Stolen Childhood, Second Edition: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America

Preface to the Second Edition

xi Preface to the Second Edition DuringtheinterveningyearssincethepublicationofStolen Childhoodin 1995, an abundance of scholarship on slavery has appeared and enriched our knowledge about the institution of slavery across geographical regions and about enslaved children who came of age before 1865. For example ,itisnowknownthatthenumberofyouthfulAfricanstransported into the New World was greater than many had believed previously. In fact,theestimatesrangefromone-fourthtoone-thirdtothetotal.Moreover , a variety of sources, including Erik Hofstee’s dissertation “The Great Divide: Aspects of the Social History of the Middle Passage in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade,” the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (CD-ROM),narrativesbyMiddlePassagesurvivors,andthespecialeditionofSlavery and Abolition 27(August2006),makedataaboutenslaved children more readily available than ever before. As a result, this work devotes attention to the transatlantic trade in African children in the chapter titled “‘In the Beginning’: The Transatlantic Trade in Children of African Descent.”1 Another rationale for including a chapter about the transatlantic trade is the sheer number of children transported and the fact that youngsters were sought after by captains interested in filling their holds quickly with “affordable” chattel. And after the United States ended its participationintheoverseastradeinAfricans,anillegaltradecontinued and children remained a likely choice in the business of buying, transporting , and selling Africans. The scope of Stolen Childhood has been increased in another way to include slave-born children in the North. The abolition of slavery in the xii Preface to the Second Edition Revolutionary War era and provisions for its gradual demise tend to obscuretheexistenceofslaveryintheNorth .Alookatnorthernbondagerevealscomplexitiesinhouseholdsinwhichchildrenwhowerebornbefore gradual abolition laws became effective remained enslaved while their siblings born afterward were destined for freedom. Furthermore, the fluidity in urban slavery shaped the nature of bondage for children. One needstolooknofurtherthanStephenWhitman’s“DiverseGoodCauses: Manumission and the Transformation of Urban Slavery” to see that enslaved and emancipated blacks were not completely separate entities.2 Thechangesinthegeographicalscopeofthistextmakeitpossibleto examine interactions between free, freed, and enslaved children across regions. In the process, it becomes clear that freeborn and emancipated persons were not entirely aloof from their enslaved contemporaries. In fact, few, if any, freeborn or freed persons in the North or South did not have a relative or friend who remained in bondage. This study looks at interactions between enslaved and free children as well as the extent of each group’s knowledge about the existence of its counterpart. This edition of Stolen Childhood attempts to move away from the notion that slavery was a southern plantation phenomenon in which white planters owned scores of black children and adults. To that end, it includes data about children owned by Native Americans and African Americans. The number of slaveholders of color and the size of their holdings were relatively small, yet they should not be dismissed. That Africans and African Americans owned other Africans or African Americans for economic and benevolent reasons is an integral part of this history. Finally, the original study devoted little attention to children’s knowl­­ edge of or participation in the abolitionist movement. Since the time the first edition was published, the scholarship of Lois Brown has made the participation of children, witting or unwitting, in Susan Paul’s abolitionist choirs impossible to ignore. Similarly, Molly Mitchell’s research highlighting free children in New Orleans provided data to show thatteachersinfluencedtheirpupils’thinkingandsensitizedthemabout the existence of slavery. The same can be said about schools for black children in New York and Cincinnati.3 Aside from these additions, the intent and structure of Stolen Childhood remain unchanged. ...