Transcript
SLAVERY AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA
Episode 2: "Liberty in the Air"

 



 

 



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Juniper and Thomas Jefferson

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At Shadwell -- a tobacco plantation in the Piedmont region of Virginia -- two young boys are growing up together. Jupiter was born a slave. The other, Thomas Jefferson, would one day be president of a new republic. Jupiter was one of more than sixty slaves who sustained Jefferson's family.

Ira Berlin: A new generation of black people -- of slaves is coming of age. These are people who are born on this side of the Atlantic. These are people who know how to operate within the society.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: When Thomas Jefferson went off to study the classics, Jupiter was trained to be Jefferson's personal valet. That training would include sophisticated lessons in psychology and power.

Jennifer Morgan: Certainly as he grew up one of the things that he was gonna have to learn is that a boy who is his same age, Thomas Jefferson's, is going to grow up to be his owner, is gonna grow up to be his master.

Ira Berlin: He came to understand something about the politics of that world... The word liberty of course would come to be used much in the years that followed. And his own owner, Thomas Jefferson became a great merchant of the language of liberty. Jupiter understood that as well.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Jupiter's status and work conditions were privileged compared to most other slaves at Shadwell. But for all of them -- including Jupiter -- it would be endless work, from sun-up to sundown and beyond.

Norrece Jones: And all of them also would have experienced a punishment. The severity of the lashings, the cutting off of ears, the kind of contraptions that are placed around people to prevent running away. All of these tortuous weapons are realities that enslaved people everywhere would have experienced.

Jennifer Morgan: Jupiter, like any child, would also have to deal with the fact that while his parents have authority over him their authority is secondary to the authority of the slave owner. He might have to witness his mother being schooled by her owner. He would have to watch his mother being punished, being whipped or being raped.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In this lopsided balance of power slaves found ingenious ways to resist the master. Some subtle, some overt, some suicidal.

Peter Wood: Arson was one of the primary forms of resistance because it was hard to track. Poisoning was another. Running away was another because you were literally stealing property from the master if you ran away.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A runaway ad in 1746 describes sixteen-year-old Stephen Thusly. He has been "much whipped, which his back will show..." Another ad describes Peter, as Virginia born, running away with iron shackles on his legs...

Thomas Davis: ... Day after day slaves are refusing to obey. They are saying listen we have our own lives. We will not go that far. We will not submit totally.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Slave and master knew each other well. Using this familiarity slaves constantly tested the boundaries. They negotiated with their masters for more time to work on their own gardens or to sell and trade produce they cultivated.

Ira Berlin: It would seem that somebody who's a slave would have no power and would have nothing to negotiate. But slaves found that they could negotiate. They danced the dance of domination and subordination.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One of the most profound forms of resistance was the preservation of African religions, values, and beliefs.

Sylvia R. Frey: What it did is create an internal universe, which is separate and apart from and beyond the control of a white master.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Yet something else was emerging.

Jennifer Morgan: The first generation of American born descendants of Africans are really in the process of creating something that has a very strong link to Africa but which is really quite new.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: On plantations new African arrivals mixed with American born slaves to shape a new culture.

Peter Wood: The Jefferson family may have a violin from Europe. And someone plays that fiddle. ... Jupiter's family from Africa knows how to make banjos. In fact Thomas Jefferson himself writes about how the banjo is an African instrument. Originally in Africa they often made it using a big gourd...so this is complicated coming together of different cultures not just Europe and Africa but varieties of West African cultures. On any given plantation any given young person like Jupiter is experiencing all these forces.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: For Jupiter growing to adulthood it was a double life. When Jefferson went off to college in Williamsburg, Jupiter accompanied him as his valet. When Jefferson went to court his future wife at her father's plantation, Jupiter would find his future wife enslaved there. They would all end up at Monticello, Jefferson's mansion in rural Virginia.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As slaves began forming extended families the slave quarter became the center of family life.

Norrece Jones: They, like any other human beings free or un-free, a thousand years ago or today, have the emotions of any other people. They fall in love, they hate others, they develop friendships and how to do this within the milieu of slavery simply made those very human realities more difficult and more challenging, but they existed.

Jennifer Morgan: ... Networks of love and affection and connection between the enslaved have got to be really crucial to surviving the experience of slavery ... to surviving it on an emotional level as well as a physical level.

Norrece Jones: But in the creation of those families it gave their owners yet another weapon to force them to behave in ways that they wanted.

Jennifer Morgan: What this community then becomes is the foundation for an internal slave trade where these children a ... these families will be separated in the future.

Peter Wood: ... It's almost unimaginable the tragedy of seeing next of kin simply removed, disappeared, shipped somewhere else. The sheer mind boggling excruciating situation of dealing with arbitrary power on a daily basis not knowing when you wake up in the morning whether the family will be complete when you go to bed at night.

Peter Wood: If you look at the runaway advertisements in the colonial newspapers what's striking is that roughly half of the people are running away to see kinfolk, to see loved ones.

 

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April 1775

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: April 1775. Open warfare broke out. Black people began choosing sides. In the North some 5,000 black men joined in mixed and all black regiments to fight on the side of the patriots some fought as minutemen in the earliest battles of the war. Black soldiers were badly needed because some white colonists were reluctant to serve. Initially, General Washington resisted arming black men.

Sylvia R. Frey: For white Americans everywhere the image of a black soldier toting a gun evokes a totally disordered society -- complete disordering of the old society.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Washington relented when he heard what was happening further south. Word was spreading that the British were going to offer freedom to slaves who joined their side.

Sylvia R. Frey: In November of 1775 Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering freedom to enslaved people who fled to the British who joined his Ethiopian corp.

Peter Wood: It has a tremendous effect and word spreads to other colonies.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: It was the rumor of Lord Dunmore's proclamation that probably inspired Titus to run away. After a stint in Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment Titus returned to the Monmouth New Jersey countryside. This time, he was leading a guerilla band of black and white raiders fighting for the British. Only now he was known as Colonel Tye. Colonel Tye and his band knew the landscape and the farmers in the region. They raided property and carried off cattle and clothing to deliver to British troops. They terrorized their former owners and kidnapped key patriot farmers most importantly they liberated their enslaved families and friends.

Russell Hodges: New York was the cockpit of the revolution. Colonel Tye was somebody who was acting on a local level but his actions had continental importance.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: During a battle in September, 1780, Colonel Tye took a bullet in his wrist. Within days he died. Only 26 years old, he had fought in the revolution for five years.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Dunmore's offer of freedom coupled with the chaos of war led to a mass exodus from Southern plantations. Tens of thousands of slaves responded with their feet. The risks were huge.

Peter Wood: There are tragic stories in Chesapeake Bay. Word is out that you can get on board a British ship. So you gather your family eight or ten people in a small boat you row out to the boat that's flying a British flag only to find out that it's a hoax that the patriots have run up a British flag in order to lure you on board arrest you punish you and send you back to the plantation. It's stories like that that break your heart.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Those slaves that reached the British forces were assigned the most arduous tasks -- building fortifications, hauling heavy equipment, digging ditches. They lived in miserable conditions in military camps and died by the thousands of smallpox.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: At the end of the war, thousands of former slaves were transported to freedom by the British. Many others were freed by fighting for the patriots. No other event until the civil war would liberate so many slaves.

Jim Horton: The point in all this is that whether African Americans fought for the American cause or whether they fought for the British cause they were fighting for the central cause of freedom. That's what African Americans were fighting for. For them the revolution really was a freedom struggle.

Voice Over: All men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties.

 

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: As the war was coming to an end, colonies began to write new constitutions. In 1780 the Massachusetts constitution was read aloud in every village including Sheffield where Mum Bett did errands. Soon after, Mum Bett knocked on the door of attorney Theodore Sedgwick. She knew him from the meetings at the Ashley house.

Thomas Davis: She overheard Ashley and his colleagues talking about the rhetoric of independence. Talking about natural rights.

Thomas Davis: Mum Bett essentially says we have this constitution that appears to announce a principle of each person being free. If that is the case then I am free.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Her meeting with Sedgwick led to a court suit in which Mum Bett and another slave of the household sued Colonel Ashley for their freedom.

John Sedgwick: It wasn't just Theodore John Sedgwick going against Colonel Ashley, he hired (Theodore did) some of the best legal talent that could be found in the whole Southern New England.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1781 Mum Bett won her case and announced that she would thereafter be known as Elizabeth Freeman. Her victory helped pave the way for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts two years later.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: During the long hot summer of 1787 enslaved coachmen waited outside independence hall in Philadelphia -- inside their owners forged a constitution for the new republic.

Peter Wood: The issue that was hardest for them to address was the issue of slavery and they simply postponed it all through that hot summer 'til the very end of their debates. And they finally brought it up and addressed it.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Most delegates -- north and south -- never considered eliminating slavery. It was clear any attempt at abolition would have ended the effort to create the United States. While the deals around slavery would shape the national debate for the next seventy years the words slave or slavery never appear in this founding document.

Jim Horton: Now they do refer to the institution in several indirect ways. There is the notion that the slave trade will not be abolished for at least 20 years. There is the notion that a person who owes service to a master in one state cannot escape that service by removing himself to another state. Now that's kind of a Fugitive Slave clause but they don't use the word slave or slavery.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The most politically significant deal embraced by the constitution was the three fifths-clause. It allowed states to count their enslaved population as three fifths of a person in determining representation in congress.

Jim Horton: So the fact is that from the south's point of view they are getting additional political power as a result of their slave population. Except for the three-fifths compromise Jefferson would have lost that election in 1800. But the slaves are not being represented. The slaves get nothing from this.

Peter Wood: And the republic that's created pays the price for that over the next many, many generations.
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The Great Awakening

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Black people were betrayed by the new constitution. But if doors were shutting, they now looked for windows to open. Ninety percent of blacks were still enslaved. But in Northern cities freed black communities were organizing themselves. In Southern cities black artisans were buying their freedom. Both groups ignited an emancipation movement. It began with the founding of the first black Christian churches.

Sylvia R. Frey: It reinforced family and community. It provided the opportunity for men and women to exercise leadership roles.

 

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Blacks had been slow to accept a religion that they associated with slavery and their masters, but in the mid-18th century a protestant revival movement called the great awakening introduced a more democratic and expressive form of Christianity and some blacks caught the spirit.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Some slave owners -- inspired by the values of the great awakening and the principles of the new nation -- began to free their slaves. Not Thomas Jefferson. In the 1780's Jefferson published his only book -- NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. In it he argued against this "great political and moral evil" of slavery yet at the same time he wrote that blacks were mentally inferior to whites.

Jefferson quote from NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA:
"... It appears to me in memory they are equal; to whites, In reason much inferior."

Thomas Davis: He suggests that they're not as bright as smart, as intellectually gifted.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Jefferson's theories fueled both sides of the slavery debate. And while he wrote that black people should be free, he never used his power to free them, including during his presidency. Instead he supported shipping former slaves to Africa.

Thomas Davis: Jefferson apparently believed that you cannot have emancipation without having colonization. Which is to say that we can't just let them be free here. That won't work. So if we are going to emancipate them we have to send them somewhere else.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: While some blacks supported colonization most leaders in the freed black communities of the north denounced the idea.

Jim Horton: You know one of the things that these free blacks said is "I'm a citizen of the United States. My father my grandfather fought in the American Revolution to bring this nation into existence. I have as much right to be in America, to live in America as anybody here."

 

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: The generation of blacks born in the late 18th century were raised on the promises of the revolution and the frustrations of its aftermath. Among them was David Walker. Brought up in the south, Walker would move north to take the emerging abolitionist movement to another level. Walker was born free in the 1790s in Wilmington, North Carolina. He probably learned to read and write in one of Wilmington's first black Christian churches.

Jim Horton: These are places, which are not only religious places. These are places where political decisions are made, political meetings are held.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: By roughly 1820 David Walker made his way to Charleston. There he was exposed to the ideas of Denmark Vesey. A freed carpenter, Vesey was a leader in the new African Methodist Episcopal church.

Peter Hinks: David Walker learns from Denmark Vesey that the bible could be a very, very important tool in giving blacks a strength to resist their enslavement. And he sees how the church in Charleston could be a center for organizing blacks just in terms of numbers and also ideologically rallying them.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Vesey like many blacks -- enslaved and free -- had also digested the news about the Haitian revolution -- the slave rebellion which created the first black republic. By 1822 -- while David Walker was in Charleston -- Vesey was organizing a massive rebellion. But someone leaked it. And Vesey -- along with more than 30 others -- was executed.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: After that failed rebellion, Walker made his way to Boston. There he would discover not only a virulent racism against black men and women, but a growing political consciousness in the freed black community. In 1820s Boston, Walker became a leading voice in local black churches and organizations...

Jim Horton: He is a member of the Massachusetts Colored Association. ...a black society specifically focused on abolition.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In 1829 Walker sat down to distill his experiences, his analysis of slavery and his rage. He wrote what came to be known as the most important abolitionist document of the nineteenth century. He called it AN APPEAL TO THE COLORED CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America.

Carla Peterson: This is an amazing document and we can take it as the first maybe expression of Black Nationalism in this country. And basically this is a verbal call to arms asking the African-American community to come together and empower itself.

Walker's voice: America is more our country than it is the whites. We have enriched it with our blood and tears.

Thomas Davis: The appeal itself lays out the full history of argument against slavery, against slaveholding.

Walker's voice: Oh, my colored brethren -- all over the world! When shall we arise from this death-like apathy? And be Men!!

Thomas Davis: More than that it is addressed to the colored people of America saying to them that they have a single aspiration and that single aspiration is freedom.

Walker's voice: We must and shall be free.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Walker modeled the appeal on the constitution and he drew from the Declaration of Independence and the bible.

Jim Horton: He says Jefferson and America are hypocrites.

Walker's voice: See your Declaration Americans! Do you understand your own language?

Jim Horton: He says that America is not doing what it professes to do. It is not expressing the values that it says it believes in.

Walker's voice: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal" -- compare your own language above extracted from your Declaration of Independence, with your cruelties and murders.

Jim Horton: He says Christians are not living up to the values of Christianity.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the appeal Walker directly confronts Jefferson's arguments about black people in his notes on the state of Virginia.

Walker's voice: Has Mr. Jefferson declared to the world that we are inferior to the whites?

Peter Hinks: He believed that racism had become so insidious that it was profoundly demoralizing blacks making them incapable of acting against the terrible oppression which weighed on them. ...and his hope was that the APPEAL would serve to motivate African Americans to fight that.

Walker's voice: We can help ourselves

Thomas Davis: One of the tremendous elements of David Walker's APPEAL is his reach into the psyche of blacks. To say first and foremost that we need to think together as a people, but also to focus on the individual. And in as sense to say change begins with you. And you must begin to think differently. Not only to think of us collectively as a single people sharing an ultimate aim of freedom but to think of yourself differently -- to think of yourself as an agent of freedom.

Thomas Davis: And what Walker does in his APPEAL in 1829 is to say "listen if emancipation is not forthcoming blood will flow, oceans and oceans of blood."

Walker's voice: I call God! I call Angels! I call men! To witness that your destruction is at hand!

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Walker distributed his APPEAL up and down the Atlantic seaboard. He mailed copies to ministers who would read it to the illiterate. The APPEAL was even discovered in the hands of runaways in North Carolina.

Peter Hinks: Black activists in the 1830s talk of gathering with others in their communities to have the APPEAL read to them, to fire them , to give them increased inspiration to continue on with their struggle and to help them understand what it was they were fighting.

Jim Horton: As you might well imagine this is shocking and frightening to slave holders. Immediately many Southern states put out bounties on David Walker' head. They want David Walker delivered from Massachusetts to a variety of places in the south.

Jim Horton: 'Course Southern slaveholders were well aware that there had been many slave rebellions and attempted rebellions all along but this was particularly frightening because it was an appeal issued by a free black man outside of the south. In other words -- outside of the direct control of slaveholders.

 

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Morgan Freeman, Narrator: One of the people who responded to Walker's charge was the young Maria Stewart who in 1826 married a free and successful Boston shipping agent. Born free, Maria was orphaned at age five and immediately sent into domestic service. She probably learned to read and write in a black church.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Three years after her wedding to James Stewart, he died.

Carla Peterson: And although he had been fairly prosperous it turns out that upon his death he had been defrauded by some white businessmen who were his colleagues. And so Maria Stewart was not only widowed but also left destitute.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: A year later she received more devastating news. Her mentor, David Walker, was found dead in his Boston doorway.

Jim Horton: There is reason to believe that he may have been assassinated by someone operating on behalf of those people who were felt directly threatened by his appeal for slave rebellion.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: His compounding losses sparked a religious conversion with political implications.

Carla Peterson: She sees herself as picking up the torch from David Walker and carrying his work forward.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Stewart began to write -- and speak in public.

Marilyn Richardson: You see her speaking things such as "I committed myself to a life of virtue and piety and I understood that I might be a warrior and a martyr for the cause of God and my brethren." Well virtue and piety are perfectly reasonable. It was a woman's sphere it was not a radical position at all. But then in the same sentence the same sentence here come the words warrior and martyr and God and my brethren. And then she goes right on to say all of the nations of the world are crying out for freedom and independence. And can the sons of Africa, remain silent under the heal of tyranny. . And it's unprecedented in African-American intellectual history.

Stewart's voice: Why should man any longer deprive his fellow man of equal rights and privileges?

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Maria Stewart was the first American woman to address a mixed audience of men and women about political issues. In it's time, it was a bold and controversial act.

Stewart's voice: Stewart's voice -- Possess the spirit of independence. The Americans do, and why should not you? Marilyn Richardson for Maria Stewart the highest form of obedience to god was political protest.

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: Drawing inspiration from the bible to oppose slavery, Stewart's special concern was the condition of black women.

Stewart's voice: How long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles?

Morgan Freeman, Narrator: In the early 1830s Maria Stewart made a number of speeches to black organizations in Boston. In her passion to challenge her audiences to become leaders, she seemed to offend both the men and the women.

Stewart: Throw off your fearfulness.

Carla Peterson: She's very, very hard on black men and accuses them of being servile, faithless, frivolous, passive.

Stewart's voice: And make yourselves useful and active members in society.

Carla Peterson: And she's telling them to get up off their duffs and be active and to be men. So what man wants to be told to be a man?

Stewart's voice: Have the sons of Africa no souls? Feel they no ambitious desires?

Jim Horton: But her words are very important -- and that is African Americans must depend foremost on themselves. They must take the lead themselves. They must uplift the race. That's the way they put it in the 19th century. They must uplift the race. And she was critical of anyone in African-American community who was not working in every way possible to uplift the race.

Carla Peterson: David Walker and Maria Stewart are so important for African-American history in a sense we could think of them as our founding father and mother because they are really our first black nationalists. They are the first to have a sense of African-American people as constituting almost a nation within a nation. We are a nation within a nation and we need to figure out where we go from here.

Jim Horton: They really foreshadow a coming more militant generation. That generation will use the words, the sentiments, the strategies of Walker and Maria Stewart.

Marilyn Richardson: What David Walker and what Maria Stewart understood was that slavery in the south and discrimination would not die as a result of moral persuasion or political activity. Because they understood that the first abolitionist in America was the first black person brought off of a ship in chains. They understood only war would bring about the possibility of emancipation of blacks in America.