Free Negro
Like them, the mainland colonies rapidly increased restrictions that defined slavery as a racial caste associated with African ethnicity.
Slaves were sometimes allowed to buy their freedom; they might be permitted to save money from fees paid when they were "hired out" to work for other parties.
Beginning with the 1775 proclamation of Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, the British recruited slaves of American revolutionaries to their armed forces and promised them freedom in return.
The Continental Army gradually also began to allow blacks to fight, giving them promises of freedom in return for their service.
The spread of cotton cultivation in the Deep South drove up the demand for slaves after 1810, and the number of manumissions dropped after this period.
[16]: 72 [17] While free, blacks often had to struggle with reduced civil rights, such as restrictions on voting, as well as racism, segregation, or physical violence.
[16]: 77 The rights of free blacks fluctuated and waned with the gradual rise in power among poor white men during the late 1820s and early 1830s.
[16]: 80 The National Negro Convention movement began in 1830, with black men holding regular meetings to discuss the future of the black "race" in America; some women such as Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth made their voices heard through public lecturing.
These efforts were met with resistance, however, as the early 19th century brought renewed anti-black sentiment after the spirit of the Revolution began to die down.
Congress adopted legislation that favored slaveholders, such as permitting slavery in territories as the nation began to expand to the West.
Famous fugitives such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth gained the support of white abolitionists to purchase their freedom, to avoid being captured and returned to the South and slavery.
[16]: 84–85 In 1857, the ruling of Dred Scott v. Sandford effectively denied citizenship to black people of any status.
Under President Abraham Lincoln, Congress passed several laws to aid blacks to gain a semblance of freedom during the American Civil War; the Confiscation Act of 1861 allowed fugitive slaves who escaped to behind Union lines to remain free, as the military declared them part of "contraband" from the war and refused to return them to slaveholders; the Confiscation Act of 1862 guaranteed both fugitive slaves and their families everlasting freedom, and the Militia Act allowed black men to enroll in military service.
Black men were officially admitted to serve in the Union Army and the United States Colored Troops were organized.
[16]: 70 In 1865, the Union won the Civil War, and states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery (except as punishment for a crime) throughout the entire country.
Those in the Upper South were more numerous: the 1860 census showed only 144 free Negroes in Arkansas, 773 in Mississippi, and 932 in Florida, while in Maryland there were 83,942; in Virginia, 58,042; in North Carolina, 30,463; and in Louisiana, 18,647.
In Florida, for example, the legislation of 1827 and 1828 prohibited them from joining public gatherings and "giving seditious speeches", and laws of 1825, 1828, and 1833 ended their right to carry firearms.
[29]: 119 "In 1861, an act was passed requiring all free Negroes in Florida to register with the judge of probate in whose county they resided.
Some returned after the Civil War to participate in the Reconstruction Era, establishing businesses and being elected to political office.
Black people were thus perceived as members of an inferior race, as God had seemingly allowed the elite class to exploit the slave trade without any hint that he might be planning any sort of divine retribution.
A South Carolina judge editorialized in an 1832 case:[36] Free negroes belong to a degraded caste of society; they are in no respect on an equality with a white man.
According to their condition they ought by law to be compelled to demean themselves as inferiors, from whom submission and respect to the whites, in all their intercourse in society, is demanded; I have always thought and while on the circuit ruled that words of impertinence and insolence addressed by a free negro to a white man, would justify an assault and battery.Free Black people could not enter many professional occupations, such as medicine and law, because they were barred from the necessary education.
Exceptions to these limitations existed, as with physicians Sarah Parker Remond and Martin Delany in Louisville, Kentucky.
[37] The 1830s saw a significant effort by white communities to oppose Black people's education, coinciding with the emergence of public schooling in northern American society.
[41] While free Black boys could become apprentices to carpenters, coopers, barbers, and blacksmiths, girls' options were much more limited, confined to domestic work such as being cooks, cleaning women, seamstresses, and child-nurturers.
[44] Many free African American families in colonial North Carolina and Virginia became landowners and some also became slave owners.
[45][46] Free Black people drew up petitions and joined the army during the American Revolution, motivated by the common hope of freedom.
Southern free Black people who fought on the Confederate side were hoping to gain a greater degree of tolerance and acceptance among their white neighbors.
[52] These black women hoped to remain financially independent both for themselves and for the sake of protecting their children from Missouri's restrictive laws.
From 1832 to 1837, the story of Margaret Morgan and her family presents a prime example of the danger to free blacks from the ambiguous legal definitions of their status.
