African Americans in the early republic
Enslaved African Americans
The overwhelming majority of African Americans in antebellum America were enslaved in the southern states. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, enslaved peoples accounted for approximately 90% of the African American population of the United States. As you have previously learned, and as will become more apparent in the next chapter, the near quadrupling of the enslaved population during the first half of the 19th century, from approximately 900,000 enslaved persons to over 3.2 million enslaved persons in 1850, was met with increasing condemnation from growing numbers of anti-slavery advocates, including abolitionists, as well as forceful endorsements by southern planters and politicians of slavery as beneficial and uplifting for everyone, especially the enslaved.
Resistance to slavery
As mentioned in earlier lessons, enslaved persons did not meekly accept their confinement and accompanying abuse and exploitation. Rather, enslaved persons engaged in various forms of both active and passive resistance, including defiance, running away, intentionally misunderstanding commands and instruction, and slowing down the work process whenever possible. In the most extreme cases of resistance, enslaved persons fought back, including through organized armed resistance. The most important rebellions of enslaved persons in antebellum America were the German Coast rebellion in Louisiana in 1811 and Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia in 1831. While neither of these rebellions by enslaved persons ended slavery in Louisiana and Virginia, these rebellions, and fears of other rebellions inspired by these and the successful enslaved-led rebellion in Haiti in the late 18th and very early 19th centuries, terrified slaveowners and millions of other white people in the south.
Samuel Warner, Authentic and Impartial Account of the Tragical Scene, 1831
Southern racial laws and taboos
As you will read below, northern and western states enacted significant racially-based restrictions on free African Americans residing in their states and often permitted slaveowners to bring enslaved persons with them into these states. Because of the prevalence of slavery, and the associated wealth derived from slave owning, within the southern states, racial barriers and restrictions were even harsher and more stringently enforced. The small numbers of free African Americans in the south often faced skepticism and hostility about their legal status as free people with frequent demands for them to prove their status as free people by showing their documents, or papers.
One of the south’s worst kept secrets was the fact that many slaveowners, including prominent planters and politicians like Thomas Jefferson, fathered children with enslaved women. Many of these slaveowners were married, meaning that they had committed adultery; more alarming is the fact that, given the vastly unequal legal statuses and sanctions attached to slaveowners and enslaved persons, particularly women, the vast majority of these relationships were nonconsensual.
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 1861
A precarious existence - African Americans in the free states
While slavery was formally ended in most northern states before the Civil War, the processes and timelines by which slavery was outlawed varied. New York (1827), Pennsylvania (1847), Connecticut (1848), Rhode Island (1853), New Hampshire (1857), and New Jersey (1865) did not formally ban the ownership and trade of enslaved persons for decades after independence. Even in northern states that outlawed slavery earlier, or never permitted slavery as a result of the Northwest Ordinance (1787), free African Americans often comprised less than 2% of the overall population of the state; New Jersey was a comparative outlier with nearly 5% of its 1850 population consisting of free African Americans whereas Maine, New Hampshire and Wisconsin all had African American populations constituting less than .5% of their state populations in 1850.
A few northern states allowed free African Americans to vote in the late 18th century, but New Jersey rescinded the right to vote for African Americans and the few women who had previously voted there in 1807, while in 1828 New York imposed significant property requirements for African American men to vote while simultaneously removing these property requirements for white men, and Pennsylvania ended voting by African American men in 1837. These prohibitions against voting by African American men were reinforced by restrictions against African Americans serving on juries, holding political office, and being discriminated against, both formally and informally, in education, employment, housing, land ownership and transportation. African Americans in the north who assisted with the Underground Railroad, an elaborate network of people and groups in the north and south who helped enslaved people escape from bondage and exploitation, faced harsher penalties than whites for the same acts.
African Americans confronted myriad legal and social obstacles in the antebellum period.
Enslaved persons, comprising approximately 90% of the African American population of the antebellum United States, were bought, sold, and traded in increasing numbers after the expansion of the “cotton kingdom” of the south.
Resistance by enslaved persons took many forms, with the most extreme being armed rebellion, including Nat Turner’s Rebellion in Virginia in 1831; the prospect of armed rebellion terrified slaveowners and others who supported this system of forced labor.
Free African Americans, throughout the country, faced enormous restrictions on their legal rights to own property and were prohibited from exercising many fundamental constitutional rights.