Hirelings: African American Workers and Free Labor in Early Maryland

6. Recession

6 Recession In 1826 Isaac Maccary was one of the most economically privileged free African Americans on the Eastern Shore. In 1808, when he was fifty-two years old, he acquired from Mary Rakes a small farm of 26.5 acres. Over the next twenty-four years, he and his wife, Memory, made several improvements to their property. They replaced a dilapidated “Negro hut” with a “tenant house,” and they built a dwelling house that tax assessors valued at fifty dollars in 1832. They also kept cattle and hogs, and steadily increased their livestock over time. In 1826 seventy-year-old Isaac decided to retire, and so he called on his eight children to support him in his old age. His son Samuel prepared a contractual agreement by which he would pay Isaac fifty dollars annually “for the better support and maintenance of his father .” In exchange for this promise of financial support, Isaac conveyed to his son the use of the “premises” occupied by the Maccarys since 1808. Isaac gave his daughter Grace “one acre of the said lot whereon the house she formerly lived in is erected,” and he instructed Samuel that his other children were all to receive “equal proportion of the residue of the said lot.” Recession 119 Samuel may have been the oldest Maccary son, but James ultimately assumed the duties of family patriarch. In 1832 Isaac and Memory lived with their son James, his wife, Mary, and their six children, William, Lureina, Milly, Samuel, Mary, and Elizabeth.1 Settled into a comparatively comfortable retirement surrounded by loved ones, Isaac Maccary had time to reflect on his life and his young grandchildren’s future. He was a savvy man who had accomplished much with his freedom, and he no doubt recognized that his grandchildren would not enjoy the same opportunities he had. Isaac and Memory, who had escaped slavery amid an economic boom, had opportunities to own land, livestock, and other forms of taxable property. They had many employment options and access to affordable housing on the Eastern Shore. They earned enough wages to acquire real estate and perhaps purchase (and thereby free) enslaved family members. Isaac’s white neighbors did not stand in his way, and at least one, Mary Rakes, sold him the land that was the foundation for his autonomy and prosperity. But the high tide that had lifted the economic fortunes of the Maccary family in the 1790s had receded somewhat by 1807 and then had abated completely by 1820. An economic recession that began in the 1810s persisted into the 1820s, eliminating countless jobs. In the 1830s waves of Irish and German immigrants heightened competition for what work remained . Wages stagnated, and as a result, free African Americans had less money to buy real property or loved ones from slavery. Those who could afford to buy land or loved ones likely encountered more hostility from white neighbors than Isaac had years earlier. If they did not already know it, Maccary’s grandchildren would soon learn that white attitudes toward free African Americans wavered between ambivalence and outright hostility in the 1830s. The economic troubles began with the decisive victory of the United Kingdom over the French and Spanish navies at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar . The defeat of Napoleon empowered the English Parliament to reassert its control over Atlantic trade. After 1805 the Royal Navy actively patrolled Chesapeake Bay and the larger Atlantic seaboard, searching merchant vessels suspected of harboring British deserters or carrying supplies to Napoleon’s forces in Europe.2 The Royal Navy had already impressed hundreds of sailors from American vessels when in June 1807 the HMS 120 Hirelings Leopard seized four sailors from the USS Chesapeake. This particular violation of American neutrality prompted President Thomas Jefferson to pass the Embargo Act of 1807 that closed U.S. ports to exports and restricted imports from Great Britain. The act devastated commercial agriculture. Exports plummeted and the whole American economy faltered. American wheat exports declined by 90 percent between 1806 and 1808, and the total value of goods shipped from Baltimore ports dropped by an estimated 75 percent in two years.3 American merchants tried to temper their losses by increasing trade with the Caribbean and opening new markets in southern Europe. These measures worked in the short term. In 1808, 60 percent of the flour exported from the United States went to the Caribbean, and...