Between Slavery and Freedom (14 page)

Within a matter of days free blacks in major cities in the North and the Upper South began responding to what they were reading and hearing about the ACS. Community leaders in Georgetown, Virginia, were the first to react. They denounced African emigration, but they argued for a settlement in the Missouri Territory. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia disagreement surfaced between the rank and file and those accustomed to speak for them. Paul Cuffe's longtime confidante James Forten was deeply involved in the wrangling. Forten did not want to leave America. A Revolutionary War veteran, he saw
his
future as linked to that of the republic he had helped create. He was prospering as a sailmaker and real estate speculator. He did concede, however, that there were some free blacks who were not faring well in America, or who simply wanted to try their luck elsewhere. At least initially, Forten and some of those closest to him, including Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, shared Cuffe's opinion that the American Colonization Society was a humanitarian undertaking and the white men behind it were dedicated to black freedom. When Finley visited Philadelphia, Forten and other black leaders met with him and endorsed his plan, at least as he outlined it.

Many other black people in Philadelphia disagreed. They insisted that African colonization was an insidious plot hatched by whites who supported slavery while at the same time fearing and despising free blacks. Before long, more statements from the ACS leadership convinced James Forten and other prominent people of color not just in Philadelphia but in communities from Boston to Baltimore that the organization was
not
committed to ending slavery or to giving free people a choice about going to Africa. Then Paul Cuffe, the one man who might have been able to push the enterprise in the direction that free people of color would have found acceptable, fell ill and died. The dream of a large-scale voluntary exodus, coupled with the freeing of every slave in America, died with him.

The ACS forged ahead regardless. With the endorsement of powerful politicians in Washington, it mounted an expedition to West Africa to
pick a site for a colony. What resulted was the founding of Liberia. The colony proved to be anything but a land of milk and honey for those who volunteered to go there, and disease and disputes threatened the whole venture. Although word soon filtered back to the United States about the dire situation in Liberia, the ACS kept up its recruiting efforts. A war of words broke out between the advocates of colonization, the vast majority of them white, and its opponents, almost all of them free blacks. James Forten was particularly vocal, especially when ACS officers tried to pressure him to lead the exodus now that Paul Cuffe was dead. Some people of color did agree to go to Liberia, although never in the numbers the ACS hoped. In many instances they were slaves whose masters freed them only on condition that they emigrate. Of the freeborn, most who left did so because they were pessimistic about their prospects in America. However, the overwhelming majority of free people steadfastly refused to abandon their homeland for an uncertain future in Africa.

The debate over emigration and colonization was just one aspect of the complex nature of black freedom in the generation after independence. Hundreds of thousands of people had struggled out of slavery, only to find that liberty seldom meant for them what it did for whites. However they saw themselves, most whites saw them differently. Freedom had given them hope for the future. It had also brought them disappointment and disillusionment. In the generation that followed, the struggle to make freedom truly meaningful continued. Black people endeavored in many different ways to claim what they considered their birthright as Americans. They sought prosperity and education, a peaceful existence, and the chance to live where they chose and as they chose. They also sought to liberate the growing number of black Americans who did not even share with them in “half-freedom.”
They
were “free”—after a fashion—but as long as so many other black people were unfree, their own freedom was less than complete.

CHAPTER FOUR

“We Will Have Our Rights”

Redefining Black Freedom, 1820–1850

The men and women of the first generation after independence fought with courage and persistence to make black freedom a reality. They won some remarkable victories, even as they weathered crises in their personal lives and in the lives of their communities. Many were poor. Many had loved ones who were still enslaved, and they themselves were often at risk of losing their liberty. However, they spoke up and they organized. Their message to white Americans was that black people could make good use of their freedom.

Their sons and daughters built on what their parents had achieved. They struggled to maintain and expand their communities. They demanded equal access to education for themselves and their children. They let white Americans know that they expected nothing less than equality. They had much to contend with, though. In the thirty years from 1820 to 1850 there was a rise in racial violence and the passage of discriminatory laws in state after state. The American Colonization Society remained active and drew support from whites of all social classes. The nation extended its boundaries significantly in the course of these three decades, and with the acquisition of more territory came the question of what rights, if any, free blacks could enjoy as they tried to move into America's borderlands in search of the same opportunities that white pioneers were seeking.

In spite of all the laws designed to keep them subordinate to whites, and in spite of the hostility they encountered, some free blacks achieved the “American Dream” of economic self-sufficiency. By the 1820s, the Lower South was home to black plantation owners like William Ellison and Anna Jai Kingsley. In a number of instances these planters were the heirs of rich white men, and some of them benefited from the labor of slaves. They were not the only black slave owners in the South. When they had the means to do so, free people purchased their friends and family members out of bondage with the obvious intention of freeing them. However, the likes of Ellison and Kingsley owned slaves for the same reason that whites did—because they wanted their labor.

Besides the wealthy “free colored” planters of the Lower South, there were thousands of black men and women in other parts of the country who had toiled, struggled, and parlayed their way into the land-owning classes by the 1820s. But for every independent and successful African-American farmer there were countless more for whom land ownership was an impossible dream, who had neither the capital nor the credit to buy land. Some became tenant farmers. Others squatted on vacant land, as many whites did, in the hope that the rightful owners would never find out. The majority of free black rural dwellers belonged to the ranks of landless laborers. The fortunate ones earned a living wage. The less fortunate labored for little more than food and shelter.

Opportunities were few and far between for free people who left the land and tried to make a living at something other than farming. In freedom, people searched for gainful employment wherever they could find it. They were not afraid of hard work. That was all most of them had known. However, few had exited slavery with much in the way of resources. If they had skilled trades they could not be sure that whites who had employed them when they had been someone's “property” would hire them once they were free.

Whites in different parts of the country had different ideas about what free black people should and should not be able to do for a living. In the cities of the North and Upper South, white working men complained vociferously about job competition, and whites of all classes conspired to prevent African Americans from becoming financially independent. In New York City in the 1820s, residents began a campaign against black chimney sweeps. They had not complained when the sweeps had been slaves, but once they were free their calls of “Sweep O, Sweep O” as they paraded through the streets allegedly disturbed the peace. White New Yorkers demanded that all sweeps get licenses, and they tried to make sure that no licenses went to black men. Carters and draymen also needed licenses, and whites wanted to ensure that
those
licenses went only to whites. This pattern of exclusion occurred in many other cities besides New York.

Learning a trade often enabled a slave to work his way out of bondage, but he might well not be able to pursue that trade as a free man. Frederick Douglass's master had leased him out to work in Baltimore's shipyards as a caulker. After he escaped in 1838, Douglass headed to the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, only to discover that no shipbuilder would employ him. In New Bedford, so he learned, skilled labor was the preserve of white men. That was the case in most communities in the North and the Upper South.