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Overview
A sweeping and original look at American slavery in the early nineteenth century that reveals the gamble slaves had to take to survive
Images of American slavery conjure up cotton plantations and African American slaves locked in bondage until the Civil War. Yet early on in the nineteenth century the state of slavery was very different, and the political vicissitudes of the young nation offered diverse possibilities to slaves. In the century's first two decades, the nation waged war against Britain, Spain, and various Indian tribes. Slaves played a role in the military operations, and the different sides viewed them as a potential source of manpower. While surprising numbers did assist the Americans, the wars created opportunities for slaves to find freedom among the Redcoats, the Spaniards, or the Indians. Author Gene Allen Smith draws on a decade of original research and his curatorial work at the Fort Worth Museum in this fascinating and original narrative history. The way the young nation responded sealed the fate of slaves for the next half century until the Civil War.
This drama sheds light on an extraordinary yet little known chapter in the dark saga of American history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781137310088 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 01/22/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Slaves' Gamble
Choosing Sides in the War of 1812
By Gene Allen Smith
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2013 Gene Allen SmithAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-137-31008-8
CHAPTER 1
BLACK SOLDIERS IN NORTH AMERICA
"Never of any use after they have carried arms"
In his study of Indian-white relations from the mid-seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, historian Richard White keenly described a middle ground where the white man and red man created a common world, adapted to changing lifestyles, and learned to accommodate cultural differences. His middle ground, located around the Great Lakes region, described "the place in between: in between cultures, peoples, and in between empires and the nonstate world of villages. It is the place where many of the North American subjects and allies of empire lived." Although White's book depicted only the relationship between Indians and whites, the basic thesis also applies to the world of African Americans during the same period because they too often occupied a middle ground between whites and Indians, between English and Spanish, and between the status of citizen and slave.
Europeans, mainly the English and Spanish, brought African Americans to the New World in bondage, forcing them to perform the arduous and demanding tasks that whites felt were beneath them. Because of this expectation, from the beginning, Europeans constructed a two-tiered social system based on race. Whites were expected to fulfill their obligations as subjects of their respective empire, while blacks spent their days toiling for their white masters. Spaniards and English alike were expected to use all available resources to expand their respective nation's empire in the New World, and settling slaves became one means of strengthening their hold over indigenous lands. Yet solidifying imperial claims by utilizing a system of slavery was only part of the process and did not take into consideration external factors such as the vastness and danger of the land itself, disease, and hostile Native Americans. These extenuating circumstances strained white resources, ultimately forcing Europeans to compromise on what they expected from both citizens and slaves.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century most of the European imperial boundaries in the New World had been defined, and this created an intense competition for any remaining land. Spain had consolidated its control over Central and South America and the Caribbean. France had expanded its holdings down the St. Lawrence and Mississippi River basins. Meanwhile Britain had secured a foothold along the Atlantic coast of North America. Each European power had carved out western empires, but their claims often overlapped and were sometimes tenuous at best. This resulted in a series of wars (1689–1763) fought in Europe as well as North America, which had a devastating effect on the colonies: they depleted the white manpower supply and ultimately forced colonial leaders to turn to free blacks and slaves to supplement their military forces. For more than a century this necessity afforded blacks who were willing to take up arms more opportunities, even though prejudice and old values prevented them from securing any degree of equality.
The many conflicts prior to the War of 1812 reveal the conditions under which the British, Americans, Spanish, and Native American/maroon (fugitive runaway blacks who settled away from whites) communities relied on blacks as combatants. By the beginning of the nineteenth century black soldiers had clearly demonstrated their value in the military, serving in a variety of offensive, defensive, and supporting roles. They had also won a variety of concessions — depending on for whom they fought — showing that military service offered an avenue for converting those hard-earned concessions to freedom. It was no surprise that these same groups turned to African Americans and that they willfully served during the War of 1812; black soldiers had proven themselves to be effective troops, and their desire to improve their well-being materially provided strong motivation for taking up arms.
"LEST OUR SLAVES WHEN ARM'D MIGHT BECOME OUR MASTERS": BRITISH COLONIAL AMERICA AND EARLY UNITED STATES
The use of African Americans as soldiers in the United States evolved over a long period of time. Even so, the shortage of white soldiers in the North American colonies combined with a Native American and foreign threat compelled colonials to use any fighting men, black or white, in their struggle for survival in a hostile, untamed land. Not surprisingly, life or death was determined by a combination of persistence and luck, not by skin color.
The ever-present threat of warfare against Native Americans became a common life-shaping feature of colonial existence during the seventeenth century, which ultimately forced each colony to devise a means of defending itself. For example, Virginia, which initially had a limited white population, expanding boundaries, and problems with Indians, armed blacks until their Native American difficulties abated during the late 1630s. By that time Virginia's white population had grown by an estimated five thousand, creating a mistaken belief that the Indians had been overwhelmed by force of numbers and thereafter would not offer further resistance. Such confidence in January 1639 prompted the colonial assembly to declare that "all persons except Negroes" had to secure arms and ammunition for defending the colony.
This legislation soon became problematic. During the spring of 1644 the aging Powhatan chief Opechancanough attacked the Virginia settlements, slaughtering more than three hundred. The Virginia assembly, despite the renewed violence, excluded blacks from military service, and by doing so the colonial government drew a distinction between the servants of the colony and the slaves, who were obligated to masters who served the colony. That presumption was further confirmed at the beginning of the eighteenth century when a special act prohibited blacks from holding "any office, ecclesiastical, civil, or military." Any black carrying a "gun, sword, club, staff, or other weapon" would be punished. One exception did permit blacks living on the frontier to possess weapons for their safety and defense, but only if they had white supervision. Virginia had passed laws proscribing blacks from carrying weapons or serving in the militia, but amended those laws when necessary.
Other southern colonies experienced comparable threats and dealt with them in a similar fashion. Near the end of the First Anglo-Dutch War in 1654, the General Assembly of Maryland required that "all persons from sixteen years of age to sixty," including free blacks and slaves, be provided with weapons to serve the commonwealth. In 1715, during the peaceful aftermath of some two decades of warfare, the Maryland assembly reversed its previous policy and precluded "all Negroes and Slaves" from military service. Likewise, the South Carolina assembly used slaves in 1671 to build fortifications around the ill-defended city of Charleston. During Queen Anne's War, the assembly further required that "trusty slaves" be armed with a "serviceable lance, hatchet, or gun" to protect the colony from a Spanish attack. Should those armed blacks capture or kill an enemy — and such a deed would have to be verified by a white witness — the slave would be granted freedom. If a slave was wounded in battle or taken prisoner and then escaped, he too would be emancipated. Apparently these conditions worked so well for South Carolina that in April 1708 the assembly renewed the provisions, employing blacks as full-fledged members of the militia.
Northern colonies with smaller slave and free black populations faced similar difficulties. The Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1641, experiencing increased problems with the Algonquian tribes along the lower Hudson River, required that slaves be armed with a "tomyhawk and a half pick." Recurring Native American troubles, combined with constant encroachments by the surrounding English colonies, also forced the Dutch to arm blacks as a defensive supplement. During the most destructive conflict in New England, King Philip's War in 1676, Rhode Island required its surprisingly large slave population to muster in the militia and perform the same training as white Englishmen.
By the end of the seventeenth century the English North American colonies had defined their black-white military relationship. Slaves and free blacks served as soldiers during a crisis, but once the trouble had passed both groups were relegated to their former subservient positions. The eighteenth century brought far more crises and more opportunities for African Americans to demonstrate their value as soldiers and citizens, but did not further clarify the already existing black-white relationship.
The troubling Yamasee War, beginning during the spring of 1715 because of white encroachment on Yamasee land and debt owed by the tribe to British traders, brought new opportunities for blacks, as it threatened not only the South Carolina frontier but also red-white relations throughout each of the English North American colonies. Success against the colonists could provide confidence for other Native American tribes and spur bloody conflicts all along the western frontier. Such a possibility demanded concerted action by the colonies. South Carolina's governor Charles Craven desperately asked Britain, New England, Virginia, and North Carolina for help, but he was forced by the need for men to hire a thousand soldiers (half of whom were African Americans) to meet the Indian threat. Fearing a growing Indian uprising and a possible slave insurrection, North Carolina leaders warned caution "lest our slaves when arm'd might become our masters." Not surprisingly, that fear resonated strongly throughout all the slaveholding colonies and emphasized how careful whites would be when arming blacks to counter Native American threats. During 1719 South Carolinians, foreseeing the fears that North Carolina leaders had warned against, revised the state's militia laws, giving slaves cash rewards rather than freedom for capturing or killing one of the enemy.
Although white Carolinians had used blacks to defeat Native Americans in the past, thereafter the Carolina assembly provided Indians with guns, ammunition, and supplies to capture escaped slaves. They relocated Indians to areas with high concentrations of slaves so they would "be an awe to the negroes." According to one Carolinian, it made "the Indians & Negro's checque upon each other ... [or] we should be crushed by one or the other." Later eighteenth-century wars demonstrated precisely how white southerners hung between the horrors of slave insurrections and the atrocities of an Indian uprising.
The War of Jenkins' Ear (1739) (Jenkins's ear was cut off by a Spanish Coast Guard official off Cuba), which evolved into the larger and more important King George's War in North America (beginning in 1744) and was also part of the general European War of Austrian Succession (1740–48), exacerbated an already tenuous situation. British and Spanish frontier fighting along the Georgia-Florida border, which had been ongoing for years, offered slaves and free blacks renewed opportunities for freedom. During January 1739 Gen. James Oglethorpe, founder of the Georgia colony, led an unsuccessful eighteen-month assault-turned-siege against Spanish St. Augustine. Although the assault — executed by regular redcoat soldiers, white militiamen, Indian allies, royal naval forces, and about eight hundred slaves — and subsequent attacks during 1742 and 1743 failed to dislodge the Spanish from Florida, according to one colonial they temporarily "spoil'd [Spain's] usual Methods of decoying our Negroes from Carolina, and elsewhere." The attacks also accentuated a growing American problem. The Spanish government and military warmly received runaway slaves and free blacks as a means of bolstering isolated segments of their far-flung empire, and the shortage of white troops forced Spain to rely on black soldiers as a means of ensuring the defense of Florida.
By 1744 diplomatic relations between Britain and France had deteriorated, and the two countries declared war on each other, joining the War of Austrian Succession. France enlisted the support of her Native American allies, setting the northern frontier ablaze in violence. Although the New England colonies, which bore the brunt of this war, had forbidden blacks from bearing arms and mustering with the militia, this immediate crisis and the shortage of white soldiers again forced New Englanders to accept blacks within their ranks. When Massachusetts governor William Shirley recruited soldiers to meet the French threat, blacks from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island volunteered, often identified as "Nero," "Cuffee Negro," "Adam a Negro," or a similarly descriptive name.
African Americans played important, although often overlooked roles in the military operations that made Britain the greatest imperial power of the late eighteenth century. Regardless, defining the motivation that prompted these men to bear arms proves far more difficult than chronicling their activities. One slave, Toney, a cook who served aboard several Boston privateers, did so because his master Samuel Lyndes enrolled him in the service; generally, slaves surrendered to their masters half of any wages or prize money earned, which meant that military service could be profitable, provided the slave survived the experience. Even so, some colonies such as New Jersey refused to arm blacks. In other instances slaves attended their masters who were fighting in the conflict and became unwilling participants in a struggle in which they had no interest.
Many free blacks, such as George Gire, saw the military as a means of advancement. After the French and Indian War, Gire petitioned the Massachusetts legislature and received, because of his "hard service," a pension of forty shillings per year. Forty shillings was not a great fortune, but the money demonstrated nonetheless that the legislature acknowledged and appreciated his sacrifice. Some may have chosen to bear arms because they believed it their duty as freemen, while others joined the conflict only because they had been forced to do so. In fact, some communities tried to use war service as a means to purge all criminals, paupers, and free blacks from their neighborhoods. Despite the reasons for their service, it cannot be denied that free blacks and slaves had found a place for themselves in the eighteenth-century military.
A single theme regarding blacks and the military had emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Colonial law and social pressure forbade free blacks and slaves from bearing arms, but the defenselessness of the colonies, the constant Indian and foreign threat, and a limited white population willing to muster in the military revealed an immediate need to enlist the services of black soldiers. By the 1770s that pattern had been well established, and it remained in place during the first months of the American War for Independence.
Blacks had played prominent roles in the events leading to the war. The "first martyr" of the struggle was the runaway slave Crispus Attucks from Framingham, Massachusetts, who died during the March 1770 Boston Massacre. A Rhode Island mulatto named Aaron helped torch the infamous British revenue cutter Gaspee off the coast of Providence in June 1772, while black militiamen Prince Easterbrook of Lexington, Pompey of Braintree, and Sam Croft of Newton all fought against the British on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord. At the June 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill black and white militiamen again confronted the British. One black soldier, Salem Poor, fought so bravely during the battle that fourteen white officers recommended him to the Massachusetts General Court for commendation; this "brave and gallant soldier" later suffered alongside his white compatriots at White Plains and Valley Forge.
After Bunker Hill, British forces withdrew to the safe confines of the Boston peninsula while colonial militiamen swarmed the outskirts of the city, making sure that redcoats did not venture into the countryside again. Included among the units that surrounded the city was Col. John Nixon's New Hampshire regiment with three slaves, another New Hampshire regiment with two black militiamen, as well as regiments from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, all with black soldiers. In fact, Gen. John Thomas, commanding one of the American brigades outside Boston, acknowledged the presence of black troops, remarking that they were "equally serviceable with other men, for fatigue [duties] and in action." Despite their bravery and the praise of white officers, Thomas reported a growing prejudice against black soldiers. He noted that southern militiamen did not tolerate black troops, but, then again, southerners held prejudices against any soldier who resided north of the Potomac River.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Slaves' Gamble by Gene Allen Smith. Copyright © 2013 Gene Allen Smith. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Illustrations,Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1 Black Soldiers in North America: "Never of any use after they have carried arms",
2 Fighting in the North 1807–13 and on the Seas: "Absolutely insensible to danger",
3 The Florida Patriot War of 1812: "For freedom we want and will have",
4 Terror in the Chesapeake, 1813–14: "Negroes who were anxious to join us",
5 Washington, Baltimore, and Other Targets: "Our enemy at home",
6 War along the Southern Coasts, 1814: "That pride of distinction, which a soldier's pursuits so naturally inspire",
7 Different Places, Same Results, 1815 and After: "They were in every sense of the word Free Men",
Epilogue,
Notes,
Index,