Slavery: Not Just Something For The South
Part XXX
Before proceeding any further I would like to show more sources used for this thread. These come from books and articles.
The Rise of New York Port, 1815-1860,Robert Greenhalgh Albion. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1939. References are to the 1967 edition.
History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Samuel Greene Arnold. New York: D. Appleton, 1859-1860.
The Tiffany Fortune and Other Chronicles of a Connecticut Family., Alfred M. Bingham. Chesnut Hill, MA; Abeel & Leet, 1996.
Five Black Lives: The Autobiographies of Venture Smith, James Mars, William Grimes, the Rev. G. W. Offley, [and] James L. Smith, Arna Bontemps, comp. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
In the Hands of Strangers: Readings on Foreign and Domestic Slave Trading and the Crisis of the Union.. Robert Edgar Conrad, ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.
Roger Sherman's Connecticut: Yankee Politics and the American Revolution., Christopher Collier. Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971.
People, I believe, have made an attempt to turn this thread into another about Southern slavery. This was not my purpose, although I will willingly discuss this on another thread; but this thread was designed to delve into something I knew nothing about until about 8 months ago. Some have told me that it is irrelevant and that (to use my own terminology, it's old hat because everyone already knows this stuff.)
Well, I for one, didn't know this and was excited to share, what I thought was something that others like me didn't have knowledge of. Admittedly I am not as well-read as many many others on forums but I am learning as I go along.
I have not set out with this thread to beat up the North, but rather to show that slave-running was going on for years in these upper Northern states, even into the early 1860's, which I would have thought impossible.
But let me continue with some of the things I've learned.
I am now turning in a little bit of a different direction, but please bear with me.
Southerners tried to reopen the slave trade, when they sent the Wanderer from New York to Africa and in 1858 and it successfully smuggled almost 400 young Africans into this country. (Let me also remind viewers that Southerners did not own these ships that carried slaves, so there was an equal partnership, if you will, at that point, between North and South.)
Before the War between the States tens of thousands of Africans were transported on illegal U.S. slave ships; and almost all vanished on foreign coffee and sugar plantations where conditions were appallingly deplorable. There is information though about some of the 400 Africans who endured the "Middle Passage" and were smuggled into the United States by the slave yacht Wanderer in late 1858. These were sent to plantations on the Georgia mainland and ultimately dispersed throughout the cotton states.
Fifty years after being smuggled into the States Wanderer survivors were photographed and interviewed by an anthropologist, Charles Montgomery. One of them, Ward Lee, originally named Cilucangy was found in South Carolina and still spoke his native language fluently. He'd once handed out a circular asking for help to go back to Africa. "I will be glad of whatever you will give me. I am bound for my old home if God be with me white or black yellow or the red I am an old African." the circular read in part. (American Anthropologist, Vol. 10, 1908)
Another of the survivors, Tom Johnson, real name Zow Uncola, said he didn't think he would return to Africa even if given the chance. "I'm gittin' so old, I'm 'fraid I couldn't git back," he told Montgomery in an interview.
To make matters more difficult Johnson said he was from a part of the African coast where the sun rises, probably meaning the east coast, where the Wanderer sailed, up and down looking for humancargo.
The old slave tried to get more specific. "Where I come from, you can see the water just drippin' out o' the sun."
(pp.134-137 COMPLICITY, paraphrasing.)
Let's continue now with another portion of this country's history that I knew a little something about, but not nearly enough: the kidnapping of free blacks in the North to sell into slavery.
Before the war the kidnapping of free blacks from Northern states was so rampant that the abolitionists called it a slave trade of its own sort.
They also claimed that the abductions boosted the South's slave population by the thousands each decade. This is probably an exaggeration, but the traffic continued for so long that modern historians have said that it was almost like an underground railroad, but running in the wrong direction! Furthermore, its most famous conductors were organized gangs, like outlaws, who became legends in their own time.
Patsy Cannon was the most unlikely gang leader; said to be so strong that she could jerk a 300-lb. sack of grain to her shoulder, or a grown man off his feet. Her chief helper was her son-in-law, known only by a contemporary newspaper as "the celebrated Joseph Johnson, negro trader."
The Cannon gang's territory extended from the Delmarva Peninsula of Maryland and Delaware, both slave states, to free Pennsylvania, where the Philadelphia waterfront was one of their favorite hunting grounds.
In the 1825 summer alone, the gang grabbed at least 12 young victims from Philly, the City of Brotherly Love.
When they found it necessary, kidnappers, like slave ship captains, resorted to murder to ensure the success of their business. April, 1829 found the skeletons of one adult and 3 young children discovered on a farm Patty Cannon had occupied.
One of the children, thought to be around 7, had a crushed skull.
A previous gang member testified that he'd seen Cannon club the child to death in an effort to get rid of incriminating evidence.
Northern cities couldn't guarantee the safety of black residents: whether they were free people who had never been slaves or runaways who'd established lives in the North.
November, 1829: a New York newspaper warned that a kidnapping ring was taking a black child a day from city streets; and by 1835, the continued threat of kidnappings in New York led to the creation of the first important black self-defense association, with its leader, David Ruggles. This Ruggles also started a short-lived journal that exposed New York officials who worked with kidnappers. Ruggles even threatened to publish a separate "slaveholders directory" for N.Y. City and Brooklyn listing the conspirators' names and addresses.
In 1838, Ruggles gave shelter for the most famous fugitive slave in American history, Frederick Douglass. In the 1855 expanded edition of his autobiography Douglass gave credit to Ruggles and described the dread he'd felt before finding sanctuary with him.
"New York, 17 years ago, was less a place of safety for a runaway than now," he wrote, "and all know how unsafe it now is, under the new fugitive slave law."
I will try my best to get back to this Monday and get into the way the Fugitive Slave Act terrified free blacks, otherwise I'll get back as soon as possible.
I do understand that some folks may feel that I need to stop and debate portions of the information I have found. I would like to get all this out there and then have a round-robin debate with hopefully, equal numbers of Northern and Southern participants.
I've been on a lot of forums and as long as debate remains courteous I'm willing and able to do this.
Hope everyone had a great week-end.
By Allen (Piewacket1861) He is member in the forum
