...


GENEALOGY EXPRESS

 

Welcome to
Black History
& Genealogy

THE FREE NEGRO IN VIRGINIA
1619 - 1865

----------
By John Henderson Russell

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to the Board of University Studies
of The Johns Hopkins University in Conformity
with the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
1913

Baltimore
1913

CHAPTER V.
pp. 123 - 177

THE SOCIAL STATUS OF THE FREE NEGRO

     The three principal elements in the population of Virginia to which the free negro had to adjust himself were the whites, the native Indians, and the negro slaves.  A discussion of the social relations of the free negro class with each of these three other elements of the population of the State in the order named may well occupy a place of first consideration in this chapter.
     If prejudices did not exist in the minds of the white inhabitants of Virginia against persons of the black race before the coming of the negro, they were not long in springing up after the two races met on Virginia soil.  From the very first mention by whites of Africans in Virginia special care was taken, in writing or in speaking of them, to designate their race or color.  In the earliest records of the courts and the parishes they were carefully distinguished from other persons by such words and phrases as "negroes," "negro servants," and "a negro belonging to" such a one.  As early as 1630 the conduct of a white man who had violated a rule of strict separation of the white and black races was denounced as an "abuse to the dishonor of God and shame of Christians," and in atonement for such conduct the white man received a sound whipping and was required to make a public apology.1  In the case of a similar violation of decency and standards of race purity in 1640 the guilty white man was compelled to "do penance" in the church, and the negro woman was whipped.2  So prominent and uncouth were the physiological characteristics and so

-------------------------
1. Hening, vol. i, p. 146
2. Ibid., vol. i, p. 552

[Pg. 124]
rude were the manners of the African emigrants that before the end of the seventeenth century many of the white colonists came to regard them as not of the human kind.3
     The prejudice against the negro was not the result of his servile station; for in that respect he was on a par with a large part of the white population.  Freedom, therefore, was not sufficient to make a negro servant or a negro slave the social equal of the whites.  By the middle of the seventeenth century there were negroes who were free from all forms of legal servitude or slavery, but they were not absorbed into the mass of free population.  Their color adhered to them in freedom as in servitude, and the indelible marks and characteristics of their race remained unchanged.4  In 1668 the law-making body of the colony gave unmistakable sanction to the exclusion of the free negroes of social equality in a declaration that "negro women set free, . . . although permitted to enjoy their freedom, yet out not in all respects to be admitted to full fruition of the exemptions and impunities of the English." 5
     Yet, in spite of strong racial antipathies, there were some illicit relations between shameless white persons and negroes, by reason of which it was deemed necessary as early as 1662 to enact legislation concerning the status of mulatto children.  In 1691 a law prescribed for "any white woman marrying a negro or mulatto, bond or free," the extreme penalty of perpetual banishment.6  The strength of public sentiment was soon tested in the matter of enforcing this law in the case of Ann Wall, an English woman, who was arraigned in the county court of Elizabeth City on the charge of "keeping company with a negro under pretense of marriage."7  Upon conviction, she and two of her mulatto chil-
-------------------------

     3. M. Godwynnn, Negro's and Indian's Advocate, suing for their admission into the Church, p. 23 et seq.
     4. Compare G. Bancroft, History of the United States, ed. 1843, vol. iii, p. 410
     5. Hening, vol. ii, p. 267
     6. Ibid., vol. iii, p. 87

     7. MS. Court Records of Elizabeth City County, 1684 - 1699, p. 27, in Virginia State Library.  In 1737 a negro who attempted to assault a white girl was compelled to stand in a pillory for an hour, was

[Pg. 125]
dren were bound for terms of service to a man living in Norfolk County, and a court order was recorded to the effect that in case she ever returned to Elizabeth City County she should be banished to the Barbadoes.8  Whether the "abominable mixture or spurious issue," as the mulatto was called, was of slave or free negro parentage, it was equally detested by respectable white persons.
     In the seventeenth century there were a few free negroes of exceptional merit who were accorded, in all relations not involving or leading to a blending of the races, social privileges about equal to those accorded to freed white servants.  A few were prosperous owners of personal and real property, respected by white persons, dealt with by white men in business relations, and permitted to participate in elections, - facts which seem to indicate that for a while the prejudices of the white inhabitants against the negroes went only to the extent of preserving the Teutonic blood from contamination, and did not at first deny to the African freedom of opportunity to take such station in other relations as his individual merit enabled him to assume.  At that time the theory that the negro was fit for nothing but slavery or some servile capacity had not been so carefully elaborated nor so generally applied as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Although precluded from the possibility of intermarrying with white persons, the negro freed from servitude or slavery had about the same industrial or economic opportunities as the free white servant.  But as slavery advanced toward a more complete inclusion and subjection of the negro race in Virginia, the social and industrial privileges of the free negro were gradually, curtailed.  The denial to him, by laws passed in 1723, of the right to vote, the right to bear arms, and the right to bear witness is proof of the fact that prejudice had extended beyond a demand for race separation and race purity to an imposition upon the negro of a low and servile station.

-------------------------
"pelted by the populace, and afterwards smartly whipped:  (Virginia Gazette, August 19-26, 1737; quoted in Virginia Magazine of History, vol. xi, p. 424).
     8 MS. Court Records of Elizabeth City County, 1684-1699, p. 83.

[Pg. 126]

     From 1723 to the end of the colonial period the number of the free negroes was, both absolutely and relative to the other populations, so small that the social status of the class would have been unimportant except for the fact that prejudices accumulating in this period were handed down to the time when the free colored class became numerically important.  Except for natural procreation, the principal additions or recruits to this class throughout this period were the result of illegitimacy.  There was no tendency to attribute to a few free negroes and mulattoes of such low origin any higher social standing than that occupied by more than ninety-nine per cent of their race and color.  Too small and of too low an origin to preserve for itself, by the formation of an exclusive caste, higher social rights than slaves, the free colored class was nevertheless sufficiently large to pass on to the larger free negro class of the period of the Commonwealth all the disabilities and social disadvantages that it had gathered to itself for a hundred years.  The freedom which masters were to be allowed to confer upon their slaves under the act of 1782 was the freedom of the colonial free negro and no more.  Even those persons who professed a desire to apply to the slaves the principles of natural and equal rights had no intention or desire to exalt the manumitted slave to social equality with the whites. Chastellux, travelling through Virginia in the early eighties of the eighteenth century, noticed the inferior social status of the free negroes, and wrote: "In the present case it is not only the slave who is beneath his master, it is the negro who is beneath the white man.  No act of enfranchisement can efface this unfortunate distinction."9
     The free negro population which came to be numbered by tens of thousands in the nineteenth century was as remote from a social plane upon which intermingling or intermarriage with the white race was possible as were the slaves.  "A companion to slaves .  .  . forbidden to intermarry with whites or to bear testimony against them; forbidden to learn

-------------------------
      9 Vol. ii, p. 99.

[Pg. 127]
to read or to write, or to preach the word of God even to his fellows, to bear arms or to resist assault - in every relation from the cradle to the grave he was never allowed to forget that he was an inferior being."
10  Illegal marriages or associations of whites with free negroes were so disreputable and disgraceful that they were entered into by the vilest white persons at the peril of chastisement by privately organized bands of white persons supported by community sentiment.11  The free mulatto class, which numbered 23,500 by 1860, was of course the result of illegal relations of white persons with negroes; but, excepting those born of mulatto parents, most persons of the class were not born of free negro or free white mothers, but of slave mothers, and were set free because of their kinship to their master and owner.12 
     When we come to consider the social contact and affiliation of the free negro with the native Indian, the barriers to social affinity and intermixing of races on terms of equality are seen to be less important than those between free negroes and whites.  No law forbade the intermarriage of free negroes and Indians, and there existed between them some fundamental grounds of sympathy and mutual appreciation.  Both bore the marks of a savage race and had a colored skin; hence they shared the racial antipathy of the whites, although possibly to a different degree.  Both were wanting in experience and acquaintance with the manners of civilized life, to which they were being introduced through the agency of an alien race.  Both enjoyed liberty to go and come at will; but, unlike slaves, they were dependent upon their own resources for subsistence.  Both were, in a way, misfits and discordant elements in a society organized as was that of Virginia, on a basis of slavery, - a society economically and politically complete, with a governing white aristocracy and a class of colored toilers living in a condition of com-

-------------------------
     10 Message of Governor Smith, 1848-1849, in House Journal, p. 21.
     11 MS. Petitions, Aelia County, 1821, A 781
     12 MS. Petitions, King William County, 1825, B1191; Essex County, 1825, A 5396; Halifax County, 1857, A 7724

[Pg. 128]
plete subjection.  While there existed dissimilarities between free negroes and Indians, there was certainly a common bond of union; and it is significant that in the massacre of 1622 not an African perished at the hands of the Indians, although there were at the time of the massacre more than twenty negroes scattered throughout the little colony.13
     Before 1724 there were in the colony some persons of mixed blood, part negro and part Indian, called mustees or mustizos.14  A number of reservations of land, containing from a few hundred to many thousand acres, were set apart in the eastern section of Virginia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for the use and enjoyment of the Indians.15  After a time, these reservations became the common homes of free negroes and the tribesmen for whom they were intended, who associated on terms of social equality.  It was said in 1787 of the inhabitants of the Gingaskin reservation16 that those who were not entirely black had at least "half black blood in them."17  The place was called Indian Town, but many of the squaws had negroes for husbands, and Indian braves lived with black wives.  As a means of improving the social order in Indian Town, the white people thereabouts proposed that no negroes, except the husbands of female Indians, be allowed to remain in the tribe.  The town, they said, afforded " a Harbour and convenient asylum to an idle set of free negroes," and was a great nuisance
to the public.18
     In 1744 the Nottaway and kindred tribes possessed about

-------------------------
     13 McDonald Transcripts from the British Public Record Office, vol. i, p. 46; Hotten, pp. 218-258; Colonial Records of Virginia, Senate Document, 1874, Extra, p. 61.
     14 "Such as are born of an Indian and negro are called Mustees " (H. Jones, The Present State of Virginia, p. 37).
     15 Hening, vol. ii, p. 290 ; P. A. Bruce, Economic History, vol. i, p. 492 et seq. ; vol. ii, p. 115.
     16 See Hening, vol. viii, p. 414, for facts concerning this reservation
in Northampton County.  In 1769 it contained six hundred acres.
The legislature then passed an ordinance providing for the, sale of two hundred acres of this land, the proceeds to be used by the parish to provide for such of the tribe as should become public charges.  Compare Hening, vol. ii, p. 13; vol. iii, p. 85.
     17 MS. Petitions, Norfolk County, 1787, B 4865.
     18 Ibid., 1782, B 4865 ; 1782, B 4845.

[Pg. 129]
20,000 acres of land which they could not, according to law, alienate.19  In 1821 they still occupied 3370 acres.  White persons in the vicinity of this reservation affirmed in 1821 that "their [the Indians'] wives and husbands are free negroes,"20 and that they had neither prudence nor economy.
     As late as 1843 the Pamunkeys possessed sixteen hundred acres of land in King William County.  One hundred and forty-three citizens of the county petitioned the legislature to have the lands divided, saying that all but a small remnant of the old Indian tribe was extinct, and that in its place were free mulattoes, all of whom were believed to have one fourth negro blood, - an amount sufficient under the provisions of the code of 1819 to class them as mulattoes.21  "They are so mingled with the negro race as to have obliterated all striking features of Indian extraction.  It is the general resort of free negroes from all parts of the country."22
     The association and intermarriage of free negroes with Indians  was not confined to areas given up to Indians.  From an early date mustees were a small constituent element of the population, intermingling with the other inhabitants of the colony.23  John Dungie, an Indian of King William County, was in 1824 legally married to Anne Littlepage, a mulatto daughter of Edmund Littlepage, esq., a man of considerable wealth.  "The husband was a sailor . . . constantly employed in the navigation of the Chesapeake Bay and Rivers of Virginia."  He free mulatto wife was heir to a considerable annuity.24  In a case before the supreme

-------------------------
     19 Hening, vol. v, p. 270.
     20 MS. Petitions, York County, 1821.
     21 Hening, vol. xiv, p. 123; I Revised Code, 423.
     22 MS. Petitions, King William County, 1843, B 1207.  Petition B 1208 is a counter-petition from the chief men of the tribe, who wish to retain their lands.  They admit that some persons not of their tribe are within their boundaries, but claim that the inhabitants generally are of at least half Indian extraction.  That members of teh Pamunkey tribe to this day (1912) bear in their features evidences of a mixture of the tribe with negroe may be stated on the authority of a prominent citizen of Richmond who has observed them.
     23 Jones, p. 37.
     24 MS. Petitions, King William County, 1825, B 1191.

[Pg. 130]
court of appeals in 1831 we find an attorney making the assertion as an historical fact that Indians had intermarried with negroes.25
     The names "mustizo" or "mustee" and "mulatto" were not always applied with discrimination, the latter being often used where the former should have been applied.26  In the censuses no separate enumeration is made of the mustees, but there is no doubt that a considerable element in the free colored population of the nineteenth century was of Indian extraction.

     The most congenial companion of the free negro outside of his own class was found among his kinsmen in bondage.  The larger part of the free negro class met and mingled with negro slaves on a plane of almost perfect social equality.27  Prior to 1782 the fact that the free colored persons were few in number would have been sufficient to prevent the formation of an exclusive caste had there been differences between free and slave negroes so radical as to render conditions favorable for such a development.  Even when their numbers became sufficiently large for the formation of an exclusive caste, there were absent those differences in economic and political station to make it desirable either for the free negro or the slave class to exclude the other from its social life, the freedom of the free negro being in most lines of activity only nominal.  There were lacking to the free negro the better education, the higher standard of wants, and the better opportunities for acquiring wealth and position necessary to supply an actual basis of superiority and to give him higher social rank than that occupied by the slave.

-------------------------
     25 Gregory v. Baugh, 2 Leigh, 665; cf. also Jenkins v. Tom, I Hening & Munford, 123; T. Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, ed. 1801, p. 182.
     26 Virginia Gazette, Dec. 1, 1782.  A reward is offered for a runaway slave who, according to the description, was the offspring of an Indian and a negres; but he is called a mulatto.
     27 "The free negroes continue to live with the negro slaves, and never with the white man"  (Chastellux, vol. ii, p. 199).

[Pg. 131]

     Had it been possible for the free negro to hold himself aloof from the slaves, he might have borne a better reputation among slave owners; for, as will appear later, his connection and his relation with slaves rendered him the object of much undeserved suspicion and criticism.  To the slaves themselves the free negro was a welcome visitor; at feasts, barbacues, dances, and negro meetings of every kind he was present to participate on a plane of equality with his slave neighbors.  While very few would have exchanged this condition for that of the slave, they rarely ever regarded slavery as the badge of a rank inferior to their own.
     It was very common in the nineteenth century and the twenty years immediately preceding for free negroes to marry slaves.  Numerous instances can be cited of marriages of free negro women with slave men.  A case occurred in Brock County in 1826. 28  A free negress by the name of Rachel married a slave in Alleghany County in 1828.29  Dilly, a free negro woman of Giles County, was married to a slave husband by whom she had two children.30  Similar examples may be found in almost any county.31
     Since the status of the mother became the status of the offspring, it might be supposed that free colored women would have had less aversion to choosing slave husbands than free colored men would have had to marrying slave wives, but that does not appear to have been the case.  Numerous examples might be cited to show that the prospect of having children who would be slaves did not deter free negro men from marrying slave wives.  Rice Stephens, a freeborn negro, was living in Northampton County in 1843 with a slave wife  and three children.32  Samuel Johnson, a

-------------------------
     28 MS. Petitions, Brock County, A 2684.
     29 MS. Petitions, Alleghany County, A 651
     30 MS. Petitions, Giles County, 1829, A 6784
     31 MS. Petitions, Goochland County, 1840, A 7109.  According to the story of Mary Winston, a free negro woman of Hanover County still living (1909), her grandmother and great-grandmother married slaves.
     32 MS, Petitions, Northampton County, B 4905

[Pg. 132]
free negro of Fauquier County, had a slave daughter who became the wife of a free negro.33
     Indeed, it is apparent that there were not a few free negroes who preferred a slave to a free wife.  Certainly there was less responsibility upon a husband whose wife and children were slaves and were therefore supported by their white owners than upon one whose wife and children had to be provided for by himself.  "A freeman," says a pro-slavery editor in 1802, "as soon as he is his own master, marries the female slave of some farmer.  He cannot well be prevented from residing with his wife.  She feeds him gratis."34  This was the opinion also of a later pamphlet writer who wrote under the pseudonym of "Calx."  "Every male free negro," he wrote, "prefers to have a slave wife, and will be so provided, if permitted by too careless indulgence.  In this manner he will not only have his wife and children supported by the owner, and a lodging provided for himself, but much of his own food will be obtained from his wife and, directly or indirectly, to the loss of her master."35
     In addition to the temptation to free colored men to select wives who were sure of support, and who might even partly support their husbands, there was after 1806 another reason why some free negroes might have considered themselves fortunate to be connected by marriage with a slave woman.  Such a family connection often prevented a free negro manumitted after 1806 from having to leave the State, according to law, within twelve months from the date of his manumission.  If such a free negro husband comported himself well and made a useful laborer in the community, he was sure to have the good will of his wife's master, to whose interest it was to keep his slaves contented in their place.  If the free husband stayed in the community, his presence would not only be a guaranty against his slave family making trouble for their master by becoming runaways, but he himself might also become a useful employee of his wife's

-------------------------
     33 MS. Petitions, Fauquier County, 1837, A 5859
     34 Richmond Recorder, Nov. 10, 1802.
     35 "Calx," p. 5 et seq.

[Pg. 133]
master.  If he was forced to leave, he immediately endangered the interest of the master by establishing himself in a border State and inducing his wife and children to join him.  Many a free negro petitioning the legislature for permission to remain in the State made a special point of the fact that his wife and children were slaves.36  Many slave-owners endorsed their petitions, and joined in asking the legislature to grant the privilege asked for.  Particularly was it true in counties bordering on Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Kentucky that the slave-owners realized and were frank to admit that a free negro, though not desirable on his own part, was more desirable in Virginia than in a border county of an adjoining State.37
     There is, however, nothing in the facts above stated, nor in truth in any authentic evidence thus far examined, to give support to the contention frequently made by slavery apologists in the nineteenth century, and to this day not in frequently repeated, that slaves generally regarded free negroes as of inferior social rank.  The negro "aristocracy," if such there was, was not based on the superiority of slaves over the free negroes, but on the superiority of the wealthy planter's "servants" over the "poor man's nigger."38  Thomas Bruce, writing in 1891 concerning the happy, state of slavery, said: "As a class, happier beings never existed, and they had a most unbounded contempt for a free negro .  .  . and shunned him as they would a leper, and even to this day that prejudice still exists in the minds of the negro who can recall the days of slavery."39  Ellen Glasgow, in her novel entitled "The Battle-Ground," depicts Free Levi as a free

-------------------------
     36 House Journal, 1832-1833, p. 201.
     37 Writing to the legislature to ask that a certain free negro be permitted to remain in the State, fifty-five slave-owners of Harrison County say: "He will take  up his residence in the nearest visits to Pennsylvania or Ohio and of course will make occasional visits to his family, and from the clamor which is going on in those states upon the subject of abolition we judge that we should have more to fear from that source than from his being permitted to remain among us"  (MS. Petitions, Harrison County, 1839, A 8677; see also MS. Petitions, Cumberland County, 1815, A 4728)
     38 A. Bagby, King and Queen County, p. 283.
     39 T. Bruce, Southwest Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley, p. 46.

[Pg. 134]
colored man "who shares alike the pity of his white neighbors and the withering contempt of his black ones."40  If there is a basis of truth which gave rise to this mistaken belief here and elsewhere expressed, it is in the fact that slave-owners disapproved of the association of their slaves with free negroes, whom they suspected of scattering seeds of discontent in slave quarters.  The master of slaves did indeed have a withering contempt for free negroes, but one of the reasons for such a feeling was the realization that his slaves might readily emulate the superior privileges of freedom as exemplified in the free negro.  The slaves, being generally of a docile, tractable disposition, may have pretended to regard free negroes as their inferiors, but their "unbounded contempt" was merely an echo.41
   
From one source, however, there sprang up in slaves a certain dislike of free negroes with whom they were required to work, but the feeling was quite different from contempt.  When free negroes were employed to work for wages with slaves, as they often were,42 and to do no harder work than the slaves, the slaves were sometimes envious of the free negroes because of the superior privileges of the latter in the way of recompense.  Such dislike for the free negroes on the part of slaves was envious dislike for a superior rather than contemptuous dislike for an inferior.
48

-------------------------
     40 P. 148.
     41 William Dunston, slave of John R. Dunston, of Accomac County, married a free negress whose name was Jane Jubilee.  In this instance it required not a little determination and self-will for the slave to follow his suit to victory; for he was constantly met by his master's reproachful quaries.  "Bill would you marry into that family of Jubilees?  They are free negroes."  This incident, related to the author by C. C. James, of Northampton County, illustrates the way in which masters tried to create in their slaves a dislike for free negroes.
     42 "They [free negroes] are sometimes hired for field labor in times of harvest and on other particular occasions."  (Madison's Writings, vol. iii, pp. 310-315).
     43 William E. Waddy, esq., of Eastville Virginia, born in 1827, and familiar with the facts concerning the relation of free negroes and slaves form his boyhood to the close of the Civil War, vividly recalls that a distaste for working with free negro hired laborers was often manifested by slaves.  He was unaware, however, of  the existence among slaves owned or observed by him of a feeling of social superiority over free negroes.

[Pg. 135]

     The acknowledgment repeatedly made by the enemies of the free negro is alone sufficient to controvert the traditional belief that slaves considered themselves in a superior station or social rank to that of the free negroes.  The latter were spoken of as "possible chieftains of formidable conspiracies," and "leaders" in servile outbreaks.44  Mr. Moore, in the slavery debate of 1832, said, "I lay it down as a maxim not to be disputed, that our slaves, like all the rest of the human race, are now and will continue to be actuated by a desire of liberty."45  This assumption was constantly made by both antislavery and proslavery advocates, and particularly by that portion of the latter class who regarded the presence of the free negroes as a source of danger to the institution of slavery as well as a menace to the discipline and control of slaves.  Antebellum free negroes and their descendants still living are very proud to relate facts concerning their free ancestry; and while the most reliable of the survivors of this class admit that many free negroes were on no higher plane than slaves, they hold to the view that many of the better class of free negroes considered themselves socially superior to any slave.  This must indeed have been true of the free negroes who owned considerable property, or owned or hired negro slaves and servants, as did a few in the seventeenth century and many in the nineteenth.  It was certainly true of some free mulattoes who because of their white connections had received special opportunities for education and an independent support.46  Whether a free negro was to be married to a free person or to a slave, who was legally incapable of making a con-

-------------------------
     44 Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 18, 1805.
     45 Ibid., Jan. 19, 1832.
     46 In 1857 eight quadroon children belonging to Craddock Vaughnto reside in the State notwithstanding the law of 1806, which applied to them.  The petitioners affirmed that they had had every care in bringing up, and that they were "beyond the sphere of the free negro class so degraded"  (MS. Petitions, Halifax County, 1857, A 7724).  See also MS. Petitions, King William County, 1825, B 1191; Alleghany County, 1828, A 651; Halifax County, 1783, A 7751.

[Pg. 136]
tract,47 legal forms were adhered to, and the nuptial ceremonies observed by white persons were imitated.  White ministers officiated at weddings of all classes of colored persons.  Free colored candidates for matrimony obtained licenses just as did white persons, and often procured the parlor of a white family as a place for the ceremony.  A glance at the records of marriages by the ministers of Henrico parish from 1823 to 1860 will reveal numerous instances of marriages of free colored persons and a few of marriages of free negroes with slaves.48  Of six marriages solemnized by Rev. Edward Peet in 1831 one was the union of free colored persons  and of sixteen persons married by the same minister in 1832, four were free colored.  In 1829 Rev. W. F. Lee married eight white and two free colored persons; in 1833 the record was the same as in 1829; in 1834 he married ten white and two free colored couples; and in 1846, four white couples and one free colored couple.49.
     In the seventeenth century and the part of the eighteenth when the free negro class was so small as to be numbered in hundreds there were to be found examples of well regulated, orderly families, appreciative of the sanctity of the family relations, in which both parents were free colored.  The Northampton County records show a few examples as early as 1655.50  The parish registers of the eighteenth century contain numerous examples of free colored parents

-------------------------
     47 "It is agreed that slaves have no power [of contract].  Hence the marriages of slaves are void"  (Minor, vol. i, p. 168).
     48 L. W. Burton, Annals of Henrico Parish, pp. 236-248.  For instances of marriages of free with slave negroes, see p. 247: "Morris Harris a free colored man, to Patience, a servant to Mrs. Mary E. Robinson by Rev. H. S. Kepler, 1855."  "Servant" in this register was a euphonious designation for "slave."  The entries concerning the marriage of a free colored man with a free colored woman uniformly stated that both were free, as: "Ned lightfoot and Sophy Buck, both free people of color.  License bearing date as above."  By Rev. W. M. Hart: "Aug. 16, 1825, JohnJarvis, a free man of color, and Lucy Marble, a free woman of color.  License bearing date Henrico Court, Aug. 1825."  For another example, see p. 248
     49 Burton, pp. 236-244.
     50 MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1651-1654, pp. 28, 161.

[Pg. 137]
whose children were regularly baptized into the church.51  When toward the latter part of the eighteenth century and on to the end of the antebellum period the free colored population came to be numbered by tens of thousands, numerous examples of respectable free colored families are to be found.  On a petition signed by ninety free colored persons of Richmond in 1823 there were nineteen families represented by the names of both husband and wife.52  It was thought that a rather large proportion of free colored females, particularly free mulattoes, were unchaste.53  How ever this may have been, there is ample documentary evidence to show that in the nineteenth century there was a certain large class of the free colored population the members of which were respectable and observant of decency and regularity in their family relations.54
     Throughout the period of the colony when the number of free negroes was comparatively small, and even in the nineteenth century before the time of the active propagation of antislavery doctrines, there existed little if any prejudice against the education of free colored persons.  In the third quarter of the seventeenth century there was opposition to offering baptism to negro slaves until it was determined by law that the administration of the baptismal rite did not bestow freedom.55  This objection did not apply, however, to the religious instruction of free negroes or negro apprentices.  Before the middle of the seventeenth century provision was made by certain white persons for guaranteeing religious instruction and education to negro servants who
would eventually become free.56  In 1654, when Richard

-------------------------
     51 Bruton Parish Register, p. 57 ff. Original copy, Bruton Church,
Williamsburg.
     52 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1823, A 9335.
     53 Calx," pp. 5-1 1.
     54 Cf. MS. Petitions, Accomac County, A 42.
     55 Hening, vol. ii, p. 260 ; Godwyn, p. II ff.
     56 General Court Records, printed in Virginia Magazine of History, vol. xi, p. 281; MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1645-1651, p. 82.

[Pg. 138]
Vaughan freed his negroes, he provided in his will that they should be taught to read and to make their own clothes, and that they should be brought up in the fear of God.57
     In colonial times the Anglican church did a great deal to provide for the religious instruction and baptism of the free colored class.  The reports made in 1724 to the English bishop by the Virginia parish ministers are evidence that the few free negroes in the parishes were permitted to be baptized, and were received into the church when they had been taught the catechism.58  It had been a practice of the seventeenth century to stipulate in the indenture or contract by which a free negro was apprenticed to a master that the master, in return for the negro's service, must provide instruction in the Christian religion in addition to sufficient food, apparel, and lodging.59  In 1691 the church became the agency through which the laws of negro apprenticeship were carried out.60  Free mulatto children born of white mothers and any free colored boy or girl without visible means of support were bound by the churchwardens to serve white men for a certain term of years.  The custom of the churchwardens of requiring these masters to provide some degree of education for the colored apprentices remained in vogue throughout the colonial period, as is shown by numerous orders of the vestry meetings and orders of the county courts for binding out free colored children.  For example, in 1727 it was ordered that David James, a free negro boy, be bound to Mr. James Isdel, "who is to teach him to read ye bible distinctly also ye trade of a gunsmith that he carry

-------------------------
      57 MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1654-1655, pp. 102, 103.
      58 Papers Relating to the History of the Church: Westminster parish, p. 261; Lawn's Creek parish, p. 289.
     "The church is open to them all" (Report of the minister in Isle of Wight County, in Papers Relating to the History of the Church, p. 274). As a means of encouraging baptism of negro children, a proposition was made to exempt from taxation for four years any negro or mulatto child baptized (ibid., p. 344).
     59 See an indenture to this effect executed by Francis Pott in 1646, in MS. Court Records of Northampton County, 1645-1651, p. 82.
     60 Hening, vol. iii, p. 87.

[Pg. 139]
him to ye Clark's office & take Indenture to that purpose."61   By the Warwick County court it was " ordered that Malacai, a mulatto boy, son of mulatto Betty be, by the church wardens of this Parish, bound to Thomas Hobday to learn the art of a planter according to law."62  By the order of the Norfolk County court, about 1770, a free negro was bound out "to learn the trade of a tanner."63  After 1785 the duty of binding out free colored children was placed upon the overseers of the poor, who required of the masters, according to the laws and the custom, an agreement to teach the apprentice reading, writing, and arithmetic.64
     In the period between the Revolutionary War and the beginning of the nineteenth century there were two religious societies that were very active in teaching and offering religious instruction to the free negroes, namely, the Quakers and the Methodists.65  The Quakers set free no inconsiderable part of the slaves manumitted in this period, and the various meetings took official action to see that negroes set free by their members were taught and Christianized.68  It was in accordance with the advice of the yearly and quarterly meetings of Friends that the monthly meetings extended "a watchful care over those negroes . . . set free within the verge of the monthly meeting, administering counsel and advice particularly to those in their minority" and rendering them temporal and spiritual assistance.67  In 1781 a

-------------------------
     61 From the court records of Princess Ann County, cited in Virginia Magazine of History, vol. ii, p. 429.  See also MS. Minutes of Northampton County, 1754-1757, p. 100.
     62 MS. Minutes of Warwick County, 1748-1762, p. 30, in Virginia State Library.
     63 MS. Orders of Norfolk Count, 1768-1771, pp. 232-233.  See also ibid., pp. 11, 91; Vestry Book of Saint Peter's Parish, p. 135: an order, 1771; Register of St. Peter's Parish, p. 117.
     64 Hening, vol. viii, pp. 376-377; vol. xii, pp. 28, 29; vol. xvi, p. 124.
     65 The friendship of the Quakers and the Methodists for the negro was mentioned by Randolph in the Federal Convention at Philadelphia, 1787.  (Papers of James Madison, ed. by Gilpin, vol. iii, p. 1396).
     66 MS. Minutes of the Hopewell Monthly Magazine,  1777-1791, p. 190.
     67 MS. Minutes of the Fairfax Monthly Meeting, 1776-1802, p. 105 (1776), pp. 110, 243 (1782); MS. Minutes and Proceedings fo Goose Creek Monthly Meeting, 1785-1818, p. 533.

[Pg. 140]
committee of Friends appointed by the Warrenton and Fairfax Quarterly Meeting "to have under their Care and labour to promote the Education and religious Instruction of such negroes as have been set free" reported that "a good degree of care and labor had been extended, and that there still remained other work along the same line that must be done."68  The Methodists were likewise mindful of the spiritual welfare of the negroes, whether free or slave, and were so active in the advocacy of the cause of freedom that they were denied by many slave-owners the opportunity of instructing slaves;69 but they continued to offer private instruction to free negroes, and to slaves when opportunity was afforded.70  Besides Quakers and Methodists, there were smaller religious societies, such as Moravians, Harmonites, and Shakers, who, besides giving the negroes religious instruction, taught them many useful industries, and even worked with them in creating a common property.71
     After the fears of the slave-owners were aroused by the Gabriel insurrection in 1800 and by rumors of a general out break, it was thought desirable to curtail the opportunities of the free negroes for acquiring a knowledge of books which might render them propagators of seditious antislavery doctrines among the slaves; hence the overseers of the poor were commanded by legislative authority to cease requiring the master or mistress to whom a free negro or mulatto child was apprenticed to teach the child reading, writing, and arithmetic, as had hitherto been the custom.72

-------------------------
     68 MS. Minutes of Warrenton and Fairfax Quarterly Meeting, 1776-1787, p. 123.
     69 Journal of the Rev. Francis Asbury vol. ii, p. 71; vol. iii, pp. 253, 257; Bennett, p. 547.
     70 "What directions shall we give for the promotion of the spiritual welfare of the colored people?
     "We conjure all our ministers and preachers . . . to leave nothing undone for the spiritual benefit and salvation of them . . . and to unite in Society those who appear to have a real desire of fleeing from the wrath to come; to meet in such in class and to exercise the whole Methodist discipline among them" (Annual Minutes, 1787, quoted from H. N. McTyeire, History of Methodism, p. 381).
     7
1 Madison's Writings, vol. iii, pp. 495, 497
     72 Hening, vol. xvi, p. 124. 

[Pg. 141]

     A more rigorous enforcement of the laws against unlawful assemblages of slaves further discouraged efforts to give instruction to negroes, bond or free.  Quakers were prosecuted in court for assembling negroes for instruction in their meeting-houses.73  Probably owing to discouragement thus received and to some relaxation of their former zeal due to other causes, the Friends were not so active in behalf of the negro in Virginia as they had been in the eighteenth century, although they continued to hold a prominent place among his sympathizers and helpers.  In 1816 a committee appointed by the Goose Creek Monthly Meeting to inquire into the opportunities for education afforded African children in the homes of Friends reported that "only two in stances were found of colored children suitably provided for, and opportunity afforded them of acquiring useful school learning."74
     In the nineteenth century the Baptist Church, by a less bold assertion of views in opposition to slavery than those advanced by Methodists, avoided the hostility of the slave owners which fell to the share of the Methodists, and thus gained the larger share of negro evangelization.75  Even when the laws discouraged negro education, the Baptists did much toward instructing free negroes privately and in Sunday schools,76 and received them into their churches.77  In churches where colored persons attended in considerable numbers a section of the pews was set aside for their use, and at all times a strict observance of the color line seems to have prevailed.  The condition of the free colored people before 1831 as regards religious and educational advantages is so well shown by a petition to the legislature in 1823 of

-------------------------
     73  See E. Woods, Albemarle County, in Virginia, p. 111, for instances of indictments of Friends for unlawfully assembling slaves.
     74 MS. Minutes of Goose Creek Monthly Meeting, 1785-1818, p. 534.
     75 In 1835 Professor E. A. Andrews wrote a letter from Fredericks burg saying that the " religious instruction [of the free negroes] has fallen, in a great measure into the hands of the Baptists, as in Baltimore it is conducted by the Methodists" (Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States, p. 162).
     76 Cf. The Liberator, July 4, 1845.
     77 MS. Petitions, Floyd County, 1836, A 6081.

[Pg. 142]
ninety-one free negroes of Richmond that the document is worth reproducing in full:—

     The petition of a number of persons of colour residing in the City of Richmond,, respectfully represents: that from the rapid increase of population in the City, the number of free persons of colour and slaves has become very considerable and although few of them can boast any knowledge of letters, yet that they are always desirous of receiving such instruction from public and divine worship as may be given by sensible and prudent Teachers of religion.
     It has been the misfortune of your petitioners to be excluded from the churches, meeting-houses and other places of public devotion which are used by white persons in consequence of no appropriate places being assigned for them, except in a few Houses, and they have been compelled to look to private Houses, where they are much crowded and where a portion of their Brothers are unable to hear or to partake of the worship which is going on.  Your Petitioners consisting of free persons and slaves, have been for sometime associated with the Baptist church.  A list of their members consisting of about 700 persons has been submitted for his inspection to the Head of Police of this City and no objection has been by him made to their moral characters.
     Your Petitioners for these reasons humbly pray that your honour able body will pass a law authorizing them to cause to be erected within this city a house of public worship which may be called the Baptist African Church.  To such restrictions and restraints as are consistent with the laws now existing or which may hereafter be passed for the proper restraint of persons of colour and for the preservation of the peace and good order of society . . . your petitioners are prepared most cheerfully to submit, and although it would be pleasing to them to have a voice in the choice of their Teachers yet would they be quite satisfied that any choice made by them should be approved or rejected by the Mayor of this city, they ask not for the privilege of continuing in office any preacher who shall in any manner have rendered himself obnoxious to the Mayor, nor can they reasonably expect to hold night meetings or assemblages for Baptizing but with the consent of that officer.  And your Petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray. . . . 78

-------------------------
    78 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1823, A 9335.  Affixed to this petition were the following names of free colored persons of Richmond and the mayor's certificate, as follows: -
     "I hereby certify that I have examined the list of signatures of free persons of colour hereunto attached and believe them to be respectable.
     "I am of opinion that the prayers of their petition, if granted, may be productive of benefit to themselves as well as to the white population of Richmond and most sincerely wish them success.
                                                   JOHN ADAMS,
                                    Mayor of the City of Richmond.
     Free persons of colour of the City of Richmond of the Baptist denomination:
 

Richard Dye,
Teanah Dye,

Hembrey Tompkins,
Mary Tompkins,

[Pg. 143]

     Although it appears that the bill introduced in the House of Delegates granting the privileges asked for in this petition was lost, the negroes were enabled by some means to erect church houses for their use.  There were three African Baptist churches and two African Methodist churches in Richmond in the decade before the Civil War.79
     When the agitation for the abolition of slavery became acute and antislavery tracts and pamphlets were in wide circulation in the State, the friends of the institution of slavery became apprehensive of the evil which might result from the reading of such literature by free negroes, and in consequence brought about legislation to prevent free negroes from acquiring a knowledge of books.79a  The proximate cause of legislative action was probably the discovery in 1830 by the mayor of Richmond of a copy of Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World in the house of a free negro after his death.80  By an act of Apr. 7, 1831, "all

___________________________________________
 

William Caswell,
Robert Dandridge,
Martha Dandridge,
Thomas Mondowney,
Catherine Mondowney,
Exland Henderson,
P. Wm. Reynolds,
Sarah Reynolds,
Isaac Vines,
Nicholaus Scott,
Betsy Scott,
Mary Barges,
David Bowles,
Susan Bowles,
Joseph Bell,
John Peters,
Agness Peters,
Douglass Tinsley,
John Green,
Isham Ellis
Nancy Ellis,
Phillip Robenson,
Richard Vaughan,
Agness Vaughan,
John Harper,
Caesar Hawkins,
Fanny Hawkins,
James Greenhow,
Alice Greenhow,
Minis Hill,
Cas Hill,
Isaac Reyals,
Billy Swann,
Aley Swann,
Edwd. Lightford,
Edward Casey,
Nanney Casey,
Wilson Morris,
Fanney Drummond,
Pleasants Price.

and 47 others, with certificates and endorsements by Joseph Price, master of police, and seven other prominent white men of the city.

-------------------------
     79 Richmond Directory, 1852, p. 165; 1856 passim.
     79a In his message to the legislature Governor Floyd asserted that the free negroes had helped to stir up revolt, and had "opened more enlarged views," and that inasmuch as they were allowed to go at liberty they could "distribute incendiary pamphlets and papers" (House Journal, 1831-1832, p. 10).
     80 Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 28, 1830.  Cf. J. B. McMaster, History of the People of the United States, vol. vi, p. 70.

[Pg. 144]
meetings of free negroes or mulattoes at any school-house or other place for teaching them reading or writing, either in the day or night, under whatever pretext," were declared to be unlawful assemblies.  Any justice either of his own knowledge or on information of others could issue his war rant to an officer authorizing him to enter the house and arrest or disperse the offending free negroes and to inflict upon them, at the discretion of a justice of the peace, corporal punishment not exceeding thirty-nine lashes.  If a white person attempted to teach free negroes for pay, he was liable to a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment.81  After "Brother" Nat Turner's insurrection the ban was put upon negro preachers and teachers by an act declaring it unlawful for negroes, whether ordained or licensed or other wise, to preach, exhort, or conduct any meeting for religious or other purposes.82  In the revision of this law in 1842 it was declared that "every assemblage of negroes for the purpose of religious worship, when such worship is conducted by a negro, and every assemblage of negroes for
the purpose of instruction in reading and writing, or in the night time for any purpose, shall be deemed an unlawful assembly."83  Some free colored persons who possessed sufficient means began sending their children to the North to be educated; but in 1838 all such efforts were forestalled by an act declaring that any free person of color who should go beyond the State for education should be considered to have emigrated.84  This was equivalent to a declaration that no free negro going out of the State for education should return.  It was apparently in anticipation of this act forbidding Virginia free negroes to seek education in the North that sixteen free negroes of Fredericksburg, all of whom possessed considerable property, petitioned the Virginia leg-

-------------------------
     81 Acts, 1830-1831, p. 107; Supplement to Revised Code, 244-245.
     82 Acts, 1831-1832, p. 20; Supplement to Revised Code, 246-247.  In 1834 ten free negroes of Richmond complained in a petition to the legislature that the consequence of this law was that many colored human beings were interred like brutes, their friends and relatives being unable to procure the usual ceremony in the burial of the dead (MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1834, A 9483).
     83 Acts, 1840-1842, p. 21; 1847-1848, p. 120; Code (1860), 810-811.
     84 Acts, 1838, p. 76; Hurd, vol. ii, p. 10; Acts, 1847-1848, p. 119.

[Pg. 145]
islature in 1838 for the privilege of establishing a school for free colored children in their city.85  They complained of the inconvenience of sending their children to the North for education, and very tactfully added that they preferred not to send them where " they imbibe bad doctrines."  The legislature refused them the right to establish the school,86  and attended in its own way to the danger of imbibing bad doctrines by withdrawing from free negroes even the privilege of educating their children beyond the limits of the State.  From 1838 to the close of the Civil War the only educational advantage that could lawfully be given to the free negroes was strictly private instruction.  Rarely and with difficulty did some free colored families procure white persons to teach their children privately.87
     In view of the difficulties to be met by free colored persons in the pursuit of learning, the discovery of a high percentage of illiteracy in that class of the population occasions no surprise. "Calx," writing in the later fifties, observed that "the free negroes, as a class, are ignorant."88  There were, however, in 1850 a little above one free negro in six who could read and write.  In the white population of the State a little more than eleven out of twelve were literate.  In other words, about eighty per cent of the free colored population throughout the State was illiterate, as compared with eight per cent in the white population.89  Quite generally throughout the entire period of two and a half centuries under review free negroes and mulattoes could merely make their marks in affixing their signatures to records of legal or business transactions.
     In the fifty years before 1861 it was the practice of persons

-------------------------
     85 MS. Petitions, Spottsylvania County, 1838.
     86 House Journal, 1837-1838, p. 248.
     87 Upon the authority of elderly men who are able to recall events of the lust two decades before the Civil War, it may safely be stated that white persons sometimes taught free negro children in the homes of the negroes.
     88 Calx," p. 4.
     89 Census of 1850, Population, vol. vii, p. 271.

[Pg. 146]
opposed to the residence of free negroes in Virginia, particularly the promoters of societies for colonizing them in Africa, to condemn them almost indiscriminately as being not only morally depraved but economically worthless.90  Fortunately there are other and less biased witnesses from whose evidence may be formed an estimate of the value and merits of the free colored class as an economic factor.  It should be remembered that all efforts to remove the free negroes from Virginia failed utterly, and with truth it may be said that one of the chief obstacles in the way of those efforts was, then as at the present time, the demand for their labor.  Between 1790 and 1860 the free negro class, numbering from twelve thousand to sixty thousand, was far from being a negligible factor in the labor supply of that half of the State in which they resided and to which their labor was accessible.  Any conception that the free negro was crushed in the scramble for employment between the slave and the white laborer may at the outset be banished from mind.  Let us see in a general way what were the conditions affecting the economic opportunities of the free negro from 1782 to the Civil War as regards the character of employment and employers.
     The agricultural and especially the plantation work was done principally by slaves.  But there was a large element in the white population, even in the eastern part of the State, which was non-slaveholding and not devoted to agriculture, except in an avocational and subsidiary manner.  To this element belonged the larger part of town and city populations.  Whatever employment was furnished to laborers by the non-slaveholding class of whites was open to competition by the free negro; and his competitors were white laborers and persons who had slaves to hire.91  But many non-slave

-------------------------
     90 Compare what William Jay had to say in 1835 on the character and tendency of the American colonization societies, in a little book entitled Slavery in America, chapters i-v.  He quotes C. L. Moseby's address before the Virginia Colonization Society, as follows: "This class of persons is a curse and a contagion wherever they reside" (p. 12; African Repository, vol. iii, p. 203).
     91 Local newspaper advertisement, City Point, 1800: "Encourage-

[Pg. 147]
holding employers preferred free labor to slave labor be cause of conscientious scruples as to the moral justification of slavery,92 and hired slaves were not well suited to do small irregular jobs. Hence there was a certain amount of employment for which the free negro had no competitor, except the white laborer, or white hireling, as he was sometimes called.
     Within this field of demand for free laborers, where the only handicap upon the free negro in his contest with the free white workman was race prejudice, he was easily the winner.  In the first place, white men of pride, disdaining to enter into competition with the free negro for employment open to them, emigrated to the West.  "While he [the free negro] remained here," asserted citizens of Henrico County in 1825, "no white laborer will seek employment near him.  Hence, it is that in some of the richest counties east of the Blue Ridge the white population is stationary and in many others it is retrograde."93  Governor Smith in his message of 1847 to the legislature said, "I venture the opinion that a larger emigration of our white laborers is produced by our free negroes than by the institution of slavery."94
     Such white laborers as remained to seek employment in the State fared badly where the free negroes were at all numerous.  There were at least two important reasons for the free negro's supremacy over the white laborer: First, his standard of living and mode of living permitted him to accept smaller wages than the whites could accept and live.  Governor Smith protested in 1848 that in the kind of work

-------------------------
ment offered to free negroes or to persons having negroes to hire. - William Heth."  The work to be done was ditching and draining.  (Taken from a fragment of a newspaper accompanying a legislative petition, in Virginia State Library.)
     92 MS. Petitions, Loudoun Co., 1843, B 1900; F. L. Olmstead, A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, p. 94; see statement of Randolph in the National Federal Convention, 1787, in Madison Papers, vol. iii, p. 1306
     93 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1825, A 9358, A9359.
     94 House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 20.  Governor Smith reaffirmed this belief in his message of 1848 (ibid., 1848-1849, p. 22)

[Pg. 148]
required in cities and in odd jobs the free negroes "wholly supersede by the smallness and nature of their compensation the employment of white men."95  Secondly, the free negro, being naturally of an obedient, tractable disposition and respectful of personal authority, and being hedged about by numerous legal incapacities and perils, was more easily commanded and directed, and was therefore a more desirable servant.  Again, we have Governor Smith to testify, not in praise, but in blame, of the free negroes that "they perform a thousand little menial services to the exclusion of the white man, preferred by their employers because of the authority and control which they can exercise and frequently because of the ease and facility with which they can remunerate such services."96
     The extent of the white employer's power to command a free negro workman or servant was even greater than that 3o30f a master over a slave; for by nature the free negro was quite as docile and as amenable to supervision as the slave, and unlike the slave he could be driven from the job and thus deprived of his means of support.  Hence, as a matter of practice, the free negro was not infrequently a better " slave" than his kinsman in bondage.  Between 1806 and 1860 large numbers of free negroes, when found beyond the limits of the counties or towns where they were known to have legal residence rights, were hired out by law as vagrants.  Upon an occasion of a number of arrests, or when such prisoners arrested at various times had accumulated, the sheriff held a public auction, and cried off to the highest bidder the services of these freemen for a definite term of months or years, their labor selling from a few cents up to twenty-five cents per day.97  Certainly with this system of hiring out free negroes under the vagrancy laws nothing but "poor white trash" could compete.  The feelings of the white

-------------------------
     95 Message, in House Journal, 1848-1849, p. 22.
     96 Message, in House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 20. •
     97 Hiring out free negroes who were willing to be engaged by enterprising white agents became such a prosperous business that in 1852 a license tax of twenty-five dollars was exacted of such agents (Acts, 1852-1853, p. 15; 1855-1856, p. 45).

[Pg. 149]
laborer in view of the conditions were correctly voiced by a white citizen writing in the Richmond Whig, Dec. 11, 1845: "Those whose hearts are now sickened when they look into the carpenters' shops, the blacksmiths' shops and the shops of all the different trades in Richmond and see them crowded with negro apprentices and negro workmen, are ready to quit in disgust."  Laws imposing direct restriction upon the economic activities and competition of the free negro were repeatedly asked for, but ware refused by the legislature.98
     Further light may be thrown upon the character and scope of the economic need served by the free negro by summarizing from many concrete cases the occupations in which he prospered.  From the list may be eliminated lawyers, doctors, and, after 1832, teachers and preachers.  Free negroes were forbidden by law to act in an official capacity, to administer medicine, and to teach or preach to persons assembled."  By reason of a prejudicial interpretation of the laws, if not in open violation of them, free negroes were not allowed to pursue unmolested the business of an inn keeper or proprietor.100  A small part of the free colored class were landowners and farmers, having come into possession of land usually by bequest from their former owner.

-------------------------
     98 House Journal, 1830-1831.  Citizens of Culpeper County petitioned the legislature in 1831 to pass a law " for encouraging white mechanics by forbidding any slave free negro or mulatto to be bound apprentice to learn any trade or art " (House Journal, 1831-1832, pp. 2, 84). Certain limitations were placed by law upon the economic freedom of the free negro ; but they were ostensibly for police purposes, and only incidentally affected his freedom in getting employment.
     99 See above, pp. 116, 144.
     100 In 1844 Jacob Sampson, a free mulatto, was ordered to show why his license of the court of Goochland County for keeping an inn or ordinary should not be revoked, and with no charges against him his license was revoked without any portion of the tax being refunded to him.  By way of appeal to the legislature, he procured testimonials from a number of white citizens showing that he was honest, sober, and of good character; that in an orderly house which he had kept for fifteen years on the "three chopped" road
he had entertained persons generally, and stock drivers especially, in a . satisfactory manner.  But his appeals were rejected by the legislature (MS. Petitions, Goochland County, 1844, A 7113; House Journal, 1844-1845, P. 37).

[Pg. 150]
But the free negro was in general a toiler.  Tucker observed that "the occupations of persons of this class are nearly the same as those of slaves."101  Among those petitioning the legislature between 1776 and 1860 were the following, enumerated by trades and occupations: barbers, coopers, carpenters, mechanics, cabinet-makers, wheelwrights, chairmakers, bricklayers, plasterers, painters, tanners, shoemakers, blacksmiths, millers, sawyers, wood-dealers, draymen, hucksters, gardeners, confectioners, bakers, fishermen, fishmongers, oysterers, commanders of boats, lead miners, day laborers at all work, body servants and attendants, household servants, and washerwomen.  There were known also to be a few merchants or dealers,102 a few musicians,103 and a few undertakers.104
     A glance at this list will reveal the reason why free negroes flocked to the cities and towns.  The employment in urban districts was in the nature of job work and service in unskilled trades to which the free negroes were adaptable.  "Bad as they are," admitted an unfriendly critic in 1859, "the free negroes [in cities and towns] serve best in many menial and low stations."105  Furthermore, as between occupations on the water and on the land, the free negro showed
an inclination to choose the former.  Tucker thought that one reason why the number of adult free colored females

-------------------------
     101 G. Tucker, Progress of the United States in Population and Wealth in Fifty Years, p. 139.  In the census enumeration made in Virginia in 1782 some free negroes appear as appurtenances of the estates of white persons (Heads of Families, First Census of United States, 1790, Virginia, pp. 112-118).
     102 Law and sentiment were not favorable toward free negro dealers, especially hawkers and pedlars (2 Revised Code, 43).  See Richmond Daily Dispatch, Feb. 18, 1858, on the whipping of a free negro poultry dealer for stealing.
     103 At one time before the Civil War the colored band of the Richmond Blues was composed of free negroes.
     104 A free negro undertaker of Charleston, West Virginia, makes the assertion that before the Civil War he buried the dead of the better classes of whites.
     105 "Calx," p. 15.  See petition from Norfolk to the legislature, which, while pleading the cause of a free negro who was about to be forced to quit the city, pleaded also in behalf of "female families" of the city whom the free Negro had been supplying with fuel (MS. Petitions, Norfolk County, 1834, B 4566).

[Pg. 151]
exceeded the number of adult males of this class, while the reverse was true of other classes of the population, was that the male free negroes sought a seafaring life.106  Bagby hints that the negro's preference for the Baptist Church may possibly find some explanation in his love for the water.107  Fishing, oyster-dredging, and working on ships or boats as servants, cooks, stewards, stevedores, or navigators were all enticing employments for the free negro.  Many of the best patronized boats on the rivers and bays were owned by free persons of color.
     Probably the most prosperous and useful class of free negroes were the barbers.  Many of the towns and cities, for example Lynchburg and Richmond, were at times almost wholly dependent upon free colored barbers.108  Reuben West, a Richmond free negro following the trade of a barber, acquired a fortune of several thousand dollars.109  In his shop on Main Street he ran from one to four chairs, and had as apprentice a free mulatto, William Mundin, who learned, and for a number of years followed, the trade as an apprentice to this free black man.  If an assertion may be based wholly upon the declaration of a freeborn and very respectable negro yet living110 who knew Reuben West, the latter owned for a few years two slaves whom he employed at his trade in his shop.
     In some trades there were free negro entrepreneurs, who used and directed the labor of hired free negroes and slaves.  A. E. Andrews, writing from Fredericksburg in 1835, asserted that "some of the best mechanics of the city are coloured men, and among them are several master workmen,

-------------------------
     106 G. Tucker, Progress of the United States, p. 60.
     107 P. 278.
     108 A distinguished gentleman of Richmond, who in 1912 was eighty-four years of age, asserts that in all his life he never had a barber who was not colored to cut his hair or shave him.  This was told the author to illustrate the extent to which the free negro was relied upon in the barber's trade.
     109 Tax-books, 1856, 1857, 1859. City Hall, Richmond.
     110 James H. Hill, 227 V Street, N. W., Washington, D. C, instructor in wood-work in the public schools, owns property in Richmond which belonged to the Hill family of free negroes long before the Civil War:

[Pg. 152]
who employ a considerable number of coloured laborers."111  It was no uncommon practice for free negroes to hire slaves to labor for them. The legislature considered repeatedly the expediency of denying to free negroes the right to hire slaves,112 the ground of objection probably being the tendency of such employment to cause the slave, commanded by one not socially his superior, to despise his slavery, or the opportunity in such employ to acquire a knowledge of antislavery doctrines and propaganda.
     How largely the failure of all attempts to remove the free negro from the State was due to a fairer appreciation of his economic worth when the value of an individual was to be considered than when the class as a whole was under review is shown by the protests forthcoming from the white inhabitants wherever and whenever an effort was made to enforce the law requiring negroes set free after 1806 to quit the State.113  The protests are hardly less significant because they attempt to have only individuals excepted from the operation of the law than if they aimed at saving the entire class.  In 1810 sixty persons prayed the legislature to allow a free negro wheelwright, "who will benefit the whole country," to remain in the State and the county;114 and in the same year citizens of Petersburg declared to the Assembly that the town could not spare without
loss one Uriah Tyner.115  In 1812 a large number of citizens of Berkeley and Frederick counties told the legislature that "there is not a human being in this part of the country where they [Jerry and Susanna, free colored] reside who is

-------------------------
     112 The matter was before the legislature of 1841-1842 (House Journal, p. 16) ; a bill was introduced to prevent the practice in 1843 (ibid., 1842-1843, p. 182) ; the expediency of similar legislation was considered in 1844 (ibid., 1844-1845, p. 66), but the committee asked to be discharged.
     113 "The harsh measures often proposed in the legislature by those who feel the evil of their increasing numbers, have not been carried into laws "because of " the examples of intelligence, honesty and worth among them" (Message of Governor Smith, in House Journal, 1850-1851, p. 30).
     114 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1810, A 9180.
     115 MS. Petitions, Dinwiddie County, 1810, A 4946.

[Pg. 153]
opposed to their remaining in Virginia."116  The plea of the inhabitants of Lynchburg for Pleasant Rowan, a free colored carpenter and mechanic, was that " his loss would be felt in the community;"116a for Frederick Williams that he was a much needed barber;116b and for Ned Adams, that he was an almost indispensable cooper.117  The people of Henrico County, petitioning for John Hopes, a free negro, said that he was a cooper " who would be useful in any community."118  The same thing was said of Daniel Warner, a free negro barber of Warrenton, by one hundred and twenty white petitioners.119  Ninety-five citizens of Accomac County declared to the legislature in 1838 that the services of John, a free negro sawyer, "are much required in his neighborhood."120  Henry Parker of Loudoun County was considered by his white neighbors as "a good and useful man," desirable in the community as a day laborer.121  No better example of the economic value placed* upon the free negro could be found than the following petition from thirty-eight citizens of Essex County: "We would be glad if he [Ben, a free negro] could be permitted to remain with us and have his freedom as he is a well disposed person and a very useful man in many respects, he is a good carpenter, a good cooper, a coarse shoemaker, a good hand at almost everything that is useful to us farmers."122
     In behalf of Harriet Cook, free colored, nearly one hundred white persons, among whom were seven justices of the peace, five ex-justices, sixteen merchants, six lawyers, and one postmaster, made to the legislature this petition: "It

-------------------------
     116 MS. Petitions, Berkeley County, 1812, A 1980. Cf. a petition in behalf of Thomas Richard, of Lee County, who, it was asserted, could have got every man who knew him to consent to his remaining (MS. Petitions, Lee County, 1820, B 1315).
     116a MS. Petitions, Campbell County, 1826, A 3482.
     116b Ibid., 1834, A 3546, one hundred and seventy-five white petitioners.
     117 Ibid., 1834, A 3544, one hundred and sixty names.
     118 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1836, A 9531.
     119 MS. Petitions, Fauquier County, 1836, A 5848.
     120 MS. Petitions, Accomac County, 1838, A 88.
     121 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1848, B 1961 ; 1849, B 1971.
     122 MS. Petitions, Essex County, 1842, A 5413.

[Pg. 154]
would be a serious inconvenience to a number of the citizens of Leesburg to be deprived of her services as a washerwoman and in other capacities in which, in consequence of her gentility, trust-worthiness, and skill she is exceedingly useful."123  In a similar manner Fortune Thomas, free colored, had rendered her services indispensable to the town of Halifax by baking cakes and tarts and making candies.  "In fact," say the petitioners in her behalf, "she has been earnestly assured by the ladies that they can in no measure dispense with her assistance and that no party or wedding can well be given without great inconvenience should her shop be broken up and discontinued."124  But rarely were protests uttered against favorable legislation in aid of a free negro who sought permission to remain in a community.125
     After many years of futile effort to put into operation laws for the purpose of removing the free negro from the State it gradually dawned upon some white persons that the inhumanity of such laws was not the only great obstacle to their enforcement, but that the unwillingness of his neighbors to part with his services was the freedman's constant shield and protection.  In 1838 certain fishermen in Westmoreland and Prince William counties complained of the scarcity of hands that could be hired in those counties because of the emigration of white and slave laborers, and sought from the legislature the privilege of using free negroes and mulattoes from the District of Columbia and Maryland,126  contrary to the laws forbidding the migration of free negroes into the State.127  In 1852 citizens of Accomac County frankly admitted that they wished the free negroes to remain among them, and prayed " the Honorable Assembly to privilege them to remain and pass a law binding all male negroes under 45 years who are not mechanics or sailors

-------------------------
     123 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1850, B 1988.
     124 MS. Petitions, Halifax County, 1850, A 7722.
     125 See MS. Petitions, Accomac County, 1850, A 403a.
     126 MS. Petitions, Westmoreland County, 1838; Prince William  County, 1839.
     127 The petitions were rejected (House Journal, 1839, pp. 84, 180, 246, 249).

[Pg. 155]
or who are not able to carry on a farm, to hire themselves out by the year."128  With reference to female free negroes a similar plan for utilizing their services was suggested.  In the same year certain citizens of Culpeper County expressed to the legislature their desire that a law be passed to make binding any contract by which a free negro obligated himself to a permanent or lifelong servitude.129  Governor Henry A. Wise, in a message to the General Assembly in 1857, asserted that one objection to a wholesale removal of the free negroes has been and is " that their labor is needed in many parts of the state where they are most numerous and that to get clear of them in any way is considerably to reduce pro tanto our population."130
     In the foregoing paragraphs setting forth the position of the free negro population with reference to industry the aim has not been to convey an impression that opportunities to find useful, remunerative employment were abundant for all persons of this class.  While it is true that of free laborers of all kinds the free negro was best fitted to survive under the adverse conditions confronting them, and that he appropriated for himself the better share of employment open to free laborers, the fact remains that a proportionately large class of free negroes were without any settled employment.  Aside from every consideration of the character or natural propensities of the free negroes, that a portion of this population should have become vagabonds was the in evitable result of legislation made applicable to the free negro only.  Two laws deserve particular mention in this connection.  By an elaborate act passed in 1801 free negroes and mulattoes were forbidden to go beyond the county or town in which they were registered in order to seek employment or for ,any other purpose.  A violator was made liable to arrest as a vagrant.131  It is unimportant in this connection that the law was not consistently or generally enforced;

-------------------------
     128 MS. Petitions, Accomac County, 1852, A 137.
     129 MS. Petitions, Culpeper County, 1852, A 4630.
     130 House Documents, no. 1, 1857, p. 151.
     131 Hening, vol. xv, p. 301; 1 Revised Code, 441.

[Pg. 156]
the terms of the act placed a penalty upon white persons employing a free colored person not known to be a resident of the county or town in which the employer lived, thus narrowly limiting the scope of industrial activity of every free negro to his home town or county unless he ventured abroad to face conditions of employment doubly hazardous.
     Five years later an act made unlawful the permanent residence in Virginia of any slave set free after May 1, 1806.  For a number of years there was almost no effort made to punish violators of this law; consequently there accumulated a considerable number of free colored persons who were not by law entitled to reside in the State.  By and by spasmodic efforts began to be made to give the act life. The efforts were not such as to prevent the increase of this expatriated class by means of manumission, but were sufficient to incite many of them to leave a community in which they were threatened or molested, and to seek safety and a means of subsistence elsewhere in the State.  Some who were forced to move by the operation of this law were kept from settling by the above-mentioned prohibitions upon white employers to furnish them work.  By 1860 probably from one fourth to one third of the free colored population in Virginia were unlawful residents under the provisions of the act of 1806.  How little wonder it is that a colored population, facing the adverse industrial conditions which produced the "poor whites," and contending furthermore with every obstruction to economic freedom that laws could provide short of slavery, furnished many recruits for a class of negroes that were idle, vagrant, and parasitical in their method of obtaining a living.
     In passing now to a discussion of the moral character of the free negro, we must avoid the error of his unfriendly contemporary critics who judged him solely by that portion of his class which was wandering through or living in the State without employment.  If we have in mind only this idle set of vagabond free negroes, it would indeed be difficult

[Pg. 157]
to exaggerate the moral degradation into which they fell.  It is well worth while to take notice of some of the many adverse criticisms of the Virginia free negro by persons and societies unfriendly to him, because such characterizations may be justly applied to the worst element of the free colored population.
     A petition of the Virginia Colonization Society for legislation in aid of efforts to remove the free negroes declared in 1833 that "the free negro is degraded, vicious and criminal."132  In 1846 Governor Smith asserted that " our criminal statistics . . . demonstrate the moral degradation of the free negro, the hopelessness of his reform, the mischievous influence of his associations."133  Again, in 1847 Governor Smith characterized the free negro class as " a race of idlers, thriftless and unproductive; they labor only from necessity, are content to put up with only a meagre supply of wants, prowl at dead of night and filch the labor of others."134  Olmstead found a Virginia slave-owner who contended with him that the free negroes were "a miserable set of vagabonds, drunken, vicious, worse than those who are retained in slavery."135  C. L. Moseby, in a speech before the Virginia Colonization Society, characterized the free colored class as "a large mass of human beings who hang as a vile excrescence upon society."136  General Mercer, vice-president of the society, described the class as " a horde of miserable people—the objects of universal suspicion - subsisting by plunder."137

-------------------------
      132 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1833, A 9456.
      133 House Journal, 1846-1847, p. 9.
     134 Ibid., 1847-1848, p. 20.  But Governor Smith's generalizations were not expressed in words which conceal his prejudiced point of view.  Having declared that the free negro was " a moral leper," he added: "That he will prove the ready instrument of those to be found in certain sections of our Union, who would kindle into flame our social edifice, cannot be doubted," thus revealing a strong motive for finding fault with the free negro character (ibid., 1846-1847, 135 P. 44
     136 Address before the Virginia Colonization Society, Quoted from Jay, Slavery in America, p. 12; African Repository, vol. iii, p. 203.
     137 African Repository, vol. ii, p. 189.

[Pg. 158]
A few of the free negro's critics were more discriminating, and by carefully confining their criticisms to the lowest stratum of the free negro class they afford additional proof that persons or societies who indiscriminately condemned all free negroes were judging the whole in view of only its worst part.  For an example of the more conservative opinion of the degradation of the free negroes we may note the petition of the county court of Loudoun County to the legislature in 1836: "It is a curious fact that this unfortunate and degraded population, unwilling to leave the state; and placing itself in a condition to elude the officers of justice by flying from neighborhood to neighborhood and from county to county, is restrained from making permanent settlements; and is thus actually legislated into poverty, vagrancy, and crime."138
     In the debate of 1832 Thomas Marshall with truth and with a discernment not usual with those who attempted to solve the free negro problem declared that in proportion as they were idle they were mischievous.139  Professor Thomas R. Dew saw the close relation which the crimes and moral degradation of free negroes bore to their poverty and want, and explained it thus: "Idleness generates want, want gives rise to temptation, and strong temptation makes the criminal."140  The wisdom of these observations is abundantly verified when we turn to the record of free negroes who were able to find remunerative employment in a tolerant community.  In the place of such descriptive words as "degraded," "idle," "vicious," "drunken," "dishonest," which filled the memorials of the colonizers, there appear such phrases as " a man of integrity and honesty,"141 " honest and prosperous man,"142 "gentility, trustworthiness and skill."143  In 1810 some of the most prominent citizens of'Accomac County certified to the legislature that Jingo, a free negro,

-------------------------
     138 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1836, B 1849.
     139 Richmond Enquirer, February 14, 1832.
     140 P. 83.
     141 MS. Petitions, Campbell County, 1822, A 3460.
     142 Ibid., 1851, A 3684.
     143 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1850, B 1988.

[Pg. 159]
"hath uniformly supported an excellent character for so briety, honesty and industry and that he hath a wife and five children. . . . His wife is a woman of good character. . . .  The husband and wife have provided well for their children and bring them up in a moral way."144  Even among the class of whites who were hostile to the continued existence of the free negroes in Virginia there was an occasional witness to the fact that "examples of intelligence, honesty and worth are not lacking among them,"145 and that "there are many of better habits - and a few who are industrious, provident and even worthy and useful;"146 and a traveller from a Northern State expressed the opinion that "the free blacks are more moral and respectable than many among the lowest class of whites."147  In view of the various conflicting assertions we are led to give credit to the recollections of respectable free negroes still living, who insist on dividing the free negroes, on a moral and social basis, into two classes, the upper one of which was thoroughly respectable, law abiding, and prosperous, while to the lower element properly belongs the reputation for being evil associates and corruptors of slaves, and parasites on the community in which they lived.148  Persons of the former class were designated by the respectful name of "men of color; " individuals of the latter class were called "free niggers."148
     The foregoing remarks on the moral character of the free

-------------------------
     144 MS. Petitions, Accomac County, 1810, A 42.
     145 Governor Floyd's message, in House Journal, 1850-1851, p. 30.
     146 " Calx," p. 5. In his essay, written about 1859, Calx proposed a scheme for reducing the number of free negroes by making a lack of employment evidence of guilt sufficient to authorize sale into slavery as a punishment.  He opposed any indiscriminate sale or removal of both good and bad.
     147 Andrews, p. 162.
     148 This is the testimony of William Mundin, born 1839, now living (1911) in Richmond.
     149 Interview with Richard A. Tucker, 13 Suffolk Street, Norfolk, Virginia. Judge Crothers, of Portsmouth, recalled that when he was a boy going to school four miles from his home in Isle of Wight County he passed on the way five families of free negroes. "They were respectable, respected, and fairly well-to-do." As far
as he knew, there was no desire on the part of the white persons of the community to be rid of them (interview, Portsmouth, January 4, 1911).

[Pg. 160]
negro have been made touching his deportment in general.  To be able to determine what measure of justification there was for a vast deal of legislation imposing special limitations and restrictions upon his conduct inquiry must be made specifically into the truth of a few of the oft-repeated charges and indictments upon which discriminatory legislation was based.  The four charges which were made with most telling effect were: (1) that he was a thief and a receiver of stolen goods; (2) that he was criminally disposed in an unusual degree; (3) that he was insurrectionary; and (4) that he was lazy and improvident.
     First, then, as to his propensity to steal.  That the free negro class produced a rather disproportionate number of thieves should not be doubted, but that the free negroes were worse in this respect than the slaves, or that they were worse than so many white persons would have become if placed in their circumstances and forced to remain there, is by no means proved.  Jefferson observed with truth that "a man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief."150  While many of the free negroes of the period between 1782 and 1865 received their training in slavery, the possession of such qualities as trustworthiness, honesty, and faithfulness to duty was a prerequisite to the attainment of freedom.  A bad slave, like an unruly horse, was more likely to go on the market, and was less likely to have the commiseration of his master, than one of better qualities.  The fact is that the free negroes, as far as they had employment, were less inclined to steal than were slaves; but in this regard the less fortunate free negroes were subject to greater temptation, if possible, than slaves, and the evidence is conclusive that they were surpassed by no other inhabitants of the Commonwealth in the number and variety of their depredations.  Mr. Archer, addressing the Virginia Colonization Society, said: "The free blacks are destined by an insurmountable barrier - to the want of occupation, thence to the want of food - thence to the distresses

-------------------------
     150 Writings of Jefferson, vol. v, p. 66 (1789).

[Pg. 161]
which ensue that want - thence to the settled deprivation which grows out of those distresses and is nursed in their bosoms."151  "Since they are idle," observed ninety citizens of Culpeper County, " they either steal or perish."152
     It should, however, be kept in mind in a comparison of the free negro with the slave in regard to all such misdemeanors as thievery that the free negro was severely brought to account and universally criticised for his offenses, whereas the slave was often shielded from prosecution and criticism by reason of the dignity and authority of his master.  Slave owners were sometimes reluctant to admit that their slaves were as bad as or worse than the slaves of their neighbors, and by way of self-defense and self-protection from criticism condoned the misdemeanors of their slaves or punished them in private.  But there was no cloak for the "free nigger."  The old warning "Be sure your sin will find you out" had abundant sanction as applied to him.
     The economic activities of the roguish free negroes and slaves were thoroughly complementary and harmonious.  The free negro, unlike the slave, could market products, the presumption being that he lawfully possessed them.  The slave possessed first-hand information as to the location of many articles of produce.  Hence the problem of production was managed by the slave; the burden of transportation was borne by the free negro; and the method of distribution was determined by mutual agreement.  As early as 1691 the free negro was charged with being a receiver and conveyer

-------------------------
     151 Quoted from Dew, p. 83.
     152 MS. Petitions, Culpeper County, 1846, A 461 1. County and hustings court records of the nineteenth century contain numerous examples of theft by free negroes. See, for example, case of Bob Green, a free negro, who in a single night stole seven hams of bacon (Orders of the Richmond Hustings Court, no. 11, 1814, p. 153).  Newspaper notes of their larcenies were sometimes tinged with a sarcasm that is indicative of their frequent repetition, as for instance the following: "The Poultry Trade - A negro engaged in the poultry business was detected a few nights ago in the act of robbing a hen house on the premises of a citizen of Manchester.  A magistrate ordered '39' for his benefit the next day" (Richmond Daily Dispatch, February 18, 1858).

[Pg. 162]
of stolen goods,158 and upon this and other accusations was based the legal restriction upon manumission.  Soon after the act removing these restrictions went into effect, in 1782, complaints were heard from different quarters that "free negroes are agents, factors, and carriers to the neighboring towns for slaves, of property by them stolen from their masters and others."154
     In the neighborhood of almost every gristmill in certain parts of eastern Virginia there were located squads of free negroes who were suspected by their white neighbors of procuring a large part of their sustenance by concert with roguish slave millers. In 1831 a number of citizens of Charles City and New Kent counties, seeking from the legislature relief from such conditions, asserted that it was a custom almost universal with owners of mills in their counties and in fact in the whole lower part of the State to employ slaves to attend the mills, and that the millers "are a sort of communication between slaves and the free persons of color" in the neighborhood.155  The legislature, however, took no action in relief of the persons aggrieved.156
     A complaint of a similar kind was received by the legislature in 1836 from Loudoun County.  According to the petitioners, free negroes who owned " trading carts " and operated them between Washington or Georgetown and the rural communities of Virginia near the District of Columbia line were in the habit of receiving stolen goods from free negroes and slaves.157  Complaints were heard at the same time from other quarters of the State, and, although the legislature refused to grant the specified request of the Loudoun County petitioners,158 a bill of general application was introduced which was designed to prevent free negroes from trading

-------------------------
     153 Hening, vol. iii, p. 87.
     154 MS. Petitions, Hanover County, 1784, A 8124; Henrico County, 1784, A 8971.
     155 MS. Petition, Charles City County, 1831, A 3962.
     156 House Journal, 1831-1832, pp. 56, 84
     157 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1836, B 1840.
     158 House Journal, 1835-1836, p. 262.

[Pg. 163]
beyond the town in which they resided.  The measure met with defeat.159
     There was a manifest reluctance on the part of the legislature to interfere by law with the right of the free negroes to trade freely, and, although complaints were becoming ominous,160 proposed legislation for prohibiting them from selling grain without a certificate or evidence that they were the lawful possessors of it was in 1840 declared inexpedient.161  In some counties, however, the white citizens were determined not to take further denial from the legislature.  In 1843 one hundred and twenty-seven citizens of Accomac County signed a petition for a law imposing a penalty upon all white persons who made purchases of grain from free negroes without requiring from them the certificate of two respectable housekeepers showing that the grain was law fully possessed.  "Country stores are in the habit," reads the petition, "of receiving grain from free negroes who are not the producers of a single bushel of grain of any kind.  The grain they sell is either stolen by the negroes who sell it or more frequently received by them of slaves who steal it from their masters and others and by this means exerts a most pernicious influence upon our slaves."162  In response to the appeal there was introduced in the House of Delegates a bill containing provisions similar to those asked for by the Accomac petition and applicable to the entire State.  It was later narrowed in application to the counties of Accomac and Richmond and enacted into law.163

-------------------------
     159 Ibid., p. 244.
     160 In 1836 the following petition was made to the legislature by citizens of Northumberland County: "This class of people, as is well known to your honorable body, is everything that is the very opposite of honesty and industry . . . .  The law to prevent dealing with slaves is a dead letter

[Pg. 164]

     The second charge or accusation, as above enumerated, which was repeatedly made against the free negro was that he was unusually criminal.  Upon the assumption of the truth of this indictment were based the criminal laws of the second quarter of the nineteenth century applicable to the free negro.  Before the beginning of the nineteenth century the free negro class was not so large as to attract special attention to its criminal record.  Statistics relative to the inmates of the penitentiary made and published during the first quarter of the nineteenth century brought to the attention of the public the fact that the free negroes were committing from two to twelve times as many of the crimes of the State for which punishment was meted out as an equal number of average white persons.  According to criminal statistics in 1804, the free negroes committed in proportion to the population twice as many crimes as the free whites.  In 1808 in proportion to the population they committed twelve crimes punished in the penitentiary to one among the whites; in 1810, three to one; in 1812, eight to one; and in 1824, twelve to one.  The conclusions drawn from these statistics created a very general belief that the free negro was fast becoming more criminal, and that existing criminal laws were wholly inadequate for a class so vicious as the free Africans.  Consequently, in 1823 a law was passed which substituted for confinement in the penitentiary, transportation and sale as a method of punishing the crimes of free negroes.  For four years this law was effective, during which time thirty-five free negroes were convicted, transported, and sold into slavery.164  During this period the number of free negro convicts in proportion to the whites was no less than it had been under the penitentiary system.  It is to the credit of Governor William B. Giles that the law was repealed in 1828.  He realized the absurdity of taking the number of free negro convicts and comparing it with the number of white convicts in judging the relative criminal capacities and tendencies of the free negroes and the whites.

-------------------------
     164 House Documents, no. 15, 1848-1849; no. 4, 1853-1854.

[Pg. 165]
The injustice to the negro of such a method consisted, first, in an erroneous assumption that the laws were administered as severely against white persons as against free negroes, 165 and, secondly, in a comparison of the record of the free negroes with the whole white population instead of with an equal number of whites similarly situated as to means of earning a living.  So pertinent in this connection are the remarks of Governor Giles that they may be quoted at some length: -

     I am far from yielding to the opinion expressed by the intelligent committee of the House of Delegates of Virginia and the enthusiastic memorialists of Powhatan respecting the degraded and demoralized condition of this caste - at least in degree and extent.  It will be admitted that this caste of colored population attracted but little of the public sympathy and commiseration, - in fact, that the public feeling and sentiment are opposed to it.  It is also admitted that the penal laws against it have been marked with peculiar severit; 166 so much so, as to form a characteristic exception to our whole penal code.  When I first came into the office of Governor, such was the severity of the penal laws against this caste, that for all capital offences short of punishment by death and for many offences not capital, slavery, sale and transportation formed the wretched doom denounced by the laws against this unfavored, despised caste of colored population .  .  .  .  I have also reason to fear, that under the influence of general prejudices, the laws, in some instances, have been administered against this class more in regour than in justice.  Yet, notwithstanding all these deprecated circumstances, the proportion of convicts to the whole population has been small.

     He points out the fact that only about one out of every thousand free negroes was a criminal, and concludes that

-------------------------
     165 It was made a penitentiary offense for a free person  "to advise any slave to abscond from this master or aid such slave to abscond by procuring for or delivering to him a pass, register or other writing or furnish him money, clothes, etc."  (Acts, 155-1856, p. 42).
     In 1848 ten out of eighty-one free negroes in the penitentiary were there for aiding or abetting slaves to escape from their masters.  This is only one example of the many more chances for a free negro to be sent to the penitentiary than for a white person (House Journal, 1847-1848, pp. 20, 22; M. S. Petitions ,Henrico county, 1844, A 954).  Two thirds of the offenses for which free negroes were arraigned before the hustings court of Richmond were defined by laws which did not apply to white persons, - such, for instance, as that which made it a criminal offense  for a free negro to remain in a city or county without proper registration (Richmond Daily Dispatch, Feb. 8, 1859).
     166 Compare Howison, vol. ii, pp. 458-459, for similar expressions.  For example, he says: "They are subject to restraints and surveillance in points beyond number.

[Pg. 166]
"these facts prove, first, that this class of population is by no means so vicious, degraded and demoralized as represented by their prejudiced friends and voluntary benefactors.  And, second, that evils attributed to this class are vastly magnified and exaggerated."167
     From 1828, the date of the repeal of the law fixing transportation and sale as a penalty in the case of free colored convicts, to 1861 the free colored class furnished from one tenth to one fifth of the inmates of the penitentiary.  The apparent disproportion of the crimes of this class was often pointed out in argument for a general deportation or colonization.168  Governors Smith, Floyd, Johnson, and Wise brought the fact repeatedly to the attention of the legislature.160  Governor Smith, however, attributed much of the disparity to circumstances which, for the free negro, were unavoidable.  "If there be," said he, "in his natural character the elements to make him a great and good man, it is hopeless to expect that they will ever be developed under our policy."170  Governor Wise, in stating in 1857 some possible arguments in defense of the free negro, observed that "if many of them are corrupted and degenerated ... it is owing not only to their own improvidence, but to evil communication with bad white men who associate and deal with them and abuse their weakness and who are not restrained by penal laws."171
It should be said that the penal record of the Virginia free negro was not worse than that of the negro in some northern free States, - for instance, Massachusetts.  Between 1840 and 1850 the number of colored convicts to one white convict, in proportion to the population, was in Massachusetts,

-------------------------
     167 P. 20.
     168 An ominous disparity! which was constantly pressed upon the attention of the reflecting men of the state" (Howison, vol. ii, p. 458)
     169 Messages of the Governors, in House Journal, 1846-1847; 1847-1848, p. 20; 1850-1851, p. 30; 1853-1854, doc. no. 1, p. 14; House Documents, no. 1, 1857-1858, p. 151.
     170 House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 20.
     171 House Documents, no. 1, 1857, p.'\ 151.

[Pg. 167]
9.6; in Virginia, 7.2.  For the first two years of the decade of the fifties it was in Massachusetts, 13; in Virgnia, 6.3.172
     If a comparison is made of the criminal record of the negroes of Virginia at the present time on the basis of the relative number of white and black convicts in the penitentiary, the disparity will appear as great today as at almost any time prior to the Civil War.173  The conclusion seems irresistible that the criminal capacities and tendencies of the antebellum free negro were not so great as they were quite generally believed to be.
     Thirdly, was the free negro insurrectionary and turbulent?  No criticism of the free negro was more general and more undeserved than that he contrive, or was disposed to contrive, insurrections, and that he induced the slaves to rebel against their masters.  He was referred to on the floor of the legislature in 1805 as a possible leader of a rebellion or an "active chieftain of a formidable conspiracy." 174
     The insurrection in Santo Domingo, headed by the free blacks of the island, for a long time furnished the starting-point of arguments advanced to show that free negroes might at any time head a slave rebellion.  In 1823 Lafayette asked Madison whether it was considered that the increase in the proportion of free blacks to slaves tended to increase or diminish the dangers of insurrection.  Madison's answer was, "Rather increases," and that in case of a slave insurrection the free blacks would be more likely to side with the slaves than with the whites.  Madison certainly gave a correct expression of the general feeling or belief of the white population, but there is really little evidence to show that the impression was correct.  There are no instances on record of insurrections in Virginia initiated by or carried out under the leadership of free negroes.  Not a free negro was proved to have had any criminal relation to the Gabriel plot in 1800, and only two free negro men

-------------------------
     172 House Documents, no. 14, 1853-54, pp. 38, 54.
     173 Reports of Virginia Penitentiary, October, 1909, September 30, 1910.
     174 Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 15, 1805.

[Pg. 168]
whose wives were slaves were implicated in the Nat Turner insurrection; neither of the two seems to have been a leading spirit among the seventy or more slaves who participated in the affair.175
     An insurrection always brought out expressions of fear of the free negro, first, because he was presumed to have kindred and sympathetic feelings for the slave and to share with him prejudices against the whites; and secondly, because he was known to have intimate relations with the slaves and an increased capacity for organization by reason of his freedom to go from place to place.  Expressed opinions of the danger of free negro insurrections were very numerous for a while after the Southampton affair,176 but occasionally some writer or speaker who thought twice be fore venturing a remedy for the ills of society pointed out the fact, which now seems plain enough, that the free negroes who had a legal right to remain and those who, despite the law, were tolerated in Virginia were too well satisfied to create insurrection.177  Thomas Marshall observed with truth in the legislature of 1832, " There is no evidence of a disposition to join in revolt or disturb the public tranquility."178  Professsor Dew observed that the Virginia free negro had been taught to understand his place and to occupy it humbly.179  The antebellum free negro did not demand social or political equality, but rather felt that any right that he possessed was so much for which he should be thankful.  The slave set free because of meritorious conduct or faithful ness of service, far from being insurrectionary, was an example of politeness, humility, and respect for superiors and for authority such as is rarely if ever seen at the present

-------------------------
     175 Richmond Enquirer, November 18, 1831 ; W. S. Drewry, The Southampton Insurrection, appendix.
    176 "We are not unmindful of the aid slaves would get from this source [the free negroes] in case of a servile insurrection " (Petition of 200 citizens of Northampton, in MS. Petitions, December, 1831, A 4884).
     177 See article contributed to the Richmond Enquirer, November 18, 1831.
     178 Richmond Enquirer, February 14, 1832.
     179 Pp. 85, 87.

[Pg. 169]
among either the white or the black population.180  The infusion of this, the best type of African in America, among the free negro class was sufficient in itself to influence the class toward submissiveness.
     Thomas Marshall believed with not a few thoughtful men that the free negro constituted "no inconsiderable, barrier to a future insurrection of slaves."181  A similar opinion was expressed on the floor of the legislature in 1805. 182  In truth, there are numerous instances of the forestalling of insurrections and the preventing of plots of slaves through the agency of free negroes.  Moses, a free negro of Goochland County, revealed a conspiracy of slaves in 1822. 183  In 1810 two hundred citizens of Petersburg declared to the legislature through a petition that a free negro, Emanuel, had saved the town from conflagration by reporting and aiding in the capture of incendiary, plotting slaves.184  Lewis Bowlagh presented certificates to the legislature to show that he had given information to the whites in time to prevent bloodshed plotted by slaves.185  A petition in behalf of Isaac, of Rockbridge County, w.as based on the ground that he had been a useful man in detecting and bringing negroes to account for their wrongdoing.188  Daniel Brady's father, a man of good character, even surrendered up his own son to stand his trial and suffer punishment.187  It was certainly not the disposition of the free negro, knowingly and with design, to increase the prejudices of the whites against him by creating insurrection.  Far from being of "a turbulent and discontented" disposition, as those in favor of coloniza-

-------------------------
     180 " They are peaceable, orderly in their deportment, humble to
those whom the law has made their superiors and polite to those who
are considered their equals." Said by fifty-nine white persons of
Caroline County of nine free negroes—Joseph Tyree, his wife, and
seven children (MS. Petitions, Caroline County, 1821, A 3804).
     181 Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 14, 1832.
     182 Ibid., January 15, 1805.
     183 MS. Petitions, Goochland County, 1822, A 7085.
     184 MS. Petitions, Dinwiddie County, 1810, A 5196.
     185 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1824, A 9353.
     186 MS. Petitions, Rockbridge County, uncatalogued.
     187 Pardons issued by Governor Wise, in House Documents, no. 1, 1857-1858, p. clxx.

[Pg. 170]
tion declared him to be, he longed to be left alone in the place of his birth, free from, fears of molestation and annoyance, to enjoy perfect contentment. Without question the free negro population in Virginia was in general meek and submissive and not inclined to rebellion.188
     Fourthly, the charge often made that the free negro was lazy and improvident must not be accepted without some qualification.  It is reasonable to believe that the free negroes, like the slaves, were naturally lazy; but it is really remarkable what examples of thrift and economy this class produced.  Within the space of four years Rose Hailstock purchased with her saved earnings her own freedom and, one by one, the freedom of her three children, paying altogether £125 sterling.189  Samuel Jackson saved enough to purchase in 1815 the freedom of his wife and two children.190  Arthur Lee, of Alleghany County, displayed a perseverance and an ability to economize that is not often surpassed by laboring men of any race or condition.  For sixteen years he was the slave of a man named Brown, who lived in North Carolina, but he was permitted to remain in Virginia on the condition that he pay his owner one hundred dollars per annum.  Having paid, at this rate, sixteen hundred dollars by 1835, he purchased his freedom, paying his owner five hundred dollars for his future liberty.  Not satisfied, he immediately set to work to earn three hundred and fifty dollars with which to purchase his wife's freedom.  This done, he procured the signatures of one hundred and seventy-six citizens of Alleghany County to his humble petition to the legislature for a law granting to him and his wife a legal right to reside in the Commonwealth, that he might continue to ply the honorable trade of a blacksmith.191  As to the character for industry of Billy Williams, forty-seven

-------------------------
     188 Professor Dew admitted, or, we might say, contended that the Virginia free negro was more orderly and well behaved than the free negro of the Northern States.  In the North, he said, the negro was taught arrogance and equality.  In the South he was made to understand his place and to occupy it humbly (pp. 85, 87).
     189 Hening, vol. xiii, p. 618.
     190 MS. Petitions, Fauquier County, 1815, A 5750.
     191 MS. Petitions, Alleghany County, 1835, A 666.

[Pg. 171]
citizens of Campbell County said: "We are his neighbors and are willing and indeed desirous that the legislature pass the law permitting him to remain in the state, as he is not only an honest, prosperous man, but in truth a most useful and accommodating man to his neighbors and all with whom he has anything to do.  A farmer by occupation and owns 100 acres of land."192  Examples could be multiplied indefinitely in contradiction of indiscriminating indictments, such, for instance, as that made by Governor Smith when he characterized the free colored population as a "race of idlers, thriftless and unproductive." 193  The exaggerated and often self-contradictory character of the statements of colonization zealots will best appear by a quotation from a widely circulated memorial194 to the legislature: - 

     Their idleness is proverbial; they live, few know in what way and fewer where . . . . Whatever energy can be spared from annoying both classes [slave and white] is expended in multiplying their own numbers.
     And yet this same individual, the pest of the land which gives him only birth, when transported to a seat where his industry may have excitement and object becomes the active, thriving, and happy citizen of Liberia.195

     Rigorous and discriminatory as were the laws of Virginia enacted for the purpose of controlling that presumably law-
-------------------------

     192 MS. Petitions, Campbell County, 1851, A 3684.
     193 House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 20.
     194 MS. Petitions, Henrico County, 1831, A 9431.  See also memorial of the Auxiliary Colonization Society of Buckingham County in MS. Petitions, Buckingham County, 1832, A 3080.  A memorial of the Fairfax Colonization Society read: "Pursuing no course of regular business and negligent of everything like economy and husbandry they are a part of the community supported by the industry of others"  (MS. Petitions, Fairfax County, 1832, A 5578).
     195 With this picture of what the Virginia colonizers professed to think the free negro would become in Liberia may be compared what citizens of Somerset County, Maryland, thought of the Virginia free negroes who had come into Maryland from Virginia after the law of 1806 made the residence of certain ones illegal in Virginia: "We reap not the rewards or fruits of our labor . . . all is snatched from us by that curse of God's Creation, the degraded free negro . . . he toils not neither does he spin, yet like Dives he fares sumptuously and is arrayed in purple and fine linen and well he may, for he appropriates to his own use the labors of the entire white population"  (MS. Petitions to Maryland Legislature, in Maryland Historical Society, portfolio 7, no. 28).

[Pg. 172]
less, disorderly and vicious member of society, the free negro, they fail in some respects to reveal the extent to which he was subjected to surveillance and discipline, while in other respects they represent a harsher treatment than he actually received.  In the nineteenth century there existed a law for keeping watch over and controlling the conduct of free negroes not found among the statutes or supported by legal precedents. Its sanction was in community sentiment, and its name was lynch-law.  The practice before the Civil War of policing the free negroes by self-appointed bailiffs was the historical antecedent of the Ku Klux Klan of reconstruction days, although there was not the same degree of organization and not so wide a gap between local sentiment and legal administration before as during that time.
     Prostitution and vice among the free colored population were frequently dealt with by methods not approved by law.  For example, in Amelia County in 1821 the inmates of houses of ill repute were visited and chastized by a party of disguised white men.196  Although a fine was imposed upon at least one of the persons connected with this raid, the state of sentiment favorable to the method of procedure is seen in the effort made by half a hundred of the local residents to have the convicted man released from his fine.  General Brodnax, speaking from the floor of the legislature in 1832, was not challenged upon the assertion that such methods of getting rid of undesirable free negroes were of common occurrence.  "Who does not know," said he, " that when a free negro, by crime or otherwise, has rendered him self obnoxious to a neighborhood, how easy it is for a party to visit him one night, take him from his bed and family, and apply to him the gentle admonition of a severe flagellation, to induce him to go away.  In a few nights the dose can be repeated, perhaps increased, until, in the language of the physicians, quantum suff has been administered . . .

-------------------------
     196 MS. Petitions, Amelia County, 1821, A 781.

[Pg. 173]
and the fellow becomes perfectly willing to go away."197  So commonly was lynch-law of this character resorted to by the whites in prevailing upon free negroes to yield to their wishes that one argument strongly urged in 1832 in favor of a law authorizing the use of force in carrying out a colonization scheme was the necessity of shielding the negroes from the cruelty of private intimidation and compulsion.198  William Miles Cuffee, a free negro born in 1839, now living at Hickory Ground, Virginia, tells how in 1859, upon a rumor of insurrection, whites assembled in bands to intimidate and frighten the free negroes in the community.  According to his report, he remained hidden in the woods for about three days and nights while the raids were being conducted against persons of his class.
     While local sentiment often permitted the authority of the law to be exceeded or ignored by individuals self-appointed to discipline and punish free negroes, it no less frequently permitted laws to remain unenforced.  Speaking of the laws which forbade free negroes to move from one town or locality to another and to assemble in considerable numbers and of those which compelled them to submit to search of their houses and persons by patrols, a writer in the Richmond Enquirer declared that "these provisions and many other laws on this subject are so much at variance with the feelings of our citizens that in many parts of the state they are merely a dead letter. . . .  So long as our humanity preponderates over our fears, so long will those laws be very partially and feebly executed."199
     The same writer clearly discerns and explains the reason why legislation dealing with the free negroes outran execution: "As legislators, impressed with the jeopardy that threatens the public safety, men readily give their assent to

-------------------------
     197 Richmond Enquirer, February 14, 1832. Compare Jay, Slavery in America, p. 45.
     198 Speech of Mr. Chandler, in the Richmond Enquirer, February 14, 1832.  General Brodnax said that he understood that the consent of the emigrants in a cargo which had recently set sail for Africa was obtained by private compulsion.
     199 Richmond Enquirer, October 8, 1805.

[Pg. 174]
any measure that seems calculated to protect it, but when they return to the bosom of their families and are surrounded by those among whom they were born and nursed and from whose labor they obtain the means of comfort and independence the sentiments of the legislator are frequently lost in the feelings of humanity and affection in the private man."
     An illustration of this fact is seen in the operation of that law which directed emancipated slaves to leave the State within twelve months from the date of their emancipation.  Henry Howe said in 1845 that "these laws, and every other having the appearance of rigor . . . are nearly dead letters upon our statute books, unless during times of excitement, or since the efforts of the abolitionists have reanimated them.  I have, until lately, scarcely known an instance in which they have been enforced."200  Petitions were continually being sent to the legislature by white persons complaining "that the law requiring the removal [of ex-slaves] is in its operation perfectly nugatory."201
     In certain localities, however, and at certain times the law was rendered in some measure effective.  The act was a penal statute, depending upon local officials for its execution; hence enforcement was not uniform as to times and places.  The appearance of the successive census reports showing the rapid increase and accumulation of the free negroes in the State usually gave rise to some zeal for proceeding against free negroes who remained in violation of the law.202  The number and the deportment of these negroes in a community went far toward determining the length to which the local officials would go in prosecuting them.  In the counties of western Virginia, where but few negroes resided, almost no use was made of this law.  In

-------------------------
     200 Historical Collections of Virginia, p. 157.
     201 MS. Petitions, Hampshire County, 1836, A 7904 ; Loudoun County, 1836, B 1849; Loudoun and Fauquier Counties, 1847, B 1952.
     202 " The excitement which now prevails will in a little while entirely subside and you will see things move on just as they have done until the next census, when we shall again begin to stir and flutter for awhile" (Richmond Whig, December 11, 1845).

[Pg. 175]
most of the eastern counties the prescribed penalty - sale into slavery - was so much at variance with sentiment that grand juries usually refused to indict, or attorneys refused to prosecute, violators of the law.203  When indictments were made, the cases were continued from time to time or finally dismissed.204
     When arrests, prosecutions, and sales of free negroes were made, the object was usually to make examples of some that all others might take warning and leave the community.  The overseers of the poor of Accomac County held a meeting in 1825, and determined to make an example of one negro, thinking that they would by this means be spared the necessity of selling as slaves the free negroes who had become unlawful residents under the act of 1806.205  A negro named Jack Bagwell was the unlucky victim; hut a single example was not sufficient to induce all other free negroes liable to sale to quit the community, and at a meeting held the following year the Board of Overseers ordered that notice be posted throughout the county "that the Overseers of the Poor . . . will sell one free negro in each district of this county for every month from this date."206
     In pursuance of the order, seven negroes were sold into slavery on June 5, 1826.  The maximum price received for any one of the seven freemen was thirty-six dollars and fifty cents.  The fact that some of them brought so low a price as one dollar creates a doubt as to whether the purchasers expected to force them into bondage or whether they did not intend to allow them to escape from the neighborhood.  In 1839 Richard Rew purchased at the price of five hundred and thirty dollars a free negro who had lived in Virginia contrary to law since his manumission in 1819.

-------------------------
     203 MS. Orders of Northampton County, 1831-1836, pp. 136, 147, 505; MS. Petitions, Loudoun and Fauquier Counties, 1847, B 1952; Frederick County, 1828, A 6495.
     204 "By this mode, they were annually before the court, their cases called and continued and in this evasive way, they spent the remainder of their days in their old communities" (T. K. Cartmell, Shenandoah Valley Pioneers and Their Descendants, p. 521).
     205 MS. Petitions, Accomac County, 1825, A 91.
     206 Ibid., 1826, A 80.

[Pg. 176]
The negro made good his escape to New York, and Rew, who had paid a high price for him, expecting to subject him to actual bondage, appealed earnestly but in vain to the legislature for a refunding of the purchase money.207
     Even such a timid and spasmodic enforcement of this law as these instances represent rendered the condition of a great number of free negroes anomalous and insecure.  Not only those negroes emancipated after 1806, but also their posterity were liable to be sold as slaves, and many deserving negroes were forced to appeal to the humanity of their white neighbors to save them from banishment or sale.  In 1834 Titus Brown, whose hair was white with age, related how he and his wife, childless and almost as old has he, had been "ordered to depart from the Commonwealth."208  It was not often that a free negro of fair character was unable, even in times of excitement, to get his white neighbors to intercede in his behalf.  These could usually bring about a relaxation of energy in the prosecution, or, as in the case of Archy Carey, they might "agree that so long as his conduct comports with his recommendation they will not enforce the law against him."209  If in this way they could not render secure a negro threatened with sale or banishment, his white sympathizers would often draft earnest appeals to the humanity of the legislators, and procure to these petitions hundreds of white subscribers.  Very frequently the legislature was moved to pass acts excepting certain free negroes from the operation of the law.210  In some such way were tolerated nearly all ex-slaves who ventured to assume the risk of losing their freedom.  It was asked in the House of Delegates in 1843 why the laws providing for the banishment or sale of certain free negroes had not been carried out.  The answer was: "because its provisions were in violation of the feelings of the people.  A thousand such laws would

-------------------------
     207 House, Journal, 1839-1840, p. 205.
     208 MS. Petitions, Loudoun County, 1834, B 1830
     209 MS. Petitions, Campbell County, 1830, A 1013
     210 For examples, see Acts, 1821-1822, p. 84; 1833-1834, p. 316; 1834-1835, p.240; or Acts of any year from 1812 to 1848.

[Pg. 177]
fall to the ground and be inoperative for lack of public sentiment."211  The same explanation was given by Governor Wise in his message to the legislature in 1857.  "It would be more humane and more just," he said, "to sell them wholesale into slavery" than to force upon them dispersion and extinction in the cold climate of the free States; "but the moral sense of our people would revolt at a violation of individual and personal rights like this and no such usurpation would be tolerated by public sentiment."
212

-------------------------
     211 Richmond Enquirer, Feb. 14, 1832.
     212 House Democrats, no. 1, 1857, p. 151
 

< BACK TO TABLE OF CONTENTS >

cv             

 

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO
BLACK HISTORY INDEX PAGE

CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO
GENEALOGY EXPRESS

GENEALOGY EXPRESS
FREE GENEALOGY RESEARCH is My MISSION

This Webpage has been created by Sharon Wick, exclusively for Genealogy Express  ©2008
Submitters retain all copyrights

.

.