African Americans in New Republic

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African Americans in New Republic
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Key Point

• Anyone attending the inauguration of President
  George Washington would have recognized quickly
  that the blessings of liberty upon which the
  Republic was founded did not extend to Americans
  of African descent
• --Donald R. Wright, African Americans
• in the Early Republic, pp.1-2

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Characteristics of the Early Republic

• From the general history
• Political--from Confederacy to Federation
• War of 1812
• Northwest Ordinance, Louisiana Purchase, Missouri
  Compromise

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Characteristics of the Early Republic

• Focus on Black History
• Black freedom in the North
• Black slavery in the South
• Growth of African American institutions
• Emergence of Black churches
• Black communities and schools
• Slave rebellions

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Slavery and the US Constitution

• Article I, Section 2 the three-fifths clause
• Article I, Section 9 importation clause
• Article IV, Section 2 fugitive slave clause

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Effects of Importation Clause

• U.S. official engagement in Atlantic Slave Trade
  ended in 1808
• Unofficially, Americans continued to participate
  in Atlantic Slave Trade illegally till the Civil
  War
• Within the U.S., an internal slave trade
  developed between the Upper South and Lower South

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Freedom in the North

• Reasons
• Northern economy not dependent on slavery
• Northern slaveholding was small
• The Great Awakening
• Approaches
• Outright manumission
• Gradual manumission

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Freedom in the North (contd.)

• New England States
• VT (1777), MA (1780), NH (1783) adopted various
  forms of outright manumission
• CT and RI (1784) adopted various forms of gradual
  manumission

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Freedom in the North (contd.)

• Mid-Atlantic States
• Manumission was heavily contested
• PA (1780), NY (1799), NJ (1804) adopted various
  forms of gradual manumission

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Freedom in the North (summary)

• Generally speaking, by the 1820s slavery had been
  abolished in the North
• As slavery ended in the North, fleeing slaves
  from the South headed North
• Laws were enacted to control the freedmens and
  womens populations in the North

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The Northwest Ordinance

• Congress abolished slavery in the Northwest
  Territory north of Ohio River
• Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois joined the union as
  free states

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Process of Becoming Free

• Being born of free parents or mother
• Being freed by the state
• Being freed by the master
• Self-purchase or self-manumission
• Escape, running away

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Slavery in the South

• To be discussed later in the course

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African American Communities

• Conflicts within white-led congregations produced
  independent Black churches
• 1792 Richard Allen (p.116), Absalom Jones
  (p.118), and other Black worshippers walked out
  of St. Georges Church in Philadelphia
• This laid the foundation for the African
  Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in 1816
• Similar situations produced independent Black
  churches in other cities