University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XX
TOWN SLAVES

SOUTHERN households in town as well as in country were
commonly large, and the dwellings and grounds of the
well-to-do were spacious. The dearth of gas and plumbing
and the lack of electric light and central heating made for
heavy chores in the drawing of water, the replenishment of fuel
and the care of lamps. The gathering of vegetables from the
kitchen garden, the dressing of poultry and the baking of relays
of hot breads at meal times likewise amplified the culinary routine.
Maids of all work were therefore seldom employed. Comfortable
circumstances required at least a cook and a housemaid,
to which might be added as means permitted a laundress, a children's
nurse, a seamstress, a milkmaid, a butler, a gardener and
a coachman. While few but the rich had such ample staffs as
this, none but the poor were devoid of domestics, and the ratio
of servitors to the gross population was large. The repugnance
of white laborers toward menial employment, furthermore, conspired
with the traditional predilection of householders for negroes
in a lasting tenure for their intimate services and gave the
slaves a virtual monopoly of this calling. A census of Charleston
in 1848,[1] for example, enumerated 5272 slave domestics as
compared with 113 white and 27 free colored servants. The
slaves were more numerous than the free also in the semi-domestic
employments of coachmen and porters, and among the draymen
and the coopers and the unskilled laborers in addition.

On the other hand, although Charleston excelled every other
city in the proportion of slaves in its population, free laborers

Manual Occupations in Charleston, 1848

                                                                                   

	Slaves		Free Negroes		Whites
	Men	Women	Men	Women	Men	Women
Domestic servants	1,888	3,384	9	28	13	100
Cooks and confectioners	7	12	18	18		5
Nurses and midwives		2		10		5
Laundresses		33		45
Seamstresses and mantua makers		24		196		125
Milliners				7		44
Fruiterers, hucksters and pedlers		18	6	5	46	18
Gardeners	3				5	1
Coachmen	15		4		2
Draymen	67		11		13
Porters	35		5		8
Wharfingers and stevedores	2		1		21
Pilots and sailors	50		1		176
Fishermen	11		14		10
Carpenters	120		27		119
Masons and bricklayers	68		10		60
Painters and plasterers	16		4		18
Tinners	3		1		10
Ship carpenters and joiners	51		6		52
Coopers	61		2		20
Coach makers and wheelwrights	3		1		26
Cabinet makers	8				26
Upholsterers	1		1		10
Gun, copper and locksmiths	2		1		16
Blacksmiths and horseshoers	40		4		51
Millwrights			5		4
Boot and shoemakers	6		17		30
Saddle and harness makers	2		1		29
Tailors and cap makers	36		42	6	68	6
Butchers	5		1		10
Millers			1		14
Bakers	39		1		35	1
Barbers and hairdressers	4		14			6
Cigarmakers	5		1		10
Bookbinders	3				10
Printers	5				65
Other mechanics[2]	45		2		182
Apprentices	43	8	14	7	55	5
Unclassified, unskilled laborers	838	378	19	2	192
Superannuated	38	54	1	5

predominated in all the other industrial groups, though but
slightly in the cases of the masons and carpenters. The whites,
furthermore, heavily outnumbered the free negroes in virtually
all the trades but that of barbering which they shunned. Among
women workers the free colored ranked first as seamstresses,
washerwomen, nurses and cooks, with white women competing
strongly in the sewing trades alone. A census of Savannah in
the same year shows a similar predominance of whites in all the
male trades but that of the barbers, in which there were counted
five free negroes, one slave and no whites.[3] From such statistics
two conclusions are clear: first, that the repulsion of the
whites was not against manual work but against menial service;
second, that the presence of the slaves in the town trades was
mainly due to the presence of their fellows as domestics.

Most of the slave mechanics and out-of-door laborers were the
husbands and sons of the cooks and chambermaids, dwelling
with them on their masters' premises, where the back yard with
its crooning women and romping vari-colored children was as
characteristic a feature as on the plantations. Town slavery, indeed,
had a strong tone of domesticity, and the masters were
often paternalistically inclined. It was a townsman, for example,
who wrote the following to a neighbor: "As my boy Reuben
has formed an attachment to one of your girls and wants her
for a wife, this is to let you know that I am perfectly willing
that he should, with your consent, marry her. His character is
good; he is honest, faithful and industrious." The patriarchal
relations of the country, however, which depended much upon
the isolation of the groups, could hardly prevail in similar degree
where the slaves of many masters intermingled. Even for
the care of the sick there was doubtless fairly frequent recourse
to such establishments as the "Surgical Infirmary for Negroes'"
at Augusta which advertised its facilities in 1854,[4] though the
more common practice, of course, was for slave patients in town

as well as country to be nursed at home. 'A characteristic note in
this connection was written by a young Georgia townswoman
"No one is going to church today but myself, as we have a little
negro very sick and Mama deems it necessary to remain at home
to attend to him."[5]

The town régime was not so conducive to lifelong adjustments
of masters and slaves except as regards domestic service; for
whereas a planter could always expand his operations in response
to an increase of his field hands and could usually provide
employment at home for any artizan he might produce, a lawyer,
a banker or a merchant had little choice but to hire out or sell
any slave who proved a superfluity or a misfit in his domestic establishment.
On the other hand a building contractor with an
expanding business could not await the raising of children but
must buy or hire masons and carpenters where he could find
them.

Some of the master craftsmen owned their staffs. Thus William
Elfe, a Charleston cabinet maker at the close of the colonial
period, had title to four sawyers, five joiners and a painter, and
he managed to keep some of their wives and children in his possession
also by having a farm on the further side of the harbor
for their residence and employment.[6] William Rouse, a Charleston
leather worker who closed his business in 1825 when the
supply of tan bark ran short, had for sale four tanners, a currier
and seven shoemakers, with, however, no women or children;[7]
and the seven slaves of William Brockelbank, a plastering
contractor of the same city, sold after his deattt in 1850,
comprised but one woman and no children.[8] Likewise when the
rope walk of Smith, Dorsey and Co. at New Orleans was offered
for sale in 1820, fourteen slave operatives were included without
mention of their families.[9]

Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire. The
following are typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements:
Michael Grantland at Richmond offered "good wages"
for the year 1799 by piece or month for six or eight negro coopers.[10]
At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for strong
negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works
in Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men
also to take employment with him.[11] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger
and Company wanted three or four negro men to work in their
factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying "they will be taught weaving,
and liberal wages will be paid for their services."[12] George
W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 "Wanted to hire, eight or ten
white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[13] A citizen
of Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters
on weekly or monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheelwright
of the same city offered to take black apprentices.[14] In
many cases whites and blacks worked together in the same employ,
as in a boat-building yard on the Flint River in 1836,[15] and
in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[16]

In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of
complete insurance from the lessee. An instance of this was a
contract between James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he
was departing for a sojourn in Scotland, and his neighbor James
Hazel. The latter was to take the three negroes Glasgow, Kelso
and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of £21 sterling for
the lot. If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel
from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was
to reimburse Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving
in turn a bill of sale for any runaway. Furthermore if any
of the slaves were permanently injured by willful abuse at the

hands of Hazel's overseer, Murray was to be paid for the damage.[17]
Leases of this type, however, were exceptional. As a
rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard
to willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where
the contracts of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[18] When
the Georgia supreme court awarded the owner a full year's hire
of a slave who had died in the midst of his term the decision
was complained of as an innovation "signally oppressive to the
poorer classes of our citizens—the large majority—who are compelled
to hire servants."[19]

The main supply of slaves for hire was probably comprised
of the husbands and sons, and sometimes the daughters, of the
cooks and housemaids of the merchants, lawyers and the like
whose need of servants was limited but who in many cases made
a point of owning their slaves in families. On the other hand,
many townsmen whose capital was scant or whose need was temporary
used hired slaves even for their kitchen work; and sometimes
the filling of the demand involved the transfer of a slave
from one town to another. Thus an innkeeper of Clarkesville,
a summer resort in the Georgia mountains, published in the distant
newspapers of Athens and Augusta in 1838 his offer of
liberal wages for a first rate cook.[20] This hiring of domestics
brought periodic embarrassments to those who depended upon
them. A Virginia clergyman who found his wife and himself
doing their own chores "in the interval between the hegira of
the old hirelings and the coming of the new"[21] was not alone in
his plight At the same season, a Richmond editor wrote: "The
negro hiring days have come, the most woeful of the year! So
housekeepers think who do not own their own servants; and
even this class is but a little better off than the rest, for all darkeydom
must have holiday this week, and while their masters
and mistresses are making fires and cooking victuals or attending

to other menial duties the negroes are promenading the
streets decked in their finest clothes."[22] Even the tobacco factories,
which were constantly among the largest employers of
hired slaves, were closed for lack of laborers from Christmas day
until well into January.[23]

That the bargain of hire sometimes involved the consent of
more than two parties is suggested by a New Year's colloquy
overheard by Robert Russell on a Richmond street: "I was
rather amused at the efforts of a market gardener to hire a young
woman as a domestic servant. The price her owner put upon
her services was not objected to by him, but they could not agree
about other terms. The grand obstacle was that she would not
consent to work in the garden, even when she had nothing else to
do. After taking an hour's walk in another part of town I again
met the two at the old bargain. Stepping towards them, I now
learned that she was pleading for other privileges—her friends
and favourites must be allowed to visit her.[24] At length she agreed
to go and visit her proposed home and see how things looked."
That the scruples of proprietors occasionally prevented the placing
of slaves is indicated by a letter of a Georgia woman anent
her girl Betty and a free negro woman, Matilda: "I cannot
agree for Betty to be hired to Matilda—her character is too bad.
I know her of old; she is a drunkard, and is said to be bad in
every respect. I would object her being hired to any colored
person no matter what their character was; and if she cannot get
into a respectable family I had rather she came home, and if she
can't work out put her to spinning and weaving. Her relations
here beg she may not be permitted to go to Matilda. She would
not be worth a cent at the end of the year."[25]

The coördination of demand and supply was facilitated in
some towns by brokers. Thus J. de Bellièvre of Baton Rouge
maintained throughout 1826 a notice in the local Weekly Messenger
of "Servants to hire by the day or month," including both

artizans and domestics; and in the Nashville city directory of
1860 Van B. Holman advertised his business as an agent for the
hiring of negroes as well as for the sale and rental of real estate.

Slave wages, generally quoted for the year and most frequently
for unskilled able-bodied hands, ranged materially higher, of
course, in the cotton belt than in the upper South. Women
usually brought about half the wages of men, though they were
sometimes let merely for the keep of themselves and their children.
In middle Georgia the wages of prime men ranged about
$100 in the first decade of the nineteenth century, dropped to $60
or $75 during the war of 1812, and then rose to near $150 by
1818. The panic of the next year sent them down again; and
in the 'twenties they commonly ranged between $100 and $125.
Flush times then raised them in such wise that the contractors
digging a canal on the Georgia coast found themselves obliged in
1838 to offer $18 per month together with the customary weekly
rations of three and a half pounds of bacon and ten quarts of
corn and also the services of a staff physician as a sort of substitute
for life and health insurance.[26] The beginning of the
distressful 'forties eased the market so that the town of Milledgeville
could get its street gang on a scale of $125;[27] at the middle
of the decade slaveowners were willing to take almost any wages
offered; and in its final year the Georgia Railroad paid only $70
to $75 for section hands. In 1850, however, this rate leaped to
$100 and $110, and caused a partial substitution of white laborers
for the hired slaves;[28] but the brevity of any relief procured
by this recourse is suggested by a news item from Chattanooga
in 1852 reporting that the commonest labor commanded a dollar
a day, that mechanics were all engaged far in advance, that much
building was perforce being postponed, and that all persons who
might be seeking employment were urged to answer the city's
call.[29] By 1854 the continuing advance began to discommode
rural employers likewise. A Norfolk newspaper of the time

reported that the current wages of $150 for ordinary hands and
$225 for the best laborers, together with life insurance for the
full value of the slaves, were so high that prudent farmers were
curtailing their operations.[30] At the beginning of 1856 the wages
in the Virginia tobacco factories advanced some fifteen per cent.
over the rates of the preceding year;[31] and shortly afterward
several of these establishments took refuge in the employment of
white women for their lighter processes.[32] In 1860 there was a
culmination of this rise of slave wages throughout the South,
contemporaneous with that of their purchase prices. First-rate
hands were engaged by the Petersburg tobacco factories at
$225;[33] and in northwestern Louisiana the prime field hands in
a parcel of slaves hired for the year brought from $300 to $360
each, and a blacksmith $43O.[34] The general average then prevalent
for prime unskilled slaves, however, was probably not much
above two hundred dollars. While the purchase price of slaves
was wellnigh quadrupled in the three score years of the nineteenth
century, slave wages were little more than doubled, for
these were of course controlled not by the fluctuating hopes and
fears of what the distant future might bring but by the sober
prospect of the work at hand.

The proprietors of slaves for hire appear to have been generally
as much concerned with questions of their moral and physical
welfare as with the wages to be received, for no wage would
compensate for the debilitation of the slave or his conversion into
an inveterate runaway. The hirers in their turn had the problem,
growing more intense with the advance of costs, of procuring
full work without resorting to such rigor of discipline as
would disquiet the owners of their employees. The tobacco factories
found solution in piece work with bonus for excess over
the required stint. At Richmond in the middle 'fifties this was
commonly yielding the slaves from two to five dollars a month
for their own uses; and these establishments, along with all other

slave employers, suspended work for more than a week at the
Christmas season.[35]

The hiring of slaves from one citizen to another do not meet
all the needs of the town industry, for there were many occupations
in which the regular supervision of labor was impracticable.
Hucksters must trudge the streets alone; and market
women sit solitary in their stalls. If slaves were to follow such
callings at all, and if other slaves were to utilize their talents in
keeping cobbler and blacksmith shops and the like for public
patronage,[36] they must be vested with fairly full control of their
own activities. To enable them to compete with whites and
free negroes in the trades requiring isolated and occasional work
their masters early and increasingly fell into the habit of hiring
many slaves to the slaves themselves, granting to each a large
degree of industrial freedom in return for a stipulated weekly
wage. The rates of hire varied, of course, with the slave's capabilities
and the conditions of business in their trades. The practice
brought friction sometimes between slaves and owners when
wages were in default. An instance of this was published in a
Charleston advertisement of 1800 announcing the auction of a
young carpenter and saying as the reason of the sale that he had
absconded because of a deficit in his wages.[37] Whether the sale
was merely by way of punishment or was because the proprietor
could not give personal supervision to the carpenter's work the
record fails to say. The practice also injured the interests of
white competitors in the same trades, who sometimes bitterly
complained;[38] it occasionally put pressure upon the slaves to fill
out their wages by theft; and it gave rise in some degree to a
public apprehension that the liberty of movement might be perverted
to purposes of conspiracy. The law came to frown upon
it everywhere; but the device was too great a public and private
convenience to be suppressed.

To procure the enforcement of such laws a vigilance committee
was proposed at Natchez in 1824;[39] but if it was created it
had no lasting effect. With the same purpose newspaper campaigns
were waged from time to time. Thus in the spring of
1859 the Bulletin of Columbia, South Carolina, said editorially:
"Despite the laws of the land forbidding under penalty the hiring
of their time by slaves, it is much to be regretted that the pernicious
practice still exists," and it censured the citizens who
were consciously and constantly violating a law enacted in the
public interest. The nearby Darlington Flag endorsed this and
proposed in remedy that the town police and the rural patrols
consider void all tickets issued by masters authorizing their
slaves to pass and repass at large, that all slaves found hiring
their time be arrested and punished, and that their owners be indicted
as by law provided. The editor then ranged further.
"There is another evil of no less magnitude," said he, "and perhaps
the foundation of the one complained of. It is that of
transferring slave labor from its legitimate field, the cultivation
of the soil, into that of the mechanic arts. . . . Negro mechanics
are an ebony aristocracy into which slaves seek to enter by
teasing their masters for permission to learn a trade. Masters
are too often seduced by the prospect of gain to yield their assent,
and when their slaves have acquired a trade are forced to the
violation of the law to realize their promised gain. We should
therefore have a law to prevent slave mechanics going off their
masters' premises to work. Let such a law be passed, and . . .
there will no longer be need of a law to prohibit slaves hiring
their own time." The Southern Watchman of Athens, Georgia,
reprinted all of this in turn, along with a subscriber's communication
entitled "free slaves." There were more negroes enjoying
virtual freedom in the town of Athens, this writer said, than
there were bona fide free negroes in any ten counties of the district.
"Everyone who is at all acquainted with the character
of the slave race knows that they have great ideas of liberty, and
in order to get the enjoyment of it they make large offers for

their time. And everyone who knows anything of the negro
knows that he won't work unless he is obliged to. . . . The negro
thus set free, in nine cases out of ten, idles away half of his
time or gambles away what he does make, and then relies on his
ingenuity in stealing to meet the demands pay day inevitably
brings forth; and this is the way our towns are converted into
dens of rogues and thieves."[40]

These arguments had been answered long before by a citizen
of Charleston. The clamor, said he, was intended not so much
to guard the community against theft and insurrection as to diminish
the competition of slaves with white mechanics. The
strict enforcement of the law would almost wholly deprive the
public of the services of jobbing slaves, which were indispensable
under existing circumstances. Let the statute therefore be left
in the obscurity of the lawyers' bookshelves, he concluded, to be
brought forth only in case of an emergency.[41] And so such
laws were left to sleep, despite the plaints of self-styled reformers.

That self-hire may often have led to self-purchase is suggested
by an illuminating letter of Billy Procter, a slave at Americus,
Georgia, in 1854 to Colonel John B. Lamar of whom something
has been seen in a foregoing chapter. The letter, presumably in
the slave's own hand, runs as follows: "As my owner, Mr,
Chapman, has determined to dispose of all his Painters, I would
prefer to have you buy me to any other man. And I am anxious
to get you to do so if you will. You know me very well
yourself, but as I wish you to be fully satisfied I beg to refer you
to Mr. Nathan C. Monroe, Dr. Strohecker and Mr. Bogg. I
am in distress at this time, and will be until I hear from you
what you will do. I can be bought for $1000—and I think that
you might get me for 50 Dolls less if you try, though that is Mr.
Chapman's price. Now Mas John, I want to be plain and honest
with you. If you will buy me I will pay you $600 per year
untill this money is paid, or at any rate will pay for myself in
two years. . . . I am fearful that if you do not buy me, there

is no telling where I may have to go, and Mr. C. wants me to
go where I would be satisfied,—I promise to serve you faithfully,
and I know that I am as sound and healthy as anyone you could
find. You will confer a great favour, sir, by Granting my request,
and I would be very glad to hear from you in regard to
the matter at your earliest convenience."[42]

The hiring of slaves by one citizen to another prevailed to
some extent in country as well as town, and the hiring of them
to themselves was particularly notable in the forest labors of
gathering turpentine and splitting shingles;[43] but slave hire in
both its forms was predominantly an urban resort. On the
whole, whereas the plantation system cherished slavery as a wellnigh
fundamental condition, town industry could tolerate it only
by modifying its features to make labor more flexibly responsive
to the sharply distinctive urban needs.

As to routine control, urban proprietors were less complete
masters even of slaves in their own employ than were those in
the country. For example, Morgan Brown of Clarksville, Tennessee,
had occasion to publish the following notice: "Whereas
my negroes have been much in the habit of working at night for
such persons as will employ them, to the great injury of their
health and morals, I therefore forbid all persons employing them
without my special permission in writing. I also forbid trading
with them, buying from or selling to them, without my written
permit stating the article they may buy or sell. The law will be
strictly enforced against transgressors, without respect to persons."[44]

When broils occurred in which slaves were involved, the masters
were likely to find themselves champions rather than judges.
This may be illustrated by two cases tried before the town commissioners
of Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1831. In the first of
these Edward Cary was ordered to bring before the board his

slave Nathan to answer a charge of assault upon Richard Mayhorn,
a member of the town patrol, and show why punishment
should not be inflicted. On the day set Cary appeared without
the negro and made a counter charge supported by testimony
that Mayhorn had exceeded his authority under the patrol ordinance.
The prosecution of the slave was thereupon dropped,
and the patrolman was dismissed from the town's employ. The
second case was upon a patrol charge against a negro named
Hubbard, whose master or whose master's attorney was one
Wiggins, reciting an assault upon Billy Woodliff, a slave apparently
of Seaborn Jones. Billy being sworn related that Hubbard
had come to the door of his blacksmith shop and "abused
and bruised him with a rock." Other evidence revealed that
Hubbard's grievance lay in Billy's having taken his wife from
him. "The testimony having been concluded, Mr. Wiggins addressed
the board in a speech containing some lengthy, strengthy
and depthy argument: whereupon the board ordered that the
negro man Hubbard receive from the marshall ten lashes, moderately
laid on, and be discharged."[45] Even in the maintenance of
household discipline masters were fain to apply chastisement
vicariously by having the town marshal whip their offending
servants for a small fee.

The variety in complexion, status and attainment among town
slaves led to a somewhat elaborate gradation of colored society.
One stratum comprised the fairly numerous quadroons and mulattoes
along with certain exceptional blacks. The men among
these had a pride of place as butlers and coachmen, painters and
carpenters; the women fitted themselves trimly with the cast-off
silks and muslins of their mistresses, walked with mincing tread,
and spoke in quiet tones with impressive nicety of grammar.
This element was a conscious aristocracy of its kind, but its
members were more or less irked by the knowledge that no matter
how great their merits they could not cross the boundary into
white society. The bulk of the real negroes on the other hand, with
an occasional mulatto among them, went their own way, the

women frankly indulging a native predilection for gaudy colors,
carrying their burdens on their heads, arms akimbo, and laying
as great store in their kerchief turbans as their paler cousins
did in their beflowered bonnets. The men of this class wore
their shreds and patches with an easy swing, doffed their wool
hats to white men as they passed, called themselves niggers or
darkies as a matter of course, took the joys and sorrows of the
day as they came, improvised words to the music of their work,
and customarily murdered the Queen's English, all with a true
if humble nonchalance and a freedom from carking care.

The differentiation of slave types was nevertheless little more
than rudimentary; for most of those who were lowliest on work
days assumed a grandiloquence of manner when they donned
their holiday clothes. The gayeties of the colored population
were most impressive to visitors from a far. Thus Adam Hodgson
wrote of a spring Sunday at Charleston in 1820: "I was
pleased to see the slaves apparently enjoying themselves on this
day in their best attire, and was amused with their manners
towards each other. They generally use Sir and Madam in addressing
each other, and make the most formal and particular
inquiries after each other's families."[46] J. S. Buckingham
wrote at Richmond fifteen years afterward: "On Sundays,
when the slaves and servants are all at liberty after dinner, they
move about in every thoroughfare, and are generally more gaily
dressed than the whites. The females wear white muslin and
light silk gowns, with caps, bonnets, ribbons and feathers; some
carry reticules on the arm and many are seen with parasols,
while nearly all of them carry a white pocket-handkerchief before
them in the most fashionable style. The young men among
the slaves wear white trousers, black stocks, broad-brimmed
hats, and carry walking-sticks; and from the bowings, curtseying
and greetings in the highway one might almost imagine one's
self to be at Hayti and think that the coloured people had got
Possession of the town and held sway, while the whites were
liviiig among them by sufferance."[47] Olmsted in his turn found

the holiday dress of the slaves in many cases better than the
whites,[48] and said their Christmas festivities were Saturnalia.
The town ordinances, while commonly strict in regard to the
police of slaves for the rest of the year, frequently gave special
countenance to negro dances and other festive assemblies at
Christmas tide.

Even in work-a-day seasons the laxity of control gave rise to
occasional complaint. Thus the acting mayor of New Orleans
recited in 1813, among matters needing correction, that loitering
slaves were thronging the grog shops every evening and that
negro dances were lasting far into the night, in spite of the prohibitions
of the law.[49] A citizen of Charleston protested in 1835
against another and more characteristic form of dissipation.
"There are," said he, "sometimes every evening in the week,
funerals of negroes accompanied by three or four hundred negroes
. . . who disturb all the inhabitants in the neighborhood
of burying grounds in Pitt street near Boundary street. It appears
to be a jubilee for every slave in the city. They are seen
eagerly pressing to the place from all quarters, and such is frequently
the crowd and noise made by them that carriages cannot
safely be driven that way."[50]

The operations of urban constables and police courts are exemplified
in some official statistics of Charleston. In the year ending
September 1, 1837, the slave arrests, numbering 768 in all,
were followed in 138 cases by prompt magisterial discharge, by
fines in 309 cases, and by punishment in the workhouse or by
remandment for trial on criminal charges in 264 of the remainder.
The mayor said in summary: "Of the 573 slaves fined or committed
to the workhouse nearly the whole were arrested for
being out at night without tickets or being found in the dram
shops or other unlawful places. The fines imposed did not in
general exceed $1, and where corporal punishment was inflicted
it was always moderate. It is worthy to remark that of the 460

cases reported by the marshals for prosecution but 22 were
prosecuted, the penalties having been voluntarily paid in 303
cases, and in 118 cases having been remitted, thus preventing by
a previous examination 421 suits." Arrests of colored freemen
in the same period numbered 78, of which 27 were followed by
discharge, 36 by fine or whipping, 5 by sentence to the workhouse,
and 10 by remandment.

In the second year following, the slave and free negro arrests
for being "out after the beating of the tattoo without tickets,
fighting and rioting in the streets, following military companies,
walking on the battery contrary to law, bathing horses at forbidden
places, theft, or other violation of the city and state laws"
advanced for some unexplained reason to an aggregate of 1424.
Of those taken into custody 274 were discharged after examination,
330 were punished in the workhouse, 33 were prosecuted
or delivered to warrant, 26 were fined or committed until the
fines were paid, for 398 the penalties were paid by their owners
or guardians, 115 were runaways who were duly returned to
their masters or otherwise disposed of according to law, and
the remaining 252 were delivered on their owners' orders.[51]

At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the
public whipping of negro offenders at prominent points on the
city streets, but complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[52]
had brought its discontinuance. For the punishment of
misdemeanants under sentences to hard labor a treadmill! was instituted
in the workhouse;[53] and the ensuing substitution of
labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[54]

In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths,
but their worship tended slowly to segregate. A few negroes
habitually participated with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal
rituals, or listened to the long and logical sermons of the
Presbyterians. Larger numbers occupied the pews appointed
for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist

whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with
their own tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of
irksome restraint. The white preacher in fear of committing
an indiscretion in the hearing of the negroes must watch his
words though that were fatal to his impromptu eloquence; the
whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when dignity
was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress
their own manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke
for unseemly conduct.[55] An obvious means of relief lay
in the founding of separate congregations to which the-white
ministers occasionally preached and in which white laymen
often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly filled
by blacks alone. There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar
talent for "'rousements" and the prayer leader might beseech
the Almighty in tones to reach His ears though afar off.
There the sisters might sway and croon to the cadence of sermon
and prayer, and the brethren spur the spokesman to still
greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations. There not
only would the quaint melody of the negro "spirituals" swell instead
of the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every
successful sermon would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece
of concerted rhythm.

In some cases the withdrawal of the blacks had the full character
of secession. An example in this line had been set in
Philadelphia when some of the negroes who had been attending
white churches of various denominations were prompted by the
antipathy of the whites and by the ambition of the colored leaders
to found, in 1791, an African church with a negro minister.
In the course of a few years this was divided into congregations
of the several sects. Among these the Methodists prospered to

such degree that in 1816 they launched the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, with congregations in Baltimore and other
neighboring cities included within its jurisdiction.[56] Richard Allen
as its first bishop soon entered into communication with Morris
Brown and other colored Methodists of Charleston who were aggrieved
at this time by the loss of their autonomy. In former years
the several thousand colored Methodists, who outnumbered by
tenfold the whites in the congregations there, had enjoyed a quarterly
conference of their own, with the custody of their collections
and with control over the church trials of colored members;
but on the ground of abuses these privileges were cancelled
in 1815. A secret agitation then ensued which led on the one
hand to the increase of the negro Methodists by some two thousand
souls, and on the other to the visit of two of their leaders
to Philadelphia where they were formally ordained for Charleston
pastorates. When affairs were thus ripened, a dispute as to
the custody of one of their burial grounds precipitated their intended
stroke in 1818. Nearly all the colored class leaders gave
their papers simultaneously, and more than three-quarters of
their six thousand fellows withdrew their membership from the
white Methodist churches. "The galleries, hitherto crowded,
were almost completely deserted," wrote a contemporary, "and
it was a vacancy that could be felt. The absence of their responses
and hearty songs were really felt to be a loss to those
so long accustomed to hear them. . . . The schismatics combined,
and after great exertion succeeded in erecting a neat
church building. . . . Their organization was called the African
Church," and one of its ministers was constituted bishop. Its
career, however, was to be short lived, for the city authorities
promptly proceeded against them, first by arresting a number of
participants at one of their meetings but dismissing them with
a warning that their conduct was violative of a statute of 1800
prohibiting the assemblage of slaves and free negroes for mental
instruction without the presence of white persons; next by refusing,
on the grounds that both power and willingness were
lacking, a plea by the colored preachers for a special dispensation;
and finally by the seizure of all the attendants at another
of their meetings and the sentencing of the bishop and a dozen
exhorters, some to a month's imprisonment or departure from
the state, others to ten lashes or ten dollars' fine. The church
nevertheless continued in existence until 1822 when in consequence
of the discovery of a plot for insurrection among the
Charleston negroes the city government had the church building
demolished. Morris Brown moved to Philadelphia, where he
afterward became bishop of the African Church, and the whole
Charleston project was ended.[57] The bulk of the blacks returned
to the white congregations, where they soon overflowed
the galleries and even the "boxes" which were assigned them at
the rear on the main floors. Some of the older negroes by special
privilege then took seats forward in the main body of the
churches, and others not so esteemed followed their example in
such numbers that the whites were cramped for room. After
complaints on this score had failed for several years to bring
remedy, a crisis came in Bethel Church on a Sunday in 1833
when Dr. Capers was to preach. More whites came than could
be seated the forward-sitting negroes refused to vacate their
seats for them; and a committee of young white members forcibly
ejected these blacks. At a "love-feast" shortly afterward
one of the preachers criticized the action of the committee,
thereby giving the younger element of the whites great umbrage.
Efforts at reconciliation failing, nine of the young men
were expelled from membership, whereupon a hundred and fifty
others followed them into a new organization which entered affiliation
with the schismatic Methodist Protestant Church.[58]
Race relations in the orthodox congregations were doubtless
thereafter more placid.

In most of the permanent segregations the colored preachers

were ordained and their congregations instituted under the
patronage of the whiles. At Savannah as early as 1802 the freedom
of the slave Henry Francis was purchased by subscription,
and he was ordained by white ministers at the African Baptist
Church. After a sermon by the Reverend Jesse Peter of Augusta,
the candidate "underwent a public examination respecting
his faith in the leading doctrines of Christianity, his call to the
sacred ministry and his ideas of church government. Giving
entire satisfaction on these important points, he kneeled down,
when the ordination prayer with imposition of hands was made
by Andrew Bryant. The ordained ministers present then gave
the right hand of fellowship to Mr. Francis, who was forthwith
presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by
Mr. Holcombe."[59] The Methodists were probably not far behind
the Baptists in this policy. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians,
with much smaller numbers of negro co-religionists to
care for, followed the same trend in later decades. Thus the
presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of $7,700,
a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation
to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian
Church of the city. The building had a T shape, the transepts
appropriated to the use of white persons. The Sunday school
of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty white men and women
as its teaching staff.[60]

Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as
the Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time. To
relieve the congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael's and
St. Philip's, a separate congregation was organized with a few
whites included in its membership. While it was yet occupying
temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob demolished Calvary
Church which was being built for its accommodation.
When the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further

use of his premises the congregation dispersed. The mob's
action was said to be in protest against the doings of the "bands"
or burial societies among the Calvary negroes.[61]

The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave
and free was obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that
it might be perverted to insurrectionary purposes. Thus when
at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free negroes petitioned the Virginia
legislature on behalf of themselves and several hundred
slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the whites had
not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction
for the creation of a "Baptist African Church," the legislature
withheld its permission. In 1841, however, this purpose was in
effect accomplished when it was found that a negro church would
not be in violation of the law provided it had a white pastor.
At that time the First Baptist Church of Richmond, having outgrown
its quarters, erected a new building to accommodate its
white members and left its old one to the negroes. The latter
were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white
minister and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white
committee. In 1855, when this congregation had grown to three
thousand members, the Ebenezer church was established as an
offshoot, with a similar plan of government.[62]

At Baltimore there were in 1835 ten colored congregations,
with slave and free membership intermingled, several of which
had colored ministers;[63] and by 1847 the number of churches
had increased to thirteen or more, ten of which were Methodist.[64]
In 1860 there were two or more colored congregations
at Norfolk; at Savannah three colored churches were paying
salaries of $800 to $1000 to their colored ministers,[65] and in

Atlanta a subscription was in progress for the enlargement of
the negro church building to relieve its congestion.[66] By this
time a visitor in virtually any Southern city might have witnessed
such a scene as William H. Russell described at Montgomery:[67]
"As I was walking . . . I perceived a crowd of very well-dressed
negroes, men and women, in front of a plain brick building
which I was informed was their Baptist meeting-house, into
which white people rarely or never intrude. These were domestic
servants, or persons employed in stores, and their general
appearance indicated much comfort and even luxury. I
doubted if they all were slaves. One of my companions went
up to a woman in a straw hat, with bright red and green ribbon
trimmings and artificial flowers, a gaudy Paisley shawl, and a
rainbow-like gown blown out over her yellow boots by a prodigious
crinoline, and asked her 'Whom do you belong to?' She
replied, 'I b'long to Massa Smith, sar.'"