In Hope of Liberty: Culture, Community and Protest among Northern Free Blacks, 1700-1860

353 Pages·1998·22.86 MB·English

by  James Oliver Horton

In Hope of Liberty
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In Hope of Liberty
Culture, Community, and Protest
Among Northern Free Blacks,
1700-1860
James Oliver Horton
Lois E. Horton
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
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Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
First published in 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1998
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Horton, James Oliver.
In hope of liberty : culture, community,
and protest among northern free Blacks, 1700-1860 /
James Oliver Horton, Lois E. Horton
p. cm. Includes index.
ISBN 0-19-504732-X
ISBN 0-19-512465-0 (pbk.)
1. Afro-Americans—History—To 1863.
2. Free Afro-Americans—History.
I. Horton, Lois E. II. Title.
E185.H644 1966 973'.0496073—dc20 95-46427
3 5 7 9 8 64
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Acknowledgments
R
esearching and writing this book has been time consuming, frus-
trating, occasionally intimidating, and constantly challenging and
rewarding. It began as a simple survey of northern black community life
in the antebellum years of the nineteenth century, an extension of our ear-
lier book on Boston's free black community. Though we started with a
straightforward design, the complex and more expansive questions that
arose during the years of our research transformed the project into a much
longer perspective on African-American life, race, and the American cul-
ture that unfolded by the time of the Civil War. The many types of
research, variety of sources, and search for often obscure information that
this undertaking demanded was daunting and sometimes overwhelming. It
could not have been accomplished without the assistance of a great many
colleagues who shared their work with us and the guidance of the many
professional librarians and archivists who helped us negotiate our way
through manuscript collections. Librarians, historians and archivists in
research institutions too numerous to mention individually provided us
with advice on sources and special collections, pointed us to local author-
ities, and helped make our research travel productive. Historical societies
in large cities and small towns offered their materials and research support.
We are greatly indebted to the dedicated women and men who staff these
research centers for their time, their expertise, and their encouragement.
A legion of friends, colleagues, and family members cheered us at criti-
cal moments, and offered advice and comments. Christine Berry, Michael
James Horton, and Nancy L. Smith read portions of the manuscript and
made valuable suggestions. Ira Berlin, Stanley Engerman, David Blight,
Shane White, Vernon Burton, Marie Tyler-McGraw, and Idus A. Newby
read the manuscript closely at various stages and helped us shape our
thoughts and argument. The interpretations of broad issues in this book
owe much to their work and to their perceptive questions and observations.
We have profited greatly from Roger Kennedy's encouragement, intellec-
tual support, and wealth of historical reflections. W Jeffery Bolster and his
studies expanded our appreciation for the importance of black seafaring
vi Acknowledgments
and the role of sailors as information carriers. Reginald Butler, Patrick Rael, and
Shannon Barker read various chapters and contributed to our conceptualization
of the cultural interaction between black and white Americans during the Jack-
sonian period. Manuela Thurner was a diligent researcher and a perceptive
reader and critic. Anthony Tucker provided invaluable assistance with the analy-
sis of computerized data. John Vlach generously provided us with archival data
from the Parting Ways Project at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Jennifer Williams,
Melissa McLoud, Cynthia Stout, Jeanne Houck, Amy Bowles, Michele Gates-
Moresi, and Anna Speicher provided important research and editorial assis-
tance.
We gratefully acknowledge funding provided to this project through grants
from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Scholarly Studies Pro-
gram of the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American His-
tory of the Smithsonian Institution, and Lionel Pincus. George Washington
University and George Mason University provided faculty research grants and
were generous in granting necessary leave time for our writing.
We also wish to acknowledge our indebtedness to the great body of scholar-
ship in African-American History on which this study rests, work produced
over the last generation by scholars such as John Hope Franklin, Benjamin
Quarles, Leon Litwack, Herbert Gutman, Gary Nash, Lawrence Levine, John
Blassingame, Jacqueline Jones, and Ira Berlin. Our editor, Nancy Lane, dis-
played unimaginable patience and faith over the life of this project, especially
during its last decade. To a special group of friends, Raymond Arsenault,
Mitchell Snay, Frederick Hoxie, and (many dinners later) Stephen J. Whitfield,
we give thanks for their encouragement, enthusiasm, criticism, insistence on
high intellectual standards, and a quarter of a century of friendship.
Contents
Introduction ix
1. Slavery and Slave Trading in the Colonial North 3
2. Culture, Race, and Class in the Colonial North 30
3. Revolution and the Abolition of Northern Slavery 55
4. A Life in Freedom: The Evolution of Family 77
and Household
5. Coping with Urban Life: Poverty, Work, 101
and Regional Differences
6. Sustaining and Serving the Community: 125
Building Institutions for Social and Spiritual Welfare
7. Culture, Politics, and the Issue of African-American 155
Identity
8. Ambivalent Identity: Colonization and the Question 177
of Emigration
9. The Growth of the Antebellum Antislavery 203
Movement
10. The Widening Struggle, Growing Militancy, 237
and the Hope of Liberty for All
Epilogue 269
Notes 271
Index 325
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Introduction
T
he story of African Americans is deeply embedded in the history of
America. It simultaneously provides an alternative viewpoint and
experience, and a commentary on the nation's social, political, and econo-
mic development. It both illustrates and contradicts the promise of
America—the principles embodied in the nation's founding documents.
Africans were among the first nonindigenous peoples to settle in British
North America. Their cultures, with characteristic beliefs, values, lan-
guages, music, and aesthetic styles, blended from the beginning with
Native American and European cultures to create a distinctive American
culture. During the same time, African-American culture evolved as a
unique variation on the American theme, blending a greater admixture of
African cultures than other American variations and shaping black com-
munities with common approaches to the joys and pains of daily life. In
the eight generations between 1700 and 1860, African-American culture
became more American and American culture became more African.
Typically, African Americans stressed cooperative organization centered
on extended and expanded families and households, the importance of
self-determination and personal dignity, mutual aid, and shared responsi-
bility for the progress of the race.1
Although a few Africans came to America as free people, and some
African Americans gained their freedom early in our country's history,
the vast majority were brought as slaves, and most of their descendants
remained in slavery for hundreds of years. The slave labor system was an
integral part of the economy in nearly all the colonies and into the early
national period in some northern states; it was the foundation of the
economy in the South until the Civil War. Slavery was the basis of much
of the nation's wealth and the source of untold suffering for tens of mil-
lions of people. For African Americans and sympathetic whites, slavery
and the racism that justified it gave the lie to America's rhetoric of liberty
and equality. The elimination of slavery was among the primary aims of
virtually all black community organizations, including churches, schools,
fraternal organizations and mutual aid societies. Black people's claim to