Between Slavery and Freedom (31 page)

2.
Peter P. Hinks, ed.,
David Walker's “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World”
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 31.

3.
John B. Russwurm to R. R. Gurley, May 7, 1829, ACS Correspondence,
Incoming
(American Colonization Society Papers, Library of Congress).

4.
Liberator
, March 2, 1833.

5.
Sarah L. Forten to Angelina Grimké, April 15, 1837, in Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, eds.,
Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822–1844
(New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1934), vol. 1, p. 381.

6.
For the text of David Wilmot's speech see
http://herb.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/1247
(accessed July 12, 2013).

Chapter Five

1.
Editorial in
Frederick Douglass' Paper
, August 20, 1852.

2.
Quoted in Ira Berlin,
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South
(New York: Pantheon, 1974), 164.

3.
Martin R. Delany,
The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the
Colored
People of the United States
(Philadelphia: The Author, 1852; reprint
Baltimore
: Black Classic Press, 1993), 203.

4.
“Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois,” in
Roy P.
Basler, ed.,
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
(New Brunswick,
NJ: Rutger
s University Press, 1953), vol. 3, pp. 145–46.

Suggested Readings

A generation ago, anyone hoping to learn very much about the lives of free black people in America from the colonial era to the Civil War faced a real challenge. By and large, this was uncharted territory. Fortunately, that is no longer the case. Over the past few decades scholars have mined a wide array of historical records to reveal the complexity of the “in between” world of those Americans who were not slaves but lacked the fundamental freedoms that whites considered to be their birthright.

Leon F. Litwack's
North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860
(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1961) and James and Lois Horton's
In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700–1860
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) are excellent surveys of black life in the supposedly “free” North.
On the South, Ira Berlin's
Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the
Antebellum
South
(New York: Pantheon, 1974) is a model of careful scholarship.
William
Loren Katz's
The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the
African
American Role in the Expansion of the United States
(1971; reprint New York: Harlem Moon, 2005) is essential reading for anyone in search of a more inclusive account of life on the frontier.

Community studies give us insight into how black people struggled to win and then maintain their freedom at the local level. The following list is not meant to be exhaustive but simply to indicate how wide-ranging the scholarship is.

Baltimore:
Freedom's Port: The African American Community of Baltimore, 1790–1860
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

Boston:
James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton,
Black Bostonians: Family Life and Community Struggle in the Antebellum North
(2nd ed. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1999).

Florida:
Jane Landers,
Black Society in Spanish Florida
(Urbana and
Chicago
: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

New Bedford:
Kathryn Grover,
The Fugitive's Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001).

New Orleans:
Kimberly S. Hanger,
Bounded Lives, Bounded Places: Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803
(Durham: Duke
University
Press, 1997).

New York:
Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, eds.,
Slavery in New York
(New York: The New Press, 2005).

Philadelphia:
Gary B. Nash,
Forging Freedom: The Formation of
Philadelphia's
Black Community, 1720–1840
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).

St. Louis:
Julie Winch,
The Clamorgans: One Family's History of Race in America
(New York: Hill & Wang, 2011).

For an excellent overview of free black life in the cities of the North, the South, and the Midwest, see Leonard P. Curry's
The Free Black in Urban America, 1800–1850: The Shadow of the Dream
(Chicago: University of
Chicago
Press, 1981).

Although the free black population was a heavily urbanized one by the mid-nineteenth century, most people of color lived in rural areas, as did the vast majority of whites. Melvin Patrick Ely's
Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Freedom
(New York: Vintage, 2005) is an intriguing study of one free black enclave and the unique set of circumstances that brought it into being. The experiences of black Midwestern farmers are chronicled in several books, the most accessible of which is Stephen A. Vincent's
Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765–1900
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

Black Americans were just as eager as whites to share in the American Dream of economic self-sufficiency. Loren Schweninger's
Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990) presents a fascinating picture of ingenuity and determination in the face of often overwhelming odds. W. Jeffrey Bolster's
Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1997) looks at the occupation that both challenged and sustained many African-American men and their families. Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark recount the remarkable saga of the wealthy Ellison clan in
Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), and in
Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley: African Princess, Florida Slave, Plantation Owner
(Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010)
Daniel
L. Schafer tells the equally remarkable story of a slave who gained her freedom and became a rich planter with slaves of her own.

T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes's
“Myne Owne Ground”: Race and
Freedom
on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640–1676
(New York: Oxford
University
Press, 1980) is a wonderfully nuanced account of the world the first black settlers to Virginia made for themselves during a time when enslavement for life was not a “given” for every black person. In
Black
Yankees
: The
Development
of an Afro-American Subculture in Eighteenth-Century New England
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988) William D. Piersen details the complexities of slavery and freedom in colonial New England, while Ira
Berlin's
prize-winning
Many Thousands Gone: the First Two Centuries of
Slavery
in North America
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998) is a superb synthesis that explains not only how different slave
systems
evolved in colonial America but how some black people managed to locate the weak spots in those systems and extricate themselves from bondage.

On the struggle for independence and the role of African Americans in that struggle, the classic study is Benjamin Quarles's
The Negro in the American Revolution
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961). Black involvement in the Revolution has continued to intrigue historians, and all of the following books are highly recommended: Edward Countryman,
Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the
Revolutionary
Era
(Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012); J. William Harris,
The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah: A Free Black Man's Encounter with Liberty
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Woody Holton,
Black Americans in the Revolutionary Era
(Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009), Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan,
The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989), and Simon Schama,
Rough Crossings: The Slaves, the British, and the American Revolution
(New York: Harper, 2007).

On black activism to end slavery and discrimination, see Benjamin Quarles's
Black Abolitionists
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1969) and a more recent work, Patrick Rael's
Black Identity and Black Protest in the Antebellum North
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2002), as well as individual biographies, of which the following are just a sampling:

Richard
Allen:
Richard S. Newman,
Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers
(New York:
New Yor
k University Press, 2008).

Mary Ann Shadd Cary:
Jane Rhodes,
Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Nineteenth Century
(Bloomington: Indiana
University
Press, 1999).

Paul Cuffe:
Lamont D. Thomas,
Rise to Be a People: A Biography of Paul Cuffe
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

James Forten:
Julie Winch,
A Gentleman of Color: The Life of James Forten
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

John Brown Russwurm:
Winston James,
The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851
(New York: New York University Press, 2010).

Maria W. Stewart:
Marilyn Richardson,
Maria W. Stewart: America's First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987).

David Walker:
Peter P. Hinks,
To Awaken My Afflicted Brethren: David Walker and the Problem of Antebellum Slave Resistance
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).

Many of the same forces that shaped the lives of free black men shaped the lives of free black women, but their gender meant that they had to contend with the “double bond” of being black and female in a society that privileged whiteness and masculinity. In addition to the biographies of individual women listed above, readers should look at Susan Lebsock's
The Free Women of Petersburg: Status and Culture in a Southern Town, 1784–1860
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1984) and Wilma King's
The Essence of Liberty: Free Black Women During the Slave Era
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006).

The best sources for trying to understand how free people of color saw their situation in America are obviously their own writings. Two semi-
autobiographical
novels that give us glimpses into the lives of two very
different
people are Frank J. Webb's
The Garies and Their Friends
(1857) and Harriet E. Wilson's
Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black
(1859). Both are available in modern paperback editions. A number of women and men left journals and memoirs. See, for example, Brenda
Stevenson
, ed.,
The
Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988),
William
R. Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis, eds.,
William Johnson's Natchez: The Antebellum Diary of a Free Negro
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), and Loren Schweninger, ed.,
From
Tennessee
Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas
(
Columbia
:
University
of Missouri Press, 1984). Dorothy B. Porter's
Early Negro Writing, 1760–1837
(1971; reprint Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1995) gathers together dozens of otherwise hard-to-find pamphlets and speeches by free women and men of color. In
Pamphlets of Protest: An
Anthology
of Early African American Protest Literature, 1790–1860
(New York and London: Routledge, 2001), Richard S. Newman, Patrick Rael, and
Phillip
Lapsansky have expanded upon Porter's work. Two very useful online databases that contain hundreds of documents by and about free black people are the Early American Imprints series, available as part of the
Archive of Americana collection at
www.readex.com
and Documenting the American South at
http://docsouth.unc.edu.
The sheer size of the document database gathered by C. Peter Ripley and his team at the Black
Abolitionist
Papers Project should not deter anyone from exploring it. One of the guiding principles of the Project has always been
access.
The entire BAP Archive is searchable for free through
http://research.udmercy.edu.
African-American and abolitionist newspapers reveal what truly mattered to free people of color in the antebellum era. Accessible Archives (
www.accessible.com
) contains transcriptions of a number of important newspapers, including
Freedom's Journal
, the
Colored American
, and Frederick Douglass's
North Star
. Two collections of convention minutes, Howard H. Bell, ed.,
Minutes of the Proceedings of the National Negro Conventions, 1830–1864
(New York: Arno Press, 1969), and the two-volume
Proceedings of the Black State Conventions, 1840–1865
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979 and 1985), edited by Philip S. Foner and George E. Walker, reflect the issues and concerns of African Americans at the national and local levels. On the outcry over the agenda of the American Colonization Society see the speeches and petitions in William Lloyd Garrison's
Thoughts on African Colonization
. Originally published in 1832, it is available through
http://books.google.com.
Given the rapid pace at which primary materials are being put online, anyone interested in delving more deeply into different aspects of free black life should have no shortage of resources, most of them just a mouse click away.