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Slavery in the North
Unnamed ^ | 2003 | Douglas Harper

Posted on 11/15/2004 12:05:16 PM PST by nosofar

African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.[1]

When the minutemen marched off to face the redcoats at Lexington in 1775, the wives, boys and old men they left behind in Framingham took up axes, clubs, and pitchforks and barred themselves in their homes because of a widespread, and widely credited, rumor that the local slaves planned to rise up and massacre the white inhabitants while the militia was away.[2]

African bondage in the colonies north of the Mason-Dixon Line has left a legacy in the economics of modern America and in the racial attitudes of the U.S. working class. Yet comparatively little is written about the 200-year history of Northern slavery. Robert Steinfeld's deservedly praised "The Invention of Free Labor" (1991) states, "By 1804 slavery had been abolished throughout New England," ignoring the 1800 census, which shows 1,488 slaves in New England. Recent archaeological discoveries of slave quarters or cemeteries in Philadelphia and New York City sometimes are written up in newspaper headlines as though they were exhibits of evidence in a case not yet settled (cf. “African Burial Ground Proves Northern Slavery,” The City Sun, Feb. 24, 1993).

(Excerpt) Read more at slavenorth.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: americanhistory; apologists; cornerstonespeech; rationalizers; roberttoombs; slavery
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To: muawiyah
In brief, you are suggesting this was an entirely UNLAWFUL operation.

Not at all. It was entirely legal to lease slaves from out-of-state.

101 posted on 11/18/2004 5:27:43 PM PST by Knitebane
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To: Knitebane
Hmmm. That'd probably explain why Uncle Jim Donald was always going over there ~ he had a bunch of slave-catchers buried out in his orchard.

I'll check on GGrandpa's personal diary over here in my cabinet to see if there's a reference to "salt".

102 posted on 11/18/2004 5:29:24 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah

The slave house is in Gallatin Co., but the county next door, where Harrisburg is, is called Saline Co., due to the salt mines there.


103 posted on 11/18/2004 5:30:48 PM PST by Knitebane
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To: Knitebane
BTW, sounds exactly like they had folks in Southern Illinois breaking the law.

Not surprising at all.

Doggone shame they had to adopt the same custom in Northern Illinois.

104 posted on 11/18/2004 5:31:49 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah

Well, there was a kernel of legality. Like I said, it was legal to lease slaves to work in the salt mines in Illinois, so Crenshaw would have had a cover to have slaves on his property. Technically you were allowed to have "indentured servants" for up to one year, after which they had to be sent back to their home state. It appears that Crenshaw worked that way for a while, but in the 1840s moved into the kidnapping racket. He was put on trial a couple of times for selling free families into slavery, but they were never able to convict him.


105 posted on 11/18/2004 5:32:15 PM PST by Heyworth
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To: muawiyah
Your reaction to all of this history reminds of the time that my aunt decided to research our family tree.

She kept going back until she found two brothers that had been hanged as horse theives and then she quit in horror. A lot of the records that she found and made copies of are still in the back of my grandmother's family bible.

I grew up in Illinois and as an amateur historian, I did a lot of research. The ugliness of the Chicagoland history is pretty well known, but the rest of the state has a lot of skeletons buried around too.

The county next door to where I grew up, Williamson, was called "Bloody Williamson" due to the gang wars in the 1930's.

Alexander, the southernmost county, and home to Cairo was a hot-bed of Copperheads and slave hunters, some of which were even county and state officials.

Abe Lincoln was not terribly popular in Illinois judging from the press clippings and the text of the speeches of some of his peers. He barely carried Illinois in the election of 1860. He was apparently entangled in a few minor ethical scandals, including some involving his wife, Mary Todd, who had a tendency to go wandering about at night and steal laundry from the yards of neighbors in Springfield. Lincoln allegedly bribed a magistrate to let her go when she as run in as a thief. Mary Todd Lincoln was later committed to an insane asylum by her son Robert.

The reality is that while Illinois was nominally a no-slavery state, many people in Illinois kept slaves well into the 1830s. A few people found loop-holes in the law that allowed them to use slaves that were technically owned by people in other states.

And because of the documentation that was left behind, either Lincoln knew about such practices or was too dense to know what business the people that worked his campaigns were in.

106 posted on 11/18/2004 5:49:26 PM PST by Knitebane
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To: Knitebane
Odds are Lincoln wanted to get elected, and it's probably always been customary in Illinois to avoid challenging the mob all that much.

BTW, we didn't stop at the hangings ~ my grandfather's first cousin was married to Dillinger, for example, and I discovered that only by keeping my eye on the comings, goings and doings of the Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born.

Still, you never really find everything first time around. Just the other day I noticed that Elliot Ness (Nese), of Untouchable's fame, had parents who were from "Northern Norway". One never proven story is that it was Dillinger who did the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago for the purpose of blaming that atrocity on Capone so that Ness could blow him and his gang away.

Well, the COTFB and "Northern Norway" have a lot in common, particularly the part of "Northern Norway" where the Smolt Sa'ami live, which is really Russia!

I will continue to watch for "evidence" that there was any connection between Ness and Dillinger through the COTFB ~ could be interesting stuff worth a screen play or two.

Oh, yes, Lincoln was a RAILROAD ATTORNEY ~ everybody in Illinois who wanted a railroad to go through their town rather than somebody else's town probably hated him.

107 posted on 11/18/2004 5:57:53 PM PST by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah
That's something that those who have semi-deified Lincoln seem to have ignored.

First and foremost, he was a politician, and politicians then were about they same as they are now.

108 posted on 11/18/2004 6:06:58 PM PST by Knitebane
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To: ProudVet77
Okay, I quit drinking rum....Am I absolved or should I still feel guilty?
109 posted on 11/18/2004 6:09:32 PM PST by pointsal
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Where have you seen me claim that SOME of the Ruling Class of the South was not well educated? Of course, most went to the North to obtain that education since that class cared little about developing educational institutions.

As usual, your claim is simply uneducated and unsubstantiated. Just looking at the southern presidents one can see that Jefferson went to a southern college (William and Mary), as did Monroe (W&M), as did Harrison (Hampden-Sydney), as did Tyler (W&M), as did Polk (UNC). Jefferson also founded a southern college (UVA) as did Patrick Henry (Hampden-Sydney). The University of Georgia was founded in 1785 - the first of any state to charter a university of its own. The University of South Carolina was founded in 1801. The University of North Carolina was founded in 1789, Tennessee in 1794, Alabama in 1831, Ole Miss in 1848, the predecessor of Tulane in 1834, and Florida in 1853. The Republic of Texas even had its first college operating in 1844. Put another way, almost every single southern state had one or more universities chartered within their borders before the civil war. The only exception I can even think of is Arkansas, which was a rural frontier state at the time.

Apparently you don't believe the facts and figures easily obtained from the Census regarding such matters.

The census data is very clear. Here are the 1850 stats for number of colleges in each state:

ALABAMA 5
ARKANSAS 3
CALIFORNIA 0
CONNECTICUT 4
DELAWARE 2
FLORIDA 0
GEORGIA 13
ILLINOIS 6
INDIANA 11
IOWA 2
KENTUCKY 15
LOUISIANA 5
MAINE 3
MARYLAND 11
MASSACHUSETTS 6
MICHIGAN 3
MISSISSIPPI 11
MISSOURI 9
NEW HAMPSHIRE 1
NEW JERSEY 4
NEW YORK 18
NORTH CAROLINA 5
OHIO 26
PENNSYLVANIA 22
RHODE ISLAND 1
SOUTH CAROLINA 8
TENNESSEE 17
TEXAS 2
VERMONT 5
VIRGINIA 12
WISCONSIN 2

You read that correctly, fake-it. In 1850 the state of Mississippi had more than twice as many colleges than the state of Massachusetts. In 1850 massachusetts also had fewer colleges than the states of Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Virginia. Those states plus Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina all had more colleges than Connecticut, more colleges than Rhode Island, more than Maine, more than New Hampshire, more than Wisconsin, more than Michigan, more than New Jersey, more than Iowa and as many as or more than Vermont. Only three yankee states had more colleges than all southern states - Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Lincoln's lack of education does not change the fact that he was one of the most brilliant politicians who ever lived

Did I ever say otherwise? He was still an uneducated and notoriously crass country bumpkin though.

110 posted on 11/18/2004 6:35:34 PM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Short of a clear Cornfederate victory there was NO chance that England was going to recognize the South. Outside delusional minds.

Then those with delusional minds must include Russell, the British foreign minister, and Palmerston, the British Prime minister.

111 posted on 11/18/2004 6:36:58 PM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
You keep confusing imports with exports. U.S. Tariffs had no effect on Illinois exports.

Wrong and wrong. Exports are necessarily effected by import tariffs as import tariffs alter both the costs at which exporters produce and the market on which they trade their goods. When one stops so does the other.

Many people supported tariffs even though it would hurt them personally because they believed them good for the nation as a whole.

Delusions such as those are not a matter of concern to me. What is a matter of concern though is (1) the fact that southerners consistently opposed tariffs as a region throughout the antebellum period and (2) that you misrepresent history if and when you suggest otherwise.

At the Founding representatives from all regions supported a tariff Madison and Jefferson as well as Hamilton.

You are obfuscating. The first tariff act in 1789 was for revenue purposes and was instituted at that time because the government needed tax money. Only three years later and southern opposition to tariffs had emerged. The tariff vote on April 19, 1792 to impose an expiration date on the tariff bill showed the clear sectional division for the first time. 19 out of 22 southerners favored it. 29 out of 42 northerners opposed it. The same trend persisted in 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1842 and so forth.

112 posted on 11/18/2004 6:44:36 PM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Though I realize you prefer to argue with yourself I must point out that I was correct the South controlled the Congress for most of the early 1800s. Opposition to the tariffs was not sufficient to defeat them.

You are simply incorrect. For a while the south held par in the senate due to the admission of new states but they quickly lost the house. Name me any single tariff bill from 1820 to 1861 and I will show you a vote where the southern members voted against protection.

Tariffs are placed on IMPORTS at any rate so your bilge is utterly irrelevent.

Tariffs effect all matters of trade. To suggest otherwise, as you have now done twice, indicates that you are both utterly ignorant and obstinate about clinging to that ignorance.

Per capita evaluations of the South's industrial prowess of course are beside the point particularly when comparing regions of lower population to regions of higher population.

Your ignorance is showing yet again. The very reason of taking per capita measurements instead of raw numbers is to account for the fact that population differences in multiple regions can and will skew them in any attempt to compare their differences! By converting the figures to per capita you REMOVE the skew of population, not add it!

113 posted on 11/18/2004 6:50:51 PM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: GOPcapitalist

Gee one would think that I claimed there were NO colleges in the South of course I didn't. Next I guess you will pretend that there were just as many educational establishments there as the North. Nor did I claim that none of the leaders went to Southern colleges and even you can't change the fact that far more of the ruling class members went to Northern colleges for their education. And I suppose you will pretend that the colleges in the South were just as good.

That list is interesting but the quality of education available at the vast majority of the schools in Mississippi
barely qualified as higher education at any rate. There were 81 schools in the Confederate states mostly new and without much merit but that won't stop you from pretending they were the equivalents of those with almost 200 yrs of history behind them.


114 posted on 11/18/2004 10:33:30 PM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: GOPcapitalist

It may since there was no chance that Britain was going to get involved.


115 posted on 11/18/2004 10:34:52 PM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: GOPcapitalist

The impact of tariffs on exports is indirect whereas I was speaking of direct effects.

Most did but not all.

Now you are finally agreeing with me that the first tariff was a revenue tariff after arguing with hundreds of words on other threads that it was an example of protectionism. Well better late than never.


116 posted on 11/18/2004 10:39:47 PM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: GOPcapitalist

One of the biggest factors in the paired admission of states was that it prevented the Senate from falling to Northern control.

Tariffs do not effect exports uniformly since they provide protection for some industries. Those can have the terms of trade tilted in their favor. Others have their exports reduced. But there is not a universal impact on all sectors contrary to your belief.

Since we were speaking about comparisions of power available the per capita evaluation becomes irrelevent. Switzerland may have as high a per capita income as the US but when you want to evaluate potential military power it becomes irreleven just as trying to compare per capita mileage leads you to no understanding or the 180 degree wrong conclusion. Georgia may have had as many miles per capita as NY but no one would conclude that gave it any particular advantage. Normalization of statistics does not clarify all things.


117 posted on 11/18/2004 10:47:13 PM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: U S Army EOD

Because their ruling classes were not as much controlled by the Slavers and because of Lincoln's political adroitness in heading them off. They had always been less controlled by the RAT party throughout their history which warded off some of the baleful influences later to destroy the others.


118 posted on 11/18/2004 10:50:25 PM PST by justshutupandtakeit (Public Enemy #1, the RATmedia.)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Gee one would think that I claimed there were NO colleges in the South of course I didn't.

No. You claimed that they didn't care about developing them when the facts conclusively show that most southern states had MORE colleges in 1850 than their northern counterparts.

That list is interesting but the quality of education available at the vast majority of the schools in Mississippi barely qualified as higher education at any rate.

Garbage. You don't even have the slightest clue what specific colleges are included on that list and thus lack both the information and the expertise to properly critique the quality of their education programs vis a vis another state's.

There were 81 schools in the Confederate states mostly new and without much merit

More garbage. The confederacy included some of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the country. I already gave you the founding dates of the major state universities and most of them are late 1700's or early 1800's. The confederacy also had William and Mary - the second oldest college on the north american continent and one of the most prestigious and best established schools in any state (it gave us 4 of our first 15 presidents).

but that won't stop you from pretending they were the equivalents of those with almost 200 yrs of history behind them.

You mean like William and Mary?

119 posted on 11/19/2004 12:01:41 AM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Since we're on the subject of 200 year histories and the sort, here are the all of the pre-revolutionary universities by year of their founding and their state:

1636 - Harvard (MA)
1693 - William and Mary (VA)
1696 - St. Johns (MD)
1701 - Yale (CT)
1742 - Moravian (PA)
1743 - University of Delaware (DE)
1746 - Princeton (NJ)
1749 - Augusta, now known as Washington and Lee (VA)
1754 - Columbia (NY)

1764 - Brown (RI)
1766 - Rutgers (NJ)
1769 - Dartmouth (NH)
1770 - Charleston College (SC) 1771 - Salem College (NC)
1773 - Dickinsen College (PA)
1775 - Hampden Sydney (VA)

So, what exactly can we glean from that list?

1. As of 1861 there was only ONE SINGLE COLLEGE in the country with a 200 year history - Harvard. The second oldest was William and Mary at 168 years.

2. Of the three 17th century colleges in North America, two were in southern states.

3. Of the 16 pre-revolutionary colleges in the United States, seven, or just under half, were on the southern side of the Mason-Dixon line.

4. The southern state of Virginia has more colonial era institutions of higher education than any other state, boasting three from before 1776.

In short, you were spouting garbage and once again you've been caught.

120 posted on 11/19/2004 12:19:51 AM PST by GOPcapitalist ("Marxism finds it easy to ally with Islamic zealotism" - Ludwig von Mises)
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