Page 285 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Although these tales often had an African origin, they also served as an allegory for
11.1 the black view of the master–slave relationship. Other stories—which were not told in
front of whites—openly portrayed the slave as a clever trickster outwitting the master.
Finally, slave religion, often practiced secretly at night and led by black preachers,
11.2 gave African Americans a chance to create their own world. Religion seldom inspired
Quick Check slaves to open rebellion, but it encouraged community, solidarity, and self-esteem by
How successful were the Vesey giving them something infinitely precious of their own. Many religious songs referred
Conspiracy and Nat Turner to the promise of freedom, or demanded that an oppressor “let my people go.” Nat
11.3 Insurrection?
Turner was a free black preacher.

Free Blacks in the Old South

Free blacks occupied an increasingly precarious position in the antebellum South.
White southerners’ fears of free blacks inciting slave revolts (like Turner’s), and their
reaction to abolitionists’ attacks, led slaveholders after 1830 to defend slavery as a posi-
tive good rather than a necessary evil. This defense was racist, emphasizing a dual
image of the black person: Under the “domesticating” influence of a white master,
the slave was a happy child; outside of this influence, he was a savage beast. As whites
strove to convince themselves and northerners that blacks were happy in slavery, they
more frequently portrayed free blacks as savages who needed to be reined in.
Beginning in the 1830s, all the southern states cracked down on free blacks. Laws
forced free people of color to register or have white guardians who were responsible
for their behavior. Free blacks had to carry papers proving their status. In some states,
they needed permission to move from one county to another. Licensing laws excluded
blacks from several occupations, and the authorities often prevented blacks from hold-
ing meetings or forming organizations. Vagrancy and apprenticeship laws forced free
blacks into economic dependency barely distinguishable from outright slavery.
Although beset by special problems of their own, most free blacks identified with
the suffering of the slaves; when they could, they protested against the peculiar institu-
tion and worked for its abolition. Many of them had once been slaves themselves or
were the children of slaves; often their relatives were still in bondage. They knew that
the discrimination from which they suffered was rooted in slavery and the racial atti-
tudes that accompanied it. As long as slavery existed, their own rights were likely to
be denied. Even their freedom was at risk; former slaves who could not prove they had
been legally freed could be reenslaved. This threat existed even in the North: Under
federal fugitive slave laws, escaped slaves had to be returned to bondage. Even blacks
who were born free were not safe. Kidnapping or fraudulent seizure by slave-catchers
was always a risk.
Because of the elaborate system of control and surveillance, free blacks in the
South could do little to work against slavery. Most found that survival depended on
creating the impression of loyalty to the planter regime. In the Deep South, relatively
privileged free people of color, mostly of racially mixed origin, were sometimes per-
suaded that it was to their advantage to preserve the status quo. As skilled artisans
and small-business owners dependent on white favors and patronage, they had little
incentive to risk everything by taking the side of the slaves. In southern Louisiana,
a few mulatto planters even lived in luxury, supported by the labor of other African
Americans.
However, although some free blacks created niches of relative freedom, their
position in southern society became increasingly precarious. Beginning in the 1830s,
southern whites sought to make the line between free and unfree a line between black
and white. Free blacks were an anomaly in this system; increasingly, the southern
Quick Check answer was to exclude, degrade, and even enslave those free people of color who
What was life like for freed slaves in remained within their borders. Just before the Civil War, a campaign developed to
the South? carry the repression and discrimination to its logical conclusion: State legislatures
proposed forcing free people of color to choose between leaving the state or being
enslaved.
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