African American History: Free Black Population (Discrimination Faced by Free Blacks)

African American History: Free Black Population (Discrimination Faced by Free Blacks)

The first federal census in 1790 recorded nearly 60,000 free blacks, compared to more than 690,000 who lived in slavery. Although most African Americans lived in the South (about 90 percent), 27,000 lived in the North. South and North, free blacks tended to concentrate in urban areas, since cities afforded employment opportunities, greater freedom of movement, and larger concentrations of people to support churches, schools, and other organizations.

However, African Americans faced many obstacles and prejudices not encountered by whites, even in areas where slavery had been abolished. They were barred from most educational institutions, limited to the least desirable residential and farming areas, often prohibited from practicing trades and opening businesses, and generally segregated in public conveyances and public worship. Except in a few New England states where their numbers were small, black voting was restricted. In many states, especially in the Midwest, they could not serve on juries or testify against whites in court.

Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa prohibited black immigration, and Illinois threatened bondage for blacks who attempted to locate there permanently. In 1807 Ohio passed a series of ‘black codes‘ requiring free blacks to post a $500 bond assuring their good conduct and self-support before they could settle in the state. Although these restrictive laws were irregularly enforced, free blacks lived under their constant threat.

African Americans’ job opportunities were always restricted, and poverty was a continuing problem. Ironically, black skilled artisans were more likely to find employment in the South than in Northern cities where they faced competition from European immigrants. Most free black men in the North worked as servants, as day laborers finding temporary work where they could, or as sailors aboard trading ships or whalers. Black women most often worked as maids, laundresses, or cooks in homes, hotels, restaurants, or other businesses.

 

The Acadian Expulsion

The Acadian Expulsion began as a prelude to their neutrality. In 1749 the British founded Halifax, Nova Scotia, and began to import settlers into Nova Scotia for the first time. During the 1750s, as tensions between Britain and France built toward the French and Indian War (1754-1763), most Acadians remained committed to neutrality as the French and British skirmished over their holdings in the region. The British increasingly distrusted Acadian neutrality and Acadian trade with the French in Louisbourg.

In the summer of 1755, the Nova Scotia military council ordered the deportation of all Acadians from the colony. During the initial months of the expulsion, the British shipped about 7,000 Acadians south to British colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. After the fall of Louisbourg to the British in 1758, Britain cleared Île Royale and sent thousands more Acadians to Britain and France, as well as to North and South America. Some of those deported died en route, and others were separated from their families. Others fled to Québec. By 1762 only some 1,500 Acadians remained in the Maritime region.

Following the deportation, immigrants from New England resettled most Acadian lands. Scattered across three continents, Acadians began to establish new communities. By 1800 close to 3,000 of these exiles had made their way to Louisiana, where the former Acadians became known over time as Cajuns. Also by that time, substantial numbers returned to the Maritime region, bringing the French-speaking population there to more than 8,000. Acadians founded rural communities in scattered locations where they subsisted through small-scale farming, fishing, and working in the woods. The Acadian Expulsion was one incidence that showed the suffering of ordinary people as a result of the tension between two opposing colonial powers.

Related articles

• Acadian Neutrality under British Control (egrejeen.wordpress.com)
• The Survival of Acadian Culture (egrejeen.wordpress.com)

The Later Movements of Abolitionism in the United States

The Later Movements of Abolitionism in the United States was inspired by the continual subjugation of black people who were seen as inferior to whites. Two factors account for the radicalization of American abolitionism during the late 1820s and early 1830s. First, the growing agitation of black abolitionists and signs of black unrest in the South inspired urgency among white abolitionists, who feared that maintaining slavery, would lead to more violence. In 1822 free black Denmark Vesey unsuccessfully conspired to lead a massive slave revolt in Charleston, South Carolina; in 1829 David Walker of Boston published his inflammatory Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World; and in 1831 Nat Turner launched a short-lived but bloody slave uprising in Virginia.

Second, a wave of evangelical revivalism called the Second Great Awakening inspired a reform spirit in the North. The revivalists argued that America was in need of moral regeneration by dedicated Christians. They channeled their fervor into a series of reforms designed to eliminate evils in American society. These reforms included women’s rights, temperance, educational improvements, humane treatment for the mentally ill, and the abolition of slavery. Although not all revivalists were abolitionists, during the mid-19th century the abolitionist movement acquired a new urgency and energy because of their support.

These two developments influenced the extraordinary career of William Lloyd Garrison, a white New Englander who became the leading American abolitionist. Garrison began publishing a weekly abolitionist newspaper called The Liberator in 1831. In 1833 Garrison, convinced that slavery was a sin and hoping to avoid more violence, brought together Quaker abolitionists, evangelical abolitionists, and his New England associates to form the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS). It aimed at immediate, uncompensated emancipation and equal rights for blacks. Among early leaders of the AASS were white abolitionists such as Arthur and Lewis Tappan, Lucretia Coffin Mott, Theodore Weld, and Lydia Maria Child, and black abolitionists such as James Forten and Robert Purvis.

Although the so-called immediate abolitionists were never more than a tiny minority of Americans, the AASS spread rapidly across the North. By 1838 the society claimed 1,350 affiliates and 250,000 members. It employed speakers, sent petitions to the U.S. Congress, and mailed abolitionist propaganda into the South. These efforts produced a fierce reaction. North and South, angry white mobs opposed changes in race relations. Southern postmasters refused to deliver antislavery literature, and in 1835 President Andrew Jackson unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to ban the mailing of abolitionist pamphlets. The following year, the House of Representatives passed the gag rule (see Gag Rules), which banned the introduction of abolitionist petitions in that body. In 1837 abolitionist newspaper publisher Elijah P. Lovejoy was killed in Illinois while trying to protect his printing press from a mob.

By the late 1830s, the AASS also faced internal division. Fierce resistance to abolitionism convinced Garrison and his associates that the entire nation—not just the South—had to be cleansed of oppression. In addition to their abolitionist activities, so-called Garrisonians became advocates of women’s rights, denounced organized religion as proslavery, and condemned all governments for their use of force. It was sinful, Garrisonians contended, to vote or to hold office. Other abolitionists had a more traditional view of women, hoped to get the churches to join the abolitionist cause, sought to engage in politics, and were not entirely opposed to using violent means.

The result was the fracturing of the AASS. While the Garrisonians retained control of a much-reduced version of that organization, two new groups emerged. In 1840 Lewis Tappan led evangelical abolitionists of both races in forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society to foster abolitionism in the nation’s churches. The same year, other non-Garrisonians formed the Liberty Party to nominate abolitionist candidates for public office.

The Liberty abolitionists were themselves divided into two factions. The radical political abolitionists of western New York, under the leadership of Gerrit Smith, declared slavery to be illegal everywhere and urged Northerners to go to the South to help slaves escape. A more numerous Liberty group, centered in Cincinnati, rejected these provocative tactics. It contended that Northerners must concentrate on ending slavery where Congress had jurisdiction—in the territories and the District of Columbia—while encouraging the formation of abolitionist political parties in the Southern states. The later movements of abolitionism in the United States were significantly influenced by some white minorities who disagreed with their white counterparts on the essence of slavery which they saw as inhuman.