Chapter 12

Negroes began to be received into the white church bodies in separate congregations, and before 1807 there is the record of the formation of eight such Negro churches. This brought forth leaders who were usually preachers in these churches. Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Church, was one; Lot Carey, one of the founders of Liberia, was another. In the South there was John Chavis, who passed through a regular course of studies at what is now Washington and Lee University. He started a school for young white men in North Carolina and had among his pupils a United States senator, sons of a chief justice of North Carolina, a governor of the state, and many others. He was a full-blooded Negro, but a Southern writer says that "all accounts agree that John Chavis was a gentleman. He was received socially among the best whites and asked to table."[95]

In the war of 1812 thirty-three hundred Negroes helped Jackson win the battle of New Orleans, and numbers fought in New York State and in the navy under Perry, Channing, and others. Phyllis Wheatley, a Negro girl, wrote poetry, and the mulatto, Benjamin Banneker, published one of the first American series of almanacs.

In fine, it seemed in the early years of the nineteenth century that slavery in the United States would gradually disappear and that the Negro would have, in time, a man's chance. A change came, however, between 1820 and 1830, and it is directly traceable to the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.

Between 1738 and 1830 there had come a remarkable series of inventions which revolutionized the methods of making cloth. This series included the invention of the fly shuttle, the carding machine, the steam engine, and the power loom. The world began to look about for a cheaper and larger supply of fiber for weaving. It was found in the cotton plant, and the southern United States was especially adapted to its culture. The invention of the cotton gin removed the last difficulties. The South now had a crop which could be attended to by unskilled labor and for which there was practically unlimited demand. There was land, and rich land, in plenty. The result was that the cotton crop in the United States increased from 8,000 bales in 1790 to 650,000 bales in 1820, to 2,500,000 bales in 1850, and to 4,000,000 bales in 1860.

In this growth one sees the economic foundation of the new slavery in the United States, which rose in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Manifestly the fatal procrastination in dealing with slavery in the eighteenth century received in the nineteenth century its terrible reward. The change in the attitude toward slavery was manifest in various ways. The South no longer excused slavery, but began to defend it as an economic system. The enforcement of the slave trade laws became notoriously lax and there was a tendency to make slave codes harsher.

This led to retaliation on the part of the Negroes. There had not been in the United States before this many attempts at insurrection. The slaves were distributed over a wide territory, and before they became intelligent enough to cooperate the chance of emancipation was held before them. Several small insurrections are alluded to in South Carolina early in the eighteenth century, and one by Cato at Stono in 1740 caused widespread alarm. The Negro plot in New York in 1712 put the city into hysterics. There was no further plotting on any scale until the Haytian revolt, when Gabriel in Virginia made an abortive attempt. In 1822 a free Negro, Denmark Vesey, in South Carolina, failed in a well-laid plot, and ten years after that, in 1831, Nat Turner led his insurrection in Virginia and killed fifty-one persons. The result of this insurrection was to crystallize tendencies toward harshness which the economic revolution was making advisable.

A wave of legislation passed over the South, prohibiting the slaves from learning to read and write, forbidding Negroes to preach, and interfering with Negro religious meetings. Virginia declared in 1831 that neither slaves nor free Negroes might preach, nor could they attend religious service at night without permission. In North Carolina slaves and free Negroes were forbidden to preach, exhort, or teach "in any prayer meeting or other association for worship where slaves of different families are collected together" on penalty of not more than thirty-nine lashes. Maryland and Georgia and other states had similar laws.

The real effective revolt of the Negro against slavery was not, however, by fighting, but by running away, usually to the North, which had been recently freed from slavery. From the beginning of the nineteenth century slaves began to escape in considerable numbers. Four geographical paths were chiefly followed: one, leading southward, was the line of swamps along the coast from Norfolk, Virginia, to the northern border of Florida. This gave rise to the Negro element among the Indians in Florida and led to the two Seminole wars of 1817 and 1835. These wars were really slave raids to make the Indians give up the Negro and half-breed slaves domiciled among them. The wars cost the United States ten million dollars and two thousand lives.

The great Appalachian range, with its abutting mountains, was the safest path northward. Through Tennessee and Kentucky and the heart of the Cumberland Mountains, using the limestone caverns, was the third route, and the valley of the Mississippi was the western tunnel.

These runaways and the freedmen of the North soon began to form a group of people who sought to consider the problem of slavery and the destiny of the Negro in America. They passed through many psychological changes of attitude in the years from 1700 to 1850. At first, in the early part of the eighteenth century, there was but one thought: revolt and revenge. The development of the latter half of the century brought an attitude of hope and adjustment and emphasized the differences between the slave and the free Negro. The first part of the nineteenth century brought two movements: among the free Negroes an effort at self-development and protection through organization; among slaves and recent fugitives a distinct reversion to the older idea of revolt.

As the new industrial slavery, following the rise of the cotton kingdom, began to press harder, a period of storm and stress ensued in the black world, and in 1829 came the first full-voiced, almost hysterical protest of a Negro against slavery and the color line in David Walker's Appeal, which aroused Southern legislatures to action.

The decade 1830-40 was a severe period of trial. Not only were the chains of slavery tighter in the South, but in the North the free Negro was beginning to feel the ostracism and competition of white workingmen, native and foreign. In Philadelphia, between 1829 and 1849, six mobs of hoodlums and foreigners murdered and maltreated Negroes. In the Middle West harsh black laws which had been enacted in earlier days were hauled from their hiding places and put into effect. No Negro was allowed to settle in Ohio unless he gave bond within twenty days to the amount of five thousand dollars to guarantee his good behavior and support. Harboring or concealing fugitives was heavily fined, and no Negro could give evidence in any case where a white man was party. These laws began to be enforced in 1829 and for three days riots went on in Cincinnati and Negroes were shot and killed. Aroused, the Negroes sent a deputation to Canada where they were offered asylum. Fully two thousand migrated from Ohio. Later large numbers from other parts of the United States joined them.

In 1830-31 the first Negro conventions were called in Philadelphia to consider the desperate condition of the Negro population, and in 1833 the convention met again and local societies were formed. The first Negro paper was issued in New York in 1827, while later emancipation in the British West Indies brought some cheer in the darkness.

A system of separate Negro schools was established and the little band of abolitionists led by Garrison and others appeared. In spite of all the untoward circumstances, therefore, the internal development of the free Negro in the North went on. The Negro population increased twenty-three per cent between 1830 and 1840; Philadelphia had, in 1838, one hundred small beneficial societies, while Ohio Negroes had ten thousand acres of land. The slave mutiny on the Creole, the establishment of the Negro Odd Fellows, and the growth of the Negro churches all indicated advancement.

Between 1830 and 1850 the concerted coöperation to assist fugitives came to be known as the Underground Railroad. It was an organization not simply of white philanthropists, but the coöperation of Negroes in the most difficult part of the work made it possible. Hundreds of Negroes visited the slave states to entice the slaves away, and the list of Underground Railroad operators given by Siebert contains one hundred and twenty-eight names of Negroes. In Canada and in the northern United States there was a secret society, known as the League of Freedom, which especially worked to help slaves run away. Harriet Tubman was one of the most energetic of these slave conductors and brought away several thousand slaves. William Lambert, a colored man, was reputed between 1829 and 1862 to have aided in the escape of thirty thousand.

The decade 1840-50 was a period of hope and uplift for the Negro group, with clear evidences of distinct self-assertion and advance. A few well-trained lawyers and physicians appeared, and colored men took their place among the abolition orators. The catering business in Philadelphia and other cities fell largely into their hands, and some small merchants arose here and there. Above all, Frederick Douglass made his first speech in 1841 and thereafter became one of the most prominent figures in the abolition crusade. A new series of national conventions began to assemble late in the forties, and the delegates were drawn from the artisans and higher servants, showing a great increase of efficiency in the rank and file of the free Negroes.

By 1850 the Negroes had increased to three and a half million. Those in Canada were being organized in settlements and were accumulating property. The escape of fugitive slaves was systematized and some of the most representative conventions met. One particularly, in 1854, grappled frankly with the problem of emigration. It looked as though it was going to be impossible for Negroes to remain in the United States and be free. As early as 1788 a Negro union of Newport, Rhode Island, had proposed a general exodus to Africa. John and Paul Cuffe, after petitioning for the right to vote in 1780, started in 1815 for Africa, organizing an expedition at their own expense which cost four thousand dollars. Lot Carey organized the African Mission Society in 1813, and the first Negro college graduate went to Liberia in 1829 and became superintendent of public schools. The Colonization Society encouraged this migration, and the Negroes themselves had organized the Canadian exodus.

The Rochester Negro convention in 1853 pronounced against migration, but nevertheless emissaries were sent in various directions to see what inducements could be offered. One went to the Niger valley, one to Central America, and one to Hayti. The Haytian trip was successful and about two thousand black emigrants eventually settled in Hayti.

Delaney, who went to Africa, concluded a treaty with eight kings offering inducements to Negroes, but nothing came of it. In 1853 Negroes like Purvis and Barbadoes helped in the formation of the American Anti-slavery society, and for a while colored men coöperated with John Brown and probably would have given him considerable help if they had thoroughly known his plans. As it was, six or seven of his twenty-two followers were Negroes.

Meantime the slave power was impelled by the high price of slaves and the exhaustion of cotton land to make increased demands. Slavery was forced north of Mason and Dixon's line in 1820; a new slave empire with thousands of slaves was annexed in 1850, and a fugitive slave law was passed which endangered the liberty of every free Negro; finally a determined attempt was made to force slavery into the Northwest in competition with free white labor, and less effective but powerful movements arose to annex more slave territory to the south and to reopen the African slave trade.

It looked like a triumphal march for the slave barons, but each step cost more than the last. Missouri gave rise to the early abolitionist movement. Mexico and the fugitive slave law aroused deep opposition in the North, and Kansas developed an attack upon the free labor system, not simply of the North, but of the civilized world. The result was war; but the war was not against slavery. It was fought to protect free white laborers against the competition of slaves, and it was thought possible to do this by segregating slavery.

The first thing that vexed the Northern armies on Southern soil during the war was the question of the disposition of the fugitive slaves, who immediately began to arrive in increasing numbers. Butler confiscated them, Fremont freed them, and Halleck caught and returned them; but their numbers swelled to such large proportions that the mere economic problem of their presence overshadowed everything else, especially after the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln was glad to have them come after once he realized their strength to the Confederacy.

The Emancipation Proclamation was forced, not simply by the necessity of paralyzing industry in the South, but also by the necessity of employing Negro soldiers. During the first two years of the war no one wanted Negro soldiers. It was declared to be a "white man's war." General Hunter tried to raise a regiment in South Carolina, but the War Department disavowed the act. In Louisiana the Negroes were anxious to enlist, but were held off. In the meantime the war did not go as well as the North had hoped, and on the twenty-sixth of January, 1863, the Secretary of War authorized the Governor of Massachusetts to raise two regiments of Negro troops. Frederick Douglass and others began the work with enthusiasm, and in the end one hundred and eighty-seven thousand Negroes enlisted in the Northern armies, of whom seventy thousand were killed and wounded. The conduct of these troops was exemplary. They were indispensable in camp duties and brave on the field, where they fought in two hundred and thirteen battles. General Banks wrote, "Their conduct was heroic. No troops could be more determined or more daring."[96]

The assault on Fort Wagner, led by a thousand black soldiers under the white Colonel Shaw, is one of the greatest deeds of desperate bravery on record. On the other hand the treatment of Negro soldiers when captured by the Confederates was barbarous. At Fort Pillow, after the surrender of the federal troops, the colored regiment was indiscriminately butchered and some of them were buried alive.

Abraham Lincoln said, "The slightest knowledge of arithmetic will prove to any man that the rebel armies cannot be destroyed with Democratic strategy. It would sacrifice all the white men of the North to do it. There are now in the service of the United States near two hundred thousand able-bodied colored men, most of them under arms, defending and acquiring Union territory.... Abandon all the posts now garrisoned by black men; take two hundred thousand men from our side and put them in the battlefield or cornfield against us, and we would be compelled to abandon the war in three weeks."[97] Emancipation thus came as a war measure to break the power of the Confederacy, preserve the Union, and gain the sympathy of the civilized world.

However, two hundred and forty-four years of slavery could not be stopped by edict. There were legal difficulties, the whole slow problem of economic readjustment, and the subtle and far-reaching questions of future race relations.

The peculiar circumstances of emancipation forced the legal and political difficulties to the front, and these were so striking that they have since obscured the others in the eyes of students. Quite unexpectedly and without forethought the nation had emancipated four million slaves. Once the deed was done, the majority of the nation was glad and recognized that this was, after all, the only result of a fearful four years' war which in any degree justified it. But how was the result to be secured for all time? There were three possibilities: (1) to declare the slave free and leave him at the mercy of his former masters; (2) to establish a careful government guardianship designed to guide the slave from legal to real economic freedom; (3) to give the Negro the political power to guard himself as well as he could during this development. It is very easy to forget that the United States government tried each one of these in succession and was literally forced to adopt the third, because the first had utterly failed and the second was thought too "paternal" and especially too costly. To leave the Negroes helpless after a paper edict of emancipation was manifestly impossible. It would have meant that the war had been fought in vain.

Carl Schurz, who traversed the South just after the war, said, "A veritable reign of terror prevailed in many parts of the South. The Negro found scant justice in the local courts against the white man. He could look for protection only to the military forces of the United States still garrisoning the states lately in rebellion and to the Freedmen's Bureau."[98] This Freedmen's Bureau was proposed by Charles Sumner. If it had been presented to-day instead of fifty years ago, it would have been regarded as a proposal far less revolutionary than the state insurance of England and Germany. A half century ago, however, and in a country which gave the _laisser faire_ economics their extremest trial, the Freedmen's Bureau struck the whole nation as unthinkable, save as a very temporary expedient and to relieve the more pointed forms of distress following war. Yet the proposals of the Bureau were both simple and sensible:

1. To oversee the making and enforcement of wage contracts for freedmen.

2. To appear in the courts as the freedmen's best friend.

3. To furnish the freedmen with a minimum of land and of capital.

4. To establish schools.

5. To furnish such institutions of relief as hospitals, outdoor relief stations, etc.

How a sensible people could expect really to conduct a slave into freedom with less than this it is hard to see. Even with such tutelage extending over a period of two or three decades, the ultimate end had to be enfranchisement and political and social freedom for those freedmen who attained a certain set standard. Otherwise the whole training had neither object nor guarantee. Precisely on this account the former masters opposed the Freedmen's Bureau with all their influence. They did not want the Negro trained or really freed, and they criticized mercilessly the many mistakes of the new Bureau.

The North at first thought to pay for the main cost of the Freedmen's Bureau by confiscating the property of former slave owners; but finding this not in accordance with law, they realized that they were embarking on an enterprise which bade fair to add many millions to the already staggering cost of the war. When, therefore, they saw that the abolition of slavery could not be left to the white South and could not be done by the North without time and money, they determined to put the responsibility on the Negro himself. This was without a doubt a tremendous experiment, but with all its manifest mistakes it succeeded to an astonishing degree. It made the immediate reëstablishment of the old slavery impossible, and it was probably the only quick method of doing this. It gave the freedmen's sons a chance to begin their education. It diverted the energy of the white South slavery to the recovery of political power, and in this interval, small as it was, the Negro took his first steps toward economic freedom.

The difficulties that stared reconstruction politicians in the face were these: (1) They must act quickly. (2) Emancipation had increased the political power of the South by one-sixth. Could this increased political power be put in the hands of those who, in defense of slavery, had disrupted the Union? (3) How was the abolition of slavery to be made effective? (4) What was to be the political position of the freedmen?

The Freedmen's Bureau in its short life accomplished a great task. Carl Schurz, in 1865, felt warranted in saying that "not half of the labor that has been done in the South this year, or will be done there next year, would have been or would be done but for the exertions of the Freedmen's Bureau.... No other agency except one placed there by the national government could have wielded that moral power whose interposition was so necessary to prevent Southern society from falling at once into the chaos of a general collision between its different elements."[99] Notwithstanding this the Bureau was temporary, was regarded as a makeshift, and soon abandoned.

Meantime partial Negro suffrage seemed not only just, but almost inevitable. Lincoln, in 1864, "cautiously" suggested to Louisiana's private consideration "whether some of the colored people may not be let in as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time to come, to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." Indeed, the "family of freedom" in Louisiana being somewhat small just then, who else was to be intrusted with the "jewel"? Later and for different reasons Johnson, in 1865, wrote to Mississippi, "If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their name, and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars, and pay taxes thereon, you would completely disarm the adversary and set an example the other states will follow. This you can do with perfect safety, and you thus place the Southern States, in reference to free persons of color, upon the same basis with the free states. I hope and trust your convention will do this."