Craig,
Senate Bill 18 of the Provisional Confederate Congress provides even
greater fodder.  It deals with a ban on the international slave trade and
says that any attempted slaves imported into the CSA would be set free in a
"Free State" provided they enjoyed the privileges of the white
inhabitants.  It was vetoed by Davis on Constitutional grounds in that it
made the CSA a *de facto* importer of enslaved persons.  The phraseology
matches your political commentary requirement to a tee.

We read a chapter of Brown for a class in Women's History and it supported
the main argument of the course about the evolution of women's position in
American society.  I used it in comprehensives because it supported a
portion of my argument.  I suppose that is why we read chapters and not the
entire book in some classes.  The Native American portion is helpful to my
studies because she reads source against the grain (John Smith and Native
women's role in the production of corn) (no pun intended) that energizes me
for scholarship.  Native foodways.  I feel like a secret Cultural Historian
but the difference in the possession and distribution of food between the
three ethnicities fascinate me.  If Senegalese-Gambian and Angolan ethnic
groups survived the Middle Passage, and there is ample evidence in the
commonality of tools, linguistics, foods & their preparation techniques
from both sides of the Atlantic, would seem to indicate that they subverted
the loss of ethnic identity inherant within chattel slavery as practiced in
the American South.  If there is persistence under chattel slavery, is
there then not the possibility of persistence of Native communities across
the southeast?  Applying Helen Rountree's argument about Native circular
community formation to the broader region.  However, having skimmed
additional chapters, I would not recommend it to a non-specialist but
nearly a hundred pages of notes make it a gold mine of sources.  Omohundro
Institute seal does not hurt either but I would expect it was written for
the specialist.  Interesting to note that it won the 1997 Dunning Prize
from the AHA.  Not sure how to take that award for a book about gender and
race.
Eric

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 4:57 PM, Craig Kilby <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Eric,
>
> Thanks for walking through this door. This is exactly what I was hoping to
> learn more about. My initial impression is that the reason people wrote
> this specific language into their wills was more of a political commentary
> on the hypocrisy of the "free" Northern states....i.e, there was not state
> would accept them. But I don't really know that, but this sure furthers the
> theory.
>
> As so your last post citing Kathleen Browns book, "Nasty Wenches" etc. The
> title is catchy but it is otherwise a waste of pulp. Just my opinion of
> course, but I know it was reviewed by several people on our Mary Ball
> Washington Museum & Library committee as a possible purchase. That is a
> pretty diverse group of people and they were unanimous in their opinion: NO.
>
> On May 17, 2012, at 2:25 PM, Eric Richardson wrote:
>
> > Craig,
> > A Public History source/venue (Underground Railroad museum in Cincinnati)
> > displayed several of the antebellum mid-western Black Codes that required
> > removal of any person of African descent within a very short time period,
> > as short as 24 hours like Georgia required for free persons of color
> > entering that state.  The museum's argument was that the Underground
> > Railroad did not end in Ohio & elsewhere but continued to Canada as the
> > actual safe refuge, not the "free States."  Not sure if it is ancedotal
> > proof or disproof but Sally Hemmings' son, Peter, changed his name to
> > Jefferson in Ohio, moved to Wisconsin, and "passed" as white there.  Not
> > sure if the stop in Ohio was longer than the Black Code allowed but he
> left
> > VA after Jefferson emancipated him.
> > Eric
>
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-- 
Eric J. Richardson
Master's of Arts in History
Master's of Arts Candidate in English
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC 27707
[log in to unmask]
(336) 202-7341

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