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^ In 1990, Congress dire< acting through the Director of the National Park Ser- vice to conduct a study of alternatives for commemo- rating and interpreting the Underground Railroad, the approxunate routes taken by enslaved fugitives escap- ing to freedom before the conclusion of the Civil War. The Congress also directed the Secretary of the Interi- or acting through the Director of the National Park ■^rvice to prepare and pubUsh an interpretive handfi
^ok on the Underground Railroad in the larger coi? text of American Antebellum society, including the history of slavery and abolitionism. This handbook has ^Sen prepared by the National Park Service in fulfill- nient of our charge under Public Law 101-628. It is my hope that the reading and discussion of our shared past iWiU benefit all Americans.
p^The Underground RaSrbadjstory is hke nothing else in American history: a secret enterprise that today i^F famous, an association many claim but few can doci^ ment, an illegal activity now regarded as noble, a neU work that was neither underground nor a railroad, ^_ system that operated not with force or high finance but through the committed and often spontaneous acts of courage and kindness of individuals unknown to each other. Perhaps the Underground Railroad lives in America's consciousness because it serves so many myths and challenges so many others. For all Ameri- cans in search of a shared past, it proves that brutal sys- tems and brutal laws can be overturned from within. It demonstrates that people can struggle and free them- selves from bondage through individual and collective acts of courage. It speaks of the power of freedom and justice.
This is an amazing story and a timely one that offers insight into America's need to face our collective histo- ry together and recreate our past with each generation. This handbook which draws together court records, buildings letters, and memories and draws on the research of historians tells the story anew. The Under- ground Railroad has a special place in our nation's his- toric memory. The National Park Service is committed to assuring that this history will be preserved. We invite your participation. ^
Robert Stanton 4 ^'^ctor, National
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[yth and Reality 7 'y Larry Gara
TFrom Bondage to Freedom 16
Slavery in America 19
By Brenda E. Stevenson
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>The Underground Railroad 45
)y C. Peter Ripley
the Past 76
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aret (jromef •with slave catch- ers in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she, her husband, and four chil- dren fwd fled from Kentucky. Accounts and illustrations of what happened vary, but in 1856 Garner reportedly killed i one child and wounded three in an attempt to prevent their recapture. She was sold back into slavery in the Deep South, where shejdied-of typkMiOiamm^^
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An Epic in United States Fiistory
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Myth and Reality
By Larry Gara
The intriguing ston' of the Underground Railroad is one of America's great legends, a mix of historical facts embroidered with m\l:hs. Traditionally the term refers to a multitude of routes to freedom taken by fugitive slaves. Typically the story focuses primarily on aboli- tionist operators and pictures fugitives as helpless, frightened passengers. The stor\'. told in the context of a free North and a slaveholding South, often assumes that only by taking advantage of a well-organized national network of aboHtionists could slaves have succeeded in escaping. Numerous accounts tell of daring rescues, ingenious underground hiding places, and tunnels con- necting nearby rivers to underground stations.
In fact, however, the North before the Civil War was not entirely free, either. By the end of the American Revolutionar)' era all Northern states had abolished slaver}^ or had made provision to do so. but fugitive slaves were always in danger of being returned under federal law and. in some cases, even under state law. Consequently, after Britain abolished slaver\' through- out its colonies in 1833. Canada became an important destination for fugitives who feared recapture and return to bondage. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which greatly expanded federal powers to protect the interests of slaveholders, posed a new threat to all fugi- tives in Northern states, and large numbers fled to Canada. Many stories about the Underground Railroad grew from events after passage of that law.
Ironically, while the 1850 law mandated Northern involvement in the return of fugitive slaves, it also led many Northerners to become moderate antislavery sympathizers. They already resented the power granted to the South in the US. Constitution whereby slave- holding states were allowed to count ever}' fi\'e slaves as three persons for purposes of Congressional represen- tation and the assignment of electoral votes. It was that power rather than slaver\' itself that many Northerners resented. The new law requiring that slaves be returned fueled anger and opposition to Southern demands.
This passageway (enlarged since the Underground Rail- road era) at the Milton House Inn in Milton, Wisconsin, is locally believed to have been used by fugitive slaves Inside front coven A page from Quaker Daniel Osbom s 1844 diary lists fugitive slaves passing through the Alum Creek Settlement in Ohio. Pages 4-5: A black couple flees with their child to the rela- tive safety of Union lines near Manassas, Virginia, in Eastman Johnson 's 1862 painting, A Ride for Libert\':The Fugitive Slaves.
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, symbolizes a turning point in the African- American strug- gle for freedom. Here John Brown and his 18-man "army of liberation " raided the federal arsenal in an attempt to lead a slave insurrection in the South. Despite its failure, the raid gal- vanized feelings in the North and South and helped spark the Civil War, which led to emancipation. During the war the town, then a part of Vir- ginia, changed hands eight times as Union and Confeder- ate troops battled to control this gateway to the Shenan- doah Valley and the South.
The mythical Underground Railroad became best known after the Civil War, but it had its roots in the antebellum period. Both abolitionists and defenders of slavery dealt in exaggeration; it was not a time in which individuals stuck to cold facts. Abohtionists boasted of their aid to fugitive slaves or announced their willing- ness to give such aid. Fugitive slaves like Frederick Douglass were effective spokespersons for abolition and often were featured speakers at antislavery gather- ings. Stories like that of Shadrach Minkins, a fugitive who was rescued from jail in Boston and sent on to Canada, got national attention and helped generate sympathy for slaves who had the courage and ingenuity to leave the South.
For their part. Southern politicians exaggerated the number of escapes and blamed them all on Northern- ers interfering with Southern property rights. Because of exaggeration and the lack of proper record keeping, numbers of escapes cannot be exact. While it is clear that there were more than the thousand annual slave escapes listed in census returns, any approximate num- ber would fall far short of the total of one million sug- gested by several persons.
Because few contemporary documents concerning the Underground Railroad have survived, most of the sources are autobiographical accounts written years after the events occurred. The abolitionist memoirs are based on recollections of members of a much-reviled minority writing after they had seen their cause tri- umph and their years of loyal service vindicated. While they vary in authenticity, most tend' to relate events from one point of view. Little or nothing was written about the ingenious and daring escape plans carried out by the fugitives themselves. The exception was The Underground Railroad written in 1872 by William Still, an African American. He published numerous docu- ments, including his own interviews with fugitives who were going through Philadelphia, and focused attention on what he referred to as the "self-emancipated cham- pions" of his race.
In the years after the Civil War, stories about the Underground Railroad appeared in magazines and newspapers. Many of these accounts were based on the memories of aging abolitionists and embellished by reporters. Through such tales the Underground Rail- road entered the realm of American folklore. Even those close to the events had difficulty separating fact
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from fiction. Gary CoUison's biography of Shadrach Minkins tells of conflicting and erroneous rumors and myths concerning Shadrach's brief stay in Concord, Massachusetts, on his way to Canada.
In the postwar years such terms as "passenger" and "conductor" of the Underground Railroad received wide circulation. What were only cellars, servants' quar- ters, and storage rooms were assumed to have been constructed for hiding fugitive slaves. Legendary mate- rial was repeated in stories, novels, plays, and even his- torical monographs. In 1898 Professor Wilbur H. Siebert published the classic history. The Underground Railroad from Slavery to Freedom, which he based on correspondence with descendants and others claiming knowledge of the institution. His collection is valuable, but some stories he accepted could not be verified.
While there were always some individ- uals willing to provide food and shelter to fleeing slaves, the term Underground Railroad did not come into common use until the construction of actual railroads became widespread. In 1844 an abolition- ist newspaper in Chicago published a car- toon captioned "The Liberty Line" that portrayed happy fugitives in a railroad car going to Canada from the United States. Passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 also led to more common use of the term and to increased aid to fugitive slaves.
The popular myth depicts a nationwide, centralized underground operation. One novelist pictures a highly organized, smooth-running operation with stations in both the North and the South, all of it masterminded by an elderly, invalid Quaker woman. In truth, there was some organized activity in certain localities, but none nationwide. Much of the aid to fugitives was haphazard. One or two incidents concerning fugitive slaves could give a community a reputation for a thriving system of aid. Local pride contributed to the popularity of the myth as unverified family stories appeared in local his- torical publications.
Inevitably, a good deal of exaggeration entered the picture. At least four communities claimed to be the place where the term Underground Railroad originat- ed, and at least five individuals were referred to in post- war accounts as "president" of the Underground Railroad. While some abolitionists had well-deserved
The African Meeting House in Boston dates to 1806 and is the oldest surviving black i church in the United States. ' Today it is a part of Boston African American National Historic Site, which includes 15 pre- Civil War structures linked by a Black Heritage Trail The Mother Bethel A. M.E. Church, shown below in an 1820s litho- graph, was at the center of the antislavery movement in Philadelphia.
11
Edward Johnson, citizen. James Laws, citizen. Mary Page, citizen. Row upon row, these simple gravestones in a corner of Arlington National Cemetery are a tribute to what it meant to the disenfranchised to become citizens. The stones mark the graves of blacks who died fighting for the Union army and the graves of their families The cemetery, in Vir- ginia overlooking the Potomac River and Washington, D. C, is ironically on the lands of the former estate of Confeder- ate Gen. Robert E. Lee. A freedman 5 village was estab- lished on the grounds of the plantation for hundreds of former slaves.
reputations for their work with fugitive slaves, many individuals who had little or no record of such service but who had held moderate to strong antislavery views were assumed, after the war, to have been part of the Underground Railroad.
Legendary accounts tend to blur the many divisions within the antislavery movement. While many Quakers supported Underground Railroad activities, others op- posed what they viewed as extremist ideas. In the 1840s, Free-Soilers who favored only political measures that restricted slavery to the South had little to do with the fugitive slave issue, but after the Civil War many were associated with it in Underground Railroad stories.
One of the more persistent myths concerns tunnels or underground hiding places. One story, frequently repeated, described such a tunnel under St. John's Epis- copal Church in Cleveland, Ohio. The Western Reserve Historical Society conducted two separate investiga- tions that concluded no such tunnels ever existed. In 1993 Byron D. Fruehling made on-site investigations of seventeen Ohio houses reputed to have had some kind of subterranean hiding places for fugitive slaves. He concluded that even though some of the buildings may have housed escaping slaves in antebellum years, the fugitives hid in barns, attics, or spare rooms, not in underground hideaways.
Another myth is that absolute secrecy was necessary in all Underground Railroad operations. Abolitionists such as Levi Coffin, William Still, and Thomas Garrett made no secret of their work aiding fugitives. Of these three only Garrett, who lived in Delaware, a border slave state, was arrested under the Fugitive Slave Law. Obviously there were times when such activities had to be carried out in secret, but reputations of abolitionists generally were well known.
The legend of the Underground Railroad has taken on a life of its own and become a major epic in Ameri- can history. It recalls a time when white and black aboli- tionists worked unselfishly together in the cause of human freedom. Like all legends it is oversimplified, whereas historical reality is complex. Sorting out fact from fiction is the everyday work of historians. In the next section of this book, two historians summarize their current conclusions in essays about slavery and the Underground Railroad.
12
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Slavery Timeline
1565
African slaves arrive on North American mainland at Spanish colony of St. Augustine
1619
Africans arrive in Virginia on Dutch ship; slave trade intensifies in latter part of 1 7th century.
1760s
Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon sur- vey Pennsylvania- Maryland boundary; in time, this marks di- vision between slave and free states.
Congress passes first Fugitive Slave Law af- firming Constitutional rights of slaveholders to their property.
1770
Crispus Attucks is killed by British sol- diers in the Boston Massacre.
1808
United States abolishes trade in slaves from Africa.
1775
First abolition society fomns in Philadelphia.
1831
Nat Turner leads slave insurrection in Virginia.
1833
William Lloyd Garrison heads New England Anti-Slavery Society; Margaretta Forten forms Female Anti- Slavery Society in Philadelphia; British Parliament passes Emancipation Act freeing all slaves and outlawing the slave trade.
1830s
Vigilance committees organize in Northern cities to prevent re- turn of fugitive slaves to the South.
1839
Slaves revolt on Spanish ship Amistad off Cuba.
1845
Frederick Douglass's first autobiography is published.
1850
Fugitive Slave Law requires escapees be returned; Hamet Tubman begins help- ing slaves escape via Underground Railroad.
14
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1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin pub- lished.
1854
Kansas-Nebraska Act allows territories to choose to be slave or free states.
1857
U.S. Supreme Court's Dred Scott Decision rules that free blacks and slaves are not citizens.
1859
Abolitionist John Brown raids U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry.
1860
Republican Abraham Lincoln wins U.S. Presidential election in November; South Carolina secedes from Union in December.
1863
1861
Civil War begins as Confederates attack Fort Sumter in April; Union declares fugitive slaves as contraband of war in May.
1862
Congress, in March, abolishes slavery in District of Columbia and provides funds for voluntary coloni- zations; in May pro- hibits slavery in terri- tories; in July the Second Confiscation Act pennits military to enlist blacks.
Lincoln's Emancipa- tion Proclamation takes effect, abolish- ing slavery in Con- federacy; Union intensifies recruit- ment of blacks as soldiers.
1865
Civil War ends in April; Lincoln assas- sinated; Thirteenth Amendment to U.S. Constitution outlaw- ing slavery ratified in December.
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'Slavery Days was Hell... It's bad to belong to folks dat own you soul and body...."
— Delia Garlic, former slave
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Slavery in
By Brenda E. Stevenson
Slavery, the institution and the people who were part of it, has had tremendous and long-lasting influence on American history and the American people. Common perceptions of the slaves and slaveholders, shrouded in mythology almost from the beginning, have changed dramatically over time. But lingering notions of South- em difference and black inferiority — both intimately linked to slavery — still remain along with a host of related questions about race and democracy. To study the history of slavery in the United States, therefore, is also to explore some of the fundamental questions that confront Americans of every generation.
Africans came with the first Europeans to the Amer- icas in exploratory and exploitative missions as seamen, pirates, workers, and slaves. Scholars have documented the presence of Africans on the expeditions of Colum- bus to the Caribbean, Cortez to Mexico, Narvaez in Florida, Cabeza de Vaca in the American Southwest, Hawkins in Brazil, Balboa in the Pacific, Pizarro in Peru, DeSoto in the North American Southeast, and Jesuit missionaries in Canada.
The first Africans designated as slave laborers arrived in the Caribbean in 1518. A century later, the first blacks were brought to Jamestown, Virginia, where, for the next few decades, they were given a sta- tus similar to that of indentured servants.
Initially Europeans brought only small numbers of Africans to the New World. However, as the need for labor grew with expansions in agriculture, mining, and other businesses, so, too, did the number of black slaves. Brazil and the Caribbean had the largest numbers of imports and for the longest span of time, with Brazil and Cuba maintaining importation until the 1880s. Fig- ures are imprecise, but over the period Brazil received at least 4 million slaves; the French Caribbean, 1.6 mil- lion; the Dutch Caribbean, 0.5 miUion; the English Caribbean, 1.8 million; the Spanish Caribbean and mainland colonies, 1.6 million; and those British main- land colonies, subsequently the United States, 450,000.
Gradual emancipation in the North did not free all slaves. This bill of sale states that a 19-year-old slave named Flora, depicted at left in an accompa- nying cut-paper silhouette, was sold for £25 in 1796 by Mar- garet D wight to Asa Benjamin in Connecticut. Flora died in
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1815. As with most slaves, little is known about her life, but more than likely she would have agreed with Delia Garlic's comment about slavery. Preceding pages: Jerry Pinkney's illustration evokes the caution and watchfulness that accompanied a successful flight from bondage.
19
Atlantic Slave Trade
The slave trade across the At- lantic followed a long history of trade in people and goods between Europe, Asia, and Africa. Rivalries among Euro- pean powers in the 1 500s and 1 600s sparked rapid exploit- ation of the New World's min- eral and agricultural resources and initiated an intense and destructive period of bonded labor in the Americas. Africans were traded, purchased, or captured to work the gold and silver mines of South and Cen- tral America and the sugar plantations of the Caribbean.
Under pressure from European traders— first Spanish and Por- tuguese, later Dutch, English, and some French— the social fabric and trade economy of West and Central Africa changed. Since Africans were producers and frequently ex- porters of cloth, omaments, and iron products, the Europeans' most valued trade goods were guns, which were then used in wars to acquire slaves. Of the approximate 1 0 million Africans shipped to the Western Hemi- sphere, only 450,000 were taken to what is now the United
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20
states, primarily between the late 1600s and 1808, when the U.S. banned the importation of slaves from Africa. Captured Africans were transported in the holds of ships, such as that of the Brookes shown below, designed to utilize every inch for human cargo. Up to 20 per- cent did not survive the Atlantic crossing. In North America, the Africans might be sold individu- ally at any ship dock, but most were sold at the major port cities of the Chesapeake Bay and, later, Charleston, Savan- nah, and New Orleans.
This early 20th-century photo- graph from the Belgian Congo of the internal African slave ;^ trade symbolizes the hor- rors and persistence of slavery— a counterpoint to the brass depiction of an African king.
Slavery in the New World began simply as one part of a long history of international trade in goods and people both in Europe and in Africa. Slavery devel- oped differently in different colonies, but the institution was recognizable. Many civilizations of the past had embraced forced labor and every continent, including the Americas and Africa, had witnessed it prior to the initiation of the transatlantic slave trade in the 16th cen- tury. Many blacks who arrived in the New World, there- fore, were familiar with a system of labor known as slavery. In Africa, slavery had been practiced in Algiers, the Sudan, the Hausa city states, Zanzibar, and among the Fulani and other ethnic groups, including the Wolot Sherbro and Mende, the Temme, Ashanti, Yoruba, Kon- go, Lozi, and Duala.
Their familiarity with the institution in their ancestral homelands, however, did not diminish the horrors the blacks were to encounter in the Americas. Slavery in Africa usually was quite different from New World forms. In Africa slaves usually were persons who had been captured in war, although some were bom or sold into bondage. Treatment often depended on the origin of their status. Prisoners of war generally had a harsher life. They could be sold and frequently were. Women often were forced into concubinage. Some were even sacrificed by victorious kings or rulers in religious cere- monies. Others were held for many years, sometimes through generations, and became part of the clan, or extended family, and were treated as valued workers. Native -bom slaves, on the other hand, customarily were not sold and had some important privileges such as the right to inherit property and to marry free people.
Indigenous African slavery seemed to be more con- ducive to family stability and cohesiveness than the American institutions. Some West African societies, for example, forbade interference in a slave's marriage and allowed slaves to buy their freedom and the freedom of family members. Others forbade masters from having sexual relations with their slaves' wives. Some freed women when they gave birth. They also had greater class mobility with some passing from slave status to become soldiers and artisans.
Slavery in any society usually can be explained bet- ter, however, through a discussion of the slave's restric- tions rather than his or her privileges. Most precolonial West African slaves could not become priests, hold important religious posts, or visit sacred places or the
22
residence of the local chief. Some were not allowed to dress as free persons, or marry or be buried near them.
Slavery in Africa, as elsewhere, was not a static insti- tution. It changed drastically over time usually as a response to cultural, economic, and military factors. The invasions of North African Arabs in the 11th and 12th centuries and the Europeans from the 16th through the 19th centuries caused great escalations in the numbers enslaved and tremendous changes in the status and function of the enslaved. The desire and, eventually, the need of West Africans to trade with Europeans for weapons and other prized goods prompted some Af- ricans to get involved in the slave trade to such an extent that they could no longer draw on their tradi- tional reserves of slaves.
The Atlantic slave trade was dangerous, controver- sial, and lucrative work. For Europeans in particular the trade was extremely profitable. It was indeed the foundation on which colonial agriculture and ship- building and European mercantilism and industry were built in the 17th and 18th centuries. The slave trade also brought profits to African middlemen, or caboceers, and the chiefs and rulers who traded their gold, ivory, dyewoods, slaves, and foodstuffs for Euro- pean weaponry, textiles, liquor, glass beads, and brass rings. As greater demands from the New World made the trade more lucrative, more and more slaves were abducted through armed raids.
African villages, however, did not passively comply with slave trading raids; they fought back. Famed Ibo autobiographer Olaudah Equiano noted that the phe- nomenon of enemies coming into his village to take slaves was so prevalent during his childhood that often the men and the women took weapons to the fields in case of a surprise attack. "Even our women are war- riors," Equiano recalled, "and march boldly out to fight along with the men. Our whole district is a kind of mili- tia." Other West Africans who had been harassed by slave procurers went to the source of the problem European traders, and attacked the company fortJ Would-be slaves tried all kinds of ways to escape, som* times sneaking away, getting help from people passing by, overpowering the guard watching them, and com- mitting suicide. Most of them did not escape, but th did establish a tradition of resistance that followed the slaves to the Americas.
Once they reached the forts on the coast, slavers
Masters and overseers pun- ished slaves for insubordina- tion, not working hard enough, attempting to escape, inciting other slaves to rebel, and countless other infractions, such as dropping a glass of water A Louisiana slave named Gordon, below, escaped to Union lines in 1863, and photographs of the welts and scars on his back publicized the horrors and violence of the slave system. Some slaves, espe- cially those who tried to escape, were forced to wear bells, left, on their arms, neck, or head. Some were muzzled. Owners occasionally branded their slaves like cattle. The initials and a heart, left, are one exam- ple of a branding iron.
'The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship .... These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted
into terror."
— Olaiidah Eqidano
placed them in temporary holding pens known as bara- coons. The capture and transport to baracoons was a brutal experience physically and emotionally for the Africans. Their greatest anxiety derived from their fears — of their slavers, the slave ships, and their fate. Olaudah Equiano's response probably was a typical one. "The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship, which was as then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo," Equiano recalled. ''These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror." He had entered a completely different world. None of what he had experienced, however, from the time of his capture to his arrival on the coast in a slave coffle, had prepared Equiano for the horrors of the Middle Passage, the trip across the Atlantic Ocean.
Equiano did not know what to make of these strange people who looked, spoke, and behaved so differently from himself. "I was now persuaded that I had got into a world of bad spirits," he recalled, "and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language they spoke, which was very different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief.... [QJuite overpowered with horror and anguish, I. ..fainted."
Conditions aboard the slave ships dur- ing their voyages from Africa to America, which could take three weeks to three months, often were torture. Segregated by gender, the blacks were chained together and packed so tightly that they often were forced to lie on their sides in spoon fashion. Clearances in ships' holds often were only two to four feet high. During periods of good weather, the slavers allowed the Africans on deck for sun and wash- ing. In bad weather or because of some perceived threat, they had to remain below, chained to one anoth- er, lying in their own feces, urine, blood, and vomit. "The floor of the rooms," one 18th-century ship observ- er wrote, "was so covered with blood and mucus which had proceeded from them in consequence of dysentery, that it resembled a slaughter house." Both shipboard personnel and American coasthne observers reported that sometimes an approaching slave ship could be smelled before it could be seen.
Olaudah Equiano, left, was kidnapped from his I bo tribe at age 11, enslaved in Africa, and passed from slave trader to trader In his autobiography, below, first published in 1789, Equiano wrote of the ''brutal cruelty " he saw aboard a slave ship and of his years in bond- age as a seaman between Vir- ginia, England, and Barbados. He eventually bought his free- dom and became an abolition- ist. Facing an uncertain future like Equiano, young boys hud- dle together in an illustration, lower left, from an 1857 issue of The Illustrated London News.
I>n'ERESTING KAllRiTIV
THE LIFE
OI.AUDAH l^dUIANO. GUST.-^yUS VyISSA,
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More than 200 attempts at on-board slave mutinies are documented. Slaves also resisted through hunger strikes, violent outbursts, refusal to cooperate, and sui- cide. Mortality rates varied greatly: sometimes as low as 10 percent, rarely as high as 100 percent. Still, it is esti- mated that several million Africans died before they ever reached the Americas.
The first blacks to arrive in the British colony of Vir- ginia reportedly came in 1619. The previous summer the English ship Treasurer left Virginia to acquire salt, goats, and other provisions. Shortly thereafter, it came into contact with a Dutch man-of-war, and the two ves- sels sailed on together. They "happened upon" a Span- ish frigate carrying slaves and other cargo. They seized the Spanish vessel and divided the cargo between them. Exactly how many Africans the Spanish ship was carry- ing we do not know, but the Dutch ship took on 100 and sailed back to Jamestown after becoming separated from the Treasurer. By the time it arrived in Jamestown in August 1619, there were 20 Africans aboard; the oth- er 80 had died at sea. The Treasurer eventually reached Jamestown, too, with one African. The others — perhaps as many as 29 — had been sold in Bermuda. From that point, Virginia's black population grew slowly but steadily; there were 300 blacks in 1649 and 2,000, or five percent of the population, by 1671.
The first Africans in Virginia, however, had an uncer- tain status. Slavery was not a formal, legalized institu- tion in the colony until the 1660s, and subsequent laws made slavery more inescapable for more Africans as larger numbers of them began to arrive. The system's increasing presence can be attributed to numerous con- ditions. Most important, indentures did not keep pace with the growing needs for labor. Colonial administra- tors also actively encouraged black slavery, extending in 1635 the headright system, which rewarded those who imported persons to the colonies with 50 acres of Virginia land for each person so imported, to also include those who sponsored the arrival of blacks. At about the same time, there was a belief that blacks, unlike Europeans or the indigenous peoples, could work in the hot Southern sun and that they had a natur- al immunity to diseases like malaria and yellow fever. Moreover, the rise of the Company of Royal Adventur- ers Trading to Africa and its later merger with the Roy- al African Company guaranteed mainland planters greater access to slave imports. By the end of the 17th
26
century, therefore, increasing numbers of slaves were entering Virginia and other colonies. Soon they were even the majority in many of Virginia's tidewater and Southside counties (those south of the James River). By 1750, they numbered more than 101,000 in Virginia while whites numbered 130,000.
By the 1670s, Africans lived in all of the British main- land colonies. Slaves were mentioned in Maryland's official documents by 1638, and the colony legally for- malized the institution in 1663. The Lords Proprietors of CaroHna, four of whom were members of the Royal African Company, expected slavery to play an impor- tant role in that colony's economic development and guaranteed its practice even before settlement. They, too, offered economic inducements for slave importa- tion through the headright system. By 1710, the black population of 4,100 in what would become South Car- olina almost equaled that of the whites. When the colony separated in 1729, South Carolina had 10,000 whites and 20,000 slaves while North Carolina had 30,000 whites and 6,000 slaves.
Georgia was late to embrace the institution. It legally banned slavery at the colony's founding, but, at the behest of settlers who saw slavery flourishing in neigh- boring South Carolina, Georgia repealed the prohibi- tion in 1750. Advertisements in the colony's Gazette soon read like so many others of the era: "To be Sold on Thursday next, at publick vendue. Ten Likely Gold Coast New Negroes. Just imported from the West Indies, consisting of eight stout men and two women."
Blacks were slaves in the Dutch colony of New Netherlands long before the British took over the colony in 1664 and renamed it New York. Slaves from Angola and Brazil routinely worked the farms of the Hudson River Valley even though the British did not legalize the institution until 1684. By the end of the 17th century, only slightly more than 2,000 were in the colony, but by 1771 the 20,000 slaves made up nearly 12 percent of New York residents.
New Jersey under the Swedish and Dutch had few slaves, but that changed once the British gained control of the colony in 1664 and, as in South Carolina and Vir- ginia, offered land incentives for the importation of Africans. By 1745, New Jersey had 4,600 slaves in a total population of about 61,000.
Bondage fell on less fertile ground in Pennsylvania, where Quakers, for moral reasons, and artisans, on eco-
27
^: Slave Uprisings
Slaveholders constantly feared slave insurrections. To curb plots, Southern states passed laws intended to intel- lectually and physically isolate slaves and instituted prac- tices that robbed them of their dignity. Despite dozens of conspiracies, few rebellions occurred. Three events that received widespread publicity were Gabriel's Conspiracy and Nat Turner's Revolt, both of which led to intensified re- strictions, and the Amistad mutiny. In 1800, Gabriel and about 30 other blacks con- spired to take hostages and
public buildings in Richmond, Virginia, and to negotiate freedom for the slaves. The plot was betrayed before it was implemented. Testimony at the trials of the conspira- tors persuaded Virginians that insurrection was a daily possi- bility. But it was not until Au- gust 22, 1 831 , that Nat Turner, below, and five other slaves initiated a rebellion in South- ampton County, Virginia. Turn- er's followers grew to about 60 as they traveled through the countryside killing at least 57 white men, women, and chil- dren. Over several days the conspirators, and many
blacks not involved, were shot or captured. Turner eventually was caught and executed, as were 1 6 of his followers. Another insurrection involved the Spanish slave ship Ami- stad, right, which was off the coast of Cuba in June 1 839 when 53 Africans freed them- selves and, led by Joseph Cinque, far right, demanded that they be taken back to Af- rica. The crew, however, sailed the ship up the U.S. coast. The mutineers were captured by an American ship and put on trial in Connecticut. The court
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been illegally captured and sold and had a right to rebel, an opinion upheld by the United States Supreme Court,
nomic principle, opposed any increases in slavery. Before William Penn received his land grant, however, the Dutch had imported African slaves. And there always were those who wanted slave labor as eagerly as the Royal African Company wanted to sell slaves. The conflict was symbolized by the tax placed on slave imports by Pennsylvania: a duty of 20 shillings for every African imported in 1700 was doubled in 1705. When the colony's Assembly passed another law in 1712 that completely outlawed the importation of blacks, the Royal African Company persuaded the Privy Council in England to nullify the law. By 1750, Pennsylvania had approximately 11,000 slaves, most of whom were living in Philadelphia.
The New England colonies imported fewer slaves than the Middle or Southern colonies, but African slav- ery also was a part of their economy and culture. By 1715, there were approximately 2,000 slaves in Massa- chusetts and 1,500 in Connecticut. During the early 1770s, on the eve of the American Revolution, Rhode Island boasted a slave population of almost 3,800 while New Hampshire had only 654 slaves in a total popula- tion of about 62,000.
Unlike voluntary immigrants, Africans did not leave or arrive in family groups. They also had little opportu- nity to form family groups for several years after their arrival, because a typical cargo included twice as many males as females. Strangers in a foreign land, forced to comprehend a new language spoken by people who looked and behaved so differently from themselves, confronted with racism, sexism, hunger, epidemics, back-breaking work quotas, and harsh corporal punish- ment, these first few Africans spread thinly throughout the colonies undoubtedly suffered great emotional and physical distress. Slave