American Negro Slavery Part 37

[Footnote 80: _Minutes and Proceedings of the First Annual Convention of the People of Colour, held in Philadelphia from the sixth to the eleventh of June_, 1831 (Philadelphia, 1831).]

These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent.

Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables, magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under circ.u.mstances in which white men went free. The more severe industrial discrimination at the North, which drove large numbers to an alternative of dest.i.tution or crime, was furthermore contributive to the special excess of negro criminality there.

[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored (with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and 28.7 for the free colored at the North. _Compendium of the Seventh Census_, p. 166. See also _Southern Literary Messenger_, IX, 340-352; _DeBow's Review_, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, _Cotton Is King_ (Cincinnati, 1855), p. 153; E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, pp. 155-158.]

In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law.

Such was the case at Was.h.i.+ngton in 1835 when following on the heels of a man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a cla.s.s.

"In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby--but the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search the houses of his a.s.sociates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out.

Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter.

[Footnote 82: Was.h.i.+ngton _Globe_, about August 14, reprinted in the _North Carolina Standard_, Aug. 27, 1835.]

Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They submitted to the regime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, together with such of their mulatto confreres as were similarly inert, had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly their own.

The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these inst.i.tutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers.

There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellows.h.i.+p Society, with members.h.i.+p confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits of the inst.i.tution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with members.h.i.+ps ranging from thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85]

[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York, 1909), p. 6.]

[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.]

[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.]

The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the const.i.tution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month.

Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the duty of all to report illnesses in the members.h.i.+p, and the function of the official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to see to the was.h.i.+ng of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule.

Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of a member who had fellows.h.i.+p also in the other for the custody of the corpse and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hea.r.s.e, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as sociable as an Irish wake.

[Footnote 86: _The By-laws and Const.i.tution of the Union Band Society of Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace_ (Caption).]

Doubtless to some extent in their lodges, and certainly to a great degree in their daily affairs, the lives of the free colored and the slaves intermingled. Colored freemen, except in the highest of their social strata, took free or slave wives almost indifferently. Some indeed appear to have preferred the unfree, either because in such case the husband would not be responsible for the support of the family or because he might engage the protection of his wife's master in time of need.[87] On the other hand the free colored women were somewhat numerously the prost.i.tutes, or in more favored cases the concubines, of white men. At New Orleans and thereabouts particularly, concubinage, along with the well known "quadroon b.a.l.l.s," was a systematized practice.[88] When this had persisted for enough generations to produce children of less than octoroon infusion, some of these doubtless cut their social ties, changed their residence, and made successful though clandestine entrance into white society. The fairness of the complexions of some of those who to this day take the seats a.s.signed to colored pa.s.sengers in the street cars of New Orleans is an evidence, however, that "crossing the line" has not in all such b.r.e.a.s.t.s been a mastering ambition.

[Footnote 87: J.H. Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, pp. 130-133.]

[Footnote 88: Albert Phelps, _Louisiana_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 212, 213.]

The Southern whites were of several minds regarding the free colored element in their midst. Whereas laboring men were more or less jealously disposed on the ground of their compet.i.tion, the interest and inclination of citizens in the upper ranks was commonly to look with favor upon those whose labor they might use to advantage. On public grounds, however, these men shared the general apprehension that in case tumult were plotted, the freedom of movement possessed by these people might if their services were enlisted by the slaves make the efforts of the whole more formidable. One of the Charleston pamphleteers sought to discriminate between the mulattoes and the blacks in the premises, censuring the indolence and viciousness of the latter while praising the former for their thrift and sobriety and contending that in case of revolt they would be more likely to prove allies of the whites.[89] This distinction, however, met no general adoption. The general discussion at the South in the premises did not concern the virtues and vices of the colored freemen on their own score so much as the influence exerted by them upon the slaves. It is notable in this connection that the Northern dislike of negro newcomers from the South on the ground of their prevalent ignorance, thriftlessness and instability[90] was more than matched by the Southern dread of free negroes from the North. A citizen of New Orleans wrote characteristically as early as 1819:[91]

"It is a melancholy but incontrovertible fact that in the cities of Philadelphia, New York and Boston, where the blacks are put on an equality with the whites, ... they are chiefly noted for their aversion to labor and p.r.o.neness to villainy. Men of this cla.s.s are peculiarly dangerous in a community like ours; they are in general remarkable for the boldness of their manners, and some of them possess talents to execute the most wicked and deep laid plots."

[Footnote 89: [Edwin C. Holland], _A Refutation of the Calumnies circulated against the Southern and Western States respecting the inst.i.tution and existence of Slavery among them_. By a South Carolinian (Charleston, 1822), pp. 84, 85.]

[Footnote 90: E.R. Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 158.]

[Footnote 91: Letter to the editor in the _Louisiana Gazette_, Aug. 12, 1819.]

CHAPTER XXII

SLAVE CRIME

The negroes were in a strange land, coercively subjected to laws and customs far different from those of their ancestral country; and by being enslaved and set off into a separate lowly caste they were largely deprived of that incentive to conformity which under normal conditions the hope of individual advancement so strongly gives. It was quite to be expected that their conduct in general would be widely different from that of the whites who were citizens and proprietors. The natural amenability of the blacks, however, had been a decisive factor in their initial enslavement, and the reckoning which their captors and rulers made of this was on the whole well founded. Their lawbreaking had few distinctive characteristics, and gave no special concern to the public except as regards rape and revolt.

Records of offenses by slaves are scant because on the one hand they were commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in a.s.suming a dearth of serious infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict slave regime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical record in the premises is that of Baldwin County, Georgia, in which the following trials of slaves for felonies between 1812 and 1832 are recounted: in 1812 Major was convicted of rape and sentenced to be hanged. In 1815 Fannie Micklejohn, charged with the murder of an infant was acquitted; and Tom, convicted of murdering a fellow slave was sentenced to branding on each cheek with the letter M and to thirty-nine lashes on his bare back on each of three successive days, after which he was to be discharged. In 1816 John, a slave of William McGeehee, convicted of the theft of a $100 bill was sentenced to whipping in similar fas.h.i.+on. In 1818 Aleck was found guilty of an a.s.sault with intent to murder, and received sentence of fifty lashes on three days in succession. In 1819 Rodney was capitally sentenced for arson. In 1821 Peter, charged with murdering a slave, was convicted of manslaughter and ordered to be branded with M on the right cheek and to be given the customary three times thirty-nine lashes; and Edmund, charged with involuntary manslaughter, was dismissed on the ground that the court had no cognizance of such offense. In 1822 Davis was convicted of a.s.sault upon a white person with intent to kill, but his sentence is not recorded.

In or about the same year John, a slave of William Robertson, convicted of burglary but recommended to mercy, was sentenced to be branded with T on the right cheek and to receive three times thirty-nine lashes; and on the same day the same slave was sentenced to death for a.s.sault upon a white man with intent to kill. In 1825 John Ponder's George when convicted of burglary was recommended by the jury to the mercy of the court but received sentence of death nevertheless; and Stephen was sentenced likewise for murderous a.s.sault upon a white man. In 1826 Elleck, charged with a.s.sault with intent of murder and rape, was convicted on the first part of the charge only, but received sentence of death. In 1828 Elizabeth Smith's George was acquitted of larceny from the house; and next year Caroline was likewise acquitted on a charge of maiming a white person. Finally, in 1832 Martin, upon pleading guilty to a charge of murderous a.s.sault, was given a whipping sentence of the customary thirty-nine lashes on three successive days.[2]

[Footnote 1: W.E.B. DuBois, in the _Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science_, XVIII, 132.]

[Footnote 2: "Record of the Proceedings of the Inferior Court of Baldwin County on the Trials of Slaves charged with capital Offences." MS. in the court house at Milledgeville. The record is summarized in Ac American Historical a.s.sociation _Report_ for 1903, I, 462-464, and in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 123-125.]

A few negro felonies, indeed, resulted directly from the pressure of slave circ.u.mstance. A gruesome instance occurred in 1864 in the same county as the foregoing. A young slave woman, Becky by name, had given pregnancy as the reason for a continued slackness in her work. Her master became skeptical and gave notice that she was to be examined and might expect the whip in case her excuse were not substantiated. Two days afterward a negro midwife announced that Becky's baby had been born; but at the same time a neighboring planter began search for a child nine months old which was missing from his quarter. This child was found in Becky's cabin, with its two teeth pulled and the tip of its navel cut off. It died; and Becky, charged with murder but convicted only of manslaughter, was sentenced to receive two hundred lashes in instalments of twenty-five at intervals of four days.[3] Some other deeds done by slaves were crimes only because the law declared them to be such when committed by persons of that cla.s.s. The striking of white persons and the administering of medicine to them are examples. But in general the felonies for which they were convicted were of sorts which the law described as criminal regardless of the status of the perpetrators.

[Footnote 3: _Confederate Union_ (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 1, 1864.]

In a West Indian colony and in a Northern state glimpses of the volume of criminality, though not of its quality, may be drawn from the fact that in the years from 1792 to 1802 the Jamaican government deported 271 slave convicts at a cost of 15,538 for the compensation of their masters,[4] and that in 1816 some forty such were deported from New York to New Orleans, much to the disquiet of the Louisiana authorities.[5] As for the South, state-wide statistical views with any approach to adequacy are available for two commonwealths only. That of Louisiana is due to the fact that the laws and courts there gave sentences of imprisonment with considerable impartiality to malefactors of both races and conditions. In its penitentiary report at the end of 1860, for example, the list of inmates comprised 96 slaves along with 236 whites and 11 free colored. All the slaves but fourteen were males, and all but thirteen were serving life terms.[6] Cla.s.sed by crimes, 12 of them had been sentenced for arson, 3 for burglary or housebreaking, 28 for murder, 4 for manslaughter, 4 for poisoning, 5 for attempts to poison, 7 for a.s.sault with intent to kill, 2 for stabbing, 3 for shooting, 20 for striking or wounding a white person, 1 for wounding a child, 4 for attempts to rape, and 3 for insurrection.[7]

This catalogue is notable for its omissions as well as for its content.

While there were four white inmates of the prison who stood convicted of rape, there were no negroes who had accomplished that crime. Likewise as compared with 52 whites and 4 free negroes serving terms for larceny, there were no slave prisoners in that category. Doubtless on the one hand the negro rapists had been promptly put to death, and on the other hand the slaves committing mere theft had been let off with whippings. Furthermore there were no slaves committed for counterfeiting or forgery, horse stealing, slave stealing or aiding slaves to escape.

[Footnote 4: _Royal Gazette_ (Kingston, Jamaica), Jan. 29, 1803.]

[Footnote 5: Message of Governor Claiborne in the _Journal_ of the Louisiana House of Representatives, 3d legislature, 1st session, p, 22. For this note I am indebted to Mr. V.A. Moody.]

[Footnote 6: Under an act of 1854, effective at this time, the owner of any slave executed or imprisoned was to receive indemnity from the state to the extent of two-thirds of the slave's appraised value.]

[Footnote 7: _Report of the Board of Control of the Louisiana Penitentiary, January, 1861_ (Baton Rouge, 1861). Among the 22 pardoned in 1860 were 2 slaves who had been sentenced for murder, 2 for arson, and 1 for a.s.sault with intent to kill.]

The uniquely full view which may be had of the trend of serious crimes among the Virginia slaves is due to the preservation of vouchers filed in pursuance of a law of that state which for many decades required appraisal and payment by the public for all slaves capitally convicted and sentenced to death or deportation. The file extends virtually from 1780 to 1864, except for a gap of three years in the late 1850's.[8] The volume of crime rose gradually decade by decade to a maximum of 242 in the 1820's, and tended to decline slowly thereafter. The gross number of convictions was 1,418, all but 91 of which were of males. For arson there were 90 slaves convicted, including 29 women. For burglary there were 257, with but one woman among them. The highway robbers numbered 15, the horse thieves 20, and the thieves of other sorts falling within the purview of the vouchers 24, with no women in these categories. It would be interesting to know how the slaves who stole horses expected to keep them undiscovered, but this the vouchers fail to tell.

[Footnote 8: The MS. vouchers are among the archives in the Virginia State Library. They have been statistically a.n.a.lyzed by the present writer, substantially as here follows, in the _American Historical Review_, XX, 336-340.]

For murder there were 346, discriminated as having been committed upon the master 56, the mistress 11, the overseer 11; upon other white persons 120; upon free negroes 7; upon slaves 85, including 12 children all of whom were killed by their own mothers; and upon persons not described 60. Of the murderers 307 were men and 39 women. For poisoning and attempts to poison, including the administering of ground gla.s.s, 40 men and 16 women were convicted, and there were also convictions of one man and one woman for administering medicine to white persons. For miscellaneous a.s.sault there were 111 sentences recorded, all but eight of which were laid upon male offenders and only two of which were described as having been directed against colored victims.

For rape there were 73 convictions, and for attempts at rape 32. This total of 105 cases was quite evenly distributed in the tale of years; but the territorial distribution was notably less in the long settled Tidewater district than in the newer Piedmont and Shenandoah. The trend of slave crime of most other sorts, however, ran squarely counter to this; and its notably heavier prevalence in the lowlands gives countenance to the contemporary Southern belief that the presence of numerous free negroes among them increased the criminal proclivities of the slaves. In at least two cases the victims of rape were white children; and in two others, if one be included in which the conviction was strangely of mere "suspicion of rape," they were free mulatto women. That no slave women were mentioned among the victims is of course far from proving that these were never violated, for such offenses appear to have been left largely to the private cognizance of the masters.[9] A Delaware instance of the sort attained record through an offer of reward for the capture of a slave who had run away after being punished.

[Footnote 9: Elkton (Md.) _Press_, July 19, 1828, advertis.e.m.e.nt, reprinted in _Plantation and Frontier_, II, 122.]

For insurrection or conspiracy 91 slaves were convicted, 36 of them in Henrico County in 1800 for partic.i.p.ation in Gabriel's revolt, 17 in 1831, mainly in Southampton County as followers of Nat Turner, and the rest mostly scattering. Among miscellaneous and uncla.s.sified cases there was one slave convicted of forgery, another of causing the printing of anti-slavery writings, and 301 sentenced without definite specification of their crimes.

Among the vouchers furthermore are incidental records of the killing of a slave in 1788 who had been proclaimed an outlaw, and of the purchase and manumission by the commonwealth of Tom and Pharaoh in 1801 for services connected with the suppression of Gabriel's revolt.

As to punishments, the vouchers of the eighteenth century are largely silent, though one of them contains the only unusual sentence to be found in the whole file. This directed that the head of a slave who had murdered a fellow slave be cut off and stuck on a pole at the forks of the road.

In the nineteenth century only about one-third of the vouchers record execution. The rest give record of transportation whether under the original sentences or upon commutation by the governor, except for the cases which from 1859 to 1863 were more numerous than any others where the commutations were to labor on the public works.

The statistics of rape in Virginia, and the Georgia cases already given, refute the oft-a.s.serted Southern tradition that negroes never violated white women before slavery was abolished. Other scattering examples may be drawn from contemporary newspapers. One of these occurred at Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts in 1768.[10] Upon conviction the negro was condemned to death, although a white man at the same time found guilty of an attempt at rape was sentenced merely to sit upon the gallows. In Georgia the governor issued a proclamation in 1811 offering reward for the capture of Jess, a slave who had ravished the wife of a citizen of Jones County;[11] and in 1844 a jury in Habersham County, after testimony by the victim and others, found a slave named Dave guilty of rape upon Hester An Dobbs, "a free white female in the peace of G.o.d and state of Georgia," and the criminal was duly hanged by the sheriff.[12] In Alabama in 1827 a negro was convicted of rape at Tuscaloosa,[13] and another in Was.h.i.+ngton County confessed after capture that while a runaway he had met Miss Winnie Caller, taken her from her horse, dragged her into the woods and butchered her "with circ.u.mstances too horrible to relate";[14] and at Mobile in 1849 a slave named Ben was sentenced to death for an attempt at rape upon a white woman.[15] In Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1842, a young girl was dragged into the woods, beaten and violated. Her injuries caused her death next day. The criminal had been caught when the report went to press.[16]

[Footnote 10: _Boston Chronicle_, Sept. 26, 1768, confirmed by a contemporary broadside: "_The Life and Dying Speech of Arthur, a Negro Man who was executed at Worcester, October 20, 1786, for a rape committed on the body of one Deborah Metcalfe_" (Boston, 1768).]

[Footnote 11: Augusta _Chronicle_, Mch. 29, 1811.]