African American History

B

Underground Railroad

Many members of interracial antislavery societies added their efforts to the work of black churches and other black organizations in a vast informally organized network known as the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad helped shelter and transport fugitive slaves who had escaped from the South. Most escaped slaves remained in Northern communities, but some fled to black settlements in Canada, where they would be safe from recapture. Although most slaves found aid from the Underground Railroad only when they reached the North, some were aided by such 'conductors' as Harriet Tubman who ventured into the South to lead people to freedom. Through this underground, fugitives from slavery also escaped to freedom in the West Indies, Mexico, and Native American territories in Florida and the West.

Abolitionist networks were also activated in cases like the Amistad case. In 1839, 53 captured Africans being transported to Havana, Cuba killed the crew of the ship, the Amistad, and captured the vessel. Attempting to return the ship to Africa, they were eventually taken into custody by American officials off the coast of Long Island, New York, and charged with piracy and murder. Antislavery forces convinced former President John Quincy Adams to defend them and publicized their plight in newspapers and public meetings. Black communities and antislavery activists mobilized to raise funds, producing a play in New York, selling portraits of the leader of the captured Africans, Joseph Cinque, and holding antislavery events. After appeals, the Supreme Court finally freed those Africans who survived their two-year imprisonment on the grounds that they had been kidnapped in an illegal slave trade and had acted in self-defense.

During the 1840s black abolitionists became increasingly impatient with their slow progress and determined to widen the antislavery struggle. New Yorker David Ruggles called for slave uprisings in the pages of the Liberator in 1841. Black leaders began to more openly support violence to protect fugitives from being returned to slavery. But the growing power of the proslavery forces was signaled at the end of the decade when Texas joined the Union as a slave state.

IX

The Critical Decade of the 1850s

Growing conflict between Southern slaveholding interests and Northern antislavery activists prompted Congress to negotiate the Compromise of 1850. The act satisfied the antislavery factions on some points such as admitting California as a free state and abolishing slave trading in the nation's capital. However, it appeased the proslavery factions by including a new law to protect slaveholders' recovery of escaped slaves.

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A

Fugitive Slave Act

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was much stronger than an earlier 1793 fugitive slave law. Armed with a legal affidavit describing the fugitive, a slaveowner or his representative need only convince a federal commissioner that a captive was his property. No court or trial was necessary, and no defense was guaranteed. Particularly infuriating to blacks and other abolitionists was the provision that compelled bystanders to assist in captures or face fines and imprisonment.

Antislavery forces organized vigilance committees to protect fugitive slaves from the increased danger, and many were rescued from slavecatchers. For example, abolitionists spirited William and Ellen Craft out of Boston and sent them to England; a group of blacks burst into a Boston hearing room, freed Shadrach Minkins (known in Boston as Fred Wilkins) and carried him to Canada; a crowd in Syracuse overwhelmed jail guards and freed Jerry McHenry. There were also many unsuccessful rescue attempts, such as the cases of Thomas Sims in 1851 and Anthony Burns in 1854, both of whom were returned to slavery after reaching Boston. Such events generated public sympathy for the antislavery cause. Resistance to the federal law in Boston was so strong that 2000 soldiers were required to escort Anthony Burns to the ship that returned him to Virginia.

B

Dred Scott Case

Black anger and pessimism increased in 1857 when the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case. Scott, a slave, had sued for freedom based on his having lived with his master for two years in the free territory of present-day Minnesota. In a major victory for slaveholders, the Court not only refused Scott’s petition for freedom but declared that blacks were not American citizens. Further, it decided that Congress could not bar slavery from the Western territories.

Such developments in the 1850s led blacks to become more militant and fueled renewed interest in emigration among a minority of African Americans. Converts to militant black nationalism included Martin R. Delany who led an exploratory expedition to Africa in 1859.

When white abolitionist John Brown laid plans to ignite and arm slave uprisings, he found many black supporters. Five African Americans were among the 18 men whom Brown led in a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859. Although the raid failed and Brown was hanged, black community gatherings commemorated John Brown's martyrdom, and many considered Harpers Ferry the first skirmish in a war against slavery.

X

The American Civil War

At the start of the American Civil War (1861-1865), most white Americans in the North were not willing to fight to end Southern slavery. They fought instead to preserve the Union and prevent slavery from spreading into the Western territories. Many opposed expanding slave territory because they believed that slaves were unfair competition to free labor.

Many Southerners fought to protect and expand slavery because they believed that limiting slavery would lead to its destruction. Even most Southerners who did not own slaves considered slavery the essential foundation of 'the Southern way of life.' 'This country without slave labor would be completely worthless,' one soldier from Mississippi argued. Even though most owned no slaves, they would 'fight forever,' an Alabama soldier vowed, 'rather than submit to freeing Negroes among us.'

African Americans hoped the Civil War would bring about the abolition of slavery. In anticipation, they formed military units in many Northern cities in the 1850s.

War finally came in the spring of 1861, and eleven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed their own nation, the Confederate States of America (or Confederacy). The black military units offered their service to the United States, but the federal government initially refused to accept African American troops. Lincoln feared that doing so would encourage the slaveholding border states to join the Confederacy. As casualties mounted during 1862, however, U.S. military commanders sometimes recruited black soldiers without explicit authority. Finally in July 1862 Congress gave the president authority to use black troops.

In the South slave labor on farms and in factories freed more whites to fight in the war. The slaves, however, demonstrated their desire for freedom by escaping from Confederate plantations by the tens of thousands. In the beginning of the war, some Northern commanders returned slaves to their masters, and others forced escapees to work for the U.S. Army. Then, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln turned U.S. war aims toward slavery's destruction by issuing his Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves held by those Southerners still in rebellion.

During the war, African American soldiers who served in the Union Army were paid less than white soldiers and suffered racist treatment. Confederates declared they would not treat captured black soldiers and their white officers as legitimate prisoners of war. Instead they threatened to treat captured black soldiers as runaway slaves and to execute their white officers. At Fort Pillow, Tennessee, Confederate forces commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest, later an organizer of the Ku Klux Klan, murdered hundreds of captured black soldiers in 1864. 'Remember Fort Pillow' became a rallying cry for black soldiers who became more determined to defeat the Confederacy.

By the end of the war, the United States had depended on the services of over 200,000 black soldiers and sailors, 24 of whom received the Medal of Honor.

In April 1865 the Union defeated the Confederacy, and slavery came to an end. President Lincoln acknowledged the critical role black troops had played in winning the war. A few days later, on April 15, Lincoln was assassinated, and Vice-President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee became president. In December of that year the states ratified the 13th amendment that formally abolished slavery. However, the U.S. victory and the end of slavery did not bring complete freedom to Southern blacks. Instead, the process of rebuilding the Union, known as Reconstruction, began.

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