Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 (43 page)

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Authors: Midori Takagi

Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865
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contracts and choosing an employer no doubt helped slave workers see the value of their work and develop a sense of self-confidence and selfworth. Slaves' emerging sense of their own value was most apparent in the workplace demands they began to make. During the late antebellum era, slaves began to view their privileges as "rights." Despite their legal status as property and the fact that they could be sold outside Richmond at any time, an increasing number of slave workers came to expect to choose their own jobs, have free time outside work, receive cash payments, socialize with whomever they chose, and take on extra work. These workers exercised their "rights" in defiance of laws at times and were prepared to defend them, even if it meant using violence.
One such slave was a hired domestic named Minsey. As was customary, she had permission to find a new job when her contract was finished at the end of the year. Minsey, however, chose to quit her job before then, at a time most inconvenient to her employer in the middle of the Christmas party. During the festivities Minsey entered the parlor and announced to the household mistress and guests that she would no longer be serving them because she had found another position in a different home. Before her employer could say a word, Minsey turned and left.
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Fanny, another hired slave domestic, held similarly strong views about privileges and flew into a rage when her employer, Emanuel Seaman, did not provide them. According to court records Seaman revoked Fanny's ability to have visitors in her quarters a practice considered a right by most urban slaves. In response, Fanny allegedly burned down Seaman's house.
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Slave John Williams felt his "rights" were being violated when his owner, Joseph Winston, began demanding work from him even though he had been hired to John Enders for the year. Williams was angry at having to use his own time to perform unpaid extra work, including polishing Winston's boots every day. Williams apparently found the situation intolerable and was moved to comment, in what was described as a threatening manner, "that he should put a stop to it he could and would do it."
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Slave resistance also was fostered by the practice of living apart. The physical and psychological distance between slave and owner or employer allowed slaves not only to develop a semi-independent community but to acquire skills such as the ability to read and write. After working hours alleyway tenements became underground schools, among other things. It was in these hidden slave quarters that slave men and women sharpened their minds, raised their expectations, and gained greater self-confidence. In one impromptu tenement school, John Jasper freed
 
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his soul and mind by learning to read the Bible with guidance from fellow slave William Jackson.
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Such a school also may have been where Beverly, a hired carriage driver, learned to "read Shakespeare."
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And there is evidence that lessons occurred nightly in hundreds of slaves' rooms. One Richmonder proclaimed that literacy was so widespread among slave residents that "many of the whites have been taught to read by negro nurses."
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The best evidence of these skills, however, can be found in the petition written by black Richmonders to President Andrew Johnson in 1865 in protest of poor postwar conditions. To prove that they were worthy of receiving equal rights and were as capable as white men, the petitioners stated that in spite of "the law of slavery [which] severely punished those who taught us to read and write . . . 3,000 of us can read, and at least 2,000 can read and write."
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In addition to literacy, urban slave living conditions helped bond men and women challenge slavery by encouraging if not forcing them to become "self-sufficient." Although few slaves, rural or urban, were ever fully dependent on their owners for their subsistence, Richmond conditions frequently required slave men and women to develop the skills to secure shelter, food, and clothing on their own. In order to manage their households successfully on the small cash payments they received, slave men and women had to plan carefully, conserve funds, pool earnings, and exercise great resourcefulness.
Such household management skills became more widespread as larger numbers of hired slaves settled in the city, and as more owners came to expect slaves to fend for themselves. This was particularly true in the cases where the owner was absent. Edward and James, two hired slaves in Richmond, had no one but themselves to depend on because both their owner and their appointed administrator paid little attention to them. The degree to which they were on their own is made clear in a letter from the administrator, Philip Lightfoot, to the slave traders: "Lieutenant Robert G. Robert of the United States Navy, left the country on a cruise to the Pacific Ocean, I [Philip Lightfoot] have been his agent here and have intended during the last 12 months, to address you concerning the amount due for the hires of his negro boys, Edward & James."
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It seems Robert had little idea what had happened to his slaves during his travels abroad, and Lightfoot was no more informed. William Fontaine of King William County similarly had little contact with his slave Aggy and did not seem bothered by this fact when he wrote, "I wished . . . to inform the person who hired Aggy, to keep her thro: the Christmas." S.L. Jones witnessed an even more distant relationship between a hired slave and owner during his visit to Richmond. According to his
 
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journal the hired slave he met kept no contact with his owner except at Christmas time when he "paid his hiring money, g[ave] an account of his travels and successes, [and said] how well he was doing." Since contact between the two was so limited, all living necessities had to be handled by the hired slave himself.
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Even critical responsibilities of ownership such as health care frequently were administered by persons other than the owners. When employers did not provide medical services (and sometimes even when they did), slaves often resorted to their own home remedies or consulted with physicians within the community.
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During the 1849 cholera epidemic, city-appointed doctors, not owners, visited tenements to care for hired slaves struck by the disease.
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The ever-more-distant relationship between slave and owner was further demonstrated in the aftermath of another cholera epidemic in 1854. Information on the number of slave deaths in the city as published in the newspapers came not from the owners but from the slave traders. It appears that increasingly, owners' traditional responsibilities for their slaves were either unmet or assumed by other groups, including slaves themselves.
Another aspect of urban slave life that had a tremendous impact on slave resistance was the income earned through the cash payment and bonus systems. On the simplest level the cash gave slave workers a degree of autonomy as consumers. Slave workers spent their money on essential material goods or small luxuries and generally were not restricted in their purchases except by the size of their earnings. As the number of bond men and women with cash reached the thousands, however, slave workers came to realize the tremendous potential power their collective earnings held. Evidence of this power came to light with the purchase of the First African Baptist Church and the opening of the Second African Baptist and Ebenezer churches, which gave black Richmonders an enormous amount of control over their religion and their institutions.
The cash earned through the urban slave system had another liberating effect: it enabled a few slave men and women to buy themselves or collectively purchase someone else out of bondage. Although such purchases required a formidable sum, a number of Richmond slaves were able to raise it. And slave savings became more important during the late antebellum era as a greater number of city owners began manumitting slaves in exchange for money.
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Between 1830 and 1860, 225 slaves were able to pay for their freedom. That compares with just 27 self-purchases during the previous thirty-year period.
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The cost of freedom was rarely low; Burrell Mann had to pay $500 for his freedom, while Walter and Mary Brown handed over $900 to their owner. During the
 
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Civil War inflation drove the costs even higher. In 1864 Robert Hucles paid more than $10,000 to free his wife and four children.
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The high cost of self-purchase often proved beyond the means of an individual. So family members, kin networks, coworkers, and neighbors often pooled their savings to purchase a member out of bondage. One source of assistance was the First African Baptist Church. Members occasionally donated funds to help purchase fellow slave congregants, especially those who intended to become missionaries or clergymen.
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Brother Thomas Allen was one of the fortunate souls whom the church purchased out of bondage. Although he did not become a missionary to Africa as he originally intended, he did go on to become the pastor of a church in Boston.
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Some of the cash within the slave community went toward helping an even larger number of slaves liberate themselves by funding a variety of secret escape networks and organizations. Through these underground organizations slaves received assistance that frequently included disguises, transportation, and personal guides. The existence of these organizations became known when local authorities discovered some of them. The arrest of the "Norfolk Nine" by police in 1858, for example, exposed an escape network that extended from Norfolk to Richmond and included (among the nine organizers) three white ship captains. Further investigation revealed that two of the ship pilots, Captains Bayliss and Lee, had received payments in return for hiding slave runaways in the false bottoms of their schooners and then sailing northward.
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Another unsuccessful escape recorded in the Hustings Court papers suggests the existence of an elaborately organized and well-funded underground organization based in Richmond. This organization came to light when Abbey Ann Dixon, a free black woman, was arrested for encouraging the escape of Martha, a slave owned by John Enders. According to Martha's testimony, Dixon had told her that "if she wanted to go away, she . . . would make arrangements for her." On the appointed night, while Martha waited for her contact to arrive, Dixon and an unidentified man walked past her, presumably to make sure she was alone. A few minutes later a second man, a free black named Robert, approached her and led her to a street corner where a third man, who was white, was waiting. Martha followed the third man to Mayo's Bridge where they were suddenly arrested by a watchman. Apparently they had been betrayed by the ship captain hired to take Martha away.
The amount of planning and funds and the number of people involved in this escape suggest a large, if imperfect, network. Every detail of the escape had been painstakingly arranged by Dixon and her accomplices. Martha had received money, a disguise (she was dressed as a boy),
 
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and the promise of transportation out of Virginia. The only flaw was a poor choice of sea captain. The details of such escapes suggest that great organizational capabilities and substantial funds existed within the slave and free black communities.
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Access to education and money, the development of certain self-improvement skills, and increased awareness of their own worth undoubtedly helped infuse slave workers with defiance, determination, and a ''spirit of insubordination." This spirit can be seen in the way "finely dressed" slave and free black women occasionally "elbowed" white residents off the sidewalks, and in the way Henry, a slave hand, proudly smoked a cigar and carried a cane in the street.
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It was this same spirit that prompted black church members to leave abruptly in the middle of a lecture on temperance and abstinence being given by a white judge.
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And it was this spirit that gave John Scott and his twenty-two coworkers the courage to protest their enslavement publicly in 1853. During that year Scott and the other slaves, belonging to the recently deceased John Enders, filed into the mayor's office and demanded "to ascertain from the records whether or not they had been emancipated by the will of their late master." Apparently Enders had informed his slaves that he intended to emancipate them when he died. After waiting two years for a response, Scott raised the issue with "white gentlemen of the city," and Enders's son, who had inherited the slaves. Scott said the group had "done every thing in our power to get our rights according to the Will of old Master." Scott described an attempt to find legal help that produced lawyers who "deceived us and got our money" by producing wills that "seem to contridicts the other."
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Scott wrote to the Colonization Society asking for assistance and indicated that all of the bondmen and their families would gladly move to Liberia should they be freed. But Scott never received a response from the society, and the twenty-three bondmen remained in slavery.
No law short of sending all slave residents out of the city could have prevented John Scott, Henry, or Minsey from making their challenges. And there is little reason to believe that any law could have prevented Jordan Hatcher or the Williamses from responding as they did. The city's expanding economy and efforts to adapt slavery to new working and living conditions practically ensured an environment hostile to a tightly restrictive slave system. More important, however, urban industrial conditions allowed a growing web of slave resistance as complex and well organized as the system of slavery itself.
Although the use of slaves in Richmond's industries and businesses helped create one of the most lucrative slave labor systems, it was one filled with problems and tensions. Money-saving tactics such as hiring

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