Slavery in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, the Midwest, and Louisiana

From Wikipedia, 1/16/2022

History of slavery in Connecticut

From Wikipedia

The exact date of the first African slaves in Connecticut is unknown, but the narrative of Venture Smith provides some information about the life of northern slavery in Connecticut. Another early confirmed account of slavery in the English colony came in 1638 when several native prisoners were taken during the Pequot War were exchanged in the West Indies for African slaves. Such exchanges become common in subsequent conflicts.[1]

Legal history of abolition in Connecticut

Connecticut blocked the importation of slaves in 1774, via the passage in the state legislature of the "Act for Prohibiting the Importation of Indian, Negro or Molatto Slaves"[2] and began a gradual emancipation of slaves in 1784, through the passage by the state legislature of the "Gradual Abolition Act" of that year. Through this "freeing the womb" act, all slaves born after March 1, 1784, would become free upon attaining the age of 25 for men and 21 for women,[3] though it did not free the parents, or any other adult slaves. In 1844, Governor Roger Sherman Baldwin proposed legislation to end slavery, but the General Assembly did not pass it until it was reintroduced in 1848 as "An Act to Prevent Slavery".[4][5] Connecticut's last slave, Nancy Toney of Windsor, died in December of 1857.[6]

Prevalence of slavery

According to Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, "In 1790 most prosperous merchants in Connecticut owned at least one slave, as did 50 percent of the ministers. ...Our economic links to slavery were deeply entwined with our religious, political, and educational institutions. Slavery was part of the social contract in Connecticut."[7]

According to U.S. census data there were 2,764 slaves in Connecticut as of 1790, a little over 1% of the population at the time.[8] This declined during the early part of the 19th century, with the census indicating numbers (percentages) reported as slaves in the State of 951 (.34%) in 1800,[9] 97 (.04%) in 1820[10] and 25 (.008%) by 1830.[11]

References

1.    McManus, Edgar J. (2001). Black Bondage in the North. Syracuse: University Press. p. 6. 

2.    Hoadly, Charles J. (1850). The public records of the Colony of Connecticut. 14. Hartford: Brown & Parsons. p. 329.

3.    Ed Stannard (June 19, 2020). "Slavery in Connecticut, ended only in 1848, had a long history". The Middletown Press.

4.    Harris, Katherine J. (2014). "Colonization and Abolition in Connecticut". In Normen, Elizabeth J.; Harris, Katherine J.; Close, Stacey K.; Mitchell, Wm. Frank; White, Olivia (eds.). African American Connecticut Explored. Wesleyan University Press. p. 67.  – via Project MUSE.

5.    Dutton, Henry; Waldo, Loren Pinckney; Booth, David Belden (1866). "An Act to Prevent Slavery". Google Book.

6.    Harris, Katherine J. (2014). "Colonization and Abolition in Connecticut". In Normen, Elizabeth J.; Harris, Katherine J.; Close, Stacey K.; Mitchell, Wm. Frank; White, Olivia (eds.). African American Connecticut Explored. Wesleyan University Press. p. 64. – via Project MUSE.

7.    Farrow, Anne; Lang, Joel; Frank, Jenifer (2005). Complicity : How the North promoted, prolonged, and profited from slavery. New York: Ballantine Books. p. xviii. 

8.    "US Census 1790" (PDF).

9.    "US Census 1800" (PDF).

10. "US Census 1820" (PDF).

11. "US Census 1830" (PDF).

Further reading

·       Steiner, Bernard C. (1883). History of slavery in Connecticut. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical an

History of slavery in Massachusetts

From Wikipedia

Chattel slavery developed in Massachusetts in the first decades of colonial settlement, and it thrived well into the 18th century. Various forms of slavery in New England predated the establishment of the Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, but once established, colonists in both jurisdictions captured, purchased, and traded enslaved people—both African and indigenous—on a scale not previously seen in the region.[1] Although slavery in the United States is typically associated with the Caribbean and the Antebellum American South, enslaved people were prevalent throughout New England’s colonial history, and the practice was deeply embedded in the economic and social fabric of the region.[2] Historians estimate that between 1755 and 1764, the Massachusetts slave population was approximately 2.2 percent of the total population; the slave population was generally concentrated in the industrial and coastal towns.[3]

The practice of slavery in Massachusetts was ended gradually through case law. As an institution, it died out in the late 18th century through judicial actions litigated on behalf of slaves seeking manumission. Unlike some other jurisdictions, enslaved people in Massachusetts occupied a dual legal status of being both property and persons before the law, which entitled them to file legal suits in court. Following England's lead, lawyer Benjamin Kent represented slaves in court against their masters as early as 1752. He won the first case to liberate a slave in the American British colonies in 1766.[4][5][6][7][8] The post-revolutionary court cases, starting in 1781, heard arguments contending that slavery was a violation of Christian principles and also a violation of the constitution of the Commonwealth. During the years 1781 to 1783, in three related cases known today as "the Quock Walker case," the Supreme Judicial Court applied the principle of judicial review to effectively abolish slavery by declaring it incompatible with the newly adopted state Constitution in 1783.[9] This did not have the effect of immediately freeing all slaves, however. Rather, it signaled to slaveowners that their right to own slaves would no longer be legally protected, and without that surety, it was no longer profitable to keep slaves, in the first place. Those who owned the slaves then generally "chose" to replace the enslavement with some other arrangement, either indentured servitude for a fixed term or conventional, paid employment.

As a result of this, Massachusetts is the only state to have zero slaves enumerated on the 1790 federal census. (By 1790, Vermont had also officially ended slavery, but a small number of slaves are recorded on the Census result. Historians have argued whether this was a misunderstanding or something more.)

A large threat to former slaves and freemen living in Massachusetts, however, was that posed by slave catchers, whose profession was to look for runaway slaves who had successfully fled from the South and sheltered in the North. Under American law at the time, these individuals were subject to detention and return to slavery in any jurisdiction that had not yet ended slavery. Many abuses were also committed in which even blacks who were freeborn in the North could be falsely accused of being runaway slaves and spirited away to a life of slavery, as in the infamous case of Solomon Northup, who was freeborn in New York and kidnapped into slavery in Louisiana.

This ongoing uncertainty impelled the abolition movement in the North because it meant that even blacks living in free states could never truly be free until slavery was definitively ended all across the United States. Massachusetts became a leading center for abolitionism in early 19th-century America, with individual activists such as William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass as well as organizations like the Boston Vigilance Committee dedicated to advancing the cause.

The political tensions caused by the collision between abolitionism and pro-slavery forces in the United States led directly to the American Civil War in 1861. After the war's end in 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed by Congress and ratified by Massachusetts, which legally abolished slavery in the United States and ended the threat of enslavement or re-enslavement once and for all. This was the final date when slavery was formally outlawed in Massachusetts, although it had been a moribund institution for decades prior to that time.

After the end of legal slavery, however, racial segregation continued in Massachusetts as a de jure legal requirement in various contexts until the mid-20th century.

History

Enslavement of indigenous peoples

The European enslavement of indigenous peoples in New England began with English sailors travelling though the region in the 16th and early 17th centuries, decades before the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[10][11] In 1605, James Rosier described in detail how he and his shipmates captured five Wabanaki men in what is today Maine: “it was as much as five or sixe of us could doe to get them into the light horseman. For they were strong and so naked as our best hold was by their long haire on their heads.”[12] The English crew took the captives to London, where they apparently hoped to instruct them in English and extract knowledge of Wabanaki government that might give them an advantage against their European competitors in the race to establish colonies in North America. Nine years later, in 1614, Englishman Thomas Hunt captured twenty-four Native Americans during a voyage to New England with John Smith. Plymouth Governor William Bradford later recalled that Hunt's goal was “to sell them for slaves in Spaine.”[13] One of Hunt’s captives, a man named Tisquantum, defied this goal and eventually found himself in England, where he was able to learn English, return to North America, and famously assist the Plymouth colonists in 1621.[14]

Following the establishment of Plymouth Colony in 1620 and the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, the colonists quickly incorporated the practice of enslaving indigenous people into the economic, social, and political fabric of New England. In the first decades of English colonization, the primary mode of enslavement was the taking captives during war.[15] This practice became especially prevalent during the Pequot War from 1636 to 1638. In the early days of the fighting, colonists brought Pequot captives from various small conflicts to the Massachusetts General Court, where they declared them officially enslaved. In an early example, the Court ordered in October of 1636 that a Pequot person named Chausop “bee kept a slave for life to worke” within the colony.[16] As the fighting escalated and the number of captives increased, however, the English began trading in enslaved Pequots on a much greater scale. They ceased to rely on the General Court and adopted a more ad hoc approach, selling captives into slavery without absent a legal declaration. Prior to 1641, no statutes guided this emerging trade in indigenous slaves. Instead, as historian Margaret Newell has argued, the colonists acted in self-interest and justified their practice after the fact, by referring to existing English notions of a just war against non-Christians (a theory later codified in the Body of Liberties).[17] These justifications were less important than they may seem in retrospect, however; most historians agree that New England colonists in the 17th century, like English people across the Atlantic world, generally accepted slavery as a fact of life and gave little thought to its morality.[18]

The enslavement of the Pequots reached its apex in May of 1637, when the English and their Mohegan and Narragansett allies systematically killed and enslaved hundreds of Pequot men, women, and children near the Mystic River.[19] The surviving captives, mostly women and children, were divided amongst the victors and spread throughout region. English soldiers took many captives directly, having been promised slaves as a reward for fighting. This resulted in a scramble to claim the most promising captives. Israel Stoughton hinted at the grotesque process in a letter to John Winthrop, the Governor of Massachusetts, in 1637: “ther is one [Pequot]… that is the fairest and largest that I saw amongst them… it is my desire to have her for a servant…. Liftenant Davenport also desireth one, to witt a tall one that hath 3 strokes upon her stummach.”[20] Captives not taken by individual soldiers were brought to Boston, where colonial leaders used them as field laborers and household servants, or sold them to English colonies in the Caribbean.[21][22]

The enslavement of indigenous people in Massachusetts slowed in the decades after the Pequot War, but it rose to new heights during the violence surrounding King Philip’s War in the mid-1670s. As English colonists mobilized militia forces against an indigenous coalition of Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Nipmuc communities, they returned to the now familiar tactic of capture and enslavement. According to historian Margaret Newell, the desire for captives formed a “central preoccupation” for the English, often leading to a further escalation of the conflict.[23] On the indigenous side, the fear of enslavement and sale to sugar plantations in the Caribbean dissuaded participants from surrender and encouraged the weakened nations to continue fighting. Some young men told an interpreter near the end of the war in 1676 that they would be inclined to make peace, but they were confident they would be enslaved if they did: “why shall wee have peace to bee made slaves, & either be kild or sent away to sea to Barbadoes... Let us live as long as wee can & die like men, & not live to bee enslaved”[24] Their fears proved well-founded. A few months later, in the fall of 1676, a ship named the Seaflower left Boston with 180 "heathen... men, women and children" who had been "sentenced & [condemned] to Perpetuall Servitude & slavery."[25] As in the aftermath of the Pequot War, hundreds of captives—both combatants and non-combatants—were taken as servants by soldiers, sold to Massachusetts households, or shipped abroad to pay the colonies’ war debt.[26]

The rate of indigenous slavery declined in Massachusetts as the violence of King Philip’s War faded and the 18th century began, but the reliance on coerced labor did not end. While fewer Native Americans were formally enslaved via capture, colonial courts began sentencing indigenous residents in the colony to terms of involuntary servitude for alleged thefts, a failure to pay debts, or committing acts of violence.[27] In neighbouring Rhode Island, courts often seized indigenous children from mothers, who they deemed “disorderly”, and offered them as indentured servants to colonists.[28] While these various indenture contracts were definite in theory, abuses were common, terms were long, and involuntary servants with terms over two years could be sold and exchanged around the region.[29]

Importation of enslaved Africans

While English colonists in Massachusetts were establishing a consistent trade in indigenous slaves in the 17th century, they also began purchasing enslaved Africans. These processes were deeply intertwined: in 1638, the slave ship Desire carried indigenous captives to the Caribbean for sale into slavery and returned with the first documented shipment of enslaved Africans in New England.[30] This reciprocal trade continued throughout the 17th century, as merchants and colonial governments exported enslaved Native Americans and traded them for more desirable African laborers. Large slaving ships rarely sailed directly from Africa to Massachusetts, as they occasionally did to Charleston. Instead, merchant ships travelling between the port towns of Salem and Boston frequently returned with enslaved Africans.[31][32] This continuous flow of enslaved laborers benefitted colonists by simultaneously removing indigenous populations and meeting expanding labor needs.

In addition to bringing enslaved Africans to New England, residents of Massachusetts and Plymouth also participated in the broader Atlantic slave trade. At least 19 voyages in the 17th century departed from New England, purchased or captured slaves in Africa, and carried them to the Caribbean for sale.[33] While these slave traders usually sold the majority of their human cargo in the Caribbean, many brought small numbers back to New England. One Rhode Island merchant in 1717 reminded his brother of this profitable trade, writing: "if you cannot sell all your slaves [in the West Indies] ... bring some of them home; I believe they will sell well."[34]

Given the sparse records, lack of a regulatory regime and general indifference to the presence of slavery, it is impossible to know exactly how many enslaved Africans were brought to Massachusetts throughout the colonial period.[35] Gregory O’Malley has estimated that around 9,813 Africans were brought directly to New England between 1638 and 1770, in addition to 3,870 who arrived through the Caribbean, but this is a rough estimate.[36] Regardless of the exact number, enslaved Africans certainly constituted a significant labor force and a notable portion of the community throughout the colonial period of Massachusetts history.

Law 1641–1703

In 1641, Massachusetts passed its Body of Liberties, which gave legal sanction to certain kinds of slavery.[37]

There shall never be any bond slaverie, villinage or captivitie amongst us unless it be lawfull captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doeth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged thereto by Authoritie.[38]

Wiecek notes that the reference to "strangers" is derived from Leviticus 25: 39–55 and explains that they could be ruled and sold as slaves.[37][39] For the Puritans and citizens of the colony, "strangers" would eventually mean Native Americans and Africans.[37] Even though the Body of Liberties excluded many forms of slavery, it did recognize four legitimate bases of slavery.[37] Slaves could legally be obtained if they were captives resulting from war, sold themselves into slavery, were purchased as slaves from elsewhere, or were sentenced to slavery through the governing authority.[40] This made Massachusetts the first colony to authorize slavery through legislation.[40] In 1670, Massachusetts made it legal for the children of slaves to be sold into bondage.[41] By 1680, the colony had laws restricting the movements of blacks.[41] A 1703 law required owners to post a bond for all slaves to protect towns in the case that a slave became indigent should the master refuse to continue caring for him or her.[42]

18th century abolitionism

By the mid-18th century, the enslavement of Africans had become a common practice in Massachusetts.[43] A 1754 census listed nearly 4500 slaves in the colony.[44] However, Abolitionist sentiment was growing, especially when the philosophical underpinnings of independence and democracy became commonly discussed in the colony. While Massachusetts did derive wealth from the Triangle Trade, its merchants and mixed economy were never as dependent on slave labor as the Southern colonies' were. As a component of the British Empire with a separate jurisdiction, the Massachusetts courts noted, but were not bound by, the decision in England in 1772 of the case Somerset v Stewart, which found that there was no basis for slavery on English soil, as Parliament had not passed an act specifically authorizing it. (Maritime trade in slaves, which was quite lucrative, would continue in the British Empire until the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 prohibited the slave trade altogether within its territory.)

Freedom Suits

Between 1764 and 1774, seventeen slaves appeared in Massachusetts courts to sue their owners for freedom.[45] In 1766, John Adams' colleague Benjamin Kent won the first trial in the United States (and Massachusetts) to free a slave (Slew vs. Whipple). [46][47] [48][49][50][51] There were three other trials that are noteworthy, two civil and one criminal. All three took place during the American Revolutionary War, when thoughts about the equality of all people were frequently voiced, and especially after the new Massachusetts constitution was passed in 1780. The civil cases were Jennison v. Caldwell (for "deprivation of the benefit of his servant, Walker"), apparently heard and decided first, and Quock Walker v. Jennison (for assault and battery),[52] both heard by the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas on June 12, 1781.

Jennison v. Caldwell

A man named Jennison argued that one Caldwell had enticed away his employee Walker. The court found in his favor and awarded Jennison 25 pounds compensation.

Quock Walker v. Jennison

This 1781 case involved a slave named Quock Walker in Worcester County Court of Common Pleas. Chief Justice William Cushing instructed the jury:

“As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that (it is true) has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage – a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then Colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of Liberty, with which Heaven (without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features) has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our Constitution of Government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal – and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property – and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and Constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract ...” [53]

The Walker case had been opened by the attorney to consider whether a previous master's promise to free Walker gave him a right to freedom after that master had died. Walker's lawyers argued that the concept of slavery was contrary to the Bible and the new Massachusetts Constitution (1780). The jury decided that Walker was a free man under the constitution and awarded him 50 pounds in damages.

Both decisions were appealed. Jennison's appeal of Walker's freedom was rejected in September 1781 by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, either because he failed to appear[54] or because his lawyers did not submit the required court papers.[52][55] The Caldwells won the other appeal; a jury concurred that Walker was a free man, and therefore the defendants were entitled to employ him.

Commonwealth v. Jennison

In September 1781, a third case was filed by the Attorney General against Jennison, Commonwealth v. Jennison, for criminal assault and battery of Walker. In his charge to the jury, Chief Justice William Cushing stated, "Without resorting to implication in constructing the constitution, slavery is ... as effectively abolished as it can be by the granting of rights and privileges wholly incompatible and repugnant to its existence." This has been taken as setting the groundwork for the end of slavery in the state.[55][56] On April 20, 1783, Jennison was found guilty and fined 40 shillings.[52]

Aftermath of the trials

While Chief Justice Cushing's opinion in effect should have ended slavery in Massachusetts, the state never formally abolished slavery until the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865. Some possible reasons for this are that state legislators were either unable or unwilling to address slave-owners' concerns about losing their financial "investment", and non-slave owning white citizens' concerns that if slavery were abolished, the freed slaves could become a burden on the community. Some even feared that escaped slaves from other states would flood Massachusetts.[57]

The Massachusetts Supreme Court decisions in Walker v. Jennison and Commonwealth v. Jennison established the basis for ending slavery in Massachusetts on constitutional grounds, but no law or amendment to the state constitution was passed. Instead slavery gradually ended "voluntarily" in the state over the next decade. The decisions in the Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker trials had removed its legal support and slavery was said to end by erosion. Some masters manumitted their slaves formally and arranged to pay them wages for continued labor. Other slaves were "freed" but were restricted as indentured servants for extended periods.[43] By 1790, the federal census recorded no slaves in the state.[58]

References

1.    Newell, Margaret Ellen (2015). Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 18–19. 

2.    Warren, Wendy (2016). New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company.

3.    https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery

4.    Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston. Early American Places Series. New York: NYU Press. 2016. p. 143. 

5.    Adams’ Minutes of the Argument: Essex Superior Court, Salem, November 1766

6.    Legal Papers of John Adams, volume 2

7.    Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England By Catherine Adams, Elizabeth H. Pleck

8.    The Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, Volume 40, 1964-1966

9.    https://www.mass.gov/guides/massachusetts-constitution-and-the-abolition-of-slavery

10. Thrush, Coll (2016). Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire. New Haven: Yale University Press. 

11. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 18-19.

12. Thrush, Indigenous London, 42.

13. Vaughan, Alden (2006). Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500-1776. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 70. 

14. Warren, New England Bound, 3-4.

15. Newell, Margaret, "Indian Slavery in Colonial New England" in Allan Gallay (ed.) Indian Slavery in Colonial America. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009. pp. 33-66.

16. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 26.

17. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 28-30.

18. Warren, New England Bound, 31-32.

19. Cave, Alfred (1996). The Pequot War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 158–159.

20. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 35

21. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 54-59

22. Warren, New England Bound, 93-95.

23. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 133.

24. Fisher, Linford D. "'Why Shall Wee Have Peace to Bee Made Slaves': Indian Surrenderers During and After King Philip's War". Ethnohistory. 64 (1): 93.

25. Lepore, Jill (1999). The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 150–151. 

26. Lepore, The Name of War, 154-156.

27. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 212-226.

28. Ruth Wallis Herndon, "Women as Symbols of Disorder in Early Rhode Island," in Women and the Colonial Gaze, ed. Tamara L. Hunt and Micheline R. Lessard (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 82-83.

29. Newell, Brethren by Nature, 227-228.

30. Warren, New England Bound, 7.

31. O'Malley, Gregory E. (2009). "Beyond the Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Caribbean to North America, 1619-1807". The William and Mary Quarterly. 66 (1): 125–172. 

32. Warren, New England Bound, 74.

33. Warren, New England Bound, 45.

34. O'Malley, Beyond the Middle Passage, 162.

35. Warren, New England Bound, 265 note 22.

36. O'Malley, Beyond the Middle Passage, 166.

37. William M. Wiecek (1977). "the Statutory Law of Slavery and Race in the Thirteen Mainland Colonies of British America". The William and Mary Quarterly. 34 (2): 261. 

38. Farrand Max (2002). "The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts". Harvard University Press.

39. Nagl, Dominik (2013). 'The Governmentality of Slavery in Colonial Boston, 1690–1760' in American Studies, 58.1, pp. 5–26. 

40. Higginbotham, A. Leon (1975). In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period. Greenwood Press. 

41. http://www.massmoments.org/moment.cfm?mid=64

42. Harper, Douglass. "Slavery in Massachusetts". Slavery in the North.

43. Piper, Emilie; Levinson, David (2010). One Minute a Free Woman: Elizabeth Freeman and the Struggle for Freedom. Salisbury, CT: Upper Housatonic Valley National Heritage Area. 

44. Moore, George H. (1866). Notes on the history of slavery in Massachusetts. NY NY: D. Appleton & Co. p. 51. 

45. p. 34

46. Adams’ Minutes of the Argument: Essex Superior Court, Salem, November 1766

47. Jenny Slew: The first enslaved person to win her freedom via jury trial Meserette Kentake January 29, 2016

48. Thursday Open Thread: Little Known Slave Court Cases NOVEMBER 9, 2017 BY MIRANDA

49. Legal Papers of John Adams, volume 2

50. Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England By Catherine Adams, Elizabeth H. Pleck

51. The Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, Volume 40, 1964–1966

52. Teddi Di Canio. "The Quock Walker Trials: 1781–83 – Suggestions for Further Reading". Law Library (law.jrank.org).

53. Harper, Douglass. Emancipation in Massachusetts slavery in the North.

54. "Quock Walker". Massachusetts Historical Society (masshist.org

55. "Massachusetts Constitution, Judicial Review, and Slavery – The Quock Walker Case". mass.gov.

56. Arthur Zilversmit, The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 114

57. Rose, Ben Z. (2009). Mother of Freedom: Mum Bett and the Roots of Abolition. Waverly, Massachusetts: Treeline Press. 

58. Moore, George H. (1866). Notes on the history of slavery in Massachusetts. New York: D. Appleton & Co. p. 247. 

History of Slavery in Pennsylvania

From Wikipedia

When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported African slaves for workers; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Slavery was documented in this area as early as 1639.[1]: 1  William Penn and the colonists who settled Pennsylvania tolerated slavery, but the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.

During the American Revolutionary War, Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act (1780), the first such law in the new United States. Pennsylvania's law established as free those children born to slave mothers after that date. They had to serve lengthy periods of indentured servitude until age 28 before becoming fully free as adults. Emancipation proceeded and, by 1810 there were fewer than 1,000 slaves in the Commonwealth. None appeared in records after 1847.

British colony

After the founding of Pennsylvania in 1682, Philadelphia became the region's main port for the import of slaves. Throughout the colony and state's history, the majority of slaves lived in or near that city. Although most slaves were brought into the colony in small groups, in December 1684 the slave ship Isabella unloaded a cargo of 150 slaves from Africa. Accurate population figures do not exist for the early colonial period, but more demographic data is available after 1750. Estate records from 1682 to 1705 reveal that during this period, less than 7% of families in Philadelphia owned slaves.[2]

The first recorded formal protest against slavery, the 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, was signed by German members of a Quaker meeting. Philadelphia Quakers rejected the petition, writing "We having inspected ye matter, above mentioned, and considered of it, we find it so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here."[3] A number of Pennsylvania Quakers remained slave-owners through the first half of the eighteenth century even as individual abolitionist Quakers like Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet questioned the practice. In 1776 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting forbid members from holding slaves. (See: Quakers in the Abolition Movement)

William Penn, the proprietor of the Province of Pennsylvania, held at least 12 slaves.[4] They took part in construction of the main house and outbuildings on his estate, Pennsbury. Penn left the colony in 1701, and never returned.

Laws

Until 1700 slaves came under the same laws that governed indentured servants. Beginning that year, the colony passed laws to try slaves and free blacks in non-jury courts, rather than under the same terms as other residents of the colony.

Under An Act for the Better Regulating of Negroes in this Province (March 5, 1725–1726), numerous provisions restricted slaves and free blacks.

·       (Section I) if a slave was sentenced to death, the owner would be paid full value for the slave.

·       (Sec II) Duties on slaves transported from other colonies for a crime are doubled.

·       (Sec III) If a slave is freed, the owner must have a sureties bond of £30 to indemnify the local government in case he/she becomes incapable of supporting himself.

·       (Sec IV) A freed slave fit but unwilling to work shall be bound out [as an indentured servant] on a year-to-year basis as the magistrates see fit. And their male children may be bound out until 24 and women children until 21.

·       (Sec V) Free Negroes and Mulattoes cannot entertain, barter or trade with slaves or bound servants in their homes without leave and consent of their master under penalty of fines and whipping.

·       (Sec VI) If fines cannot be paid, the freeman can be bound out.

·       (Sec VII) A minister, pastor, or magistrate who marries a negro to a white is fined £100.

·       (Sec VIII) If a white cohabits under pretense of being married with a negro, the white will be fined 30 shillings or bound out for seven years, and the white person's children will be bound out until 31. If a free negro marries a white, they become slaves during life. If a free negro commits fornication or adultery with a white, they are bound out for 7 years. The white person shall be punished for fornication or adultery under existing law.

·       (Sec IX) Slaves tippling or drinking at or near a liquor shop or out after nine, 10 lashes.

·       (Sec X) If more than 10 miles from their master's home, 10 lashes.

·       (Sec XI) Masters not allowed to have their slaves to find and or go to work at their own will receive a 20 shilling fine.

·       (Sec XII) Harboring or concealing a slave: a 30 shillings a day fine.

·       (Sec XIII) Fine to be used to pay the owners of slaves sentenced to death. This law was repealed in 1780.[5]

During the colonial period, Pennsylvania passed a series of laws to restrict the slave trade. Beginning in 1700, it imposed duties on the import of slaves. The Board of Trade in England rescinded the duties, which the Pennsylvania Assembly reimposed: 1700: 20 shillings per slave, 1750: 40 shillings, 1712: £20, 1715 to 1722 and again in 1725: £5: each time the Law was overturned in London it was re-established in Pennsylvania.[1]: 3–6 

Conditions

In the first years of the colony, masters used slaves to clear land and build housing. Once the colony was established, the slaves took on a wider variety of jobs. In Philadelphia, where the majority of slaves lived, many were household servants, while others were trained in different trades and as artisans. In 1767, the wealthiest 10% of the population owned 44% of slaves; the poorest 50% of residents owned 5% of slaves. The wealthy used them as domestic servants and expressions of their wealth. Middling merchants kept slaves as servants, while also using some as apprentices in the business, or other jobs also occupied by indentured servants. As Philadelphia was a port city, many slaves were used in jobs associated with shipping. They worked as gangs in rope-walks, and learned sail making. Some sailors took slaves with them as workers so that the sailors could increase their share of profits, as the slaves would be given none.[6]

In rural areas, slaves generally worked as household servants or farmhands, and sometimes both depending on need, just as farm families took on all jobs. In Southeastern Pennsylvania, iron masters who owned slaves sometimes leased them out locally to work at charcoal manufacture and the surface mining of limestone and iron ore.[7]

Due to lack of sanitation and understanding about transmission of disease, Philadelphia was an unhealthy place during the colonial period, with a death rate of 58 per 1,000. Many slaves were among those who died early. As more males were imported than females at the time, family formation was limited. Without the continued import of new slaves, the slave population would not have increased.[8]

Resistance and abolition

By the time of the French and Indian War, the number of slaves in the state was at its highest. More had been imported in the mid-18th century, as the improving economy in the British Isles had resulted in fewer immigrants coming as indentured servants. Given continued Anglo-European immigration to the colony, though, slaves as a percentage of the total population decreased over time.[2] By the time of the American Revolution, slavery had decreased in importance as a labor source in Pennsylvania. The Quakers had long disapproved of the practice on religious grounds, as did Methodists and Baptists, active in the Great Awakening. In addition, the wave of recent German immigrants were opposed to it based on their religious and political beliefs. The Scots-Irish, also recent immigrants, generally settled in the backcountry on subsistence farms. As a group, they were too poor to buy slaves. In the late colonial period, people found it economically viable to pay for free labor. Another factor against slavery was the rising fervor of revolutionary ideals about the rights of man.[1]: 1 

Religious resistance to slavery and the slave-import taxes led the colony to ban slave imports in 1767. Slaveholders among the state's Founding Fathers included Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, Robert Morris, Edmund Physick and Samuel Mifflin. Franklin and Dickinson both gradually became supporters of abolition.

In 1780 Pennsylvania passed the first state Abolition Act in the United States under the leadership of George Bryan. It followed Vermont's abolition of slavery in its constitution of 1777. The Pennsylvania law ended slavery through gradual emancipation, saying:

That all Persons, as well Negroes, and Mulattos, as others, who shall be born within this State, from and after the Passing of this Act, shall not be deemed and considered as Servants for Life or Slaves; and that all Servitude for Life or Slavery of Children in Consequence of the Slavery of their Mothers, in the Case of all Children born within this State from and after the passing of this Act as aforesaid, shall be, and hereby is, utterly taken away, extinguished and for ever abolished.[9]

This act repealed the acts of 1700 and 1726 that had established separate courts and laws specific to Negroes. At this point, slaves were given the same rights as bound servants. Free Negroes had, in theory, the same rights as free Whites. The law did not free those approximately 6,000 persons who were already slaves in Pennsylvania. Children born to slave mothers had to serve as indentured servants to their mother's master until they were 28 years old. [9] (Such indentures could be sold.)

Pennsylvania became a state with an established African-American community. Black activists understood the importance of writing about freedom, and were important participants in abolitionist groups. They gained access to papers run by anti-slave supporters and printed articles about freedom. Anti-slavery pamphlets and writings were rare in the South, but widely distributed in the state of Pennsylvania. African-American activists also began to hold meetings around the state, which were sometimes disrupted by white rioters. The activists continued to hold their meetings. African-American activists also contributed to operations of the Underground Railroad, and aiding slaves to freedom in the state. The activists created the Vigilant Association in Philadelphia, which helped refugees from slavery to escape from masters and get resettled in free states.[10]

Decline of slavery

In 1780, the abolition act provided for the children of slave mothers to remain in servitude until the age of 28. Section 2 of the Act stated, "Every negro and mulatto child born within this state after the passing of this act as aforesaid who would in case this act had not been made, have been born a servant for years or life or a slave, shall be deemed to be and shall be, by virtue of this act the servant of such a person or his or her assigns who would in such case have been entitled to the service of such child until such child shall attain unto the age of twenty-eight years...".[9] It required that they and children of African-descended indentured servants be registered at birth. Some Quarter Sessions records of Friends Meetings include births of children identified as mulatto or black.[11]

The federal censuses reflect the decline in slavery. In addition to the effects of the state law, many Pennsylvania masters freed their slaves in the first two decades after the Revolution, as did Benjamin Franklin. They were inspired by revolutionary ideals as well as continued appeals by Quaker and Methodist clergy for manumission of slaves. The first U.S. Census in 1790 recorded 3,737 slaves in Pennsylvania (36% of the Black population). By 1810, the total Black population had more than doubled, but the percentage who were slaves had dropped to 3%; only 795 slaves were listed in the state.[12]

End of slavery

Slavery was ended in Pennsylvania in 1847, by the state legislature. An Act to Prevent Kidnapping, Preserve the Public Peace, Prohibit the Exercise of Certain Powers Heretofore Exercised by Certain Judges, Justices of the Peace, Aldermen and Jailors in This Commonwealth (1847), did not recognize the property rights of slaveholders, inside or outside the state.[1]: 238  "From the Southern point of view the conditions in the state after 1847 were such as to make imperative the passing of a new fugitive slave law to be vigorously enforced by the government of the United States."[1]: 239  Much of the 1847 state law was superseded by the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, but by then all Pennsylvania slaves were free.

The following table represents the growth in Pennsylvania's free black population and decline of its slave population.[13]

Year

Free Blacks

Total Blacks

Slaves

Percentage of Blacks Free

1790

6,537

10,274

3,737

63.62

1810

22,492

23,287

795

96.58

1820

30,202

30,413

211

99.31

1840

47,854

47,918

64

99.87

1860

56,949

56,949

0

100.00

References

1.    Turner, E. R. The Negro In Pennsylvania, Slavery-Servitude-Freedom, 1639-1861, (1912).

2.    Trotter, J. W. and Smith, E. L, ed. African Americans in Pennsylvania (1997), p. 44

3.    Gerbner, Katharine, "Slavery in the Quaker World," Friends Journal, September 2019.

4.    Nash, Gary B. and Jean Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (1991)

5.    Statutes at Large: Table of Contents

6.    Trotter and Smith, African Americans in Pennsylvania (1997), pp. 55-58

7.    Walker Joseph E "Negro Labor in the Charcoal Iron Industry of Southeastern Pennsylvania", The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 93, No. 4 (October 1969), pp. 466-486; via JSTOR

8.    Trotter and Smith, African Americans in Pennsylvania (1997), p. 69

9.    "1780: AN ACT FOR THE GRADUAL ABOLITION OF SLAVERY", Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania

10. Newman, Richard S. (7 September 2011). "'Lucky to be born in Pennsylvania': Free Soil, Fugitive Slaves and the Making of Pennsylvania's Anti-Slavery Borderland". America: History and Life.

11. Robert L. Baker, "Slavery, Anti-Slavery and the Underground Railroad in Centre County, Pennsylvania", Historical Records Imaging Project, Centre County Government, accessed 16 August 2012

12. Trotter and Smith, ed. African Americans in Pennsylvania (1997) p. 77

13. Ira Berlin (2003), pp. 276-278

Bibliography

·       Berlin, Ira. Generations of Captivity: A History of African-American Slaves. (2003) 

Slavery in Rhode Island

      In 1652, Rhode Island passed the first abolition law in the Thirteen Colonies banning slavery,[13] but the law was not enforced by the end of the 17th century. By 1774, the slave population of Rhode Island was 6.3 percent, nearly twice as high as any other New England colony. In the late 18th century, several Rhode Island merchant families began actively engaging in the triangle trade. James and John DeWolf of Bristol were the largest slave traders in Rhode Island.[14] In the years after the Revolution, Rhode Island merchants controlled between 60 and 90 percent of the American trade of enslaved African people.[15] In the 18th century, Rhode Island's economy depended largely upon the triangle trade; Rhode Islanders distilled rum from molasses, sent the rum to Africa to trade for slaves, and then traded the slaves in the West Indies for more molasses.

       Stephen Hopkins, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, introduced a bill while serving in the Rhode Island Assembly in 1774 that prohibited the importation of slaves into the colony, and this became one of the first anti-slavery laws in the United States. In February 1784, the Rhode Island Legislature passed a compromise measure for gradual emancipation of slaves within the state. All children of slaves born after March 1 were to become apprentices, the girls to become free at 18, the boys at 21. By 1840, the census reported only five former Africans enslaved in Rhode Island.[15] However, the international slave trade continued despite the antislavery laws of 1774, 1784, and 1787. In 1789, an Abolition Society was organized to secure enforcement of existing laws against the trade. Leading merchants continued to engage in the trade even after it became illegal, especially John Brown, for whom Brown University is named, and George DeWolf, but slaving was no more than a minor aspect of Rhode Island's overall maritime trade after 1770.[16] By the mid-19th century, many Rhode Islanders were active in the abolitionist movement, particularly Quakers in Newport and Providence such as Moses Brown.[17] The Free African Union Society was America's first African benevolent society, founded in Newport in 1780.[18] Rhode Island's Constitution finally emancipated all slaves in 1843 in Section 4, "Slavery shall not be permitted in this state."[19]

References

1.    O'Brien, Francis J. (2004) Bibliography for Studies of American Indians in and Around Rhode Island, 16th – 21st Centuries

2.    berkeley.edu website

3.    This is the largest island in Narragansett Bay, called Aquidneck Island today.

4.    Charter of Rhode Island (1663)

5.    Marty, Martin E. (1985-08-06). Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America. Penguin (Non-Classics). pp. 77. 

6.    Mike Stanton, "Rhode Island: The Story Behind the Numbers," http://www.stateintegrity.org/rhodeisland_story_subpage 

7.    Alan Taylor, American Colonies, (2001), pp. 276–284

8.    Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln, (2005), p. 540.

9.    The Rhode Islander: The border is ... where? Part II

10. King Philip's War Archived 2007-10-26

11. The North American Review, "Hunter's Oration," Published by Oliver Everett, 1826, Item notes: v.23(1826), pg.457 [1]

12. William R. Staples, Annals of the Town of Providence from its First Settlement to the Organization of the City Government in June 1832 (Providence, 1843), p. 332 (Rhode Island Historical Society Collections,

13. John Carter Brown Library Exhibitions

14. Horton, James Oliver; Horton, Lois E. (2014-03-25). Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory. The New Press. 

15. Slavery in Rhode Island

16. J. Stanley Lemons, "Rhode Island and the Slave Trade," Rhode Island History, Nov 2002, Vol. 60 Issue 4, pp 94–104,

17. Providence Journal | Rhode Island news, sports, weather & more – Providence Journal

18. Stokes, Keith (19 December 2017). "R.I.'s former slaves achieved great things". The Providence Journal.

19. "The Constitution of Rhode Island 1843". Word Service.

20. Peter J. Coleman, The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860 (1963).

Bibliography

·       Aubin, Albert K. The French in Rhode Island (Rhode Island Heritage Commission, 1988).

·       Coleman, Peter J. The Transformation of Rhode Island, 1790–1860 (1963). online edition

·       Conley, Patrick T. The Irish in Rhode Island (Rhode Island Heritage Commission, 1988).

·       Coughtry, Jay A. The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (1981).

·       Crane, Elaine Forman. A Dependent People: Newport, Rhode Island in the Revolutionary Era (Fordham University Press, (1992) online edition

·       Dennison, George M. The Dorr War: Republicanism on Trial, 1831–1861 (1976) online edition

·       Field, Edward. State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (3 vols. 1902).

·       Hall, Donald, foreword, Feintuch, Burt and Watters, David H., editors, Encyclopedia of New England (2005), comprehensive coverage by scholars

·       James, Sidney V. Colonial Rhode Island: A History (1975).

·       Levine, Erwin L. Theodore Francis Green, The Rhode Island Years (Brown University Press, 1963)

·       Lockard, Duane. New England State Politics (1959) pp 172–227; covers 1932–1958

·       Lovejoy, David. Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution, 1760–1776 (1958). online edition

·       McLoughlin, William G. Rhode Island: A History (States and the Nation) (1976) excerpt and text search

·       Mayer, Kurt B. Economic Development and Population Growth in Rhode Island (1953).

·       Moakley, Maureen, and Elmer Cornwell. Rhode Island Politics and Government (2001) online edition

·       Morse, J. (1797). "Rhode Island". The American Gazetteer. Boston, Massachusetts: At the presses of S. Hall, and Thomas & Andrews. OL 23272543M.

·       Peirce, Neal R. The New England States: People, Politics, and Power in the Six New England States (1976) pp 141–81; updated in Neal R. Peirce and Jerry Hagstrom, The Book of America: Inside the Fifty States Today (1983) pp 187–92

·       Polishook, Irwin. Rhode Island and the Union (1969).

·       Preston, Howard W. Rhode Island and the Sea (1932).

·       Santoro, Carmela E. The Italians in Rhode Island: The Age of Exploration to the Present, 1524–1989 (Rhode Island Heritage Commission, 1990),

·       Weeden, William B. Early Rhode Island: A Social History of the People (1910).

·       Withey, Lynne E. Urban Growth in Colonial Rhode Island: Newport and Providence in the Eighteenth Century (1984).

·       WPA (Works Progress Administration). Rhode Island: A Guide to the Smallest State (1937), famous guide to state & every town & city

Midwest, Mississippi River, and Louisiana

Further information: Slavery in New France

The French introduced legalized slavery into their colonies in New France both near the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. They also used slave labor on their island colonies in the Caribbean: Guadeloupe and especially Saint-Domingue. After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the Gulf Coast, French colonists imported more African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as agricultural or mining laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as much as one-third of the limited population in that rural area.[65]

Slavery was much more extensive in lower colonial Louisiana, where the French developed sugar cane plantations along the Mississippi River. Slavery was maintained during the French (1699–1763, and 1800–1803) and Spanish (1763–1800) periods of government. The first people enslaved by the French were Native Americans, but they could easily escape into the countryside which they knew well. Beginning in the early 18th century, the French imported Africans as laborers in their efforts to develop the colony. Mortality rates were high for both colonists and Africans, and new workers had to be regularly imported.

Implemented in colonial Louisiana in 1724, Louis XIV of France's Code Noir regulated the slave trade and the institution of slavery in the French colonies. As a result, Louisiana and the Mobile, Alabama areas developed very different patterns of slavery compared to the British colonies.[66]

As written, the Code Noir gave some rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture slaves, to separate married couples (and to separate young children from their mothers). It required owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.[67][68][69]

The Code Noir forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in La Louisiane from the earliest years. In New Orleans society particularly, a formal system of concubinage, known as plaçage, developed. Usually formed between young white men and African or African-American women, these relationships were formalized with contracts that sometimes provided for freedom for a woman and her children (if she was still enslaved), education for the mixed-race children of the union, especially boys; and sometimes a property settlement. The free people of color became an intermediate social caste between the whites and the mass of enslaved blacks; many practiced artisan trades, and some acquired educations and property. Some white fathers sent their mixed-race sons to France for education in military schools.

Gradually in the English colonies, slavery became known as a racial caste that generally encompassed all people of African descent, even if mixed race. From 1662, Virginia defined social status by the status of the mother, unlike in England, where under common law fathers determined the status of their children, whether legitimate or natural. Thus children born to enslaved mothers were considered slaves, regardless of their paternity. Similarly, children born to mothers who were free were also free, whether or not of mixed-race. At one time, Virginia had prohibited enslavement of Christian individuals, but lifted that restriction with its 1662 law. In the 19th century, laws were passed to restrict the rights of free people of color or mixed-race (sometimes referred to as mulattoes) after early slave revolts. During the centuries of slavery in the British colonies, the number of mixed-race slaves increased.[66][69]

Slavery in New France

From Wikipedia

Slavery in New France was practiced by some of the indigenous populations, which enslaved outsiders as captives in warfare, but it was European colonization that made commercial chattel slavery become common in New France. By 1750, two thirds of the enslaved peoples in New France were indigenous, and by 1834, most enslaved people were black.[1]

The institution, which endured for almost two centuries, affected thousands of men, women, and children descended from indigenous and African peoples. It also impacted many indigenous people, who were used as domestic servants and traded as goods.

Indigenous origin of slavery in new France

Main article: Panis (slaves of First Nation descent)

The existence of slavery in this region predates arrival of Europeans and had major impacts on the way the system of slavery progressed during French colonization. Entrenched in a culture of war, indigenous groups of the Pays d'en Haut relied extensively on warfare that focused on captive-taking, rather than killing.[2] These captives would then be processed, often through a brutal series of events designed to strip the individual of any identifications from prior groups and also supplying lasting demarcations and scarring to signify the individual's captive status to others in the community.

The process of integration was often cruel and life-threatening and included acts such as the cutting off of fingers or other extremities, nails being torn out, nose cropping, and beatings.[2] The ritual of captive integration was a public affair, which involved all sections of native society, including women and children, whose participation was particularly poignant in solidifying the status of the slave, often a captured male warrior, in his new community. Those surviving from being beaten and marked would then undergo humiliating acts, such as undressing and forced singing, to erase former identities further before they were reintegrated into their new community or were ritually tortured and executed.[2] Once part of the community, captives served distinct social functions within it. Generally, slaves were not typically seen as freely-transferable property and trade goods as traditionally seen in modes of chattel slavery. Instead, slaves were intended to serve the social role of a lost community member: when one member would be murdered or taken from the community, a captive would be provided to take that member's place and assume her or his roles.[2] That often meant that the position of the slave was gendered in a way that pushed men to take on traditionally-female tasks, such as serving meals, providing farm labour, preparing skins, and carrying packs when hunting. Female captives were often used as secondary "chore" wives, who were used for routine household acts as well as providing reproductive labour.[2]

Politically, there was also considerable value in these captive-taking rituals. Captives' unique positions as social intermediaries allowed them to provide diplomatic services, such as translation. Able to act as symbolic gifts between peoples, slave-trading added social and political weight behind indigenous relations, linking separate regions' peoples to one another through ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Often being seized from one group, integrated into another, and then exchanged to still others, they had capacities to act as cultural coordinators, which highlighted the utility of the indigenous slave trade and the degree to which indigenous captives may have been able to exercise autonomy within their servitude.[2]

French-indigenous patterns of enslavement

Clearly established prior to the French arrival, a system of slavery was well underway. The French practice of slavery therefore existed more as an adaptation to an existing system rather than the imposition of a new system upon indigenous peoples and spaces. Slavery was adopted by French settlers in earnest beginning in 1632, continuing after the Conquest of New France in the 18th century. Initially, slavery in the colony was complicated by France's ethical stance on the matter: slave ownership in New France was not legally recognized (as per their free-soil doctrine), but it could still be justified with the understanding that only the act of enslaving people was deemed unethical and simply buying or receiving slaves was accepted.[2] Hoping to mimic the economic success of other colonies, France's royal administration gave in to Canadian pressures from slave-purchasing colonial officials, and issued the Raudot Ordinance of 1709, putting into law a legitimacy of enslavement within the St. Lawrence Valley colonial setting.[3]

French settlers primarily acquired slaves through the process of ritualized gift giving commonly used to facilitate diplomatic negotiations. However French hunger for more slaves altered indigenous practices of captive taking and enslavement. Warfare focusing on captive taking increased, as captives became not just a way to symbolically replace lost relatives, but also became economically valuable goods to exchange with the French. Networks of alliances between indigenous groups helped funnel captives towards the French.[2]

The exchange of slaves, and different understandings about the nature of slavery also had real impacts on French relationships with their native neighbors. Protracted conflicts, such as the Fox Wars, were largely encouraged because war captives provided an ample source of new slaves. Indigenous nations allied to the French and antagonistic to the Fox used this incentive to leverage French military support.[2] At other times, different conceptions of slavery stood in the way of relationships. Denonville's decision to send 40 captured Iroquois to France as galley slaves proved to be a major roadblock to future peace negotiations between the French and the Iroquois. Similarly, diplomatic talks with Sioux chiefs in 1742 were marred by the presence of Sioux slaves who had ended up in French possession.[2]

African slave trade in New France

African slaves in New France were a minority in relationship to both African slaves within New France and throughout all "New World" slave holdings. Out of the roughly 3.8 million slaves who had been transported from Western Africa to the Americas by the 1750s, only about 1,400 ended up in New France. Similarly, African slaves were continuously outnumbered by the enslaved indigenous population that formed the majority of the forced-labour force in New France.[8] While exact figures are hard to reconstruct, an estimate of slave populations in 1759, on the eve of Conquest of 1760 suggests a total of around 4000 slaves, of which around 1200 were African.[9] It was in 1632 that the first recorded black slave, Olivier Le Jeune, arrived in New France. It would take more than 50 years later for the next black slave to appear in records, despite strong efforts to augment the numbers of black slaves.[3] Several attempts were made throughout the history of New France to increase the number of African slaves brought to the colony to increase the available workforce. Attempts to increase the economic output of mines, fisheries, and farms were frustrated by the lack of workers.[9] There was much concern that the introduction of African enslavement in Canada would be a costly economic option, citing the major differences in climate as the main reason for its possible failure.[3] Nevertheless, the Governor, Marquis de Denonville, petitioned Louis XIV in 1688 for permission to import African slaves into New France to help establish a colonial economy more closely based on that of France's Caribbean colonies.[9] In May 1689, permission was granted by the King to begin the import of black slaves.[3] However, the number of African slaves remained quite low; colonial records show that there were only eleven African slaves in New France between 1689 and 1709.[2] Later calls to increase the importation of African Slaves to New France also echoed the example of other European colonies that relied on slave labour. For example Michel Begon argued in 1716 that New France should try to emulate the Thirteen Colonies in their use of slaves.[3]

However attempts at modeling New France on other colonies were frustrated both by historical accident and changing colonial policy. While Louis XIV authorization of slave imports to New France in response to Denonville's request was granted, the start of the Nine Years' War prevented the establishment of continual trade. A similar authorization in 1701 was curtailed by the outbreak of the Seven Years' War. Beyond the difficulties of establishing slave trading networks to New France, economic factors further hindered their development; New France had less potential for high-profit plantation agriculture compared to other colonies, and the availability of indigenous slaves generally meant that there were fewer profitable opportunities for selling slaves in New France.[9]

Royal Edict of 1685

The Code Noir (Black Code) was essentially designed for (black) African slaves whom the French had used extensively in the French Caribbean colonies since 1685. It was composed of 60 articles and was meant to offer some protection to slaves. The Code, moreover, extended toward "Panis" slaves in New France, but its legal application and enforcement remained limited due to the close relationship between the French and the native tribes.[10]

The Code outlined the rights and obligations of both slaves and their owners. Slaves could not make contracts, own land, testify, or be sentenced publicly. Because they did not have the status of a civil individual, slaves could not be charged criminally as citizens. If slaves were found to have physically harmed or damaged something or someone, the owner or owners were financially and personally responsible for the damages caused. If the owner failed to pay for the damages, his slave could be forcefully removed from his possession.[10]

The owner, additionally, had the right to whip or chain his slave. However, it was illegal to mutilate, kill or torture slaves. Although the Code classified slaves as objects much like a piece of furniture, the owners, nevertheless, had obligations toward their slaves. They were required to feed, clothe, care for in case of injury or sickness, and provide for aging and crippled slaves.[10]

With regards to births and marriages, under the Black Code, there was no legal recognition of the father's situation; a marriage between a free man and a slave woman was not legally recognized. A child born from a free man and a slave woman was considered a slave child; a child born from a free man and free slave woman, in contrast, was a free child.[10]

In 1724, modifications were made to the Black Code. After its revision, the Code "insisted on the basic humanity of the slave: each was to be instructed, baptized, and ministered unto as a Christian, families were to be recognized, and freed slaves were to receive the rights of common citizens — in theory the African could aspire to become a Frenchman".[10] In practice, nevertheless, there was a huge gap between the laws written in the Black Code and reality since the large majority of French colonists ignored the existence of the document. It was an exception, moreover, for a slave to become free. And while it has been argued that the French were more lenient and tolerant towards their slaves, in comparison to other European planters, the living conditions and treatment of slaves, however, was still determined by the attitude of their owners.[10]

Regional characteristics of slavery

Slavery in the Illinois Country

The Illinois Country was a French colonial settlement situated in the Mississippi Valley.[11] Although newcomers to the region, the Illinois were an influential Algonquian group who were heavily engaged in slave trade practices with the French and with indigenous allies. Given that their economy primarily revolved around bison hunting, the Illinois tribes required a lot of manpower which they mostly received from slaves. Bison was not only a staple diet for the Illinois but was also integrated in their material culture.[11]

Female slaves were delegated tedious tasks such as processing and drying the meat as well as using bison skins for decorative purposes, clothing and diplomatic gifts.[11] It required wives and female slaves to cooperate and divide the work amongst each other.

Yet slavery did not only serve economic needs in the Illinois country as it also served cultural purposes. For one, the slave trade allowed the Illinois to strengthen their relationship with the French and other indigenous allies. They would raid and take captives from their enemies, namely the Foxes, and offer them as gifts to the French.[2] The trading of slaves was a ritualized performance that reinforced kinship alliance between the French and the Illinois.[11] The French, in turn, accepted the slaves and baptized them—stripping them of their ethnic and cultural identity in an effort to Christianize them.[2] Not surprisingly, the taking of captives often led to violent retaliations, namely from the Foxes. Longstanding animosity between the Illinois and the Foxes placed the French in a compromising position. While the French were eager to move westward and trade with the Foxes, they needed to consider their kinship alliance with the Illinois and other indigenous groups in the Great Lakes region.[2] To demand the Illinois to relinquish their captives to the Foxes was to offend them, but to ask the Foxes to seek new captives in distant regions was to doubly offend the Illinois since it threaten their position as trusted middlemen to the French.[11] Moreover, the French were reluctant to stop the Illinois from taking captives seeing as they benefited from the Fox slave trade.[2] Thus, inasmuch as the slave trade strengthened alliances between the Illinois and the French, it also soured relationships which led to intermittent retaliatory campaigns.

The French introduced legalized slavery of Africans under the Code Noir in New France. After the port of New Orleans was founded in 1718 with access to the plantation colonies of the Caribbean, French colonists imported increased numbers of African slaves to the Illinois Country for use as mining or agricultural laborers. By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for as many as a third of the limited population in that rural area.[12]

Slavery on Île-Royale

The Louisbourg in the colony of Île-Royale (Cape Breton & Prince Edward Island) is one city of New France with official records of a black slave community. Louisbourg was an important trading port for the colony because of its key geographical location. It was the midpoint between Europe and France's Caribbean colonies, and was not so subject to sea ice as the settlements to the west. Its economy depended on fishing, the military and trade.[8] It is believed that hundreds of black slaves traveled through the port aboard merchant vessels; only 216 black individuals,[8] nevertheless, were actually enslaved on Ile Royale. The majority of these slaves were the property of the wealthiest individuals of Ile Royale: merchants, government and military officials. Owning slaves increased one's living conditions and social status within the colony.[8]

The slaves of Ile Royale had very different backgrounds as some came from the Dutch West Indies while others directly came from Guinea.[8] However, despite not having the same heritage or ethnicity, they had the common experience of being slaves. What is interesting about Ile Royale is that slaves on the island had a variety of occupations that included being servants, gardeners, bakers, tavern keepers, stonemasons, soldiers, sailors, fisherman and hospital workers. What is most important about this specific part of the French colony of New France is that the enslaved blacks became citizens of the community; not only were they mothers and fathers who became part of a growing African-French colonial culture but they also helped shape colonial life, too.[8]

Slavery in Louisiana

Main article: History of slavery in Louisiana

Although Louisiana was established much later than other colonies within New France in 1699, it still acquired blacks far more quickly than Canada as it had the advantage of being closer to the Caribbean market. It also had the opportunity to exploit the native market of the vast Mississippi valley. In Louisiana, plantation owners preferred African slaves; some still kept natives as maids, nevertheless.

Some Panis were enslaved by the beginning of the 18th century, even though it was prohibited officially. These slaves were captured by other native tribes during conflicts and then sold to the French.

In 1717, John Law advised the Mississippi Company to import black slaves into Louisiana in order to develop the economy with plantations. Around 6,000 black slaves were brought in between 1719 and 1743. Some slaves were sent to the Illinois Country, in Upper Louisiana, New France, a part of French North America, to work in the plantation fields and lead mines.

The Black Code regulated the condition of the slaves just like in the other French colonies, aside from Canada. The Black Code, nevertheless, was not highly respected and slaves enjoyed relative autonomy. During their days off, for example, slaves could cultivate a piece of land and then sell their produce. Others would hunt, log wood, or take care of cattle; all of these actives could occur far from the plantation. Even though interracial marriages and gatherings of slaves was prohibited, both of these practices were nonetheless recorded. Despite this small window of freedom, the lives and work of slaves remained extremely difficult. Harvest period was the most disagreeable season for them. Their belongings, in addition, were sparse and usually only consisted of a few personal items. Still, slave rebellions were rare during the French colonial period.

The slaves also contributed to the creolization of this part of the colony. Even if the Black Code mandated that slaves receive a Christian education, most continued their native practices.

Slavery in Quebec

Thousands of people were legally held as slaves in Quebec during the colonial period, used as status symbols and servants for wealthy individuals, the local government, and religious organizations including the Grey Nuns. Black slaves exploited by the French were brought from other colonies like Martinique or captured from African regions like Madagascar.[13]

Personal experiences of slaves in Canada

Treatment of slaves in Canada varied depending on whether the captive was enslaved by an indigenous group or enslaved by a colonial settler. For example, when faced with a declining population, the Iroquois were known to organize a war party and take captives in order to replace the deceased. Customarily, the captive would undergo a ritualized form of torture, a process that was meant to break down the captive's previous social identity before he/she were fully integrated in their adoptive clan. Although the captive was considered an adoptive kin, disfigurements such as a mutilated nose or missing fingers marked them as captives. Yet an account from the Jesuit missionary, Father Isaac Jogues, seems to suggest that revenge and humiliation were also reasons for taking and torturing captives. He details the ways in which his Iroquois abductors repeatedly beat him with war clubs, tore his fingernails and burned his arms and thighs. Women and youth also had their fill of torturing Father Jogues by beating him with iron rods and yanking out his thumbs.[14]

Captive taking was also practiced among other indigenous groups and that some rituals of humiliation and torture were not always as ghastly as the ones endured by Father Jogues. Louis Hennepin, for example, was another French missionary who recorded his experience as a captive among the Sioux. Even though he was ceremoniously adopted by the war chief Aquipaguetin to replace his deceased son, he suffered physical abuse and ridicule from his captors until he was released. Although he did not experience the same horrors as Father Jogues, his meals were rationed in order to keep him weak and dependent.[2] By contrast, French slave-owners did not subject their slaves to undue forms of torture as European understanding of kinship and adoption were radically different from that of indigenous peoples.[3] Instead, many slave-owners opted to baptize their slaves and christen them with a new name. Those who wished to keep the origins of their slave a secret requested that their slave be identified as "panis" on their baptismal records.[2] However, some slave-owners delayed the baptism of their slaves while others never bothered to baptize them at all. For example, slave-owner Desmoulins baptized Thomas, his black slave, at the age of sixty while Phillippe Vinet-Préville baptized his slave on the day of her death at the age of fifty-five.[3]

Due to their lowly status, many official documents have neglected to specify the kinds of jobs held by slaves. In the Census of 1666, for example, slaves are merely identified as "domestic engagé" while the profession of other family members are specified to the reader. Luckily, some legal documents did provide information on the status of a slave, the nature of their tasks and sometimes, their hobbies and interests. For example, a smuggling trial in 1712 involving a free native slave named Joseph was recorded, providing a fascinating window into the world of free slave populations in Montreal.[2] The legal document mentions that Joseph spent most of his days trading and negotiating with other free slaves from his neighborhood and that he had access to his slave-owner's canoe and sometimes travelled to the Pays d'en Haut with his native friends.[2] Although it may not be a substantial amount of information, knowing that Joseph had friends and was able to have close relationships outside of his household humanizes him.

Occasionally, testimonies and wills provide a glimpse into the intimate relationships between indigenous (or black) slaves and their owners. In 1721, a widow named Marie Claire Catoire wrote a will in which she confirmed her conditional manumission of her native slave Suzanne in exchange for the slave's servitude to her and her son Leonard for the remainder of their lives.[15] Although Suzanne fulfilled this condition, Catoire added another condition to her slave's liberation: that Suzanne and her husband were "to practice the Roman Catholic religion and comport themselves as free persons of the French nation."[15] Efforts to "frenchify" indigenous or black slaves through clothing or conversion was not uncommon during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, in 1731 a widow by the name of Marie LeRoy wrote a will expressing that her sauvagesse be given her "'habit de crepon', several 'aulnes' of white cloth with which might make 'coeffes', and a 'jupon' so that she might remember her for the remainder of her life, and live in Christian fashion".[15]

Personal history of slaves

Further information: Slave narrative

Pierre was one of the first recorded slaves in New France. In 1690, he appeared on the official hospital records at the age of 15. Between 1690 and 1692, his Jesuit master who identified Pierre as his "domestic" placed him twice in the care of the hospital. He was of Panis origin; initially captured in the Illinois territories, he belonged to the Jesuit missionaries of Quebec.[16]

Marie-Joachim was an enslaved Mesquaki (Fox) Indian who belonged to Julien Trottier dit Desrivieres, a wealthy merchant of Montreal. She was brought to Montreal as a slave around 1712 but only appeared in official records in 1725 at the age of 22 due to her involvement in a criminal trial. She was accused of stealing trade goods from her master's warehouse with the intention of giving them to her French lover. While she was sentenced to have her hands cut off, she was sold, instead to a master in Quebec City where she worked as a domestic slave. She eventually died a few years later in her late 20s.[16]

Marie-Marguerite was an enslaved Plains Indian who belonged to Marc-Antoine Huard de Dormicourt, a naval officer from Quebec City. Marie-Marguerite appeared in the record in 1740 in her late twenties when she sued Marc-Antoine Huard de Dormicourt for her freedom. Her trial ignited a debate within the population of New France because she was challenging the legality of her enslavement and forcing inhabitants to question the legal boundaries of slavery. Unfortunately for Marie-Marguerite, however, she lost her appeal and was sent to work on a Caribbean sugar plantation.[16]

Charlotte-Barbe was an enslaved Plains Indian who belonged to Governor Charles de la Boische, Marquis de Beauharnois. Charlotte-Barbe appeared in the record in 1729 when she died at the age of 9. This governor held more than twenty enslaved natives at various times during his tenure.[16]

Marie-Joseph Angélique was one of New France's most well known slaves. While pregnant, she set her mistress' house on fire for revenge or to divert the attention away from her escape. She ran away with the father of her child, who was also a black slave and belonged to another owner. The fire that she started ended up burning part of Montreal and a large portion of the Hôtel-Dieu. Later on she was caught and sentenced to death.

Marie Louise is a famous figure for black slaves in New France but more specifically on Ile Royale. She was the third enslaved woman to be freed on the island. On January 21, 1754, she married 25-year-old Louis Coustard who had arrived to Louisbourg three years earlier from the port of LaRochelle in France. He was the only white man to marry a black slave on Ile Royale. Prior to her marriage, Marie Louise had given birth to 7 illegitimate children, all of whom had to become slaves because she had not yet been free. With Louis she gave birth to two children, both of whom inherited free status from their father.[8]

Road to abolition

A side effect of the 1763 Treaty of Paris was that Panis enslavement in North America greatly diminished and eventually disappeared at the turn of the century, most likely due to harsh economic conditions.[10] In 1793, importing black slaves became prohibited in Upper Canada, forty years before the British government passed the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act, which abolished the institution of slavery throughout the British Empire.[17]

References

1.    Bonita, Lawrence. "Enslavement of Indigenous People in Canada". The Canadian Encyclopedia. Historica Canada.

2.    Brett, Rushforth. Bonds of alliance : indigenous and Atlantic slaveries in New France. Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture. Chapel Hill. 

3.    Trudel, Marcel; Tombs, George (2013). Canada's forgotten slaves : two centuries of bondage. Montréal, Québec, Canada. 

4.    "Des traces de l'esclavage se retrouvent également au Canada". Radio-Canada.ca. 2019-08-23.

5.    "L'histoire du Québec métissée méconnue". 2017-06-09.

6.    "Histoire 101 de l'esclavage au Québec". Le Journal de Québec. 2017-10-05.

7.    Daniel Gay (2004). "Portrait d'une communauté: Les Noirs du Québec, 1629-1900" (PDF). Cap-aux-Diamants..

8.    Donovan, Kenneth (1995). "Slaves and their Owners in Ile Royale 1713-1760". Acadiensis: 30.

9.    1930-, Winks, Robin W. (1997). The Blacks in Canada : a history (2nd ed.). Montreal, Que.: McGill-Queen's University Press. 

10. Gilles, David (2008–2009). "La norme esclavagiste, entre pratique coutumière et norme étatique: les esclaves panis et leur statut juridique au Canada (XVIIe-XVIIIe s)". Ottawa Law Review.

11. Michael, Morrissey, Robert (9 March 2015). Empire by collaboration : Indians, colonists, and governments in colonial Illinois country. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

12. Ekberg, Carl J. (2000). French Roots in the Illinois Country. University of Illinois Press. pp. 2–3. 

13. Polak, Monique (11 February 2017). "Slavery in Quebec: Shedding light on a largely unknown history". Montreal Gazette. Quebec City.

14. The Jesuit relations : natives and missionaries in seventeenth-century North America. Greer, Allan. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. 2000. 

15. Sophie., White (2012). Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians : material culture and race in colonial Louisiana (1st ed.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

16. Rushforth, Brett; Kahn, Andrew (18 January 2016). "Native American Slaves in New France". Slate.

17. Oldfield, Dr John (February 17, 2011). "British Anti-slavery". BBC History. BBC.

History of Slavery in Louisiana

From Wikipedia,

Following Robert Cavelier de La Salle establishing the French claim to the territory and the introduction of the name Louisiana, the first settlements in the southernmost portion of Louisiana (New France) were developed at present-day Biloxi (1699), Mobile (1702), Natchitoches (1714), and New Orleans (1718). Slavery was then established by European colonists.

The institution was maintained by the Spanish (1763–1800) when the area was part of New Spain, by the French when they briefly reacquired the colony (1800–1803), and by the United States following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Due to its complex history, Louisiana had a very different pattern of slavery compared to the rest of the United States.[1]

French rule (1699–1763)

See also: Slavery in Canada (New France) and Indian slave trade in the American Southeast

Chattel slavery was introduced by French colonists in Louisiana in 1706, when they made raids on the Chitimacha settlements. Thousands of indigenous people were killed, and the surviving women and children were taken as slaves. The enslavement of natives, including the Atakapa, Bayogoula, Natchez, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Taensa, and Alabamon peoples, would continue throughout the history of French rule.[2] While Native American peoples had sometimes made slaves of enemies captured in war, they also tended to adopt them into their tribes and incorporate them among their people.

The French introduced African chattel slaves to the territory in 1710, after capturing a number as plunder during the War of the Spanish Succession. Trying to develop the new territory, the French transported more than 2,000 Africans to New Orleans between 1717–1721, on at least eight ships. The death toll for African and native slaves was high, with scurvy and dysentery widespread because of poor nutrition and sanitation. Although sailors also suffered from scurvy, enslaved Africans were subject to more shipboard diseases owing to overcrowding.

Spanish rule (1763–1803)

Alejandro O'Reilly re-established Spanish rule in 1768, and issued a decree on December 7, 1769, which banned the trade of Native American slaves.[3] Although there was no movement toward abolition of the African slave trade, Spanish rule introduced a new law called coartación, which allowed slaves to buy their freedom and that of other slaves.[4] Spain shipped gypsy slaves to Louisiana.[5]

A group of maroons led by Jean Saint Malo resisted re-enslavement from their base in the swamps east of New Orleans between 1780 and 1784.

Two attempted slave rebellions took place in Pointe Coupée Parish during Spanish rule in 1790s, the Pointe Coupée Slave Conspiracy of 1791 and the Pointe Coupée Slave Conspiracy of 1795, which attracted a lot of attention.

U.S. Territory of New Orleans (1804–1812)

The demand for slaves increased in Louisiana and other parts of the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin (1793) and the Louisiana Purchase (1803). The cotton gin allowed the processing of short-staple cotton, which thrived in the upland areas. It made possible a new commodity crop in northern Louisiana, although sugar cane continued to be predominant in southern Louisiana. The Mississippi River Delta area in southeast Louisiana created the ideal alluvial soil necessary for the growing of sugar cane; sugar was the state's prime export during the antebellum period.

The United States banned the importation of slaves in 1807–08. A brisk domestic slave trade developed; many thousands of black slaves were sold by slaveholders in the Upper South to buyers in the Deep South, in what amounted to a significant forced migration.

Early in 1811, while Louisiana was yet the U.S. Territory of Orleans, the largest slave revolt in American history began about thirty miles outside of New Orleans (or a greater distance if traveled alongside the twisting Mississippi River), as slaves rebelled against the brutal work regimens of sugar plantations. There had been a sizable influx of refugee French planters from the former French colony of Saint-Domingue following the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), who brought their slaves of African descent with them. This influence was likely a contributing factor in the revolt. The German Coast Uprising ended with white militias and soldiers hunting down black slaves, peremptory tribunals or trials in three parishes (St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and Orleans), execution of many of the rebels, and the public display of their severed heads.

Statehood and the U.S. Civil War (1812–1865)

Slavery was officially abolished in the portion of the state under Union control by the state constitution of 1864, during the American Civil War. Slavery had already been abolished in the remainder of the state by President Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, which provided that slaves located in territories which were in rebellion against the United States were free. In some areas, slaves left the plantations to seek Union military lines for freedom. If such lines were located too far away, they were often held in servitude until the Union gained control of the South.

Differences between slavery in Louisiana and other states

Louisiana had a markedly different pattern of slave trading compared to other states in the American South as a result of its French and Spanish heritage. The origin of the slaves brought in by slave traders were primarily Senegal, the Bight of Benin and the Congo region,[6] which differed to that of states such as Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi, where the enslaved were culturally African-American after having resided in the United States for at least two generations. After the Louisiana Purchase, an influx of slaves and free blacks from the United States occurred.[7]

Secondly, Louisiana's slave trade was governed by the French Code Noir, and later by its Spanish equivalent the Código Negro,[8] As written, the Code Noir gave specific rights to slaves, including the right to marry. Although it authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture them. It forbade separation of married couples, and separation of young children from their mothers. It also required the owners to instruct slaves in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, an idea that had not been acknowledged until then.[9][10][11]

Together with a more permeable historic French system related to the status of gens de couleur libres (free people of color), often born to white fathers and their mixed-race partners, a far higher percentage of African Americans in the state of Louisiana were free as of the 1830 census (13.2% in Louisiana, compared to 0.8% in Mississippi, whose dominant population was white Anglo-American[12]). The free people of color were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves.[13][14]

The Code Noir also forbade interracial marriages, but interracial relationships were formed in New Orleans society. The mulattoes became an intermediate social caste between the whites and the blacks, while in the Thirteen Colonies mulattoes and blacks were considered socially equal and discriminated against on an equal basis.[15][16]

When control of Louisiana shifted to the United States, the Catholic social norms were deeply rooted in Louisiana; the contrast with predominantly Protestant parts of the young nation, where differing norms prevailed, was evident. The Americanization of Louisiana resulted in the mulattoes being considered as black, and free blacks were regarded as undesirable.[17][18]

See also

·       History of slavery in Texas

References

1.    Martin H. Steinberg, "Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management", pp. 725–26 [1]

2.    Rushforth, Brett (2014). Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. 

3.    Midlo Hall, Gwendolyn (1992). Africans in Colonial Louisiana. Louisiana State University Press. p. 336.

4.    [2] Berquist, Emily. Early Anti-Slavery Sentiment in the Spanish Atlantic World, 1765–1817

5.    Rodriguez, Junius P. (1997). The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery. 

6.    Slave data base at the Whitney Plantation Historic District museum, retrieved 19 April 2017.

7.    Martin H. Steinberg, "Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management", pp. 725–26 [3]

8.    Martin H. Steinberg, "Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management", pp. 725–26 [4]

9.    Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery, Princeton University Press (2003), p. 322 [5] Note that the hardcover edition has a typographical error stating "31.2 percent"; it is corrected to 13.2 in the paperback edition. The 13.2% value is confirmed with 1830 census data.

10. Samantha Cook & Sarah Hull, The Rough Guide to the USA

11. Terry L. Jones, The Louisiana Journey, p. 115

12. Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery, p. 322 [6] Note that the hardcover edition contained a typo indicating "31.2 percent" while the paperback edition corrected this to 13.2 %. The latter figure can be calculated from 1830 census data.

13. Samantha Cook & Sarah Hull, The Rough Guide to the USA

14. Terry L. Jones, The Louisiana Journey, p. 115

15. Terry L. Jones, The Louisiana Journey, p. 115

16. Martin H. Steinberg, "Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management", pp. 725–26 [7]

17. Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery, p. 322 [8]

18. Martin H. Steinberg, "Disorders of Hemoglobin: Genetics, Pathophysiology, and Clinical Management", pp. 725–26 [9]