I found it interesting that the full history of Anthony Johnson, indenture, free black, slave owner http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/1narr3.html
and freed black man by the name of Billy Flora http://www.libarts.uco.edu/history/faculty/roberson/course/4753/Biographies/1/4753WilliamFloraperiodI.htm
Occupied special status in Virginia. My research has also found free black men who became part of the "Peculiar Institution" in South Carolina and Louisiana. Just an interesting twist that is not spelled out in any history book that I have read. Most comes from original sources of the period.
Respectfully,
C. M. Dozier
Carl M. Dozier, LTC, AUS, Ret GOLD STAR FATHER
Proud father of SSG Jonathan Kilian Dozier KIA Sinsil, Iraq 01-09-08...
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From Kevin Hardwick:
Regarding the civil rights of slaves: I would advise anyone interested
in the constitutional status of slaves to review James Madison's defense
of the 3/5 clause in FEDERALIST 54. In that defense, Madison makes it
explicit that slaves did in fact retain some civil rights, albeit
heavily circumscribed. Moreover, as a matter of legal practice, such
rights routinely were respected by southern courts--including those in
Virginia. On this particular, see the excellent scholarship of Philip
Schwartz, SLAVE LAW IN VIRGINIA. It sucked eggs to be a slave, and the
rights possessed by slaves were narrow. But its pretty clear that for
those white slave-owning Virginians who enforced and interpreted the
law, they did exist.
Let's have sufficient respect for the people who lived in the past to
allow them to speak, in words and deed, for themselves. Some of us may
be more interested in condemning others among us, today, with dreaded
and horrible epithets like "Politically Correct." But those of us who
care about history ought to be less interested in scoring cheap
political points in the present, and more interested in what people in
the past actually said and did. When we do this, we find, as Melvin Ely
has so well illuminated in his recent study of Prince Edward county (a
study that gives no comfort to ideologues of either stripe), that the
historical reality is a whole lot more complex than either Old South
ideologues or their "Politically Correct" foes would have us believe.
From Steven T. Corneliussen:
In another thread this morning, I included a paragraph that
re-introduced the question that I believe led a few weeks ago to such
incivility that Mr. Tarter judged it was time not only to stop that
conversation, but to begin vetting message as they're offered. The
question is: Were American slaves Americans? Mr. Southmayd today writes:
"Slaves were chattel property prior to the 13th Amendment and so were
not 'Americans' of any kind. They were slaves of African descent. See
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857) which is still the
Supreme Court legal precedent on the point vis-a-vis African slaves." My
own contention is that despite the citizenship (indeed, personhood)
catch-22 imposed by grotesque, perverted antebellum laws and court
decisions, enslaved people who toiled and suffered and created and
procreated and built the wealth of Virginia and the South and the nation
over generations were truly and profoundly Americans. I'm invoking a
higher law, in other words. I also assert that the question is not only
a fitting one for this forum, but an important one. Still, for all I
know Mr. Tarter will judge that he must block my message. But I hope he
doesn't, and I hope that I can learn -- from messages that follow the
forum's behavior rules -- what it is that I'm missing, if indeed I'm
missing something. For the life of me, I simply cannot understand how
those people can sensibly be remembered as anything but Americans under
any decent definition of the word American. (Decent, mind you; not
merely antebellum, catch-22 legal.) Recently I published an op-ed in the
Norfolk paper that overlapped with this question, and I plan to do more
such writing, for this question is crucial in the Fort Monroe discussion
and beyond. Can anybody please explain to me what I have wrong besides
(as some might see it) my contempt for legalized and institutionalized
injustice? Thanks.
From Anne Pemberton:
If you look at the history, it was not until 1740 that Africans were
decided to be other than human being. When first imported into Virginia
they were servants with the same rights to freedom at the end of their
term as any other servant. It was the effort to "declass" Africans to
something less than human in legal terms.
Furthermore, a legal definition that decides that a human being is less
than human is NOT a legal definition that can be supported - not in
today's world, not in yesterday's world. It was a legal abberation that
was intended to separate the poor white from joining in a rebellion with
the poor blacks, including the enslaved, that led to the "they are
chattel" legislations.
Prior to the legislation there were a number of court cases that upheld
the human rights of those imported as slave to earn their freedom in due
course.
Let me add, Jeff, that no law, then or now, has the power to take the
humanity from a human being! These were Americans. They fought in the
Revolutionary war for THEIR freedom as well as ours. They were truly
entitled to the fruits of their sacrifice.
From Anne Pemberton:
Thinking over Jeff's assertion that those who were enslaved should not
be described as "African Americans", I hit the following passage in this
book:
Foul Means, written by Anthony S. Parent, Jr. on pg 152-55.
The author describes one of the many attempts by blacks to win their
freedom from slavery. The plot came to light in March, 1709. The plot
was determined to have spanned several counties. The supposed leaders
were rounded up and tried before the oyer and terminer courts of the
respective counties.
P153:
"The Council of State issued an order superseding the county
jurisdiction on April 18. It directed the suspected leaders to be
arraigned in General Court for high treason, both because the conspiracy
crossed county lines and because of the enormity of the threat. High
treason, the most eggregious crime, {{was a curious charge for an
enslaved laborer who owed no allegiance to the state.}} Three days
later, after acquitting three of the accused, the General Court found
Salvadore and Scipio guilty, and sentenced them to be hanged and then
drawn and quartered, the penalty for high treason."
Admittedly, this took place before Virginia joined the US of A, but if,
as Jeff asserts, these people were chattels from the beginning, and
could not therefore have been British Subjects, or after 1783,
Americans, how could they be found guilty of high treason? Can a cow be
found guilty of high treason? How about a horse? A pig maybe?
Seems as if the courts considered them citizens of Britain when it
suited them, and as "chattel" when it suited them.
BTW, just to set the record straight, this uprising never occured. No
blood was shed, black, white, or red (one of those found guilty of high
treason was a Native American). The only crime committed was a
conspiracy to win their freedom.
But the threat of freedom frightened the slaveowners. William Byrd II
was one of several who reported an apocolyptic experiences that year.
The slaveowners had another 150 years before the apocolypse drove them
down.
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