Anne Sarah Rubin draw upon their remarkable Valley of the Shadow website to describe the wartime experiences of African Americans living on both borders of the Mason-Dixon line. Noah Andre Trudeau turns our attention to the war itself, examining the military experience of the only all-black division in the Army of the Potomac. And Eric Foner gives us a new look at how black leaders performed during the Reconstruction, revealing that they were far more successful than is commonly acknowledged--indeed, they represented, for a time, the fulfillment of the American ideal that all people could aspire to political office. Wide-ranging, authoritative, and filled with invaluable historical insight, Slavery, Resistance, Freedom brings a host of powerful voices to America’s evolving conversation about race.

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• DOI: 10.2307/1888384
• Corpus ID: 159755355

Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox

• Published 1 June 1972
• The Journal of American History

115 Citations

Slavery and freedom in american state constitutional development, from slavery to the cooperative commonwealth: the paradox of slavery and freedom, slavery and revolution: the conscience of the rich, unwriting the freedom narrative: a review essay, neoclassical culture in a society with slaves: race and rights in the age of wheatley, reproduction and miscegenation, police work: the centrality of labor repression in american political history, glorious burdens: teaching obama's history and the long civil rights movement., ancients, moderns, and africans: phillis wheatley and the politics of empire and slavery in the american revolution, religion, revolution and the rise of modern nationalism: reflections on the american experience, one reference, the alteration in the relationship between leadership and constituents in virginia, 1660 to 1720, related papers.

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

Freedom and Slavery

While revolutionaries fought for freedom from British tyranny and oppression during the American Revolution, this war did not guarantee freedom for all. By the start of the American Revolution, slavery was legal and actively practiced in all Thirteen Colonies. As the conflict spread across the colonies, enslaved Black persons had to decide where to place their loyalties to ensure that they too could participate in this opportunity. Some formerly enslaved persons, such as Winsor Fry, joined the Continental Army hoping that the new nation would ensure liberty for all. Others, such as Harry Washington, ran from the men preaching about free will while actively keeping men, women, and children in servitude and joined the British. A few joined regiments like Col. Christopher Greene’s that allowed enslaved Black men to earn their freedom in exchange for their service to the Continental Army. Regardless, no matter their path, all hoped for freedom from bondage.

Stories of Freedom and Slavery

Former slave fighting as a patriot, and navigating life in a new nation

On the eve of Revolution, all thirteen rebelling colonies legally practiced slavery. Though there is no record of Winsor’s birth, it is likely that he was born enslaved. In 1773 prominent Rhode Islander Thomas Fry bequeathed “my Negro man named Windsor” to his youngest son Joseph, along with other property including several plots of land. Two years later however, Winsor joined the Continental Army as a free man.

View full story of Winsor Fry

Harry Washington

A slave of George Washington who found freedom fighting for the loyalists.

People on both sides of the American Revolution were fighting for their freedom. While the American revolutionaries fought for freedom from British rule, they denied personal freedom to thousands of enslaved Black people in the American colonies. The American Revolution provided an opportunity for enslaved people to fight for their own freedom, often making difficult choices to support patriots or the British based on which side offered a better chance at freedom. For Harry, supporting the British held the promise of liberty. He was one of thousands of enslaved people who took the British up on their promise of freedom.

View full story of Harry Washington

Christopher Greene

Leader of an integrated regiment that died on the battlefield

In February 1778 the Rhode Island Assembly announced that “every able-bodied negro, mulatto, or Indian man slave in this state” could enlist in the state line. They further stipulated that “every slave, so enlisting, shall upon his passing muster before Col. Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress; and be absolutely FREE, as though he had never been encumbered with any Kind of Servitude or Slavery.” This clause represented one of the few avenues to freedom for enslaved men during the era, but it was only open for a short time. The Assembly struck this clause after only four months, as the state’s slave owners petitioned for its repeal.

View full story of Christopher Greene

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Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery By Eric Foner Hardcover, 448 pages W.W. Norton and Co. List Price: $29.95

Read an Excerpt

In 1854, Sen. Stephen Douglas forced the Kansas-Nebraska Act through Congress. The bill, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, also opened up a good portion of the Midwest to the possible expansion of slavery.

Douglas' political rival, former Illinois Congressman Abraham Lincoln, was enraged by the bill. He scheduled three public speeches in the fall of 1854, in response. The longest of those speeches — known as the Peoria Speech — took three hours to deliver. In it, Lincoln aired his grievances over Douglas' bill and outlined his moral, economic, political and legal arguments against slavery.

But like many Americans, Lincoln was unsure what to do once slavery ended.

"Lincoln said during the Civil War that he had always seen slavery as unjust. He said he couldn't remember when he didn't think that way — and there's no reason to doubt the accuracy or sincerity of that statement," explains historian Eric Foner. "The problem arises with the next question: What do you do with slavery, given that it's unjust? Lincoln took a very long time to try to figure out exactly what steps ought to be taken."

Foner traces the evolution of Lincoln's thoughts on slavery in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. He explains how Lincoln's changing thoughts about slavery — and the role of freed slaves — mirrored America's own transformation.

In the Peoria speech, Lincoln said that slavery was wrong, Foner says, and then admitted that he didn't know what should be done about it, even contemplating "free[ing] all the slaves, and send[ing] them to Liberia — to their own native land."

"Lincoln is thinking through his own position on slavery," says Foner. "[This speech] really epitomizes his views into the Civil War. Slavery ought to be abolished — but he doesn't really know how to do it. He's not an abolitionist who criticizes Southerners. At this point, Lincoln does not really see black people as an intrinsic part of American society. They are kind of an alien group who have been uprooted from their own society and unjustly brought across the ocean. 'Send them back to Africa,' he says. And this was not an unusual position at this time."

Foner traces how Lincoln first supported this kind of colonization — the idea that slaves should be freed and then encouraged or required to leave the United States — for well over a decade. Like Henry Clay, Lincoln also supported repealing slavery gradually — and possibly compensating slave owners for their losses after slaves were freed.

It was not until the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared the freedom of all slaves and then named 10 specific states where the law would take affect, that Lincoln publicly rejected his earlier views.

Eric Foner is a history professor at Columbia University and the author of several books about the history of American race relations. courtesy of the author hide caption

Eric Foner is a history professor at Columbia University and the author of several books about the history of American race relations.

"The Emancipation Proclamation completely repudiates all of those previous ideas for Lincoln," says Foner. "[The abolishment of slavery is] immediate, not gradual. There is no mention of compensation and there is nothing in it about colonization. After the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln says nothing publicly about colonization."

Foner says many factors led to Lincoln's shift in his position regarding former slaves. Neither slave owners nor slaves supported colonization. Slavery was beginning to disintegrate in the South. And the Union Army was looking for new soldiers to enlist — and they found willing African-American men waiting for them in the South.

"As soon as the Union Army went into the South, slaves began running away from plantations to Union lines," Foner says. "And this forced the question of slavery onto the national agenda."

"Almost from the very beginning of the Civil War, the federal government had to start making policy and they said, 'Well, we're going to treat these people as free. We're not going to send them back into the slave-holding regions,'" Foner says. "And the Army opened itself up to the enlistment of black men. And by the end of the Civil War, 200,000 black men had served in the Union Army and Navy. And envisioning blacks as soldiers is a very, very different idea of their future role in American society. It's the black soldiers and their role which really begins as the stimulus in Lincoln's change [with regard to] racial attitudes and attitudes toward America as an interracial society in the last two years of his life."

Foner is a history professor at Columbia University. He previously has served as the president of the Organization of American Historians, the American Historical Association and the Society of American Historians. His books include Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Man: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War and Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. He also appeared as the on-camera historian for the 2003 PBS series Freedom: A History of Us.

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Struggles for Freedom: Essays on Slavery, Colonialism, and Culture in the Caribbean and Central America

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Darién J. Davis; Struggles for Freedom: Essays on Slavery, Colonialism, and Culture in the Caribbean and Central America. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 February 1999; 79 (1): 110–112. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-79.1.110

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This important collection of essays brings together newly edited materials and previously published work by the author on the English-speaking Caribbean. Bolland, a sociologist, aims to look at the economic, political, and cultural forces that have shaped Caribbean societies from colonial times to the present day. Divided into four sections— “Colonial and Creole Societies,” “Colonization and Slavery,” “From Slavery to Freedom,” and “Class, Culture and Politics”— Struggles for Freedom is diverse in its approach and subject matter. In the introductory essay, “Creolization and Creole Societies: A Cultural Nationalist View of Caribbean Social History,” Bolland makes clear that “creolization” constitutes a central dynamic of Caribbean social history, and this assertion reverberates throughout the book.

Bolland begins part 2 by looking at the colonization of Central America and the enslavement of its inhabitants, while demonstrating the economic links that existed between Central America and the Spanish-dominated Caribbean prior to 1550. He focuses on indigenous slavery and offers the generally accepted argument that the impact of African slavery in any particular region was inversely related to the availability of indigenous labor. The chapter on Belize is more specific, as it examines labor practices related to timber extraction in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bolland makes clear that Belize’s creole culture evolved from the complex interaction among slaves from different cultural backgrounds, slaves and their masters, and men and women who were not primarily engaged in plantation slavery. The final essay in this second section examines changing European perceptions of Amerindians in Belize, from the early European colonizers of the time of Columbus to the British overlords of the nineteenth century. Bolland surveys the perceptions of colonizers and chroniclers during the initial phase of contact and colonization, although he pays particular attention to the ethnocentric views of the British, a legacy that persists to this day.

In part 3 Bolland questions the notion that social relations changed after the abolition of slavery. He demonstrates that in many cases slaves had opportunities to engage in wage labor while so-called “freed men and women” were often coerced. This same theme is more specifically treated in chapter 6, which examines how after abolition the British ensured continued control over land and labor in the West Indies in general and Belize in particular. This section concludes with an essay on the politics of freedom in the British West Indies. Bolland tackles the complex question of how former slaves gave meaning to their freedom by examining issues of worker autonomy after emancipation. As he shows, the answer to this question varied, and must be interpreted within the complex relationship between “dominance, resistance and accommodation” (p. 187).

In part 4, Bolland analyzes four important West Indian novelists (Victor Stafford Reid, Ralph de Boissiére, John Hearne, and George Lamming). Although his frame of analysis is not as clear as in other chapters, he does offer us a glimpse into the cultural history of the region in the preindependence era of the 1940s and 1950s. As he searches for authentic articulations of “Creole culture,” Bolland offers little in the way of a historical or nationally-specific context for understanding the novelists and their novels. Moreover, the reader is never quite sure why the author has chosen to examine these four novelists. Nonetheless, Bolland makes us understand why he believes it is Lamming who best “makes the concept of an authentic Caribbean nation possible” (p. 256).

The final essay of the book focuses on the role of ethnicity in decolonization and political struggle in two English-speaking Caribbean nations on the mainland: Belize and Guyana. Both countries have remarkably similar histories and thus make for a superb comparison. Bolland forcibly argues that party politics, which many have analyzed through the prism of ethnicity, in fact cuts across ethnic lines. Moreover, in both countries, as in the region as a whole, cultural and ethnic identities are intimately related to class formation, emerging nationalism, and state formation.

This volume is an important contribution to the literature on the English-speaking Caribbean. It is particularly helpful in placing Anglophone communities in a context that extends beyond the island-nations (although comparative material from the major island-nations of Jamaica, Barbados, or Trinidad is minimal). Bolland inevitably faced the challenge of many Caribbean scholars who must balance broad regional trends with in-depth analysis of specific nation-states. In light of this, it is remarkable that one author is able to provide so much depth and breadth to the subject. For the historian, many of the general essays may not be historically specific enough. Others will lament the lack of comparison with the Spanish, French, and Dutch Caribbean. Yet, these essays provide important themes and issues that will allow for cross-cultural comparison. This volume is well organized and conceptualized (although it does not include the index listed in the table of contents) and will be an important reference for years to come.

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Explore the newly discovered papers

The papers reveal a past of local slave trading and slaveholding. In the years following the Revolutionary War, some of the region’s most prominent leaders were slaveholders: Isaac Craig, John and Presley Neville, John McKee—names that live on to identify the area’s towns and streets.

The documents, as you will see in the links to the right, are written in highly embellished penmanship and a flowery prose style. They are faded, with the occasional ink splotch or scratched out word. The revelations in these accounts, together with other such documentation as slave registries, census records, history books, and slaves’ own writings, unlock a forgotten history of the Pittsburgh region.

What is in the slave papers?

Outright manumissions are rare here, but freedom in these papers sometimes comes in other forms. For instance, Peter Cosco was set free in 1790 by his slaveholder John McKee, but only by self-purchase—that is, he paid McKee £100 to buy his own freedom.

Other manumissions are not quite what they seem. In many cases, the child of a slave is manumitted by a slaveholder. Minutes later the young person is indentured, sometimes to a different slaveholder, until the age of 28. Some indenture documents stipulate that the servant should get limited instruction. Other rules: the servant must be taught a skill, must follow the master’s wishes, and must not marry or beget children during indenture.

Free Black people still faced danger. Many appeared in court to ask for a Certificate of Freedom. The claimant had to prove that he/she was born free or had been previously freed. If the court was satisfied, it would issue a certificate with a minute description of the person including skin shades, hair texture, and body scars. Freedom papers were essential for freedmen who wanted to travel, particularly those working on the rivers.

Almost half of the 55 records in these papers originated in states south of the Mason-Dixon Line, especially Virginia, Kentucky, and Maryland. Pennsylvania, as a border state, was a battleground in the fight between slavery and freedom. For an escaped slave, crossing the Mason- Dixon Line into Pennsylvania seemed to be liberating. But it would be many decades after the first of the 55 records was filed before slavery disappeared from Western Pennsylvania.

About the Freedom Papers and Certificates of Freedom

Freedom papers and certificates of freedom were documents declaring the free status of Blacks. These papers were important because “free people of color” lived with the constant fear of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Freedom Papers proved the free status of a person and served as a legal affidavit. Manumissions and emancipations were legal documents that made official the act of setting a Black person free from slavery by a living or deceased slaveholder.

It was prudent for Blacks to file papers attesting to their free status with the county deeds office in order to protect them from slave catchers and kidnappers. Antebellum America, including Western Pennsylvania, was hostile territory for a person of African descent. There are records of Blacks being held in local jails because they were suspected of being fugitive slaves. As was stated earlier, Black slaves were perceived as property that, just like other goods, could be bought and sold, stolen or lost.

Filing with the deeds office protected African Americans from the loss, theft, or destruction of original documents, as in all-too-frequent situations where slave catchers confiscated or destroyed freedom papers to force free men and women into lives of bondage. Some free men had to have an affidavit that testified to their free status.

If they lacked an affidavit, their friends would have to file such an affidavit after the free men in question had been confined. One such affidavit was sworn on behalf of James Cooper on Nov. 29, 1803. At that time, Cooper was confined in the “Common Jail of Allegheny on Suspicion of being a Slave from Canady” (Canada), placed there by John Wilkins, chief burgess of Pittsburgh. Three witnesses testified on Cooper’s behalf, and two of them “offered to bring forward four or five Others to prove that the said Cooper committed (upon God knows what ground) by Justice Wilkins is a free man.” It is not known whether the affidavit was reason enough to free James Cooper from the jail of Judge Wilkins. But this affidavit does seem to indicate that there were not only personal friends, but also a sympathetic network, perhaps an abolitionist group, willing to support the freedom of at least that Black man.

Amos Sisco of Washington County was a free Black man who, as the certificate of freedom says, was “about descending the Ohio river on a Steamboat in the Capacity of a Cook.” Sisco needed his certificate to protect his movements because in 1837, the year the certificate was signed and recorded, the Underground Railroad movement was active, and the waterways and rivers were used often as transport for fugitive slaves.

Jesse Turner of Southampton County, Va., was registered in that county’s court on Aug. 18, 1829, as a free man of color. A record of the filing was made in the Allegheny County deed books on Sept. 6, 1848. Turner probably moved to Allegheny County in 1848 and needed to file his certificate attesting to his free status. Given the harsh reprisals against African Americans that followed Nat Turner’s 1831 revolt in Southampton County, Jesse Turner would probably have had a difficult time obtaining his certificate there after the revolt. It is even possible that Jesse Turner had been enslaved by the same Southampton County slaveholders, Benjamin Turner and his son Samuel, who had enslaved Nat Turner and his mother.

In some cases, African Americans participated in the benign purchase and sale of family members. In this regard, the freedom papers of Julia Mason recorded by the County on Oct. 1, 1851, constitute an illuminating record. Mason was freed by her husband, Robert Mason, who purchased her from G. W. Baker of Winchester, Va., for the sum of $600. Julia was 35 years old at the time, and, as it was just a year after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Robert Mason was careful to record the manumission of his wife with the deeds office. Since Robert Mason was a free African American, this document records a Black person participating in the slave economy, but for the honorable purpose of freeing his wife from bondage.

About the Indentures

The documents titled Indentures referred to that clause of the Gradual Abolition Act that called for those born of slave mothers after March 1, 1780, to serve 28 years as indentured servants. One such indenture that raises a number of questions is that of the 6-year-old slave girl Sally. Sally was a slave for life to Thomas Woods of Ohio County, Va., who manumitted her in 1825 to serve until age 28 as an indentured servant to Pittsburgh attorney John McKee (not to be confused with McKeesport founder John McKee).

Sally, “having no parents living in the State of Pennsylvania,” arrived in the Commonwealth to serve a term of 22 years as an indentured servant. We don’t know whether Sally served the full term of this contract. The peculiar thing is that a 6-year-old was contracting herself as an indenture, apprenticed “to learn the Art and mystery of a house Servant and Cook.” Two members of the Pittsburgh Bar approved this transaction, Pittsburgh aldermen Thomas Enochs and Magnus Murray, the man who would later serve two terms as the city’s mayor.

In 1793, the same John McKee who had founded McKeesport and freed Peter Cosco indentured a young woman named Kut, the daughter of an enslaved woman named Negro Suck. The indenture was for 12.5 years and states that Kut “shall faithfully serve his [McKee’s] lawful commands, cheerfully obey; she shall not contract matrimony &c &c, nor do anything detrimental to her said Master’s interests; she shall not commit fornication nor frequent taverns, cards, dice nor any unlawful games.”

It appears by the statements made in this document that some perception of the surrounding community made a Black girl prey to the vices of society. This record also suggests Blacks’ preservation of their African roots through their choice of names. Taking another look at the indenture of Kut and her mother Suck, we see a name with West African cultural connections: Suck appears to be derived from the Wolof female name Sukey. The Wolof were native to West Africa’s Guinea and Senegambia region. Sukey was a common name among Creole slaves in Louisiana, as was the common Creole name Kut, sometimes spelled Quite.

The Freedom Papers

» Certificate Of Freedom: David Lewis

» Indenture: Mary Smith

» Indenture: Sally

» Freedom Papers: Amery Joiner

» Freedom Papers: Mary Joiner

» Freedom Papers: Matilda Richardson

» Indenture: Matilda Richardson

» Freedom Papers: Charles Gouldman

» Indenture: Charles Gouldman

» Certificate Of Freedom: McCoy

» Certificate Of Freedom: George Martin

» Freedom Papers: Peter Cosco

» Indenture: Negro Suck

» Indenture: Deemer

» Certificate Of Freedom: Gabriel Klingman

» Certificate Of Freedom: Amos Sisco

» Certificate Of Freedom: Joseph Miller

» Certificate Of Freedom: Henry Stevens

» Freedom Papers: James Bayly

» Certificate Of Freedom: Henry Williams

» Freedom Papers: Stephen

» Freedom Papers: Jacob

» Freedom Papers: Daniel Robinson

» Freedom Papers: William Johnson

» Freedom Papers: Crayton Warrick

» Freedom Papers: Emanual Jackson Jr.

» Freedom Papers: Armsted

» Freedom Papers: Milly

» Freedom Papers: William Ridout

» Freedom Papers: Johnston Howard

» Freedom Papers: Matilda Hall

» Freedom Papers: Edward Robinson

» Certificate Of Freedom: William Harris

»Freedom Papers: Caroline McAlfrey

» Freedom Papers: William Johnston

» Freedom Papers: Isaac Craig

» Freedom Papers: Allen Norton

» Certificate Of Freedom: Jesse Turner

» Freedom Papers: Thomas Mahorney

» Freedom Papers: Oscar Wright

» Freedom Papers: Jacob Moore

» Freedom Papers: Caleb Mills

» Certificate Of Freedom: Henry Holt

» Freedom Papers: Jack Walls

» Certificate Of Freedom: James Cooper

» Indenture: Comfort Tunnel

» Indenture: John Davis

» Freedom Papers: Mary

» Indenture: Frankey

» Freedom Papers: Frankey

» Freedom Papers: Samuel Johnston

» Indenture: Lucy

» Freedom Papers: Archibald Brant Et Al

» Freedom Papers: Julia Mason

» Freedom Papers: Edwin

» Freedom Papers: Nancy Rollings

© 2009 University Library System , University of Pittsburgh

Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence (July 2021)

By: Hans Eicholz July 1, 2021

• Lead Essay Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence (July 2021)
• Response Essay Intentions, Context, and Principles: Jefferson’s Slavery Problem
• Response Essay Thomas Jefferson and the Problem of Race
• Response Essay Eicholz, Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence
• Response Essay How White Was Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence?
• Conversation Comments My Response to the Responses
• Conversation Comments Closed Systems and Open Futures
• Conversation Comments Final Response

Attachments:

• Liberty Matters - Understanding Jefferson: Slavery, Race, and the Declaration of Independence

Peter S. Onuf July 6, 2021

Susan Love Brown July 8, 2021

Lucas E. Morel July 13, 2021

"Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free . . ."

[A] different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind . . . And upon this ground our Constitution of Government . . . sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal-and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property-and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. [3]

Hannah Spahn July 15, 2021

Hans Eicholz July 20, 2021

Hannah Spahn July 22, 2021

Lucas E. Morel July 27, 2021

Peter S. Onuf July 29, 2021

Susan Love Brown August 3, 2021

"In Notes there is both the attempt to square his own inconsistencies in the elements of his thoughts with himself and the European intellectual world he is addressing, but equally important, he is speaking as a Virginian to fellow Virginians. These considerations diverted him away from the higher public reason of the Declaration. The Notes certainly contain conflicting sentiments in the chapters on manners and laws, but they permit the kind of special pleading and political maneuvering that would have signaled to other Virginians that he was perhaps not so radical after all..."

Hans Eicholz August 5, 2021

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American Paradox Essay

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What Morgan mean by the American Paradox

Why it is historically significant, works cited.

Generally, a paradox is something that shows some contradictory qualities. According to Morgan, American paradox means that both slavery and freedom were used simultaneously in the American colonial history (Morgan 5). He claimed that the Englishmen’s rights were maintained through the destruction of the African rights.

Morgan ascertained that the democracy and freedom of the Americans mainly found their roots in the establishment of the American slavery. He also argued that constituents of American paradox stemmed from democracy and slavery, which existed in colonial Chesapeake (Morgan 12).

American paradox is historically significant since it puts into consideration how both the economic conditions and social situations in Chesapeake resulted into democracy and slavery. Significantly, the American paradox made many historians and American scholars to begin having some interest in studying the foundation of liberty, rise of liberty, and often ordinary men and women were challenged by historians for nearly two decades about tracing racism, exploitation and oppression history.

In fact, the American is historically significant in the sense that it prompts scholars across the world to examine and unearth those historical issues on freedom and slavery, which colonial historians previously were never intending to do, especially the role that was played by slavery in the early historical development.

It is through such analysis portrayed in Morgan’s American paradox that many scholars and historians have recently come out to voice their concerns about slavery since before then the issue was merely treated as an exemption (Myers 1).

This was a rather worrying trend since the American population who suffered the effects of slavery constituted one-fifth of the entire population of the country, a figure that was too significant to be ignored in the revolution, and could not just be regarded as a mere exception.

Moreover, Morgan’s American paradox significantly prompted historians to examine the history of the one-fifth Americans who were directly exposed to the effects of slavery. It is through such detailed historical examination that scholars were able to form critiques on the old historical accounts and interpretations.

Arguably, elements of oppression and slavery were dominant features in the American history, an idea that is well supported by the American paradox. However, equality and liberty could not be advanced because the masses were fastened with chains of slavery, and to avoid addressing issues of equality and liberty in the American history to be merely baseless, did not only show how hard facts were ignored, but evading the problems that the facts addressed (Morgan 27).

In summary, Morgan’s views on American paradox presented two contradicting concepts, which are, freedom and slavery in the American history. The American equality and liberty never rose alone, but were accompanied by slavery, and the two contradicting developments took place in the American history for nearly two centuries, that is, between 17 th century and 19 th century (Beth 56).

Essentially, these centuries were crucial in the history of American paradox, and from the analysis it can be ascertained that modern historians and scholars hold a different view from that of colonial historians.

The colonial historians ignored the plight of the one-fifth Americans who were subjected to the effects of slavery and regarded their numbers as insignificant. However, modern historians examined the issue and held a different view that dignity and liberty could hardly be attained by the Americans who were exposed to a system of slavery that denied them human dignity and freedom.

Beth, Mary. A People and a Nation, Brief (9th Ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2011. Print.

Morgan, Edmund. “Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox.” The Journal of American History 59. 1 (1972): 5-29. Print.

Myers, David. The American Paradox . New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2011. Print.

• Chesapeake: Community Health Report
• Colonization of the Chesapeake
• Chesapeake Colony: The Only Place to Be
• The Vietnam War Causes
• Cold War Era and Threats to American Families
• Slavery and the Old South
• Jacksonian Era in the History of US
• Reading the American Past by Michael P. Johnson
• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2018, November 6). American Paradox. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-paradox/

"American Paradox." IvyPanda , 6 Nov. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/american-paradox/.

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IvyPanda . 2018. "American Paradox." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-paradox/.

1. IvyPanda . "American Paradox." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-paradox/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "American Paradox." November 6, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/american-paradox/.

US laws created during slavery are still on the books. A legal scholar wants to at least acknowledge that history in legal citations

Associate Professor of Law, Michigan State University

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As the story of Juneteenth is told by modern-day historians, enslaved Black people were freed by laws, not combat.

Union Gen. Gordon Granger said as much when he read General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, in front of enslaved people who were among the last to learn of their legal freedom.

According to the order, the law promised the “absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”

But the new laws guaranteeing legal protections for equal rights – starting with the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863 and followed by the ratification of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments after the U.S. Civil War had ended in April 1865 – did not eliminate the influence of slavery on the laws.

The legacy of slavery is still enshrined in thousands of judicial opinions and briefs that are cited today by American judges and lawyers in cases involving everything from property rights to criminal law.

For example, in 2016 a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited Prigg v. Pennsylvania , an 1842 U.S. Supreme Court case that held that a state could not provide legal protections for alleged fugitive slaves. The judge cited that case to explain the limits of congressional power to limit gambling in college sports.

In 2013, a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals cited Prigg for similar reasons. In that case, involving challenges to an Indian tribe’s acquisition of land, the judge relied on Prigg to explain how to interpret a federal statute.

Neither of these judges acknowledged or addressed the origins of the Prigg v. Pennsylvania case.

That is not unusual.

What I have learned by researching these slave cases is that the vast majority of judges do not acknowledge that the cases they cite involve the enslaved. They also almost never consider how slavery may have shaped legal rules.

The Citing Slavery Project

To place these laws in historical context for modern-day usage and encourage judges and lawyers to address slavery’s influence on the law, I started the Citing Slavery Project in 2020. Since then, my team of students and I have identified more than 12,000 cases involving enslaved people and more than 40,000 cases that cite those cases.

We have found dozens of citations of slave cases in the 2010s. Such citations appear in rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and in state courts across the country. Citation by lawyers in briefs is even more prevalent.

An ethical obligation?

Addressing slavery’s legal legacy is not just an issue for historians.

It is also an ethical issue for legal professionals. The code of conduct for U.S. judges recognizes that “an independent and honorable judiciary is indispensable to justice in our society.” The code further calls for judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity … of the judiciary.”

Lawyers share in this obligation.

The American Bar Association notes the profession’s “special responsibility for the quality of justice.” It also calls for lawyers to further “the public’s understanding of and confidence in the rule of law and the justice system.”

Such actions are particularly important because of the rising importance of the Supreme Court’s history-and-tradition test , which uses analysis of historical traditions to determine modern constitutional rights. Courts risk undermining their legitimacy by paying attention to some legal legacies while ignoring others.

It is my belief that lawyers and judges must confront slavery’s legacy in order to atone for the legal profession’s past actions and to fulfill their ethical duties to ensure confidence in our legal system.

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“Slavery And Freedom” Essays

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America’s Quest for Freedom

This essay about America’s quest for freedom explores the evolution of this foundational concept throughout its history. It examines how America’s ideals of freedom, rooted in its Declaration of Independence, have been challenged and reshaped over time by pivotal events such as the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. From struggles with slavery to advancements in civil liberties and economic rights, America’s journey reflects a dynamic interplay of principles and realities. The essay also discusses America’s global role in promoting freedom, highlighting its influence on international norms and its ongoing commitment to democracy and human rights. Overall, it portrays freedom as a central, evolving theme in America’s national identity, shaped by historical legacies and contemporary challenges.

How it works

Freedom lies at the heart of America’s national identity, embodying both a cherished ideal and a complex reality shaped by history, culture, and law. From its founding principles to contemporary debates, the concept of freedom in America has evolved, reflecting societal shifts and struggles. Understanding this journey unveils a nuanced narrative of progress and challenges.

Fundamentally, America’s conception of freedom traces back to its Declaration of Independence in 1776, boldly asserting inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This seminal document laid the groundwork for a nation aspiring to be a beacon of freedom, inspiring subsequent generations and framing debates on individual rights versus governmental authority. However, the road to realizing these ideals has been marked by contradictions and struggles, notably the institution of slavery, which persisted for nearly a century after independence.

The Civil War, a defining chapter in American history, underscored the nation’s grappling with the meaning of freedom. The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 marked a critical juncture, legally freeing slaves in Confederate states and setting the stage for the 13th Amendment’s abolition of slavery nationwide. Yet, the post-war Reconstruction era revealed the complexities of integrating freed slaves into American society, highlighting ongoing disparities in access to freedom and equality.

The 20th century witnessed expansive strides in expanding civil liberties, catalyzed by landmark Supreme Court decisions and grassroots movements. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, led by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, challenged segregationist practices and demanded equal rights under the law. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 represented a pivotal achievement, safeguarding political freedoms for African Americans and bolstering democratic participation.

However, America’s pursuit of freedom has encompassed broader dimensions beyond civil rights. Economic freedom, for instance, has been a focal point of debates surrounding capitalism and regulation. The rise of industrialization in the late 19th century ushered in an era of unprecedented economic growth yet exposed labor abuses and economic inequalities. Efforts to balance economic freedom with social welfare have shaped legislative agendas, from the New Deal’s reforms during the Great Depression to contemporary discussions on healthcare and income inequality.

Furthermore, America’s commitment to freedom extends beyond its borders, influencing its foreign policy and global engagements. Throughout the 20th century, America positioned itself as a defender of democracy and human rights, confronting totalitarian regimes during the Cold War and advocating for international norms of freedom and self-determination. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 symbolized a triumph of freedom over oppression, resonating as a testament to America’s global influence in advancing democratic ideals.

In conclusion, America’s journey toward freedom is a dynamic narrative that intertwines principles, progress, and persistent challenges. From its founding aspirations to contemporary debates, the concept of freedom in America continues to evolve, shaped by historical legacies, social movements, and evolving interpretations of rights and responsibilities. As America navigates the complexities of a changing world, its commitment to freedom remains a cornerstone of its national identity, embodying both aspirations and ongoing quests for justice and equality.

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Charles M. Blow

On Juneteenth, Freedom Came With Strings Attached

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

Last week at a Juneteenth concert on the South Lawn of the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris said that on June 19, 1865, after Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, “The enslaved people of Texas learned they were free.” On that day, she said, “they claimed their freedom.”

With those words, Harris, who stood alongside President Biden when he admirably signed the legislation that made Juneteenth a federal holiday, expressed a common oversimplification, one born of our tendency to conjugate history’s complexities: Although it’s a mark of progress to commemorate the end of American slavery, it’s imperative that we continue to underscore the myriad ways in which Black freedom was restricted long after that first Juneteenth.

To start, there is some debate over whether most of the estimated 250,000 enslaved people in Texas at the time didn’t know about the Emancipation Proclamation. As the Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told me recently, “I have never met a scholar who believes that’s true.”

But more important, emancipation was not true freedom — not in Texas and not in most of the American South, where a vast majority of Black people lived. It was quasi freedom. It was an ostensible freedom. It was freedom with more strings attached than a marionette.

Most Black people couldn’t claim their freedom on June 19, 1865, because their bodies (and their free will) were still being policed to nearly the same degree and with the same inveterate racism that Southern whites had aimed at them during slavery.

The laws governing the formerly enslaved “were very restrictive in terms of where they could go, what kind of jobs they could have, where they could live in certain communities,” said Daina Ramey Berry, the dean of humanities and fine arts at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the author of “The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, From Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation.”

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• New research exposes the role of women in America’s slave trade

In the bondage of others they saw their freedom

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T hey didn’t know how bad it was. That was how James Redpath, a northern journalist who toured the South in the 1850s, explained white southern women’s support for slavery to his readers. He reckoned that women were shielded from the “most obnoxious features” of the trade—rarely witnessing the auctions and the lashes doled out as punishments on plantations—and were oblivious to the “gigantic commerce” that it had become. Over time historians came to agree that slavery was the business of men.

Research published last month shatters that narrative. Economists at Ohio State University analysed data from the New Orleans slave market, the biggest of them all, to quantify women’s involvement. They found that women were buyers or sellers in 30% of all transactions and 38% of those that involved female slaves. By matching names to census records they show that it was not just single or widowed women who dealt in slaves because they lacked husbands; married ones did, too.

These are the first hard numbers building on a growing body of qualitative work by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, showing just how instrumental women were to the slave economy. In the travel logs of foreigners she uncovered descriptions of southern belles bidding at the slave markets dressed in their finest silks and “glittering in precious jewels”. And in interviews conducted by the federal government in the 1930s she found that former slaves frequently reported belonging to the “mistis” and told stories of being beaten by her with stinging nettles or coming home to find their child missing and the mistress counting a “heap of bills”.

For the ladies of the antebellum South, slavery was more than business—it was their ticket to economic freedom. Coverture laws compelled women to relinquish property and money to men when they married, but exceptions were made for slaves. As with furniture and clothing, a bride could hold on to the humans she owned and take them with her to her new husband’s estate. Fathers hoping to secure their daughters’ futures gave them slaves at baptisms, birthdays and engagements.

As grown-ups, women used slaves to establish financial independence. In cities like Charleston and New Orleans they put them to work selling cakes or dresses and pocketed the profits in secret. Some ran slave brothels. The mistresses then used the cash to reinvest in the slave market. But unlike their husbands, who often bought fit men to work the fields, women bought more women, who were cheaper but paid dividends later on when they reproduced.

On the eve of the civil war Southern women came to understand that the Union army threatened to strip them not just of their material wealth but of their independence. As men went off to battle and Congress passed the Confiscation Acts of the early 1860s, which authorised the government to seize slaves, women panicked. Before the war, half of the South’s wealth was in slaves. The fall of the Confederacy left many Southerners destitute. Freed slaves later recounted giving their former mistresses grits and potatoes to subsist on after emancipation.

It would be decades before the women of the South gained the right to control their earnings, own property, take custody of their children and vote. Ms Jones-Rogers contends that their fight for segregation into the 20th century was fuelled by the sense of power they had known and lost. In the subjugation of others they had tasted freedom. ■

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This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “The second sex”

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Edited Collection CFP for "William Wells Brown: A Man Of Letters"

Call For Papers

Williams Wells Brown: A Man of Letters

William Wells Brown is the author of many firsts in African American literature – the first play, novel, and travel narrative – that did much to establish the tropes and motifs which would become its conventions. While Brown’s most taught and studied writings continue to be his autobiographical Narrative (1847) and his novel Clotel (1853), his literary career and political activism should not be reduced to these two works and the antebellum period. Indeed, as a prolific man of letters who published in five separate decades, Brown merits greater scholarly engagement with the breadth and influence of his literary works.   

This call for  papers seeks contributors for a volume of essays devoted to the richness of  William Wells Brown’s literary contributions. Editors April Logan (Salisbury University) and Joe Conway (University of Alabama in Huntsville) are most interested in considerations of Brown’s less studied writings and speeches. They also welcome papers that chart new approaches to his antebellum work, such as how Brown — an obsessive reviser of his own writing— adapted it to fit the new historical, cultural, and socio-political contexts of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The goal of this essay collection is to do critical justice to the length, eclecticism, and legacy of Brown’s literary career. 

Some texts and contexts to take up  might include but are not limited to the following:

• Brown’s oratory in America and and his late 1877 speaking tour through England and Scotland
• Brown’s engagement with music and poetry, such as in The Anti-slavery Harp (1848)
• Brown as a playwright and performer (ex., The Escape (1858))
• Brown’s interest in visual culture, such as in his Original Panoramic Views (1849)
• Brown and the Black Atlantic, including his travel narratives such as Three Years in Europe: or, Places I have Seen and People I have Me t. (1852); “Visit of a Fugitive Slave to the Grave of Wilberforce” in Autographs for Freedom (1854); and American Fugitive in Europe. Sketches of Place and People Abroad  (1855)
• Brown’s historical imagination and the archive, his development as a historian, and/or his place in the Black historiographical tradition in works like St. Domingo: Its Revolution and Its Patriots (1855); The Black Man (1862); The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867); and The Rising Son (1873)
• Brown’s innovations in traditional genres, such as his mixture of autobiography, politics, and humor in My Southern Home: or, The South and Its People (1880)
• Brown’s many revisions, such as  Miralda’s 1860-1 publication in The Anglo-African and Clotelle ’s 1864 publication in Redpath’s “Books for the Campfire Series”

A university press has shown strong interest in this project. The editors seek proposals of 250-300 words as well as a short C.V. describing the scholarly work of potential contributors. Proposals from graduate students and contingent faculty are very much welcome. Please submit proposals to [email protected] and  [email protected] by October 15, 2024. Final essays will be expected by June 15, 2025.

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Juneteenth events celebrate the end of slavery in the United States

June 19 (UPI) -- Juneteenth holiday events across the nation celebrate and memorialize June 19 in 1865, when 250,000 slaves in Texas were granted their freedom following the Civil War.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued a proclamation honoring the Juneteenth day of observance. Advertisement

"Today, we recognize that Juneteenth not only marks the end of America's original sin of slavery, but also the beginning of the work at the heart and soul of our nation -- making the promise of America real for every American," Biden said.

• Google celebrates Juneteenth 2024 with a Doodle
• 2 dead, 4 injured in Texas Juneteenth event shooting
• White House to host Juneteenth concert

Juneteenth celebrates the final triumph of the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that freed all slaves in the former Confederate states and the eventual ratification of the 13th Amendment that abolishes slavery everywhere in the United States and its territories. Advertisement

President Abraham Lincoln and more than 618,000 soldiers gave their lives during the struggle to abolish slavery.

Congress passed a resolution that Lincoln on Feb. 1, 1865, signed the 13th Amendment , which then went to states for ratification.

The 13th Amendment reads: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to its jurisdiction."

The White House hosted an early Juneteenth celebration on June 10th. The nation's capital is hosting several holiday activities on Wednesday and through the weekend.

The Juneteenth events include an exhibit of painter William H. Johnson's "Fighters of Freedom" series honoring Black activists and others, including Harriet Tubman , George Washington Carver and Marian Anderson. The free exhibit is located at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington D.C.

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art is hosting a "Five Murmurations" visual-essay exhibit by filmmaker and artist John Akomfrah. The exhibit commemorates much of the seminal events of 2020, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter unrest in works of art and film clips. Advertisement

Additional Juneteenth events in the nation's capital include those scheduled at Tudor Place, the National Portrait Gallery, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History and The Phillips Collection.

Most of the Juneteenth events in Washington D.C. are free.

Some 1,400 miles away in Galveston, Texas, a 45th Annual Juneteenth Proclamation Reading was held late Wednesday morning at Ashton Villa. The event also honored former Texas State Rep. Al Edwards, who sponsored legislation that made Juneteenth Day a state holiday in 1979.

Galveston is notable because that is where federal Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and federal troops read the Emancipation Proclamation and effectively freed the state's 250,000 slaves on June 19, 1865.

Granger's actions were the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation and made former slaves in Texas aware that Lincoln officially freed them 2.5 years earlier.

Vice President Kamala Harris headlined a Juneteenth Block Party in Atlanta on Tuesday. A rodeo in nearby Marietta on Wednesday honored the legacy of Black ranchers, farmers, cowboys and cowgirls. Advertisement

Other events feature concerts, beauty pageants, parades and other community events to honor the official abolishment of slavery throughout the United States and its territories.

While countless Juneteenth events are scheduled Wednesday and through the weekend, previously scheduled celebrations on city properties in Akron, Ohio, are canceled .

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik on Friday announced the cancellations after eight Akron City Council members expressed their concerns about holding the events so soon after a recent mass shooting .

One or more unidentified shooters killed one and wounded 28 while shooting from an SUV into a crowd celebrating a birthday party at a private residence after midnight on June 2.

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On Juneteenth, a journalist honors ancestor at ceremony for Black soldiers who served in Civil War

Associated Press reporter Darren Sands, right, reads the names of United States Colored Troops regimental soldiers, including his great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands, at the African American Civil War Memorial as part of Juneteenth commemorations on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Associated Press reporter Darren Sands points to the name of his great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands listed with the names of other United States Colored Troops soldiers on the African American Civil War Memorial during Juneteenth commemorations on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

The Associated Press religion reporter Darren Sands poses by the gravestone of his great-great-great-great-grandfather and Civil War soldier Hewlett Sands in Westbury, N.Y., Monday, June 17, 2024. Hewlett Sands, born into slavery, served in the 26th United States Colored Infantry. He will be honored in a Juneteenth ceremony in Washington, D.C., along with about 200,000 other Black soldiers who fought to preserve the Union. (AP Photo/Lonnie Sands)

The Associated Press religion reporter Darren Sands and his father, Lonnie Sands, pose by the gravestone of his great-great-great-great-grandfather and Civil War soldier Hewlett Sands in Westbury, N.Y., Monday, June 17, 2024. Hewlett Sands, born into slavery, served in the 26th United States Colored Infantry. He will be honored in a Juneteenth ceremony in Washington, D.C., along with about 200,000 other Black soldiers who fought to preserve the Union. (AP Photo/Darren Sands)

Associated Press reporter Darren Sands, second from right, reads the names of United States Colored Troops regimental soldiers, including his great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands, at the African American Civil War Memorial as part of Juneteenth commemorations on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Associated Press reporter Darren Sands, left, and his wife Jummy Olabanji Sands, right, hold a U.S. flag and a flag from the 26th United States Colored Infantry, which his great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands served in, at the African American Civil War Memorial during Juneteenth commemorations on Wednesday, June 19, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — It was the middle of the night in the summer of 2021 when I finally found the missing piece of my family history.

My great-great-great-great grandfather Hewlett Sands, born into slavery in Oyster Bay, New York in 1820, was one of the more than 200,000 names listed on the African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. That meant he was a soldier who served in a United States Colored Troops regiment that fought for the Union – and the freedom we still celebrate today.

As the screen glowed, a mix of emotions – anxiety, elation, pride – washed over me. It was the first step in understanding the story of his life. I want to share what I know about him!

I had to resist the urge to race to the Spirit of Freedom statue and trace my fingers over his name etched on the nearby Wall of Honor. I held off until the sun came up.

This Juneteenth I returned to the memorial to honor him and all who served our country, one that spent its first two centuries seeing most of its Black people as someone else’s property. In a special ceremony Wednesday, I was helping carry on the more than 150-year-old commemoration of enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, finding out on June 19, 1865, that they’d been freed. It’s been a longtime sacred celebration for many Black Americans, but only recently was recognized as a federal holiday.

I didn’t go just for myself or my family. I also wanted to celebrate Frank Smith , a civil rights leader and the memorial’s director, whose work preserving this lesser-known American history helped me understand where I came from and who I was.

One of Smith’s biggest wishes is for the National Parks Service to assign a full-time ranger to the memorial site. If there was ever a candidate, it would be Marquett Awa-Milton. I first met him when I came to find my ancestor’s name. He serves the memorial daily in full Civil War regalia, and was taking selfies and gladhanding visitors with his rifle sticking above his head as I arrived.

Soon, the ceremony began. Smith, who once presided over this event with just his staff and very little fanfare, opened the ceremony by welcoming about 150 people, many tucked under the shade as temperatures rose. Smith then asked me and two-dozen other volunteers to read the names of soldiers who were in Galveston when the war ended, including the 26th Regiment. After I read Hewlett Sands’ name aloud, I took my wife, Jummy, by the hand and showed her the tiny corner of the memorial symbolizing his sacrifice. I felt again the same mix of pride and gratitude I first felt in the summer of 2021.

“Congratulations on finding your ancestor,” Smith had told me again last week, as he had after he first told me in 2021 after I found my connection to Hewlett Sands. I think it is what he says to everyone who finds their ancestor on the wall, a thank you for all those men who sacrificed.

I learned about Hewlett Sands while researching my family’s history, hoping to interweave it into a book I’m writing about Coretta Scott King’s work to try and transform America into a nonviolent society after the assassination of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968.

Over the many decades since the Civil War, there was a lot of displacement among my ancestors; people moved away and never came back and a lot of our family stories were lost.

But I do know that the Sands men served valiantly in World War II. There was a newspaper headline about “The Sands Family Fights” with a photograph of several of them. We knew a lot more about World War II than the Civil War.

According to the records I found, Hewlett Sands was born on Nov. 29, 1820, in the home of the Townsend family, a wealthy and powerful family on Long Island who held many enslaved people before New York abolished slavery in 1827.

It’s not clear to me how he spent much of his life between 1820 and 1852. He apparently worked as a farm laborer, and even as a clam digger. When he was 32, he met and married a young widow named Anne Amelia Payne, who took Sands as her last name.

In April 1861, Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, igniting the Civil War.

In January 1864, Hewlett Sands would collect a $300 bounty and join the 26th United States Colored Troops infantry regiment, which prepared for war along with thousands of other soldiers on Riker’s Island. His enlistment papers say he was 42, but in fact he was about to turn 44.

According to military records, his regiment – after enduring rugged conditions in camp -- boarded a ship named Warrior in March 1864 bound for South Carolina, where they fought in the battle at Honey Hill and other engagements.

Life after the war for Hewlett Sands was defined by a series of economic hardships. He fell and lost vision in one eye; and he lost an inheritance he intended to pass down to his family through the generations. He died on April 8, 1901, at the age of 81.

But his and Amelia’s son, James Edward Sands, got married and had two children, one of whom was Alfred Sands. Among Alfred’s children was my grandfather Alonzo, who served with his brothers in World War II. In June 1960, Alonzo and Catherine Sands gave birth to a boy, Lonnie, who is my dad.

Like Hewlett Sands, I grew up in Long Island, in the town of Roslyn, where I developed a love for reading. I first read about the life of Martin Luther King at the Bryant Library, and by age 11 was giving speeches about him and his impact on my life. It was in Roslyn, as a boy, that I decided I wanted to be a journalist, after a compassionate Newsday reporter visited to get our family’s side of the story in an article about a neighborhood controversy.

Now, working on this Juneteenth story as a journalist, I feel it’s part of my mission to educate and inform people about all this. And to be able to share it with my dad, my mom – all of my family.

I have a very strong sense of connection to the idea Hewlett Sands risked his life for not just his family, but for a higher ideal. I think all those men shared a sense of doing something that was going to impact generations that they would never meet.

No one living had ever seen Hewlett’s grave, and I went just the other day. On a cloudless day, my dad and I discovered his tombstone, inscribed Co. D 26th U.S. INF. Somehow, we felt a little closer to him, and a little closer to each other.

Darren Sands is a Washington-based reporter with the AP’s Religion Team.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.