Having given vent to my Yankee self-righteousness by shaking my finger at Great-grandmother Thorne for owning slaves, I've subsequently calmed down a bit and tried to understand her situation a little better. After she inherited those three slaves from her common-law husband, her options may have been far more limited than we might think, and keeping the slaves might have been the best of a bad lot of choices.
Even though she was their "owner," Rebecca could not of her own accord have legally set her slaves free when she inherited them in 1827, as her late husband had done for her and their son in 1811. Why? Because in 1820, the South Carolina legislature had prohibited all personal manumissions. No longer could a slave-owner manumit his/her slaves at his/her convenience by simply filing the proper legal papers and paying the requisite fees.
News of the Haitian Revolution in 1791 had instilled great fear of slave uprisings into Southern whites and white slave-owners, and controlling the numbers and movements of African Americans—especially Free Persons of Color—became a steadily-increasing priority. Amrita Chakrabati Myers notes in her Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Freedom in Ante-bellum Charleston that influxes of both Free Persons of Color and slaves had made the white population of Charleston a minority by 1820.
So in 1820, the South Carolina legislature prohibited personal manumissions as a way of limiting the number of Free Persons of Color in the state. (The Act also prohibited Free Persons of Color from entering South Carolina or returning to South Carolina should they leave.) After 1820, manumitting a slave required an act of the legislature—and very few were granted. Not even rich white slaveowners who had intended to free their slaves but had, um, "dawdled," succeeded in having requests for manumission granted. Myers notes the case of the well-known French botanist, Philipe Noisette,* who had moved in 1794 from Haiti to Charleston with his Haitian common-law wife, Celestine, because of the Haitian Revolution. Philippe and Celestine had had two children in Haiti and subsequently four more in Charleston, but because marriage between the races was prohibited in Charleston, he found himself obliged to declare his wife and mixed-race family to be his slaves—and then was unable to free them because of the Act of 1820. He petitioned the legislature for manumission; they refused his request. (p. 62)
So Rebecca could not have freed the slaves she inherited even if she had wanted to. And she quite likely knew that her chances of having a request to the South Carolina legislature granted hovered between zero and nil.
Were there other options available? Yes, but they were very high risk options. The slaves could have packed their bags and left, but that was practically a death sentence: African American men traveling overland without papers or masters were considered runaways by default and were thus fair game for anything from kidnapping and resale to outright murder. Considering that Charleston was a port city, escaping slaves might have had a chance by taking to a boat, but it would likely have been a small boat on a very big ocean, with no guarantees that they would be picked up or who might pick them up. Or they could trying being stowaways—again the hallmarks of runaways with all that could follow.
So Rebecca's choices were likely very limited, and almost certainly none of them will have been what we would prefer and what the slaves would likely have preferred: freedom.
An additional wild card: while we know that Rebecca's children were free born, we do not know whether these three male slaves were related to her. For all we know, they may have been her siblings or half-siblings. So, while she may not have been able to free them, she as their owner will have been able to keep them relatively safe from being sold or sent away. And indeed, if she followed the pattern of many other Charlestonian slaveowners, she will have let them keep some portion of the wages they earned, so that they had real, disposable income. We simply don't know.
So I must lay my hand upon my mouth for having spoken whereof I did not know and without listening hard first. Great-grandmother Thorne's choices were limited and possibly even agonizing. And now I ask again, I hope more humbly this time: "Great-grandmother Thorne, we do not know what issues you faced when you inherited these three slaves from your late husband. Please tell us what you were thinking?"
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*If you are a rose gardener, you will have heard of Noisette Roses. Yes, that's him.
Source: Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Freedom in Ante-bellum Charleston (UNC Press: 2011)
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