Researching slavery

The Fall of Slavery in America

In the United States, slavery was officially abolished in 1865 with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. National abolition of slavery began on a single day with this single law. The Thirteenth Amendment, however, was not accomplished on a single day. Several generations of Americans struggled to agree about basic human liberties. Slavery became the chief aggravating source of contentious disagreements between the States, disagreements severe enough to sever the Union. Debates, which often developed into violent and deadly outbursts, were not limited to whether slavery should be abolished, but also how to free the slaves. The central issue was deeper than the question of human servitude. At issue was how to enforce a demand for human dignity and bestow the proper rights to all human beings, despite enormous commercial consequences. Hundreds of thousands of citizens lost their lives as slavery was torn from the fabric of America.

The establishment of slavery

One interesting explanation for the early dynamics of slavery was explained in The Many-Headed Hydra,written by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. According to Linebaugh and Rediker, the Earth itself and the forces of earthly nature played a part in creating the slave environment: “The circular transmission of human experience from Europe to Africa to the Americas and back again corresponded to the same cosmic forces that set the Atlantic currents in motion” (2) This suggests that the circular pattern of Atlantic oceanic currents were a significant catalyst for the particular institution of slavery in the United States. These circular currents made the African slave trade a lucrative business despite limited means of transportation; these currents aided the transportation of both slaves as well as ideas. Merchants and warriors commonly used the natural trade winds and oceanic currents to ferry their human cargo back and forth across the Atlantic. By contrast, establishing a slave trade between China and North America was not economically feasible because of geography and the limits of transportation. The explanation continued, “the merchants, manufacturers, planters, and royal officials of northwestern Europe followed these currents, building trade routes, colonies, and a new transatlantic economy” (2). Sociological theories for global systems of labor were developed by rulers, especially in the period of time between the early English colonial expansions of the early seventeenth century through the industrialization age of the nineteenth century (3). Theories of labor and global commerce, along with the human cargo of slaves, circulated around the Atlantic, from the plantations in America to Irish commons, and to Europe, following oceanic currents and accompanying the commodities being produced (4). Prospectors in the slave trade were focused on making money as efficiently as possible and operated from strategically located ports.

American Revolution

As merchants profited and slaves suffered throughout the 1700s, and American agricultural businesses were thriving, various revolutionary movements began to influence the business of slavery. Motley crews worked hard to resist any such revolution, and to retain their profits from the slave trade; striving to protect their livelihood from abolitionist movements. This revolutionary antagonist was known by Revolutionary contemporaries as the motley crew:

It is a subject whose history we have traced from the hydrarchy of the 1710s and 1720s to the slave revolts and urban insurrections of the 1730s and 1740s. The defeat of these movements allowed slavery and maritime trade to expand, as gangs of slaves extended plantation acreage and gangs of sailors manned ever growing fleets of naval and merchant vessels […] Operations on sea and land, from mutiny to insurrection, made the motley crew the driving force of a revolutionary crisis in the 1760s and 1770s. Such actions helped to destabilize imperial civil society and pushed America toward the world’s first modern colonial war for liberation (Linebaugh and Rediker 212)

This is significant in the context of the Declaration of Independence, and the political struggle for American independence. Many new settlers to America despised the slave trade and found it contradictory to the founding principles of the nation. The existence of slavery in the new land was repugnant, and was among the grievances driving the nation toward independence. Many settlers sought to dispose of slavery in the process of becoming an independent nation.

In Sons of Providence, Charles Rappleye highlights several instances when Americans nearly abolished slavery. One such event unfolded in 1776; eighty-nine years before the Thirteenth Amendment finally abolished slavery; when in his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson included the business of trading slaves as a grievance against the King of England. Jefferson believed slavery was originally imposed on the colonies by British rulers and merchants. He also believed that abolition was “the great object for desire in those colonies” (172). Congress eventually removed this passage from the document, and Jefferson temporarily abandoned the issue as the nation shifted its focus toward the military rebellion against Britain.

Slavery starts to lose international support

Rappleye also provided a timeline for two of the earliest official acts against slavery. President Thomas Jefferson signed into law the “Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States.” This occurred in March of 1807; a year when constitutional protections for the slave trade were set to expire. Three weeks later, English Parliament followed suit by enacting a universal ban on British participation in the slave trade; Britain passed the “Abolition of the Slave Trade Act.” All the great powers of Europe soon joined in consensus, thus rendering the business of trading slaves illegal. A ban on the trade of slaves, the first great goal of abolitionists, became reality (338).

Inside the world of slavery

Many slave owners accepted a myth that their slaves were perfectly content. Many of these slave owners never viewed themselves as oppressors of any kind. Instead, they believed that their slaves should be thankful for the privilege to live in the United States. By giving the slaves work, food, and residence, the owners thought they were doing a good thing. In her book about runaway and freed Missouri slaves, Harriet Frazier quoted a portion of Mark Twain’s unfinished autobiography. This Twain excerpt explained the mindset of a typical white resident of any slave state:

When slavery perished my mother had been in daily touch with it for sixty years. Yet, kind-hearted and compassionate as she was, I think she was not conscious that slavery was a bald, grotesque, and unwarrantable usurpation. She had never heard it assailed in any pulpit, but had heard it defended and sanctified in a thousand; her ears were familiar with Bible texts that approved it, but if there were any that disapproved it they had not been quoted by her pastors; as far as her experience went, the wise and the good and the holy were unanimous in the conviction that slavery was right, righteous, sacred, the peculiar pet of the Deity, and a condition which the slave himself ought to be daily and nightly thankful for Manifestly, training and association can accomplish strange miracles. As a rule our slaves were convinced and content (5)

The Missouri census of 1860 also contradicted this myth of the contended slave, “In 1860, Missouri had the lowest percentage of its population in human bondage than any other slave jurisdiction” (1). Missouri was the northernmost slave state, almost completely surrounded by the free territories of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Because of this political geography, slaves in Missouri had more realistic options for escape. The low percentage of slave population in the 1860 Missouri census is evidence that, when given a chance to escape, the slaves who were supposedly content would definitely disappear to some other life (1). Missouri was also a slave state that never seceded during the Civil War.

Southern white planters who owned groups of slaves would give them residence on plantations. The owners established rank and file societal orders for their worker groups. After researching scores of letters between a slave community and their owner, Randall Miller asserted: “Wise planters never relaxed their search for talent among the slaves. The winnowing process of the well-managed Southern plantation sorted out the ambitious, intelligent, and proficient from the dull and weak” (139). Talented slaves were assigned higher positions of trust and authority. Miller also perceived that the privileged slaves would serve as intermediaries between the owner and the rest of the slave community (139). The highest ranking slave in Millers analysis was called a driver. Discipline of the lesser slaves was one of the many seemingly traitorous responsibilities of the driver, but this duty earned the rider extra privileges. This extra power had delicate limits because if the rider became too tyrannical he would no longer serve the purpose of his owner. If the rider angered the slaves in his charge too frequently, they would become unruly, less efficient, or even destructive. The rider had to be diplomatic, and these responsibilities were not easy for the rider to bear (147).
Slaves sought freedom

One path to freedom was for slaves to escape from their owners by running to a free territory. It was against the law for a slave to run and they often needed assistance. Free sympathizers, who deliberately assisted in slave escapes, also risked legal punishment. The escaping slaves might have viewed these sympathizers as conductors on a railroad to freedom. This path to freedom is now called the Underground Railroad. In the mid 1800’s, knowledge of The Railroad was guarded and clandestine. In her account of a true escape story, Carol Pirtle describes what is not known about: The Railroad, a slave named Sukey, her master named Borders, and William Hayes who helped Sukey escape:

Whether or not William Hayes intentionally persuaded Sukey and her family to flee the Borders farm is unclear, but the story told in the trial transcript confirms that he certainly assisted her in running away. How she knew about him, or if she knew him personally before she sought his aid, is also a matter of conjecture. No doubt the abolitionists in the area were well known, and perhaps local gossip had transported Hayes’s name to Sukey’s ears (50).

Once slaves escaped to a free and tolerant community, they were often identified as freedmen. In his book, Freedom’s Champion, Paul Simon explains how it was not difficult to distinguish between free Negroes and escaping slaves, “Runaway slaves were not too difficult to find since […] their “Negro clothes,” clothing ordinarily worn by slaves, distinguished them from the few free former slaves in Illinois” (35). This implies the ragged nature of slave clothing and also how freed slaves must have obtained more sophisticated clothing.

Another escape from slavery was for the slave family to leave the United States entirely, and colonize Liberia. People who supported such colonization were often opposed to immediate abolition. They were opposed to the idea of setting the slaves free in America, and favored instead a gradual process of removal—not integration.

Freedom of the press

In Freedom’s Champion, Paul Simon discussed how the issue of slavery was so sensitive that politicians actually passed resolutions barring all antislavery talk (38). Watchdog committees were established and threatened to suppress freedom of speech either legally or illegally (39). In response to a committee of citizens who opposed his publications, Lovejoy wrote: “I am threatened with violence and death because I dare to advocate, in any way, the cause of the oppressed” (39). The famous editor made a heroic stand for freedom of the press, and he eventually paid for this stand with his life. Lovejoy continued: “Under a deep sense of my obligations to my country, the church and my God, I declare it to be my fixed purpose to submit to no such dictation. And I am prepared to abide the consequences” (39). Lovejoy did advocate for slaves by publishing many anti-slavery periodicals despite constant threats of mob violence against him. Lovejoy refused to be silenced and stood by his convictions; he was soon to be followed by millions more citizens who were also opposed to the slavery of human beings.

Civil War

In November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the sixteenth President of the United States. By this time, public controversy over the peculiar institution of slavery had reached a climax, and the legislature of South Carolina viewed the election of Lincoln as a threat to their livelihood; that is, the livelihood of the citizens. South Carolina seceded from the Union in January of 1861. Emboldened by the actions of South Carolina, six more states quickly seceded: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas; all severed their Union ties; this all occurred before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in March of 1861 (United States). In April of 1861, the first shots of the American civil war were fired by the Confederacy against Fort Sumter; this attack emboldened four more states to secede: Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. The Confederacy was then formed with eleven states seceding (United States).

The Civil War was fought to restore the Union of States, with abolition of slavery a prerequisite eventually demanded by the North. The South fought brutally to preserve their agricultural way of life; a living almost completely dependant on slavery. During the war, the Union Congress passed acts to abolish slavery in the North, and declared southern slaves who served the Confederate military to be free. In January of 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation which declared that all slaves still held by rebellious states were legally free. The war would rage for two more years. The long term effect of supply line blockades established by the Union forces eventually broke the will of the Confederate Army whose starving soldiers finally succumbed to their need for food; they finally lost their morale and were defeated. The final surrenders were completed in April and May of 1865. The human costs of the war; and consequently the costs of eliminating slavery in the United States, were almost beyond measure. At least 620,000 soldiers were killed, and several million people found themselves mourning the losses of their loved ones (United States).

The forces of the Civil War were divided almost entirely by the question of slavery. Nearly every pro-slavery state had fought for the Confederacy and nearly every pro-abolition state had fought for the Union. Today, the aftershocks of the Civil War have not vanished. Struggles for racial equality and racial integration continue to course through American culture. The practice of slavery was an almost incomprehensible sin and the necessary healing process continues to this day. It is logical to now view the Civil War as the mid-point for the fall of slavery; several generations of Americans wrestled with eradicating slavery before the Civil War; and several generations have wrestled with the results since the Civil War. But slavery did indeed fall, and the human costs should weigh heavily on any modern day discussion of the subject.