The Truth About Slavery In America
"Every slave that ever entered into this country came in on a Northern built, owned and operated slave ship, or a European slave ship. Slave ships would primarily enter the U.S. into major Northern ports, such as New York and Boston. The early financial infrastructure of those cities were built primarily on the slave trade. These ships would take Northern made rum into Africa and trade the rum with African tribes for slaves that these tribes had captured during tribal wars."
Colonel Robert E. Lee
"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race." - Col. Robert E. Lee, United States Army, December 27, 1856
“The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern States."
Charles Dickens, 1862
Charles Dickens, 1862
BLACK SLAVE OWNERS
By Robert M. Grooms
In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.
The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slave holding states.
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slave holding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.
The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).
In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented slave holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6).
In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slave owner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a slave to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former slave would become a magnate slave master.
At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among slaves of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white slave-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, blacksmithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.
On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly slaves of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the slave he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the slave's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."
Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent slaveholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.
Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under slavery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become slaves; this because they were unable to support themselves.
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of slaves. Black slave masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free blacks were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."
In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired slave workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.
On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.
In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other blacks, free and slave, and poor whites sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.
Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring slaves in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.
Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap slave labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that whites dealt only with other whites. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.
In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conflagration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free blacks owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg blacks each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."
Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-slave blacksmith, owned two slaves, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as blacksmiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oyster-men and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 blacks owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.
The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.
In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.
By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and slaves. In 1840 he owned 30 slaves, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine slaves. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.
In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a slave 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for whites. And Ellison owned more slaves than 99 percent of the South's slaveholders.
Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "slave breeder." Slave breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of slaves under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited slaves (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began slave breeding.
While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female slaves at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His slaves were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem slaves.
As with the slaves of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's slaves ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a slave catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable slave. Andrews caught the slave in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.
William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the slave daughter he had sold.
Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.
The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."
Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro slave magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 slaves, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).
A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of slavery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.
The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slave holding states.
The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).
In the rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slave holding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of this number, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
To return to the census figures quoted above, this 28 percent is certainly impressive when compared to less than 1.4 percent of all American whites and less than 4.8 percent of southern whites. The statistics show that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters.
The majority of slaveholders, white and black, owned only one to five slaves. More often than not, and contrary to a century and a half of bullwhips-on-tortured-backs propaganda, black and white masters worked and ate alongside their charges; be it in house, field or workshop. The few individuals who owned 50 or more slaves were confined to the top one percent, and have been defined as slave magnates.
In 1860 there were at least six Negroes in Louisiana who owned 65 or more slaves The largest number, 152 slaves, were owned by the widow C. Richards and her son P.C. Richards, who owned a large sugar cane plantation. Another Negro slave magnate in Louisiana, with over 100 slaves, was Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter whose estate was valued at (in 1860 dollars) $264,000 (3). That year, the mean wealth of southern white men was $3,978 (4).
In Charleston, South Carolina in 1860 125 free Negroes owned slaves; six of them owning 10 or more. Of the $1.5 million in taxable property owned by free Negroes in Charleston, more than $300,000 represented slave holdings (5). In North Carolina 69 free Negroes were slave owners (6).
In 1860 William Ellison was South Carolina's largest Negro slave owner. In Black Masters. A Free Family of Color in the Old South, authors Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roak write a sympathetic account of Ellison's life. From Ellison's birth as a slave to his death at 71, the authors attempt to provide justification, based on their own speculation, as to why a former slave would become a magnate slave master.
At birth he was given the name April. A common practice among slaves of the period was to name a child after the day or month of his or her birth. Between 1800 and 1802 April was purchased by a white slave-owner named William Ellison. Apprenticed at 12, he was taught the trades of carpentry, blacksmithing and machining, as well as how to read, write, cipher and do basic bookkeeping.
On June 8, 1816, William Ellison appeared before a magistrate (with five local freeholders as supporting witnesses) to gain permission to free April, now 26 years of age. In 1800 the South Carolina legislature had set out in detail the procedures for manumission. To end the practice of freeing unruly slaves of "bad or depraved" character and those who "from age or infirmity" were incapacitated, the state required that an owner testify under oath to the good character of the slave he sought to free. Also required was evidence of the slave's "ability to gain a livelihood in an honest way."
Although lawmakers of the time could not envision the incredibly vast public welfare structures of a later age, these stipulations became law in order to prevent slaveholders from freeing individuals who would become a burden on the general public.
Interestingly, considering today's accounts of life under slavery, authors Johnson and Roak report instances where free Negroes petitioned to be allowed to become slaves; this because they were unable to support themselves.
Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (University Press of Virginia-1995) was written by Ervin L. Jordan Jr., an African-American and assistant professor and associate curator of the Special Collections Department, University of Virginia library. He wrote: "One of the more curious aspects of the free black existence in Virginia was their ownership of slaves. Black slave masters owned members of their family and freed them in their wills. Free blacks were encouraged to sell themselves into slavery and had the right to choose their owner through a lengthy court procedure."
In 1816, shortly after his manumission, April moved to Stateburg. Initially he hired slave workers from local owners. When in 1817 he built a gin for Judge Thomas Watries, he credited the judge nine dollars "for hire of carpenter George for 12 days." By 1820 he had purchased two adult males to work in his shop (7). In fewer than four years after being freed, April demonstrated that he had no problem perpetuating an institution he had been released from. He also achieved greater monetary success than most white people of the period.
On June 20, 1820, April appeared in the Sumter District courthouse in Sumterville. Described in court papers submitted by his attorney as a "freed yellow man of about 29 years of age," he requested a name change because it "would yet greatly advance his interest as a tradesman." A new name would also "save him and his children from degradation and contempt which the minds of some do and will attach to the name April." Because "of the kindness" of his former master and as a "Mark of gratitude and respect for him" April asked that his name be changed to William Ellison. His request was granted.
In time the black Ellison family joined the predominantly white Episcopalian church. On August 6, 1824 he was allowed to put a family bench on the first floor, among those of the wealthy white families. Other blacks, free and slave, and poor whites sat in the balcony. Another wealthy Negro family would later join the first floor worshippers.
Between 1822 and the mid-1840s, Ellison gradually built a small empire, acquiring slaves in increasing numbers. He became one of South Carolina's major cotton gin manufacturers, selling his machines as far away as Mississippi. From February 1817 until the War Between the States commenced, his business advertisements appeared regularly in newspapers across the state. These included the Camden Gazette, the Sumter Southern Whig and the Black River Watchman.
Ellison was so successful, due to his utilization of cheap slave labor, that many white competitors went out of business. Such situations discredit impressions that whites dealt only with other whites. Where money was involved, it was apparent that neither Ellison's race or former status were considerations.
In his book, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. writes that, as the great conflagration of 1861-1865 approached: "Free Afro-Virginians were a nascent black middle class under siege, but several acquired property before and during the war. Approximately 169 free blacks owned 145,976 acres in the counties of Amelia, Amherst, Isle of Wight, Nansemond, Prince William and Surry, averaging 870 acres each. Twenty-rune Petersburg blacks each owned property worth $1,000 and continued to purchase more despite the war."
Jordan offers an example: "Gilbert Hunt, a Richmond ex-slave blacksmith, owned two slaves, a house valued at $1,376, and $500 in other properties at his death in 1863." Jordan wrote that "some free black residents of Hampton and Norfolk owned property of considerable value; 17 black Hamptonians possessed property worth a total of $15,000. Thirty-six black men paid taxes as heads of families in Elizabeth City County and were employed as blacksmiths, bricklayers, fishermen, oyster-men and day laborers. In three Norfolk County parishes 160 blacks owned a total of $41,158 in real estate and personal property.
The general practice of the period was that plantation owners would buy seed and equip~ ment on credit and settle their outstanding accounts when the annual cotton crop was sold. Ellison, like all free Negroes, could resort to the courts for enforcement of the terms of contract agreements. Several times Ellison successfully sued white men for money owed him.
In 1838 Ellison purchased on time 54.5 acres adjoining his original acreage from one Stephen D. Miller. He moved into a large home on the property. What made the acquisition notable was that Miller had served in the South Carolina legislature, both in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and while a resident of Stateburg had been governor of the state. Ellison's next door neighbor was Dr. W.W. Anderson, master of "Borough House, a magnificent 18th Century mansion. Anderson's son would win fame in the War Between the States as General "Fighting Dick" Anderson.
By 1847 Ellison owned over 350 acres, and more than 900 by 1860. He raised mostly cotton, with a small acreage set aside for cultivating foodstuffs to feed his family and slaves. In 1840 he owned 30 slaves, and by 1860 he owned 63. His sons, who lived in homes on the property, owned an additional nine slaves. They were trained as gin makers by their father (8). They had spent time in Canada, where many wealthy American Negroes of the period sent their children for advanced formal education. Ellison's sons and daughters married mulattos from Charleston, bringing them to the Ellison plantation to live.
In 1860 Ellison greatly underestimated his worth to tax assessors at $65,000. Even using this falsely stated figure, this man who had been a slave 44 years earlier had achieved great financial success. His wealth outdistanced 90 percent of his white neighbors in Sumter District. In the entire state, only five percent owned as much real estate as Ellison. His wealth was 15 times greater than that of the state's average for whites. And Ellison owned more slaves than 99 percent of the South's slaveholders.
Although a successful businessman and cotton farmer, Ellison's major source of income derived from being a "slave breeder." Slave breeding was looked upon with disgust throughout the South, and the laws of most southern states forbade the sale of slaves under the age of 12. In several states it was illegal to sell inherited slaves (9). Nevertheless, in 1840 Ellison secretly began slave breeding.
While there was subsequent investment return in raising and keeping young males, females were not productive workers in his factory or his cotton fields. As a result, except for a few females he raised to become "breeders," Ellison sold the female and many of the male children born to his female slaves at an average price of $400. Ellison had a reputation as a harsh master. His slaves were said to be the district's worst fed and clothed. On his property was located a small, windowless building where he would chain his problem slaves.
As with the slaves of his white counterparts, occasionally Ellison's slaves ran away. The historians of Sumter District reported that from time to time Ellison advertised for the return of his runaways. On at least one occasion Ellison hired the services of a slave catcher. According to an account by Robert N. Andrews, a white man who had purchased a small hotel in Stateburg in the 1820s, Ellison hired him to run down "a valuable slave. Andrews caught the slave in Belleville, Virginia. He stated: "I was paid on returning home $77.50 and $74 for expenses.
William Ellison died December 5, 1861. His will stated that his estate should pass into the joint hands of his free daughter and his two surviving sons. He bequeathed $500 to the slave daughter he had sold.
Following in their father's footsteps, the Ellison family actively supported the Confederacy throughout the war. They converted nearly their entire plantation to the production of corn, fodder, bacon, corn shucks and cotton for the Confederate armies. They paid $5,000 in taxes during the war. They also invested more than $9,000 in Confederate bonds, treasury notes and certificates in addition to the Confederate currency they held. At the end, all this valuable paper became worthless.
The younger Ellisons contributed more than farm produce, labor and money to the Confederate cause. On March 27, 1863 John Wilson Buckner, William Ellison's oldest grandson, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. Buckner served in the company of Captains P.P. Galliard and A.H. Boykin, local white men who knew that Buckner was a Negro. Although it was illegal at the time for a Negro to formally join the Confederate forces, the Ellison family's prestige nullified the law in the minds of Buckner's comrades. Buckner was wounded in action on July 12, 1863. At his funeral in Stateburg in August, 1895 he was praised by his former Confederate officers as being a "faithful soldier."
Following the war the Ellison family fortune quickly dwindled. But many former Negro slave magnates quickly took advantage of circumstances and benefited by virtue of their race. For example Antoine Dubuclet, the previously mentioned New Orleans plantation owner who held more than 100 slaves, became Louisiana state treasurer during Reconstruction, a post he held from 1868 to 1877 (10).
A truer picture of the Old South, one never presented by the nation's mind molders, emerges from this account. The American South had been undergoing structural evolutionary changes far, far greater than generations of Americans have been led to believe. In time, within a relatively short time, the obsolete and economically nonviable institution of slavery would have disappeared. The nation would have been spared awesome traumas from which it would never fully recover.
Thomas Jefferson condemned the slave trade in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but the New England slave traders lobbied to have the clause stricken. In a short eleven year period form 1755 to 1766, no fewer than 23,000 slaves landed in Massachusetts. By 1787, Rhode Island had taken first place in the slave trade to be unseated later by New York. Before long, millions of slaves would be brought to America by way of Northern slave ships. There were no Southern slave ships involved in the triangular trade of slaves. The New England Yankee who brought slaves to America were interested in getting money, not in helping their cargo make a fresh start in the New World. New Englanders not only sold blacks to Southern planters but also kept slaves for themselves as well as enslaving the local Indian population. Slavery did not appear in the South until Northern settlers began to migrate South, bringing with them their slaves. It was soon discovered that while slaves were not suited to the harsh climate and working conditions of the north, they were ideal sources of cheap labor for the newly flourishing economy of Southern agricultural. Of the 9.5 million slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere from 1500 - 1870, less than 6% were brought to the United States. This means that Spanish, British and French neighbors to the south owned over 94% of the slaves brought to the New World. In the South, less than 7% of the total population ever owned a slave. In other words, over 93% of Southerners did not own any slaves.
The motive for slavery was Northern profits. Most of what the North did was motivated by profit, regardless of the cost to others. Whether it was officially encouraged, as in New York and New Jersey, or not, as in Pennsylvania, the slave trade flourished in colonial Northern ports. But New England, by far, was the leading slave merchant of the American colonies. The first systematic venture from New England to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders, who sent three ships in quest of gold dust and black slaves. One vessel returned the following year with a cargo of wine, salt, sugar, and tobacco, which it had picked up in Barbados in exchange for slaves. But the other two ran into European warships off the African coast and barely escaped in one piece. Their fate was a good example of why American traders stayed out of the slave trade in the 17th century.
The motive for slavery was Northern profits. Most of what the North did was motivated by profit, regardless of the cost to others. Whether it was officially encouraged, as in New York and New Jersey, or not, as in Pennsylvania, the slave trade flourished in colonial Northern ports. But New England, by far, was the leading slave merchant of the American colonies. The first systematic venture from New England to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders, who sent three ships in quest of gold dust and black slaves. One vessel returned the following year with a cargo of wine, salt, sugar, and tobacco, which it had picked up in Barbados in exchange for slaves. But the other two ran into European warships off the African coast and barely escaped in one piece. Their fate was a good example of why American traders stayed out of the slave trade in the 17th century.
"[R]ace prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in those states where slavery was never known." --Alexis De Tocqueville, “Democracy in America”
Discussing Slavery
Valerie Protopapas
There was a book written not long ago with the provocative title “Emancipating Slaves; Enslaving Free Men.” I don’t hold with the author’s premise that ending slavery was the only morally acceptable reason for the War of Secession and that protecting the rights and liberties of the Sovereign States and the People somehow constituted an unworthy cause. Nonetheless, the title at least is accurate. The War did indeed emancipate the slaves while at the same time, enslaving all Americans including those newly emancipated. It was rather like those incidents in which the military states that it had to destroy something in order to save it! Whatever the original intention, the result is catastrophic for that which is being “saved.”
Of course, with the rise of politically correct Marxist revisionism as the only acceptable “system” for the study of history, everything about the War has been reduced to one issue only: that of slavery. There simply is no other criteria for consideration—not tariffs or a tyrannous federal government or the slow economic and political strangulation of the States of the South or even the existing hatred and contempt in which most of the rest of the so-called “union” held their Southern brethren. Bad feelings against the South, formerly limited to New England had, by the middle of the 19th century, been “exported” to every State and Territory North and West of the Mason-Dixon line. Of course, this insured that there was little sympathy for the growing impoverishment of that Section especially given the fact that the South’s poverty was the consequence of Southern tax dollars enriching the rest of the Union. This matter was infinitely exacerbated by the refusal of Congress to permit Southerners to move into any new territories if they brought their slaves with them even though that was their constitutional right. Thus hedged in on all sides, the South was politically, economically and culturally marginalized being forced forever into a small, well defined territory within the nation at large—a precursor of the reservations established for the equally despised American Indian. The territory below the Mason-Dixon line and east of Indian territory became, quite literally, a ghetto into which the people of the South were forced to remain whatever happened. Individuals could leave, of course, but their culture and way of life was forever limited by law to Dixie whereas, the “Yankee” mindset, originally limited to New England, had infested virtually every part of what lay outside.
In point of fact, there had never really been a single unified “nation” from the beginning. Instead there were thirteen sovereign and diverse colonies who came together to act based upon the concept of “the enemy of my enemy….” Indeed, the original Articles of Confederation proved unworkable as a direct result of the lack of a cohesive vision among these newly independent “nations.” If there was insufficient motivation for those “nation-states” to work together under a yoke as mild as the Articles, forcing them into the more binding Constitution did not bode well for the future of the republic. But even the Constitution does not mention the word “nation,” neither did the majority of its creators envision the central government arising from that compact becoming the ruler rather than the servant of any—much less all—of the sovereign States. When it became obvious to many Southerners in the 1850s that this had already happened under the Constitution, they and their States determined to leave that compact as already having been broken for the economic and political benefit of the rest of the signatory States. Indeed, the Southern understanding of the correct nature of the bond originally envisioned among the States was to be found in the name they chose for their new nation: the Confederate States of America. In fact, they wished to return to the old Articles purged of those weaknesses that had led to the creation of the Constitution in the first place. Whether that would have succeeded, alas we shall never know.
There were many reasons for secession, but it was secession that was the reason for Mr. Lincoln’s war. Defenders of the South decry the claim that slavery was the sole reason for secession and thus, for the war. They bring up all of the above and more besides, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Nowhere is this more plain than in the apparent need for those defending the South to begin any such defense with the claim that they personally believe that slavery was a great evil and then going on to quote the likes of Robert E. Lee to show that this was not an unusual viewpoint in the South. Actually, it wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t universal either and many Southern apologists have a very difficult time dealing with that reality. They seem to believe that in order to have any credibility at all, slavery—at least as it existed in the South in the 1800s—must be totally condemned not only in the here and now, but also in the time period in which it existed. No effort is made—or more properly, permitted to be made—to consider the mindset of the people or the situation extant at that time. Slavery and those who were part of it must be allowed no defense of any kind. But that is not all! In fact—and here’s the problem—the subject cannot even be allowed rational debate and discussion! No one may even consider the problem through the lens of [1] the historical time period, [2] the history of slavery itself and [3] the alternatives (if any) available. In fact, nothing is acceptable but an immediate and mindless blanket condemnation of slavery without any reference to mitigating circumstances as well as a total acceptance of any and every act that could be construed as attempting to end it. Anything and everything else is met with shock and horror, rendering a logical, rational, scholarly discourse on the institution virtually impossible. Any attempt at such, results first, in a defensive claim by those involved that they are against slavery (and who would claim to be for it?) and secondly, an outcry that the person attempting to consider the subject objectively and in depth is a racist and possibly even a member of the Klan. That is a very poor foundation upon which to build knowledge. If you cannot even discuss the issue, then rational human intercourse ceases to exist and we are left with demagoguery, slogans and propaganda.
But that, sadly, is where things now stand. God help the intelligent person who looks into the institution of slavery as it came to be on this continent and what happened up until the passage of the 13th Amendment—or should I say, the second manifestation of that Amendment. The first such, was the virtually unknown “Corwin” Amendment offered by Lincoln and the radical Republicans while President Buchanan was still in office. This would have placed black slavery into the Constitution in perpetuity. Lincoln believed that the South was considering secession in order to protect slavery, which it must be admitted seemed likely given the rhetoric of the time. After all, slavery was the foundation of the cotton trade—which in turn, was the foundation of most Southern wealth. All that Lincoln wanted was a compliant South that remained in the Union and filled the coffers of the federal treasury, the bounty of which would then be distributed among Mr. Lincoln’s business cronies to his personal, political and economic benefit. The British called it mercantilism. The Americans beginning with Hamilton called it “the American system.” Mussolini called it “corporatism.” Today we call it “crony capitalism,” but, in fact, its correct name is fascism. The plight of the black slave was of no interest to the vast majority of Northern whites and those who did have an interest such as the radical abolitionists, were only interested in creating servile insurrection and using the black slave to kill the white Southerner. The slaves would then themselves be killed by local militias. It was a sort of “two birds with one stone” strategy.
But for all of the claims that slavery was inefficient and too costly for its return, the fact is that it worked sufficiently well that had it not been for Northern tariffs and the increasing political impotence of the South which could not prevent them, King Cotton would have bestowed upon the cotton states, at least, considerable wealth and therefore, considerable power. True, the Northern mogul with his huge manpower pool fleeing to the New World could use up and dispose of this human traffic at a far better cost to profit ratio than the Southern planter who was required to give his chattel lifelong care—not an inexpensive arrangement. Indeed, a great deal of the disgust the New England Yankee felt for slavery had nothing to do with the plight of the slave, but rather what these worthies considered the waste of money caring for the young, the sick, the old and the crippled who gave no return for their keep. Except for children, such were never employed in his Northern factories, mills and mines! Indeed, should an employee become unable to work, he was simply discarded as any other piece of useless trash. The writings of New England businessmen, politicians and even ordinary citizens are filled with laments about the waste of good money on useless “Africans.” Actually, the vast majority of the people of the North at all levels of income and society did not want the black man free, so much as they wanted him gone! They blithely forgot that their own people were the means by which blacks reached the pristine shores of North America—that is, after the British outlawed the trade in hopes of dealing a death blow to the New World empires of Portugal, France and Spain.
But let us look finally, at whether or not an actual defense can be made for slavery. First, let us define “defense.” Does it mean “defending” as in promoting or approving of the institution? I am sure that there were Southerners of the time who did just that! But one doubts that anyone would do so today in this era of mindless political correctness where nuanced thought and speech simply cannot exist. Yet, even Robert E. Lee believed that the situation of “the African” was much improved after he was taken from his dark homeland and brought into the light of the Christian West. Lee did not approve of forced servitude, but he reasoned—not incorrectly—that the Negro in America was both physically and spiritually better off than he would have been had he remained in Africa—and rationally, I do not believe that a case can be made to the contrary. To begin with, he was introduced to Christianity, something that would save his immortal soul. Whatever he endured as a slave paled beside the blessing of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Now while this secular age would find such reasoning poor at best and comedic at worst, in the 19th Century, most people (especially in the South) took their religion very seriously indeed!
Lee also reasoned—as did most astute Southerners—that slavery was a dying institution and that for the millions of slaves living in the South, the day was not all that far removed before they would be emancipated. Of course, this was not necessarily a comforting thought. Because of their numbers and their concentration first within the South itself and then more particularly, within certain regions in the South, the idea of a free Negro population unrestrained by the curb of white oversight and control made most whites very nervous indeed. This nervousness was further exacerbated by the efforts of Northern radical abolitionists to instigate servile insurrection of the type practiced by the infamous Nat Turner and his barbaric followers. So the people of the South found themselves in an untenable position. Even those who desired emancipation and an end to slavery did not know what to do with a black population that had grown to over three million by the 1860s, a large majority of which was, by virtue of Northern “black codes,” confined to the South by law. Interestingly enough, many modern “scholars” talk about slavery as a sort of “black genocide” when it was exactly the opposite. Indeed, during reconstruction, a Northern newspaper man when talking about the “Africanization” of South Carolina stated that he did not believe that the blacks could remain in power. And among the reasons for his belief was their falling population due to the fact that their children were dying off in greater numbers because they were no longer being cared for as they had been under slavery! The post-war understanding that blacks were physically better off, lived longer and were more healthy and that black children had a better chance to live and thrive under slavery than they did as free men is a point of view that is ignored in today’s study of history even with its concentration on the black man in America.
There are very few circumstances in life that fail to produce both positive and negative consequences. I am reminded of the story of Pollyanna, a poor child who, despite being orphaned was habitually optimistic. She is warned by her maiden aunt’s servants that she will find nothing positive in her attendance at church on Sunday. And, indeed, the preacher is full of hell-fire and fury and the congregation departs more shell-shocked than comforted. When the group return home, the servant asks the child if she is able to find anything positive to say about the ordeal. Pollyanna thinks for a few moments and then her face lights up and she cries, “It’s whole week until next Sunday!” Even death is not altogether negative. General James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart declared that he did not want to survive the War if the South did not prevail. God heard his prayer and delivered him as he himself had wished—that is, to die in a great battle on a fine horse. Though Stuart died in a bed, he was mortally wounded in just such a battle. Since all men die, here at least was a good Christian man given what he had asked of God—to end his life before he was defeated. Even slavery was not an entirely negative condition as many testified both before and after the war. If slavery had been such a horror for blacks, then Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would have produced what was intended, a servile insurrection of such magnitude that Lee would have been stripped of soldiers rushing home to protect their helpless families from marauding black mobs. But Lincoln and his generals were wrong in their understanding of the relationship between most whites and blacks in the South and more often than not, slaves protected their white families as best they could when the Yankees came even to dying for them. How anyone can say that this did not constitute love and fidelity, I cannot imagine and if the slave loved the master and was loyal to him and his family, what reason could he or she have but that the master loved and succored the slave.
Finally, facts and truth are not prejudiced on one side of an issue or the other. A fact is a fact and truth is truth and the enlightenment they bring cannot and should not be denied because of prejudice towards a particular viewpoint. The role of the scholar and the academic whether in science or mathematics or history is to discover facts whatever they may be and truth insofar as it can be discerned from those facts. When a scholar or an academic is more concerned with presenting a desired conclusion rather than the conclusion arising from said facts and truth, he is no longer a scholar or an academic. He is a demagogue and a liar.
Valerie Protopapas
There was a book written not long ago with the provocative title “Emancipating Slaves; Enslaving Free Men.” I don’t hold with the author’s premise that ending slavery was the only morally acceptable reason for the War of Secession and that protecting the rights and liberties of the Sovereign States and the People somehow constituted an unworthy cause. Nonetheless, the title at least is accurate. The War did indeed emancipate the slaves while at the same time, enslaving all Americans including those newly emancipated. It was rather like those incidents in which the military states that it had to destroy something in order to save it! Whatever the original intention, the result is catastrophic for that which is being “saved.”
Of course, with the rise of politically correct Marxist revisionism as the only acceptable “system” for the study of history, everything about the War has been reduced to one issue only: that of slavery. There simply is no other criteria for consideration—not tariffs or a tyrannous federal government or the slow economic and political strangulation of the States of the South or even the existing hatred and contempt in which most of the rest of the so-called “union” held their Southern brethren. Bad feelings against the South, formerly limited to New England had, by the middle of the 19th century, been “exported” to every State and Territory North and West of the Mason-Dixon line. Of course, this insured that there was little sympathy for the growing impoverishment of that Section especially given the fact that the South’s poverty was the consequence of Southern tax dollars enriching the rest of the Union. This matter was infinitely exacerbated by the refusal of Congress to permit Southerners to move into any new territories if they brought their slaves with them even though that was their constitutional right. Thus hedged in on all sides, the South was politically, economically and culturally marginalized being forced forever into a small, well defined territory within the nation at large—a precursor of the reservations established for the equally despised American Indian. The territory below the Mason-Dixon line and east of Indian territory became, quite literally, a ghetto into which the people of the South were forced to remain whatever happened. Individuals could leave, of course, but their culture and way of life was forever limited by law to Dixie whereas, the “Yankee” mindset, originally limited to New England, had infested virtually every part of what lay outside.
In point of fact, there had never really been a single unified “nation” from the beginning. Instead there were thirteen sovereign and diverse colonies who came together to act based upon the concept of “the enemy of my enemy….” Indeed, the original Articles of Confederation proved unworkable as a direct result of the lack of a cohesive vision among these newly independent “nations.” If there was insufficient motivation for those “nation-states” to work together under a yoke as mild as the Articles, forcing them into the more binding Constitution did not bode well for the future of the republic. But even the Constitution does not mention the word “nation,” neither did the majority of its creators envision the central government arising from that compact becoming the ruler rather than the servant of any—much less all—of the sovereign States. When it became obvious to many Southerners in the 1850s that this had already happened under the Constitution, they and their States determined to leave that compact as already having been broken for the economic and political benefit of the rest of the signatory States. Indeed, the Southern understanding of the correct nature of the bond originally envisioned among the States was to be found in the name they chose for their new nation: the Confederate States of America. In fact, they wished to return to the old Articles purged of those weaknesses that had led to the creation of the Constitution in the first place. Whether that would have succeeded, alas we shall never know.
There were many reasons for secession, but it was secession that was the reason for Mr. Lincoln’s war. Defenders of the South decry the claim that slavery was the sole reason for secession and thus, for the war. They bring up all of the above and more besides, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Nowhere is this more plain than in the apparent need for those defending the South to begin any such defense with the claim that they personally believe that slavery was a great evil and then going on to quote the likes of Robert E. Lee to show that this was not an unusual viewpoint in the South. Actually, it wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t universal either and many Southern apologists have a very difficult time dealing with that reality. They seem to believe that in order to have any credibility at all, slavery—at least as it existed in the South in the 1800s—must be totally condemned not only in the here and now, but also in the time period in which it existed. No effort is made—or more properly, permitted to be made—to consider the mindset of the people or the situation extant at that time. Slavery and those who were part of it must be allowed no defense of any kind. But that is not all! In fact—and here’s the problem—the subject cannot even be allowed rational debate and discussion! No one may even consider the problem through the lens of [1] the historical time period, [2] the history of slavery itself and [3] the alternatives (if any) available. In fact, nothing is acceptable but an immediate and mindless blanket condemnation of slavery without any reference to mitigating circumstances as well as a total acceptance of any and every act that could be construed as attempting to end it. Anything and everything else is met with shock and horror, rendering a logical, rational, scholarly discourse on the institution virtually impossible. Any attempt at such, results first, in a defensive claim by those involved that they are against slavery (and who would claim to be for it?) and secondly, an outcry that the person attempting to consider the subject objectively and in depth is a racist and possibly even a member of the Klan. That is a very poor foundation upon which to build knowledge. If you cannot even discuss the issue, then rational human intercourse ceases to exist and we are left with demagoguery, slogans and propaganda.
But that, sadly, is where things now stand. God help the intelligent person who looks into the institution of slavery as it came to be on this continent and what happened up until the passage of the 13th Amendment—or should I say, the second manifestation of that Amendment. The first such, was the virtually unknown “Corwin” Amendment offered by Lincoln and the radical Republicans while President Buchanan was still in office. This would have placed black slavery into the Constitution in perpetuity. Lincoln believed that the South was considering secession in order to protect slavery, which it must be admitted seemed likely given the rhetoric of the time. After all, slavery was the foundation of the cotton trade—which in turn, was the foundation of most Southern wealth. All that Lincoln wanted was a compliant South that remained in the Union and filled the coffers of the federal treasury, the bounty of which would then be distributed among Mr. Lincoln’s business cronies to his personal, political and economic benefit. The British called it mercantilism. The Americans beginning with Hamilton called it “the American system.” Mussolini called it “corporatism.” Today we call it “crony capitalism,” but, in fact, its correct name is fascism. The plight of the black slave was of no interest to the vast majority of Northern whites and those who did have an interest such as the radical abolitionists, were only interested in creating servile insurrection and using the black slave to kill the white Southerner. The slaves would then themselves be killed by local militias. It was a sort of “two birds with one stone” strategy.
But for all of the claims that slavery was inefficient and too costly for its return, the fact is that it worked sufficiently well that had it not been for Northern tariffs and the increasing political impotence of the South which could not prevent them, King Cotton would have bestowed upon the cotton states, at least, considerable wealth and therefore, considerable power. True, the Northern mogul with his huge manpower pool fleeing to the New World could use up and dispose of this human traffic at a far better cost to profit ratio than the Southern planter who was required to give his chattel lifelong care—not an inexpensive arrangement. Indeed, a great deal of the disgust the New England Yankee felt for slavery had nothing to do with the plight of the slave, but rather what these worthies considered the waste of money caring for the young, the sick, the old and the crippled who gave no return for their keep. Except for children, such were never employed in his Northern factories, mills and mines! Indeed, should an employee become unable to work, he was simply discarded as any other piece of useless trash. The writings of New England businessmen, politicians and even ordinary citizens are filled with laments about the waste of good money on useless “Africans.” Actually, the vast majority of the people of the North at all levels of income and society did not want the black man free, so much as they wanted him gone! They blithely forgot that their own people were the means by which blacks reached the pristine shores of North America—that is, after the British outlawed the trade in hopes of dealing a death blow to the New World empires of Portugal, France and Spain.
But let us look finally, at whether or not an actual defense can be made for slavery. First, let us define “defense.” Does it mean “defending” as in promoting or approving of the institution? I am sure that there were Southerners of the time who did just that! But one doubts that anyone would do so today in this era of mindless political correctness where nuanced thought and speech simply cannot exist. Yet, even Robert E. Lee believed that the situation of “the African” was much improved after he was taken from his dark homeland and brought into the light of the Christian West. Lee did not approve of forced servitude, but he reasoned—not incorrectly—that the Negro in America was both physically and spiritually better off than he would have been had he remained in Africa—and rationally, I do not believe that a case can be made to the contrary. To begin with, he was introduced to Christianity, something that would save his immortal soul. Whatever he endured as a slave paled beside the blessing of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. Now while this secular age would find such reasoning poor at best and comedic at worst, in the 19th Century, most people (especially in the South) took their religion very seriously indeed!
Lee also reasoned—as did most astute Southerners—that slavery was a dying institution and that for the millions of slaves living in the South, the day was not all that far removed before they would be emancipated. Of course, this was not necessarily a comforting thought. Because of their numbers and their concentration first within the South itself and then more particularly, within certain regions in the South, the idea of a free Negro population unrestrained by the curb of white oversight and control made most whites very nervous indeed. This nervousness was further exacerbated by the efforts of Northern radical abolitionists to instigate servile insurrection of the type practiced by the infamous Nat Turner and his barbaric followers. So the people of the South found themselves in an untenable position. Even those who desired emancipation and an end to slavery did not know what to do with a black population that had grown to over three million by the 1860s, a large majority of which was, by virtue of Northern “black codes,” confined to the South by law. Interestingly enough, many modern “scholars” talk about slavery as a sort of “black genocide” when it was exactly the opposite. Indeed, during reconstruction, a Northern newspaper man when talking about the “Africanization” of South Carolina stated that he did not believe that the blacks could remain in power. And among the reasons for his belief was their falling population due to the fact that their children were dying off in greater numbers because they were no longer being cared for as they had been under slavery! The post-war understanding that blacks were physically better off, lived longer and were more healthy and that black children had a better chance to live and thrive under slavery than they did as free men is a point of view that is ignored in today’s study of history even with its concentration on the black man in America.
There are very few circumstances in life that fail to produce both positive and negative consequences. I am reminded of the story of Pollyanna, a poor child who, despite being orphaned was habitually optimistic. She is warned by her maiden aunt’s servants that she will find nothing positive in her attendance at church on Sunday. And, indeed, the preacher is full of hell-fire and fury and the congregation departs more shell-shocked than comforted. When the group return home, the servant asks the child if she is able to find anything positive to say about the ordeal. Pollyanna thinks for a few moments and then her face lights up and she cries, “It’s whole week until next Sunday!” Even death is not altogether negative. General James Ewell Brown (J.E.B.) Stuart declared that he did not want to survive the War if the South did not prevail. God heard his prayer and delivered him as he himself had wished—that is, to die in a great battle on a fine horse. Though Stuart died in a bed, he was mortally wounded in just such a battle. Since all men die, here at least was a good Christian man given what he had asked of God—to end his life before he was defeated. Even slavery was not an entirely negative condition as many testified both before and after the war. If slavery had been such a horror for blacks, then Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation would have produced what was intended, a servile insurrection of such magnitude that Lee would have been stripped of soldiers rushing home to protect their helpless families from marauding black mobs. But Lincoln and his generals were wrong in their understanding of the relationship between most whites and blacks in the South and more often than not, slaves protected their white families as best they could when the Yankees came even to dying for them. How anyone can say that this did not constitute love and fidelity, I cannot imagine and if the slave loved the master and was loyal to him and his family, what reason could he or she have but that the master loved and succored the slave.
Finally, facts and truth are not prejudiced on one side of an issue or the other. A fact is a fact and truth is truth and the enlightenment they bring cannot and should not be denied because of prejudice towards a particular viewpoint. The role of the scholar and the academic whether in science or mathematics or history is to discover facts whatever they may be and truth insofar as it can be discerned from those facts. When a scholar or an academic is more concerned with presenting a desired conclusion rather than the conclusion arising from said facts and truth, he is no longer a scholar or an academic. He is a demagogue and a liar.
Slave owners, slaves, and life on the plantation
Submitted by Gay Mathis on Sun, 03/02/2008 - 22:03
Slave owners, slaves, and life on the plantation
Date: March 2, 2003
Byline: Mike Toner
Digs unearth slave plantations in North
Slaveholding plantations, usually thought of as uniquely Southern institutions, were deeply rooted in the fabric of "free" states of the North as well, new archaeological studies are showing.
The hidden history of Northern plantations and their slaves is emerging — one shovelful of soil at a time — from excavations in and around historic manor houses in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. From bits of china, kitchen utensils, tools, buttons and personal items, archaeologists are getting glimpses of a chapter of America's past that written histories have either ignored or forgotten.
Most Northern states abolished slavery before the Civil War. But recent excavations show that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, many of what later came to be called manors and landed estates were full-fledged plantations that held African-American slaves under conditions similar to those in the South.
"Historians are stunned by some of the evidence," said Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist at the University of Maryland.
"The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations," she said. "It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."
Near Salem, Mass., archaeologists have excavated the ruins of a 13,000-acre plantation that produced grain, horses, barrel staves and dried meat. The owner, Samuel Browne, traded those goods for molasses and rum from the Caribbean. The graveyard shows at least 100 African-Americans were enslaved there from 1718 to 1780.
At Shelter Island on New York's Long Island, archaeologists have spent several years peeling open the grounds of present-day Sylvester Manor to reveal the traces of an 8,000-acre plantation that provisioned two sugar plantations in Barbados and made heavy use of African slave labor. During the late 1600s, at least 20 slaves there served as carpenters, blacksmiths, domestics and field hands.
"America was a slaveholding country — North and South," said LaRoche. "Over the years, that reality has been lost, stolen or just strayed from the history books."
Fleshing out history
The United States banned the importation of new slaves in 1808, but that did not free the millions already in the country, or their descendants. Some states did take action, enacting bans one by one, so that by 1863 the practice was illegal in most of the North.
Because the written record of slavery from the slaves' point of view is so meager, archaeology — with its emphasis on the physical landscape and material aspects of culture — is emerging as an important means of filling in omissions and distortions.
"Artifacts can tell us how people washed their clothes, fed themselves, churned their butter and hitched their horses," said Orloff Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. "That's why archaeology can tell what it was like to live as a slave."
Some of the new evidence of Northern slaveholding plantations comes from excavations on the well-manicured grounds of historic estate homes, like the elegant Van Cortlandt Manor on the banks of New York's Croton River, where slaves worked in the fields and orchards.
Other discoveries are turning up in more humble, more endangered locations. In Morris County, N.J., plans for a park-and-ride transit station for New York commuters recently prompted the state to order archaeological investigations of the site, thought to have been home to the 18th century Beverwyck estate.
Before archaeologists finished, they had found the remains of more than 20 plantation buildings, including a dairy, blacksmith shop, distillery and quarters for at least 20 slaves that were part of a 2,000-acre provisioning operation for the owners' properties in the Caribbean.
Beneath the floor of the slave quarters, archaeologists found a set of iron shackles; small caches of pins, needles and beads; and ritualistic arrangements of cooking utensils that reflect the occupants' African origins.
"For a time, Beverwyck was one of the region's finest plantations, but it could only have reached that high state of cultivation through the forced labor of enslaved workers," said archaeologist Wade Catts of John Milner Associates, a New Jersey archaeology firm engaged in the project.
"For most of history, Beverwyck has been known primarily as one of the places that George Washington slept," he said. "Now the tangible evidence we've uncovered allows us to see it in a whole new light."
Catts said there was little doubt that other plantations in New Jersey also had significant slave populations.
As a science, archaeology is more than a century old. But only in the last few decades have researchers devoted much attention to the African-American component of sites, both in the North and the South.
"For a long time, archaeologists who studied plantations were mostly interested in the people who lived in the big house," said Syracuse University anthropologist Theresa Singleton, author of "The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life." "That didn't tell us much more about slaves than we learned from the histories by the people who enslaved them. Archaeology allows us to see history through a different lens."
Digging up a past that many would rather forget has had interesting results on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
'Amnesia' recovery
Slave quarters have been reconstructed at Bulloch Hall, the Greek Revival mansion just off the town square in Roswell. Until archaeological excavations in the late 1990s helped identify the location of the structure, the only hint of the slaves who helped build the mansion in 1839 had been a simple sign pointing in the general direction of "the quarters."
In rural Mason County, Ky., archaeologists recently identified an old wooden barn as the country's only extant slave pen, one of the prisonlike compounds where slaves were kept overnight during transport from the East to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana in the mid-1800s.
The busloads of curiosity seekers who descended on the farm for a closer look prompted an ultimatum from the owner. Archaeologists could either remove the structure or he would tear it down. The building, disassembled one timber at a time, will soon be reconstructed at Cincinnati's Underground Railroad center.
In Philadelphia, when the new $9 million Liberty Bell Center opens this year, the grounds of the most famous icon of American independence — and later the symbol of the abolitionist movement — will now acknowledge an aspect of African-American history that almost got left out.
During excavations or the new center, archaeologists recovered thousands of artifacts from the red brick mansion where Washington stayed in Philadelphia. But it took public protests for the National Park Service to decide that the story of Washington's slaves deserved space in the pavilion, too.
"Most Philadelphians would be shocked to know that Washington had slaves with him in the city," said University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Gary Nash, who helped spur the Park Service decision.
The slave quarters, and any artifacts they hold, lie just outside the entrance to the new center. They were undisturbed by construction, and the Park Service plans to leave them in place, to be studied and interpreted at some future date.
"Written history is always subject to a kind of cultural amnesia. Some of it is deliberately forgotten and some of it is inadvertently lost," said Nash. "That's why artifacts and their context are so important. They can speak to us for the people who left no written record."
Submitted by Gay Mathis on Sun, 03/02/2008 - 22:03
Slave owners, slaves, and life on the plantation
Date: March 2, 2003
Byline: Mike Toner
Digs unearth slave plantations in North
Slaveholding plantations, usually thought of as uniquely Southern institutions, were deeply rooted in the fabric of "free" states of the North as well, new archaeological studies are showing.
The hidden history of Northern plantations and their slaves is emerging — one shovelful of soil at a time — from excavations in and around historic manor houses in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. From bits of china, kitchen utensils, tools, buttons and personal items, archaeologists are getting glimpses of a chapter of America's past that written histories have either ignored or forgotten.
Most Northern states abolished slavery before the Civil War. But recent excavations show that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, many of what later came to be called manors and landed estates were full-fledged plantations that held African-American slaves under conditions similar to those in the South.
"Historians are stunned by some of the evidence," said Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist at the University of Maryland.
"The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations," she said. "It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."
Near Salem, Mass., archaeologists have excavated the ruins of a 13,000-acre plantation that produced grain, horses, barrel staves and dried meat. The owner, Samuel Browne, traded those goods for molasses and rum from the Caribbean. The graveyard shows at least 100 African-Americans were enslaved there from 1718 to 1780.
At Shelter Island on New York's Long Island, archaeologists have spent several years peeling open the grounds of present-day Sylvester Manor to reveal the traces of an 8,000-acre plantation that provisioned two sugar plantations in Barbados and made heavy use of African slave labor. During the late 1600s, at least 20 slaves there served as carpenters, blacksmiths, domestics and field hands.
"America was a slaveholding country — North and South," said LaRoche. "Over the years, that reality has been lost, stolen or just strayed from the history books."
Fleshing out history
The United States banned the importation of new slaves in 1808, but that did not free the millions already in the country, or their descendants. Some states did take action, enacting bans one by one, so that by 1863 the practice was illegal in most of the North.
Because the written record of slavery from the slaves' point of view is so meager, archaeology — with its emphasis on the physical landscape and material aspects of culture — is emerging as an important means of filling in omissions and distortions.
"Artifacts can tell us how people washed their clothes, fed themselves, churned their butter and hitched their horses," said Orloff Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. "That's why archaeology can tell what it was like to live as a slave."
Some of the new evidence of Northern slaveholding plantations comes from excavations on the well-manicured grounds of historic estate homes, like the elegant Van Cortlandt Manor on the banks of New York's Croton River, where slaves worked in the fields and orchards.
Other discoveries are turning up in more humble, more endangered locations. In Morris County, N.J., plans for a park-and-ride transit station for New York commuters recently prompted the state to order archaeological investigations of the site, thought to have been home to the 18th century Beverwyck estate.
Before archaeologists finished, they had found the remains of more than 20 plantation buildings, including a dairy, blacksmith shop, distillery and quarters for at least 20 slaves that were part of a 2,000-acre provisioning operation for the owners' properties in the Caribbean.
Beneath the floor of the slave quarters, archaeologists found a set of iron shackles; small caches of pins, needles and beads; and ritualistic arrangements of cooking utensils that reflect the occupants' African origins.
"For a time, Beverwyck was one of the region's finest plantations, but it could only have reached that high state of cultivation through the forced labor of enslaved workers," said archaeologist Wade Catts of John Milner Associates, a New Jersey archaeology firm engaged in the project.
"For most of history, Beverwyck has been known primarily as one of the places that George Washington slept," he said. "Now the tangible evidence we've uncovered allows us to see it in a whole new light."
Catts said there was little doubt that other plantations in New Jersey also had significant slave populations.
As a science, archaeology is more than a century old. But only in the last few decades have researchers devoted much attention to the African-American component of sites, both in the North and the South.
"For a long time, archaeologists who studied plantations were mostly interested in the people who lived in the big house," said Syracuse University anthropologist Theresa Singleton, author of "The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life." "That didn't tell us much more about slaves than we learned from the histories by the people who enslaved them. Archaeology allows us to see history through a different lens."
Digging up a past that many would rather forget has had interesting results on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
'Amnesia' recovery
Slave quarters have been reconstructed at Bulloch Hall, the Greek Revival mansion just off the town square in Roswell. Until archaeological excavations in the late 1990s helped identify the location of the structure, the only hint of the slaves who helped build the mansion in 1839 had been a simple sign pointing in the general direction of "the quarters."
In rural Mason County, Ky., archaeologists recently identified an old wooden barn as the country's only extant slave pen, one of the prisonlike compounds where slaves were kept overnight during transport from the East to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana in the mid-1800s.
The busloads of curiosity seekers who descended on the farm for a closer look prompted an ultimatum from the owner. Archaeologists could either remove the structure or he would tear it down. The building, disassembled one timber at a time, will soon be reconstructed at Cincinnati's Underground Railroad center.
In Philadelphia, when the new $9 million Liberty Bell Center opens this year, the grounds of the most famous icon of American independence — and later the symbol of the abolitionist movement — will now acknowledge an aspect of African-American history that almost got left out.
During excavations or the new center, archaeologists recovered thousands of artifacts from the red brick mansion where Washington stayed in Philadelphia. But it took public protests for the National Park Service to decide that the story of Washington's slaves deserved space in the pavilion, too.
"Most Philadelphians would be shocked to know that Washington had slaves with him in the city," said University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Gary Nash, who helped spur the Park Service decision.
The slave quarters, and any artifacts they hold, lie just outside the entrance to the new center. They were undisturbed by construction, and the Park Service plans to leave them in place, to be studied and interpreted at some future date.
"Written history is always subject to a kind of cultural amnesia. Some of it is deliberately forgotten and some of it is inadvertently lost," said Nash. "That's why artifacts and their context are so important. They can speak to us for the people who left no written record."
"Northerners profited from slavery in many ways, right up to the eve of the Civil War. The decline of slavery in the upper South is well documented, as is the sale of slaves from Virginia and Maryland to the cotton plantations of the Deep South. But someone had to get them there, and the U.S. coastal trade was firmly in Northern hands. William Lloyd Garrison made his first mark as an anti-slavery man by printing attacks on New England merchants who shipped slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans.
Long after the U.S. slave trade officially ended, the more extensive movement of Africans to Brazil and Cuba continued. The U.S. Navy never was assiduous in hunting down slave traders. The much larger British Navy was more aggressive, and it attempted a blockade of the slave coast of Africa, but the U.S. was one of the few nations that did not permit British patrols to search its vessels, so slave traders continuing to bring human cargo to Brazil and Cuba generally did so under the U.S. flag. They also did so in ships built for the purpose by Northern shipyards, in ventures financed by Northern manufacturers."
Douglas Harper...
Long after the U.S. slave trade officially ended, the more extensive movement of Africans to Brazil and Cuba continued. The U.S. Navy never was assiduous in hunting down slave traders. The much larger British Navy was more aggressive, and it attempted a blockade of the slave coast of Africa, but the U.S. was one of the few nations that did not permit British patrols to search its vessels, so slave traders continuing to bring human cargo to Brazil and Cuba generally did so under the U.S. flag. They also did so in ships built for the purpose by Northern shipyards, in ventures financed by Northern manufacturers."
Douglas Harper...