T.D. Rice and the Invention of Jumpin’ Jim Crow
•
•
Playbill of Thomas Dartmouth Rice as “Jim Crow”,
1832
• Thomas “Daddy” Rice
white performer and playwright from
New York City, who used AfricanAmerican vernacular speech, song,
and dance to entertain white
audiences through the mid-1800s.
Rice’s “Jim Crow” character became
synonymous with black inferiority
•
Spawned popularity of blackface minstrel
shows and entertainment and legitimized
assaults on black citizenship, rights, and
humanity in the free North
•
Cast African Americans to American and
global audiences as uncouth, intruding,
and inherently ill-equipped for citizenship
Sheet Music to “Coal Black Rose,”
1830
Was among the most popular songs
sung by white performers in minstrel
shows
Irish-Americans and Blackface Minstrelsy
• Blackface minstrelsy permitted persecuted IrishAmericans to purchase their “whiteness,” specifically
by ridiculing and perpetuating denigrating
stereotypes about African Americans, who were also
their economic competitors
Second and third grade children being made up for their Negro song and dance at May Day-Health
Day festivities. Ashwood Plantations, South Carolina. 1939.
Slaveholders
Slaveholding in 1850
# of Slaves Owned
Slaveholders
1
68,000
2-4
105,000
5-9
80,000
10-19
55,000
20-49
30,000
50-99
6,000
100-199
1,500
200+
250
Individual slaveholders made up ~3% of the southern population in 1860.
25-31% of southern families owned slaves.
The largest slave-driven plantations were located in coastal South Carolina and
Georgia and along the Mississippi River.
Slaves were also used by the masters and
mistresses as social accessories to demonstrate their wealth and ascendancy
Into southern aristocracy.
Southern Family Pictured with Enslaved Woman Caretaker, ca. 1859
Native American Slaveholding in 1860
• Cherokees – 4,600 slaves
• Choctaws – 2, 344 slaves
• Creeks – 1, 532 slaves
• Chickasaws – 975 slaves
• Seminoles – 300 slaves
African-American Slaveholders
• Numbered 3, 775 in 1830
• 80% were located in Louisiana, South Carolina,
Virginia, and Maryland
• 50% were city-dwellers, with most in New
Orleans and Charleston
• Overwhelmingly owned members of their
immediate or extended families
Non-Slaveholding Whites
Yeoman family in Cedar Mountain, VA,
ca. 1862
Three out of four southern white families owned no slaves during the
antebellum era.
• Published The Impending Crisis of
the South (1857)
• Criticized the social, political, and
economic monopoly of the planter
class, which he argued held back the
South’s economic and industrial
growth
• Despised blacks and proposed that
slaveholders be taxed and compelled
to resettle their slaves in either Africa
or Latin America
Hinton Rowan Helper
Slaves
Growth of U.S. Slave Population
Year
Slave Population
1790
697,624
1800
893,602
1810
1,191,362
1820
1,538,022
1830
2,009,043
1840
2,487,355
1850
3,204,313
1860
3,953, 760
Slaves made up 39% of the southern population in 1860.
57% of the population in South Carolina were slaves.
49% of families in Mississippi owned slaves.
Where was the enslaved population concentrated?
Free Blacks in the South
Free Black Population, 1860
Region
Free Black Pop.
North
South
Upper South
226, 152
261, 918
224, 963
% of Total Black
Pop. in that Locale
100
6.2
12.8
Lower South
36, 955
1.5
The largest free black population was located in Maryland, where they made up 49.1 % of the
total black population.
Substantial free black populations could also be found in Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina.
Texas had the smallest free black population in 1860 with only 355 free blacks.
“I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just.”
- Thomas Jefferson, 1785
“Many in the South once
believed that [slavery] was
a moral and political
evil…That folly and delusion
are gone; we see it now in
its true light, and regard it
as the most safe and stable
basis for free institutions in
the world.”
-John C. Calhoun, SC
1837
Sources of Sectional Crises of 1850s
• Ideological Differences
• The Role and Future of Slavery in the U.S.
• Namely, will slavery be allowed to expand into
the territories
Wilmot Proviso
• First introduced on August 8,
1846
• Sought to prevent the
extension of slavery in any
territory acquired as a result of
the Mexican-American War
David Wilmot (PA)
• Repeatedly fails to pass in the
U.S. Senate; but intensifies
sectionalism
Potential of the MO Compromise 36 30’ Line to Solve Conflict
On the Wilmot Proviso:
“If we flinch we are
gone!”
John Calhoun
Compromise of 1850
• Negotiated by Henry Clay (KY) and Stephen A. Douglas of (IL)
• California would enter Union as a free state
• Texas border would be adjusted in favor of New Mexico
• New Mexico was slated to be organized as two territories (New
Mexico and Utah) and when admitted as states they could decide
for either slavery and freedom
• Slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia
• Enacted a stricter fugitive slave law
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Subjected federal officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway
slave to a fine of $1,000
• Only required a person claiming ownership of slave to submit an
affidavit to a federal commissioner, who could accept or reject
• Note: Federal commissioners received $5 if they rejected an
affidavit and $10 is they ordered the alleged runaways arrest.
• Accused runaways were prohibited from testifying on their own
behalf.
• Subjected free citizens caught aiding fugitive slaves were subject to
a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.
Impact of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
• Hastened black migration to Canada
• Radicalized and increased the ranks of northern
abolitionist movement
• Led to the enactment of personal liberty laws in 9
northern states, which enabled state attorneys to
defend fugitives, appropriated funds to pay their
defense costs; and denied the use of public
buildings to detain accused escapees
The Case of Anthony Burns (1853-1855)
• Escaped from slavery in Richmond, VA in 1853
at the age of 19
• Arrived in Boston and began working for a
clothing dealer
• Arrested on May 24, 1854 in Boston; Spurred
violent protests among Boston abolitionists, who
repeatedly tried to free Burns
• Prompted President Franklin Pierce to send in
federal marshals
• Convicted and returned to his master.
• Bostonians raised $1200 to purchase Burns,
which they did by 1855
• Published
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852.
• Sold over 300,000 copies in its first year in
the U.S. and over 1 million copies in Great
Britain
• Helped increase abolitionist sentiment
throughout the North though it relied on racist
and sexist depictions of African Americans,
since Stowe had extremely limited contact
with the South.
Jefferson Davis
U.S. Senator from Mississippi (1847-1851)
Future President of the Confederates States of America
“Slave labor is wasteful labor, and it therefore
requires a still more extended territory than would
the same pursuits if they could be prosecuted by
the more economic labor of white men.”
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
• Introduced by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of IL
• Created territories of Nebraska and Kansas
• Opened two territories up for settlement and stated
that settlers would vote on the issue of permitting
slavery before statehood
• Repealed section of the MO Compromise that forbade
slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36˚30’.
Salmon P. Chase,
U.S. Senator from Ohio
Joshua Giddings
U.S. Congressman from Ohio
“We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge;
as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel
of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied
region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers
from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of
despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.”
-” Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States,”
January 1854
Abraham Lincoln
“Our progress in degeneracy appear to me to be pretty rapid.
As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created
equal.’ We now practically read ‘all men are created equal,
except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will
read ‘All men are created equal except negroes and foreigners,
and Catholics.”
Lincoln in letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855
Pottawatomie Massacre
•
•
Date: May 24-25, 1856
Brown, his sons, and several abolitionists
murdered 5 pro-slavery white settlers at
Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County,
Kansas. Led to all-out war in KS.
•
Catalysts: 1) fraudulent territorial
elections in 1855, which authorized
slavery, passed a harsh slave code, and
disqualified from office anti-slavery
citizens; 2) Pierce removal from Andrew
Reeder as governor of KS after Reeder
refused to use her position to make KS a
slave state; and 3) pro-slavery attack on
free-state legislature in Lawrence, Kansas
in 1856
John Brown, c. 1856
Lithograph by John L. Magee, 1856
On May 22, 1856, U.S. House Representative Preston Brooks (SC)
viciously beat U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (MA) unconscious after
Sumner denounced the violence in Kansas and pro-Slavery South,
especially Brooks’s uncle U.S. Senator Andrew Butler (SC).
Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
•Scott and his family were still slaves
•Scott (as a black person and slave) was not a
citizen and had no rights
•Scott’s stay in Wisconsin did not make him
free since Congress did not have the power to
exclude slavery from a territory, nor could a
territorial legislature
• Means popular sovereignty cannot keep
slavery from a territory.
•Declared the MO Compromise and the NW
Ordinance of 1787 unconstitutional
•Left fate of KS and NE uncertain
Roger Taney
Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court
(1836-1864)
“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that
unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world
at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the
United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation
displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century
before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate
with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had
no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
-Taney Opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)
Lincoln Douglas Debates
Race for U.S. Senate
• Stephen A. Douglas
– Incumbent (D-IL)
• Illinois Republicans
meet and nominate
Abraham Lincoln as
their candidate.
1858 Debates
• Formal political debates
between Lincoln and Douglas in a
campaign for one of Illinois' two
United States Senate seats.
• Debates launched Lincoln into
national prominence.
Issues of the Debates
• Expansion of slavery
• Popular sovereignty
• Dred Scott decision
• African American Citizenship
Abraham Lincoln
“If we could first know where we are and whither we are
tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it.
We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated
with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an
end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy,
that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly
augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall
have been reached and passed. "A house divided against
itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot
endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house
to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will
become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of
slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where
the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course
of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till
it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new,
North as well as South.”
Harper Ferry’s Raid
• Designed plan to create a slave
revolution to bring down slavery
• Raised funds in abolitionist circles
throughout New England, though most
thought the plan undesirable
• With sons and an interracial band of
supporters raided the federal armory at
Harpers Ferry in present-day West
Virginia on Oct. 16, 1859
• Eventually captured, tried, convicted,
and executed for treason.
John Brown, 1859
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the
crimes of this guilty land will never be purged
away but with blood. I had, as I now think,
vainly flattered myself that without very much
bloodshed it might be done.“
- December 2, 1859, the day of his execution
“Let the consequences be what they may, whether
the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and
Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep
with mangled bodies or whether the last vestige
of liberty is swept from the face of the American
Continent, the South will never submit to such
humiliation and degradation as the inauguration
of Abraham Lincoln.”
- The Atlanta Confederacy, 1860
U.S. Presidential Election of 1860
Southern Secession before War
• South Carolina – December 20, 1860
• Mississippi – January 9, 1861
• Florida – January 10, 1861
• Alabama – January 11, 1861
• Georgia – January 19, 1861
• Louisiana – January 26, 1861
• Texas – February 1, 1861
Why did the deep South states secede after the
presidential election of 1860?
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this
government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the
house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will
become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of
slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the
public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it
shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North
as well as South.”
-Abraham Lincoln
From Speech on June 17, 1858 in Springfield, Illinois When He Accepted the
Republican Nomination for the state’s U.S. Senator
-
“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have
been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of
them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have
assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic
institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen
of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as
sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment
among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace
and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have
encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes;
and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and
pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing…A
geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States
north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office
of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are
hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the
common Government, because he has declared that that "Government
cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public
mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate
extinction.”
-Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina
from the Federal Union, Dec. 20, 1860
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its
connection with the government of which we so long formed a
part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons
which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the
product which constitutes by far the largest and most important
portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to
the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious
law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the
tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world,
and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That
blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of
reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but
submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the
Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our
ruin.“
-A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of
Mississippi from the Federal Union, Jan. 9, 1861