I suppose one test of Mr. Browning's thesis is this:  did slaves who were freed before
the Civil War seek to be reenslaved because the "practicalities" of life were so hard. A
few, here and there did; but they are the rare exceptions that prove the rule.

Did masters, like Edward Coles free their slaves and provide them with land.  Yes; did
some masters free their slaves and then hire them?  All the time.

Did slaves prefer to be free and not to be sold away from loved ones and familiar
surroundings whenever their master got really angry at them (this was one of Jefferson's
punishments) or whenever their master needed money (TJ sold about 85 slaves between
about 1785 and 1795).

On the eve of the civil war there were about 260,000 free blacks in the South and about
240,000 in the North.  They were obviously making a living and surviving; some were
property owners; some substantial property owners.  Most were poor.   And, I will bet
that almost all of them were happy to be free and not ready to trade it for bondage.

Browning writes:  "Would the established mechanisms of land acquisition
through headrights, apprenticeship and the like have meant that the newly freed
slaves would have ended up as the Appalachian Scots-Irish up in the hollows on the
worst of land, poor but free?"

I suppose we could go ask the Scots-Irish if they would prefer to be slaves?

Paul Finkelman

"Lyle E. Browning" wrote:

> Paul Finkelman wrote:
>
> > he could have freed his slaves and hired them to work his land; he could have
> > provided for their freedom in his will, if we could not see fit to free them in
> > his life; he could have gradually freed them as his need for them diminished.
> > The possibilities were endless.
>
> I'll grant you the possibilities are endless, but the practicalities aren't. Most of
> the "enlightened" freed their slaves upon their deaths. That may be assumed to be
> self interested to an extreme. (I won't need them anymore so I shall do the right
> thing" kind of argument). Robert Carter who freed his and provided land was an
> exception, presumably.
>
> How much discussion was there in the 18th and pre-Civil War 19th century about the
> mechanics of earning a living for manumitted slaves? By this I mean did anyone
> actually work out on paper or in practice how freed slaves were to be integrated
> into the local economy? As it turned out, the aftermath of the Civil War seems to me
> to have engendered worse treatment for these folks than anything anyone could have
> thought beforehand. Did the thinking go that the slaves, once freed, would be seen
> in economic terms as the equivalent of anyone else out there in the labor pool?
> Orser makes a good argument for the sort of paralysis on both sides as the mechanics
> which ended up with tenant farming and share cropping got themselves worked out, as
> poorly as they surely did. Would the largely agrarian economy at the time have had
> the means of paying wages on a regular basis as factory workers were paid in the
> North? I can't help but think that if by some stroke of a legislative magic wand,
> slaves had been freed without bloodshed and attendant hard feelings, then the end
> result would have been much the same for large numbers of workers. That is, they
> would have continued in their work in a feudal sort of arrangement, still at the
> beck and call of the owner. The migration of large numbers of workers off the
> plantations would certainly have spelled their doom as I don't see that the
> mechanization that enabled farmers to work larger acreages with fewer workers
> happening much before it did. Would the established mechanisms of land acquisition
> through headrights, apprenticeship and the like have meant that the newly freed
> slaves would have ended up as the Appalachian Scots-Irish up in the hollows on the
> worst of land, poor but free?
>
> So, apart from a few hardy and enlightened if perhaps self-interested souls, what
> was going on regarding the practicalities?
>
> Lyle
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East Fourth Place
Tulsa, OK  74104

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Fax 918-631-2194

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