In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

3 Free People of Color, Expulsion, and Enslavement in the Antebellum South Emily West Free people of color in the antebellum United States were excluded from legal citizenship as defined in the 1790 Naturalization Act because they were not “free white persons.” Like their enslaved counterparts, then, southern free blacks were excluded from legal marriage, although most black people, whether enslaved or free, strove to choose their own life partners and live as couples regardless of their status before the law. Southern free people of color were also unable to vote, and many faced considerable hardships in their attempts to earn a living. Moreover, during the antebellum era white concerns about the very existence of free people of color within southern states, both old and new, increased, and historian Evelyn Nakano Glenn has argued they were increasingly perceived to be “anti-citizens.”1 As notions of citizenship in the eyes of whites grew ever more exclusionary, then, the declining status of free people of color was formalized before law. On a national level, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision the Supreme Court declared that free people of color never had been and therefore never could be citizens.2 But even before this time, at a local and state level, southern legislatures had been moving from the 1830s onward to restrict the freedoms afforded free people of color, and by the 1850s their aim was the removal of what they perceived to be an anomaly in the slave South: a free black person. During the 1850s, then, southern states moved toward the expulsion or enslavement of all free people of color, who were ultimately saved from either fate only by the Civil War. So by the eve of war, the ideas of free people of color about concepts such as “liberty,” “citizenship,” and “equality” were superseded by the practicalities —the difficulties—of coping with everyday life. The majority of Free People of Color, Expulsion, and Enslavement in the Antebellum South · 65 free blacks increasingly prioritized their intimate ties of affection within their affective communities and the ability economically to provide for their families before all else. Thinking of citizenship in terms of liberal entitlements to legal and political rights was generally the preserve of white members of society, and an investigation into citizenship’s meanings at this uncertain time can expose some of the other white paradigms within which the lives of mid-nineteenth-century men and women have been framed. For example, most free black southern men were not able sufficiently to provide for their families, so women could not rely on them for economic well-being. Free black women, therefore, tended not only to work more outside the home than many of their white counterparts but also to encompass broader definitions of maternity and motherhood, in which providing for one’s family in an economic sense was as important as the more “white” ideal of motherhood as the embodiment of “care and nurture.”3 Antebellum southern blacks therefore conceptualized citizenship not only in practical terms of providing but also as more of a process of belonging—and being recognized as belonging—to a family, group, or community. This meant that notions of romantic love for southern blacks stood in stark contrast to those of whites. Citizenship granted the right to legal marriage, and it is often assumed that in the early nineteenth century wedlock was entered for reasons of property and pragmatism, but this was common only within white society. The enslaved were early pioneers in setting up life partnerships for romantic reasons notwithstanding their wedlock’s lack of legal status.4 And the same was true for many free black families. Devoid of wealth, they were able to marry for romantic love, and they placed their families before all else, including a legal citizenship that bore no relevance to their everyday lives. More specifically, exploring the lives of late-antebellum free people of color through the prism of enslavement petitions they submitted to state legislatures and county courts also reveals the extent to which marital ties of affection crossed the line from slavery to freedom. Historian Jeff Forret has recently stressed that relations between the enslaved and poor whites were often more complex and less hostile than has hitherto been recognized, and free people of color can be built into this analysis as well.5 Many free people of color had enslaved spouses and lived in families that existed “somewhere in between ” slavery and freedom. Historian John Wess...

Share