SLAVERY & THE MAKING OF AMERICA (PBS, DVD)
Each episode is contained on its own DVD; there is a brief intro before the start of each
transcript. Times are approximate; PBS provided the transcript, but the times and
highlighting has been added by the reviewer. There are some remarkable scenes and
commentary in the first three episodes. For the last one, the compelling road of Robert
Smalls is the focus, if you are looking for an angle on Civil War/Reconstruction. If you want
to show some historians’ interpretation of Reconstruction, you can show the last few
minutes of Episode 4 for a good, somewhat hopeful view.
Episode one opens in the 1620s with the introduction of 11 men of African descent and mixed ethnicity into
slavery in New Amsterdam. Working side by side with white indentured servants, these men labored to lay
the foundations of the Dutch colony that would later become New York. There were no laws defining the
limitations imposed on slaves at this point in time. Enslaved people, such as Anthony d'Angola, Emmanuel
Driggus, and Frances Driggus could bring suits to court, earn wages, and marry. But in the span of a
hundred years, everything changed. By the early 18th century, the trade of African slaves in America was
expanding to accommodate an agricultural economy growing in the hands of ambitious planters. After the
1731 Stono Rebellion (a violent uprising led by a slave named Jemmy) many colonies adopted strict "black
codes" transforming the social system into one of legal racial oppression.
Transcript
SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Episode 1: "The Downward Spiral"
2:00
Scene #1
“The First Eleven”
Really interesting—start at 3:25—shows undefined,
sort of negotiable early status of Africans in America
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: They were from Africa and Europe. Some were enslaved. Some were
indentured servants. All of them were poor and exploited. Their status as workers was confusing and
complex. Their lives were controlled by the Dutch West India Company. Day after day, they struggled
to survive the harsh world of Dutch New Amsterdam in the 1620s. Evening after evening they
gathered in taverns.
Jim Horton: Taverns were places where you gathered to talk about your problems. And slaves would
complain about their masters and indentured servants would complain about their masters and you
had a lot of interracial bonding in these taverns.
Leslie Harris: You also have people who indenture themselves. They promise their labor to a wealthy
person for seven years in order to pay off the price of coming to the New World.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The Dutch West India Company had established a fur trading post in
1624 on a hilly island called Manahattes. The area would become New York City. Less than 200 people
lived in the settlement. Most were men from Northern Europe who worked for the Company. To make
larger profits the Dutch West India Company wanted free labor.
(3:25)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Free Africans had come to the new world with European explorers in
the 1530's. English settlers in Jamestown, Virginia purchased twenty Africans from Dutch traders in
1619. Seven [ed note: video says 5] years later the first enslaved Africans arrived in Dutch New
Amsterdam. Their bondage began approximately two hundred years of slavery in what would become
America's Northern states.
Leslie Harris: The first 11 enslaved people, all male, who came to New Amsterdam, were brought by
the Dutch West Indian Company. They were owned by the company, not by individuals. So they're
company slaves. And they're bought by the company for the purpose of building the colony.
Graham Russell Hodges: It was quite common for the Dutch and for the English to raid the
wealthier Spanish and the Portuguese shipping to get people and to get property. So these people are
really prisoners of war.
Ira Berlin: These people come out of a larger Atlantic world. In the 14th and 15th century as Africa
and Europe and the Americas meet for the first time. We call them Atlantic Creoles.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Atlantic Creoles had cultural roots in both Africa and Europe. Some
were the offspring of European men and African women. Some traveled the seas with Europeans.
Some may have been literate. Many spoke multiple languages.
Leslie Harris: The names of the first 11 indicate some of that mixture. The name Simon Congo or
Anthony Portuguese or John D'angola -- these names are European names. Simon, Anthony, John -they're Christian names. And then the last name's Portuguese indicating a connection with Portugal
perhaps with a Portuguese explorer or Congo indicating this is a Christian African who came from the
Congo.
6:45
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The enslaved did not know if or when freedom would come. In the
settlements of Virginia, Massachusetts and New Amsterdam slavery was undefined. There were no
laws, no rules, no regulations. (Here the filmmaker makes point that slaves could negotiate.
Jim Horton: It was a difficult, harsh life. They are expected to work regardless of the weather,
regardless of the temperature because their work is what was valuable not their person.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Work began at sunrise. The company forced the first eleven to clear
land, construct roads and unload ships. They were both manual and skilled workers. Their labor helped
build the Dutch New Amsterdam economy.
Leslie Harris: The first 11 slaves were there really to provide the infrastructure. So they were really
the backbone of this early colony and really were integral to the survival of Europeans.
Graham Russell Hodges: Because the Dutch did fear racial mixture, they were not interested in
marriages between Creoles and Dutch women or Belgian women. Therefore by the late 1620s they
brought in Creole or African women into the colony.
Jennifer Morgan: The women are ostensibly brought -- as the company says -- for the comfort of
our Negro men. They will need to perform at least two jobs -- which is to be sexual partners for the
men but to be hard workers as well. The men are going to be very important then in helping these
women navigate since the men have been there for slightly longer than the women and understand
the terrain.
9:03 Scene#2
“Rights of Slaves” --This could be summarized, but I think it would
also surprise students to see slaves in this half-free status
Leslie Harris: Slaves in New Amsterdam during this time have rights that we think of as unusual for
enslaved people. They have the right to earn wages. They have the right to keep those wages.
Europeans are dependent on enslaved people and so they need to in a sense appease them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Because slavery had no legal structure, the Atlantic Creoles were able
to negotiate for greater autonomy. In 1635, several of them petitioned the Dutch West India Company
for wages they believed the company owed them. Anthony Portuguese sued a white merchant in
1638. A year later Pedro Negretto and Manuel D. Rues successfully sued Europeans for wages due.
Court records indicate that Atlantic Creoles made the system work for them when they could.
Leslie Harris: In some African slavery there is a greater sense of the rights of the enslaved people.
There is a greater sense of obligation on the part of the community. And I think that these enslaved
people bring that idea of slavery with them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1641, Anthony Van Angola, one of the first eleven, married Lucie
D'Angola. It was the first recorded marriage between black people in Dutch New Amsterdam.
Jennifer Morgan: The enslaved understand legitimating a marriage is a way to claim ground. They
are sophisticated interpreters of the landscape.
Leslie Harris: In Europeans' religious beliefs you were not supposed to enslave another Christian and
African people knew this and attempted to convert to Christianity. So, Christianity was this space that
Africans tried to build onto a space of negotiations for greater freedom. Now in reality many enslaved
people were Christian and the fact that they were baptized and were practicing Christians meant
nothing in terms of their status as a free people.
11:29
Graham Russell Hodges: The Dutch West India company has a very problematic relationship with
the area Native Americans. By 1639 relations had deteriorated into war. At that point a number of the
Creoles are put into the military force against the Indians.
Leslie Harris: There is a fear among Europeans during this time that African Americans may join with
Native Americans. And the first eleven in fact use this fear to negotiate.
Graham Russell Hodges: They had been part of the reform church. They had served in the military.
They had built the fort. They had done all of the critical labor that was necessary to make New
Amsterdam into a viable town. Now it was their time to be free.
Leslie Harris: The company responded with what has become known as half freedom these men and
their wives could live on what became known as the free negro lots. They could farm their own land
and they paid a kind of tribute in return to the company. The company also had the right to call them
up if they needed their labor.
Jim Horton: Don't get the idea that these were just nice people and wanted to allow these Africans
an opportunity. They calculated they could make more money with half freedom and therefore they
used that system. But even under those conditions work in the Dutch colony for a slave was slavery.
Jennifer Morgan: The members of this community of half free people had to be very profoundly
struck with the tentative and tenuous nature of their freedom. The evidence of that is that their
children who are not half free who remain enslaved. And therefore in a very profound way speak to
the fact that the community itself is, is vulnerable.
Leslie Harris: Half free blacks don't separate themselves from enslaved blacks. In fact they work...
um at times try to negotiate freedom for other enslaved people. Over the years these 11 men and
their wives continue to bargain, petition for freedom for their children.
14:20
Peter Wood: New Amsterdam is now becoming a good-sized town. At least 20 percent of the people
are black. Some of them are slaves, some are half free some are free but wherever you are in that
spectrum you can see the possibilities.
Leslie Harris: Half freedom is this moment where a group of slaves is moved to a new status. And
there's probably a belief among the slave community that they too can achieve a new status. Not
perfect -- not full freedom but something better, more autonomous than what had existed before.
15:05 Scene #3
“Indentured Servitude”
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Freedom was also the goal of black and white indentured servants in
Chesapeake tobacco country. Since the early 1600s Black people had trickled into the area. Most were
enslaved, others indentured servants. A few were free. John Punch was a black indentured servant.
James Gregory a Scotsman and Victor from the Netherlands served with him on a small tobacco farm.
Peter Wood: In the New World, every European colony needed to provide a profit. In the Chesapeake
Bay, Virginia, Maryland, the more tobacco you could plant the more profits you could reap. The more
pleased the investors back in England would be. And there is tremendous pressure for labor.
Jim Horton: They hoped to use Native Americans that they found in Virginia as a labor supply. They
were disappointed because Native Americans in Virginia were powerful enough to frustrate the
attempts to use them as forced laborers. It was at that point that the British turned to British laborers
under the indentured servitude system.
Marvin Dulaney: The status of indentured white servants and indentured Africans was very similar.
They were both of course hired for a period of time. And, and both could become free. And let's also
say that both were treated real bad. To be an indentured servant in this country meant that you
literally didn't have any rights.
Ira Berlin: In this world there's not much practical difference in terms of the oppression that they
face. In some measure that equality is an equality because these people can't be treated worse.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By 1640 indentured servants were essential to the profits of Virginia
tobacco farmers. Their labor made tobacco the colony's most profitable export.
Norrece Jones: Three men on the same farm, doing the same labor, being harassed and oppressed
on a comparable level to the point that these three men chose to flee their owner.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: John Punch, Victor, and James Gregory crossed the Virginia border into
Southern Maryland. Days later they were captured and returned. In the colony's highest court it was
said that Hugh Gwyn's servants caused him considerable "loss and prejudice."
Norrece Jones: The two white men are sentenced to simply a number of years added to their
indentures. For John Punch -- the one black among these three men -- his fate is infinitely worse, it's
servitude for life.
Marvin Dulaney: Now there's no law that says that John Punch had to have been enslaved for life but
it was clear that 1640 is sort of the turning point. The beginning of the point where Africans are gonna
be treated differently as opposed to whites who are indentured servants.
Norrece Jones: Rather than distinguishing people because they are un-free people are being
distinguished now because they're black or white. And that whiteness is privileging in ever increasing
and beneficial ways.
20:05 Scene #4
Emanuel Driggus
One man’s story illustrates downward spiral**
Douglas Deal: Emanuel Driggus first appears in the records of the eastern shore of Virginia in about
1645 as the slave of Captain Francis Pott. Emanuel Driggus fits nicely into the category of people that
we are coming to call Atlantic Creoles. He had this European name -- Portuguese really. Driggus is just
an anglicization, a shortened form of Rodridges.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As part of Emanuel's servitude Captain Pott provided him with a cow
and a calf. When Emmanuel began his service, his wife, Frances, and daughters, ages eight and one,
were bound to Captain Pott as well. Captain Pott informed the court: "[I have] taken to service two
daughters of my Negro, Emanuel Driggus to serve and be with me." The terms of Emanuel's
enslavement guaranteed that these children would attain their freedom after a specified number of
years. However, no such provision was made for their brothers and sisters.
Douglas Deal: Captain Pott ran into some financial difficulties. He instructed his nephew to try to
arrange things to get him out of debt and told him particularly that he would rather part with anything
other than his Negroes.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Yet, in 1657, after twelve years of service, Emanuel's family became
Captain Pott's way to "arrange things."
Jennifer Morgan: Their family is completely disrupted, um in fact destroyed by Potts's economic
insecurities. So that when Pott accrues debt their younger child is sold and later their oldest daughter
Ann is sold for about 5,000 pounds of tobacco.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When Captain Pott died his widow inherited a farm, farm animals, and
Emanuel. However, by 1661 court records show that Emanuel had attained his freedom, leased 145
acres and expanded his livestock holdings.
Jim Horton: Even if you get your freedom as a black person your life is not going to be like that of a
free white person. Emanuel Driggus gets his freedom. He leases land he's got to pay many times what
a white person would have paid to lease that land. He is not treated like your average free person.
Race is really by now a factor and becoming a more and more significant factor.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By 1665 Maryland and New York had legalized slavery. Three
years earlier Virginia law makers decreed, "all children born in Virginia shall be held bond or
free according to the condition of the mother."
Deborah Gray White : Even children of say a white master and a slave woman it makes those
children not free it makes them a slave. It makes them chattel, it makes them valuable, it makes the
white father a slave owner of his own children.
Norrece Jones: Black men and black women raised thousands of mulatto children as families. That
love of children transcended the pain and the horror of how that child was created. Unlike some
Europeans who created these children and saw their lives so meaningless and insignificant that they
sold them no differently than any other slave.
Douglas Deal: Emanuel Driggus continued to see to the needs of his enslaved children. He
transferred title to livestock to them -- ah -- later on hoping against hope that the livestock might be a
source for some route to freedom for them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The court records of September 29, 1673 state "I Emanuel ..grant unto
my said two daughters one bay mare." The same day he granted another mare to his free children.
Despite his efforts, Emanuel could not free Thomas and Anne, the son and daughter sold by Captain
Pott. However, because Thomas married a free black woman, his children were born free.
Douglas Deal: One of those children was named Frances, born in about 1677. Though she was free,
she was bound out to serve a local blacksmith planter named John Brewer.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Frances entered the service of the blacksmith in 1694. Later that year
she found herself in court charged by John Brewer with the sin of fornication. No partner was named.
Seventeen-year-old Frances was sentenced to thirty lashes. In addition her servitude to Brewer was
extended for two years. Months later Frances was back in court this time charged with having a child
out of wedlock.
Jim Horton: It becomes increasingly difficult for free blacks to make their case before a court of law.
Frances Driggus accuses her master of fathering her child. Now the court won't hear of this. They will
not take the word of a black woman against that of a white man and especially a white man who is a
planter.
Douglas Deal: This throws the court into an uproar. The justices decide to send the case on to a
higher level. However, they do sentence her to yet another whipping.
Douglas Deal: Her master, John Brewer, decides he's had enough of Frances and assigns her to
another man. Frances brings a court case against this move.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Judges were still unlikely to accept the testimony of a black woman
against a white man. Un-deterred, Frances argued that Brewer was conspiring to place her in a
community where her status as a free woman would not be recognized. The letter binding Frances to
Brewer was ruled invalid.
Jennifer Morgan: Frances actually wins her suit and she's released from the terms of her indenture.
Frances is really extraordinary because there are very few black women who are able to use the
courts in the way that she does. Unfortunately her father has died. Her mother is sick and by 1700
Frances is improvised and destitute. She reappears in the courts because, um, in a desperate act she
steals food to try to ah feed herself and her child.
Douglas Deal: She decides that ah she'd better link up to another household, again become a
servant, have some steady kind of support. So she binds over herself and her child to Isaac and
Bridgett Foxcroft. She promises to serve them for 10 years and any children that she has are to serve
for 25 years.
Deborah Gray White : Now if you were a free black woman what are you going to do? There were
very few means of making money for any woman in the colony. To be free ironically meant that you
were going to be impoverished. And in fact you could find yourself worse off than someone who was
enslaved.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Isaac Foxcroft had promised Frances freedom upon his death.
However, when he died his widow assigned Frances and her children to another master. Again,
Frances sought justice. Without a document and only her word for evidence, the court ruled against
her. After 1704 she disappeared from the public record.
Douglas Deal: In Virginia and a number of other colonies the Atlantic Creoles knew how to negotiate
their way through this system and, and win gains and advantages for themselves. Limited gains
sometimes but gains nonetheless. It had gone from a situation where they could do that to a situation
where there was no space left to do that.
31:50
Peter Wood: A small group of elite Virginia planters have committed to the use of race slavery to
expand their tobacco holdings. In 1691 they forbid free blacks from living in certain counties. If you're
African-American you cannot have an educatio, ah, you cannot move about freely. You cannot hold
property. All of these constraints are falling in on one generation.
Deborah Gray White : It's a link in a chain of slavery whereby people cannot become free. Before
this there were ways of becoming free.
Jim Horton: Slavery is replacing indentured servitude as the labor system of choice. And by the
beginning of the 18th century it is clear that through law in the Chesapeake slavery is being made a
racially based institution and people are being considered property.
33:05 Scene #5
Societies with Slaves
Shows the econ embedding of slavery
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: New Amsterdam was renamed New York in 1664 after the British took
over the colony. New York and other British colonies including Massachusetts, New Jersey and
Maryland, were societies with slaves. Of the original thirteen colonies Carolina was the first in which
slavery was the center of economic production, making it the first slave society. Racial slavery was
sanctioned by Carolinas' 1669 constitution.
Peter Wood: The Carolina colony, which was originally South Carolina and North Carolina -- founded
in about 1670. It's one of these gifts from Charles the second to his friend. Here's a place to exploit
fellows -- go to it.
Edward Ball: Many South Carolinian whites came initially from Barbados where the British had
established a giant sugar economy with some 50 thousand Afro-Caribbean slaves. The plantation
system was merely transplanted like a kind of virus from the Caribbean to the American coast.
Marvin Dulaney: The more slaves that you brought gave you more land. You got 50 acres of land for
every person that you brought into the Carolina colony. And so slavery was encouraged, ah, from the
outset here. And of course the key was to find ah the, the type of work that slaves could do to make
the colony profitable.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the enslaved cleared land the planters searched for a way to exploit
the Carolina low country. They tried growing cotton and indigo and raising livestock. The more they
tried the more they failed to find a lucrative cash crop. The enslaved were growing something they
called oryza (or rice) for themselves. They had grown it for hundreds of years in West Africa.
Peter Wood: Now it's not knowledge that they hold to themselves. Once they have shown other
people how to plant this crop they've lost control of the knowledge. And an entire economy based on
exploitation of Africans is in place within a generation. And the shipment of Africans to South Carolina
skyrockets.
John K. Thornton: So many of the Africans who were enslaved during the 17th and 18th century
were ex-soldiers some of them would be captured through wars or civil wars. And these victors would
sell the captives off to the Europeans. This had the advantage from their point of view of reducing
their numerical strength, especially the solider population, of the opponents.
Jim Horton: They're marched to the coast. Many of them had not been to the coast before -- they
had not seen the ocean. They see white people for the first time. Who are these people? There was
this folklore about cannibalism. Lots of slaves who were brought to the coast really were so afraid that
these people were gonna eat them.
Peter Wood: Some of the people owning South Carolina are also invested in the Royal Africa
Company, in the slave trade themselves. They're getting a profit at both ends out of this.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The major profit came from the "human cargo" of enslaved Africans.
Slave trading had become the basis of an international economy.
Ira Berlin: There are a variety of auxiliary industries, that is -- ship building, insuring, ah, those
ships, ah making sails for those ships. So the expansion of slavery is an essential part of the
expansion of capitalism.
Edward Ball: As the ships came from West Africa and people were dying, their bodies would be
thrown overboard usually in the middle of the Atlantic. But once in a while the captains would wait
until they arrived Charleston Harbor. So one of these captains threw several dozen over board and
their bodies including children began to wash ashore. So the governor became very upset. And it
wasn't because this was a crime against humanity. It was because the smell was irritating to the white
population.
Norrece Jones: In many African communities there's this reverence for the ancestors and this
reverence for those who are now in the spirit world -- a belief that they're watching over. And I think
that that is what sustained so many people at their, their weakest and their lowest moment.
39:00 Scene #6
Sullivan’s Island
Peter: On Sullivan's Island the English established a pest house where they could quarantine people
off of incoming ships.
Jim Horton: These people were thought of as goods, as cargo. And in the language of the slave
trader this was a place where goods were held until they could reach full market value. This is the
perfect example of the inhumanity of the slave system.
Edward Ball: The most valuable workers were men younger than 20. And the second most valuable
were women younger than 20. Children were young and inexpensive and they would grow up and live
a long time and produce a lot of rice.
Jim Horton: For a person just arriving, you know, you've been aboard this ship for a long time but
you probably don't know exactly how long. You don't know where you have gone. Of course the
number one thing on your mind is how do I get out of here? How do I get myself free?
Edward Ball: Those who died were probably buried in mass graves. The people who had died en
route were probably one quarter to one third of those who had actually boarded the ship. Those who
finally survived were taken to Charleston where they were waxed down with oil, fed a good meal, and
put on the auction block.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For the enslaved, survival took many forms. Some pretended to be
ignorant or represented their masters' interests. However, many refused to conform. They maintained
their dignity by drawing strength from their spirituality and culture.
Norrece Jones: Even though people may not have spoken the same language and even though
people may have been rivals traditionally in their homelands there would've been a certain spiritual
bonding that took place -- that people came together and fused themselves together in this new
world.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By the 1720s enslaved black people outnumbered whites by more than
two to one in the Carolina low country.
Edward Ball: Slavery was probably unique in every region where it flourished -- in Massachusetts,
New York, Virginia and Barbados. But in South Carolina, it was probably the most industrial form of
slavery. Because the scale was so, so great. The task system was something that was unique to South
Carolina whereby enslaved people had a given assignment on each day. So they usually went to work
in the morning at sunrise and a day's task in the field would be to hoe a quarter of an acre, which was
105 feet square. And people spent most of the year up to their knees in mud bent over tilling away at
the soil under the sun. Rice was a very demanding master.
Deborah Gray White : In South Carolina slaves are worked almost to death. And then they go back
to Africa and they go get some more and they're continually replenished.
John K. Thornton: In Central Africa, men generally don't do agricultural work. There's even a
proverb: if you want to humiliate another man you say, "you're no man take up a hoe." Um, indicating
that only women would do this kind of work and yet here in South Carolina men were being forced to
work, right along side of women.
Peter Wood: In West Africa, the mother would pound a little bit of rice everyday to prepare the
evening meal. It was a -- it was an art form -- it was a skill you could be proud of it. You then found
yourself doing the same thing. You're growing rice, but now it's completely different.
Daniel C. Littlefield: The sound of the pounding of rice in Africa was the sound of domesticity. Ah -but the sound of pounding rice in South Carolina was the sound of exploitation.
45:40
Edward Ball: Well the more money that the white elites made, the more it was in their interests to
make the slave system a kind of invincible fortress that would perpetuate the -- ah -- comforts of the
few. And so the incentive was for those who ran the society to set up extensive policing systems.
Jim Horton: A slave, a slave especially under these circumstances wants to survive, wants to be free.
And it also doesn't take much imagination to understand the anger of being enslaved of being held
against your will of seeing your loved ones subjected to treatment that no human begins ought to
experience.
Edward Ball: The first time your punishment was whipping. If you ran away a second time there
would be an "R" branded on your right cheek. The third time one of your ears would be severed and
another "R" would be burned onto your left cheek for runaway. And if you ran away a fourth time -- if
you were a man the punishment was castration.
Peter Wood: Gruesome punishments that had been familiar in England were exaggerated in the slave
society. The planter had to calculate that I can punish this person even if they die I can import new
people from West Africa. And I'm making so much money in this process that I can afford to do it.
Marvin Dulaney: The inhumane treatment says a lot -- that indeed they're resisting their
enslavement. That -- like any other human being whose rights and opportunities are being taken away
that they are going to resist and fight back.
Peter Wood: Burning down barns was something that occurred regularly and increased during
harvest time when the workload was heaviest. Poisoning could not be caught readily. And it was often
something that was feared by whites even when it didn't exist.
Edward Ball: One symptom of their fear was that there was a law that white men had to carry guns
when they went to church. Sunday was the only day off for enslaved people. And so people the white
folks feared that the uprising, if it ever came, would happen on Sunday when all the whites were
gathered in church. Therefore the white men were required to carry their guns to church.
48:30 Scene #7
Stono Rebellion
—This part is really good
Peter Wood: It was on a Saturday night September 1739. It was a work crew. Many of them are
Angolans, including a man named Jemmy who becomes the leader.
Edward Ball: The fated Sunday finally came on the Stono River southwest of Charleston. And they
got to a store and broke in and they killed a Mr. Hutchinson. Decapitated him and put his head on a
pole and cleared out his store of guns.
Peter Wood: It happens at harvest time, which is the time when blacks are being worked the
hardest. It also happens in malaria time and there is an epidemic going on in Charleston which has
virtually shut down the town.
John K. Thornton: They must have realized that they couldn't possibly take over the area and drive
out the, the Europeans, but they did recognize the possibility that if they took common action as
soldiers they might be able to escape.
Marvin Dulaney: The government of Florida had already issued a decree that any African who was a
slave who made it to Florida would be free. And there was indeed a colony there of ex-slaves.
Jim Horton: There is this African manned fortification. And when the Stono rebellion breaks out it
becomes clear that what these people are trying to do is to reach Fort Mose.
Peter Wood: People begin to join them. They burn successive plantations. Kill some of the white
people living there. Draw some of the blacks with them. Others are afraid to join in and refuse to go.
But unfortunately for them they meet the lieutenant governor riding north.
Marvin Dulaney: They gave chase to him but he was able to sound the alarm. And then of course
sort of a -- a posse is formed and they set out after this group of Africans.
Peter Wood: It's an amazing moment. If they had been able to take him hostage who knows what
the dynamics would have been. These people are pursued south for a day or two. If they had been
able to go another 24 or 48 hours so -- that more people could have joined them their strength would
have been greater and who knows what the prospects would have been.
Edward Ball: And the whites came on them, they surrounded these men and they fired on them. A
lot of them were scattered, many of them were killed.
Marvin Dulaney: Some of them escape into the swamp, but those that they did capture they
chopped their heads off. Put their heads on poles leading out, down what is today US 17 out of
Charleston -- to send a message to the other Africans this is what will happen to you if you rebel.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: After the Stono Rebellion, all of the separate laws governing slavery
were consolidated into a single code. This "black code" restricted the movement of black people and
regulated almost every aspect of the lives of the enslaved.
Peter Wood: The crushing of the Stono Rebellion was a tragedy. To me, these people were freedom
fighters. Someone like Jemmy, newly arrived from Angola, is able to show others around him that this
is not the only way to live, this can change -- it may not change this time but it will change in the
future.
Jim Horton: Under the most inhumane conditions that you can possibly imagine, people were able to
maintain their human dignity. It gives you some insight into the resilience of the human spirit. That it
is possible for human beings to make the decision: I will not be defeated.
ENDS 53:40
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/about/index.html
From the 1740s to the 1830s, the institution of slavery continued to support economic development. As the
slave population reproduced, American planters became less dependent on the African slave trade. Ensuing
generations of slaves developed a unique culture that blended elements of African and American life.
Episode two follows the paths of several African Americans, including Thomas Jefferson's slave Jupiter,
Colonel Tye, Elizabeth Freeman, David Walker, and Maria Stewart, as they respond to the increasingly
restrictive system of slavery. At the core of this episode is the Revolutionary War, an event which reveals
the contradictions of a nation seeking independence while simultaneously denying freedom to its black
citizens.
Transcript
SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Episode 2: "Liberty in the Air"
1:34
Scene#1
Organzizing Rebellion --**very good**
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: New York City, 1741. Quack, enslaved to a house painter, approached
Fort George -- the seat of British colonial rule in New York and home to the governor.
Thomas Davis: Quack was also married to the governor's cook, a slave. The governor did not like
Quack's behavior and did not like when Quack came visiting and the governor gave orders to the fort's
centuries that if Quack should appear he should not be allowed entry. Quack uttered certain
imprecations that he would burn the place down but he would be with his wife. And when the fort did
subsequently burn down Quack was a prime suspect.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When fires erupted in a number of other buildings, warehouses, and
stores, it was clear that this was more than romance thwarted.
Thomas Davis: The cry went up, "the negroes are rising, the negroes are rising."
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Rumors of slaves organizing rebellions traveled the Atlantic seaboard.
Two years earlier in an uprising of slaves in Stono, South Carolina some whites were murdered. Now,
white New Yorkers panicked.
Thomas Davis: Almost every adult black male who was over 14 years of age was picked up by the
city constables, by the militia, and placed in jail.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the inquiries began, Caesar, slave of a baker, was the first to be
marched to the gallows. His body would hang in a public space while a conspiracy trial accused dozens
of slaves and a few whites of plotting to burn down New York City and foment slave rebellion.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The trial revealed bitter details about the lives of the enslaved in New
York, home to the second largest slave population after Charleston, South Carolina.
Graham Russell Hodges: There was a sense among all of these slaves that they were trapped into a
system that offered no yield at all. That there was nothing that they could do if they wanted to be free
except to revolt.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slaves complained about being overworked and that they weren't
supplied with enough clothing or fuel to keep warm. They lashed out at the laws that prohibited them
from gathering together. But their most common complaint was not being allowed to visit their loved
ones.
Graham Russell Hodges: In the mid 18th century African Americans in New York knew that liberty
existed for others. They knew it was denied to them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As slaves faced the court they were confronted by all the laws that had
accumulated over the past one hundred years restricting and degrading their lives.
Thomas Davis: The law of slavery deemed that persons who were patently human beings were not in
fact persons. They were not persons at law rather they were deemed property. Well that is a patent
fiction. Anyone can look at Caesar , at Quack ... and say well yes these are persons. And much of
slaves' existence was geared to the fact of demonstrating their humanity.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Early in the proceedings, Quack was accused of burning down Fort
George. He and twelve other black men were burned at the stake, seventeen were hanged. Four
whites were also hanged.
Thomas Davis: After each rebellion, what the society seeks to do is pass a more repressive set of
laws. And so we have a continually upward cycling of violence because the violence of slaveholder
repression produces the violence of slave reaction.
6:19
scenes of the middle passage shown
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By the 1750s some five thousand Africans a year were brought to
American docks in crowded filthy, stinking ships ...
Jim Horton: And for weeks they are confined to these places, people being chained together. People
dying and being chained to dead people for periods of time until somebody decides to take the dead
people above decks and throw them into the ocean.
Peter Wood: Some people it didn't last two weeks but for other people they began mustering the
human resources that it would take to figure out the predicament they had been thrown into.
Peter Wood: The planters, the exploiters have rationalized what they're doing. They've worked it out
with the law. They've worked it out with their god one way or another. And they've begun the long
trek into American racism. That is to say they've reduced these people to less than human beings. And
that's the way they're gonna make it work.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A hundred years after the first Africans arrived -- most colonies were
heavily dependent upon slave labor. By 1750 a quarter million enslaved blacks now made vast wealth
possible for their masters.
Peter Wood: Slavery it seems to me was an extraordinary goose that laid the golden egg ... .You had
workers that you didn't have to pay and you owned their children as soon as they were born. It's a
preposterous system . All you have to do is visit one of the huge plantations in Virginia or South
Carolina to see the wealth that flowed ...
8:18 Scene#2
Jupiter and Thomas Jefferson—Jeff part too hypothetical, then the
resistance part is quite ethnographic, and most compelling is 14:50-16:50 b/c of commentary)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At Shadwell -- a tobacco plantation in the Piedmont region of Virginia - two young boys are growing up together. Jupiter was born a slave. The other, Thomas Jefferson,
would one day be president of a new republic. Jupiter was one of more than sixty slaves who
sustained Jefferson's family.
Ira Berlin: A new generation of black people -- of slaves is coming of age. These are people who are
born on this side of the Atlantic. These are people who know how to operate within the society.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When Thomas Jefferson went off to study the classics, Jupiter was
trained to be Jefferson's personal valet. That training would include sophisticated lessons in
psychology and power.
Jennifer Morgan: Certainly as he grew up one of the things that he was gonna have to learn is that a
boy who is his same age, Thomas Jefferson's, is going to grow up to be his owner, is gonna grow up
to be his master.
Ira Berlin: He came to understand something about the politics of that world... The word liberty of
course would come to be used much in the years that followed. And his own owner, Thomas Jefferson
became a great merchant of the language of liberty. Jupiter understood that as well.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Jupiter's status and work conditions were privileged compared to most
other slaves at Shadwell. But for all of them -- including Jupiter -- it would be endless work, from sunup to sundown and beyond.
Norrece Jones: And all of them also would have experienced a punishment. The severity of the
lashings, the cutting off of ears, the kind of contraptions that are placed around people to prevent
running away. All of these tortuous weapons are realities that enslaved people everywhere would have
experienced.
Jennifer Morgan: Jupiter, like any child, would also have to deal with the fact that while his parents
have authority over him their authority is secondary to the authority of the slave owner. He might
have to witness his mother being schooled by her owner. He would have to watch his mother being
punished, being whipped or being raped.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In this lopsided balance of power slaves found ingenious ways to resist
the master. Some subtle, some overt, some suicidal.
10:50 resistance
Peter Wood: Arson was one of the primary forms of resistance because it was hard to track.
Poisoning was another. Running away was another because you were literally stealing property from
the master if you ran away.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A runaway ad in 1746 describes sixteen-year-old Stephen Thusly. He
has been "much whipped, which his back will show..." Another ad describes Peter, as Virginia born,
running away with iron shackles on his legs...
Thomas Davis: ... Day after day slaves are refusing to obey. They are saying listen we have our own
lives. We will not go that far. We will not submit totally.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slave and master knew each other well. Using this familiarity slaves
constantly tested the boundaries. They negotiated with their masters for more time to work on their
own gardens or to sell and trade produce they cultivated.
Ira Berlin: It would seem that somebody who's a slave would have no power and would have nothing
to negotiate. But slaves found that they could negotiate. They danced the dance of domination and
subordination.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One of the most profound forms of resistance was the preservation of
African religions, values, and beliefs.
Sylvia R. Frey: What it did is create an internal universe, which is separate and apart from and
beyond the control of a white master.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Yet something else was emerging.
Jennifer Morgan: The first generation of American born descendants of Africans are really in the
process of creating something that has a very strong link to Africa but which is really quite new.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On plantations new African arrivals mixed with American born slaves to
shape a new culture.
Peter Wood: The Jefferson family may have a violin from Europe. And someone plays that fiddle. ...
Jupiter's family from Africa knows how to make banjos. In fact Thomas Jefferson himself writes about
how the banjo is an African instrument. Originally in Africa they often made it using a big gourd...so
this is complicated coming together of different cultures not just Europe and Africa but varieties of
West African cultures. On any given plantation any given young person like Jupiter is experiencing all
these forces.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For Jupiter growing to adulthood it was a double life. When Jefferson
went off to college in Williamsburg, Jupiter accompanied him as his valet. When Jefferson went to
court his future wife at her father's plantation, Jupiter would find his future wife enslaved there. They
would all end up at Monticello, Jefferson's mansion in rural Virginia.
14:50
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As slaves began forming extended families the slave quarter became
the center of family life.
Norrece Jones: They, like any other human beings free or un-free, a thousand years ago or today,
have the emotions of any other people. They fall in love, they hate others, they develop friendships
and how to do this within the milieu of slavery simply made those very human realities more difficult
and more challenging, but they existed.
Jennifer Morgan: ... Networks of love and affection and connection between the enslaved have got
to be really crucial to surviving the experience of slavery ... to surviving it on an emotional level as
well as a physical level.
Norrece Jones: But in the creation of those families it gave their owners yet another weapon to force
them to behave in ways that they wanted.
Jennifer Morgan: What this community then becomes is the foundation for an internal slave trade
where these children a ... these families will be separated in the future.
Peter Wood: ... It's almost unimaginable the tragedy of seeing next of kin simply removed,
disappeared, shipped somewhere else. The sheer mind boggling excruciating situation of dealing with
arbitrary power on a daily basis not knowing when you wake up in the morning whether the family will
be complete when you go to bed at night.
16:53 Scene#3
Titus—the vignettes of Titus and Mum Bett are interesting, but might
be told instead of shown, but then show 22:36 & on
Peter Wood: If you look at the runaway advertisements in the colonial newspapers what's striking is
that roughly half of the people are running away to see kinfolk, to see loved ones. (image of woman
running away in one of those obnoxious collars with spokes)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slave sales and cross-plantation marriages meant that families were
strewn across the landscape. A web of well-worn footpaths soon connected plantations and farms
creating a kinship map of a region. Those paths also functioned as trading and news networks. The
complex waterways of the Atlantic seaboard extended these contacts. They would become key for a
young slave, named Titus, coming of age on the eve of the American Revolution. During the early
1770s in Monmouth County, New Jersey Titus worked alongside his quick-tempered owner, John
Corlies. It was a time when some colonists were beginning to protest British restrictions on their
freedom. Titus was alert to the gathering storm. He knew that one protestant group -- the Quakers -had begun to free their slaves . John Corlies was a Quaker.
Graham Russell Hodges: When Titus turns 21 he knows this is the age in which other Quakers free
their enslaved people. Corlies refuses to do so.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Unlike other Quakers, Corlies also refused to teach Titus to read and
write -- but he did send his young slave to market alone. Titus would take advantage of this practical
education. He had a wide range of survival skills. He earned cash by selling animal skins and produce
he had grown. He also owned a mental map of the area and its extensive waterways. As Titus turned
21 it was 1775. The American Revolution had begun. He now saw the mounting political conflict as an
opportunity. He made a dangerous and risky move.
20:00 ish (when Mum Bett is introduced)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When Titus ran some half million, or one in five people in the colonies
were of African descent. Most were enslaved. Some were free. A few even owned slaves themselves.
As the relationship between the colonists and the British deteriorated, black people in America faced a
new challenge -- how to make their demands for freedom heard in the growing cacophony for liberty.
In rural Massachusetts a domestic slave by the name of Mum Bett was paying close attention to this
unfolding crisis. She worked alongside her sister, Lizzie, in the home of John and Hannah Ashley.
John Sedgewick: Colonel John Ashley was probably the most important man in town. The Ashleys
owned just about everything there was to own. Including as it turned out Mum Bett herself.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One day an incident occurred that would strengthen Mum Bett's resolve
John Sedgewick: Lizzie was making for herself some wheat cakes from the scraps that were left
over...and Mum Bett is watching from the other side of the room. When Mrs. Ashley sees this and gets
furious. She takes a coal pan from the fireplace, a red-hot device that she's ready to bring down on
little Lizzie's head. Well Mum Bett of course would never sit for that. She gets the coal pan on her own
forearm and it burns her severely and leaves a nasty scar. Well for years afterwards Mum Bett made a
point of rolling up her sleeves whenever she was in public so that she would reveal the scar. So that
when people would ask her "why Betty what happened?" she would say "Ask Madam!"
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Mum Bett would soon take her destiny into her own hands. Deprived of
an opportunity to learn how to read and write Mum Bett was listening in on the growing resentment of
the colonists against British taxation and control. She was present during crucial meetings in the
Ashley house when a position paper was written demanding rights for the colonists.
John Sedgewick : In it they used the phrase or something very close to "every citizen is entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." These words that come down from the philosopher John
Locke and become part of the scriptural language of the Declaration of Independence. She would have
been right there. She would have heard it.
22:36
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Revolution and the rhetoric of liberty were in the air. Mum Bett and
others like her would soon begin to exhale this new language.
Voice Over: The natural liberty of man is to be free.
Thomas Davis: Beginning in 1765 with the Stamp Act crisis, the language the rhetoric, of natural
rights flows throughout the American colonies
Voice Over: The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Davis: There are continual pamphlets that are coming forward to express views of natural
rights Slaves hear that conversation. Slaves some of them read those pamphlets .
Voice Over: All men are by nature equally free and have certain inherent rights in which when they
enter.
23:30
Jim Horton: You know when you listen to the patriots.
Voice Over: Reducing us to slavery.
Jim Horton: They say we will not be the slaves of England. They don't say we will not be the secondclass citizens. They will, they don't say we won't be the oppressed people they say we will not be the
slaves. Well when people who hold slaves say we will not be slaves you know that they know what
they're talking about. Well slaves were saying exactly the same thing. And African Americans were
quick to say we will not be the slaves of England nor will we be the slaves of America.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In early 1773 a petition arrived on the desk of governor Thomas
Hutchinson, the British crown's representative in Massachusetts. At a time when most slaves were
illiterate, this petition was signed by a slave.
Voice Over: "The humble Petition of many slaves: we shall never be able to possess and enjoy any
thing, not even life itself, but in a manner as the beasts that perish. We have no Property! We have no
City! No Country! ... Signed Felix.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Three months later another petition was written and signed by four
enslaved men, Peter Bestes, Sambo Freeman, Chester Joie, and Felix Holbrook.
Voice Over: We expect great things from men who have made such a noble stand against the
designs of their fellow men to enslave them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The petitioners demanded answers.
Thomas Davis: How is it that you can talk about liberty as a fundamental right of human beings
when in fact you keep us as slaves? How is it that you treat us as beasts when we are human beings?
More than that -- how can you call yourselves Christian people?
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A year later, yet another petition reached the new Massachusetts
governor. Crafted by slaves, the words again would sound like a document that had yet to be written - the Declaration of Independence.
Voice Over: We have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without being
deprived of them by our fellow men.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: All the petitions were dismissed. Slaves could see the paradox. Thomas
Jefferson -- still in his early thirties, spoke of slavery as a moral evil yet he was a prominent member
of the Virginia slave holding class. Now he was at work on a document about equality and liberty.
Voice Over: We hold these truths to be...
Peter Wood: If I were Jupiter looking at my childhood friend Thomas Jefferson knowing the world we
both grew up in I wouldn't be surprised by the contradictions that emerge in his thinking.
Voice Over: Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Jim Horton: In some ways you know Thomas Jefferson is so like America itself. Thomas Jefferson
expresses opinions in the Declaration of Independence that are wonderful examples of fairness, of a
belief in human dignity and human freedom yet Thomas Jefferson is so contradictory because the man
who writes the Declaration of Independence is the man that holds at one point almost 250 slaves or
more. The country that says to the world we bring ourselves into existence on the principle of human
freedom is the country that is, in many ways, founded on the principle of human slavery -- supported
by that principle. That's a pretty substantial contradiction.
**you can see how this quote can provide a writing prompt for students to consider
27:28 Chapter 4
April 1775
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: April 1775. Open warfare broke out. Black people began choosing
sides. In the North some 5,000 black men joined in mixed and all black regiments to fight on the side
of the patriots some fought as minutemen in the earliest battles of the war. Black soldiers were badly
needed because some white colonists were reluctant to serve. Initially, General Washington resisted
arming black men.
Sylvia R. Frey: For white Americans everywhere the image of a black soldier toting a gun evokes a
totally disordered society -- complete disordering of the old society.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Washington relented when he heard what was happening further south.
Word was spreading that the British were going to offer freedom to slaves who joined their side.
Sylvia R. Frey: In November of 1775 Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a
proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people who fled to the British who joined his Ethiopian
corp.
Peter Wood: It has a tremendous effect and word spreads to other colonies.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: It was the rumor of Lord Dunmore's proclamation that probably
inspired Titus to run away. After a stint in Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment Titus returned to the
Monmouth New Jersey countryside. This time, he was leading a guerilla band of black and white
raiders fighting for the British. Only now he was known as Colonel Tye. Colonel Tye and his band knew
the landscape and the farmers in the region. They raided property and carried off cattle and clothing
to deliver to British troops. They terrorized their former owners and kidnapped key patriot farmers
most importantly they liberated their enslaved families and friends. (Another prompt here: imagine
the power of Tye’s militia and the powerfulness they felt—but discuss the contradiction with the
American Revolution’s focus on liberating itself from England and these slaves liberating themselves
from America!)
Russell Hodges: New York was the cockpit of the revolution. Colonel Tye was somebody who was
acting on a local level but his actions had continental importance.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: During a battle in September, 1780, Colonel Tye took a bullet in his
wrist. Within days he died. Only 26 years old, he had fought in the revolution for five years.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Dunmore's offer of freedom coupled with the chaos of war led to a
mass exodus from Southern plantations. Tens of thousands of slaves responded with their feet. The
risks were huge.
Peter Wood: There are tragic stories in Chesapeake Bay. Word is out that you can get on board a
British ship. So you gather your family eight or ten people in a small boat you row out to the boat
that's flying a British flag only to find out that it's a hoax that the patriots have run up a British flag in
order to lure you on board arrest you punish you and send you back to the plantation. It's stories like
that that break your heart.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Those slaves that reached the British forces were assigned the most
arduous tasks -- building fortifications, hauling heavy equipment, digging ditches. They lived in
miserable conditions in military camps and died by the thousands of smallpox.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At the end of the war, thousands of former slaves were transported to
freedom by the British. Many others were freed by fighting for the patriots. No other event until the
civil war would liberate so many slaves.
32:27
Jim Horton: The point in all this is that whether African Americans fought for the American cause or
whether they fought for the British cause they were fighting for the central cause of freedom. That's
what African Americans were fighting for. For them the revolution really was a freedom struggle.
(From this point, the rest of the scene can be summarized instead of shown.)
Voice Over: All men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable
rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the war was coming to an end, colonies began to write new
constitutions. In 1780 the Massachusetts constitution was read aloud in every village including
Sheffield where Mum Bett did errands. Soon after, Mum Bett knocked on the door of attorney
Theodore Sedgwick. She knew him from the meetings at the Ashley house.
Thomas Davis: She overheard Ashley and his colleagues talking about the rhetoric of independence.
Talking about natural rights.
Thomas Davis: Mum Bett essentially says we have this constitution that appears to announce a
principle of each person being free. If that is the case then I am free.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Her meeting with Sedgwick led to a court suit in which Mum Bett and
another slave of the household sued Colonel Ashley for their freedom.
John Sedgwick: It wasn't just Theodore John Sedgwick going against Colonel Ashley, he hired
(Theodore did) some of the best legal talent that could be found in the whole Southern New England.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1781 Mum Bett won her case and announced that she would
thereafter be known as Elizabeth Freeman. Her victory helped pave the way for the abolition of
slavery in Massachusetts two years later.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: During the long hot summer of 1787 enslaved coachmen waited
outside independence hall in Philadelphia -- inside their owners forged a constitution for the new
republic.
Peter Wood: The issue that was hardest for them to address was the issue of slavery and they simply
postponed it all through that hot summer 'til the very end of their debates. And they finally brought it
up and addressed it.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Most delegates -- north and south -- never considered eliminating
slavery. It was clear any attempt at abolition would have ended the effort to create the United States.
While the deals around slavery would shape the national debate for the next seventy years the words
slave or slavery never appear in this founding document.
Jim Horton: Now they do refer to the institution in several indirect ways. There is the notion that the
slave trade will not be abolished for at least 20 years. There is the notion that a person who owes
service to a master in one state cannot escape that service by removing himself to another state. Now
that's kind of a Fugitive Slave clause but they don't use the word slave or slavery.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The most politically significant deal embraced by the constitution was
the three fifths-clause. It allowed states to count their enslaved population as three fifths of a person
in determining representation in congress.
Jim Horton: So the fact is that from the south's point of view they are getting additional political
power as a result of their slave population. Except for the three-fifths compromise Jefferson would
have lost that election in 1800. But the slaves are not being represented. The slaves get nothing from
this.
Peter Wood: And the republic that's created pays the price for that over the next many, many
generations.
37:10 Scene #6
The Great Awakening—(not too good early; start at 40:00)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Black people were betrayed by the new constitution. But if doors were
shutting, they now looked for windows to open. Ninety percent of blacks were still enslaved. But in
Northern cities freed black communities were organizing themselves. In Southern cities black artisans
were buying their freedom. Both groups ignited an emancipation movement. It began with the
founding of the first black Christian churches.
Sylvia R. Frey: It reinforced family and community. It provided the opportunity for men and women
to exercise leadership roles.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Blacks had been slow to accept a religion that they associated with
slavery and their masters, but in the mid-18th century a protestant revival movement called the great
awakening introduced a more democratic and expressive form of Christianity and some blacks caught
the spirit.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Some slave owners -- inspired by the values of the great awakening
and the principles of the new nation -- began to free their slaves. Not Thomas Jefferson. In the 1780's
Jefferson published his only book -- NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. In it he argued against this
"great political and moral evil" of slavery yet at the same time he wrote that blacks were mentally
inferior to whites.
Jefferson quote from NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA:
"... It appears to me in memory they are equal; to whites, In reason much inferior."
Thomas Davis: He suggests that they're not as bright as smart, as intellectually gifted.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Jefferson's theories fueled both sides of the slavery debate. And while
he wrote that black people should be free, he never used his power to free them, including during his
presidency. Instead he supported shipping former slaves to Africa.
Thomas Davis: Jefferson apparently believed that you cannot have emancipation without having
colonization. Which is to say that we can't just let them be free here. That won't work. So if we are
going to emancipate them we have to send them somewhere else.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: While some blacks supported colonization most leaders in the freed
black communities of the north denounced the idea.
Jim Horton: You know one of the things that these free blacks said is "I'm a citizen of the United
States. My father my grandfather fought in the American Revolution to bring this nation into
existence. I have as much right to be in America, to live in America as anybody here."
40:09
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The generation of blacks born in the late 18th century were raised on
the promises of the revolution and the frustrations of its aftermath. Among them was David Walker.
Brought up in the south, Walker would move north to take the emerging abolitionist movement to
another level. Walker was born free in the 1790s in Wilmington, North Carolina. He probably learned
to read and write in one of Wilmington's first black Christian churches.
Jim Horton: These are places, which are not only religious places. These are places where political
decisions are made, political meetings are held.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By roughly 1820 David Walker made his way to Charleston. There he
was exposed to the ideas of Denmark Vesey. A freed carpenter, Vesey was a leader in the new African
Methodist Episcopal church.
Peter Hinks: David Walker learns from Denmark Vesey that the bible could be a very, very important
tool in giving blacks a strength to resist their enslavement. And he sees how the church in Charleston
could be a center for organizing blacks just in terms of numbers and also ideologically rallying them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Vesey like many blacks -- enslaved and free -- had also digested the
news about the Haitian revolution -- the slave rebellion which created the first black republic. By 1822
-- while David Walker was in Charleston -- Vesey was organizing a massive rebellion. But someone
leaked it. And Vesey -- along with more than 30 others -- was executed.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: After that failed rebellion, Walker made his way to Boston. There he
would discover not only a virulent racism against black men and women, but a growing political
consciousness in the freed black community. In 1820s Boston, Walker became a leading voice in local
black churches and organizations...
Jim Horton: He is a member of the Massachusetts Colored Association. ...a black society specifically
focused on abolition.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1829 Walker sat down to distill his experiences, his analysis of
slavery and his rage. He wrote what came to be known as the most important abolitionist document of
the nineteenth century. He called it AN APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, but in
particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America.
Carla Peterson: This is an amazing document and we can take it as the first maybe expression of
Black Nationalism in this country. And basically this is a verbal call to arms asking the AfricanAmerican community to come together and empower itself.
Walker's voice: America is more our country than it is the whites. We have enriched it with our blood
and tears.
Thomas Davis: The appeal itself lays out the full history of argument against slavery, against
slaveholding.
Walker's voice: Oh, my colored brethren -- all over the world! When shall we arise from this deathlike apathy? And be Men!!
Thomas Davis: More than that it is addressed to the colored people of America saying to them that
they have a single aspiration and that single aspiration is freedom.
Walker's voice: We must and shall be free.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Walker modeled the appeal on the constitution and he drew from the
Declaration of Independence and the bible.
Jim Horton: He says Jefferson and America are hypocrites.
Walker's voice: See your Declaration Americans! Do you understand your own language?
Jim Horton: He says that America is not doing what it professes to do. It is not expressing the values
that it says it believes in.
Walker's voice: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal" -- compare
your own language above extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and
murders.
Jim Horton: He says Christians are not living up to the values of Christianity.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the appeal Walker directly confronts Jefferson's arguments about
black people in his notes on the state of Virginia.
Walker's voice: Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world that we are inferior to the whites?
Peter Hinks: He believed that racism had become so insidious that it was profoundly demoralizing
blacks making them incapable of acting against the terrible oppression which weighed on them. ...and
his hope was that the APPEAL would serve to motivate African Americans to fight that.
Walker's voice: We can help ourselves
Thomas Davis: One of the tremendous elements of David Walker's APPEAL is his reach into the
psyche of blacks. To say first and foremost that we need to think together as a people, but also to
focus on the individual. And in as sense to say change begins with you. And you must begin to think
differently. Not only to think of us collectively as a single people sharing an ultimate aim of freedom
but to think of yourself differently -- to think of yourself as an agent of freedom.
Thomas Davis: And what Walker does in his APPEAL in 1829 is to say "listen if emancipation is not
forthcoming blood will flow, oceans and oceans of blood."
Walker's voice: I call God! I call Angels! I call men! To witness that your destruction is at hand!
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Walker distributed his APPEAL up and down the Atlantic seaboard. He
mailed copies to ministers who would read it to the illiterate. The APPEAL was even discovered in the
hands of runaways in North Carolina.
Peter Hinks: Black activists in the 1830s talk of gathering with others in their communities to have
the APPEAL read to them, to fire them , to give them increased inspiration to continue on with their
struggle and to help them understand what it was they were fighting.
Jim Horton: As you might well imagine this is shocking and frightening to slave holders. Immediately
many Southern states put out bounties on David Walker' head. They want David Walker delivered
from Massachusetts to a variety of places in the south.
Jim Horton: 'Course Southern slaveholders were well aware that there had been many slave
rebellions and attempted rebellions all along but this was particularly frightening because it was an
appeal issued by a free black man outside of the south. In other words -- outside of the direct control
of slaveholders.
47:30 Scene #7
Mariah Stewart --can be summarized, not recom’d to show
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One of the people who responded to Walker's charge was the young
Maria Stewart who in 1826 married a free and successful Boston shipping agent. Born free, Maria was
orphaned at age five and immediately sent into domestic service. She probably learned to read and
write in a black church.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Three years after her wedding to James Stewart, he died.
Carla Peterson: And although he had been fairly prosperous it turns out that upon his death he had
been defrauded by some white businessmen who were his colleagues. And so Maria Stewart was not
only widowed but also left destitute.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A year later she received more devastating news. Her mentor, David
Walker, was found dead in his Boston doorway.
Jim Horton: There is reason to believe that he may have been assassinated by someone operating on
behalf of those people who were felt directly threatened by his appeal for slave rebellion.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: His compounding losses sparked a religious conversion with political
implications.
Carla Peterson: She sees herself as picking up the torch from David Walker and carrying his work
forward.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Stewart began to write -- and speak in public.
Marilyn Richardson: You see her speaking things such as "I committed myself to a life of virtue and
piety and I understood that I might be a warrior and a martyr for the cause of God and my brethren."
Well virtue and piety are perfectly reasonable. It was a woman's sphere it was not a radical position at
all. But then in the same sentence the same sentence here come the words warrior and martyr and
God and my brethren. And then she goes right on to say all of the nations of the world are crying out
for freedom and independence. And can the sons of Africa, remain silent under the heal of tyranny. .
And it's unprecedented in African-American intellectual history.
Stewart's voice: Why should man any longer deprive his fellow man of equal rights and privileges?
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Maria Stewart was the first American woman to address a mixed
audience of men and women about political issues. In it's time, it was a bold and controversial act.
Stewart's voice: Stewart's voice -- Possess the spirit of independence. The Americans do, and why
should not you? Marilyn Richardson for Maria Stewart the highest form of obedience to god was
political protest.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Drawing inspiration from the bible to oppose slavery, Stewart's special
concern was the condition of black women.
Stewart's voice: How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and
talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the early 1830s Maria Stewart made a number of speeches to black
organizations in Boston. In her passion to challenge her audiences to become leaders, she seemed to
offend both the men and the women.
Stewart: Throw off your fearfulness.
Carla Peterson: She's very, very hard on black men and accuses them of being servile, faithless,
frivolous, passive.
Stewart's voice: And make yourselves useful and active members in society.
Carla Peterson: And she's telling them to get up off their duffs and be active and to be men. So what
man wants to be told to be a man?
Stewart's voice: Have the sons of Africa no souls? Feel they no ambitious desires?
Jim Horton: But her words are very important -- and that is African Americans must depend foremost
on themselves. They must take the lead themselves. They must uplift the race. That's the way they
put it in the 19th century. They must uplift the race. And she was critical of anyone in AfricanAmerican community who was not working in every way possible to uplift the race.
Carla Peterson: David Walker and Maria Stewart are so important for African-American history in a
sense we could think of them as our founding father and mother because they are really our first black
nationalists. They are the first to have a sense of African-American people as constituting almost a
nation within a nation. We are a nation within a nation and we need to figure out where we go from
here.
Jim Horton: They really foreshadow a coming more militant generation. That generation will use the
words, the sentiments, the strategies of Walker and Maria Stewart.
Marilyn Richardson: What David Walker and what Maria Stewart understood was that slavery in the
south and discrimination would not die as a result of moral persuasion or political activity. Because
they understood that the first abolitionist in America was the first black person brought off of a ship in
chains. They understood only war would bring about the possibility of emancipation of blacks in
America.
One by one the Northern states, led by Vermont in 1777, adopted laws to abolish and phase out slavery.
Simultaneously, slavery in the Southern United States entered the period of its greatest expansion. Episode
three, which starts at the beginning of the 1800s, examines slavery's increasing divisiveness in America as
the nation develops westward and cotton replaces tobacco as the country's most valuable crop. The episode
weaves national events through the personal histories of two African American slaves -- Harriet Jacobs and
Louis Hughes -- who not only managed to escape bondage, but also exposed the horrific realities of the
slave experience in autobiographical narratives. These and other stories of physical, psychological, and
sexual exploitation fed the fires of a reinvigorated abolitionist movement. With a diverse membership
comprised of men and women, blacks and whites, and led by figures including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner
Truth, and Amy Post, abolitionist sentiment gathered strength in the North, contributing to the widening
fissure and imminent break-up of the nation.
Transcript
SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Episode 3: "Seeds of Destruction"
2:00
Scene #1
Harriet Jacobs
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: I once saw two beautiful children playing together. One was a fair white
child; the other was her slave. When I saw them embracing each other, I turned sadly from the lovely
sight. I foresaw the blight that would fall on the slave's heart.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the 1850s, Harriet Jacobs began to pen an autobiography she would
call INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A SLAVE GIRL. She would become the first woman to write a slave
narrative -- published works written by African Americans who had escaped lives of bondage. At a
time when state laws in the south made it a crime to teach the enslaved reading and writing, Harriet
would use her words to reveal the awful truth of American slavery. Her story begins in the coastal
town of Edenton, North Carolina, where she was born in 1813. Harriet's first owner had ignored the
law and taught her to read and write. After she died, Harriet was willed to the three-year-old daughter
of Doctor James Norcom. Twelve-years-old with light skin and dark eyes, Harriet became a house
slave. She was to cook and clean, and serve the wishes of the mistress -- and the master.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Even the little child will learn that if God has bestowed beauty upon her, it
will prove her greatest curse.
Nell Irvin Painter: Harriet Jacobs calls slavery a cage of obscene birds ... Harriet says that no matter
what the slave girl looks like if she's dark, if she's light, if she's medium, if she's at all attractive -- she
has beauty -- it's a curse because the master will be after her.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Dr. Norcom was a man widely admired in the community. He took an
unmistakable interest in his new house slave, a girl forty years his junior.
Jean Fagan Yellin: The scent of sex and of oppression was overpowering in that household. It was
just everywhere. And then Norcom starts to focus on her ... and she didn't know what to do ... she's
12 ... she doesn't know how to handle it. She doesn't want anything to do with him. He's a disgusting
old man. It's a very difficult, very difficult situation for her. He is just after her all the time. She could
be washing the dishes, she could be making up the beds, she could be setting the parlor straight and
whenever he's in a room with her -- which is a lot -- ah, he's just after her.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. He peopled my young
mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. He met me at every turn,
reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to
submit to him.
Jean Fagan Yellin: She's just completely drowning in this, in this harassment and in this sexual
situation ... He doesn't want to force her. He wants to convince her. He wants to control her. He wants
to control her mind. She says, "my master had money and power on his side -- I had a determined
will. There is might in each." Wonderful line. So she's, she's in a war and really from the time she's
12, 13, 14 she understands it. Cause she isn't his victim. She's his enemy.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Harriet knew that the doctor was the father of eleven slave children.
Nell Irvin Painter: Norcom had many children outside of his legal marriage ... And what Harriet tells
us -- that he tended to sell the children off.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The practice was not unusual. "Mulattos," wrote a slaveholder's wife,
"are as common as blackberries."
6:50
Mia Bay: The rates of interracial children being born may have actually been higher then than any
time since. Most of these liaisons cannot be described as consensual because any kind of liaison
between a slave and their owner cannot be described as consensual.
Deborah Gray White: So no white man ever had to feel like he was in fact raping a black woman if
he took her against her will. In fact if you, ah, look through the court records you will find that, ah,
the judges often say there is no such thing as the rape of a black woman. The courts do not recognize
it.
Nell Irvin Painter: This is just, it's disgusting, it's obscene is what it is. It's obscene, it's perverted,
it's incestuous but it was normal. It was legal.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The Southern code of honor, Harriet learned, did little to protect the
virtue of black women.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: If a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife, the church dismisses
him. But if she is colored, it does not hinder his continuing to be their good shepherd ... When Dr.
Norcom joined the Episcopal church, I was much surprised. I supposed that religion had a purifying
effect on the character of men, but the worst persecutions I endured from him were after he was a
communicant.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: If Harriet had hoped that Mary Norcom would offer protection from her
husband's advances, she was sadly disappointed.
Jean Fagan Yellin: Maria Norcom, as her, as her husband called her, didn't have a lot of opinions.
She married him when she was 16 -- ah, she was pregnant I think every year and a half after that
forever. And, um, she was expected to, to have those children and raise those children and run the
household.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For Norcom's wife, Harriet's presence was a source of unrelenting
misery.
Nell Irvin Painter: What's particularly, ah, shocking, astonishing is the figure reappearing in ex-slave
narratives of the jealous mistress -- the mistress who cannot protect herself from her husband's
adultery. And ... who makes her own life a torture because of jealousy and because of the sense that
she is not able to lift herself above her husband's lust.
Mia Bay: Meanwhile Dr. Norcom pursues Harriet over years and years ... despite his wife, or maybe
even to spite his wife because they seem to be stuck in this triangle where everyone is -- um, you
know -- they're tormenting Harriet and tormenting each other at the same time.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At 15, Harriet believed she had finally found her rescuer -- Samuel
Tredwell Sawyer. The thirty-year-old lawyer was from one of North Carolina's most important families.
Nell Irvin Painter: He says that he's concerned about her. How does she feel? Imagine you're 15
years old and a charming young man, I mean he's not so young he's twice as old as she is -- actually
he's almost 30, comes and expresses concern. "I am your friend" he says. You know where that goes.
You know where that goes if you're 15 and you're white or black or brown or yellow or red and you
feel you're in trouble. He was the safe haven. What was Harriet thinking when she agreed to take on a
white lover? She's a teenager, that's the first thing we have to remember. She's a kid.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Harriet was convinced that a man of such power and influence would
be able to free her.
Jean Fagan Yellin: It is a Hollywood dream more than a century before Hollywood, but it had
happened to another young woman in the town and she knew the story and the whole town knew the
story of Rose Kabaras and how she had really managed to get her young master to fall in love with
her. And he had in fact freed their children and he had in fact freed her and he had in fact even freed
her mother. So there was a model for this wild alternative and Harriet was a risk taker. And ... and
she took the risk.
11:49 Scene #2
Religious Revival
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Within a year of starting her relationship with Sawyer, Harriet gave
birth to a son. By law her child was owned, as she was, by Norcom. As Harriet waited for Sawyer to
free them, America's protestant churches were caught up in a sweeping religious revival. Many
slaveholders saw a value in exposing their slaves to Christianity. The message from the pulpit was
clear.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Servants be obedient to them that are your masters. Obey your old master
and your young master. If you disobey your earthly master, you offend your heavenly Master. You
must obey God's commandments!
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Many African Americans, however, were extracting a very different
message from the good book.
Jim Horton: All the stories about being brought to the Promised Land being saved. I mean that has
special meaning to slaves. So that the slaves drew from Christianity the parts that particularly spoke
to the oppressed. The parts that said God won't forget you. The parts that said it doesn't matter what
people on earth think about you, if god loves you.
13:20
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On August 22, 1831, a small army of the oppressed rose up, and the
world of Harriet Jacobs, and of slaves throughout the south was forever changed.
An enslaved preacher named Nat Turner led seventy slaves in an uprising in Southampton County,
Virginia. In a forty-eight-hour period they killed fifty-seven whites, including women and children.
Jim Horton: It is no accident that Nat Turner was a preacher. It is no accident that when he goes to
war he does so based upon commandments that he finds in the bible in Christianity ... It was
disturbing to say the least to slaveholders that their slaves might spout back to them Christian
doctrine which would justify slave rebellion.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As word of the rebellion spread across the south, whites began to lash
out. In Edenton, Harriet watched in terror as every person of color became a target.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Groups of white men were rushing in every direction, wherever a colored
face was to be found. Everywhere men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in
puddles at their feet. Mobs dragged along a number of colored people, each white man threatening
instant death if they did not stop their shrieks.
Jim Horton: And so you know after Nat Turner's rebellion lots of slaves who had nothing at all to do
with the rebellion suffered sometimes were killed. Not because they were involved in the slave
rebellion but because white people were more afraid. And when they got more afraid they got more
violent and they were more dangerous.
Deborah Gray White: They had to retaliate. They had to show that in fact no black rebellion would
or could succeed. And so they struck back. They killed blacks in the countryside. They took and cut off
their heads and they put them on the roadside on stands as a sign to all blacks that they could not
and should not rebel.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The south remained on high alert. Patrols guarded roads and gathering
places. Slaveholders fostered a martial atmosphere that embraced brutality as a necessity. For Harriet
Jacobs, life under Norcom's grip would become intolerable and far more complicated. At nineteen, she
gave birth to another child by Sawyer -- a daughter. Sawyer offered to buy the children. Norcom not
only refused, he wanted revenge.
Nell Irvin Painter: Norcom is threatening to send her children to a plantation of his that's known for
brutalizing slaves. Ah -- Harriet uses the word brutalizing, what we -- that's what we would call
traumatizing. And when she speaks of what happens to people there -- their hearts get broken, their
psyche's get broken they're not themselves afterwards.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slowly the realization came: if she were gone, Norcom would relinquish
the children. The only way to save her children was to leave them.
Jean Fagan Yellin: And so she decides she has to act to free them. It's, it's a wild move but she
made wild moves before ...
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1835, Harriet fled into nearby swamps until her grandmother -- a
free woman living in Edenton -- arranged for a more permanent hide out. Soon after, Harriet was
secreted away in a tiny space beneath the roof of her grandmother's house. Harriet's world would now
shrink to a space nine feet long, seven feet wide, and three feet high.
Jean Fagan Yellin: If you take a very large library table and get under the library table that's the
kind of space that you're talking about.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Rats and mice ran over my bed. I was restless for want of air; the
atmosphere so stifled that even mosquitoes would not condescend to buzz in it. I suffered for air even
more than for light.
Nell Irvin Painter: She suffers from heat, she suffers from cold. From time to time she can come
down and walk around a little bit but she's under house arrest basically.
Mia Bay: ... she was literally a prisoner who, who made herself a prisoner and I guess that's how she
did it. She survived as prisoners do.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Within weeks, Harriet learned that Sawyer had bought the children,
and was sending them to live at her grandmother's house. Still, Harriet continued to live a secret
existence, just a floor apart from her children.
Mia Bay: The thing that holds her back is her devotion to her children. And that was for a lot of slave
women the thing that kept them from running away. There were a great deal more male runaways.
And the typical runaway was a young male who didn't have children. For slave women, they just didn't
want to run away without their children.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Days slipped into months ... months into years. Harriet filled her time
writing, reading, and sewing.
Jean Fagan Yellin: She describes some psychotic episodes ... she talks about, ah, hearing voices and
she talks about seeing things. And she talks about passing out and um they have to bring her to.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: She bore a tiny whole through one of the walls. On occasion, she could
catch a glimpse of her children playing nearby comforting herself in the knowledge that she had freed
them from Norcom's hold.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Countless were the nights that I sat late at the little loophole scarcely large
enough to give me a glimpse of one twinkling star. Season after season, year after year I peeped at
my children's faces and heard their sweet voices, with a heart yearning all the while to say, "Your
mother is here."
Deborah Gray White: I think that her psychic strength reflects that of all slave women, because
slavery demanded a different kind of womanhood. It demanded that people be self-reliant. It
demanded that they try to do everything that they could to protect themselves. She has the strength
and resilience that African-American women had to develop to survive slavery.
21:40 Scene #4
Louisiana Purchase
**this part is quite good**
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Decades before Harriet Jacobs was born, leading Southerners such as
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been convinced that slavery was nearing its end.
Tobacco had exhausted the soil. The need for slave labor had diminished. That changed in 1803, when
President Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase -- and doubled the size of the nation. Four new
states, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, together known as the Deep South, joined the
Union as slave states.
Ira Berlin: Thomas Jefferson in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase declared that he was going to
create an empire for liberty. He was going to make an area in which American liberty would expand
across the continent. Thomas Jefferson's empire for liberty turned out to be an empire for slavery. The
19th century, the years after Louisiana Purchase were the period of the greatest expansion of
American slavery ever.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The new land was an ideal match for a new invention -- the cotton gin.
Jim Horton: The combination of the cotton gin and the Louisiana Purchase made the production of
cotton unbelievably profitable. You know the cotton gin increased the amount of cotton that a single
slave could produce in a day by 50 fold. What it meant was that growing cotton was incredibly,
incredibly profitable.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1808, just as cotton was creating an insatiable appetite for slave
labor, Congress abolished the importation of slaves from Africa. Now an already vibrant domestic
slave trade would flourish. In the Upper South, the sale of slaves became more profitable than
growing tobacco.
Mia Bay: Slaves vary widely in value from 50 to 2000 dollars depending on who they are, how old
they are -- but the valuable ones are very, very valuable.
24:10
Ira Berlin: The slave trade developed its own language. This is a language of, of big bucks. It's a
language of wenches ... Of course this entire language is meant to separate the black people from the
common run of humanity. It's a language of dehumanization, it's a language of bestiality to say that
these people are in fact like animals.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slave auctions became a common sight, even in the nation's capital.
Deborah Gray White: If a young woman was put on the auction block one of the things that they
wanted to make sure she could do was have children. They touched peoples bodies both men and
women. But you can imagine that for a woman it was it ... in ... incredibly invasive ... So they were
not above taking her into a back room and examining her to see whether or not she was able to have
children. Now this is the 19th century. So one wonders what an ordinary slaveholder would be doing
but they even on the auction block they would feel a women' s breast to see whether or not she could
suckle a child.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The specter of the auction block haunted the lives of enslaved people.
Mia Bay: Slave mothers knew that this moment might come. And they anticipated it and they did
everything they could to prevent it. They lobbied with their masters. They tried to get sold with their
children but it was something that haunted them from the moment that their children were born that
they might lose them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: More than a million people would be sent to the Deep South, nearly
twice as many as were brought to America in all the years of the African slave trade. Many of the
enslaved were compelled to march the entire distance, some as much as a thousand miles. To one
observer the procession of chained slaves resembled nothing so much as a funeral march.
Nell Irvin Painter: And it took everything they had to keep going. And we also need to remember
that some people didn't make it. Some people were depressed, some people were suicidal, some
people were vengeful and violent with each other or towards animals or toward children. There was a
lot of loss. There was a lot of loss.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: While slavery was expanding in the South, the Northern states were
abolishing it -- staking their future on free labor. The nation was becoming two separate societies. The
Missouri Compromise of 1820 was designed to maintain a balance of free and slave states. Yet, the
cotton juggernaut would be unstoppable.
Jim Horton: Cotton becomes the key crop, the key cash producer in the life of the nation. For a
period of time, there are more millionaires along a narrow band of land along the Mississippi river than
in the entire rest of the nation combined. This is a terribly, terribly profitable crop we're talking about.
By 1840 the values of cotton exports was greater than everything else the nation exported to the
world combined. And that made slaves the most valuable thing in the nation beside the land itself.
29:00
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the price of slaves soared, slave traders began to roam the North
abducting free black people. In April of 1841, Solomon Northup found himself in one of the many slave
pens lining the streets of Washington, D.C. Born a free man, he lived in New York State with his wife
and three children.
Voice of Solomon Northup: The idea began to break upon my mind that I had been kidnapped. But
that I thought was incredible. It could not be that a free citizen of New York should be dealt with thus
inhumanly. It was a desolate thought. I bowed my head and wept.
Jim Horton: He was a free person. He knew he was a free man. And so here he is in the situation
where it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The color of your skin marks you as a potential slave.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In Washington, D.C., slave auctions were a daily occurrence. Chained
human beings were marched routinely in front of the Capitol.
Jim Horton: If you can picture Solomon Northup a free man who has lived a good portion of his life in
New York State and he sees himself in chains being taken away into slavery. Think about the
contradiction. Here you have the federal capital of the United States, the nation dedicated to the
proposition of human freedom tolerating, profiting from the selling of human beings into bondage.
30:30 Scene #4
Louis Hughes
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At the age of thirty-three, Solomon Northup, was "sold down the river,"
as the phrase went -- transported down the Mississippi to the cotton fields of the Deep South. Louis
Hughes was also sold down the river. At eleven-years-old he was bought in Virginia for 380 dollars.
Voice of Louis Hughes: I can still see my mother's face when she bade me good-bye. I ran off from
her as quickly as I could, for I did not want her to see me crying. It came to me, more and more
plainly, that I would never see her again.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Louis arrived at the plantation of Mr. Edward McGee. His new owner
was one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi.
Voice of Louis Hughes: When I went out into the yard, everywhere I looked slaves met my view. I
never saw so many slaves at one time before.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The young boy was presented as a gift to Mrs. McGee and put to work
around the main house. Alone and helpless, he worked hard at his tasks. But it was of no use.
Voice of Louis Hughes: Mrs. McGee was naturally irritable. I tried to please her by arranging the
parlor, when I overheard her say: "They soon get spirit, it don't do to praise them." My heart sank
within me.
Nell Irvin Painter: So Louis Hughes speaks of his mistress as someone who would simply hit him as
he walked by or cuff his ears when he was simply he thought going about his business. One of the
saddest sides of this story is that over and over again the children don't understand why they're being
beaten. What is the motive? What am I being corrected for? What is it that I'm doing that I shouldn't
be doing? You can imagine what this does psychologically if you don't know why you're being beaten.
Mia Bay: It was Hughes's mistress becomes for him an example of the way that slavery corrupts the
character of white people. He looks at her and how she takes out her bad feelings on the slaves on a
daily basis and thinks this is you know this, this institution is actually bad for white people. It makes
them into terrible people.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the Cotton Kingdom, slaveholders saw themselves as members of a
new aristocracy. They built lavish homes, bought the finest furnishings, and prided themselves on the
elegance of their manners. Their leisure was purchased by the backbreaking labor of others. At
harvest time young Louis was sent to the fields.
Voice of Louis Hughes: The daily task of each able-bodied slave during the cotton-picking season
was 250 pounds or more, and all those who did not come up to the required amount would get a
whipping.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Enslaved people labored from sunup to sundown, and when the moon
was full they continued into the night. Children as young as nine picked cotton.
Jim Horton: And now we had to start thinking about people as slaveholders thought about people
and that is as machines. You have to keep getting your machines working at top speed for as long as
possible.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Having made their fortunes in the Deep South, planters turned their
attention to gaining political power, becoming Governors, Congressmen, Senators, and Presidents.
Jim Horton: Cotton and the slave labor force, which made the production of cotton possible was
incredibly powerful economically. And in the 19th century -- as in the 21st century -- economic power
translated into political power. In the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the
election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years sees a slaveholder in the White House.
Ira Berlin: It is they, ah, who write the laws. It is they who adjudicate those laws. It is they who
enforce those laws. Ah, the United States is truly a slave holding republic.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Though they had abandoned slave labor in their own region,
Northerners were making huge profits from slavery. Cotton generated an extensive textile industry in
New England. Insurance companies insured slaves as property. Many Wall Street firms got their start
as middlemen in the cotton trade. Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts called it a conspiracy of
the "Lords of the Loom and the Lords of the Lash." The economics of slavery had torn Louis Hughes
from his family. Now, he would find another.
Deborah Gray White: People grab other people and they make blood kin out of people who are not
kin. It's resilience. It's, it's survival. It's a way to survive. It's a way to make a way out of no way to
create a family when it is being torn and split apart.
Nell Irvin Painter: It saved people who were vulnerable in so many ways to physical and
psychological abuse. Someone else in the quarters or in the kitchen who says here's a little cake for
you or how are you or help me. These are the other sides of these not blood relationships but kin
relationships nonetheless.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Louis Hughes would grow strong and healthy. The thought of freedom
never far away.
Voice of Louis Hughes: I used to hear Boss read in the papers about runaway slaves who had gone
to Canada, and it always made me long to go. Yet, I never appeared as if I paid the slightest attention
to what the family read or said on such matters; but I felt that I could try at least to get away.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When he was twenty-years-old, Louis summoned the courage and fled,
only to be caught and returned.
Voice of Louis Hughes: My clothing was removed, and the whipping began. Boss whipped me a
while, then he sat down and read his paper, after which the whipping resumed. This continued for two
hours ... Then he used tree switches, which cracked the flesh so the blood oozed out. It was weeks
before I could bear clothing touching my skin.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Whippings often ended with a bucket of salt water poured on the
wounds.
39:00 Scene #5
Freedom for Harriet
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1842, Harriet Jacobs had lived in her cramped, dark space for
almost seven years.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: It appeared to me as if ages had rolled away since I entered upon that
gloomy, monotonous existence. My friends feared I should become a cripple. Had it not been for the
hope of serving my children, I should have been thankful to die. Dark thoughts passed through my
mind as I lay there day after day. I tried to be grateful for my little cell, and even to love it as part of
the price I had paid for the redemption of my children.
Jean Fagan Yellin: Why for 7 years, almost, 6 years and 11 months she can't leave, I must say I
don't understand. And, and researching her life researching her biography, her autobiography I, I
didn't really at the beginning believe the 7 years. But in fact ah we know when she went into hiding
because we have Norcom's ad in the paper ah saying he's after his fugitive girl Harriet who absconded
for no reason.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Now after all those years of confinement, Harriet's secret was about to
be exposed. A neighbor's untrustworthy slave had stumbled upon Harriet's hideaway. A ship captain
known for smuggling runaways offered to help. Off the coast of Edenton, arrangements were made for
Harriet's escape.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: I was on deck as soon as the day dawned. I watched the reddening sky,
and saw the great orb come up slowly out of the water. Soon the waves began to sparkle and
everything caught the beautiful glow. I had never realized what grand things air and sunlight are till I
had been deprived of them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Harriet arrived in the bustling city of Philadelphia. There she was met
by members of the Underground Railroad, an anti-slavery network dedicated to helping runaway
slaves. There were more than half a million free blacks in the North, many of them, like Harriet, had
left loved ones behind in the south. Harriet's hope was to find her brother, John, who had fled Edenton
years earlier. She boarded a train to New York, and got her first taste of racial attitudes in the North.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: We were stowed away in a large, rough, car, with windows on each side,
too high for us to look out without standing up. This was the first chill to my enthusiasm about the
Free States.
Nell Irvin Painter: What she encountered was a world ah very divided by race in which black people
were second or third class citizens actually. In which black men could not vote unlike white men ... So
it's a hierarchical white supremacists world that she encounters in the north.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When she found her brother, he was working as an anti-slavery
speaker, on occasion sharing a podium with Frederick Douglass. Also a fugitive slave, Douglass was
the most powerful voice for black freedom in the country. African Americans, together with white
abolitionists, were building a growing anti-slavery movement. In 1849, Harriet moved to Rochester,
New York, a hub of abolitionist activity.
Jean Fagan Yellin: She follows her brother west to Rochester. And ah there she meets, um, the
most militant group of women on the North American continent. She meets the women who have just
in 1848 ah had the first convention of women's rights at Seneca Falls ... And she becomes a very close
friend of the Quaker feminist abolitionist Amy Post. And it's to Amy Post that Harriet finally tells her
story. And a few years later um Amy convinces Harriet to write her story as a contribution to the
movement.
44:00
Jim Horton: America would have ignored the contradiction of freedom-loving nation tolerating slavery
if they could have. But what free blacks, what slaves what they did in conjunction with white allies
who were committed to anti-slavery was to make it increasingly difficult for the nation to ignore this
great glaring contradiction.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The anti-slavery message struck a nerve among many Northerners -as a massive influx of immigrants began putting new strains on their society.
James Oakes: The Irish wage laborers who built those railroads, who dug the canals, were the first
real waged labor working class in America. And the growth of that working class is going to become a
major social development of 19th century America.
Jim Horton: But there was this notion that slave labor and free labor could not exist side by side.
That slave labor would drive out, would devalue free labor.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: With victory in the Mexican War bringing vast new territories into the
Union, the conflict between slave states and free states would explode. The south wanted room to
grow. The north saw a promise land for free labor. As violent confrontation loomed in the west,
Congress devised the Compromise of 1850. California would be admitted as a free state and in return
the south would get the most severe Fugitive Slave Law in the nation's history.
Jim Horton: The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 you have to understand what this law said. It said that a
person could be accused of being a fugitive slave and that person would have no right of self-defense.
No right to speak on his or her own behalf. No right to a lawyer. No right to a jury trial. Think about it.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The law was a resounding defeat for abolitionists. Local officials would
receive the hefty sum of 10 dollars for every African American handed over to slave catchers. "It is the
beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population," Harriet declared. As danger mounted, scores
of Harriet's friends and neighbors fled to Canada.
Voice of Harriet Jacobs: Many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before -- that her
husband was a fugitive, and must leave her to insure his own safety. Worse still, many a husband
discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago, and as "the child follows the condition of the
mother," the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the cotton kingdom reached new heights of wealth and power, Louis
Hughes married Matilda, a cook on the McGee plantation. Soon after, she gave birth to twins. But,
motherhood did not spare Matilda from overwork -- Mrs. McGee's demands were unrelenting, forcing
Matilda to neglect her babies.
Voice of Louis Hughes: My heart was sore and heavy, for my wife was almost run to death with
work ... My blood boiled in my veins to see my wife so abused; yet I dare not open my mouth.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Within six months, the twins were dead.
Nell Irvin Painter: Well it's a heartbreaking situation and what makes it even worse is that you
realize that every slaveholding household in the nation had this kind of a scene sooner or later. We
have babies dying like crazy. It's we call it infant mortality. That's a very clinical word for babies
dying.
48:57 Scene #6
Flag of Slavery—good tone in this segment
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For the young couple, there seemed no end to suffering. Nearly two
hundred and fifty years after Africans were first landed on America's shores, the Supreme Court of the
United States would proclaim that blacks, by virtue of their race, were not persons before the law. In
1857, in a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that Congress had no
authority to limit the spread of slavery to any territory. The Chief Justice's words stunned African
Americans.
Jim Horton: Roger B. Tawny a Southerner ... reads out loud the decision that says ... that Dred Scott
as a black person and black people generally had never been, were not then, could never be citizens
of the United States and as such have no rights which white men are bound to respect.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Northerners were furious. "Wherever our flag floats," protested one
newspaper editor, "it is the flag of slavery." When abolitionists sought ways to circumvent the Dred
Scott ruling, slaveholders pressed for a federal slave law.
James Oakes: This is astounding. By the late 1850s the Southerners are demanding that the federal
government pass a slave code for all the territories that it acquitted in the west. And obviously
Northerners aren't about to accept this kind of thing.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The battle over slavery was crippling the political process. On a bright
spring morning, Congressman Preston Brooks from South Carolina entered the senate chamber -- and
beat Senator Charles Sumner, the fiery abolitionist, into unconsciousness.
Jim Horton: Violence is erupting in the halls of government, on the streets of Washington, involving
our lawmakers. There are people who are coming to sessions of the House of Representatives and the
U.S. Senate armed. In fact one letter says the only people who aren't coming with two guns are those
who are coming with two guns and a knife.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the midst of partisan turmoil all eyes turned to the 1860 presidential
election, and the Republican nominee -- the "free soil" candidate, Abraham Lincoln. Both Edward
McGee and Louis Hughes anxiously awaited the results.
Voice of Louis Hughes: Boss had been reading the papers, when he broke out with the exclamation:
"The very idea of electing an old rail splitter to the presidency of the United States! Well, he'll never
take his seat."
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The Democratic party had fractured north and south, giving victory to
the "rail splitter" from Illinois -- the first time a candidate was elected without carrying a single
Southern state.
James Oakes: Remember Lincoln was elected committed to not interfering with slavery anywhere.
He was only committed to restricting its expansion. But at that point the slaveholders had become so
convinced that the north was taken over by these lunatic abolitionists that that is the way they viewed
Abraham Lincoln's election, no matter what Lincoln said.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Even before Lincoln took office, seven Southern states withdrew from
the Union. Enslaved people across the south were heartened by the news. For Louis and Matilda the
moment held the first ray of hope for freedom. After reuniting with her children, Harriet Jacobs
completed her autobiography. As she looked toward an uncertain future, her brother's words weighed
heavy on her heart, "woe be to the country where the sun of liberty has to rise up out of the sea of
blood." The United States had come apart over slavery. The nation was at the brink of civil war.
Episode four looks at Civil War and Reconstruction through the experiences of South Carolina slave Robert
Smalls. It chronicles Smalls' daring escape to freedom, his military service, and his tenure as a congressman
after the war. As the events of Smalls' life unfold, the complexities of this period in American history are
revealed. The episode shows the transformation of the war from a struggle for union to a battle over
slavery. It examines the black contribution to the war effort and traces the gains and losses of newly freed
African Americans during Reconstruction. The 13th amendment abolished slavery in 1865, the 14th and
15th amendments guaranteed black civil rights, and the Freedmen's Bureau offered aid to former slaves
throughout the 1870s. Yet simultaneously, the formation of militant groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan
threatened the future of racial equality and segregation laws began to appear across the country. Slavery's
eradication had not brought an end to black oppression.
Transcript
SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Episode 4: "The Challenge of Freedom"
Intro, then the script starts at about 1:58
Lawrence Rowland: The moon was up, the tide was right for the escape of the Planter. It was a
dramatic event.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the early morning of May 13th, 1862 a slave named Robert Smalls
led his wife, children and fellow enslaved sailors on a daring escape attempt from the Charleston
harbor.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Just one year before, Confederates had captured Fort Sumter, gaining
control of the harbor. North and South were now locked in a Civil War -- a war that would become the
bloodiest in the nation's history. The conflict had erupted just a few miles from where Robert Smalls
and his fellow crewmen were attempting their escape.
Andrew Billingsley: They had a little rowboat and once the families were loaded on to the boat the
men took their posts. Smalls dressed like the captain and they set out from the harbor past first Fort
Johnson
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: They had to give the appropriate signals and one single mistake would have
alerted those who were watching that something was amiss and they would have held up the ship and
possibly fired on it, blowing it out of the water.
Lawrence Rowland: Well, because Robert Smalls was a helmsman he knew those things. And he
simply demonstrated what the passage code was.
Andrew Billingsley: And after a few seconds, which he said later seemed hours, he got the response
pass on Planter. And so he sped on. And then they were approaching Fort Sumter and Smalls said a
prayer. "Oh Lord, we entrust ourselves into thy hands. Like thou didst for the Israelites in Egypt, guide
us to our promised land of freedom." And some of the men said to him, "let's don't go close to the
fort, let's cut a wide berth around it so they won't see us." Smalls said we want them to see us. We
don't want them to think we're sneaking around. So they went got close to Fort Sumter.
4:50 (background on Smalls begins)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Robert Smalls was born in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839, just down
the coast from Charleston. His mother, Lydia was born enslaved on the McKee Plantation.
Lawrence Rowland: Robert Smalls mother Lydia was a household servant so she was probably more
literate and better educated than most of the general slave population in the Sea Islands. She
imparted, or at least tried to impart as much as that education to her son as she could.
Andrew Billingsley: He absorbed from his mother a sense of pride, self worth, dignity -- and he
learned from his owner a set of skills. He taught him all sorts of things but he did not teach him to
read and write. When Smalls becomes 12 years old instead of sending him out to the fields the owner,
McKee, took the boy himself into Charleston and deposited him with his sister-in-law.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Charleston was a whole new world for the young boy. And now, like
many of the other enslaved, he found himself hired out by his owner to work in the city.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: In the urban environment it was not unusual someone who owned several
slaves to hire the slave's time out to other persons and that would represent a mechanism that would
continue to allow the, the owner to reek the profits of the, the slaves labor.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For the next few years Smalls worked at various jobs around
Charleston and learned many new skills. Eventually he found work on the docks.
Andrew Billingsley: By the time he was 15 years old Smalls was captain of the crew on the docks.
Most of these men were twice his age. And he earned 15 dollars a month, which belonged to the
owner McKee. And whenever he got his 15 dollars McKee gave Smalls one dollar. Well Smalls saves
his dollar and he purchased things like tobacco and candy and sold it to the other men on the docks
and made more money and he saved it.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But Smalls was ambitious. He asked McKee if he could hire himself out.
Then he would pay McKee fifteen dollars a month, and keep any additional money he earned. McKee
agreed.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: This happened frequently, actually, that owners often times allowed their
slaves to work for other persons, accumulate wages as a result and to then purchase their freedom.
This was a unique opportunity that was afforded especially by urban life. And it was very important for
individuals such as Smalls because often times they were also given the opportunity to live away from
the people who owned them.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Robert Smalls would soon ask if he could live on his own as well.
Andrew Billingsley: When Smalls turned 17 he fell in love with a young lady named Hannah Jones
who was almost twice his age. 29 I believe she was. But they got married
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: McKee gave his permission for them to marry and he also gave the
newlyweds permission to live in Charleston.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But Smalls knew that the few freedoms he now enjoyed existed at the
whim of his master. Robert Smalls wanted real freedom.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: With the help of his wife, Smalls studied maritime charts and was
promoted. As he made more money, Robert and Hannah began to talk about buying their freedom.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Then everything changed. (9:13, Chapter 2: THE CIVIL WAR)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The Civil War broke out on Robert Smalls' doorstep.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For decades, North and South had been dividing between free and
slave labor. In 1860, as the country expanded into the west, Southerners wanted the new western
territories to be slave states. But most Northerners saw these new territories as places for free white
men to work their own small farms. The battle over the future of slavery was destroying the Union.
Jim Horton: By the time of the presidential election of 1860 Southern democrats break off and they
are pushing quite strongly towards the possibility of succession and the center of secession during this
period is South Carolina.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: With the Democratic Party divided, a free-labor Republican from Illinois
was elected president with less than 40 percent of the vote. Abraham Lincoln did not carry a single
Southern state.
Jim Horton: Immediately after the election of Abraham Lincoln there are a series of meetings in
South Carolina particularly. And before Christmas of 1860 South Carolina announces to the world that
it is withdrawing from the United States of America -- it is seceding.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Less than a month after Lincoln took office Fort Sumter fell to the
Confederates.
Jim Horton: Abraham Lincoln issues a call for federal troops to put down what he now is referring to
as a rebellion. The civil war is underway and, you know, it's like this rock rolling downhill.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (11:45) In late 1861, the Union regained control of some of the Sea
Islands that stretched along the South Carolina coast.
Lawrence Rowland: Robert Smalls could have seen the Union fleet offshore. Throughout the war the
Union fleet was visible from Charleston harbor so the sense of the impending possibility for freedom
was in the mind of all of the slaves of the low country.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When the war began, Robert Smalls' ship was called into confederate
service and he was forced to continue working on board.
Andrew Billingsley: So for a year he was fighting with the Confederacy against the Union. They laid
mines in the harbor, they carried ammunition from one place to another, they carried troops. They
were fighting a war. Smalls figured that he was fighting the war on the wrong side. Smalls and his
wife had been talking about freedom for a long time. And Smalls began to speak with some of the
other black men who were working with him on the ship, they began to talk about how to escape.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One night, the enslaved crewmen of the Planter dared meet at Smalls
apartment to finalize their escape plans. They went over the scheme in detail.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: They decided that they would in the wee hours of the morning -- they would
load the members of their families on the vessel and sail it out then into the harbor and beyond the
confederate battle stations, taking a tremendous risk.
Andrew Billingsley: One man said, you know, I'm not afraid of any of this for myself but I'm afraid
of what they will do to my wife and family back here if I participate. Smalls was very generous, he
said "ok on the condition that you not tell anybody about our secret we'll let you go." So they let the
man go. And then he said, "this is very dangerous and we may be captured by the confederates, and
if they capture us they will put us to death." So he said to them, "I suggest that in case we are
captured we set dynamite to the boiler on the ship and blow it up blowing up ourselves at the same
time. Better [he said] to take our lives into our own hands than to turn ourselves over to the
confederates." They all agreed.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On the night of May 13th, 1862, as they often did, the confederate
crew went home and left the black crew on board to guard the ship. This night, conditions were right.
The Planter had just been loaded with ammunition, more than enough to blow it up if necessary.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: With their families huddled below, the Planter, with Robert Smalls
impersonating the captain, approached Fort Sumter. He gave the signal and was allowed to pass.
Andrew Billingsley: And then the century on the Fort Sumter noticed that the boat had sped up and
he thought that was funny. So he called to the boat to halt. But by now Smalls was out of the range of
the confederate fire and so he didn't stop. But now he was in real trouble because he was headed
toward the Union fleet. Although he was sailing toward them to deliver the ship to them they did not
know he was coming. So what to do? Well apparently Hannah, his wife, had brought a white bed sheet
along. So Smalls orders his men to take down the Confederate flag take down the state of South
Carolina flag and put this white bed sheet up on the flagpole which they did.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: The union naval blockade didn't fire on the ship and, ah, did allow it come
into it's midst. And was very surprised to see this confederate vessel now in the possession of
enslaved African Americans who turned it over to them.
Andrew Billingsley: Smalls stepped up and said to the union ship captain, "I'm Robert Smalls. I
brought you the Planter. I thought it might be of some use to uncle Abe." That's how the Planter
became a union ship and Smalls became free.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (17:00, Ch. 3 “OPPORTUNITY TO FLEE”) Robert Smalls' capture of the
Planter was a sensation. It was reported from New York to London.
Lawrence Rowland: Robert Smalls very quickly became a major celebrity. Lots of slaves escaped
during the civil war. None of them escaped with as much enterprise or with as much confederate
property in their possession as Robert Smalls and the crew of the Planter.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The union navy quickly learned that they were getting much more than
just a new ship.
Andrew Billingsley: When Smalls was, um, taken into, um, union custody and debriefed they were
overjoyed. They knew that the ship was valuable. As they debriefed Smalls they learned how much he
knew about the confederate defenses and that was even more valuable than the ship.
W. Scott Poole: Robert Smalls really challenged the whole theoretical basis of slavery because here
was someone who was intelligent enough, who was courageous enough, who was confident enough to
engineer, really, this dramatic and extraordinary escape right out from under the noses of the superior
race. So there's this feeling that you know there has to be some sort of, of retribution for that. And so
the state of South Carolina actually places a, a 50,000 dollar bounty on his head.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The bounty did not frighten Smalls. He was prepared to fight and
joined the union navy as a non-commissioned pilot.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the war entered its second year, most Southern white men had
been called into the army. Many of the enslaved took this opportunity to flee.
W. Marvin Dulaney: It clearly revealed that without the patrol system in the South, which basically
dissipated when the war started, there was nothing to restrain them and keep them from running
away. And so, as a result, they ran away by the hundreds and then eventually by the thousands.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As thousands of escaped slaves made it to union lines some field
commanders put them to work in non-combat jobs. Unlike the navy, which had a few AfricanAmerican sailors, the army would not permit blacks to fight.
Ira Berlin: From Lincoln's perceptive, or from the perspective of most Northerners, ah, this is a white
man's war for union. This war has nothing to do -- nothing to do with slavery, and it has nothing to
do, ah, with black people.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: From the time he took office Lincoln's policy was focused on keeping
the four slave-owning Border States in the Union. Lincoln believed that without Delaware, Maryland,
Kentucky, and Missouri the north was doomed. "I hope God is on our side," the president told a
reporter, "but I must have Kentucky."
Jim Horton: In fact there's this very interesting conversation between Fredrick Douglas and Abraham
Lincoln in which Fredrick Douglas says that, ah, you know you're fighting this war with, with a strong
right hand behind your back. Even though you're concerned about maintaining the loyalty of the
Border States the United States would be better off to accept the service of thousands, tens of
thousands of African-American troops.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: And by 1862 the relentless movement of fleeing slaves into union lines
and their insistent demand to be allowed to fight made the issue unavoidable. In August the federal
war department authorized mustering an army of five thousand black men in South Carolina.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Robert Smalls volunteered to help recruit the first South Carolina
colored troops. Within the year black regiments were being created all across the union. The response
was overwhelming.
Nell Irvin Painter: Wherever it's possible you have masses of men volunteering for the army. It's
people all over the north coming to Massachusetts to volunteer for the Massachusetts 54th and 55th -in South Carolina for the first colored infantry.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Now officially allowed to fight, they had to fight not only the
confederate army, they had to fight within the union ranks as well. Racism was rampant. At first,
black soldiers received only half pay. But still they came.
Ira Berlin: It's important to understand that from the beginning of the war black people have a
commitment to their own freedom and determination to seize what they see as a critical opening, ah,
which will change their lives and the change the lives of their descendants forever.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The influx of new soldiers was having an impact, but Lincoln wanted to
choke the Southern resistance. Despite opposition within the Republican Party, Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st, 1863. It sent shock waves through the South.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Although the Proclamation only freed slaves in the rebel state that
were beyond the control of the union army, to African Americans it meant freedom was on the
horizon.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: Those enslaved people who heard about the Proclamation -- often times they
placed the broadest possible interpretation on it. And, and even if, and even if the literal words did not
apply to them because of geographical limitations they applied the Proclamation to themselves.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: All over the South, African Americans took up the cause of freedom.
Even soldiers who had already freed themselves by making it to the union lines gathered to hear the
words read aloud.
Voice of Reverend French: ...shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The call for freedom had been sounded.
Music: [My Country Tis of Thee, Sweet Land of Liberty of Thee I sing.]
Jim Horton: By issuing the Emancipation Proclamation (24:00) Abraham Lincoln was able to change
the war from simply a war to keep the union together, a war to crush a rebellion -- into a holy war, a
fight for freedom.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For African Americans, it was the dawn of a new day.
Music: [Let Freedom Ring!]
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But the war was far from over. (24:50)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the North, anger over the Proclamation caused enlistments by white
men to fall off. The federal government responded with an unpopular draft.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the 1864 election neared, Lincoln feared defeat because of the
Proclamation. But union victories in Virginia and the capture of Atlanta transformed the national mood.
The President won with 55 percent of the vote.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Then on April 9, 1865, with his army down to less than 8,000 men,
Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered. The war was almost over.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Five days after the surrender, exactly four years to the day after the
civil war had begun, a celebration was held at Fort Sumter to raise the American flag once again over
the fort.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: And there was tremendous rejoicing on that day as throngs of people
gathered and journeyed out to, to Fort Sumter.
Lawrence Rowland: (26:00) By the time that celebration in Charleston harbor occurred Robert
Smalls fought in 17 battles in which he risked his life for the union cause. So he was a military hero,
ah, at the end of the war. And when this occurred he was one of the celebrities who was included in
the ceremony.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: This celebration was terribly consequential because what it did was to
confirm that the war was over with, and that this was a new day -- a new day in South Carolina and a
new day throughout the length and breath of the South.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: All over the country African Americans rejoiced.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But their joy would not last. That same night, Abraham Lincoln was
shot in a Washington theatre. Within hours the great emancipator was dead.
Andrew Billingsley: Smalls said he cried like a baby and prayed "Lord have mercy on us all."
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The country wondered, "what now."
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Lincoln hadn't finalized his plans to reintegrate the Union, but with the
South in shambles, the region needed reconstruction.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Every level of society had to be rebuilt. (great photos)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Now free, African Americans were faced with many challenges, but
their greatest challenge was freedom itself.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: African Americans, although greatly desirous of, of freedom were not really
sure what exactly would be entailed by that concept.
Nell Irvin Painter: In a world built on slavery -- to say you are not enslaved anymore, what does it
mean? Who's free? Does that mean you're gonna become white person? Ah, does that mean you're
gonna be able to own property?
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: It's an abstract kind of a concept that really could only be determined by
what people did.
Jim Horton: (29:00, Ch 4 “LOST FRIENDS”) And if you read accounts of life in the South in the
immediate aftermath of the war what you, what you will read over and over again is about large
numbers of African Americans who are traveling the roads. It's very interesting because the former
slaveholders say that these people are just wandering around aimlessly. They weren't wandering
around aimlessly they were looking for friends and relatives that had been sold away.
Nell Irvin Painter: One of the most heartrending sites in, ah, and after the war publications is
columns called "lost friends" in which people are looking for their families. People trying to get
together. (compare this to other “post war” typ searching for loved ones, even 9/11)
Jim Horton: They were by their actions giving the lie to this notion that family didn't mean anything - that these connections had been broken, that they didn't care anything about these people who had
been sold away. And that's precisely what they did care about and what they're trying to do is to
reconstitute families to find mothers and fathers and relatives and friends.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (30:50) All over the South, African Americans set out to become part
of the new society. With the help of the Federal Freedman's Bureau, churches in the North and South,
and individuals, worked together to open schools for the newly freed slaves. Freed people of all ages
wanted one of the most basic rights denied them during slavery -- to learn to read and write.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Many others opened businesses or sought work for pay. For former
slaves it was the first time they could negotiate work contracts and buy land.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: They knew that owning land was the key to inclusion in the new
America.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Still others turned their attention to becoming part of the new political
system.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But, the new president was a Southern democrat named Andrew
Johnson.
Jim Horton: In the first weeks after he takes office he sets about providing almost wholesale pardons
for many of those who have been the major leaders of the confederacy.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (32:40) The former Confederates had only one major requirement
before being readmitted to the Union. They had to accept the Thirteenth amendment abolishing
slavery and all would be forgiven. Republicans in Congress were outraged.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: They impeached President Johnson, who escaped removal by a single
vote. Then Congress took over Reconstruction and immediately made changes to the Constitution.
Jim Horton: The 14th amendment to the Constitution said that your right of citizenship is not
dependant on race. And the 15th amendment said that you could not deny a person the right to vote
because of the person's race.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: By the time you get to the spring of 1867, African Americans have a new
sense of government, a new sense of what, of what government means. After all, it was government
that would in fact take steps to incorporate African American men into the body of politic.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: With the ability to vote and enter politics many African Americans, who
had fled the South returned home.
Andrew Billingsley: At the end of the war Smalls came back to Beaufort where he purchased the
house where he'd grown up as a slave, where his mother had worked as a slave. His mother was now
presiding over the house as a freeperson. She'd been presiding over it for a long time for the McKees
now she was doing it for her son. Then Smalls went fairly quickly into politics.
Lawrence Rowland: The Beaufort republican club became the base of Robert Smalls', ah, political
career. And Robert Smalls went all over the county canvassing -- as they say, but campaigning. He
proved himself to be a very clever orator. Um, great at repartee and ah dramatic in his oratory and
often aggressive and colorful and all those things. The black population of the Sea Islands responded
immediately to Robert Smalls. And so this was the beginning of his political career.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (35:00) In the spring of 1868 Robert Smalls was elected to the South
Carolina State House of Representatives where he joined the black majority in the legislature. It was
the only state in the Union to be dominated politically by African Americans. South Carolina, where the
Civil War had begun, would become a major proving ground for Reconstruction.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Across the country African Americans entered political life at every
level of society.
Jim Horton: If you make this comparison between 1860 when 90 percent of black people were slaves
and 1868, 1870 when you've got African Americans who are in State Legislature they are black
mayors and police chiefs. There are blacks in the U.S. Senate in the U.S. House of Representatives -they are literally revolutionizing American politics.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Although their overall numbers were small, their mere presence was
too much for the old Southern establishment.
Lawrence Rowland: That was very radical. I mean white folks they just couldn't imagine that. I
mean social equality, political equality oh my it was just, ah, beyond their comprehension -- that such
a radical thing could occur so fast.
W. Scott Poole: And so when the social fabric begins to rip from the perspective of white
Southerners. What they know to do is to respond with overwhelming violence. And they do. The Ku
Klux Klan (36:50) emerges throughout the South.
Jim Horton: They do unspeakable things. They do the things that you would think of terrorists doing.
They blow things up, they kill people, they do all kinds of other things that you would normally
associate with political terrorism.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: These were very dangerous times. These white terrorists -- really because
that's, that's what they would properly be called -- were committed at stopping at nothing to
eliminating the black body politic.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: No republican was immune -- black or white. And the thousands of
federal troops stationed in the South were not enough to stop the violence.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In South Carolina, state representative Robert Brown Elliott,
spearheaded hearings to investigate Klan activities.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Elliott's success in getting some of the Klan to confess to their tactics
convinced him that he could do something about the intimidation. He once said, "we have suffered
much and may suffer more. Let us not be driven from our position by any threats."
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In November 1870, Elliott was elected to the U.S. Congress. He took
his crusade against the Klan with him.
Bobby Donaldson: Elliott wants to, um, convince the federal government that more work needs to
be done to protect the rights of citizens. And he particularly wanted to catch the ear of president
Ulysses Grant.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: But Grant's only major Reconstruction plan was an attempt to annex
the Caribbean Island of Santo Domingo in the hopes that African Americans would want to relocate
there.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Despite Grant's plan, Elliott, along with other Republican leaders
continued lobbying the president. In April of 1871, their efforts paid off. Grant signed a Ku Klux Klan
Act aimed at giving the federal courts the power to jail the Klan's leaders. In October, Grant declared
martial law in nine South Carolina counties due to the "condition of lawlessness." It would be the only
time the military power of the Act would be used.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By 1874, when Robert Smalls was elected to Congress, the Klan Act
had been effective, but now there was a new problem.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Groups called Rifle Clubs had taken their place. In South Carolina the
Red Shirts Rifle Club became notorious.
W. Scott Poole: The Red Shirts essentially were the confederate army recidivist. They command
structure of the Red Shirts' regiments preserve the command structure of actual confederate
regiments. These were confederate veterans who were now under, in many cases, the very same
officers that they had served under during the American civil war. And so the organization of the Red
Shirts was really a way to bring resistance out into the open.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1876, just eight years after the first inter-racial elections, violence
against Southern republicans was out of control. Smalls took to the floor of Congress to urge his fellow
Congressmen to keep the pressure on the South.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: He told them about a letter he had received testifying to the level of
violence. The letter began:
Voice of Robert Smalls: These were facts, which I vouch for entirely, and are not distorted in any
degree. It's a plain unvarnished narration of painful and horrible truths.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On July 4th, 1876 a local plantation owner drove his buggy down a
public road in Hamburg, South Carolina where a black militia troop was drilling.
W. Scott Poole: The local plantation owner insisted on being allowed to drive right through this, ah, - field. The black militia refused to move. They almost come to blows.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: After a few tense moments, the troop leader, Doc Adams, ordered his
men to break ranks and allowed the carriage to pass.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: All along whites in that area had been waiting for kind of a provocation that
they could use to rally their forces. And so local democratic leaders rally white democrats in that area
and when the local black militia found out what was happening they, they held up in a, in a building.
And the whites began to lay siege to that building. Ultimately the black militiamen were forced to
surrender.
W. Scott Poole: When they surrender, particular members of Doc Adams' militia are picked out. They
call them out one by one and they shoot them in the head. Then they tell the rest to flee -- as they
begin to flee into the woods many of them are shot in the back.
Bobby Donaldson: That was a turning point because not only did it scare African Americans but it
showed white democrats this is the moment, this is the trajectory you could take if you really wanted
to turn the clock back on Reconstruction. (this scene can definitely be compared to the scene in Hotel
Rwanda where the sign is given and the violence begins)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: (44:15, Ch. 5 “ELECTION OF 1876”) In the South, the days leading up
to the presidential election of 1876 became even more violent. In the North, republicans grew weary
of the plight of the freedmen. When the governor of Mississippi asked for federal troops to halt
widespread violence against black voters, Grant said there was no use saving Mississippi if it would
cost the republicans Ohio.
W. Scott Poole: There was sort of this general feeling that 'let's just give the white ssouth what they
want.' Which the white south said 'what we want is to be left alone to shape our own social
institutions.' Which is a very polite, very Southern way of saying we want to be able to control our
former slaves.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At great personal risk African Americans held political meetings to get
out the vote. But the Democrats smelled victory.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On November 7th, 1876 everyone who dared went to the polls. The
day after the election, there were accusations of vote tampering in three Southern states -- Florida,
Louisiana, and South Carolina.
W. Marvin Dulaney: In fact there's two returns coming from all three of these states. Ah, ah -- one
set of returns say that the democrats have won the election. Another says, says that the republicans
have won the election. And this of course leads to, an impasse and they decided to appoint a
commission.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the commission argued whether the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes
or the Democrat Samuel L. Tilden should become president, the March 4th inauguration deadline
loomed.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Robert Smalls spoke about the continued violence against republicans
in his state.
Voice of Robert Smalls: The Democratic Party pursued a policy calculated to drive from the state
every white man who would refuse to join them in their attempts to deprive the Negro of the rights
guaranteed him by the Constitution of the United States.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The debate dragged on. The struggle for freedom was in jeopardy.
Ira Berlin: And hence the basis of a bargain. A bargain which will allow Rutherford B. Hayes to
assume the presidency.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On the evening of February 26, 1877, just six days before the
inauguration deadline, a clandestine meeting between representatives of both candidates took place at
the Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C.
W. Marvin Dulaney: They sort of come up with an agreement where we're no longer concerned
about the rights of African Americans as voters. And to put the Negro question on the back burner and
not worry about it anymore. They literally turn African Americans over to, to the South.
Jim Horton: In other words to remove the final, ah, forces of the federal government providing
protection in the South for black and white republicans. Well the deal is struck.
W. Marvin Dulaney: And so this is the infamous compromise of 1877.
Bernard E. Powers Jr.: The message that goes out to African Americans was that the destiny of
African Americans was not at all connected to the destiny of the nation. This is a very different
situation than the situation which developed during the Civil War because one of the things that, that
we understand and understand very clearly is that when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by
President Lincoln, Lincoln was saying that the destiny of African Americans was linked directly to the
destiny of the nation. We would rise or fall together. And now with the rise of Rutherford B. Hayes as
republican President, now republicans were essentially saying that the country can get along very well
without you.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: After the Compromise of 1877, African Americans found themselves
increasingly forced out of politics.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Across the South black republicans were simply removed from their
posts. Roberts Smalls, a U.S. Congressman who could not be removed, was charged with corruption,
jailed and eventually pardoned.
Lawrence Rowland: They did to Robert Smalls what they did to a lot prominent black politicians at
that time. Those charges haunted Robert Smalls for the rest of his life. But Robert Smalls was a very
brave man. Not just stealing the planter but his whole -- fighting in 17 battles in the Civil War he
wasn't afraid of gunfire he wasn't afraid of standing up to people who were armed when he was not.
He had immense personal courage.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Robert Smalls never gave in. To the disdain of the democrats, he
continued to run and be re-elected from his predominately black district for nine more years. His
leadership would give hope to his people in the years of uncertainty to come. (about 50:00)
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Across the South, democratic leaders did all they could to erase
Reconstruction from their minds and from the law.
Jim Horton: Gradually African American voters are intimidated to the point where they all but cease
to be allowed to vote.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Mississippi passed a series of laws that allowed legal discrimination
against African Americans in almost every phase of life. State after state in the South followed suit.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the old slave system was turned into a new system of servitude,
many African Americans stayed to fight on the soil they had always called home. Others took their fate
into their own hands and joined the movement west.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Black churches became more than ever the political cornerstone of
their communities. Through them, African Americans kept faith in the American dream. Ministers
preached, as they had during slavery, that liberation would come.
Jim Horton: The period of Reconstruction is a very instructive period in American society. It is
America, in some ways, at its racial worst. But there are glimmers of America at its racial best.
W. Scott Poole: This moment when people with everything in the world including history against
them had exercised both democracy and political power. Real political power.
Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Their attempt at the first inter-racial democracy was stalled, but the
groundwork had been laid. Although it would be almost a hundred years until the second
Reconstruction, their struggle would not be in vain.
Jim Horton: Out of Reconstruction come the basic tools that allow the modern civil rights movement
to establish important victories in the 1960s. Without the 14th amendment, without the 15th
amendment the civil rights movement would have had very little foundation upon which to build. So
Reconstruction really does have an important impact on all of the generations that follow. It would be
too simple to say that Reconstruction was a total failure -- it wasn't a total failure. There was a period
of time when America provided a ray of hope. (ends 54:10)
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