Black Refugees Research Articles

Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815–1860 (review)

Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860. By Harvey Amani Whitfield. (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 2006. Pp. 200. Maps. Cloth, $65.00; Paper, $24.95.)Reviewed by W. Bryan Rommel-RuizIn his timely and important study of the Black Refugees from the War of 1812, Harvey Amani Whitfield has reminded us that the black communities established in Nova Scotia in the nineteenth century were among the connected nodes of black freedom in the Atlantic world. Whitfield traces the regional, cultural, and social histories of the Black Refugees, a constellation of former American slaves who fled to the British Army during the war, from the Chesapeake and Lowcountry (primarily Virginia and Georgia's Sea Islands). Ultimately, he confronts a profound issue: How did the cultural and social worldviews of the Black Refugees with such deep roots in American slavery endure migration and resettlement to Nova Scotia? Much as American historians have discovered in their studies of nineteenth-century urban black communities in the American North, Whitfield sees the ways in which economic, social, and political marginalization in Nova Scotia promoted a black racial consciousness, becoming the impetus for community development, political action, and identity formation. As Whitfield demonstrates, the Black Refugees embraced their identity as subjects of the British monarchy, and moved from that position to advocate for their rights as citizens in Nova Scotia.Blach on the Border opens with two narratives: The history of blacks in Nova Scotia and the history of American slavery in the Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Weaving together Canadian and American historiography, Whitfield illuminates the ways in which the longer history of blacks in Nova Scotia, particularly the legacies of the Black Loyalists and Jamaican Maroons, influenced the Black Refugee experience. Furthermore, he demonstrates how slave culture and society in the American South shaped their lives in nineteenth-century Nova Scotia. These histories and traditions would collide and define the contours of black life in this maritime Canadian province. Like the Black Loyalists during the Revolutionary War, the Black Refugees were promised land and freedom for their support of the British military. And similar to the Black Loyalist experience, this next wave of black American migrants encountered a government and communities in Nova Scotia hostile to their arrival. Indeed, the Black Refugees discovered a harsher racial climate because of the history of tense race relations in the province. Ultimately nearly half of the Black Loyalists left to help found the Afro-British colony of Sierra Leone, and most of the Jamaican Maroons left Nova Scotia as well. Many white Nova Scotians hoped the Black Refugees would follow these earlier examples and leave the colony. While a few of the Refugees would accept the offer of removal to the Caribbean, most decided to stay and make a life in Nova Scotia.It is in the stories of the struggles and hardships of the Black Refugees in the early years of their settlement that we see the richness of Whitfield's research. Significantly, Chesapeake blacks settled in Preston, a rural area outside of Dartmouth (a suburb of Halifax) while Lowcountry migrants settled in Hammonds Plains, another area bordering the seaport, although distant from the black community in Preston. Looking at the petitions submitted by Black Refugees for land and supplies, Whitfield discovered work patterns that paralleled the black experience in the American South, particularly in the insistence of the Refugees to pursue farming and practice traditional artisan trades, occasionally engaging the urban labor market in Halifax. In their work and labor, the Black Refugees were practicing cultural and social traditions tied to their experience in American slavery, and identified their commitment to farming with ideas of independence and freedom. …

'A Less Favourable Specimen': The Abolitionist Response to Self-Emancipated Slaves in Sierra Leone, 1793–1808

'A Less Favourable Specimen':The Abolitionist Response to Self-Emancipated Slaves in Sierra Leone, 1793-1808 Cassandra Pybus (bio) When on 23 February 1807 the bill to abolish the slave trade passed the house of commons, William Wilberforce was exultant. 'Well, Henry', he playfully demanded of his cousin and close colleague Henry Thornton, 'what shall we abolish next?' To which Thornton replied, 'The Lottery, I think.'1 This scene of pious self-congratulation has been replayed over and over in the literature on abolition, yet rarely has it been questioned for what it reveals of the moral ambivalence of these two evangelical heavyweights. This exchange was not simply a rare moment of jocularity; the lottery was the institution most likely to galvanize the abolitionist zeal of the Clapham Sect, whereas the terrible institution of slavery was simply not on their agenda.2 The very next day Wilberforce spoke forcefully against a bill for the gradual abolition of slavery, arguing that slaves must first be trained for freedom. He reiterated the view that he had articulated in the Commons in 1804 that enslaved Africans were not 'fit to receive freedom', and so it would be 'madness to attempt to give it to them'.3 Wilberforce spoke with conviction as a result of his experience as a director of the Sierra Leone Company, which had established a settlement for freed slaves on the west coast of Africa. Henry Thornton was the company chairman and several fellow evangelical abolitionists also served as directors. It is in their response to the emancipated slaves of Sierra Leone that their ambivalence toward enslaved Africans can most clearly be seen.4 A settlement for runaway slaves had been the brainchild of Granville Sharp, champion of James Somerset and the Zong case.5 A passionate anti-slavery advocate, [End Page 97] Sharp was one of the founders of the anti-slavery committee in 1787, which became, rather to his dismay, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (or London Committee).6 Into the creation of a 'Province of Freedom' he poured all his deepest convictions about humanity and justice among people of all races. Even though the people to be settled there were mostly illiterate and had suffered the demoralizing experience of slavery, Sharp believe they would be as capable of self-government as any. His plan for governance allowed all males over 16 a vote in the common council where power would reside. Households were divided into tens, called tithings, each of which would elect a tithingman, while every 100 households would choose a hundredor. Each person over 16, regardless of sex, was entitled to a one-acre town lot and a small farm, but overall the land was the responsibility of the community as a whole, with a majority vote to dispose of it. As he conceived it, the 'Province of Freedom' should be quite independent, where the settlers could make any laws not inconsistent with Britain's, hold their own courts and elect their own leaders.7 It was the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, under the chairmanship of Henry Thornton, which put Sharp's plan into action. In May 1787 it hastily settled some 340 black refugees from North America on land at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River, which had been 'purchased' from a local chief of the Koya Temne.8 However this settlement did not turn out as Sharp had envisaged. It was an unmitigated disaster.9 When early in 1791 a rescue mission arrived in Sierra Leone, it found only 46 survivors who had been driven out of the settlement by the local chief and were clinging to life on a swampy island in the river mouth. Sharp's anguished appeals for government assistance fell on deaf ears, so he then turned to his abolitionist friends to provide a stable economic base for his 'poor little ill-thriven swarthy daughter, the unfortunate colony of Sierra Leone'. The new plan was to establish a trading enterprise in Sierra Leone that would be an alternative to the abhorrent slave trade, as well as a base for spreading christianity throughout the heathen continent. He recruited Thornton, together...

A Rejected Alternative: Union Policy and the Relocation of Southern "Contrabands" at the Dawn of Emancipation

HISTORIANS CONTINUE TO DISAGREE ABOUT HOW DEEPLY THE NEGATIVE attitudes of northern whites toward blacks influenced politics during the Civil War. Increasingly scholars do agree that powerful prejudice against blacks prevailed among white northerners of foreign and southern birth and ancestry, especially in the Middle West, and some researchers go on to say that these feelings reinforced wartime support for black colonization abroad and delayed President Abraham Lincoln's embrace of emancipation. Yet only few writers argue that antiblack prejudice in the North also influenced the Lincoln administration's decision to utilize and protect the freedpeople in the South, rather than to facilitate their movement out of the war-torn region. (1) This lack of academic consensus may stem in part from the scant consideration given to the ways racial anxieties affected politics in the staunchly antislavery New England states. Other than brief mentions, historians have also failed to scrutinize the consequences that racial attitudes there had for the plight of southern black refugees and for Union policy toward emancipation and the freedpeople. This article examines an influential case in point, scarcely studied, abortive effort in 1862 to send black refugees from Virginia to Massachusetts. (2) The relocation initiative originated at Fortress Monroe, Union foothold near the tip of Virginia's lower peninsula. It began September 12, 1862, when General John A. Dix, the Union commander, asked Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton for authorization to communicate and make arrangements with the Governors of Massachusetts and other Northern to grant temporary asylum to approximately two thousand colored men, women, and children currently encamped at and near Old Point Comfort. Dix complained that the contraband negroes--runaway and abandoned slaves--at and near the fortress had always been and are now very great source of embarrassment to the troops in this garrison and in the camps hereabouts and to the white population in this neighborhood. If the fortress were approached or besieged by Confederates, he would, he claimed, feel obliged to ship them all to the North, something that would need to be done without needless delay and if possible, with the concurrence of the authorities of the State or States to which they may be sent. (3) Dix's urgency partly sprang from the vulnerability of the fortress to Confederate attack. (4) Equally troubling were the living conditions and treatment of refugees who lived within Union lines on narrow strip of land that stretched from Hampton and Fortress Monroe to Newport News. Despite the efforts of the Union army, northern missionaries, and the refugees themselves, including many who had been put to work by the military, it proved difficult to provide adequate employment, medical care, food, shelter, and protection to so many uprooted people in hostile territory. (5) During and after General George B. McClellan's campaign on the peninsula in the summer of 1862, conditions worsened. Of the thirty-one hundred refugees living at or near the fortress in early September, Dix estimated that the thirteen hundred who had been housed in tents had been decimated by exposure and disease. Mortality and had even led a considerable number to obtain permission to return to their masters.... Many privations were manmade, sometimes caused by Confederate troops and sympathizers but mainly brought on by Union soldiers whose conduct propelled Dix to claim that close contact between the refugees and the army was not calculated to improve the moral condition of either.... (6) The plan to transfer refugees to the North had the support of Charles B. Wilder, superintendent of contrabands at Fortress Monroe and an employee of the American Missionary Association until the fall of 1862 when Dix put him on the army's payroll. A frequent critic of the army's treatment of refugees and of its failure to pay them full and overdue wages, Wilder had turned to Massachusetts for help. …

Fatal Flood

The 1927 Mississippi River flood is a major part of the historical memory of the Mississippi Delta. Anyone interviewing residents of the Delta who lived through the disaster will find that the flood always emerges as a topic, regardless of the subject of the interview. Memories of the flood, however, are shaped by the contours of race and class that defined the plantation economy, which stretched from southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas to the Gulf of Mexico. This vast region, broadly defined as the Mississippi Delta, was known in the early twentieth century for harsh labor practices that included convict labor, peonage, and murder. Efforts to control the Mississippi River when it flooded in 1927 and to administer relief to the victims revealed to the world the dark side of planter rule in the Delta. Fatal Flood tells the story of this major disaster, one previously documented by the historian Pete Daniel in his Deep'n as It Come (1977) and more recently by the nonfiction writer John M. Barry in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1997)—both of whom are interviewed in the documentary. The film combines amazing film footage of the flood's devastation and of life for the black refugees in the Red Cross camps, with interviews from black and white survivors. The white people tend to recall the scope of the flood and the amount of land and cotton it destroyed. Black people in the film re mem ber h ow, when Se cretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover called in the Red Cross to administer relief, planters used the rations to keep them on the plantations at starvation wages.

Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization (review)

Reviews99 Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization. Edited by Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon. Louisiana State University Press, 1992. 334 pp. Cloth, $42.50; paper, $16.95. Reviewed by Karen Trahan Leathern, who recently received a Ph.D. in American history from the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation is titled " ? Carnival According to Their Own Desires': Gender and Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1870-1941." Through the lens of race, Creole New Orleans explores a city that is in many ways unlike the rest of the South, yet inextricably embedded in it. In a remarkably cohesive collection of essays, the authors advance from the colonial period to the present with broad strokes, illuminating odd twists and turns. Borrowing from C. Vann Woodward's notion of historical counterpoint, they juxtapose "the Franco-African protest tradition of New Orleans and the tragic racial mind-set of Anglo-America." The essays by Jerah Johnson and Gwendolyn Midlo Hall in part 1, "The French and African Founders," redefine the history of colonial New Orleans. In place of well-worn stories of French explorers and Spanish rulers, the authors present engaging revisions that emphasize racial and ethnic intermingling. Johnson shows that the French initially encouraged Indian assimilation and French and Indian intermarriage. Although it clearly envisioned a French rather than a multicultural society, the colonial administration's attitudes in fact fostered a pluralistic assemblage. The attempt to blend Indians into the dominant society also brought Indians into close contact with African slaves, with whom they intermarried. Hall further expands on this notion of a permeable society by focusing on the development of Afro-Creole culture, which included both slaves and free blacks. Part 2, "The American Challenge," traces the decline of French influence and the evolution of American dominance. These essays are most valuable as contributions to a current dialogue in American history as scholars begin to explore the social construction of whiteness—how people came to understand what it meant to be white in the South. Paul F. Lachance shows how white and black refugees from the 1791 Haitian revolution and immigrants from France propped up a French-speaking white majority in the city until the 1830s. Next, Joseph G. Tregle Jr. compellingly dissects the creation of the Creole myth. In the antebellum years, all Louisiana natives, black and white, fell under the rubric of Creole. But after the Civil War, partly in reaction to George Washington Cable's fictional depiction of white Creoles as uncouth, hypocritical miscegenists, eminent historian Charles Gayarré and others promoted the image of Creoles as aristocratic, educated, refined, racially pure whites of French or Spanish descent. According to this scheme, only an unfortunate confusion led outsiders and racially mixed New Orleanians to consider persons of mixed blood as Creoles. Ironically, this new myth undermined white Creoles' identification with French culture because it emphasized their whiteness over their Frenchness. Part 3 addresses the Americanization of black New Orleans. Both essays explain how the permeable racial world presented in part 1 became enmeshed first in the racial dualism of Jim Crow and then in the racial politics of the civil rights era and afterward. Joseph Logsdon and Caryn Cosse Bell present a dynamic portrait of the French-speaking, free, black Creole community from the antebellum period to the end of the century. This privileged group saw its world slip away in the 1850s, when sectional conflict and changes in local government brought repression. Meanwhile, they absorbed revolutionary ideas from the French emancipation of 1848, which granted "full political rights" to former slaves in the French West Indies. These experiences molded a new generation that 100Southern Cultures formed the vanguard of a movement for racial equality. But the Civil War and its aftermath altered the demographic composition of New Orleans, which came to include an increasing number of English-speaking, Protestant blacks. Moreover, the two communities possessed different racial ideals. Opposed to caste divisions, black Creoles drew upon their antebellum heritage to seek an integrated society, while Anglo-Protestant blacks sought refuge and resistance in all-black institutions. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, Rodolphe Desdunes, editor of the daily newspaper the Crusader, and others in the...

"The Doom of Slavery": Ulysses S. Grant, War Aims, and Emancipation, 1861-1863

Like many Northerners, Ulysses S. Grant went to war in 1861 to save the Union—and nothing more—in what he predicted would be a short conflict. By 1863, after two years of bloody struggle against a stubborn enemy, Grant came to understand that a war to preserve the Union must of necessity transform that Union. Central to that revolutionary transformation was the acceptance of emancipation as a war aim and the enrollment ofex-slaves in the bluecoat ranks. The intensity of Confederate resistance compelled Union commanders to accept this notion, while the influx of black refugees into Yankee camps helped to force a decision. In 1861 Grant believed that the Union should keep hands off slavery if a quick peace and rapid reconciliation was desired. By 1863 circumstances had changed. Notions of a limited conflict gave way to the concept of a total war waged against Southern resources and morale as well as manpower. New means were needed to attain victory. To save the Union one must destroy slavery. Grant's experiences as a field commander are illustrative of this process, suggesting the interaction between the progress of the war effort, the escalation of Southern resistance, and the transformation of war aims to encompass emancipation. From war's beginning Grant realized that at the core of the dispute was the institution of slavery. His position on the peculiar institution was ambiguous, and he left no detailed explanation of his feelings for historians to examine. Marriage to the daughter of a slaveholder entangled him in slavery: he worked alongside slaves, his wife owned four house servants, and he was a slaveholder for a short period. Yet family slaves heard him speak out against the institution, he did not succumb to the

Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean (review)

BOOK REVIEWS185 have come before it, is a study of means and ends. Because he discusses antislavery in its broadest terms over a long period of time, he has a hard time sustaining a tight argument. Gerteis does include an excellent discussion of Lydia Maria Child, whose writing illustrates the power ofdomestic values translated into public policy, in addition to a fine synopsis of the development ofthe antislavery argument that swung between the demands of morality and utility of "creative destruction." Like the careers ofhis subjects, Gerteis's conclusion does not live up to its initial promise, and seems disappointingly vague. Reluctant to focus primarily on politics, Gerteis tries to relate the ascendency ofthe utilitaritarian aspects of antislavery over the moral to the developing sensibilities of the middle class during the latter decades of the nineteenth century and the creation of private and public spheres. Romantic moral reform, he contends , retreated in the nonconfrontational realm of domestic virtue, while preoccupation with productive relations between labor and capital seized the public mind justifying competition and acquisition ofthe postwar era. Nevertheless, Morality and Utility is a fine addition to the literature ofthe middle period, a well researched and thoughtful book ofparticular interest to the nineteenth century specialist. Barbara L. Bellows Middlebury College Haiti's Influence on Antebellum America: Slumbering Volcano in the Caribbean . By Alfred N. Hunt. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Pp. 196. $25.00.) In a wide-ranging study Alfred N. Hunt concludes that the slave rebellion in Haiti made a substantial impact on life in antebellum America. He shows that the revolution in Saint Domingue frightened Southern planters, and the model of Haiti's race war became an important point of reference for both defenders and critics ofslavery. Many Southerners cited the frightening stories ofbloodshed in Haiti to insist that whites could not co-exist with "uncivilized" free blacks, and they spoke of the poor economic picture in Haiti after its independence to argue that abolition could bring ruin upon the South. These twin fears of race war and economic disaster represented cornerstones in Southern thinking; as Southerners contemplated the awful image of Haiti, they became more hostile toward proposals for gradual emancipation. On the other hand abolitionists pointed to the example of Saint Domingue to argue that resistance to emancipation was foolish, because it would eventually bring a terrible day of slave vengeance. Hunt also looks beyond this familiar story to examine connections that are less well recognized. He discusses, for instance, the significant role of white and free black refugees who escaped to the American South. Between 1 79 1 and 1 808, thousands ofthese émigrés moved to New Orleans, Charles- 186CIVIL WAR HISTORY ton, Mobile, and other locales. As sugar planters, journalists, educators, musicians, actors, comedians, and craftsmen, they made substantial contributions to their new societies. Migration also occurred in the other direction (although in much smaller numbers). Some American blacks tried to settle in Haiti, but disease and other problems often made their experiences tragic. Hunt also considers the interesting perpectives on Toussaint L'Ouverture in antebellum America. Abolitionists, ofcourse, described the black revolutionary as a hero, but a number of Southerners also were impressed with his example. They admired his "conservative" tactics (p. 87) and praised him for initiating a tough policy of forced labor after emancipation that returned black laborers to the fields. Finally, Hunt shows that American blacks drew considerable pride from the example of Haiti. They appreciated the story of slaves overthrowing their masters and resisting attempts by various European armies to suppress them, and they treated the example of Haitian independence as a symbol that inspired feelings of black nationalism. The author's approach to his subject, searching out virtually every major reference to Haiti in the thinking of leading black and white figures of the 1791-1861 period, becomes a little tedious. We learn that Haiti was on the minds of many of the principal actors in the drama over Southern slavery, but the author offers few new insights for connecting the story of Haiti to the causes of secession and the Civil War. He does, however, present a useful overview of the subject...

The Fugitive Slave Crisis in Cincinnati, 1850-1860: Resistance, Enforcement, and Black Refugees

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Fugitive Slave Crisis in Cincinnati, 1850-1860: Resistance, Enforcement, and Black RefugeesStephen MiddletonStephen Middleton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 72, Number 1-2Winter-Spring 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/JNHv72n1-2p20 Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001), which is continued by The Journal of African American History (2002-present). Copyright 1987 The Association for the Study of African American Life and HistoryPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Mark Reinhardt Who Speaks for Margaret Garner? Slavery, Silence, and the Politics of Ventriloquism Reinhardt, Critical Inquiry 29, no.11 (Jul 2015): 81–119.https://doi.org/10.1086/367999

U.S. Policy and Black Refugees

U.S. Policy and Black Refugees

U.S. Policy and Black Refugees

The debate over who is a “legitimate refugee” involves more than just a quarrel over definitions. Haitians and African refugees, largely Ethiopians, have come to our shores in much the same manner as previous groups. The reaction to the arrival of these groups, however, must be seen in the context of legal and political changes in American society.The “first asylum” phenomenon of persons fleeing to the United States as their first place of refuge from persecution has become the primary focus of any policy decisions affecting our refugee and immigration laws. Further, the “first asylum” issue has blurred the distinctions between refugees and immigrants.

The Negro in Cincinnati, 1800-1830

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Negro in Cincinnati, 1800-1830Richard C. WadeRichard C. Wade Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 39, Number 1January 1954 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2715644 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref Journal History This article was published in The Journal of Negro History (1916-2001), which is continued by The Journal of African American History (2002-present). Copyright 1954, 1969 The Association for the Study of African American Life and HistoryPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: Stephen Middleton The Fugitive Slave Crisis in Cincinnati, 1850-1860: Resistance, Enforcement, and Black Refugees, The Journal of Negro History 72, no.1-21-2 (Nov 2017): 20–32.https://doi.org/10.1086/JNHv72n1-2p20