Posted on 03/02/2003 7:59:22 AM PST by groanup
Digs unearth slave plantations in North
By MIKE TONER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Slaveholding plantations, usually thought of as uniquely Southern institutions, were deeply rooted in the fabric of "free" states of the North as well, new archaeological studies are showing.
The hidden history of Northern plantations and their slaves is emerging -- one shovelful of soil at a time -- from excavations in and around historic manor houses in Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. From bits of china, kitchen utensils, tools, buttons and personal items, archaeologists are getting glimpses of a chapter of America's past that written histories have either ignored or forgotten.
Most Northern states abolished slavery before the Civil War. But recent excavations show that during the late 1700s and early 1800s, many of what later came to be called manors and landed estates were full-fledged plantations that held African-American slaves under conditions similar to those in the South.
"Historians are stunned by some of the evidence," said Cheryl LaRoche, a historical archaeologist at the University of Maryland.
"The popular notion is that slavery in the North consisted of two or three household servants, but there is growing evidence that there were slaveholding plantations," she said. "It's hard to believe that such a significant and pervasive part of the past could be so completely erased from our history."
Near Salem, Mass., archaeologists have excavated the ruins of a 13,000-acre plantation that produced grain, horses, barrel staves and dried meat. The owner, Samuel Browne, traded those goods for molasses and rum from the Caribbean. The graveyard shows at least 100 African-Americans were enslaved there from 1718 to 1780.
At Shelter Island on New York's Long Island, archaeologists have spent several years peeling open the grounds of present-day Sylvester Manor to reveal the traces of an 8,000-acre plantation that provisioned two sugar plantations in Barbados and made heavy use of African slave labor. During the late 1600s, at least 20 slaves there served as carpenters, blacksmiths, domestics and field hands.
"America was a slaveholding country -- North and South," said LaRoche. "Over the years, that reality has been lost, stolen or just strayed from the history books."
Fleshing out history
The United States banned the importation of new slaves in 1808, but that did not free the millions already in the country, or their descendants. Some states did take action, enacting bans one by one, so that by 1863 the practice was illegal in most of the North.
Because the written record of slavery from the slaves' point of view is so meager, archaeology -- with its emphasis on the physical landscape and material aspects of culture -- is emerging as an important means of filling in omissions and distortions.
"Artifacts can tell us how people washed their clothes, fed themselves, churned their butter and hitched their horses," said Orloff Miller of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati. "That's why archaeology can tell what it was like to live as a slave."
Some of the new evidence of Northern slaveholding plantations comes from excavations on the well-manicured grounds of historic estate homes, like the elegant Van Cortlandt Manor on the banks of New York's Croton River, where slaves worked in the fields and orchards.
Other discoveries are turning up in more humble, more endangered locations. In Morris County, N.J., plans for a park-and-ride transit station for New York commuters recently prompted the state to order archaeological investigations of the site, thought to have been home to the 18th century Beverwyck estate.
Before archaeologists finished, they had found the remains of more than 20 plantation buildings, including a dairy, blacksmith shop, distillery and quarters for at least 20 slaves that were part of a 2,000-acre provisioning operation for the owners' properties in the Caribbean.
Beneath the floor of the slave quarters, archaeologists found a set of iron shackles; small caches of pins, needles and beads; and ritualistic arrangements of cooking utensils that reflect the occupants' African origins.
"For a time, Beverwyck was one of the region's finest plantations, but it could only have reached that high state of cultivation through the forced labor of enslaved workers," said archaeologist Wade Catts of John Milner Associates, a New Jersey archaeology firm engaged in the project.
"For most of history, Beverwyck has been known primarily as one of the places that George Washington slept," he said. "Now the tangible evidence we've uncovered allows us to see it in a whole new light."
Catts said there was little doubt that other plantations in New Jersey also had significant slave populations.
As a science, archaeology is more than a century old. But only in the last few decades have researchers devoted much attention to the African-American component of sites, both in the North and the South.
"For a long time, archaeologists who studied plantations were mostly interested in the people who lived in the big house," said Syracuse University anthropologist Theresa Singleton, author of "The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life." "That didn't tell us much more about slaves than we learned from the histories by the people who enslaved them. Archaeology allows us to see history through a different lens."
Digging up a past that many would rather forget has had interesting results on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.
'Amnesia' recovery
Slave quarters have been reconstructed at Bulloch Hall, the Greek Revival mansion just off the town square in Roswell. Until archaeological excavations in the late 1990s helped identify the location of the structure, the only hint of the slaves who helped build the mansion in 1839 had been a simple sign pointing in the general direction of "the quarters."
In rural Mason County, Ky., archaeologists recently identified an old wooden barn as the country's only extant slave pen, one of the prisonlike compounds where slaves were kept overnight during transport from the East to the cotton fields of Mississippi and Louisiana in the mid-1800s.
The busloads of curiosity seekers who descended on the farm for a closer look prompted an ultimatum from the owner. Archaeologists could either remove the structure or he would tear it down. The building, disassembled one timber at a time, will soon be reconstructed at Cincinnati's Underground Railroad center.
In Philadelphia, when the new $9 million Liberty Bell Center opens this year, the grounds of the most famous icon of American independence -- and later the symbol of the abolitionist movement -- will now acknowledge an aspect of African-American history that almost got left out.
During excavations or the new center, archaeologists recovered thousands of artifacts from the red brick mansion where Washington stayed in Philadelphia. But it took public protests for the National Park Service to decide that the story of Washington's slaves deserved space in the pavilion, too.
"Most Philadelphians would be shocked to know that Washington had slaves with him in the city," said University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Gary Nash, who helped spur the Park Service decision.
The slave quarters, and any artifacts they hold, lie just outside the entrance to the new center. They were undisturbed by construction, and the Park Service plans to leave them in place, to be studied and interpreted at some future date.
"Written history is always subject to a kind of cultural amnesia. Some of it is deliberately forgotten and some of it is inadvertently lost," said Nash. "That's why artifacts and their context are so important. They can speak to us for the people who left no written record."
"There is always one flea a dog can't reach." Abraham Lincoln.
By 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation had the effect of eliminating all slavery in the USA. Lincoln further pushed the 13th amendment approval in the US House, personally ensuring 2/3rds majority vote. Lincoln was shot in the back and killed by one of those "southern gentlemen" before the states could ratify the 13th amendment, but clearly Lincoln was indeed fundamental in ending slavery in the US both in fact and in law.
Denial is not a river in Egypt.
The seceding states always seemed to mention slavery as a fundamental cause. Funny how the neo-Confederates want to sweep that under the rug.
THAT is a very debatable point. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no slave. It was a war measure. To quote A. Lincoln:
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it be freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union."
Abraham Lincoln to Horace Greeley, 22 August 1862.
By 1865 (before the ratification of the 13th amendment) slavery ceased to exist in the US. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had been the undoing of slavery -- it had wider effects than its literal interpretation. Lincoln (and the might of the north) freed the slaves -- nutty neo-Confederate claptrap to the contrary notwithstanding.
Cute.
"Although the South would have preferred any honourable compromise to the fratricidal war which has taken place, she now accepts in good faith its constitutional results, and receives without reserve the amendment which has already been made to the constitution for the extinction of slavery. This is an event that has long been sought, though in a different way, and by none has it been more earnestly desired than by citizens of Virginia."
Gen. R.E. Lee, 1866.
Spoken like a true neo-Confederate. Oh the poor maligned slaveowners. Woe is us.
At the heart of the arguments here are moral and emotional ideas of guilt and innocence, rather than more impersonal or objective concepts of causation or development. Also, there's a desire for clear answers and unambiguous characterizations. What was Woodrow Wilson's line on WWI? What was Churchill's attitude towards Stalin or Hitler? Or Reagan's approach to taxation? The answer is that these things changed over time. To be sure, there were constant convictions in the minds of such men, but practical policies changed as circumstances and opportunities changed.
So it was with Lincoln's attitude towards slavery. What was possible and desireable at the time changed as circumstances changed. But in contrast to many other politicians of the day, Lincoln did have a bedrock conviction that slavery was wrong, though practical accomodations would have to be made to circumstances and changing priorities.
We demand that everything be subjected to moral convictions that we have already come to agree on. But is that the case with contentious issues in our own day? Were there is no consensus, policy can't take on contentious questions head on. It has to procede by zigzags and half-measures, a step backwards for two forwards.
The controversy also gets complicated, because slavery was the issue in the 19th century, and people today are talking more about racial equality and integration, which were very radical ideas at the time. It was too much to ask for any serious candidate to office to support racial equality.
Well we all know this couldn't be true. The statists here on FR and the infinitely wise over at the Claremont Institute know much more than silly old facts
Some states did take action, enacting bans one by one, so that by 1863 the practice was illegal in most of the North.
Notice most, and considering that many of the states that had banned slavery didn't even allow blacks to live in their borders such as Oregon and lincoln's home state Illinois
And, those rumors that some of slaves were of European-American descent??? This internet is crazy...
Ff--150, now don't get upset. Everyone knows that all the 'valid' information comes from AOL chat sites. Well that and the World Socialist Web Site. That's where James McPherson gives us a three part interview on the 'real' causes of the war
Now can someone tell me again why we're supposed to listen to anything McPhernut has to say?
Gee how can that be, billbears? According to the census of 1860 there were 7,628 free blacks living in Illinois. That was more than the number of free blacks in Tennessee (7,300). That was more than twice as many as lived in Georgia (3,500). That was almot 3,000 more than the number of blacks in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas, and Florida combined (4,873). Even Oregon, teeny little Oregon, had almost as many free blacks (128) as there were in all of Arkansas (144), even though Arkansas had 8 times as many people as Oregon. So it seems that, once again, you're wrong, billbears. Better luck next time.
I don't think it's debatable at all. Emancipation Proclamation aside, President Lincoln was instrumental in getting the 13th Amendment passed in 1864-65 and sent to the states.
Another little touted FACT is that people in Africa and Asia, including those in Muslim countries, OWN SLAVES TODAY!
"Just the facts, Ma'am. Just the facts."The American Anti-Slavery Group is working hard to end this horror. They deserve the support of all of us.
Lol...FReepmail on the way...
No free Negro, or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of adoption of this constitution, shall ever come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contract, or maintain any suit therein; and the legislative assembly shall provide by penal laws for the removal by public officers of all such free negroes who shall bring them into the state, or employ or harbor them therein
For the better part of Illinois' antebellum history, free blacks were only allowed to enter the state after posting a $1000 bond. In 1848, Illinois changed its constitution to absolutely prohibit the entrance of free blacks. In 1853, Illinois enacted legislation to enforce the ban. Further, Indiana's Constitution barred free blacks from owning property or entering contracts. Perhaps we need to discuss how many free blacks there were in a slave state such as Virginia (58,042) or North Carolina (30,463) compared to the 'free' states of Vermont (709) and Maine (1,327). But did Oregon's constitution work? Well apparently it did because in 1860 only 128 free blacks lived in the state out of a population of 52,456. From my understanding of the Illinois codes, blacks could be grandfathered in, so that any that lived there before 1853 still lived there. But it looks as if Oregon and Vermont (who both sided with the union) did quite well in enforcing their black laws now doesn't it?
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