While the “free” states prohibited slavery, they certainly passed plenty of other laws enforcing the second-class citizenship of Black Americans. One example was the prohibition of immigration passed in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Oregon. Iowa passed an act in 1851 prohibiting the immigration of free Black people into the state. Every free Black citizen found in Iowa was given three days to leave the state once they were served public notice. Those that refused to leave were taken to court and, if convicted, ordered to pay a fine of two dollars a day for every day they remained in the state. Then they would be put in jail until they paid the fine or agreed to leave. The other three states adopted - in 1848, 1851, and 1857, respectively - anti-Black immigration clauses as part of their state constitution. Oregon not only punished the Black people who immigrated to the state, but also those who brought them.
We can see today how race-based immigration laws and enforcement continue the development of second-class citizenry.
For Black History Month, I’m setting a goal of posting a piece of lesser publicized history every day. Since i’m starting a little late, here are four posts rolled into one.
Slave Rebellions
One of the many problems with the way that US history is taught is the way it seems to portray slaves as passive - devoid of agency in their own liberation. The reality is that there were so many acts of rebellion - physical resistance, poisonings, stabbings, arsons, and other acts of vengeance - that it is impossible to create an accurate estimate of just how many occurred. I like this particular quote (sorry, but its unattributed):
The slaves destroyed tirelessly. Like the peasants in the Jacquerie or the Luddite wreckers, they were seeking their salvation in the most obvious way, the destruction of what they knew was the cause of their sufferings; and if they destroyed much it was because they suffered much.
Here are four of the many acts of slave rebellion:
- 1791-1804: The Haitian Revolution, led by General Toussaint l’Ouverture, was the only rebellion to liberate an entire slave population. The slaves succeeded in overthrowing the White planter class and proceeded to defeat the French, Spanish, and British forces. They used tactics that foreshadowed modern guerrilla warfare and proved that slaves could succeed in self-determination.
- 1862: The Confederacy, often to its detriment, used slaves as crew members on ships during the Civil War. Slave ship pilot Robert Smalls of the steamship Planter, along with other slave members of the crew, stole the ship out of the Charleston harbor. Smalls navigated the ship into a Union harbor, where he was made captain of the Planter and set sail against the Confederacy.
- 1856: Henry “Box” Brown, a slave in Richmond, VA, ordered a 3×2x2-foot box and had himself mailed to freedom in Philadelphia. The journey took 26 hours and he carried with him a jug of water and a few biscuits.
- 1812-1816: After the War of 1812, over three hundred slaves occupied an abandoned British fort in what is now Florida. The heavily armed fort became a symbol for Black independence and the US government made destruction of the fort one of its highest priorities. In July 1816, the US Army and Navy launched an attack on the fort but were defeated. However, a second attack hit the ammunitions supply, and the fort exploded. Only 64 of the 300 fort residents survived, and only three of the 64 were uninjured. The fort’s leader, Garcia, was killed by firing squad and the remaining survivors were returned to slavery.
Some White people refused to believe that these acts of rebellion could possibly be caused by a desire for liberation. Instead, it was viewed as a mental illness and was even given a name by Dr. Cartwright, drapetomania. I believe these days we would call it Oppositional Defiance Disorder.
