Between Slavery and Freedom (30 page)

John S. Rock on the Likelihood of War (1858)

New Jersey native John Swett Rock (1825–1866) was truly a “renaissance man.” A physician and a teacher, he also trained as a lawyer. In 1861, he qualified as a member of the Massachusetts Bar—he had moved to Boston in 1852—and in 1865 he was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was an outspoken advocate of racial equality, a fierce opponent of slavery, and a champion of rights for women as well as men. The following excerpt is from a speech Rock gave in Boston on March 5, 1858, in commemoration of the Boston Massacre. He was certain that there would soon be a war against slavery and that African Americans would determine the outcome of that conflict.

White Americans have taken great pains to try to prove that we are cowards . . . The black man is not a coward . . . Nothing but a superior force keeps us down. And when I see the slaves rising up by hundreds annually, in the majesty of human nature, bidding defiance to every slave code and its penalties, making the issue Canada or death, I am disposed to ask if the charge of cowardice does not come with an ill-grace . . . Our fathers fought nobly for freedom, but they were not victorious. They fought for liberty, but they got slavery. The white man benefitted, but the black man was injured. I do not envy the white American the little liberty which he enjoys . . . But I would have all men free . . . Sooner or later, the clashing of arms will be heard in this country, and the black man's services will be needed: 150,000 freemen capable of bearing arms, and not all cowards and fools, and three quarter of a million slaves, wild with the enthusiasm caused by the dawn of the glorious opportunity of being able to strike a genuine blow for freedom, will be a power which white men will be “bound to respect.” Will the blacks fight? Of course they will. The black man will never be neutral . . . White men may despise, ridicule, slander and abuse us, and make us feel degraded; they may seek as they always have done to divide us and make us feel degraded; but no man shall cause me to turn my back upon my race.

Source:
Liberator
(Boston), March 12, 1858

Using Wealth to Buy Political Influence (1858)

St. Louis native Cyprian Clamorgan (1830–1902) was the grandson of a French adventurer, Jacques Clamorgan, and his black concubine, Susanne. Cyprian's early life was chaotic, and he remained illiterate until he was in his late teens, but once he learned to read and write there was no holding him back. In 1858,
he
authored a witty and perceptive analysis of the situation of free people of color in the city of his birth—a city where slavery flourished, but where there were several thousand free black people, some of them wealthy and well-connected. His message was clear enough: money equaled power, and affluent free blacks could make their voices heard. Even if they could not vote or run for office, they could influence their white tenants and people they did business with to support candidates who favored antislavery and equal rights.

[T]he colored people of St. Louis command several millions of dollars; and everyone knows that money, in whose hands soever it may be found, has an influence proportioned to its amount. Now, although our colored friends have no voice in the elections, they are not idle spectators. They know what parties and what individuals are most favorable to their interests, and they are not slow in making friends with those who are able and willing to serve them. . . . [T]he wealthy free colored men of St. Louis . . . know that the abolition of slavery in Missouri would remove a stigma from their race, and elevate them in the scale of society. . . . When slavery is abolished, where will be found the power of excluding the colored man from an equal participation in the fruits of human progression and mutual development? What political party will then dare to erect a platform on which the black man cannot stand side by side with his white brother? . . . The colored men of St. Louis have no votes themselves, but they control a large number of votes at every election. Many of them own houses which are rented to white voters, and others trade extensively with white dealers. It is an easy matter to them to say to their white tenants . . . “[V]ote this ticket or seek another place of abode.” It is no less easy for them to tell the merchant that, unless he votes for certain men, he will lose a large custom, and no one acquainted with human nature will deny that such requests are usually complied with.

Source: Julie Winch, ed.,
Cyprian Clamorgan's “The Colored Aristocracy of
St. Lou
is”
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), pp. 47–48.

“Being a Citizen of the United States” (1859)

Even before the
Dred Scott
decision declaring that blacks were not and never had been citizens, the U.S. State Department routinely refused to issue a passport to
anyone whose paperwork indicated that they were black. Sarah Parker Remond (1826–1894), the daughter of Salem, Massachusetts, businessman John Remond, went to England in 1858 as an antislavery lecturer. Before she left the United States she applied for a passport. In an era before photographs, a written description sufficed—and Remond's simply stated that she was of a “dark complexion.” Officials in Washington assumed she was white and she got her passport. Trouble ensued, however, when Remond went to the U.S. embassy in London to get a visa to travel to France.

Sarah P. Remond to Hon. George M. Dallas, Dec. 12, 1859

Sir—I beg to inform you that a short time since I went to the office of the American embassy to have my passport visaed for France. I should remark that my passport is an American one, granted to me in the United States, and signed by the Minister in due form. It states—what is the fact—that I am a citizen of the United States. I was born in Massachusetts. Upon my asking to have my passport visaed at the American embassy, the person in the office refused to affix the visa on the ground that I am a person of color. Being a citizen of the United States, I respectfully demand as my right that my passport be visaed by the Minister of my country . . .

S
arah P. Remond

Legation of the United States, London, Dec. 14, 1859

To Miss Sarah P. Remond

I am directed by the Minister to acknowledge the receipt of your note . . . and to say in reply, he must, of course, be sorry if any of his countrywomen, irrespective of color or extraction, should think him frivolously disposed to withhold from them facilities in his power to grant for travelling . . . but when the indispensable qualification for an American passport—that of the “United States citizenship”—does not exist, when, indeed, it is manifestly an impossibility by law that it should exist, a just sense of his official obligations . . . constrains him to say that the demand . . . cannot be complied with.

benj. moran
,
Assistant Secretary of Legation

Sarah P. Remond to Benjamin Moran

sir—
I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter . . . The purport of your communication is most extraordinary. You now lay down the rule that persons free born in the United States, and who have been
subjected all their lives to the taxation and other burdens imposed upon American citizens, are to be deprived of their rights as such, merely because their complexion happens to be dark, and that they are to be refused the aid of the Ministers of their country, whose salaries they contribute to pay.

Source:
New York Herald
, January 24, 1860

Notes

Chapter One

1.
Louisiana
Code Noir
(1724), article 54, in B. F. Finch, ed.,
Historical Collections of Louisiana: Embracing Translations of Many Rare and Valuable Documents
(New York: D. Appleton, 1851), vol. 3, p. 95.

2.
William Waller Hening, comp.,
Statutes at Large, Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in the Year 1619
(Richmond:
R. & W.
& G. Bartow, 1819–1823), vol. 2, p. 267.

3.
“An Act Concerning Negroes & Other Slaves,” in “Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, September 1664,”
Archives of Maryland
(Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1883), vol. 1, p. 533.

4.
Hening, comp.,
Statutes at Large of Virginia
, vol. 3, p. 86.

5.
See, for example,
American Weekly Mercury
(Philadelphia), September 23–30, 1736.

6.
Pennsylvania Gazette
, March 5, 1751.

7.
Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641),
www.winthropsociety.com/liberties.php
(accessed March 15, 2013)

8.
Boston News-Letter
, August 18, 1768.

Chapter Two

1.
Summation of John Adams in
Rex
v. Wemms, in
Le
gal Papers of John Adams, v
ol. 3, case 64, Massachusetts Historical Society, Adams Papers, Digital Edition (
www.masshist.org
, accessed September 6, 2013).

2.
“Crispus Attucks” (1888), in James Jeffrey Roche, ed.,
The Life of John Boyle O'Reilly, Together with His Complete Poems and Speeches
(
Ne
w York: Cassell, 1891), 410.

3.
Broadside, “Circular letter signed in behalf of our fellow slaves in this province, and by order of this committee, by Peter Bestes and others” [Boston, 1773], in Early American Imprints, series 1, no. 42416.

4.
Constitution of Vermont, 1777, chapter 1, article 1,
http://Vermontarchives.org/govhistory/constitute/con77.htm
(accessed September 6, 2013)

5.
“Minutes from the Case of
Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison,”
www.lexisnexis.com/academic/1univ/hist/aa/aas_case.asp
(accessed September 6, 2013). Jennison claimed ownership of Walker.

6.
New Hampshire Gazette,
July 15, 1779.

7.
New Hampshire Constitution (1783), articles 1 and 2,
www.nh.gov/constitution/constitution.html
(accessed September 6, 2013).

8.
The Act was reprinted in a number of Massachusetts newspapers. See, for instance,
Hampshire Chronicle
(Springfield), April 30, 1788.

9.
The letters exchanged between the Newport and Philadelphia societies are reprinted in William Douglass,
Annals of the First African Church in the United States of America, Now Styled the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas
(Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1862), 25–29.

Chapter Three

1.
Federal Gazette
, July 16, 1810.

2.
Copy of a Letter from Benjamin Banneker to the Secretary of State with his Answer
(Philadelphia: Daniel Lawrence, 1792), 8.

Chapter Four

1.
Julie Winch, ed.,
“The Elite of Our People”: Joseph Willson's Sketches of Black Upper-Class Life in Antebellum Philadelphia
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 82–83.