Part 36 (2/2)
Going thither with them, he was drugged, shackled, despoiled of his free papers, and delivered to a slave trader who s.h.i.+pped him to New Orleans.
Then followed a checkered experience as a plantation hand on the Red River, lasting for a dozen years until a letter which a friendly white carpenter had written for him brought one of his former patrons with an agent's commission from the governor of New York. With the a.s.sistance of the local authorities Northrup's ident.i.ty was promptly established, his liberty procured, and the journey accomplished which carried him back again to his wife and children at Saratoga.[64]
[Footnote 64: [David Wilson ed.], _Narrative of Solomon Northrup_ (New York, 1853). Though the books of this cla.s.s are generally of dubious value this one has a tone which engages confidence. Its pictures of plantation life and labor are of particular interest.]
A third instance, but of merely local notoriety, was that of William Houston, who, according to his own account was a British subject who had come from Liverpool as a s.h.i.+p steward in 1840 and while at New Orleans had been offered pa.s.sage back to England by way of New York by one Espagne de Blanc. But upon reaching Martinsville on the up-river voyage de Blanc had ordered him off the boat, set him to work in his kitchen, taken away his papers and treated him as his slave. After five years there Houston was sold to a New Orleans barkeeper who shortly sold him to a neighboring merchant, George Lynch, who hired him out. In the Mexican war Houston accompanied the American army, and upon returning to New Orleans was sold to one Richardson. But this purchaser, suspecting a fault of t.i.tle, refused payment, whereupon in 1850 Richardson sold Houston at auction to J.F.
Lapice, against whom the negro now brought suit under the aegis of the British consul. While the trial was yet pending a local newspaper printed his whole narrative that it might ”a.s.sist the plaintiff to prove his freedom, or the defendant to prove he is a slave.”[65]
[Footnote 65: New Orleans _Daily Delta_, June 1, 1850.]
Societies were established here and there for the prevention of kidnapping and other illegal practices in reducing negroes to slavery, notable among which for its long and active career was the one at Alexandria.[66]
Kidnapping was, of course, a crime under the laws of the states generally; but in view of the seeming ease of its accomplishment and the potential value of the victims it may well be thought remarkable that so many thousands of free negroes were able to keep their liberty. In 1860 there were 83,942 of this cla.s.s in Maryland, 58,042 in Virginia, 30,463 in North Carolina, 18,467 in Louisiana, and 250,787 in the South at large.
[Footnote 66: Alexandria, Va., _Advertiser_, Feb. 22, 1798, notice of the society's quarterly meeting; J.D. Paxton, _Letters on Slavery_ (Lexington, Ky., 1833), p. 30, note.]
A few free negroes were reduced by public authority to private servitude, whether for terms or for life, in punishment for crime. In Maryland under an act of 1858 eighty-nine were sold by the state in the following two years, four of them for life and the rest for terms, after convictions ranging from arson to petty larceny.[67] Some others were sold in various states under laws applying to negro vagrancy, illegal residence, or even to default of jail fees during imprisonment as fugitive suspects.
[Footnote 67: J.R. Brackett, _The Negro in Maryland_, pp. 231, 232.]
A few others voluntarily converted themselves into slaves. Thus Lucinda who had been manumitted under a will requiring her removal to another state pet.i.tioned the Virginia legislature in 1815 for permission, which was doubtless granted, to become the slave of the master of her slave husband ”from whom the benefits and privileges of freedom, dear and flattering as they are, could not induce her to be separated.”[68] On other grounds William Ba.s.s pet.i.tioned the South Carolina general a.s.sembly in 1859, reciting ”That as a free negro he is preyed upon by every sharper with whom he comes in contact, and that he is very poor though an able-bodied man, and is charged with and punished for every offence, guilty or not, committed in his neighborhood; that he is without house or home, and lives a thousand times harder and in more dest.i.tution than the slaves of many planters in this district.” He accordingly asked permission by special act to become the slave of Philip W. Pledger who had consented to receive him if he could lawfully do so.[69] To provide systematically for such occasions the legislatures of several states from Maryland to Texas enacted laws in the middle and late fifties authorizing free persons of color at their own instance and with the approval of magistrates in each case to enslave themselves to such masters as they might select.[70] The Virginia law, enacted at the beginning of 1856, safeguarded the claims of any creditors against the negro by requiring a month's notice during which protests might be entered, and it also required the prospective master to pay to the state half the negro's appraised value. Among the Virginia archives vouchers are filed for sixteen such enslavements, in widely scattered localities.[71] Most of the appraisals in these cases ranged from $300 to $1200, indicating substantial earning capacity; but the valuations of $5 for one of the women and of $10 for a man upwards of seventy years old suggest that some of these undertakings were of a charitable nature.
An instance in the general premises occurred in Georgia, as late as July, 1864, when a negro freeman in dearth of livelihood sold himself for five hundred dollars, in Confederate currency of course, to be paid to his free wife.[72] Occasionally a free man of color would seek a swifter and surer escape from his tribulations by taking his own life;[73] but there appears to be no reason to believe that suicides among them were in greater ratio than among the whites.
[Footnote 68: _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 161, 162.]
[Footnote 69: _Ibid_., II, 163, 164.]
[Footnote 70: In the absence of permissive laws the self-enslavement of negroes was invalid. Texas Supreme Court _Reports_, XXIV, 560. And a negro who had deeded his services for ninety-nine years was adjudged to retain his free status, though the contract between him and his employer was not thereby voided. North Carolina Supreme Court _Reports_, LX, 434.]
[Footnote 71: MSS. in the Virginia State Library.]
[Footnote 72: American Historical a.s.sociation _Report_ for 1904, p. 577.]
[Footnote 73: An instance is given in the _Louisiana Courier_ (New Orleans), Aug. 26, 1830, and another in the New Orleans _Commercial Advertiser_, Oct. 25, 1831. The motives are not stated.]
Invitations to American free negroes to try their fortunes in other lands were not lacking. Facilities for emigration to Liberia were steadily maintained by the Colonization Society from 1819 onward;[74] the Haytian government under President Boyer offered special inducements from that republic in 1824;[75] in 1840 an immigration society in British Guiana proffered free transportation for such as would remove thither;[76] and in 1859 Hayti once more sent overtures, particularly to the French-speaking colored people of Louisiana, promising free lands to all who would come as well as free transportation to such as could not pay their pa.s.sage.[77] But these opportunities were seldom embraced. With the great bulk of those to whom they were addressed the dread of an undiscovered country from whose bourne few travellers had returned puzzled their wills, as it had done Hamlet's, and made them rather bear those ills they had than to fly to others that they knew not of.
[Footnote 74: J.H.T. McPherson, _History of Liberia_ (Johns Hopkins University _Studies_, IX, no. 10).]
[Footnote 75: _Correspondence relative to the Emigration to Hayti of the Free People of Colour in the United States, together with the instructions to the agent sent out by President Boyer_ (New York, 1824); _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 155-157.]
[Footnote 76: _Inducements to the Colored People of the United States to Emigrate to British Guiana, compiled from statements and doc.u.ments furnished by Mr. Edward Carberry, agent of the immigration society of British Guiana and a proprietor in that colony_. By ”A friend to the Colored People” (Boston, 1840); The _Liberator_ (Boston), Feb. 28, 1840, advertis.e.m.e.nt.]
[Footnote 77: E.P. Puckett, ”The Free Negro in Louisiana” (MS.), citing the New Orleans _Picayune_, July 16, 1859, and Oct. 21 and 23, 1860.]
Their caste, it is true, was discriminated against with severity. Generally at the North and wholly at the South their children were debarred from the white schools and poorly provided with schools of their own.[78] Exclusion of the adults from the militia became the general rule after the close of the war of 1812. Deprivation of the suffrage at the South, which was made complete by the action of the const.i.tutional convention of North Carolina in 1835 and which was imposed by numerous Northern states between 1807 and 1838,[79] was a more palpable grievance against which a convention of colored freemen at Philadelphia in 1831 ineffectually protested.[80]
Exclusion from the jury boxes and from giving testimony against whites was likewise not only general in the South but more or less prevalent in the North as well. Many of the Southern states, furthermore, required license and registration as a condition of residence and imposed restrictions upon movement, education and occupations; and several of them required the procurement of individual white guardians or bondsmen in security for good behavior.
[Footnote 78: The schooling facilities are elaborately and excellently described and discussed in C.G. Woodson, _The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_ (New York, 1915).]
[Footnote 79: Emil Olbrich, _The Development of Sentiment for Negro Suffrage to 1860_ (University of Wisconsin _Bulletin_, Historical Series, III, no, I).]
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