All Men Are Created Equal
Slavery and the American Revolution
"How is it," asked Samuel Johnson, "that we hear the loudest yelps for
liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The British author was only one
of many Europeans who thought it strange that a nation run by slave
owners should be so noisily demanding its own freedom. This same bitter
inconsistency was embodied in the death of Crispus Attucks. A mulatto
slave who had run away from his Massachusetts master in 1750, he spent
the next twenty years working as a seaman and living in constant fear of
capture and punishment. In 1770, he, with four others, was killed in the
Boston Massacre. Ironically, the first man to die in the Colonial fight
for freedom was both an Afro-American and a runaway slave. His death
became symbolic of what was to be an underlying question in the years to
come: "What place would there be for the African in America once the
colonies gained freedom from the old world?"
The Quakers were the first group in America to attack slavery. In his
book Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes, John Woolman
contended that no one had the right to own another human being. In 1758
the Philadelphia yearly meeting said that slavery was inconsistent with
Christianity, and in 1775 Quakers played a dominant role in the formation
of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first
antislavery society in America.
As the colonists began to agitate for their own freedom, many of them
became increasingly aware of the contradiction involved in slaveholders
fighting for their own freedom. "To contend for liberty," John Jay
wrote, "and to deny that blessing to others involves an inconsistency not
to be excused." James Otis maintained that the same arguments which were
used to defend the rights of the colonists against Britain could be used
with at least equal force against the colonists by their slaves. "It is
a clear truth," he said, "that those who every day barter away other
men's liberty will soon care little for their own."
In the same vein, Abigail Adams wrote her husband: "It always appeared a
most iniquitous scheme to me to fight ourselves for what we are daily
robbing and plundering from those who have as good a right to freedom as
we have." Perhaps the most radical statement was made by the Reverend
Isaac Skillman in 1773. Again, comparing the struggle of the colonists
with that of the slaves, he said that it was in conformity with natural
law that a slave could rebel against his master.
In 1774 the Continental Congress did agree to a temporary termination of
the importation of Africans into the colonies, but, in reality, this was
a tactical blow against the British slave trade and not an attack against
slavery itself. In an early draft of the Declaration of Independence,
the British king was attacked for his in involvement in the slave trade,
and he was charged with going against human nature by violating the
sacred rights of life and liberty. However, this section was deleted.
Apparently, Southern delegates feared that this condemnation of the
monarch reflected on them as well.
Although neither slavery nor the slave trade was mentioned in the
Declaration, it did maintain that all men were created equal and endowed
with the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This
seeming ambivalence concerning the future of slavery on the part of the
Continental Congress left Samuel Johnson's ironic question about American
hypocrisy unanswered. From a logical point of view, the Declaration of
Independence either affirmed the freedom of the African immigrant, or it
denied his humanity. Because each state continued almost as a separate
sovereign entity, the Declaration of Independence became a philosophical
abstraction, and the status of the African in America was determined
independently by each.
Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, put teeth into Johnson's
bitter question. In 1775 he offered to grant freedom to any slave who
ran away from his master and joined the British army. Earlier that year,
in spite of the fact that both slaves and free men had served at
Lexington and Concord, the colonists had shown an increasing reluctance
to have any blacks serving in their Army. The Council of War, under
Washington's leadership, had unanimously rejected the enlistment of
slaves and, by a large majority, it had opposed their recruitment
altogether. However, the eager response of many slaves to Lord Dunmore's
invitation gradually compelled the colonists to reconsider their stand.
Although many colonists felt that the use of slaves was inconsistent with
the principles for which the Army was fighting, all the colonies, with
the exception of Georgia and South Carolina, eventually recruited slaves
as well as freedmen. In most cases, slaves were granted their freedom at
the end of their military service. During the war some five thousand
blacks served in the Continental Army with the vast majority coming from
the North.
In contrast to later practice, during the Revolution the armed services
were largely integrated with only a few segregated units. While the vast
majority of Afro-American troops fighting in the Revolutionary War will
always remain anonymous, there were several who achieved distinction and
made their mark in history. Both Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell
crossed the Delaware with Washington on Christmas Day in 1776. Lemuel
Haynes, later a pastor of a white church, served at the Battle of
Ticonderoga. According to many reports, Peter Salem killed the British
major, John Pitcairn, at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Gradually, the colonies were split into two sections by differing
attitudes towards slavery. In 1780 the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a
law providing for the gradual abolition of slavery. The Preamble to the
legislation argued that, considering that America had gone to war for its
own freedom, it should share that blessing with those who were being
subjected to a similar state of bondage in its midst. Three years later
the Massachusetts Supreme Court decided that slavery was contrary to that
state's constitution and that it violated the natural rights of man.
Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and New York all passed laws
providing for gradual emancipation. Although the liberal philosophy of
the revolution did lead these states to end slavery, most Northern
citizens were not genuinely convinced that natural law had conferred full
equality on their Afro-American neighbors. Racial discrimination
remained widespread.
At the same time, the Southern states which were dependent on slavery for
their economic prosperity showed little interest in applying the
doctrines of the Declaration of Independence to either the slaves or the
free blacks in their midst. If anything, the passage of stiffer black
codes increased the rights of the masters while diminishing those of
slaves and freedmen. Some Southern states had qualms about the
advisability of continuing the slave trade, but this did not mean that
they had doubts about the value of slavery. Rather, the number of slave
insurrections which swept through South America, highlighted by the
bloody revolt in Haiti, led them to fear possible uprisings at home.
They had always been cautious about bringing unbroken slaves directly
from Africa, and now they were also afraid to import unruly slaves from
South America.
In 1783 Maryland passed a law prohibiting the importation of slaves, and
in 1786 North Carolina drastically increased the duty on the importation
of slaves, thereby severely reducing the flow. The Federal Government
finally took action to terminate the slave trade in 1807, but a vigorous,
illegal trade continued until the Civil War. The first sectional
conflict over slavery had taken place at the Constitutional Convention.
Those Northerners who had hoped to see slavery abolished by this new
constitution were quick to realize that such a document would never be
approved by the South. Most of the antislavery forces concluded that it
was necessary to put the Union above abolition.
While the Constitution did not specifically mention slavery, it did
legally recognize the institution in three places. First, there was a
heated debate over the means of calculating representation to the House.
Southern spokesmen wanted as many delegates as possible and preferred
that slaves be counted. Northerners, wanting to restrict Southern
representation, insisted that slaves not be counted. Some of them
pointed out that it was an insult to whites to be put on an equal footing
with slaves. The compromise which was framed in Article I, Section 2,
was that a slave should be counted as three-fifths of a man.
Second, the antislavery elements tried to make their stand at the
convention by attacking the slave trade. However, while many Southern
states were opposed to the trade, the issue became entangled in power
politics. South Carolina, which had few slaves, believed that the
termination of the slave trade would force up the price of slaves and
place her at a severe disadvantage in comparison with Virginia which
already had a large slave supply. It argued that Virginia would be
artificially enriched to the disadvantage of the other Southern states.
The states of the North and middle South were again forced to compromise,
and, in Article II, Section 9, they agreed that the trade would be
permitted to continue for another twenty years.
The third capitulation occurred in Article IV, Section 2, which as the
Fugitive Slave Provision. It stated that a slave who ran away and
reached a free state, did not thereby obtain his freedom. Instead, that
state was required, at the master's request, to seize and return him.
In fact, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were afraid that
the revolutionary ideology of freedom and equality had unwisely and
unintentionally unleashed a social revolution. Southern planters
envisioned the end of slavery on which their wealth was based. Northern
capitalists were opposed to the liberal and democratic land laws which
the people were demanding. The economic leaders in both sections of the
country believed that there was a need to protect property rights against
these new revolutionary human rights. While the Northern states strove
to stabilize society in order to build a flourishing commerce, the
Southern states tightened their control over their slaves fearing that
insurrections from South America or ideas about freedom and equality from
the American Revolution itself might inspire a serious slave rebellion.
Slave Insurrections
From the time that the first African was captured until the completion of
Emancipation, slaves struck out against the institution in one way or
another. Herbert Aptheker has recorded over hundred insurrections.
Although most slave revolts in America were small and ineffective, there
were three in particular which chilled Southern hearts. These were led
by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner and occurred within the
short span between 1800 and 1831. Toussaint l'Ouverture in Haiti had
previously demonstrated that slaves could be victorious over large
European armies, and the American colonists had taught by their example
in the American Revolution that violence in the service of freedom was
justifiable. The gradual abolition of slavery which was occurring in the
Northern states gave hope that the institution in America might be
terminated altogether. However, the slaves saw little reason to believe
that their Southern masters would follow the example of the Northerners
in abolishing slavery. Many of the slaves came to accept that if the
institution was to be destroyed, it would have to be done by the slaves
themselves.
In August, 1800, Gabriel Prosser led a slave attack on Richmond,
Virginia. During several months of careful planning and organizing, the
insurrectionists had gathered clubs, swords, and other crude weapons.
The intention was to divide into three columns: one to attack the
penitentiary which was being used as an arsenal, another to capture the
powder house, and a third to attack the city itself. If the citizens
would not surrender, the rebels planned to kill all of the whites with
the exception of Quakers, Methodists, and Frenchman. Apparently, Prosser
and his followers shared a deep distrust of most white men. When they had
gathered a large supply of guns and powder, and taken over the state's
treasury, the rebels calculated, they would be able to hold out for
several weeks. What they hoped for was that slaves from the surrounding
territory would join them and, eventually, that the uprising would reach
such proportions as to compel the whites to come to terms with them.
Unfortunately for the plotters, on the day of the insurrection a severe
storm struck Virginia, wiping out roads and bridges. This forced a delay
of several days. In the meantime, two slaves betrayed the plot, and the
government took swift action. Thirty-five of the participants, including
Prosser, were executed. As the leaders refused to divulge any details of
their plans, the exact number involved in the plot remains unknown.
However, rumor had it that somewhere between two thousand and fifty
thousand slaves were connected with the conspiracy. During the trials,
one of the rebels said that he had done nothing more than what Washington
had done, that he had ventured his life for his countrymen, and that he
was a willing sacrifice.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a young slave named Denmark Vesey won
$1,500 in a lottery with which he purchased his freedom. During the
following years he worked as a carpenter. In his concern over the plight
of his slave brethren, he formed a plan for an insurrection which would
bring them their freedom. He and other freedmen collected two hundred
pike heads and bayonets as well as three hundred daggers to use in the
revolt, but, before the plans could be put into motion in 1882, a slave
informed on them. This time it was rumored that there had been some nine
thousand involved in the plot. Over a hundred arrests were made,
including four whites who had encouraged the project, and several of the
leaders, including Vesey, were executed.
The bloodiest insurrection of all, in which some sixty whites were
murdered, occurred in Southampton County, Virginia, in August, 1831. Nat
Turner, its leader, besides being a skilled carpenter, was a literate,
mystical preacher. He had discovered particular relevance in the
prophets of the Old Testament. Besides identifying with the slave
experience of the Israelites, Turner and other slaves felt that the
social righteousness which the prophets preached related directly to
their situation. The picture of the Lord exercising vengeance against
the oppressors gave them hope and inspiration. While the Bible did
appear to tell the slave to be faithful and obedient to his master, it
also condemned the wicked and provided examples that could be interpreted
to prove God's willingness to use human instruments in order to bring
justice against oppressors. Turner's growing hatred of slavery and his
increasing concern for the plight of his brothers, led him to believe he
was one of God's chosen instruments.
As his conviction deepened, the solar eclipse early in 1831 appeared to
him to be a sign that the day of vengeance was at hand. In the following
months he collected a small band of followers, and in August they went
into action. Unlike Prosser and Vesey, he began with only a very small
band which lessened his chance of betrayal. As they moved from farm to
farm, slaughtering the white inhabitants, they were joined by many of the
slaves who were freed in the process. However, word of the massacre
spread. At one farm, they were met by armed resistance. Slaves as well
as masters fought fiercely to stop the attack. Some of Turner's men were
killed and wounded, and the planned drive towards Jerusalem was thrown
off stride. This enabled the militia to arrive and break up the attack.
In due time Turner and several of his followers were captured and
executed.
White men in both the South and the North saw little similarity between
these insurrections and the American Revolution. The Turner massacre was
universally depicted as the work of savages and brutes, not of men.
Vigilance was tightened, and new laws controlling the slaves were passed
throughout the South. Both the violence of the slaves and the verbal
abuse of the abolitionists only served to strengthen the South in its
defense of the peculiar institution. Slaves who revolted were depicted
as beasts who could not be freed because they would endanger society.
Submissive slaves were pictured as children in need of paternal
protection from the evils of a complex, modern world. They were never
seen as men whose rights and liberties had been proclaimed in the
Declaration of Independence.
Growing Racism
As Afro-American freedmen sought to claim their rights as men and
citizens, they were confronted with constant resistance from whites who
were unwilling to accept them. Actually, pressure from the mass of
Northern white workers had contributed to abolition of slavery in those
states. In the Northern states slavery was forced to compete with free
white labor in a way which was not true of the plantation economy of the
South. White workers continually complained that slavery was keeping
their wages down and unemployment up, and in 1737 the governor of New
York had asked the Legislature to investigate the charges that slave
competition contributed to unemployment. While this attack had helped to
undermine slavery, it had also exacerbated tension between black and
white labor. The continual flow of runaways from the South brought an
increasing supply of cheap black labor to compete with white workers, and
the friction between the two races continued. While many of the
runaways, like Frederick Douglass, had worked as skilled craftsmen in the
South, they found economic discrimination in the North limiting them to
menial labor.
After 1830, when the tide of European immigration began to swell, the
competition for jobs grew even sharper, and blacks found that even menial
jobs were being taken over by the new European immigrants. Jobs such as
stevedores, coachmen, barbers, and servants, which had traditionally been
left to blacks, were now being invaded by the Irish. Whereas in 1830 the
vast majority of New York City servants were Afro-American, after 1850
most of them were Irish. This economic competition contributed
considerably to the hostility, fear, and discrimination which confronted
the Northern freedmen.
In 1816 the American Colonization Society was founded. It was considered
the ideal solution to the American racial dilemma. Claiming to be
interested in the welfare of the African in its midst, the Society
advocated colonizing in Africa or wherever else it was expedient. It
comforted slave owners by announcing that it was not concerned with
either emancipation or amelioration. Both were outside its jurisdiction.
It did imply that slaves might eventually be purchased for colonization.
Most of its propaganda tried to demonstrate that the freedman lived in a
wretched state of poverty, immorality, and ignorance and that he would be
better off in Africa.
The movement received widespread support from almost all sectors of the
white community including presidents Madison and Jackson. Several state
legislatures supported the idea, and Congress voted $100,000 to finance
the plan which eventually led to the establishment of the Republic of
Liberia.
However, the Afro-American community was not very enthusiastic about the
project. In 1817 three thousand blacks crowded into the Bethel Church in
Philadelphia and, led by Richard Allen, vehemently criticized
colonization. They charged that the Society's propaganda only served to
increase racial discrimination since it stressed the poverty and
ignorance of the freedman and claimed he was doomed to continue in his
filth and degradation because of his natural inferiority. It also argued
that whites would only take advantage of the Afro-American, and that the
separation of the two races was the only solution. The participants at
the Bethel meeting contended that this propaganda tended to justify
racial discrimination.
The claim was also made that the removal of freedmen from America would
only serve to make the slave system more secure, and they pledged
themselves never to abandon their slave brothers. Besides, while they
were African by heritage, they had been born in America, and it was now
their home. Most of the fifteen thousand who did return to Africa were
slaves who had been freed for this purpose, and the project was
acknowledged to be a failure. The Society's own propaganda contributed
to the alienation of many freedmen. One of its own leaders admitted that
lacks could read and hear and, when they were spoken of as a nuisance to
be banished, they reacted negatively like men.
Widespread racial prejudice, besides creating racial discrimination,
resulted in oppressive legislation. In 1810 Congress excluded
Afro-Americans from carrying the mail. In 1820 it authorized the
District of Columbia to elect white city officials, and it consistently
admitted new states to the Union whose constitutions severely limited the
rights of freedmen. The office of the Attorney General usually took the
position that the Constitution did not grant citizenship to Negroes, and
Congress itself had limited naturalization to white aliens in 1790. This
point of view was later justified by the Dred Scott decision. With only
a few exceptions, the Secretary of State refused to grant passports to
those wishing to travel abroad, although it did provide a letter of
identification stating that the carrier was a resident of the United
States. Finally, Massachusetts granted its own passports to its colored
citizens, complaining that they had been virtually denationalized.
Also, many states in the Northwest passed laws prohibiting or limiting
the migration of Afro-Americans into their territory. An Illinois law
said that anyone who entered the state illegally could be whipped and
sold at auction. Many states denied blacks the ballot, prohibited their
serving on a jury and legally segregated transportation, restaurants,
hotels, theaters, churches, and even cemeteries. Most Northern states
did not allow them to testify in court against whites. This meant that,
if a white man beat a black, the black had no legal protection unless
another white was willing to testify on his behalf.
On several occasions white hostility erupted into violence. Black
workmen were harassed, abolitionists beaten, and entire communities
terrorized. One of the worst of these events occurred in Cincinnati in
1829. With the rapid growth of "Little Africa," that city's black
ghetto, the local citizens decided to enforce the state's
anti-integration legislation. Some twenty years before, the state had
passed a law requiring blacks entering the state to provide proof of
their freedom and to post a bond as guarantee of their good behavior.
When the inhabitants of "Little Africa" obtained an extension of the
30-day time limit within which they were to comply with the law, the
citizens of Cincinnati were outraged, and they took matters into their
own hands. White mobs ransacked the area, indiscriminately and
mercilessly beating women and children, looting stores and burning
houses. It was estimated that half of the two thousand inhabitants of
the area left the city. Many of them emigrated to Canada, and the local
paper, which had helped to inflame the mob, lamented that the respectable
black citizens had left and only derelicts remained.
At the very point in American history when democracy was sinking its
roots deeper into the national soil, the status of the Afro-American was
being clearly defined as an inferior one. The Jacksonian Era brought the
common man into new prominence, but the same privileges were not extended
to the blacks. In the South, society was strengthening the institution
of slavery against any possible recurrences of slave insurrections. The
activities of the slaves, especially those of Negro preachers, were being
watched even more closely than before. In the North, both state and
federal laws denied blacks many of the rights of citizenship.
PART TWO Emancipation Without Freedom