To add to what Ellen Eslinger noted a while back about an 1856
fear of a slave uprising, Brethren [often called "Dunkers" in the
18th & 19th centuries] leader John Kline of Rockingham county
wrote in his diary for 11 September 1856:
"Council meeting at our meeting-house. Decide the question as to
what the churches here in the slaveholding States should require of
any slaveowner desiring to come into the church. A very delicate
matter to act upon in the present sensitive condition of public
feeling on slavery. But it is the aim of the Brethren here not to
offend popular feeling, so long as that feeling does not attempt any
interference with what they regard and hold sacred as their line of
Christian duty. Should such opposition arise, which I greatly fear
will be the case at no distant day, it will then be seen that it is the
fixed purpose and resolve of the Brotherhood to 'obey God rather
than men.' It was decided in council that every slaveholder coming
into the church must give up his or her slaves as property; and yet
not turn them off houseless and homeless, but allow them to
remain, and labor, and be fed and clothed as usual, until suitable
and lawful provisions can be made for their complete
emancipation."
(Benjamin Funk, Life and Labors of Elder John Kline...Elgin, IL,
1900, p. 381f.)
The Dunkers had gone on record against allowing slave-holders in
their churches for decades, but the "present sensitive condition"
Kline mentions may refer to a new uneasiness in the "public
feeling."
Rob Hewitt
[log in to unmask]
7F00,0000,0000> Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 14:40:14 -0500
> From: Ellen Eslinger <<[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Free Negro Registrations
>
> I've been studying free blacks in the Valley & closely examined
all the =
> registers I can find for that region. The monthly pattern you
describe =
> prompts me to think that the trigger was the Christmas 1856 fear
of a =
> slave uprising experienced in many parts of the South.
>
> The registers I've looked at suggest that only about 1/3 of those
free =
> blacks who were required to register did so. But at times of crisis-
-after =
> Nat Turner or John Brown, there was usually a temporary surge.
Whether =
> this was the result of greater vigilence by the authorities or black
fear =
> is unclear.=20
>
> Ellen Eslinger
> DePaul University
> [log in to unmask]
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 07/17/01 16:05 PM >>>
> As an archivist in local records at The Library of Virginia, recently
I
> have been sorting through the loose court records of Cumberland
County. In
> the decade of the 1850s, Free Negro Registration "passes"
routinely number
> one or two a month. Today while sorting through the records for
1857,
> suddenly there are 13 for January, 52 for February, 15 for March
and 10 =
> for
> April. Then it's back to 1 for May, none for June, 2 for July.
> I checked Acts of Assembly for 1856 to see if some new statute
would
> explain the sudden, dramatic rise in registrations, but there was
nothing
> that logically would provide a reason. Several colleagues
consulted here =
> at
> LVA are just as baffled as I about the increase.
> (By way of explanation, the law of 1794 required all Free Negroes
to
> register regularly (usually every five years in rural areas) with the
=
> Clerk
> of the Court, be entered in the Register and be issued a pass
describing
> the individual to be carried on his/her person. Usually when the
person
> registered, the old pass was turned in and a ne one issued. The
clerk
> often put the old pass into the loose records where they were
retained to
> the present day. These old passes are the ones that suddenly
increase in
> numbers.)
> So, I put it to the folks out there in Historyland: does anyone
have an
> answer to the question why so many in such a short span of
time? It may be
> a local thing that ever will defy explanation (e.g. mean sheriff,
panicky
> rumors, etc.) or there may be some other cause I have
overlooked. Many
> thanks. John Hopewell, LVA
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> End of VA-HIST Digest - 17 Jul 2001 to 19 Jul 2001 (#2001-121)
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