Chapter Content
Okay, here we go. So, like, Chapter 5, right? It's all about this, like, really tense time in American history. You gotta remember, the country was totally divided, and it wasn't just about, you know, states rights or whatever. It was about slavery, and it was getting really, really messy.
So, first up, there's this thing called the Fugitive Slave Act. Ugh. Basically, it was a way for the South to kinda keep slavery going even when some slaves were escaping. It said that, like, even if a black person made it to the North, slave owners could just come up and, like, snatch them back. Or, even worse, they could just grab any black person and say, "Oh, yeah, they're mine, they ran away." Can you imagine?
And the North? Some people there were *not* happy. You had these black activists, people like J. W. Loguen. He was amazing. His mom was a slave and his dad was the slave owner, messed up, right? Anyway, he escaped to freedom, went to college, and became a minister in Syracuse, New York. And he was *mad*. He gave this speech where he's basically saying, "We're done being nice. If they wanna enforce this law, bring on the bloodhounds! I got my freedom from God, and I'm gonna defend it!" He basically outlawed the law, which, like, is pretty hardcore.
And Syracuse lived up to that. Some runaway slave, they called him Jerry, got caught. And a crowd of people, they straight-up broke into the courthouse with crowbars and, like, a battering ram and freed him! Can you believe that level of defiance?
Loguen, by the way, he turned his home into a major stop on the Underground Railroad. It's said he helped, like, 1,500 people escape to Canada. His former mistress, she found out about him writing a book, and she wrote him a letter, like, asking for money or for him to come back into slavery. And his response? He published it in this abolitionist newspaper. It was brutal. He's basically like, "How dare you? Did you raise your own kids to sell them? I had more right to your horse than you ever had to me!" And he's like, daring her to come and try to take him back.
Then you have Frederick Douglass. Oh man, what an orator. He knew that slavery wasn't just the South's problem. It was the whole nation's shame. He gave this speech, like, on the Fourth of July, and he’s like, "Why are you asking me to celebrate your independence? What does it mean to the slave? It's just a reminder of how unfair and cruel you are! It’s all a sham!"
And you know, after Nat Turner's rebellion, things got even tighter in the South. But, there was an incident on this ship, the Creole. The slaves on board overpowered the crew and sailed to the British West Indies, where slavery was already abolished. The British, they refused to return the slaves, which made people in Congress, like Daniel Webster, want to go to war with England! But black people, they were like, "Hold up. Why would we fight for a government that denies us basic rights?"
Douglass, he spoke about the idea that change comes from conflict and struggle. There has to be demand for change. It doesn't just happen.
And you see, there were disagreements on approach between black and white abolitionists, actually. Black abolitionists were more open to armed revolt, but, they also felt it was okay to use the ballot box, existing political structures. Whatever worked! They weren't as, like, morally rigid as some of the white abolitionists.
You know, these issues were always on everyone’s mind. There's this story about some black kids in a school in Cincinnati. They asked the kids, "What do you think most about?" And all their answers, everything, was about slavery. It just dominated everything. Even their school work.
So, yeah, white abolitionists, they did amazing work, no question. But black abolitionists, they were, like, the backbone of the whole movement.
Even with all this, it wasn't always easy. Blacks were constantly dealing with, you know, the underlying racism, even from the white abolitionists. Douglass started his own newspaper, The North Star, and it actually led to a split with Garrison. Black abolitionists, they really felt the need to lead the movement themselves and have their own voice.
And imagine, black women? They had to deal with being abolitionists, being black in a white reform movement, and being women in a movement often run by men. Sojourner Truth, wow. At a Women's Rights Convention, she took to the stage while there was a riotous crowd and said, "I know it kinda feels like hissing is what you want to do at a colored woman talking about things and women’s rights, but we're here and we ain’t going nowhere."
Okay, so then you have John Brown. I mean, what a character! He was this white guy who planned to, like, seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and start a slave revolt. Harriet Tubman, you know, she was involved, but she got sick. Frederick Douglass, he met with Brown. He thought the plan was nuts but admired the guy's courage.
And Douglass was right. The plan didn't work. Brown and his men got surrounded by the militia and, like, a hundred marines led by Robert E. Lee. Brown refused to surrender. Du Bois writes, just picture this: a blood-covered old man lying in the dirt, interrogated by the governor, and he just says, "You better prepare for a settlement of this question... the Negro question. The end is not yet."
Du Bois basically says that the huge reaction to Brown's raid proved it wasn't as small as people said. If it was, they wouldn’t have reacted so strongly.
Brown knew he was going to die, and said the crimes of this country would be purged with blood. Emerson said the execution would make the gallows holy.
One of Brown's men, John Copeland, wrote to his parents, and he said they shouldn’t feel sorrow for his impending death.
So, the government, they ended up executing John Brown. But here's the thing: this was the same government that, like, weakly enforced laws against the slave trade but was super strict about returning runaway slaves. The same government that stopped abolitionist mail from going to the South. The same Supreme Court that said Dred Scott wasn't a person, just property. That government would never just let slavery end by rebellion. It would only end slavery on its own terms.
Enter Abraham Lincoln. He was able to kinda bring together the needs of the business elite, the ambitions of the Republican party, and, you know, just enough humanitarianism. He wasn't gonna put abolition at the *very* top of the list, but he wasn't gonna let it fall too far down.
Lincoln could argue morally against slavery, but, he was very cautious in politics. He didn't even publicly denounce the Fugitive Slave Law. He said he hated seeing the poor people being hunted down, but he’d just bite his lip and keep quiet. And, he didn't see black people as equal to white people.
And during his campaign for Senate, he would say different things depending on his audience. In the North, he would talk about how we need to discard this idea of some races being inferior to others. But, in the South, he would say he's not in favor of social and political equality and thinks that the white race should be superior.
Ultimately, the South’s secession from the Union wasn't really about slavery itself. Most northerners just didn’t care *that* much about slavery. It was more of a clash of economic elites. The North wanted free land, free labor, free markets. The South, they saw Lincoln and the Republicans as a threat to their whole way of life.
Lincoln started the war by trying to retake Fort Sumter.
And, like, his first Inaugural Address? He said he wasn't going to interfere with slavery where it already existed. He even overturned an order freeing slaves of owners resisting the U.S. He didn’t want to lose the slave states still in the Union. He starts to act against slavery only as the war dragged on and he needs to win. Someone said, like, they watered him so he’d grow.
Even in the North, you know, racism was still a big deal. Blacks in New York, they couldn’t even vote unless they owned a bunch of property. And there was a proposal to get rid of that requirement, but it got voted down.
There were some people, like Wendell Phillips, who saw potential in Lincoln, even with all his flaws. “He’s just a pawn now, but we can change him into something better!”
Congress even said that the war wasn’t waged to overthrow slavery, it was waged to preserve the Union.
And by 1862, emancipation petitions were pouring into Congress. Congress passed a Confiscation Act, which let them free slaves of people fighting the Union, but, they didn’t enforce it.
Greeley basically said that Lincoln was missing the opportunity to win the war. "We need blacks to help us out, so free them!"
And, Lincoln responded basically saying that his goal was to save the Union. He would free slaves if that helped, and he wouldn’t if that didn’t. It was about the Union, not about slavery.
And when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, it declared slaves free only in areas still fighting the Union.
But even though it had its limitations, the Proclamation did spur the antislavery movement. In the summer of 1864, 400,000 signatures went to Congress asking for legislation to end slavery. Congress ended up adopting the Thirteenth Amendment declaring an end to slavery.
And, after the Proclamation, blacks could join the Union army.
But the more blacks got involved, the more it seemed like the war was *for* their liberation. And, there was a backlash. In the North, you had poor whites resenting that they were being drafted for a war to end slavery that the rich could just buy their way out of. And the draft riots in 1863 became basically a race riot against blacks.
The war ended up being super bloody.
Du Bois pointed out that the enslaved people had a certain power in their hands. If they stopped working, the Confederacy would starve. If they walked into Federal camps, it would show the doubters in the North that they could be useful to the cause.
The black women also played a significant role in the war towards the end.
And, you hear people say that the reason that black acceptance of slavery is proven is because more slaves didn’t run away when they had opportunities. But, half a million actually did.
By 1865, that people realized that they were operating under a delusion when they thought the slaves were content and happy with the status quo.
There were some special moments during the war. In one story, Robert Smalls and other blacks took over a steamship and sailed it to the Union navy.
But, most just kept working and waited for opportunity to come.
By the end of the war, there were 200,000 blacks in the Union Army and Navy.
Blacks in the Union Army and cities give a hint of how limited emancipation would be. Off-duty black soldiers were attacked in the North. And in the Army, black soldiers were used for the heaviest and dirtiest work, and they didn’t get paid as much as the white soldiers.
Late in the war, a black Sergeant, William Walker, ordered his men to stack arms and resign to protest the unequal pay. He got court-martialed and shot for mutiny.
The confederacy then came to realize that it needed to enlist the help of the slaves. But, the war ended before it was able to have a significant impact.
Former slaves had a variety of experiences. Some people had an instant celebration, while others just quietly gave thanks to God.
Many understood that their status after the war would depend on owning land. One black man wrote about how the land was the inheritance of Americans of African descent because of the labor that the ancestors put in under slavery.
But, abandoned plantations were leased to former planters and other northerners.
Some land was sold at auction, but blacks couldn’t afford to buy it.
The government also restored land to confederate owners and forced the freedmen off of it.
So, the slaves were made serfs and chained to the soil. The freedmen felt that this was the freedom that they acquired from the Yankee.
One guy stated that Lincoln didn’t do anything because we still had to depend on the southern white man for food, clothing, and work.
The government had originally fought the slave states in 1861 not to end slavery, but to retain the territory and market and resources.
After the Civil War, the South had a legal framework. The 13th amendment ended slavery. The 14th amendment repudiated the Dred Scott decision by declaring that everyone born in the US were citizens. And the 15th amendment gave the right to vote no matter your color or previous condition of servitude.
Congress passed some laws making it a crime to deprive blacks of their rights.
They voted, formed political organizations, and began to express themselves forcefully on issues.
But Andrew Jackson vetoed bills to help blacks.
Southern states enacted “black codes,” which made the freed slaves work on the plantations like serfs. For example, Mississippi made it illegal for freedmen to rent or lease farmland.
Jackson clashed with senators and congressmen, who wanted equal rights for the freedman. These members succeeded in impeaching Jackson in 1868, but the Senate fell one vote short of the votes required to remove him.
Whatever northern politicians were doing, southern blacks were determined to make the most of their freedom, despite lack of land and resources. They began asserting their independence from whites, forming their own churches, becoming politically active, and strengthening their family ties.
Blacks were elected to southern legislatures, but a propaganda campaign tried to make them seem inept, lazy, corrupt, and ruinous. There was corruption, but not like they were worse that any other political group.
The public debt increased after the start of the new legislature in South Carolina, but the new legislature introduced free public schools for the first time.
Black voting after 1869 resulted in black members of the US Senate, and congressmen.
There were many black leaders in the postwar South. Henry MacNeal Turner, who was elected to the first postwar legislature of Georgia, expressed that he wasn’t here to beg for rights, he was here to demand it. He said the scene today is unparalleled in the history of the world because there has never been a person charged with the offense of being a darker hue that his fellow-men.
One former slave that went to school after the war expressed that the reason that white people are different from them is because of money, and they got that money off of them and stole it.
After the war, black women helped rebuild the South. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper described that women were the mainstay in supporting the family, and that they did two-thirds of the truck gardening.
Some women also expressed that if black men get their rights, then they will be masters over the women.
Black men could now vote and hold office, but so long as the negro remained dependent on whites for work, the vote could be bought. Laws calling for equal treatment became meaningless.
The southern white oligarchy used its economic power to organize the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups.
Violence mounted as the Ku Klux Klan organized raids, lynchings, and beatings.
A Negro blacksmith was shot at and fought back, killing the other man. He was acquitted in the court, which was the first time a black person killed a white person and went free after a trial. But then he was shot later on.
The government became less enthusiastic about defending blacks and even allowed violence to take place. The Supreme Court began to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in a way that made it impotent for racial equality.
In 1883, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was nullified by the Supreme Court. There was an argument that people should be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.
There was a remarkable dissent on the supreme court by John Harlan, who was a former slaveowner, who said there was constitutional justification for banning private discrimination. He then argued that discrimination was a badge of slavery and similarly outlawable. He pointed also to the clause saying that anyone born in the United States was a citizen.
The Supreme court then ruled that a railroad could segregate black and white if the segregated facilities were equal. It could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social equality.
Harlan again dissented: "Our Constitution is color-blind…"
President Hayes reached an agreement to remove Union troops from the South, the last military obstacle to the reestablishment of white supremacy.
The South was induced to combine with the Northern conservatives and become a prop instead of a menace to the new capitalist order.
The new capitalists were looking for appropriation and subsidies, which were sought with the backing of poor white farmers who wanted railroads and flood control. They didn’t yet understand how this would be used to exploit them.
As a first act of the new North-South capitalist cooperation, the Southern Homestead Act was repealed. This let lumbermen and absentee speculators buy up much of the land.
Bond’s study of Alabama Reconstruction says that accumulation of capital and the men who controlled them, were as unaffected by prejudices as it is possible to be. Those who sought profit turned other men’s prejudices to their own account and did so with skill and acumen.
Coal and iron were now plentiful. Northern bankers had known this for almost two decades, the only thing lacking was transportation.
Northern capital then started to direct southern railroad lines.
An editor of the Atlanta Constitution spoke that it was a new era of peace and prosperity. The Negro was now a laboring class that had the fullest protection of laws.
Northern capitalists were convinced of the immense profits to be gained from the development of resources in Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia.
Northern men no longer denounce the suppression of the Negro vote. The necessity of it is recognized.
Images of the Negro came mostly from white writers who depicted them as monsters.
In this atmosphere, Booker T. Washington urged black political passivity, and that they just be farmers, mechanics, and servants. He said that it was folly to agitate social equality.
A young black editor testified before a Senate committee about the situation of the Negro and widespread poverty. He said the average wage of Negro farm laborers was about 50 cents a day, paid in “orders,” not money, so it could only be used at a store controlled by the planter.
Many Negroes then fled the South for Kansas.
There were black leaders who thought Washington was wrong in advocating for caution. Another black man, John Hope, said that if they are not striving for equality, then what are they living for?
W. E. B. Du Bois saw that the late-nineteenth-century betrayal of the Negro was part of a larger process of exploitation and bribery taking place in all “civilized” countries.
Is the world blinded with tears and blood? As there began to rise in America in 1876, a new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor.