Transcript for:
Slavery's Impact on Early America

tonight in early America black slaves and white indentured servants are equally exploited their work is what was valuable not their person then laws begin to distinguish between black and white 1640 sort of a turning point where Africans are going to be treated differently and slavery spreads across all the colonies people are being considered property the downward spiral begins an entire economy based on exploitation of Africans is in place within a generation yah-hoo [Music] before 1800 more people came to America from Africa than from anywhere else and most of them payment chains their toil helped make the United States the richest nation on earth slavery was no sideshow in American history it was the main event America was a slave owning country longer than has been a free one and the legacy of slavery haunts us is still we've made certain progress in race relations but we'll never get further until we look more closely at slavery this is a story of resistance at the struggle to maintain human dignity it is a story of the demand for freedom told through the lies of enslaved people and it's the story of the founding fathers you never knew [Music] they were from Africa and Europe some were enslaved some were indentured servants all of them were poor and exploited their status as workers was confusing and complex their lives were controlled by the Dutch West India Company day after day they struggled to survive the harsh world of Dutch New Amsterdam in the 1620s evening after evening they gathered in taverns taverns were places where you gathered to talk about your problems and slaves are complain about their masters and indentured servants or to complain about their masters so they had a lot of interracial bonding in these taverns [Music] you have people who indenture themselves they promised their labor to a wealthy person for seven years in order to pay off the price of coming to the new world the Dutch West India Company had established a fur trading post in 1624 on a hilly island called mana Hattie's the area would become New York City less than 200 people lived in the settlement most were men from Northern Europe who worked for the company to make larger profits the Dutch West India Company wanted free labor free Afghans had come to the new world with European explorers on the 1530s English settlers and Jamestown Virginia purchased 20 Africans from Dutch traders in 1619 five years later the first enslaved Africans arrived in Dutch New Amsterdam their bondage began approximately 200 years of slavery in what would become America's northern states [Music] the first 11 enslaved people all mayo became two New Amsterdam were brought by the Dutch West India Company they were owned by the company not by individuals so their company slaves and they're brought by the company for the purpose of building the colony it was quite common for the Dutch and for the English to raid the wealthier Spanish and the Portuguese shipping to get people and to get property so these people are really are since prisoners of war these people come out of a larger Atlantic world in the 14th and 15th century as Africa Europe and the Americas meet there for the first time we call them Atlantic Creoles Atlantic Creoles had cultural roots in both Africa and Europe some were the offspring of European men and African women some travel the Seas with Europeans [Music] some may have been literate many spoke multiple languages the names of the first eleven indicate some of that mixture the name Simon Congo or Anthony Portuguese or John D'Angela these names are European names Simon Anthony John their Christian names and then the last names Portuguese indicating a connection with Portugal perhaps with the Portuguese explorer or Congo indicating this is a Christian African who came from the Congo the [Music] enslaved did not know if or when freedom would come in the settlements of Virginia Massachusetts and New Amsterdam slavery was undefined there were no laws no rules no regulations it was a difficult hard life they are expected to work regardless of the weather regardless of the temperature because their work is what was valuable not their person work began at sunrise the company forced the first eleven to clear land construct roads and unload ships they were both manual and skilled workers their labor helped build the Dutch New Amsterdam economy the first 11 slaves were there really to provide the infrastructure so they were really a backbone of this early colony and really were integral to the survival of Europeans because the Dutch did fear racial mixture they were not interested in marriages between Creoles and Dutch women or Belgian women therefore by the late 1620s they brought in creole our African women into the colony the women are ostensibly brought as the company says for the comfort of our Negro men they will need to perform at least two jobs which is to be sexual partners for the men but to be hard workers as well the men are going to be very important than in helping these women navigate since the men have been there for slightly longer than the women and understand the terrain slaves in New Amsterdam during this time have rights that we think of as unusual for enslaved people those wages Europeans are dependent on enslaved people and so they need to in a sense of peace because slavery had no legal structure the Atlantic Creoles were able to negotiate for greater autonomy in 1635 several of them petitioned the Dutch West India Company for wages they believed the company owed them Anthony Portuguese suit of white merchants in 1638 a year later pedro Negredo and manuel de Roos successfully sued europeans for wages due court records indicate that Atlantic Creoles made the system work for them when they could in some African slavery there is a greater sense of the rights of the enslaved people there is a greater sense of obligation on the part of the community and I think that these enslaved people bring that idea of slavery with them in 1641 Anthony Van Angola one of the first 11 merit lucidi Angola it was the first recorded maritime black people in Dutch New Amsterdam the enslaved understand legitimating a marriage is a way to claim ground they are sophisticated interpreters of the landscape in Europeans religious beliefs you were not supposed to enslave another Christian and African people knew this and attempt to convert to Christianity so Christianity was this space that Africans tried to build into a space of negotiation for greater freedom now in reality many enslaved people were Christian and the fact that they were baptized and were practicing Christians met nothing in terms of their status as free people Dutch West India Company has a very problematic relationship with the area Native Americans by 1639 relations had deteriorated into war at that point a number of the Creoles are put into the military force against the Indians there is a fear among Europeans during this time that african-americans may join with Native Americans and the first eleven in fact used this fear to negotiate they had been part of the Reformed Church they had served in the military they had built the fort they had done all of the critical labour that was necessary to make New Amsterdam into a viable town now it was their time to be free the company responded with what has become known as half freedom these men and their wives could live on what became known as the free Negro Lots they could farm their own land and they paid a kind of tribute in return to the company the company also had the right to call them up if they needed their labor don't get the idea that these were just nice people and wanted to allow these Africans an opportunity they calculated they can make more money with half freedom and therefore they use that system but even under those conditions work in the Dutch colonies for a slave was slavery the members of this community of half-free people had to be very profoundly struck with the tentative and tenuous nature of their freedom the evidence of that is their children who are not half free who remain enslaved and therefore in a very profound way speak to the fact that the community itself is is vulnerable half free blacks don't separate themselves from enslaved blacks in fact they work at times to try and negotiate freedom for other enslaved people over the years these eleven men and their wives continues to bargain petition for freedom for their children New Amsterdam is now becoming a good-sized town at least 20 percent of the people are black some of them are slaves some are half free some are free but wherever you are in that spectrum you can see the possibilities half freedom is this moment where one group of slaves has moved to a new status and there's probably a belief among the people in the slave community that they too can achieve a new status not perfect not full freedom but something better and more autonomous than what had existed before freedom was also the goal of black and white indentured servants in Chesapeake tobacco country since the early 1600s black people had trickled into the area most were enslaved others indentured servants a few who were free John punch was a black indentured servant James Gregory a Scotsman and Victor from the Netherlands served with him on a small tobacco farm in the new world every European colony needed to provide a profit in the Chesapeake Bay Virginia Maryland the more tobacco you could plant the more profits you could reap the more pleased the investors back in the England would be and there is tremendous pressure for labor they hope to use Native Americans that they found in Virginia as a labor supply they were disappointed because the Native Americans in Virginia were powerful enough to frustrate the attempts to use them as forced laborers it was at that point that the British turned to British laborers under the indentured servitude system [Applause] [Music] the status of indentured white servants and indentured Africans was very similar they were both of course hired for a period of time and in both could become free and let's also say that both were treated real bad to be an indentured servant in this country myth that you literally did have any rights in this world there's not much practical difference in terms of the oppression that they face in some measure that equality is inequality because these people can't be treated worse by 1640 indentured servants were essential to the profits of Virginia tobacco farmers their labor made tobacco the colony's most profitable export three men on the same farm doing the same labor being harassed and oppressed on a comparable level to the point that these three men chose to flee their owner John punch Victor and James Gregory crossed the Virginia border into Southern Maryland days later they were captured and returned in the colony's highest court it was said that Hugh Gwen's servants devolved him considerable loss and Prejudice the two white men are sentenced to simply a number of years added to their indentures for John punch the one black among these three men his fate is infinitely worse its servitude for life now there's no law that says that John punch had to have been enslaved for life but it was clear that 1640 is sort of a turning point the beginning of the point where Africans are gonna be treated differently as opposed to whites who are endangered service rather than distinguishing people because they are unfree people are being distinguished now because they're black or white and that whiteness is privileged in ever-increasing and beneficial ways [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Emanuel Driggers first appears in the records of the Eastern Shore of Virginia in about 1645 as the slave of captain Francis pot Emanuel Driggers fits nicely into the category of people that we are coming to call Atlantic Creoles he had this European name Portuguese really druggist is just an anglicisation or a shortened form of Rodrigues as part of a manual servitude captain pot provided him with a cow in the path [Music] when the manual began his service his wife Frances and daughters ages eight and one were bound to captain pot as well captain pot informed the court I have taken to service two daughters of mine Negro Emanuel dradis to serve and be with me the terms of Emmanuel's enslavement guaranteed that these children would attain their freedom after a specified number of years however no such provision was made for their brothers and sisters captain pot ran into some financial difficulties he instructed his nephew to try to arrange things to get him out of debt and told him particularly that he would rather part with anything other than his Negroes yet in 1657 after 12 years of service Emmanuel's family became captain pots away to arrange things their family is completely disrupted in fact destroyed by pots 'as economic insecurities so that when pots a cruise debt the younger child is sold and later their oldest daughter and is sold for about five thousand pounds of tobacco [Music] [Applause] [Music] when captain Pat died his widow inherited a farm farm animals and a manual [Music] however by 1661 court records show that Emanuel had attained his freedom least a hundred and forty-five acres and expanded his livestock holdings even if you get your freedom as a black person your life is not going to be like that of a free white person Emanuel drinketh gets his freedom the leases land he's got to pay many times what white person would have paid at least at land he is not treated like your average free person race is really by now a factor and becoming a more and more significant factor by 1665 Maryland and New York had legalized slavery three years earlier Virginia lawmakers decreed all children born in Virginia shall be held bond or free according to the condition of the mother even children of say a white master and a slave woman it makes those children not free it makes them slave it makes them chattel it makes them valuable it makes the white father a slave owner of his own children black men and black women raised thousands of mulatto children as families that love of children transcended the pain and the horror of how that child was created unlike some Europeans who created these children and solve their lives so meaningless and insignificant that they sold them no differently than any other slave [Music] immanuel drag us continue to see to the needs of his enslaved children he transferred title to livestock to them later on hoping against hope that the livestock might be a source for some route to freedom for them the court records of September 29 1673 state I Emmanuel grant unto my said two daughters one bay mare the same day he granted another mayor to his free children despite his efforts Emanuel could not free Thomas and and the son and daughter sold by Captain pot however because Thomas married a free black woman his children were born free [Music] one of those children was named Francis born in about 1677 though she was free she was bound out to serve a local blacksmith planter named John brewer [Music] Frances entered the service of the blacksmith in 1694 later that year she found herself in court charged by John brewer with the sin of fornication no partner was named seventeen-year-old Frances was sentenced to 30 lashes in addition a servitude to borough was extended for two years months later Frances was back in court this time charged with having a child out of wedlock it becomes increasingly difficult for free blacks to make their case before a court of law Frances drago's accuses her master of fathering her child now the court won't hear of this they will not take the word of a black woman against that of a white man especially a white man who is a planter this throws the court into an uproar the justices decide to send the case on to a higher level however they do sentence her to yet another whipping [Music] her master John Brewer decides he's had enough of Francis and assigns her to another man Francis brings a court case against this move judges were still unlikely to accept the testimony of a black woman against a white man undeterred Francis argued that Brewer was conspiring to place her in a community where her status as a free woman would not be recognized the letter binding Frances to Brewer was ruled invalid Frances actually wins her sued and she's released from the terms of her indenture Frances is really extraordinary because there are very few black women who are able to use the courts in the way that she does [Music] unfortunately her father has died her mother is sick and by 1700 Francis is impoverished and destitute she reappears in the courts because in a desperate act she steals food to try to feed herself and her child she decides that she'd better link up to another household again become a servant have some steady kind of support so she binds over herself and her children to Isaac and Bridget Foxcroft she promises to serve them for 10 years and any children that she has are to serve for 25 years now if you are a free black woman what are you going to do there were very few means of making money for any woman in the colony to be free ironically meant that you were going to be impoverished and in fact you could find yourself worse off than someone who was enslaved [Music] Isak Foxcroft had promised france's freedom upon his death however when he died his widow assigned Frances and her children to another master again Frances sought justice without a document and only her word for evidence the court ruled the gangster after 1704 she disappeared from the public record in Virginia and a number of other colonies the Atlantic Creoles knew how to negotiate their way through this system and win gains and advantages for themselves limited gains sometimes but it gains nonetheless it had gone from a situation where they could do that to a situation where there was no space left to do that the small group of elite Virginia planters have committed to the use of race slavery to expand their tobacco holdings 1691 they forbid free blacks from living in certain counties if you're african-american you cannot have an education you cannot move about freely you cannot hold property all of these constraints are falling in on one generation it's a link in a chain of slavery whereby people cannot become free before this there were ways of becoming free slavery is replacing indentured servitude as the labor system of choice and by the beginning of the 18th century it is clear that through law in the Chesapeake slavery is being made a racially based institution and people are being considered property New Amsterdam was renamed New York in 1664 after the British took over the colony New York and other British colonies including Massachusetts New Jersey and Maryland were societies with slaves of the original 13 colonies Carolina was the first in which slavery was the center of economic production making it the first slave society racial slavery was sanctioned by Carolina's 1669 Constitution the Carolina colony which was originally South Carolina in North Carolina founded about 1670 it's one of these gifts from charles ii to his friends here's a place to exploit fellas go to it many South Carolinian whites came initially from Barbados where the British had established a giant sugar economy with some 50,000 afro-caribbean slaves the plantation system was merely transplanted like a kind of virus from the Caribbean to the American coast the more slaves that you brought gave you more land you got fifty acres of land for every person that you brought into the Carolina colony and so slavery was encouraged from the outset here and of course the key was to find that the type of work that slaves could do to make the colony profitable as the enslaved cleared land the planters searched for a way to exploit the Carolina's Lowcountry they tried growing cotton and indigo and raising livestock the more they tried the more they failed to find a lucrative cash crop the enslaved will growing something they called a riser or rice for themselves they have known it for hundreds of years in western Africa now it's not knowledge that they hold to themselves once they have shown other people how to plant this crop they've lost control of the knowledge and an entire economy based on exploitation of Africans is in place within a generation and the shipment of Africans to South Carolina skyrockets so many of the Africans who were enslaved during the 17th and 18th century were ex-soldiers some of them would be captured through Wars or civil wars and these victors would sell the captives off to the Europeans this had the advantage from their point of view of reducing their numerical strength especially the soldier population of a opponents there marched to the coast many of them had not been to the coast before they had not seen the ocean they see white people for the first time who are these people there was this folklore about cannibalism lots of slaves who were brought to the coast really were so afraid that these people are going to eat them [Music] some of the people owning South Carolina are also invested in the Royal Africa Company in the slave trade themselves they're getting a profit of both ends out of this the major profit came from the human cargo of enslaved Africans slave trading had become the basis of an international economy there are a variety of auxiliary industries that is shipbuilding ensuring those ships making sales for those ships so the expansion of slavery then is an essential part of the expansion of capitalism as the ships came from West Africa and people were dying their bodies would be thrown overboard usually in the middle of the Atlantic but once an oil the captains would wait until they arrived Charleston Harbor so one of these captains threw several dozen overboard when their bodies including children began to wash ashore so the governor became very upset and it wasn't because this was a crime against humanity it was because the smell was irritating to the white population many African communities there's this reverence for the ancestors and this reverence for those who are now in the spirit world a belief that they are watching over [Music] and I think that that is what sustained so many people at their their weakest in their lowest moment [Music] I on Sullivan's Island the English established a pest house where they could quarantine people off of incoming ships these people were thought of as Goods its cargo and in the language of the slave trader this was a place where goods were held until they could reach full market value this is the perfect example of the inhumanity of the slave system the most valuable workers were men younger than 20 and the second most valuable were women younger than 20 [Music] children were young and inexpensive and they would grow up and live a long time and produce a lot of rice for a person just arrived you know you've been aboard this ship for a long time but you probably don't know exactly how long you don't know where you have gone of course the number one thing on your mind is I don't like get out of here how do I get myself free [Music] those who died were probably buried in mass graves the people who had died and roots were probably one-quarter to one-third of those who had actually boarded the ship those who finally survived were taken to Charleston where they were waxed down with oil fed a good meal and then put on the auction box for the enslaved survival took many forms some pretended to be ignorant or represented their masters interests however many refused to conform they maintained their dignity about drawing strength from their spirituality and culture even though people may not have spoken the same language and even though people may have been rivals traditionally in their homelands there would have been a certain spiritual bonding that took place that people came together and fused themselves together in this new world by the 1720s enslaved black people outnumbered whites by more than two to one in the Carolina low country slavery was probably unique in every region where it flourished Massachusetts New York Virginia and Barbados but in South Carolina it was probably the most industrial form of slavery because the scale was so so great the task system was something that was unique to South Carolina whereby enslaved people had a given assignment on each day so they usually went work in the morning at sunrise and a day's tasks in the field would be to hoe a quarter of an acre which was 105 feet square and people spent most of the year up to their knees and mud bent over tilling away at the soil under the Sun rice was very demanding master [Music] in South Carolina slaves are worked almost to death and then they go back to Africa and they go get some more and they're continually replenished and in central Africa men generally don't do agricultural work there's even a proverb if you want to humiliate another man you say you're no man take up a hoe indicating that only women would do this kind of work and yet here in South Carolina men were being forced to work right alongside of women [Music] in West Africa the mother would pound a little bit of rice every day to prepare the evening meal it was a it was an art form it was a skill you could be proud of it you then found yourself doing the same thing you're growing rice but now it's completely different the sound of the pounding of rice in Africa was the Sun of domesticity but the sound of pounding rice in South Carolina was the sound of exploitation well the more money that the white elite made the more it was in their interests to make the slave system a kind of invincible fortress that would perpetuate the comforts of the few and so the incentive was for those who ran the society to set up extensive policing systems a slave slave especially under these circumstances wants to survive wants to be free and it also doesn't take much imagination to understand the anger of being enslaved but being held against your will seeing your loved ones subjected to treatment of no human beings oughta experience the first time your punishment was whipping if you ran away a second time there would be an are branded on your right cheek the third time one of your ears would be severed and another R would be burned onto your left cheek for runaway and if you ran away a fourth time if you were a man the punishment was castration gruesome punishments that had been familiar in England were exaggerated in the slave society the planter had to calculate that I can punish this person even if they die I can import new people from West Africa and I'm making so much money in this process that I can afford to do it the inhumane treatment says a lot that indeed they're resisting their enslavement that like any other human being whose rights and opportunities are being taken away that they they're gonna resist and fight back burning down barns was something that occurred regularly and increased during harvest time when the workload was heaviest poisoning could not be caught readily and it was often something that was feared by whites even when it didn't exist one symptom of their fear was that there was a law that white men had to carry guns when they went to church Sunday was the only day off for enslaved people and so people the white folks feared that the uprising if it ever came would happen on Sunday when all the whites were gathered in church therefore the white men were required to carry their guns to church he was on a Saturday night September 17 39 it was a work crew many of them are Angolans including a man named Jimmy who becomes the leader [Music] the fate of Sunday finally came on the Stono River Southwest of Charleston and they got to a store and broke in and they killed a mr. Hutchinson decapitated him and put his head on a pole and cleared out his store of guns it happens in harvest time which is the time when blacks are being worked the hardest it also happens in malaria time and there is an epidemic going on in Charleston which has virtually shut down the town they must have realized that they couldn't possibly take over the area and drive out the the Europeans but they did recognize the possibility that if they took common action as soldiers they might be able to escape the governor of Lourdes had already issued a decree that any African who was a slave who made it to Florida would be free and there was neither colony there of ex-slaves there is this African manned fortification and when the Stono rebellion breaks out it becomes clear that what these people are trying to do is to reach Fort Mose a [Music] [Applause] [Music] people begin to join them they burn successive plantations and kill some of the white people living there draw some of the blacks with them others are afraid to join in and refuse to go but unfortunately for them they meet the lieutenant-governor riding north [Music] [Applause] they gave chase to him but he was able to sound the alarm and then of course a sort of a posse that's born and they set out after this group of Africa it's an amazing moment if they had been able to take him hostage who knows what the dynamics would have been these people are pursued south for a day or two if they had been able to go another 24 or 48 hours so that more people could have joined them their strength would have been greater and who knows what the prospects would have been and the whites came on them they surrounded these men and they fired on them a lot of them were scattered many of them were killed some of them escaped into swamp but those that they did capture they chop their heads off and put their heads on poles leading up found what is today us 17 out of the Charleston to send a message to the other Africans this is what will happen to you if you reveal after the Stono rebellion all of the separate laws governing slavery were consolidated into a single code this black code restricted the movement of black people and regulated almost every aspect of the lives of the enslaved the crushing of the Stono rebellion was a tragedy to me these people were freedom fighters [Music] someone like Jimmy newly arrived from Angola is able to show others around him that this is not the only way to live this can change it may not change this time but it will change in the future under the most inhumane conditions that you can possibly imagine people were able to maintain their human dignity it gives you some insight into the resilience of the human spirit that it is possible for human beings to make the decision I will not be defeated next time America's thriving colonies were heavily depended on slave labor slavery was an extraordinary goose that laid the golden egg the war for independence brings the enslaved new hope for them the Revolution really was a freedom struggle is Liberty in the air the country that says to the world we bring ourselves into existence on the principle of human freedom is founded on slavery experience more of the personal stories triumphs and challenges enslave people faced at pbs.org learn more about the continuing efforts of enslaved and free black Americans to gain equal rights under the law [Music] [Music] [Music] at New York Life we know that learning from the past helps create a better future we support this PBS program as part of our commitment to understanding the stories that shaped our nation guided by our values financial strength integrity and humanity New York Life has been part of America's stories since 1845 join us in exploring the defining moments of our nation's history we are PBS tonight America's thriving colonies were heavily depended on slave labor slavery was an extraordinary goose that laid the golden egg the war for independence brings the enslaved new hope for them the revolution really was a freedom struggle is liberty in the air the country that says to the world we bring ourselves into existence on the principle of human freedom is founded on slavery [Music] [Music] for a hundred years the enslaved had been trapped in a brutal system resistance was always dangerous at the outbreak of the American Revolution Liberty was in the air but black people both enslaved and free learned that for their voices to be heard they would have to ignite their own freedom struggle [Music] New York City in 1741 quacked enslaved to a housepainter approached Fort George the Cedar British colonial rule in New York and home to the governor [Music] [Music] [Music] Kwak was married to the governor's cook a slave the governor did not like quacks behavior and did not like when quack came visiting and the governor gave orders to the 4th centuries that if quacks should appear he should not be allowed entry quacked uttered certain implications that he would burn the place down but he would be with his wife when the fort did subsequently burned down the quack was a prime suspect when fires erupted in a number of other buildings warehouses and stores it was clear that this was more than romance thwarted the cry went up the Negroes were rising the Negroes are rising rumors of slaves organizing rebellion travel the Atlantic seaboard two years earlier in an uprising slaves in Stono South Carolina and some whites were murdered now white New Yorkers panicked almost every adult black male who was over 14 years of age was picked up by the city constables by the militia and placed in jail as the inquiries began Caesar slave of a baker was the first to be marched to the gallows [Music] his body would hang in a public space while a conspiracy trial accused dozens of slaves and a few whites of plotting to burn down New York City and foment slave rebellion [Music] the trial revealed bitter details about the lives of the enslaved in New York home to the second largest slave population after Charleston South Carolina there was a sense among all of these slaves that they were trapped into a system that offered no yield at all that there was nothing that they could do if they want to be free except a revolt slaves complained about being overworked and that they weren't supplied with enough clothing or fuel to keep warm they lashed out at the laws that prohibited them from gathering together but the most common complaint was not being allowed to visit their loved ones in the mid 18th century african-americans in New York knew the Liberty existed for others they knew it was denied to them as slaves faced the court they were confronted by all the laws that had accumulated over the past 100 years restricting and degrading their lives the law of slavery deemed that persons who were patently human beings were not in fact persons they were not persons at law rather they were deemed property well that is a Payton fiction anyone can look at Caesar at Kwak and say well yes these are persons and much of slaves existence was geared to the fact of demonstrating their humanity early in the proceedings quack was accused of burning down Fort George II and 12 other black men were burned at the stake 17 were hanged for whites were also aimed after each rebellion what the society seeks to do is pass a more repressive set of laws and so we have a continually upward cycling of violence because the violence of slaveholder repression produces the violence of slavery action by the 1750s some five thousand Africans a year were brought to American docks in crowded filthy stinking ships and for weeks they are confined to these places people being chained together people dying and being chained to dead people for periods of time until somebody decides to take the dead people above decks and throw them into the ocean some people didn't last two weeks but for other people they began mustering the human resources that it would take to figure out the predicament they had been thrown into the planters the exploiters have rationalized what they're doing they've worked it out with the law they've worked it out with their God one way or another and they've begun the long track into American and racism that is to say they have reduced these people to less than human beings and that's the way they're gonna make it work a hundred years after the first Africans arrived most colonies were heavily dependent upon slave labor by 1750 a quarter million enslaved blacks now made vast wealth possible for their masters slavery it seems to me was an extraordinary goose that laid the golden egg you had workers that you didn't have to pay and you owned their children as soon as they were born it's a preposterous system all you have to do is visit one of the huge plantations in Virginia or South Carolina to see the wealth that flowed 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 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 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 certainly as he grew up one of the things that he was going to have to learn is that a boy who is his same age Thomas Jefferson is going to grow up to be his owner is going to grow up to be his master 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 merchants of the language of Liberty Jupiter understood that as well Jupiter status and work conditions were privileged compared to most other slaves that Shadwell but for all of them including Jupiter it would be endless work from sunup to sundown and beyond [Music] all of them also would have experienced a punishment the cutting off of ears the kind of contraptions that are placed around people to prevent running away all of these torturous weapons are realities that enslaved people everywhere would have experienced 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 Keaton 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 in this lopsided balance of power slaves found ingenious ways to resist the master some subtle some Wolfert some suicidal 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 a runaway head in 1746 describes sixteen-year-old Steven thusly he has been much whipped which is back in his show another a describes Peters Virginia Vaughn running away with iron shackles on his legs 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 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 it would seem that the somebody who's a slave would have no power and head would have nothing to negotiate but slaves found that they could negotiate they danced the dance of domination and subordination one of the most profound forms resistance was the preservation of African religions values and beliefs what it did is create an internal universe which is separate and apart from and beyond the control of a white master yet something else was emerging 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 on plantations new African arrivals mixed with american-born slaves to shape a new culture the Jefferson family may have a violin from Europe you know 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 [Music] [Applause] [Music] 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 as slaves began forming extended families the slave quarter became the center of family life they like any other human beings free or run free a thousand years ago or today have the emotions of any other people they fall in love they hate others they've developed friendships and how to do this within the miu of slavery simply made those very human realities more difficult and more challenging but they existed 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 but in the creation of those families it gave their owners yet another weapon to force them to behave in the ways that they wanted what this community then becomes is the foundation for an internal slave trade where these children and these families will be separated in the future [Music] it's almost unimaginable tragedy of seeing next-of-kin simply removed disappeared ships and once 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 [Music] if you look at the runaway advertisements in the colonial newspapers what's striking is that roughly half the people are running away to see kinfolk to see loved ones slave sales and cross plantation marriages meant that families were strewn across the landscape aware of well worn footpaths soon connected plantations and farms creating a kinship map of region those pants also functioned as trading and news networks the complex waterways of the Atlantic seaboard extended these contacts they would become key for a young slave named Titus coming of age on the eve of the American Revolution during the early 1770s in monmouth county new jersey titus worked alongside his quick-tempered owner john coila's it was a time when some colonists were beginning to protest British restrictions on their freedom Titus was alert to the gathering storm he knew that one Protestant group the Quakers had begun to free their slaves John Corliss was a Quaker when Titus turns 21 he knows this is the age in which other Quakers are freeing their men they're their enslaved people Karlie's refuses to do so unlike other Quakers Paulus also refused to teach Titus to read and write but he did send his young slave to market alone Titus would take advantage of this practical education he had a wide range of survival skills he earned cash by selling animal skins and produce he had roamed he also owned a mental map of the area and its extensive waterways as Titus turned 21 it was 1775 the American Revolution had begun [Music] he now saw the mounting political conflict as an opportunity they made a dangerous and risky move when Titus ran some half million or one in five people in the colonies were of African descent most were enslaved some were free a few even owned slaves themselves as a relationship between the colonists and the British deteriorated black people in America faced a new challenge how to make their demands for freedom heard in the growing cacophony for liberty in rural Massachusetts a domestic slave by the name of mom Bette was paying close attention to this unfolding crisis she worked alongside her sister Lizzie in the home of John and Hannah Ashleigh Colonel John Ashley was probably the most important man in town the Ashley's owned just about everything there was to own including as it turned out mum bet herself one day an incident occurred that would strengthen mum that's resolved Lizzie was making for herself some wheat cakes from the scraps that were left over and mum bed is watching from the other side of the room when mrs. Ashley sees this and gets furious she takes a cold pan from the fireplace a red-hot device that she's ready to bring down on little Lizzy's head well mom bet of course it would never sit for that she gets the cold pan on her own forearm and it burns her severely and leaves a nasty scar well four years afterwards that mum bet made a point of rolling up her sleeves whenever she was in public so that she would reveal the scar so that when people would ask her why Betty what happened she would say ask madam mum bet would soon take her destiny into her own hands deprived of an opportunity to learn how to read and write mum Bette was listening in on the growing resentment of the colonists against British taxation and control she was present during crucial meetings in the Ashley house when a position paper was written demanding rights for the colonists in it they used the the phrase or something very close to that every citizen is entitled to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness if these words that come down from the philosopher John Locke and become part of the scriptural language of the Declaration of Independence she would have been right there she would have heard it [Music] revolution and the rhetoric of Liberty were in the air mum bet and others like her would soon begin to exhale this new language the natural Liberty of man had to be free beginning in 1765 with the Stamp Act crisis the language the rhetoric of natural rights flows throughout the American colonies God who gave us life gave us Liberty at the same time there are continual pamphlets that are coming forward to express views of natural rights slaves hear that conversation slaves some of them read those pamphlets all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights of which when they enter in you know when you listen to the Patriots they say we will not be the slaves of England they don't say we will not be the second-class citizens they will they don't say we won't be the oppressed people they say we will not be the slaves well when people who whole slaves say we will not be slaves you know that they know what they're talking about well slaves were saying exactly the same thing and African Americans were quick to say we will not be the slaves of England nor will we be the slaves of America in early 1773 a petition arrived on the desk of Governor Thomas Hutchinson the British crowns representative in Massachusetts at a time when most slaves were illiterate this petition was signed by a slave we shall never be able to possess and enjoy anything not even life itself but in a manner as the beasts that perish we have no property we have no city no country sign felix three months later another petition was written and signed by four enslaved men peter bestest [ __ ] Freeman just a joy and Felix Holbrook weeks take great things from men who have made such a noble stand against the designs of their fellow men to enslave them the petitioners demanded answers how is it that you can talk about liberty as a fundamental right of human beings when in fact you keep us as slaves how is it that you treat us as beasts when we are human beings more than that they say how can you call yourself a Christian people a year later yet another petition reached the new Massachusetts governor crafted by slaves the words again would sound like a document that had yet to be written the Declaration of Independence we have in common with all other men a natural right to our freedoms without being deprived of them by our fellow man [Music] all the petitions were dismissed slaves could see the paradox Thomas Jefferson still in his early thirties spoke of slavery as a moral evil yet he was a prominent member of the Virginia slave holding class now he was at work on a document about equality and liberty we hold these truths to be self-evident if I were Jupiter looking at my childhood friend Thomas Jefferson knowing the world we both grew up in I wouldn't be surprised by the contradictions that emerge in his thinking among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness in some ways you know Thomas Jefferson is so like America itself Thomas Jefferson expresses opinions in the Declaration of Independence that are wonderful examples of fairness of a belief in human dignity and human freedom yet Thomas Jefferson is so contradictory because the man who writes the Declaration of Independence is the man that holds at one point almost 250 slaves or more the country that says to the world we bring ourselves into existence on the principle of human freedom is the country that is in many ways founded on the principle of human slavery supported by that principle that's a pretty substantial contradiction April 1775 open warfare broke out black people began choosing sides in the north some 5,000 black men joined and mixed in all black regiments to fight on the side of the Patriots some thought his 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 for white Americans everywhere the image of a black soldier toting a gun evokes a totally disordered society the complete disordering of the old Society 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 in November 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 Corps it has a tremendous effect and word spreads to other colonies it was the rumor of Lord Dunmore's Proclamation that probably inspired Titus to run away after a Staunton Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment Titus returned to the month of New Jersey countryside this time he was leading a guerrilla band of black and white Raiders fighting for the British only now he was known as Colonel time Colonel Tigh 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 [Applause] most importantly they liberated their enslaved families and Families New York was the cockpit of the revolution curl tide was acting on a local level but his actions had continental importance during a battle in September 1783 note I took a bullet in his wrist within days he died only 26 years old he had fought in the revolution for 5 years Dan was 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 [Music] the risks were huge there are tragic stories in Chesapeake Bay the 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 roll 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 onboard arrest you punish you and send you back to the plantation it's stories like that that break your heart 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 at the end of the war thousands of former slaves were transported to freedom by the British many others were freed by the fighting for the Patriots no other event until the Civil War would liberate so many slaves 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 all men are born free and equal as the war was coming to an end colonies began to write new constitutions the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties in 1780 the Massachusetts Constitution was read aloud in every village including Sheffield where mum bet did errands their natural rights and blessings of life soon after mom BETT knocked on the door of attorney Theodore Sedgwick she knew him from the meetings at the Ashley house she overheard Ashleigh and his colleagues talking about the rhetoric of Independence talking about natural rights mom bet 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 our meeting with Sedgwick led to a court suit in which mom vet and another slave of the household sued Colonel Ashley for their freedom it wasn't just Theodore Sedgwick going against Colonel Ashley he hired Theodore did is some of the best legal talent that could be found in the whole southern New England in 1781 mom bet won her case and announced that she would thereafter be known as Elizabeth Freeman [Music] our victory helped pave the way for the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts two years later during the long hot summer of 1787 enslaved coachman waited outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia inside their owners forged the constitution for the new republic the issue that was hardest for them to address was the issue of slavery they simply postponed it all through that hot summer to the very end of their debates and they finally brought it up and addressed it 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 the slavery would shape the national debate for the next 70 years the words slave or a slavery never appear in this founding document 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 and that's kind of a fugitive slave clause but they don't use the word slave or slavery the most politically significant deal embraced by the Constitution was the three-fifths clause it allowed states to count their slave population as three-fifths of a person in determining representation in Congress so the fact is from the South 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 an election in 1800 but the slaves are not being represented the slaves get nothing from this and Republic that's created pays the price for that over the next many many generations [Music] black people were betrayed by the new constitution but if doors were shutting they now looked for windows to open 90% 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 it reinforced family and community it provided the opportunity for men and women to exercise leadership roles Black's had been slow to accept a religion that the 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 black people caught the spirit 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 1780s 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 it appears to me that in memory they are equal to whites in reason much inferior he suggests that they are not as bright as smart as intellectually gifted 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 Jefferson apparently believed that you could not 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 while some black supported colonization most leaders and the freed black communities of the north denounced the idea 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 an American to live in America as any body here 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 Wacka would move north to take the emerge and abolitionist movement to another level Walker was born free in the 1790s and Wilmington North Carolina he probably learned to read and write and one a Wilmington first black Christian churches these are places which are not only religious places these are places where political decisions are made political meetings are held by roughly eighteen twenty day vyd Walker made his way to Charleston there he was exposed to the ideas of Denmark Vesey a freed carpenter VC was a leader in the new African Methodist Episcopal Church David Walker learns from Denmark buzzy the Bible could be a very very important tool in giving blacks the 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 see see like many blacks enslaved and free had also digested the news about the Haitian Revolution a slave rebellion was created the first black Republic by 1822 while David Walker was in Charleston VC was organizing a massive rebellion but someone leaked it BC along with more than 30 others was executed 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 free black community in 1820s Boston Walker became a leading voice in local black churches and organizations he is a member of the Massachusetts colored Association a black society specifically focused on abolition 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 19th 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 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 America is more our country than it is the ways we have enriched it with our blood and tears the appeal itself lays out the full history of argument against slavery against slave holding oh my collet breath 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 we must and shall be free Wacka modeled the appeal on Constitution and he drew from the Declaration of Independence and the Bible he says Jefferson and America are hypocrites see your declaration Americans do you understand your own lying he says that America is not doing what it professes to do it is not expressing the values that it says it believes in 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 uses Christians are not living up to the values of Christianity in the appeal Walker directly confronts Jefferson's arguments about black people in his notes on the state of Virginia as mr. Jefferson declared to the world that we are inferior to the whites he believed that racism have become so insidious that it was only 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 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 a 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 and what worker does in his appeal in 1829 is to say listen if emancipation is not forthcoming blood will flow oceans and oceans of blood I call God I call angels I called men to witness that your destruction is Adam 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 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 well as you might well imagine this is shocking and frightening to slaveholders immediately many southern states put out bounties on David Walker's head they want David Walker delivered from Massachusetts to a variety of places in the south 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 [Music] one of the people who responded to Wallace charge was the young Mariah Stewart who in 1826 married a free and successful Boston shipping agent Born Free Mariah was often at age five and immediately sent into domestic service she probably learned to read and write on a black church three years after her wedding to James Stewart he died although he had been fairly prosperous it turns out that upon his staff he had been defrauded by some white businessmen who were his colleagues and so mariah Stewart was not only widowed but also left destitute a year later she received more devastating news her mentor David Walker was found dead in his Boston doorway there is reason to believe he may have been assassinated by someone operating on behalf of those people who felt directly threatened by his appeal for slave rebellion these compounding losses sparked a religious conversion with political implications she sees herself as picking up the torch from David Walker and carrying his work forward steward began to write and speak in public 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 perfectly reasonable it was woman's sphere it was not a radical position at all but there in the same sentence the same sentence here come the words warrior and martyr and God and my brethren 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 heel of tyranny and it's unprecedented in African American intellectual history why should man any longer deprive his fellow man of equal rights and privileges Mariah Stuart was the first American woman to address a mixed audience of men and women about political issues in its time it was a bold and controversial act Mariah Stuart the highest form of obedience to God was political protests possessed the spirit of Independence drawing inspiration from the Bible to oppose slavery to a special concern was the condition of black women how long shall the fair daughters of Africa be compelled to bury their minds and talents beneath a load of iron pots and kettles in the early 1830s Mariah Stuart made a number of speeches to black organizations in Boston and her passion to challenge her audiences to become the she seemed to offend both the men and the women walk your fearfulness and she's very very hard on black men and accuses them of being servile faithless frivolous passive and make yourself useful and active members in society and she's telling them to get up off their Duff's and and be active and to be men so what man wants to be told to be a man at the Sons of Africa no soul feel they know ambitious desires plus 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'd 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 David Walker and Mariah Stewart are so important for African American history in a sense we could think of them as our founding father and mother they're the first to have a sense of African American people as constituting almost a nation within the nation we are a nation within a nation and we need to figure out where we go from here they really foreshadow becoming more militant generation that generation will use the words the sentiments the strategies of Walker and Stewart what David Walker and what Mariah Stewart understood was that slavery and discrimination would not die as a result of moral persuasion or political activity because they understood that the first abolitionists 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 next time slavery transforms America into an economic power and that made slaves the most valuable thing in the nation beside the land itself enslaved men women and children labor to make millions for their masters here you have the nation tolerating the selling of human beings the seeds of destruction had been planted violence is erupting in the halls of government on the streets of Washington experience more of the personal stories triumphs and challenges enslaved people faced at pbs.org learn more about the continuing efforts of enslaved and free black Americans to gain equal rights under the law [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] at New York Life we know that learning from the past helps create a better future we support this PBS program as part of our commitment to understanding the stories that shaped our nation guided by our values financial strength integrity and humanity New York Life has been part of America's story since 1845 join us in exploring the defining moments of our nation's history we are PBS [Music] tonight slavery transforms America into an economic power and that made slaves the most valuable thing in the nation beside the land itself enslaved men women and children labor to make millions for their masters here you have the nation tolerating a selling of human beings the seeds of destruction have been planted violence is erupting in the halls of government on the streets of Washington [Music] [Music] [Music] it was the age of cotton a time when a third of all southerners lived in bondage an era of extraordinary wealth sustained by unimaginable brutality millions of enslaved people were bought and sold in the cotton Kingdom it seems slavery with last forever [Music] [Music] I once saw two beautiful children playing together one was a fair white child the other was her slave when I saw them embracing each other I turned sadly from the lovely sight I foresaw the blight that would fall on the slaves heart in the 1850s Harriet Jacobs began to pen an autobiography she would call incidents in the life of a slave girl she would become the first woman to write a slave narrative published works written by African Americans who had escaped lives of bondage at a time when state laws and the south made it a crime to teach the enslaved reading and writing Harriet would use her words to reveal the awful truth of American slavery her story begins in the coastal town of Edenton North Carolina where she was born in 1813 areas first owner had ignored the law and taught her to read and write after she died Harriet was will to the three-year-old daughter of dr. James Holcomb twelve years old with light skin and dark eyes Harriet became a house slave she was to cook clean and serve the wishes of the mistress and the master even the little child will learn that if God has bestowed Beauty upon her it will prove her greatest curse Harriet Jacobs call slavery a cage of obscene birds Harriet says that no matter what the slave girl looks like if she's dark if she's light if she's medium if she's at all attractive she has beauty it's a curse because the master will be after her dr. Norcom was a man widely admired in the community he took an unmistakable interest in his new house slave a girl 40 years his junior the scent of sex and of oppression was overpowering in that household it was just everywhere and then Norcom starts to focus on her and she doesn't know what to do she's she's 12 she doesn't know how to handle it she doesn't want anything to do with him he's a disgusting old man it's a very difficult very difficult situation for her he is just after her all the time she could be washing the dishes she could be making up the beds she could be setting the parlour straight and whenever he's in a room with her which is a lot he's just after my master began to whisper foul words in my ear he peopled my young mind with unclean images such as only a vile monster could think of he met me at every turn reminding me that I belong to him and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him she's just completely drowning in this in this harassment and in this sexual situation he doesn't want to force her he wants to convince her he wants to control her he wants to control her mind she says my master had money and power on his side I had a determined will there is might in each wonderful line so she's she's in a war and really from the time she's 12 13 14 she understands it because she isn't his victim she's an enemy area knew that the doctor was the father of eleven slave children Norcom had many children outside of his legal marriage and what Harriet tells us that he tended to sell the children off the practice was not unusual Milano's wrote a slaveholders wife are as common as blackberries the rates of interracial children being born may have actually been higher than than any time since most of these liaisons cannot be described as consensual because any kind of liaison between a slave and their owner cannot be described as consensual so no white man ever had to feel like he was in fact raping a black woman if he took her against her will in fact if you look through the court records you will find that the judges often say there is no such thing as the rape of a black woman the courts do not recognize it this is just it's disgusting it's it's obscene is what it is it's obscene it's perverted it's incestuous but it was normal it was legal [Music] the southern code of honor Harriet learned did little to protect the virtue of black women if a pastor has offspring by a woman not his wife the church dismisses him but if she's colored it does not hinder his continuing to be their good shepherd when dr. Norcom joined the Episcopal Church I was much surprised I supposed that religion had a purifying effect on the character of men but the worst persecution Zion do it from him were after he was a communicant if Harriet had hoped that Marion Holcomb would offer protection from her husband's advances she was sadly disappointed Maria Norka mr. Ezra has been called her didn't have a lot of options she married him when she was 16 she was pregnant I think every year and a half after that forever and she was expected to to have those children and raise those children and run the household for Noah comes wife Harriet's presence was a source of unrelenting misery what's particularly shocking astonishing is the figure reappearing in excellent narratives of the jealous mistress the mistress who cannot protect herself from her husband's adultery and who makes her own life a torture because of jealousy and because of a sense that she is not able to lift herself above her husband's lust meanwhile dr. Norcom pursues Harriet over years and years despite his wife or maybe even to spite his wife because they seem to be stuck in this triangle where everyone is you know they're tormenting Harriet and tormenting each other at the same time at 15 Harriet believed she had finally found her rescuer Samuel Treadwell Sawyer the 30-year old lawyer was from one of North Carolina's most important families he says that he's concerned about her how does she feel imagine you're 15 years old and a charming young man I mean he's not so young he's twice as old as she is actually he's almost 30 comes and expressed his concern I am your friend he says you know where that goes you know where that goes if you're 15 and you're white or black or brown or yellow or red and you feel you're in trouble he was the safe haven what was Harriet thinking when she agreed to take on a white lover she's a teenager that's the first thing we have to remember she's a kid Harriet was convinced that a man of such power and influence would be able to free a it is a Hollywood dream more than a century before Hollywood but it had happened to another young woman in the town and she knew this story and the whole town knew this story of rose Cabarrus and how she had really managed to get her young master to fall in love with her and he had in fact freed their children and he had in fact freed her and he had in fact even freed her mother so there was a model for this wild alternative and Harriet was a risk-taker and and she took the risk within a year of starting her relationship with soya Harriet gave birth to a son by law her child was owned as she was by Northam as Harriet waited for Sawyer to freedom America's Protestant churches were caught up in a sweeping religious revival minutes late whole to saw a value in exposing their slaves to Christianity the message from the pulpit was clear servants be obedient to them that are your masters obey your old master and your young master if you disobey your earthly master you offend your heavenly master you must obey God's commandments many african-americans however were expecting a very different message from the good book of all the stories about being brought to the promised land being saved I mean that had special meaning to slaves so that the slaves drew from Christianity the parts that particularly spoke to the oppressed the parts that said God won't forget you the part that said it doesn't matter what people on earth think about you I God love you on August 22nd 1831 a small army of the oppressed rose up and the world of Harriet Jacobs and the slaves throughout the South was forever changed an enslaved preacher named nat turner led 70 slaves in an uprising in Southampton County Virginia in a 48-hour period they killed 57 White's including women and children it is no accident in that Turner was a preacher it is no accident that when he goes to war he does so based upon Commandments that he finds in the Bible in Christianity it was disturbing to say the least to slaveholders that their slaves might spouts back to them Christian doctrine which would justify slave rebellion as way to the rebellion spread across the south White's began to lash out in Edenton Harriet watched antara as every person of color became a target groups of white men were rushing in every direction wherever a colored face was to be found everywhere men women and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles of their feet mobs dragged along a number of colored people each white man threatening instant death if they did not stop their shrieks and so you know after NAT Turner's rebellion lots of slaves with nothing at all to do with the rebellion suffering sometimes were killed not because they were involved in a slave rebellion but because white people were more afraid when they got more afraid they got more violent and they were more dangerous they had to retaliate they had to show that in fact no black rebellion would or could succeed and so they struck back they killed blacks in the countryside they took and cut off to their heads and they put them on the roadside on stands as a as a sign to all blacks that they could not and should not rebel the South remained on high alert patrols guarded roads and gathering places slave holders fostered a Marshall atmosphere that embrace brutality as a necessity for Harriet Jacobs life under Norcom script would become intolerable and far more complicated at 19 she gave birth to another child by Sawyer a daughter Sawyer offered to buy the children no come not only refused he wanted revenge Norcom is threatening to send her children to a plantation of his that's known for brutalizing slaves Harriet uses the word brutalizing what we that's what we call traumatizing and when she speaks of what happens to people there their hearts get broken their psyches get broken they're not themselves afterwards slowly the realization came if she will dawn norcombe would relinquish the children the only way to save her children was to leave them and so she decides she has to act to free them it's it's a wild move but she made wild loose before [Music] in 1835 Harriet fled into nearby swamps until her grandmother a free woman living in Edmonton arranged for a more permanent hideout soon after Harriet was secretive away in a tiny space beneath the roof of her grandmother's house Harriet's world would now shrink to a space nine feet long seven feet wide and three feet high if you take a very large library table and get under the library table that's the kind of space that you're talking about rats and mice ran over my bed I was Restless for want of air the atmosphere was so stifled and even mosquitoes would not condescend to buzz in it I suffered for air even more than for light she suffers from heat she suffers from cold from time to time she can come down and walk around a little bit but she's she's under house arrest basically she was literally a prisoner who made herself a prisoner and I guess that's how she did it she survived as prisoners do [Music] within weeks Harriet learned that Sawyer had bought the children and was sending them to live at her grandmother's house still Harriet continued to live a secret existence just a floor apart from her children the thing that holds her back is her devotion to her children and that was for a lot of slave women the thing that kept them from running away there were great deal more male Runaways and the typical runaway was a young male who didn't have children for slave women they just didn't want to run away without their children days lived into months months into years [Music] Ariat filter time writing reading and sewing [Music] she describes some psychotic episodes she talks about hearing voices and she talks about seeing things and she talks about passing out and they have to bring her to she bore a tiny hole through one of the walls on occasions she could catch a glimpse of her children playing nearby comforting herself and the knowledge that she had freed them from nor comes holed countless were the nights that I sat late at the little loophole scarcely large enough to give me a glimpse of one twinkling star season after season year after year I peeped at my children's faces and heard their sweet voices with a heart yearning all the while to say your mother is here I think that her psychic strength reflects that of all slave women because slavery demanded a different kind of womanhood it demanded that people be self-reliant it demanded that they've tried to do everything that they could to protect themselves but she has the strength and resilience that African American women had to develop to survive slavery [Music] decades before Harriet Jacobs was born leading southerners such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had been convinced that slavery was nearing its end tobacco had exhausted the soil the need for slave labor had diminished [Music] that changed in 1803 when President Jefferson signed the Louisiana Purchase and doubled the size of the nation for new states Louisiana Alabama Mississippi and Arkansas together known as the deep south join the Union as slave states Thomas Jefferson in negotiating of the Louisiana Purchase declared he was going to create an empire for liberty he was going to make an area in which American Liberty would expand across the continent Thomas Jefferson's empire for liberty turned out to be an empire for slavery the 19th century the years after the Louisiana Purchase were the period of the greatest expansion of American slavery ever the new land was an ideal match for a new invention the cotton gin the combination of the cotton gin and Louisiana Purchase made the production of cotton unbelievably profitable you know the cotton gin increased the amount of cotton that a single slave could produce in a day by 50 fold what it meant was that growing cotton was incredibly incredibly profitable in 1808 justice cotton was creating an insatiable appetite for slave labor Congress abolished the importation of slaves from Africa now an already vibrant domestic slave trade would flourish in the upper South the sale of slaves became more profitable than growing tobacco slaves vary wildly in value from $50 to $2,000 depending on who you know who they are how old they are but the valuable ones are very very valuable the slave trade develops its own language it's the language of a big bucks it's a language of wenches of course this entire language is meant to separate black people from the common run of humanity it's a language of dehumanization it's a language of bestiality to say that these people are in fact like animals slave auctions became a common sight even in the nation's capital [Music] if a young woman was put on the auction block one of the things that they wanted to make sure she could do was have children they touched people's bodies both men and women but you can imagine that for a woman it was an incredibly invasive so they were not above taking her into a back room and examining her to see whether or not she was able to have children now this is the 19th century so one wonders what an ordinary slave holder would be doing but they even on the auction block they would feel a woman's breasts to see whether or not she could suckle a child the specter of the auction block haunted the lives of enslaved people slave mothers knew that this moment might come and they anticipated it and they did everything they could to prevent it they lobbied with their masters they tried to get sold with their children but it was something that haunted them from the moment that their children were born that they might lose them [Music] more than a million people would be sent to the deep south nearly twice as many as were brought to America in all the years of the African slave trade many of the enslaved were compelled to march the entire distance some as much as a thousand miles to one observer the procession of chained slaves resembled nothing so much as a funeral march and it took everything they had to keep going and we also need to remember that some people didn't make it some people were depressed some people were suicidal some people were vengeful and violent with each other or toward animals or toward children there was a lot of loss there was a lot of loss while slavery was expanding in the south the northern states were abolishing it staking their future on free labor the nation was becoming two separate societies the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was designed to maintain a balance of free and slave states yet the cotton juggernaut would be unstoppable cotton becomes the key crop the key cash producer in the life of a nation for a period of time there are more millionaires along a narrow band of land along the Mississippi River than in the entire rest of the nation combined this is this is a terribly terribly profitable crop that we're talking about by 1840 the value of cotton exports was greater than everything else the nation exported to the world combined and that made slaves the most valuable thing in the nation beside the land itself as the price of slaves soared slave traders began to roam the north abducting free black people in April of 1841 Solomon Northup found himself in one of the many slave pens lining the streets of Washington DC born a free man he lived in New York State with his wife and three children the idea began to break upon my mind that I had been kidnapped but that I thought was incredible it could not be that a free citizen of New York should be dealt with thus in humanely it was a desolate thought I bowed my head and wept he was a free person he knew he was a free person and so here he is in a situation where it doesn't matter it doesn't matter the color of your skin marks you as a potential slave in Washington DC slave auctions were a daily occurrence chained human beings were march routinely in front of the Capitol if you can picture Solomon Northup a free man who has lived a good portion of his life in New York State and he sees himself in Chains being taken away to slavery think about the contradiction here you have the federal capital of the United States the nation dedicated to the proposition of human freedom tolerating profiting from the selling of human beings into bondage at the age of 33 Solomon Northup was sold down the river as the phrase went transported down the Mississippi to the cotton fields of the deep south [Music] Louis huge was also so down the river at 11 years old he was bought in Virginia for three hundred and eighty dollars I can still see my mother's face when she bared me goodbye I ran off from her as quickly as I could for I did not want her to see me crying [Music] it came to me more and more plainly that I would never see her again [Music] luis arrived at the plantation of mr. Edward Magee [Music] his new owner was one of the wealthiest planters in Mississippi when I went out to the yard everywhere I looked slaves met my view I never saw so many slaves at one time before the young boy was presented as a gift to mrs. McGee and put to work around the main house alone and helpless he worked hard at his tasks [Music] but it was of no use mrs. McGee was naturally irritable I tried to please her by arranging the parlour when I overheard her safe they soon yet spirit it don't do to praise them my heart sank within me so Lois you speaks of his mistress is someone who would simply hit him as he walked by or cuff his ears when he was simply he thought going about his business one of the saddest sides of this story is that over and over again the children don't understand why they're being beaten what is the motive what am I being corrected for what is it that I'm doing that I shouldn't be doing you can imagine what this does psychologically if you don't know why you're being beaten Lewis Hughes mistress becomes for him an example of the way that slavery corrupts the character of white people he looks at her and how she takes out her bad feelings on the slate on a daily basis and thinks this is you know this this institution is actually bad for white people it makes them into terrible people in the cotton Kingdom slaveholders saw themselves as members of a new aristocracy they built lavish homes bought the finest furnishings and prided themselves on the elegance of them they'll Asia was purchased by the back-breaking labor of love us at harvest time young Lewis was sent to the fields the daily task of each able-bodied slave during the cotton pickin season was 250 pounds or more and all those who did not come up to the required amount would get a whippin enslaved people labored from sunup to sundown and when the moon was full they continued into the night children as young as nine wicked cotton and now I had to start thinking about people a slaveholders thought about people and that is this machines you have to keep your machines working at top speed for as long as possible [Music] having made their fortunes in the deep south plant has turned their attention to gaining political power becoming governor's congressmen senators and presidents cotton and the slave labor force which made the production of cotton possible was incredibly powerful economically and in the 19th century as in the 21st century economic power translated into political power in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln 50 of those years seized a slave holder in the White House it is they who write the laws it is they who adjudicate those laws it is they who enforce the those laws the United States is truly a slaveholding Republic though they had abandoned slave labor in their own region northerners were making huge profits from slavery cotton generated an extensive textile industry in New England insurance companies insured slaves as property many Wall Street firms got their start as middlemen in the cotton trade Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts called it a conspiracy of the lords of the loom and the Lords of the lash the economics of slavery had torn Lewis Hughes from his family now he would find another people grab other people and they make blood kin out of people who are not can its resilience it's it's survival it's a way to survive it's a way to make a way out of no way to create a family when it is being torn and split apart it saved people who were vulnerable in so many ways to physical and psychological abuse someone else in the quarters or in the kitchen who says here's a little cake for you or how are you or help me these are the other sides of these not blood relationships but kin relationships nonetheless Lewis Hughes would grow strong and healthy the thought of freedom never far away I used to hear boss read in the papers about runaway slaves who had gone to Canada and it always made me long to go yet I never appeared as if I paid the slightest attention to what the family read or said on such matters but I felt that I could try at least to get away when he was 20 years old Lewis summoned the courage and fled only to be caught and returned my clothing was removed and the women began boss whipped me awhile then he sat down and read his paper after which the whipping resumed this continued for two hours then he used three switches which cracked the flesh so the blood proved out it was weeks before that bare clothing touching my skin whippings often ended with a bucket of salt water poured on the wounds in 1842 Harriet Jacobs had lived in her cramped dark space for almost seven years it appeared to me as if ages had rolled away since I entered upon that gloomy monotonous existence my friends feared I should become a [ __ ] had it not been for the hope of serving my children I should have been thankful to die dark thoughts passed through my mind as I lay there day after day I tried to be grateful for my little cell and even to love it as part of the price I had paid for the redemption of my children why for seven years almost six years 11 months she can't leave I must say I don't understand and and researching her life researching her biography or autobiography I I didn't really at the beginning believe the seven years but in fact we know when she went into hiding because we have noir comes and in the paper saying he's after his fugitive girl Harriet who absconded for no reason now after all those years of confinement Harriet's secret was about to be exposed a neighbor's untrustworthy slave had stumbled upon Harriet's hideaway a ship captain known for smuggling Runaways offered to help off the coast of Edenton arrangements were made for Harriet's escape I was on deck as soon as the day dawned I watched the reddening sky and saw the great orb come up slowly out of the water soon the waves began to Sparkle and everything caught the beautiful glow I had never realized what grand things air and sunlight are till I had been deprived of them Perry had arrived in the bustling city of Philadelphia there she was met by members of the Underground Railroad an anti-slavery Network dedicated to helping runaway slaves there were more than a half million free blacks in the north many of them by period had left loved ones behind in the south Harriette's hope was to find her brother John who had fled Edenton years earlier she boarded a train to New York and got her first taste of racial attitudes in the north we were stowed away in a large rough car with windows on each side too high for us to look out without standing up this was the first chill to my enthusiasm about the free states what she encountered was a world very divided by race in which black people were second or third class citizens actually in which black men could not vote unlike white men so it's it's a hierarchical white supremacist world that she encounters in the north when she found her brother he was working as an anti-slavery speaker on occasion sharing a podium with Frederick Douglass also a fugitive slave Douglass was one of the most powerful voices for black freedom in the country African Americans together with white abolitionists were building a growing anti-slavery movement in 18-49 Harriet moved to Rochester New York a hub of abolitionist activity she follows her brother West to Rochester and there she meets the most militant group recruitment on the North American continent she meets the women who have just in 1848 had the first convention of women's rights at Seneca Falls and she becomes a very close friend of the Quaker feminist abolitionist Amy post and it's - Amy post that Harriet finally tells her story and a few years later Amy convinces Harriet to write her story as a contribution to the movement America would have ignored the contradiction of freedom loving nation tolerating slavery if they could have but what free blacks what slaves what they did in conjunction with white allies who were committed to anti-slavery was to make it increasingly difficult for the nation to ignore this great glaring contradiction the anti-slavery message struck a nerve among many Northerners as a massive influx of immigrants began putting new strains on their society the Irish wage laborers who built those railroads who dug the canals were the first real wage labor working class in America and the growth of that working class is going to become major social development of nineteenth-century America but there was this notion that slave labor and free labor could not exist side by side that slave labor would drive out would devalue free labor with victory in the Mexican War bringing vast new territories into the Union the conflict between slave states and free states would explode the South watered room to grow the North's or promised land for free labor as violent confrontation loomed in the West Congress devised the compromise of 1850 California would be admitted as a free state and in return the South would get the most severe Fugitive Slave Law in the nation's history the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 you have to understand what this law said it said that a person could be accused of being a fugitive slave and that person would have no right of self-defense no right to speak on his or her own behalf no right to a lawyer no right to a jury trial think about it the law was a resounding defeat for abolitionists local officials would receive the hefty sum of ten dollars for every african-american handed over to slave catchers it is the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population area declared danger mounted scores and Harriet's friends and neighbors fled to Canada many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before that her husband was a fugitive and must leave her to ensure his own safety worse still many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago and as the child follows the condition of the mother the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery as the cotton Kingdom reached new heights of wealth and power Lewis Hughes married Matilda a cook on the maguey plantation soon after she gave birth to twins but motherhood did not spare Matilda from overwork mrs. McGee's demands were unrelenting forcing Matilda to neglect her babies my heart was sore and heavy for my wife was almost run to death with work my blood boiled in my veins to see my wife so abused yet I dare not open my mouth within six months the twins were dead [Music] well it's a heartbreaking situation and what makes it even worse is you realize that every slaveholding household in the nation had this kind of a scene sooner or later we have babies dying like crazy it's we call it infant mortality that's a very clinical word for babies dying for the young couple there seemed no end to suffering [Music] nearly 250 years after Africans were first landed on America's Shores the Supreme Court of the United States would proclaim that blacks by virtue of their race were not persons before the law in 1857 in a landmark decision the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case that Congress had no authority to limit the spread of slavery to any territory the Chief Justice's words stunned African Americans Roger B Toni a southerner breeds a decision that says that Dred Scott as a black person and black people generally had never been were not then could never be citizens of the United States and as such have no rights which white men are bound to respect northerners who are furious wherever our flag floats protested one newspaper editor it is the flag of slavery when abolitionists sought ways to circumvent the Dred Scott ruling slaveholders pressed for a federal slave law this is astounding by the late 1850s the southerners are demanding that the federal government pass a slave code for all the territories that it acquired in the West and obviously northerners aren't about to accept this kind of thing the Battle of the slavery was crippling the political process on a bright spring morning congressman Preston Brooks from South Carolina entered the Senate chamber and beat Senator Charles Sumner the fiery abolitionist into unconsciousness violence is erupting in the halls of government on the streets of Washington involving our lawmakers there are people who are coming to sessions of the House of Representatives and the US Senate armed in fact one letter says the only people who aren't coming with two guns are those who are coming with two guns and a knife in the midst of the partisan turmoil all eyes turned to the 1860 presidential election and the Republican nominee the Free Soil candidate Abraham Lincoln both Edward McGee and Lewis Hughes anxiously awaited the results boss had been reading the papers when he broke out with the exclamation the very idea of electing an old rail splitter to the presidency of the United States well he'll never take his seat the Democratic Party had fractured north and south giving victory to the rail splitter from Illinois the first time a candidate was elected without carrying a single southern state bimba Lincoln was elected committed to not interfering with slavery anywhere he was only committed to restricting its expansion but at that point the slaveholders have become so convinced that the North was taken over by these lunatic abolitionists that that is the way they viewed Abraham Lincoln's election no matter what Lincoln said even before Lincoln took office seven southern states withdrew from the Union enslaved people across the South were heartened by the news the Lewis and Matilda the MoMA tells the first real hope for freedom [Music] after reuniting with her children mariette jacobs completed her autobiography as she looked toward an uncertain future her brother's words weighed heavy on her heart woe be to the country where the Sun of Liberty has to rise up out of the sea of blood the United States had become a part of a slavery the nation was at the brink Civil War [Music] next time the north in the south by the bloodiest war in American history this is a white man's war for Union this war has nothing to do with slavery then black Americans and slaved and free force a change in the war Robert smalls fought in 17 battles in which he risked his life for the Union cause emancipation only begins the challenge of freedom the message was that the destiny of African Americans was not at all connected to the destiny of the nation experience more of the personal stories triumphs and challenges enslaved people faced at pbs.org learn more about the continuing efforts of enslaved and free black Americans to gain equal rights under the law nah nah Bolivia man oh man am I getting some fool who say aye [Music] [Music] [Music] at New York Life we know that learning from the past helps create a better future we support this PBS program as part of our commitment to understanding the stories that shaped our nation guided by our values financial strength integrity and humanity New York Life has been part of America's story since 1845 join us in exploring the defining moments of our nation's history we are PBS [Music] tonight the north in the south by the bloodiest war in American history this is a white man's war for union this war has nothing to do with slavery then black Americans enslaved and free forced a change in the war Robert smalls fought in seventeen battles in which he risked his life for the Union cost emancipation only begins the challenge of freedom the message was that the destiny of African Americans was not at all connected to the destiny of the nation [Music] [Music] [Music] in 1861 in the United States now just 80 years old was ripped apart over slavery with the election of Abraham Lincoln seven states of the law south left the Union to found a new Confederacy a great war began and with it thousands of african-americans fled to freedom [Music] [Applause] [Music] the moon was up the tide was right for the escape of the planter and it was a dramatic event in the early morning of May 13th 1862 a slave named Robert smalls led his wife children and fellow enslaved sailors on a daring escape attempt from the Charleston Harbor [Music] just one year before Confederates had kept at Fort Sumter gaining control of the harbor North and South were now locked in a civil war a war that would become the bloodiest in the nation's history the conflict had erupted just a few miles from where Robert smalls and his fellow crewmen were attempting their SP [Music] they had a little rowboat and monster families were loaded onto the boat the men took their posts a small just like the captain and they set out from the harbor as first fort Johnson they had to give the appropriate signal and one single mistake would have alerted those who were watching that something was amiss and they would have held up the ship and possibly fired on it blowing it out of the water well because Robert smalls was a helmsman he knew those things and he simply demonstrated what the passage code was after a few seconds which he said later seemed hours he got the response pass on planter and so he sped on and then they were approaching fort sumter and small save the prayer Oh Lord we entrust ourselves into thy hands like thou didst for the Israelites in Egypt guide us to our promised land of freedom and some of the men said to him let's don't go close to the fort let's cut a wide berth around it so they won't see us suppose that we wanted to see us we're not under sink we sneaking around so they went close to Fort Sumter [Music] Robert smalls was born in Buford South Carolina in 1839 just down the coast from Charleston [Music] his mother Lydia was born enslaved on the McKee plantation Robert smalls mother Lydia was a household servant so she was probably more literate and better educated than most of the general slave population and the Sea Island she imparted or at least tried to apart as much of that education to her son as she could he absorbed from his mother a sense of pride soft worth dignity and he learned from his honor a set of skills he taught all sorts of things but he did not teach him to read and write when smalls becomes 12 years Oh instead of sending him out to the fields the owner McKee took the boy himself into Charleston and deposited him with his sister-in-law Charleston was a whole new world for the young boy and now like many other enslaved he found himself hired on by his owner to work in the city in the urban environment it was not unusual for someone who owned several slaves to hire the slaves time out to other persons and that would represent a mechanism that would continue to allow the the owner to reap the profits of the slaves labor for the next few years smalls worked at various jobs around Charleston and learned many new skills eventually he found work on the docks by the time he was 15 years old smalls was captain of the crew on the docks mostly millet rice essays and even $15 a month which belonged to the owner McKee and whenever he got his $15 Mikey gave smalls one down a small sage his dollar and he purchased things like tobacco and candy and sold it to the other men on the docks and made more money and he saved but smalls was ambitious he asked Mikey if he could hire himself out then he would pay Mikey $15 a month and keep any additional money here McKee agreed this happened frequently actually that owners often times allowed their slaves to work for all the persons accumulate wages as a result and to then purchase their freedom this was a unique opportunity that was afforded especially by urban life and it was very important for individuals such as smallest because oftentimes they were also given the opportunity to live away from the people who owned them Robert smalls would soon ask if he could live on his own as well when smalls turned seventeen he fell in love with the young lady named Allen Jones who was almost twice his age twenty nine idly she was but they got married McKee gave his permission for them to marry and he also gave the newlyweds permission to live in Charleston but smalls knew that the few freedoms he now enjoyed existed at the whim of his master Robert smalls wanted real freedom with the help of his wife small study of maritime charts and was promoted as he made more money Robert and Hannah began to talk about buying their freedom then everything changed the civil war broke out on Robert smalls doorstep for decades North and South had been dividing between free and slave labor in 1860 as the country expanded into the West southern is one of the new western territories to be slave states but most northerners saw these new territories as places for free white men to work their own small farms the battle over the future of slavery was destroying the Union by the time of the presidential election of 1860 the southern democrats break off and they are pushing quite strongly towards the possibility of secession and the center of secession during this period of South Carolina with a Democratic Party divided a free labor Republican from Illinois was elected president with less than 40 percent of the vote Abraham Lincoln did not carry a single southern state immediately after the election of Abraham Lincoln there are a series of meetings in South Carolina particularly and before Christmas of 1860 South Carolina announces to the world that it is withdrawing from the United States of America it is seceding [Music] less than a month after Lincoln took office fort sumter fell to the Confederates Abraham Lincoln issues call for federal troops to put down what he now is referring to as a rebellion civil war is underway and you know it's like this rock rolling downhill [Music] in late 1861 the Union regained control of some of the sea islands that stretched along the South Carolina coast Robert smalls could have seen the Union fleet offshore throughout the war the Union fleet was visible from Charleston Harbor so the sense of the impending possibility for freedom was in the mind of all the slaves of the low country when the war began Robert smalls ship was called into Confederate service and he was forced to continue working on board so for a year he was fighting with the Confederacy against the Union they laid mines in the harbor they carried ammunition for one place another they carry troops they were fighting a war smalls figured that he was fighting the war on the wrong side smalls and his wife had been talking about freedom for a long time and smalls began to speak with some of the other black men who were working with him on the ship they began to talk about how to escape one night the enslaved crewmen of the planet dared meet at smalls apartment to finalize their escape plans they went over the scheme in detail they have decided that they would in the wee hours in the morning they would load the members of their families on the vessel and sail it out then into the harbor and beyond the Confederate battle stations taking a tremendous risk one man said you know I'm not afraid of any of this for myself but I'm afraid of what they will do to my wife and family back here if I participate Smallville's general he's okay on the condition that you not tell anybody about our secret we let you go so they let the man go [Music] and then he said this is very dangerous and we may be captured by the Confederates and if they capture us they put us to death so he said to them I suggest that in case we had captured we set dynamite to the boiler on the ship and blow it up blowing up ourselves at the same time better he said to take our lives into our own hands than to turn ourselves over to the Confederates they all agreed [Music] on the night of May 13th 1862 as they often did the Confederate crew went home and let the black crew on board to guard the ship this night conditions were right the planner had just been loaded with ammunition more than enough to blow it up if necessary with their families huddled below the platter with Robert smalls impersonating the captain approached Fort Sumter he gave the signal and was allowed to pass and then the Centurion the fort sumter noticed that the boat has sped up and he thought it was funny so he called to the boat to halt but by now small was out of the range of the Confederate fire and so he didn't stop but now he was in real trouble because he was headed toward the Union fleet although he was sailing toward them to deliver the ship to them and they did not know he was coming so what to do well apparently I'm Pamela his wife had brought her white bed sheet alone so the small orders his men to take down the Confederate flag take down a flag and put this appointment sheet up on the flagpole which they did the Union naval blockade didn't fire on the ship and and did allowed to come into its midst and was very surprised to see this Confederate vessel now in the possession of enslaved African Americans who turned it over to the small stepped up and said to the Union ship captain I'm Robert smalls I brought you the planter I thought it might be of some use to Uncle Abe that's how the planet became a union the ship and small became free [Music] Robert smalls captured the Panta was a sensation it was reported from New York to London Robert smalls very quickly became a major celebrity lots of slaves escaped during the Civil War none of them escaped with as much enterprise or with as much Confederate property in their possession as Robert smalls and the crew of the planter the Union Navy quickly learned that they were getting much more than just a new ship the smalls was taken into the union custody and debriefed they were overjoyed they knew that the ship was valuable and as it debriefed smalls they learned how much he knew by the Confederate defenses and that was even more valuable than the ship Robert smalls really challenged the whole theoretical basis of slavery because here was someone who was intelligent enough who was courageous enough who was confident enough to engineer really this dramatic and extraordinary escape right out from under the noses of the superior race so there's this feeling that there has to be some sort of retribution for that and so the state of South Carolina actually places a $50,000 bounty on his head the bounty did not frighten smalls he was prepared to fight and joined the Union Navy as a non-commissioned pilot as the war ended its second year most southern white men had been called into the army many of the enslaved took this opportunity to flee the clearly revealed that without the patrol system in the south which basically dissipated when the war started there was nothing has restrained him and keep them from running away and so as a result they they ran away by the hundreds and and then eventually by the thousands as thousands of escaped slaves made it to Union lines some field commanders put them to work and non-combat jobs unlike the Navy which had a few african-american sailors the army would not permit blacks to fight from Lincoln's perspective or from the perspective of most northerners this is a white man's war for Union this war has nothing to do with slavery and it has nothing to do with black people from the time he took office Lincoln's policy was focused on keeping the four slave-owning border states in the Union Lincoln believed that without Delaware Maryland Kentucky and Missouri the North was doomed I hope God is on our side the president told a reporter but I must have Kentucky in fact this is very interesting conversation between Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln in which Frederick Douglass says that you know you're fighting this war with with a strong right hand behind your back even though you're concerned about maintaining the loyalty of the border states the United States would be better off to accept the service of thousands tens of thousands of African American troops and by 1862 the relentless movement of fleeing slaves into Union lines and their insistent demand to be allowed to fight made the issue unavoidable in August the federal War Department authorized mustering an army of 5,000 black men in South Carolina [Music] Robert smalls volunteered to help recruit the free South Carolina colored troops within the year black regiments were being created all across the Union the response was overwhelming wherever it's possible you have masses of men volunteering for the army its people all over the north coming to Massachusetts to volunteer for the Massachusetts 54 and 55th in South Carolina for the first colored infantry now officially allowed to fight they had to fight not only the Confederate Army they had to fight within the Union ranks as well racism was rampant at first black soldiers received only half pay but still they came it's important to understand that from the beginning of the war black people have a commitment to their own freedom and determination to seize what they see as a critical opening which will change their lives and the change the lives of their descendants forever the influx of new soldiers was having an impact but Lincoln wanted to choke the southern resistance despite opposition within the Republican Party Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863 it sent shockwaves through the south [Music] although the proclamation only freed slaves in the rebel states that were beyond the control of the Union Army to african-americans it meant freedom was on the horizon those enslaved people who heard about the proclamation because it oftentimes they placed the broadest possible interpretation on it and and even if and even if the literal words did not apply to them because of geographical limitations they applied the proclamation to themselves a proclamation was issued by the president all over the south african americans took up the cause of freedom the following to wit that on the first day of january ad 1863 all persons held as slaves within any state even soldiers who had already freed themselves by making it to the Union lines gather to hear the words read aloud shall be then thenceforward and forever free [Applause] the calls freedom at rinse out [Music] [Applause] [Music] by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation Abraham Lincoln was able to change the war from simply a war to keep the Union together a war to crush a rebellion into a holy war a fight for freedom for African Americans it was the dawn of a new day [Applause] [Music] but the war was far from over [Music] in the north anger over the proclamation called enlistments by white men to fall off the federal government responded with an unpopular draft as the 1864 election neared Lincoln feared defeat because of the proclamation but Union victories in Virginia and the capture of Atlanta transformed the national mood the president won with 55% of the vote [Music] then on April 9th 1865 with his armor down to less than 8,000 men Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered the war was almost over five days after the surrender exactly four years to the day the civil war had begun a celebration was held at Fort Sumter to raise the American flag once again over the fort and there was tremendous rejoicing on that day as Thrones of people journeyed out true for Sumter by the time that celebration in Charleston Harbor occurred Robert smalls fought in seventeen battles in which he risked his life for the Union cause so he was a military hero at the end of the war and when this occurred he was one of the celebrities who was included on the ceremony this celebration was terribly consequential because what it did was confirm that the war was over with and that this was a new day a new day in South Carolina and a new day throughout the length and breadth of the South all over the country african-americans rejoiced but their joy would not last that same night Abraham Lincoln was shot in a Washington Theatre within hours the great Emancipator was dead a small set he cried like a baby and prayed lord have mercy on us all the country wondered what now [Music] blinkin hadn't finalized his plans to reintegrate the union but with the South in shambles the region needed reconstruction [Music] every level of society had to be rebuilt now free african-americans were faced with many challenges but their greatest challenge was freedom itself african-americans although greatly desirous of freedom we're not really sure what exactly would be entailed by that concept in a world built on slavery to say you were not enslaved anymore what does it mean who's free does that mean you're going to become a white person does that mean you're going to be able to own property it's an abstract kind of a concept that really could only be determined by what people did if you read accounts of life in the South in the immediate aftermath of the war you will read over and over again is about large numbers of african-americans who are traveling the roads it's very interesting because the former slaveholders say that these people are just wandering around aimlessly they weren't wandering around aimlessly they were looking for friends and relatives that have been sold away [Music] [Music] one of the most heart-rending sites in and after the war publications is columns called lost friends in which people are looking for their families [Music] people trying to get together [Music] they were by their actions giving the lie to this notion that family didn't mean anything that these connections had been broken that they didn't care anything about these people who had been sold away and that's precisely what they did care about and what they were trying to do is to reconstitute families to find mothers and fathers and relatives and friends [Music] all over the south african americans set out to become part of the new society with the help of the federal Freedmen's Bureau churches in the north and south and individuals worked together to open schools for the newly freed slaves [Music] [Music] treat people of all ages wanted one of the most basic rights denied them during slavery to learn to read and write many others open businesses or sought work for pay for former slaves it was the first time they could negotiate work contracts and buy land they knew that owning land was the key to inclusion in the new America still others turn their attention to becoming part of the new political system but the new president was a southern Democrat named Andrew Johnson in the first weeks after he takes office he sets about providing almost wholesale pardons for many of those who have been the major leaders of the Confederacy the former Confederates had only one major requirement before being readmitted to the union they had to accept the 13th amendment abolishing slavery and all would be forgiven Republicans in Congress were outraged they impeached President Johnson who escaped removal by a single vote then Congress took over reconstruction and immediately made changes to the Constitution the 14th Amendment of the Constitution said that your right of citizenship is not dependent on race and the Fifteenth Amendment said that you could not deny a person two right to vote because of the person's race by the time you get to the spring of 1867 african-americans have a new sense of government a new sense of what government means after all it was government that would in fact take the steps to incorporate African American men into the body politic with the ability to vote in into politics many African Americans who had fled the South returned home at the end of the war smalls came back to Buford where he purchased a house where he drawn up as a slave his mother had worked as a slave [Music] his mother na was presiding over this house as a free person she'd been presiding over it for a long time for the McKee family now she was doing a first son then smalls went fairly quickly into politics the Beaufort Republican Club became the base of Robert smalls political career and Robert smalls went all over the county canvassing as they said but campaigning he proved himself to be a very clever orator great at repartee and dramatic in his oratory and often aggressive and colorful and all those things the the black population of the Seattle's responded immediately to Robert smalls and so this was the beginning was political career in the spring of 1868 Robert smalls was elected to the South Carolina State House of Representatives where he joined the black majority in the legislature it was the only state in the Union to be dominated politically by african-americans South Carolina where the Civil War had begun would become a major proving ground for reconstruction [Music] across the country african-americans into political life at every level of society [Music] if you make this comparison between 1860 when 90% of black people were slaves in 1868 1870 when you've got African Americans who are in state legislatures they are black mayors and police chiefs they are blacks in the US Senate in the US House of Representatives they are literally revolutionising American politics although their overall numbers were small their mere presence was too much for the old southern establishment that was very radical I mean never well white folks they could just couldn't imagine that I mean social equality political equality oh my it was just beyond their comprehension that such a radical thing could occur so fast and so when the social fabric begins to rip from the perspective of white Southerners what they know to do is to respond with overwhelming violence and they do the Ku Klux Klan emerges throughout the south they do unspeakable things they do the things that you would think of terror is doing they blow things up they kill people they do all kinds of other things that you would normally associate with political terrorism these were very dangerous times these white terrorists really because that's that's what they would properly be called were committed to stopping at nothing to eliminating the black body politic no Republican was a new black or white and the thousands of federal troops stationed in the South were not enough to stop the violence in South Carolina state representative Robert Brown Elliott spearheaded hearings to investigate plan activities Eliot's success in getting some of the Klan to confess to their tactics convinced him that he could do something about the intimidation he once said we have suffered much and may suffer more let us not be driven from our position by any threats in November 1878 was elected to the US Congress he took his crusade against the Klan with him Elliot wants to convince the federal government that more work needs to be done to protect the rights of citizens and he particularly wanted to catch the ear of President Ulysses Grant but glance only major reconstruction plan was an attempt to annex the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo in the hopes that African Americans would want to relocate there despite grants plan Elliott along with other Republican leaders continued lobbying the president in April of 1871 their efforts paid off grant signed a Ku Klux Klan act aimed at giving the federal courts the power to jail the clans leaders [Music] in October Grant declared martial law in nine South Carolina counties due to the condition of lawlessness it would be the only time the military power of the act would be used by 1874 one Robert smalls was elected to Congress the Klan Act had been effective but now there was a new problem groups called rifle clubs had taken their place in South Carolina the red church rifle club became notorious the redshirts essentially were the Confederate Army recidivists the command structure of the red shirt regiments preserve the command structure of actual Confederate regiments these were Confederate veterans who were now under in many cases the very same officers that they had served under during the American Civil War and so the organization of the red shirts was really a way to bring resistance out into the open in 1876 just eight years after the first interracial elections violence against southern Republicans was out of control [Music] small strip to the flow of Congress to urge his fellow congressmen to keep the pressure on the south he told them about a letter he had received testifying to the level of violence the letter began these were facts which I've vouch for entirely and are not distorted in any degree it's a plain unvarnished narration of painful and horrible truths on July 4th 1876 a local plantation owner drove his buggy down a public road in Hamburg South Carolina where a black militia troupe was drilling the local plantation owner insisted on being allowed to drive right through this muster field the black militia refused to move they almost come to blows after a few tense moments the troop leader doc Adams ordered his men to break ranks and allow the carriage to pass all alone whites in that area have been waiting for a kind of a provocation that they could use to rally their forces and so local Democratic leaders rally white Democrats in that area and when the local black militia found out what was happening they they held up in a building and whites and began to lay siege to that building [Music] ultimately the black militiamen were forced to surrender when they surrendered particular members of doc Adams militia are picked out they call them out one by one and they shoot them in the head then they tell the rest to flee as they begin to flee into the woods many of them are shot in the back [Music] [Music] that was a turning point because not only did it scare African Americans but it showed white Democrats this was the moment this was this was the trajectory you could take if you really wanted to turn the clock back on reconstruction in the south the days leading up to the presidential election of 1876 became even more violent [Music] in the north republicans grew weary of the plight of the freedmen when the governor of mississippi asked for federal troops to halt widespread violence against black voters grant said there was no you saving mississippi if it would cost the republicans Ohio there was sort of this general feeling that let's just give the white South what they want which the white South said what we want is to be left alone to shape our own social institutions which is a very polite very southern way of saying we want to be able to control our former slaves at great personal risk african-americans held political meetings to get out the vote but the Democrats smelled victory [Music] on November 7th 1876 everyone who dared went to the polls the day after the election there were accusations of folk tampering in three southern states Florida Louisiana and South Carolina in fact there's two returns come from all three of these states one set of returns say that the Democrats have won the election another set says it says that the Republicans had won the election and this of course leads to an impasse in Congress and they decided to appoint a commission as the Commission argued whether the Republican Rutherford B Hayes or the Democrat Samuel Tilden should become president the March 4th inauguration deadline loaned Robert small spoke about the continued violence against Republicans in his state the Democratic Party pursued a policy calculated to drive from the state every white man who would refuse to join them and their attempts to deprive the Negro of the rights guaranteed him by the Constitution of the United States the debate dragged on the struggle for freedom was in jeopardy and hence the basis of a bargain a bargain which will allow Rutherford behaves to assume the presidency on the evening of February 26 1877 just six days before the inauguration deadline a clandestine meeting between representatives of both candidates took place at the Wormley Hotel in Washington DC [Music] they've sort of come to an agreement that we're no longer concerned about the rights of African Americans as voters and to put the Negro question on the backburner and and not worry about it anymore and they literally turn African Americans over at City to the South in other words to remove the final forces of the federal government providing protection in the south for black and white Republicans well the deal is struck [Music] and so this is the infamous lien compromise of 1877 [Music] the message that goes out to African Americans was that the destiny of African Americans was not at all connected to the destiny of the nation and this is a very different situation than the situation which developed during the Civil War because one of the things that that we understand and understand very clearly is that when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Lincoln Lincoln was saying that the destiny of African Americans was linked directly to the destiny of the nation we would rise or fall together [Music] and now with the rise of breath furred behaves as Republican president now Republicans were essentially saying that the country can get along very well without you after the compromise of 1877 african-americans found themselves increasingly forced out of politics across the south black Republicans were simply removed from their posts Robert smalls a US congressman who could not be removed was charged with corruption jailed and eventually pardoned they did to Robert smalls what they did to a lot of problems black politicians that time and those charges haunted Robert smalls for the rest of his life but Robert smalls was a very brave man not just stealing the planter but his whole is fighting in 17 battles in the Civil War he he wasn't afraid of gunfire he wasn't afraid of standing up to people who were armed when he was not he had immense personal courage Robert smalls never gave in to the disdain of the Democrats he continued to run and be reelected from his predominantly black district for nine more years his leadership would give hope to his people in the years of uncertainty to come across the South Democratic leaders did all they could to erase reconstruction from their minds and from the law [Music] gradually african-american voters are intimidated to the point where they all but cease to be allowed to vote Mississippi passed a series of laws that allowed legal discrimination against African Americans in almost every phase of life state after state in the South followed suit [Music] as the old slave system was turned into a new system of servitude many african-americans stayed to fight on the soil they had always called home others took their fate into their own hands and joined the movement West black churches became more than ever the political cornerstone of their communities through them african-americans kept faith in the American dream ministers preached as they had during slavery that liberation would common period of reconstruction is a very instructive period in American society it is America in some ways at its racial worst but there are glimmers of America at its racial best this moment when people with everything in the world including history against them had exercised both democracy and political power real political power [Music] their attempt at the first interracial democracy was stalled but the groundwork had been laid although it would be almost a hundred years until the second reconstruction their struggle would not be in vain [Music] out of reconstruction come the basic tools that allow the modern civil rights movement to establish important victories in the 1960s without the 14th amendment without the 15th amendment the civil rights movement would have had very little foundation upon which to build so reconstruction really does have an important impact on all of the generations that follow it would be too simple to say that reconstruction was a total failure it wasn't a total failure there was a period of time when America provided a ray of hope I probably as a robbery [Music] experience more of the personal stories triumphs and challenges enslaved people faced at pbs.org learn more about the continuing efforts of enslaved and free black Americans to gain equal rights under the law at New York Life we know that learning from the past helps create a better future we support this PBS program as part of our commitment to understanding the stories as shaped our nation guided by our values financial strength integrity and humanity New York Life has been part of America's story since 1845 join us in exploring the defining moments of our nation's history we are PBS [Music] you Sally Hemings a slave woman whose name will be forever linked to one of America's founding fathers when three