Family or Freedom: People of Color in the Antebellum South

3. "Traditional" Motivations and White Perspectives on Voluntary Enslavement

75 3 “TRADITIONAL” MOTIVATIONS AND WHITE PERSPECTIVES ON VOLUNTARY ENSLAVEMENT The aptly named Daniel Freeman from Orangeburg, South Carolina, requested that the House of Representatives permit him to become enslaved to John B. Murrow. Freeman was apparently “assured that the condition of slavery would be preferable to his present condition as a free person of color. That he is anxious to relinquish his present dubious condition and grant to himself the benefits of protection and support which will arrive from the relation of master and servant.” Freeman then marked his request, for which there survives no date, with an “X,” so indicating that the “real” writer of his petition remains unknown.1 But the choice of words is vitally significant. Freeman’s petition defined bondage as “preferable ” to freedom; the latter was but a “dubious condition” without the “benefits of protection and support” granted by masters. Like Daniel Freeman, many other enslavement petitioners couched their requests in terms of proslavery ideology, where bondage was suggested as a positive good. Such petitioners were typically seeking to appeal to white lawmakers by performing to expected racial roles.2 Daniel Freeman does not appear to have any familial ties to the Murrow family slaves, as John Murrow owned only four: a twenty-year-old woman, an eighteen-year-old man, and two young children, apparently a nuclear family grouping.3 Neither did Freeman live within the Mur- 76 FAMILY OR FREEDOM row family’s household. In the 1860 census, he appears as a thirty-fiveyear -old “mulatto” who lived in the household of the non-slaveholding white Howel family.4 So Freeman’s motivations for enslavement remain elusive. Indeed, the impetus behind his petition could have come from John Murrow himself. Master of only four slaves, Murrow would significantly increase his chattel through his acquisition of Daniel Freeman. This particular petition, therefore, also hints strongly at the typical socioeconomic profiles of potential owners, who tended not to be wealthy men. Surviving petitions such as this one have been interpreted too literally by contemporary proslavery ideologues and subsequent generations of historians. Typically, both the expulsion and enslavement of free people of color have been viewed through a prism of issues that include impoverishment, debt, and the notion of enslavement as a positive good. This chapter will show that all three areas constitute “traditional” explanations for the phenomena of expulsion and enslavement and that all dwell exclusively on white, rather than black perspectives. While poverty, financial debt, and proslavery ideology can all offer some partial explanations for free blacks’ expulsion and enslavement, all three factors ignore the significant role free blacks’ more intimate sentiments played, and they fail to address free black volition where people were fighting to remain where they belonged, with beloved kin. This chapter takes as its starting point the use of enslavement requests as proslavery propaganda in southern newspapers. It also probes more deeply the framing of slavery petitions in terms of proslavery discourses , and it will also consider those petitions submitted by free blacks who had fallen foul of the law and those who were poor, impoverished, or sickly.The chapter also assesses the socioeconomic profiles of potential owners by tracking their slave ownership. What sorts of people cajoled or tricked or otherwise encouraged free people of color into requesting bondage? The broad conclusion is that most potential owners, like John Murrow, held only a few slaves (if any at all).They regarded voluntary enslavement initiatives as a way into the slaveholding class, with subsequent economic gain.White potential owners did not seek voluntary slaves for benevolent reasons, despite their public framing of petitions in such a way. Finally, the chapter will comment on the financial transactions involved in enslavement requests and the economic value of free people of color to their potential masters. “Traditional” Motivations andWhite Perspectives onVoluntary Enslavement 77 enslaveMent requests as proslavery propaganda Situated within the contexts of poverty, debts or ill health are the traditional historical explanations for enslavement. John Hope Franklin saw voluntary slavery as a means by which “free negroes” could avoid legal difficulties and cited the example of John Stewart, who moved to Cincinnati , Ohio, after having purchased his freedom in Raleigh, North Carolina . In 1854 he was sentenced to a chain gang after he entered a plea of guilty to stealing. He apparently expressed regret that he was now a free man and vowed to return to the South and...