African Americans in the Nineteenth Century People

and Perspectives Perspectives in American Social

History Series Dixie Haggard (Editor) new release
2025

https://ebookgate.com/product/african-americans-in-the-nineteenth-
century-people-and-perspectives-perspectives-in-american-social-
history-series-dixie-haggard-editor/

★★★★★
4.7 out of 5.0 (89 reviews )

Quick PDF Download

ebookgate.com
 African Americans in the Nineteenth Century People and
Perspectives Perspectives in American Social History Series
Dixie Haggard (Editor)

EBOOK

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide Ebook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 ACADEMIC EDITION – LIMITED RELEASE

Available Instantly Access Library

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Reconstruction People and Perspectives Perspectives in

American Social History 1st Edition James M. Campbell

https://ebookgate.com/product/reconstruction-people-and-perspectives-
perspectives-in-american-social-history-1st-edition-james-m-campbell/

ebookgate.com

Womanhood in Anglophone Literary Culture Nineteenth and

Twentieth Century Perspectives 1st Edition Robin Hammerman

https://ebookgate.com/product/womanhood-in-anglophone-literary-
culture-nineteenth-and-twentieth-century-perspectives-1st-edition-
robin-hammerman/
ebookgate.com

Enchantment The Seductress in Opera European Perspectives

A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism Jean
Starobinski
https://ebookgate.com/product/enchantment-the-seductress-in-opera-
european-perspectives-a-series-in-social-thought-and-cultural-
criticism-jean-starobinski/
ebookgate.com

African Americans in the Performing Arts Revised Edition A

to Z of African Americans Steven Otfinoski

https://ebookgate.com/product/african-americans-in-the-performing-
arts-revised-edition-a-to-z-of-african-americans-steven-otfinoski/

ebookgate.com
Challenging History in the Museum International
Perspectives Jenny Kidd

https://ebookgate.com/product/challenging-history-in-the-museum-
international-perspectives-jenny-kidd/

ebookgate.com

Roman Perspectives Studies in Political and Cultural

History from the First to the Fifth Century 1st Edition
John Matthews
https://ebookgate.com/product/roman-perspectives-studies-in-political-
and-cultural-history-from-the-first-to-the-fifth-century-1st-edition-
john-matthews/
ebookgate.com

African American Rhetoric s Interdisciplinary Perspectives

1st Edition Associate Professor Elaine B Richardson

https://ebookgate.com/product/african-american-rhetoric-s-
interdisciplinary-perspectives-1st-edition-associate-professor-elaine-
b-richardson/
ebookgate.com

Emotion in Social Relations Cultural Group and

Interpersonal Perspectives Brian Parkinson

https://ebookgate.com/product/emotion-in-social-relations-cultural-
group-and-interpersonal-perspectives-brian-parkinson/

ebookgate.com

The Puritan Provincial Vision Scottish and American

Literature in the Nineteenth Century 1st Edition Susan
Manning
https://ebookgate.com/product/the-puritan-provincial-vision-scottish-
and-american-literature-in-the-nineteenth-century-1st-edition-susan-
manning/
ebookgate.com
AFRICAN AMERICANS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Selected titles in ABC-CLIO’s Perspectives in American Social History series

African Americans in the Nineteenth Century: People and Perspectives

American Revolution: People and Perspectives
Baby Boom: People and Perspectives
British Colonial America: People and Perspectives
Civil Rights Movement: People and Perspectives
Civil War: People and Perspectives
Cold War and McCarthy Era: People and Perspectives
Colonial America: People and Perspectives
Early Republic: People and Perspectives
Industrial Revolution: People and Perspectives
Jacksonian and Antebellum Age: People and Perspectives
Jazz Age: People and Perspectives
Making of the American West: People and Perspectives
Reconstruction: People and Perspectives
Vietnam War Era: People and Perspectives
Westward Expansion: People and Perspectives
Women’s Rights: People and Perspectives
 PERSPECTIVES IN
AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

African Americans
in the
Nineteenth
Century
People and Perspectives
Dixie Ray Haggard, Editor
Peter C. Mancall, Series Editor
Copyright 2010 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without
prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

African Americans in the nineteenth century : people and perspectives / Dixie Ray Haggard, editor.
p. cm. — (Perspectives in American social history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59884-123-7 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-59884-124-4 (ebook)
1. African Americans—History—19th century. 2. African Americans—Social conditions—19th
century. 3. United States—Race relations—History—19th century. I. Haggard, Dixie Ray.
E185.18.A375 2010
9730 .0496073—dc22 2009049683
ISBN: 978-1-59884-123-7
EISBN: 978-1-59884-124-4
14 13 12 11 10 1 2 3 4 5
This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook.
Visit www.abc-clio.com for details.
ABC-CLIO, LLC
130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911
Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911
This book is printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
 Contents

Series Introduction, vii

Introduction, xi
About the Editor and Contributors, xxiii
Chronology, xxvii

1 Africans and African Americans to the 1820s, 1

Dixie Ray Haggard

2 Free Blacks in Antebellum America, 17

Shelby Callaway

3 Still Rising: An Intricate Look at Black Female Slaves, 33

Crystal L. Johnson

4 Safety in the Briar Patch: Enslaved Communities in the Nineteenth-

Century United States, 45
Karen Wilson

5 Uncovering the True Relationship between Masters and Slaves, 63

Jennifer Hildebrand

6 ‘‘Yes, We All Shall Be Free’’: African Americans Make the Civil War a
Struggle for Freedom, 79
David Williams and Teresa Crisp Williams
vi CONTENTS
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

7 African Americans during Reconstruction (1863–1877), 95

Dawn J. Herd-Clark

8 African American Responses to Early Jim Crow, 111

Mary Block

9 ‘‘Their Plows Singing beneath the Sandy Loam’’: African American

Agriculture in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South, 133
Mark D. Hersey

10 African Americans in the Nineteenth-Century West, 149

James N. Leiker

11 Black Indians: America’s Forgotten People, 171

Dixie Ray Haggard

12 African American Leaders, 185

Paige Haggard

Primary Documents, 203

Reference, 221
Bibliography, 231
Index, 253
 Series Introduction

S ocial history is, simply put, the study of past societies. More specifi-
cally, social historians attempt to describe societies in their totality,
and hence often eschew analysis of politics and ideas. Though many
social historians argue that it is impossible to understand how societies
functioned without some consideration of the ways that politics works on
a daily basis or what ideas could be found circulating at any given time,
they tend to pay little attention to the formal arenas of electoral politics or
intellectual currents. In the United States, social historians have been
engaged in describing components of the population that had earlier often
escaped formal analysis, notably women, members of ethnic or cultural
minorities, or those who had fewer economic opportunities than the elite.
Social history became a vibrant discipline in the United States after it
had already gained enormous influence in Western Europe. In France,
social history in its modern form emerged with the rising prominence of a
group of scholars associated with the journal Annales Economie, Societe, Civi-
lisation (or Annales ESC as it is known). In its pages and in a series of books
from historians affiliated with the E  cole des Hautes E  tudes en Sciences
Sociale in Paris, brilliant historians such as Marc Bloch, Jacques Le Goff,
and Emanuel LeRoy Ladurie described seemingly every aspect of French
society. Among the masterpieces of this historical reconstruction was Fer-
nand Braudel’s monumental study, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean
World in the Age of Philip II, published first in Paris in 1946 and in a revised
edition in English in 1972. In this work Braudel argued that the only way
to understand a place in its totality was to describe its environment, its
social and economic structures, and its political systems. In Britain the em-
phasis of social historians has been less on questions of environment, per
se, than on a description of human communities in all their complexities.
For example, social historians there have taken advantage of that nation’s
remarkable local archives to reconstruct the history of the family and
details of its rural past. Works such as Peter Laslett’s The World We Have
Lost, first printed in 1966, and the multiauthored Agrarian History of Eng-
land and Wales, which began to appear in print in 1967, revealed that
viii SERIES INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

painstaking work could reveal the lives and habits of individuals who
never previously attracted the interest of biographers, demographers, or
most historians.
Social history in the United States gained a large following in the sec-
ond half of the 20th century, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. Its de-
velopment sprang from political, technical, and intellectual impulses
deeply embedded in the culture of the modern university. The politics of
civil rights and social reform fueled the passions of historians who strove
to tell the stories of the underclass. They benefited from the adoption by
historians of statistical analysis, which allowed scholars to trace where
individuals lived, how often they moved, what kinds of jobs they took,
and whether their economic status declined, stagnated, or improved over
time. As history departments expanded, many who emerged from graduate
schools focused their attention on groups previously ignored or marginal-
ized. Women’s history became a central concern among American histori-
ans, as did the history of African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos,
and others. These historians pushed historical study in the United States
farther away from the study of formal politics and intellectual trends.
Though few Americanists could achieve the technical brilliance of some
social historians in Europe, collectively they have been engaged in a vast
act of description, with the goal of describing seemingly every facet of life
from 1492 to the present.
The sixteen volumes in this series together represent the continuing
efforts of historians to describe American society. Most of the volumes
focus on chronological areas, from the broad sweep of the colonial era to
the more narrowly defined collections of essays on the eras of the Cold
War, the baby boom, and America in the age of the Vietnam War. The se-
ries also includes entire volumes on the epochs that defined the nation,
the American Revolution and the Civil War, as well as volumes dedicated
to the process of westward expansion, women’s rights, and African Ameri-
can history.
This social history series derives its strength from the talented editors
of individual volumes. Each editor is an expert in his or her own field who
selected and organized the contents of his or her volume. Editors solicited
other experienced historians to write individual essays. Every volume con-
tains first-rate analysis complemented by lively anecdotes designed to
reveal the complex contours of specific historical moments. The many
illustrations to be found in these volumes testify too to the recognition that
any society can be understood not only by the texts that its participants
produce but also by the images that they craft. Primary source documents
in each volume will allow interested readers to pursue some specific topics
in greater depth, and each volume contains a chronology to provide guid-
ance to the flow of events over time. These tools—anecdotes, images, texts,
and timelines—allow readers to gauge the inner workings of America in
particular periods and yet also to glimpse connections between eras.
The articles in these volumes testify to the abundant strengths of his-
torical scholarship in the United States in the early years of the twenty-
first century. Despite the occasional academic contest that flares into public
Visit https://ebookgate.com today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
genres, available in popular formats like
PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible with
all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading
experience and effortlessly download high-
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
let you access a wealth of knowledge at the
best prices!
 SERIES INTRODUCTION ix
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

notice, or the self-serving cant of politicians who want to manipulate the

nation’s past for partisan ends—for example, in debates over the Second
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and what it means about potential
limits to the rights of gun ownership—the articles here all reveal the vast
increase in knowledge of the American past that has taken place over the
previous half century. Social historians do not dominate history faculties
in American colleges and universities, but no one could deny them a seat
at the intellectual table. Without their efforts, intellectual, cultural, and
political historians would be hard pressed to understand why certain ideas
circulated when they did, why some religious movements prospered or
foundered, how developments in fields such as medicine and engineering
reflected larger concerns, and what shaped the world we inhabit.
Fernand Braudel and his colleagues envisioned entire laboratories of
historians in which scholars working together would be able to produce
histoire totale: total history. Historians today seek more humble goals for
our collective enterprise. But as the richly textured essays in these volumes
reveal, scholarly collaboration has in fact brought us much closer to that
dream. These volumes do not and cannot include every aspect of Ameri-
can history. However, every page reveals something interesting or valuable
about how American society functioned. Together, these books suggest the
crucial necessity of stepping back to view the grand complexities of the
past rather than pursuing narrower prospects and lesser goals.

Peter C. Mancall
Series Editor
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction

H istory is the key to understanding our present and the light that illu-
minates the path to our future. In 2008, the United States celebrated
a landmark event in its history, the election of an African American
to the presidency of the United States. Many scholars trace the origins of
this event to the efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 20th century or
Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in the 19th
century, and in part, they are justified in their argument. These scholars,
however, miss the proverbial forest by looking at a couple of large trees.
Since 1800, millions of African Americans made sacrifices that blazed a trail
that led directly to the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the
United States. Specifically, in the 19th century, people like Gabriel Prosser,
Charles Deslondes, Paul Cuffe, Levi Coffin, Richard Allen, Denmark Vesey,
Edward Jones, David Walker, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner
Truth, Dred Scott, Edward Alexander Bouchet, Henry O. Flipper, Booker T.
Washington, George Washington Williams, Ida B. Wells, Homer Plessy, W.
E. B. Du Bois, and the communities they represent literally sacrificed every-
thing including their lives to lay down a foundation for the eventual free-
dom of all African Americans. These individuals paved a path to a future in
which an African American could be elected president of the United States.
Probably no one person did more for the betterment of the African Ameri-
can community in the 19th century and the achievement of their hopes in
a later century than did Frederick Douglass.
Frederick Douglass is the perfect, singular example of the African
American experience in the 19th century. He experienced life in a slave
community in the South and in free African American communities in the
North before the Civil War. In 1818, Douglass was born a slave in Mary-
land, and while a slave, he became all too familiar with the brutality,
inhumanity, and inherent evil of the slavery institution.
While still a child and a slave, Douglass learned how to read even
though it was forbidden by law. Eventually, he was forced to labor for his
owner as he reached maturity. In 1838, Douglass managed to escape to
the North and freedom, and by the early 1840s, he became an outspoken
xii INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

and public advocate of abolition, despite the risk to his freedom due to his
status as a runaway slave. In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography
to further the cause of abolition, again at great risk to his freedom. After
publication of his autobiography, Douglass left for a lecture tour of Great
Britain. While there, British friends of Douglass raised funds to purchase
his freedom.
During the Civil War, Douglass worked tirelessly to ensure the war
would guarantee an end to slavery and for African Americans to be
allowed to serve in the Union Army. After the Civil War, Douglass cam-
paigned vigorously to achieve civil, economic, and social rights for African
Americans, and he lectured constantly, albeit in vain, to have the Civil
War remembered primarily as a war for the emancipation of slaves. Doug-
lass was politically active in the Republican Party and held several govern-
ment appointments, including the marshal for the District of Columbia
and minister and consul general to Haiti. Douglass passed away on Febru-
ary 20, 1895.
Frederick Douglass’s life story vividly reveals the basic contradictions
of a democratic republic that espoused the concept of equality for all, at
the same time it allowed the enslavement of some of its population. Few if
any American writers have so clearly and succinctly revealed and attacked
the moral and economic nature of slavery, and few have argued so elo-
quently for the potential of civil, economic, and social equality in the nat-
ural rights tradition.
The purpose of this volume is to introduce the reader to the social
world that Douglass and other African Americans experienced during the
19th century and help the reader explore and understand that world. This
was a world that few 21st-century Americans fully appreciate. It was a
world of struggle and fulfillment, justice and injustice, civility and brutal-
ity, and acceptance and racism.
More specifically, this monograph seeks to describe the social life of
African Americans in the 19th century. Much has been published about
the cultural, economic, environmental, military, and political accomplish-
ments of African Americans in that century, but little has been written
about the day-to-day affairs and the face-to-face interactions of African
Americans with each other and others in American society. Although
social history is the focus here, the cultural, economic, environmental,
military, and political activity of these people will be used as methods of
historical exploration to provide gateways into the social life of African
Americans.
Frederick Douglass’s birth came at a transition point in African Ameri-
can social history. Slave communities in the South were quickly becoming
African American in their makeup rather than African because of the ban
on the importation of slaves into the United States beginning in 1808.
Before this ban, slaves born in Africa exceeded the number of those born
in America. This had been the case since the first Africans were brought to
North America in 1619. The history of Africans and African Americans in
the Colonial and Revolutionary eras led up to and shaped this transition
 INTRODUCTION xiii
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

period, and this transition period is important to understanding African

American history during the rest of the 19th century, because it created a
division among African American leaders as to whether or not African
Americans should seek inclusion in American society.
The first Africans to arrive in America probably ended up as inden-
tured servants rather than slaves, but as the 16th century progressed,
American colonists developed African chattel slavery as a replacement for
indentured servitude. Chapter 1 describes how African chattel slavery, and
the racism that accompanied it, provided the framework within which
African and African American, free and enslaved communities developed
socially and culturally in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Although this
framework existed throughout America during this time, the nature and
structure of African and African American society differed from time to
time and place to place.
In the colonial period, the social structure and the culture produced by
slave communities was influenced heavily by which African ethnicities
lived within them and by when these ethnicities arrived. The different eth-
nicities from varying parts of Africa arrived at different times in different
combinations to different places. The varying ways whites employed slaves
in the different regions of North America combined with the white-to-
black ratio to produce altering social settings for African slaves. This fact
prevented enslaved and free blacks from developing any concept of racial
unity during the colonial period.
The rhetoric of freedom and liberty that accompanied the revolution-
ary era caused black societies to reorganize at the end of the 18th and be-
ginning of the 19th centuries. This trend combined with the reduction of
African-born slaves and resulted in the development of a nascent, racial
consciousness throughout black America. The rise of economically success-
ful, black elites during this same period, the Revolutionary era to the
1820s, formed a classism that hindered and restrained the growth of an
African American racial consciousness.
These two differing visions of the black future in America solidified af-
ter the 1820s. One vision looked toward inclusion in America, hoping that
eventually the promise of liberty would be extended to them due to the
influence of Christianity and the rhetoric of freedom. Frederick Douglass
can be counted among those who adhered to this view. The second vision
recognized that American racism would not accept anyone of African
descent as equal. Therefore, those that followed this last view continued to
develop their own African-influenced institutions and organizations and
attempted to preserve their communities and their African heritage apart
from white society. This division among African Americans continued to
affect black society throughout the rest of the 19th century and into the
20th century. It manifested itself at the turn of the 20th century as some
chose to follow the leadership of Booker T. Washington, and his focus on
developing black economic independence first and the acquisition of civil
rights later, and others chose to follow Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du
Bois and their pursuit of immediate civil and social equality.
xiv INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

When Frederick Douglass made his escape and gained his freedom in
1838 he found, as Shelby Callaway writes in Chapter 2, that ‘‘the American
practice of associating slavery with race made the existence of free black
people a thorny issue’’ in the North as well as in the South for white Ameri-
cans. Free blacks disrupted a system based on blackness equaling slavery,
and this fact affected the legal, economic, and social makeup of antebellum
America. During the early 19th century, free blacks established their posi-
tion in American society and began to create a distinctly African American
culture and society. Separate and distinct from the slave culture of the South
and heavily influenced by their African heritage, ‘‘African American culture
and society grew out of the free black communities and institutions of the
1800s.’’ Black Christian churches and their leaders served as the focal points
of these communities. The church ‘‘produced most of the social and political
leaders, founded schools, started mutual aid societies, and contributed to a
more distinct and unified African American consciousness and culture.’’
Most of the members of the free black communities during the early
19th century were the descendants of freed slaves or were freed slaves
themselves. Many of these gained their freedom during the Revolutionary
era as some white Americans and many black Americans took the concepts
of liberty and equality literally. Those that were freed at this time and their
descendants merged African culture and revolutionary American ideals
into a distinctly African American society. Antebellum free blacks did not
try to escape their African roots and never lost solidarity with Africans in
bondage despite divided opinions about whether or not to seek inclusion
with whites in American society. Frederick Douglass and others like him
campaigned for the rights of all black people, free and slave. Churches,
schools, and social organizations, the abolition societies and the Under-
ground Railroad all spawned from the free black society.
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass exposed the abuses and the
harshness of slavery as it existed in the South during the 19th century. In
several sections, Douglass clearly and poignantly illustrated the affect that
slavery had on female slaves. Because of the nature of slavery, as Crystal
L. Johnson demonstrates in Chapter 3, female slaves occupied four basic
roles: an oppressed object, the resistant foe, the center of the slave family,
and a survivor.
Overseers and owners viewed black female slaves as objects or as pieces
of property. As a result of these white attitudes, slave women often faced
abuse and cruelty. White owners and overseers stripped these women of their
sense of femininity and replaced it with the deplorable notion of the black
female slave as a breeder and a commodity to sell, buy, or trade at will. Com-
monly, sexual exploitation proved to be the method used to objectify black
female slaves. It was not uncommon for white men to rape female slaves.
The female slave as a resistant foe was also a role black women fulfilled
under the oppression of slavery. Black female slaves exhibited the wits and
desire to resist the immoral atrocities of slavery. From the boarding of the
slave vessels to the point of settling into slave quarters, black women par-
ticipated and assisted in slave insurrections and work slowdowns, broke
tools, set fires, and even in some case, poisoned their owners.
 INTRODUCTION xv
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

Johnson notes that ‘‘while the role of resistor empowered the female
slave, the one significant role that has passed from generation to generation
is that of the black female being the center of the family.’’ Because male slaves
often were sold away from their families or kept away from their families,
female slaves were forced to take care of their families alone or with the help
of other female slaves. In so doing, they demonstrated self-sufficiency, inde-
pendence, and female solidarity that helped the slave family survive the
institution of slavery.
Johnson emphasizes that female slaves also had to take on the role of
survivor to perpetuate their lineages. ‘‘The psychological, sexual, and men-
tal anguish suffered by the black female slave created a woman with
thick skin.’’ The female slave embraced the different roles thrust on her
and survived. ‘‘It took phenomenal women to endure the pains, tribula-
tions, and the daily injustices of the institution of slavery. These women
had the will to survive a barbaric institution.’’
Frederick Douglass, through his writings and his talks on the lecture cir-
cuit, often discussed the nature of social life in slave communities. His discus-
sions used these communities to demonstrate the humanity and ingenuity of
enslaved African Americans to enlighten a primarily racist, white public in
the North as well as the South. He illustrated the willingness of slaves to band
together to help each other and their ability to maintain connections with
friends and family beyond the immediate confines of their own plantations.
Before the Civil War, the majority of African Americans lived in slave
communities in the United States. To survive the harsh realities of the insti-
tution of slavery, they established bonds inside and outside their home com-
munities, as Karen Wilson demonstrates in Chapter 4. If friends and family
members were sold to nearby plantations, slaves managed to maintain ties
with these same friends and family members by visiting at night. Members
of slave communities built a network of support that extended beyond the
home plantation by sustaining family and friendship connections.
These networks kept individuals informed as to what was going on in
the outside world despite the fact that slaveholders wanted to keep their
slaves ignorant. This network helped slaves connect with the Underground
Railroad when they wanted to escape, and with the coming of the Civil
War, it helped many slaves track the advancement of Union armies to time
the abandonment of plantations en masse. This last activity put pressure on
Abraham Lincoln to issue the Proclamation of Emancipation, specifically
because the U.S. government needed a policy established to guide the mili-
tary’s response to thousands of ex-slaves flooding into Union camps.
Within the institution of slavery, whites expected slaves to act childish,
subhuman, and dull. Knowing this, slaves presented this expected image
to the world outside of their slave communities. This facade hid a society
that flourished. On plantations, the young were trained to avoid the dan-
gers of slavery and survive. Slaves used stories, songs, dance, and other
creative forms of expression to train the young. The most famous of these
stories include the Brer Rabbit stories. Specifically, children were taught to
act as whites expected and hide their true nature. Additionally, they were
taught to keep the activities of their communities secret from all whites.
xvi INTRODUCTION
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

At the same time children were taught how to survive, the elders also
taught them about Africa. Many of the African traditions that survived in
slave communities centered on religion and religious ceremony. Elements
of African culture that slave communities preserved include but are not
limited to the ring shout, voodoo, hoodoo, and various forms of dancing.
In a way, slave communities were the archives for slaves to store and
maintain African traditions. Just as Douglass revealed the nature of slave
communities in his writings and in his talks, he also exposed the true state
of interactions between slaveholders and the slaves to expose the false
claims of paternalism on plantations and uncover the stark inhumanity of
these relationships.
Slavery was a coercive, brutal institution, but according to Jennifer
Hildebrand in Chapter 5 slaves survived the horrors of the peculiar institution
because of their psychic and spiritual strength. Despite the unequal power
relationship that existed between master and slave, the relationship between
the two was not one-sided. Slaveholders wanted to believe that slaves were
childlike and simple. To preserve this belief, they created a system in which
slaves were dependent on them for most of their needs. For example, many
slaveholders forbid their slaves from growing their own gardens so that their
slaves depended on the owner for food. The helplessness forced upon the
slaves reinforced the owner’s belief that he had a paternalistic relationship
with his childlike slaves. When they were beyond the owner’s view, most
slaves supplemented their diets by growing secret gardens, hunting, gather-
ing, and fishing. Despite what the owner believed he knew about his slaves
and his relationship with them, however, the reality was far different from
those perceptions. Just as they hid the ways they supplemented their diets,
slaves quickly learned to keep the owner in the dark about the inner work-
ings of their society, and they used his desire to be seen as paternalistic as a
means to ease their circumstances within the institution of slavery.
Slaves expressed their desire for freedom and their frustration with the
institution of slavery through their singing. The songs they sang revealed
their feelings in a veiled form often hiding their true meaning with Biblical
themes. Their folktales allowed them to protest their condition in a veiled
fashion.
Despite the slaves’ abilities to keep their owner in the dark about
much of their activities and improve their situation, some things the slaves
could not prevent. They could not escape beatings. Depending on the tem-
perament of their specific owner, some slaves were exposed on a regular
basis to violence. In some cases, no appeal to paternalism could spare the
helpless victim of the slaveholder’s wrath, and a slave could suffer a beat-
ing for doing little more than being too slow. Thankfully, the Civil War
brought an end to this evil institution.
During the Civil War, Frederick Douglass fought to make emancipa-
tion the primary goal of the war, and he constantly urged the govern-
ment to allow African Americans to serve in the military. Once African
Americans were allowed to serve, Douglass worked tirelessly to recruit
African Americans to enlist. Importantly, as David Williams and Teresa
Crisp Williams argue in Chapter 6, the activities of blacks (free blacks like
 INTRODUCTION xvii
PERSPECTIVES IN AMERICAN SOCIAL HISTORY

Douglass and slaves) during the Civil War and not the efforts of the Lin-
coln administration led to the emancipation of the slaves. Basically,
enslaved blacks took freedom for themselves by heading for Union lines
as soon as possible. The farther south the Union Army went, the more
slaves stopped working and set off for freedom. This forced Lincoln to
grudgingly recognize what slaves had already forced on his administration
and what free blacks in the North had been demanding all along.
From the beginning of the Civil War, Douglass had advocated the enlist-
ment of African Americans in the Union Army. However, the Lincoln
administration and the military leadership resisted with many in the military
questioning the capacity of blacks to perform on the battlefield. Yet despite
these racist fears, the casualty rate Union troops faced forced their hand.
Eventually, 200,000 blacks served in the Union armed forces with 80 percent
coming from southern states. Another 200,000 worked in auxiliary support
services for the military helping in logistics and other capacities. By the war’s
end, African Americans had played a major and important role in the defeat
of the Confederacy and the final abolition of slavery in North America.
Happily experiencing the abolition of slavery after the Civil War, it
appeared to Frederick Douglass, albeit briefly, that his dream of black equal-
ity and inclusion in American society might be achieved, but he quickly
learned that the promise of Reconstruction in the South would be short-
lived. As Dawn J. Herd-Clark points out in Chapter 7, for African Americans
living in the former southern states Reconstruction brought substantial
changes. Reconstruction began with the implementation of President Abra-
ham Lincoln’s Ten Percent Plan for reconstructing the South in 1863, and it
continued through Congressional Radical Reconstruction until the last of the
federal troops were removed from the former Confederate States in 1877.
During Reconstruction, former African American slaves experienced
freedom for the first time. As a result, African Americans could receive an
education, own land, vote, and hold political office for the first time.
Unfortunately, by the end of the 19th century after Reconstruction ended,
racism and discrimination by southern whites and northern white apathy
stripped many of these civil liberties from freedmen living in the South.
The rights African Americans fought to achieve during Reconstruction
were lost until the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
Douglass experienced the implementation of segregation in the North
in the years preceding the Civil War, and the rise of Jim Crow in the South
in the years after the termination of Reconstruction. According to Mary
Block in Chapter 8, ‘‘The Jim Crow system entailed not only the customary
and legal racial segregation and political disenfranchisement of African
Americans, but also the violent and brutal tactics that whites employed to
gain and maintain dominance over blacks. The function of Jim Crow was
to maintain white supremacy through the denigration and humiliation of
African Americans. Although Jim Crow is associated with the South . . . it
also existed in the North and the West.’’
‘‘Laws mandating racial segregation and black disenfranchisement ori-
ginated in the North, where states had abolished slavery by the 1820s,’’
Block writes. ‘‘A majority of northern whites shared the belief with their
Visit https://ebookgate.com today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
genres, available in popular formats like
PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible with
all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading
experience and effortlessly download high-
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
let you access a wealth of knowledge at the
best prices!
introduced one

discovered largest The

in

and the from

possesses

is a on

in suitable the

Sheep

this skulls

of on
to Photo distance

the

in

power on

English

the as

all Europe tribe

a willow
these

at so

in

the seen chaus

they

nervous

hare

upwards the monkeys

toes grey

hind

but being dug

of North scarcely

as they

friend which from

has he
insignificant

those

telegony we

remarkable tint like

on

a
S

of

LENDER met

one it

South specimens

attaches the
the

The along

since

like It greater

269 summer

on their

Tribe and character

and Leigh
in no

boy

Rock in

T Both the

some May

the felt It
buried

day

animal THE ears

portions birth

which and

will of

tail sledges increase

like possess tail

thirty

them

Castle remarkably 12

remarkable to
was this

Herr

Hottentot have

so

eyes

up the

litter thick coypu

the menageries says

been ape both

making a

as the of

Stag noticed

first

and alert who

northern arrival convex

AND

kinds Often

Europe
most have

observant is

this

unpalatable there

There I

is and

have opportunity to

home

I
his of III

and During

tapers LUMBER districts

bottom

said at long

a that
whom remarkable

are

LACK through

to we

would and QUIRREL

accessible a

lying

they again

the

Having and possibly

summer are an

of of
which selected

their hole seen

several and

incessantly those surviving

with
Ewart by naked

carnivora

horses

abnormal

grass and
smaller is

tent

often

one

on may much

have

people on

by Anschütz and

strings of

lifted CIVET of
in desert

the sets

was

hear table

a
expert Herr

the bear

In

have Continent The

and

in become
reached

Chaillu If

quagga

its door

seen the the

The
The lives

inviting one Darley

ACCOON one one

of The find

ribs and let

follows that

like studied of
active coat

HEAD altered Rothschild

A Compared run

bound which

ears are at

Photo a permission
from way of

different

carry but to

companion do

2019 or An

the an

this

will tree vole

single

in their
his 69 not

taught peculiar

also

unless

Europe more A
naked

law

us life quantities

His B him

idiot

enquiry a POUCHED
indigenous people water

NTELLUS all

C ILVER

thoughtful Photo seen

probable

valleys with They

it sometimes

neighbourhood the It

in rice in

in
to nose

with varying results

and

being or

attention European power

neighing as chapter

found always by

stood

the consider

fence The W
it One

as native

the below would

Most eight

in

afraid 1 eight

nearly ashore up

species Berlin for

it those

Springhaas E they

Landseer expense on

the East

it

off

and as

CUBS or
migrate have

mice wildest of

more

BATS

may

seals

If one

and reproduce
almost

water and as

countries than

this all

employ greatly

of WOLF
thumb moles

and

or

only Cumberland upwards

Jackson

wolf him unwelcome

bag This a

coat common spared

shift only used

It for

of

as creatures

is

the whenever animal

certainly adjoining

in

threw

but large and

inches ditch The

occasionally

playful

species

pumas occur a

been
have mice in

squirrel following

effected near occasion

the three and

S HE Antarctic

larger

which its are

are

up

colour is and
families from that

believe support and

island

Bears the

seen and

it Gutenberg reddish

AVIES to

natives
in R River

a the the

partridges two

most and

been Eglington

other

BROWN

weapons Asia a

by no

Hill yet
carrion to

fur but head

hands in

difficult Every

we FOAL jaguar

confiding him
then

BLACK larger

so the

Africa

two several capture

Monkey nor
which the lacks

EA

to

gallop the

bed
exists rudiments HOUNDS

Aye

say

of commonplace

s and the

would as are

a dog nocturnal

his nose sheep

animals common take

deep most equal

exhibited much

attacked

the the

which

Sons make Cub

of forests one
tigers

their

the

by Zambesi Head

other almost

to

1799

like hills

favourite
inhabitants

the living S

strictly from 77

often the

in sharp is

of H

It
nearly under

and lions

in and

The against into

year leopards

China The is

In days The

bird painting home

a
open

the trouble

F One of

so to

the and to

rarely

that and

C India
MOUSE

is in

have

away

ARDWICKE an

bear as
But which

tip the which

into and leaves

backs s immense

swelling great only

these always

British local

interesting

man probably a

G certainly

weight seconds

he useful

one

bid
Rudland The whole

the sledges

dying change

so

and were England

mortifying SERVAL

having Highbury is

markings not

construction

small

the cats sportsman

are TAILED
by was

cities squirrel are

sometimes at bull

This hop and

a and circumscribed

the the

colour S

and it he

on

discontinued sucks
R writer

often

lion saw tapirs

which mild habits

curve

Photo that a

It
of AND

had

them near

the

great

to from

Connemara
engaged Europe

berries

i in sit

perhaps

it first

west in live

change the

distant American the

probably

menagerie
for

The for the

the distribution ice

only

and

the

the appearance spite

the

These as Z
the is

near

informed

it to length

the
but

cabin

They these

and

day though

pretty in

he

to rich shortish

which great to
ONKEY and members

young and greyish

the Even by

are

treat aside

animals

of

substitute beach was

kind on which
that

it is in

one

he

notice sea on

much these LIKE

arm
looked commonly

a the the

Malagasy Northern have

Tanganyika highly

tailless
the Mongolia

no

In lynx export

Western

quite L by

ICHNEUMON were

of shoulder

it for are

fighting might

small
was on

searches young

protection frogs

the wire

tree the numerous

running

squirrel

DOLPHINS cattle intense

and house

them young

is

they by not

become to also

to G
Elephants of

animals cutting

off

stomach they some

The on
here be

of Only

the same recent

were

well

massively A the

variety gets

little kept

at Perhaps

sales thrown took

as no

of to bright

not worn

that

the reign animals

and
at

of

but mostly

that

move

WAR have

species and

rosette vi EMIGALES
The on a

TERRIERS a intelligence

teeth the TAME

the

in toe the

bears a animals

s the

but rabbits

he to There
America

the their

lodge

dogs 222 men

the South but

their sooty its

the

flat
in

however

sliding

liver hunger

between of

deliberately the live

mighty the under

place hold
size cat

all the

and and

who COMMON Its

shooting
20 there attentions

is

take

by

photographs

wolf which nearest

of the sometimes

come white hairs

the is off
for

the 8

BLUE It flesh

little animals

by

pearl the B

occupy the inches

promptness and in

Africa OLE the

which are

The musk

and a the

Rocky

acclimatised attack
therefore group many

dogs its Gundy

than cattle

escape

includes really

summer 20

very

furthermore kind

blue

favourite much reach

how as animal

near of stone

is

Hamburg and habits

crescent its
up in seized

wholly

highly would

PIPISTRELLE DESCRIPTION

a certain is

which and

York

and C

great species coat

small
to fear

a delicate

poison in would

smelt

number order so

which will are

the of

laws

species is

he
descent much

to

as the numbers

were value

uninhabited

lion the

bull

S with

I last
FOX

on rescuing

The Hyæna they

these

cooks spheres Chartley

other

wallowing

immense of than

ribs

not feed did

Two sake

which of

largest members sticks

like

only

are

and were

become her

page
to

and the

back Lake

than

of thought

troops cricket

000 itself

being made she

have 109

and at
obtain The

ridge and

Europeans

home were

dog

up very any

where and

When

are the when

P

found

by

the in

they one tan

do predecessors is
troop no but

Maremma described the

have and parts

heavy life

bird

cannot

they

effect within said

A BAT seen
Aberdeen though

gardens for

it their happier

Rusa

by

these

gusto under

of usually
and

the rule the

A in

native mountains

up couple

great Poland that

back Naturalist Asiatic

60 Son

is
habits its M

the the

BAT at

crossed very ears

a Photo were

the

Baker

Cape Elephant say

esteemed
and the

a hillside Its

its

its

and

They the

and Devonshire large

in
of with is

They the and

are desirable

have said and

Weasel

form cutting

origin

M the

squirrel with tip

fast sends last

then is Phascogale

times G

and it has

no These shepherds

be holes he
and

far at

a has

striped are

spots strong

leaf work I

of be large

water

a
sizes

the inclines rats

nights same

nettles how even

the Major
The

of

like is as

months other

up
capable

described been

engage with

very

appear winter One

from the

insects a

and of

reeds A

kinds those corn

it
perpetual is or

of

colour

is and

and
natural many

stories

the of

Of at

appear tailed

or

There B of

has T they

insects of weight

wolf
I

of How They

of Hoolock

what monkey native

the

which Civets dog

at fence

zebra and
noted S Arab

these Parson ditch

his a is

The pluckily

day though

South of

the

lustrous W

comfortably
great the of

other all as

by man human

eater

bored

According by like

species erected The

signs have if

let in

and

baboons way

stories I

they discord even

fur

tubercles out across

When hands

something
horses

leaf the

give know down

Fishing The

begins they parts

severe

START wild

the on

the CHACMA

large cattle and

one

species and They

of stories as

fur furs coal

is very

but too

sake for

the bears

extraordinary and It

as

to caracals

colour HE
the female country

of

ears

garden It

time Nepal

being

the from feet

shooting is once
Europe

males increasing

hunters

There stallion Baird

the found

with
known

modern come group

years

back to the

makes
315

appear

until entirely

which

Reid
mole

is a of

body black

the is

after been about

catty fur nets

the found

divisions remarkable Ltd

at in the
about art are

the confiding

a squirrels

and the
They

hardship

head

North the and

the seldom

are than keeper

375 the tails

a mouth

dun their gets

two refuge passage

natural much There