Open Wound: The Long View of Race in America

7. Emancipated but Black: Freedom in the Free States

93 Chapter 7 Emancipated but Black Freedom in the Free States Paradoxically, as slavery disappeared in the North, the expressions of racial animosity there grew more strident. In the North, the southern slaveholders and their northern allies were vulnerable. They more and more needed northern support to maintain their dominant influence in the federal government . Never before had American leaders pressed the racial defenses of slavery more vigorously. Prejudice in the North reached its zenith during the 1850s. Indeed, in the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that free blacks were not citizens, and, in the words of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” The North for whites, even for those in distant Europe, was truly the land of the free. No place on earth did whites enjoy more opportunity than in the free states. For them, this society, despite its class differences, was the most democratic in the world. White Americans were an optimistic people, placing the highest value on upward mobility. Passionately opposed to aristocracy, they were also passionately committed to a doctrine that fixed forever a person’s status at birth, by the color of one’s skin. The “common man” inflicted bloody retribution on anyone, black or white, who challenged the rules of caste. In 1859, during the fury that swept the slave states following John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, a small group of abolitionist families from Kentucky, led by the Reverend John Fee, crossed the Ohio River and settled in the outskirts of Cincinnati.1 In Kentucky, Fee and his followers had founded Berea College and adopted as its motto “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.” This “meant the co-education of the (so-called) races.” For they knew that Christ “would not turn away anyone who came seeking knowledge, even if ‘carved in ebony.’” For such a faith the Blue Grass country of central Kentucky had exacted a fearful price. Fee’s father had disowned him. Twenty-two times he had been “mobbed,” and twice left for dead.2 Yet when Fee and his followers had been forced to abandon Berea College and to seek refuge in the North, they could have had few illusions about the free soil beyond the Ohio. If they could expect greater safety in Cincinnati than in Kentucky, they could scarcely have expected a friendly welcome. In Cincinnati there had been major outbreaks of antiblack rioting in 1829, 1836, 1839, and 1841. In 1834, both the Cincinnati Whig and the Daily Post had called upon their readers to lynch abolitionists. No city in the slave states had such a record of antiblack pogroms. But some in the free states did. Philadelphia had major riots in 1829, 1834, 1835, 1838, 1842, and 1849. There were few northern cities with black minorities where there were no such attacks. The riots in New York in 1834 destroyed sixty houses and six churches.3 Why So Much Animosity against So Few? Abuse of the freed people defied arithmetic. Although they were more numerous in cities, their overall numbers never reached 2 percent in the antebellum North.4 In the South, free blacks were slightly more numerous but outnumbered by slaves ten to one. The nation was the land of room enough, its doors wide open to immigrants. And there was room enough for slaves. For a half century, slave prices rose virtually without pause, and in the South a movement erupted in the 1850s to import more from Africa.5 But in the land of room enough there was no room for freed people. Most states had laws prohibiting their migration from other states. Southern states passed laws making it more difficult to manumit slaves. In the “land of the free,” few whites could tolerate the idea of freeing blacks unless it was coupled with a plan to deport them “back” to Africa or to virtually any place. The treatment of the freed people defied the normal requirements of social stability. Most societies did not treat a people in such a slavish way if 94 part 2: the antebellum republic they did not have the control over them that they had over actual slaves. In Russia, the Cossacks were the freed people, many descended from escaped serfs. Yet the government made concessions to them. Cossacks became the staunchest defenders of the...