Slavery and Freedom in the Age of Revolution

1
Slavery and Freedom in the Age of Revolution

• AAS-HIUS 365Wednesday, October 6, 2004

2
Lecture Outline

• Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution
• Paternalism and Patriarchy
• Rise of Anti-Slave-Trade/Antislavery Sentiment in
  18th C
  
• Manhood and Citizenship Black Loyalists and
  Patriots in the Revolutionary Era

3
1.Resistance, Rebellion, and Revolution
4
Defining Resistance

• To some historians, resistance applies to all
  acts of non-cooperation/disobedience on the part
  of the slaves, such as
  
• -- feigning illness
• -- stealing/taking from master
• -- poisoning
• -- sabotaging the crop
• -- destroying tools
• -- mistreating animals
• -- arson
• -- running away/running around

5
Resistance v. Non-Cooperation?

• Historians Christopher Lasch and George
  Frederickson question whether individual,
  unorganized forms of non-cooperation constitute
  resistance.

6

• How do we read these acts of non-cooperation?
• Lasch and Frederickson Malingering may have
  reflected no more than a disinclination to work,
  especially when the rewards were so meager.
  Likewise, what is taken for sabotage may have
  originated in apathy or indifference. Acts of
  violence are subject to varying interpretations
  as well.

7

• Lasch and Frederickson define resistance as a
  political concept that is, collective action
  designed to subvert the system, to facilitate and
  regularize escape from it, or at the very least,
  to force important changes in it.

8
Slave Revolts as Political Action

• Lasch and Frederickson describe slave revolts
  sporadic and usually shortlived outbursts of
  destruction -- as the most rudimentary form of
  political action.
• What make these upheavals political at all is
  that they rest on some sense, however primitive,
  of collective victimization. They require,
  moreover, at least a minimum of organization and
  planning.

9
Early Slave Revolts as Rudimentary Struggles
for Freedom not Revolutionary in Aim

• What makes them rudimentary, Lasch and
  Frederickson write, is that they do not aim so
  much at changing the balance of power as at
  giving expression on the one hand to apocalyptic
  visions of retribution, and on the other to an
  immediate thirst for vengeance directed more at
  particular individuals than at larger systems of
  authority.

10
Weakness of Slave Revolts in Absence of a
Revolutionary Ideology/Collective Consciousness

• In the one case, the sense of grievance finds an
  outlet in indiscriminate violence in the other,
  it attaches to a particular embodiment of
  authority. But in neither case does collective
  action rest on a realistic perception of the
  institutional structure as a whole and the
  collective interest of its victims in subverting
  it. That explains why such outbreaks of violence
  tend to subside so quickly, leaving the
  exploitive structure intact.

11
Genovese of Special Character of Slave Revolts
in Atlantic World

• The revolts of blacks in the modern world had a
  special character and historical significance,
  for they occurred within a worldwide capitalist
  mode of production
• Whatever else may be said of the revolts, they
  everywhere formed part of the political
  opposition to European capitalisms bloody
  conquest of the world and attendant subjugation
  of the colored peoples.

12
From Rebellion to Revolution

• Genovese argues that, by the end of the 18th
  century, the historical content of slave revolts
  shifted decisively from attempts to secure
  freedom from slavery to attempts to overthrow
  slavery as a social system.
• Examples Saint-Domingue/Haitian Revolution,
  1790s Gabriels Conspiracy, 1800

13
Insurrection Anxieties among the Slaveholders

• That the white ruling elite of colonial Virginia
  feared rebellion among the indentured servants
  and enslaved Negroes is evident from the
  passage of increasingly repressive laws
  throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth
  centuries

14
1680 Anti-Insurrection/Anti-Runaway Law

• Whereas the frequent meetings of considerable
  numbers of Negro slaves under pretense of feasts
  and burials is judged of dangerous consequence,
  it is enacted that no Negro or slave may carry
  arms, such as any club, staff, gun, sword, or
  other weapon, nor go from his owners plantation
  without a certificate and then only on necessary
  occasions the punishment twenty lashes on the
  bare back, well laid on.
• And, further, if any Negro lift up his hand
  again any Christian he shall receive thirty
  lashes, and if he absent himself or lie out from
  his masters service and resist lawful
  apprehension, he may be killed and this law shall
  be published every six months.

15
1682 Anti-Insurrection Law

• Whereas the act of 1680 on Negro insurrections
  has not had the intended effect, it is enacted
  that church wardens read this and the other act,
  twice every year, in the time of divine service,
  or forfeit each of them six hundred pounds of
  tobacco, and further to prevent insurrections no
  master or overseer shall allow a Negro slave of
  another to remain on his plantation above four
  hours without leave of the slaves own master.

16
1691 Anti-Runaway Law White Men Deputized as
Slave Patrollers

• An act for suppressing outlying slaves covering
  divers subjects, states whereas many times
  Negroes, mulattoes and other slaves lie hid and
  lurk in obscure places killing hogs and
  committing other injuries, it is enacted, that
  the sheriff may raise so many forces from time to
  time as he shall think convenient for the
  effectual apprehending of such Negroes. If they
  resist or runaway they may be killed of destroyed
  by gun or otherwise whatsoever, provided that the
  owner of any slave killed shall be paid four
  thousand pounds of tobacco by the public.

17
1691 Virginia Colonial LawRestricts Manumission,
Identifies Free Blacks as Pariahs

• A great inconvenience may happen to this country
  by setting negroes and mulattoes free, by their
  entertaining Negroes from their masters service,
  or receiving stolen goods, or being grown old
  bringing a charge upon the country... it is
  enacted that no Negroes, or mulattoes be set free
  by any person whatsoever, unless such person pay
  for the transportation of such Negro out of the
  country within six months after such setting
  free, upon penalty of ten pounds sterling to the
  church wardens

18
State Offers Reward of Freedom to Slaves Who
Reveal Conspiracies

• 1710. Chapter XVI.Whereas a Negro slave named
  Will, belonging to Robt. Ruffin, of the County of
  Surry, was signally serviceable in discovering a
  conspiracy of Negroes for levying war in this
  colony for reward of his fidelity, it is enacted
  that the said Will is and forever hereafter shall
  be free and shall continue to be within this
  colony, if he think fit to continue. The sum of
  forty pounds sterling shall be paid the said
  Robt. Ruffin for the price of Will.

19

• 1723. Chapter IV.
• Whereas the laws now in force for the better
  governing of slaves are found insufficient to
  restrain their unlawful and tumultuous meetings,
  it is enacted that if any number of Negroes
  exceeding five conspire to rebel, they shall
  suffer death, and but utterly excluded the
  benefit of clerg.
• It is reenacted that if slaves are found
  notoriously guilty of going abroad at night or
  running away and lying out and cannot be
  reclaimed from such disorderly discourses, it
  shall be lawful to direct every such slave to be
  punished by dismemberment, or any other way not
  touching life.

20

• 1748. Ch. XXXVIII. The conspiracy of slaves or
  their insurrection is a felony and the penalty
  death without benefit of clergy. It is repeated
  that incorrigible slaves going abroad at night
  may be dismembered by court order and if they die
  no forfeiture nor punishment shall be incurred.

21

• 1792. Ch. XLI.
• Negroes and mulattoes shall not carry guns,
  except free Negroes may be permitted to keep one,
  and Negroes, bond or free, living on the frontier
  may be licensed to keep them.
• Conspiracy to rebel, or make insurrection, is
  deemed a felony,with death the punishment without
  benefit of clergy.
  

22

• 1798. Chapter 4.
• Free persons conspiring with slaves to rebel
  shall suffer death.
  
• 1804. Chapter 119.
• All meetings of slaves at any meeting house or
  any other place in the night shall be considered
  an unlawful assembly, and any justice may issue
  his warrant to enter the place where the assembly
  may be fore apprehending or dispersing the
  slaves, and to inflict corporal punishment on the
  offenders at the discretion of the justice, not
  exceeding twenty lashes.
• 1817. Chapter XV.
• If any free person advise or conspire with any
  other free person or Negro to induce or excite
  any slave to rebel or make insurrection, every
  such free person shall be held a felon and suffer
  death by hanging.

23
Major American Slave Revolts of the 18th C

• 1712 New York About 25 Indian and black
  slaves upset over ill-treatment rebelled, killing
  9, wounding 6. Some of the alleged conspirators
  were tortured and hanged others were burned at
  stake. Led to passage of restrictive laws.
• 1739 South Carolina some 20 slaves living near
  the Stono River seized guns and ammunition,
  killed 25 whites, destroyed white-owned stores.
  Rebel forces grew to hundreds most were captured
  or killed, their heads posted on fenceposts in
  city of Charleston. Led to passage of both
  restrictive and ameliorative laws.

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• Genovese African-born slaves dominated both
  revolts and appealed to the religious sentiments
  of their brothers and sisters. The New York
  rebels espoused traditional African religions, as
  they understood it, and called for a war on the
  Christians in a manner suggestive of the early
  Caribbean obeahmen. The religion of the rebels
  at Stono appears to have been more clearly
  syncretic Angolan slaves with at least a formal
  adherence to Catholicism sought an alliance with
  the Spanish in Florida.

25
Why so relatively few slave revolts of note in
Colonial North America?

• In his book From Rebellion to Revolution (1979),
  historian Eugene Genovese underscored the unique
  obstacles to the organization of successful slave
  rebellions in the American South.
• Genovese listed the general conditions that
  allowed for the success of slave rebellions in
  other parts of the world conditions rarely
  found in the United States.

26
General conditions favoring slave rebellion in
Caribbean Islands and South America

• Depersonalization of master-slave relationship
  cultural estrangement of whites and blacks
  
• Economic distress and famine
• Large slaveholding units averaging one hundred or
  two hundred slaves
  
• A divided ruling class
• Blacks heavily outnumbered whites

27
General conditions favoring slave rebellion in
Caribbean Islands and South America

• African-born slaves outnumbered those born into
  American slavery (creoles)
  
• Social structure of slaveholding regime permits
  emergence of autonomous black leadership
  
• Geographical, social, and political environment
  provided terrain and opportunity for the
  formation of colonies of runaway slaves strong
  enough to threaten the plantation regime.

28
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)

• As proportion of creole slaves to African-born
  increased and the cultural distance between
  masters and slaves narrowed, the foundations of a
  regional paternalism grew progressively
  stronger.
• Economic depression did not have same effect on
  slaves in U.S. that it did in the Caribbean
  islands (I.e., no widespread famines)
  

29
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)

• U.S. slaveholding units were much smaller than
  those in sugar colonies, where slaveholding units
  averaged 100-200 slaves.
  

30
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)(contd)

• Little dissension within white ruling class.
  Slaveholders of U.S. had no metropolitan capital
  in Europe to answer to and shared power
  effectively in Washington. When faced with threat
  of slave revolt in early 19th c., they suppressed
  internal divisions and established political
  consensus by eliminating the slavery issue and
  settling other issues.
• Blacks remained a minority in U.S. South except
  in restricted areas (such as South Carolina
  rice-growing regions)

31
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)

• Slave society in Old South provided less room for
  the development of advanced strata of black
  leaders than in Caribbean Islands and Brazil

32
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)

• Maroon activity in the U.S., while by no means
  trivial, could not spark general revolt as
  readily as it could elsewhere. The terrain of the
  Old South put unsual difficulties in the way of
  would-be maroons. With the exception of Florida,
  the very geographic isolation and limited means
  of subsistence drastically reduced both the
  possibilities for large-scale maroon
  concentrations and for decisive
  military-political interventions.

33
Conditions unfavorable to slave rebellion in Old
South (vis-a-vis Caribbean and Brazil)

• The closing of international slave trade (1808)
  demanded improvement in material conditions of
  slave life in order to guarantee adequate rate of
  reproduction. This, in turn, removed one of the
  prime conditions for revolt.

34
Genovese on Paternalism

• Genovese argues that American slaveholders
  embraced/espoused an ideology of paternalism
  that improved material conditions but undercut
  the development of revolutionary consciousness
  among the slaves.
• What does Genovese mean by paternalism? Does he
  mean that masters were kind, benevolent, father
  figures to their obedient, childlike slaves?

35

• No, slavery was, in Genovese's words, "cruel,
  unjust, exploitative, and oppressive." And
  Genovese acknowledges that slaves resisted their
  own "dehumanization" at every turn.

36

• For Genovese, paternalism describes a world in
  which masters and slaves -- like lords and serfs
  of the earlier times -- "faced each other with
  reciprocal demands and expectations.
• One might ask how a slave -- defined, by law, as
  "a possession, a thing, a mere extension of his
  masters will" -- could make demands upon the
  slaveholder?

37

• In reality, slaves were never the mere extension
  of their masters will. They had minds and wills
  of their own.
  
• Masters and slaves had to work out an arrangement
  that they could both live with, a kind of truce
  that would minimize open hostility and ensure
  some measure of stability within the plantation
  community. Though slaveholders held immense power
  over slaves, that power was never absolute. And
  slaves seized every opportunity to win
  concessions from slaveholders and improve their
  individual and collective lots.

38

• Paternalism paradoxically improved the conditions
  of slavery while reinforcing racial
  subordination. It suggested that slaveholders
  and slaves had mutual obligations, like parents
  and children. The slaveholders had a
  responsibility to protect their slaves the
  slaves, in turn, had a responsibility to obey
  their masters.

39
Genovese on Paternalism

• Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, p. 6, 5
• Paternalism grew out of the necessity to
  discipline and morally justify a system of
  exploitation.
  
• Paternalism defined the involuntary labor of the
  slaves as a legitimate return to their masters
  for protection and direction. But, the masters
  need to see their slaves as acquiescent human
  beings constituted a moral victory for the slaves
  themselves. Paternalisms insistence upon mutual
  obligations duties, responsibilities, and
  ultimately even rights implicitly recognized
  the slaves humanity.

40
Genovese on Paternalisms Consequences for Slave
Resistance

• Wherever paternalism exists, it undermines
  solidarity among the oppressed by linking them as
  individuals to their oppressors. A lord
  functions as a direct provider and protector to
  each individual or family, as well as to the
  community as a whole.
• Paternalism created a tendency for slaves to
  identify with a particular community through
  identification with its master it reduced the
  possibilities for identification with each other
  as a a class. Racism undermined the slaves sense
  of worth as black people and reinforced their
  dependence on white masters.

41

• Genovese attributes the rise of paternalism in
  the Old South to several unique historical
  factors.
  
• The close proximity of masters and slaves.
  Slaveholders in the American South, unlike their
  counterparts in the Caribbean, tended to live on
  their plantations, near their slaves. Under
  these conditions, the master, like the lord of an
  English manor, established himself as a "direct
  provider and protector to each family, as well as
  to the community as a whole.
• The closing of the African Slave Trade.
  Slaveholders had to devise methods to ensure that
  the slave population reproduced itself.
  Paternalism tended to mediate class and racial
  conflicts.

42

• Genovese argues that both blacks and whites
  accepted paternalism, but with radically
  different interpretations.
  
• Masters embraced the ideology because it allowed
  them to justify their subordination of the
  slaves.
  
• Slaves embraced the ideology because it afforded
  them some measure of bargaining power and,
  ultimately, affirmed their humanity.

43
Paternalisms Predecessor Patriarchalism

• Philip Morgan, Slave Counterpoint
• Patriarchalism was an austere code emphasizing
  control, obedience, discipline, and severity. Yet
  patriarchalism also involved protection,
  guardianship, and reciprocal obligation. It
  defined the gentleman planters self-image and
  constituted the ideals and standards by which
  slaveholding behavior was judged.

44
Transformation from Patriarchalism to Paternalism
in late 18th c.

• Late 18th c. masters more inclined to stress
  their solicitude toward and generous treatment of
  their dependents.
  
• Gradually masters began to expect gratitude and
  love of bondspeople. Their outlook became more
  sentimental.
  
• Masters began to create fiction of contented and
  happy slave.

45
2Rise of Anti-Slave Trade and Antislavery
Sentiments and the Origins of an International
Abolitionist Movement
46
Antislavery Movement

• Why did the international antislavery movement
  arise in the mid- to late eighteenth century
  after centuries of apathy on the subject?

47
Factor 1Age of Enlightenment/Rise of
Humanitarianism

• Enlightenment introduced new ideas about
  natural rights, political liberties, freedom or
  religion, and equality before the law -- The
  goals of rational man were considered to be
  knowledge, freedom, and happiness.
• new concern for humane treatment of the poor
  and weak extended to the physical mistreatment of
  slaves
  
• .. a rising belief in the malleability of human
  nature and the influence of environment on human
  behavior led to a radical rethinking of black
  inferiority. Heathens could be Christianized,
  savages could be educated in the ways of
  civilization.

48
Factor 2 Spread of Capitalism itsFree Labor
Ideology

• contributed to the questioning of slavery.
  Early political economists, such as Adam Smith,
  believed that slavery violated central economic
  laws by preventing the free buying and selling of
  labor and by elimininating incentives for hard
  work and self-improvement. Economic hardship in
  the tobacco belt of the Upper South reinforced
  the free labor critique of slavery.

49
Factor 3The Great Awakening/Evangelical
Christianity

• The religious revivals that began with the Great
  Awakening in the 1740s and continued into the
  1780s heightened interest in the conversion of
  slaves and stressed the equality of all men
  before God.

50
1691 Virginia Colonial LawRestricts Manumission,
Identifies Free Blacks as Pariahs

• A great inconvenience may happen to this country
  by setting negroes and mulattoes free, by their
  entertaining Negroes from their masters service,
  or receiving stolen goods, or being grown old
  bringing a charge upon the country... it is
  enacted that no Negroes, or mulattoes be set free
  by any person whatsoever, unless such person pay
  for the transportation of such Negro out of the
  country within six months after such setting
  free, upon penalty of ten pounds sterling to the
  church wardens

51
1723 Virginia Law Establishes Strict New
Conditions for Manumission

• No Negro or Indian slave shall be set free upon
  any pretense whatsoever, except for some
  meritorious service to be adjudged by the
  governor.

52
Manumission What Sort of Service Qualified as
Meritorious?

• 1710 Whereas a Negro slave named Will, belonging
  to Robt. Ruffin, of the County of Surry, was
  signally serviceable in discovering a conspiracy
  of Negroes for levying war in this colony for
  reward of his fidelity, it is enacted that the
  said Will is and forever hereafter shall be free
  and shall continue to be within this colony, if
  he think fit to continue. The sum of forty pounds
  sterling shall be paid the said Robt. Ruffin for
  the price of Will.

53
The Revolution

• For African-Americans, the American Revolution
  presented a unique opportunity to fight for a
  stake in Americas freedom and independence.
  For generations afterward, African-American
  orators and writers would point to the martyrdom
  of Crispus Attucks the first American to die in
  the Boston massacre and the service of some
  5,000 black soldiers in the Continental Army as
  evidence of black patriotism and manhood, worthy
  of recognition by their white fellow citizens.
  Yet many enslaved African Americans chose to cast
  their lot with the British, who promised them
  liberty in return for military service.

54
Lord Dunmores Emancipation Proclamation (1775)

• I do require every Person capable of bearing
  Arms, to resort to His MAJESTY'S STANDARD, or be
  looked upon as Traitors to His MAJESTY'S Crown
  and Government, and thereby become liable to the
  Penalty the Law inflicts upon such Offenses such
  as forfeiture of Life, confiscation of Lands, .
  . And I do hereby further declare all indented
  Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to
  Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear
  Arms, they joining His MAJESTY'S Troops as soon
  as may be, foe the more speedily reducing this
  Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to His
  MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity.

55

• Despite threats of capital punishment and the
  heightened vigilance of slave patrols and
  colonial militia, some three hundred to four
  hundred runaways managed to reach British lines
  and enlist in Lord Dunmores Ethiopian
  Regiment. Outfitted in military uniforms
  bearing the revolutionary slogan Liberty to
  Slaves, they would fight in one major battle
  against colonial troops and serve with Dunmore
  until his retreat from the Chesapeake Bay in
  August 1776.

56

• Petitions for compensation filed by slaveholders
  after the war reveal the high stakes involved for
  African Americans who sided with the British
  against the slaveholding American patriots.
• In December 1775, a slave named Africa was
  captured in the service of Lord Dunmore by a
  group of patriots and taken to Williamsburg. The
  Committee of Safety ordered Africa to the lead
  mines. His master later petitioned the
  legislature for Africa's return and reimbursement
  for his hire from the time he was sent to the
  mines.

57
Petitions by Slaveholding Patriots for
Compensation

• Edmond Ruffin Jr.'s slave Dick was apprehended
  attempting to board one of Lord Dunmore's ships.
  The Committee of Safety decided to send Dick, who
  displayed an "insolent and seditious
  Disposition," to the West Indies or to the lead
  mines as an example to other disloyal blacks.
  Dick, however, died before the example could be
  set, and his owner sought compensation.
• A slave named Aaron was captured attempting to
  escape to Lord Dunmore's fleet in Chesapeake Bay
  and sentenced to labor in the lead mines by the
  Committee of Safety. Aaron's owner, Thomas
  Paramour, asked to be compensated for the
  services of his slave.
• In 1775 a "Negro Fellow named Tom," age about
  nineteen years, ran away to British lines but was
  soon taken by Patriot forces and ordered by the
  Committee of Safety to work in the lead mines. In
  1776, Tom was sent to the West Indies and sold to
  pay for powder and ammunition. Tom's owner asked
  for compensation.

58

• By contrast, many African Americans who served
  with the Continental Army petitioned for and
  won -- their freedom.
  
• A slaveholder from Albemarle County requested
  permission to emancipate William Beck, a
  "mulatto" slave who had served in several
  military campaigns. The owner stated in his
  petition that Beck had behaved "in a most
  exemplary manner" and had paid his owner for his
  freedom.

59
Revolutionary Era Freedom Suits

• A Nansemond County slave named James declared in
  his petition for freedom that he had spied on the
  British during the American Revolution for the
  French general the Marquis de Lafayette. For
  these services he sought his freedom, noting that
  his master would "receive compensation for the
  loss of a valuable workman."
• A Norfolk County slave named Saul stated that
  during the American Revolution he spied on the
  British and served his country with distinction.
  His spying "rendered essential service to his
  Country," at least until he was betrayed in 1781
  by another black man. Additionally, he fought in
  numerous campaigns. He asked that the legislature
  "not suffer him any longer to remain a
  transferable property."