T.D. Rice and the Invention of Jumpin’ Jim Crow

Playbill of Thomas Dartmouth Rice as “Jim Crow”, 1832

• Thomas “Daddy” Rice• white performer and playwright from

New York City, who used African-American vernacular speech, song,

and dance to entertain white audiences through the mid-1800s.

• Rice’s “Jim Crow” character became synonymous with black inferiority

• Spawned popularity of blackface minstrel shows and entertainment and legitimized assaults on black citizenship, rights, and

humanity in the free North

• Cast African Americans to American and global audiences as uncouth, intruding,

and inherently ill-equipped for citizenship

Sheet Music to “Coal Black Rose,” 1830

Was among the most popular songs sung by white performers in minstrel

shows

Irish-Americans and Blackface Minstrelsy

• Blackface minstrelsy permitted persecuted Irish-Americans to purchase their “whiteness,” specifically by ridiculing and

perpetuating denigrating stereotypes about African Americans, who were also their economic competitors

Second and third grade children being made up for their Negro song and dance at May Day-Health Day festivities. Ashwood Plantations, South Carolina. 1939.

Slaveholders

Slaveholding in 1850# of Slaves Owned Slaveholders

1 68,000

2-4 105,000

5-9 80,000

10-19 55,000

20-49 30,000

50-99 6,000

100-199 1,500

200+ 250

Individual slaveholders made up ~3% of the southern population in 1860.

25-31% of southern families owned slaves.

The largest slave-driven plantations were located in coastal South Carolina and Georgia and along the Mississippi River.

Slaves were also used by the masters and mistresses as social accessories to demonstrate their wealth and ascendancy

Into southern aristocracy.

Southern Family Pictured with Enslaved Woman Caretaker, ca. 1859

Native American Slaveholding in 1860

• Cherokees – 4,600 slaves

• Choctaws – 2, 344 slaves

• Creeks – 1, 532 slaves

• Chickasaws – 975 slaves

• Seminoles – 300 slaves

African-American Slaveholders• Numbered 3, 775 in 1830

• 80% were located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland

• 50% were city-dwellers, with most in New Orleans and Charleston

• Overwhelmingly owned members of their immediate or extended families

Non-Slaveholding Whites

Yeoman family in Cedar Mountain, VA, ca. 1862

Three out of four southern white families owned no slaves during the antebellum era.

Hinton Rowan Helper

• Published The Impending Crisis of the South (1857)

• Criticized the social, political, and economic monopoly of the planter

class, which he argued held back the South’s economic and industrial

growth

• Despised blacks and proposed that slaveholders be taxed and compelled to resettle their slaves in either Africa

or Latin America

Slaves

Growth of U.S. Slave PopulationYear Slave Population

1790 697,624

1800 893,602

1810 1,191,362

1820 1,538,022

1830 2,009,043

1840 2,487,355

1850 3,204,313

1860 3,953, 760

Slaves made up 39% of the southern population in 1860.

57% of the population in South Carolina were slaves.

49% of families in Mississippi owned slaves.

Where was the enslaved population concentrated?

Free Blacks in the South

Free Black Population, 1860Region Free Black Pop. % of Total Black

Pop. in that LocaleNorth 226, 152 100South 261, 918 6.2

Upper South 224, 963 12.8Lower South 36, 955 1.5

The largest free black population was located in Maryland, where they made up 49.1 % of the total black population.

Substantial free black populations could also be found in Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

Texas had the smallest free black population in 1860 with only 355 free blacks.

“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

- Thomas Jefferson, 1785

“Many in the South once believed that [slavery] was a moral and political evil…That folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable

basis for free institutions in the world.”

-John C. Calhoun, SC 1837

Sources of Sectional Crises of 1850s

• Ideological Differences

• The Role and Future of Slavery in the U.S.

• Namely, will slavery be allowed to expand into the territories

Wilmot Proviso

David Wilmot (PA)

• First introduced on August 8, 1846

• Sought to prevent the extension of slavery in any

territory acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War

• Repeatedly fails to pass in the U.S. Senate; but intensifies

sectionalism

Potential of the MO Compromise 36 30’ Line to Solve Conflict

John Calhoun

On the Wilmot Proviso:

“If we flinch we are gone!”

Compromise of 1850• Negotiated by Henry Clay (KY) and Stephen A. Douglas of (IL)

• California would enter Union as a free state

• Texas border would be adjusted in favor of New Mexico

• New Mexico was slated to be organized as two territories (New Mexico and Utah) and when admitted as states they could decide for either slavery and

freedom

• Slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia

• Enacted a stricter fugitive slave law

Fugitive Slave Act of 1850• Subjected federal officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave to

a fine of $1,000

• Only required a person claiming ownership of slave to submit an affidavit to a federal commissioner, who could accept or reject

• Note: Federal commissioners received $5 if they rejected an affidavit and $10 is they ordered the alleged runaways arrest.

• Accused runaways were prohibited from testifying on their own behalf.

• Subjected free citizens caught aiding fugitive slaves were subject to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

Impact of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

• Hastened black migration to Canada

• Radicalized and increased the ranks of northern abolitionist movement

• Led to the enactment of personal liberty laws in 9 northern states, which enabled state attorneys to defend fugitives, appropriated funds to pay their

defense costs; and denied the use of public buildings to detain accused escapees

The Case of Anthony Burns (1853-1855)

• Escaped from slavery in Richmond, VA in 1853 at the age of 19

• Arrived in Boston and began working for a clothing dealer

• Arrested on May 24, 1854 in Boston; Spurred violent protests among Boston abolitionists, who

repeatedly tried to free Burns

• Prompted President Franklin Pierce to send in federal marshals

• Convicted and returned to his master.

• Bostonians raised $1200 to purchase Burns, which they did by 1855

Harriet Beecher Stowe

• Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852.

• Sold over 300,000 copies in its first year in the U.S. and over 1 million copies in Great

Britain

• Helped increase abolitionist sentiment throughout the North though it relied on racist

and sexist depictions of African Americans, since Stowe had extremely limited contact

with the South.

Jefferson DavisU.S. Senator from Mississippi (1847-1851)

Future President of the Confederates States of America

“Slave labor is wasteful labor, and it therefore requires a still more extended territory than would the same pursuits if they could be prosecuted by

the more economic labor of white men.”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854• Introduced by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of IL

• Created territories of Nebraska and Kansas

• Opened two territories up for settlement and stated that settlers would vote on the issue of permitting slavery

before statehood

• Repealed section of the MO Compromise that forbade slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36˚30’.

Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Senator from Ohio

Joshua GiddingsU.S. Congressman from Ohio

“We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel

of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers

from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.”

-” Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States,” January 1854

Abraham Lincoln

“Our progress in degeneracy appear to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read ‘all men are created equal,

except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘All men are created equal except negroes and foreigners,

and Catholics.”

Lincoln in letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855

Pottawatomie Massacre• Date: May 24-25, 1856

• Brown, his sons, and several abolitionists murdered 5 pro-slavery white settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County,

Kansas. Led to all-out war in KS.

• Catalysts: 1) fraudulent territorial elections in 1855, which authorized

slavery, passed a harsh slave code, and disqualified from office anti-slavery

citizens; 2) Pierce removal from Andrew Reeder as governor of KS after Reeder

refused to use her position to make KS a slave state; and 3) pro-slavery attack on

free-state legislature in Lawrence, Kansas in 1856

John Brown, c. 1856

Lithograph by John L. Magee, 1856

On May 22, 1856, U.S. House Representative Preston Brooks (SC) viciously beat U.S. Senator Charles Sumner (MA) unconscious after Sumner denounced the violence in Kansas and pro-Slavery South,

especially Brooks’s uncle U.S. Senator Andrew Butler (SC).

Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)• Scott and his family were still slaves

• Scott (as a black person and slave) was not a citizen and had no rights

• Scott’s stay in Wisconsin did not make him free since Congress did not have the power to

exclude slavery from a territory, nor could a territorial legislature

• Means popular sovereignty cannot keep slavery from a territory.

• Declared the MO Compromise and the NW Ordinance of 1787 unconstitutional

• Left fate of KS and NE uncertain

“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world

at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation

displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate

with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

-Taney Opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

Roger TaneyChief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court

(1836-1864)

Lincoln Douglas Debates

Race for U.S. Senate

• Stephen A. Douglas– Incumbent (D-IL)

• Illinois Republicans meet and nominate Abraham Lincoln as their candidate.

• Formal political debates between Lincoln and Douglas in a campaign for one of Illinois' two United States Senate seats.

• Debates launched Lincoln into national prominence.

1858 Debates

Issues of the Debates

• Expansion of slavery

• Popular sovereignty

• Dred Scott decision

• African American Citizenship

Abraham Lincoln“If we could first know where we are and whither we are

tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

Harper Ferry’s Raid

John Brown, 1859

• Designed plan to create a slave revolution to bring down slavery

• Raised funds in abolitionist circles throughout New England, though most

thought the plan undesirable

• With sons and an interracial band of supporters raided the federal armory at

Harpers Ferry in present-day West Virginia on Oct. 16, 1859

• Eventually captured, tried, convicted, and executed for treason.

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged

away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much

bloodshed it might be done.“

- December 2, 1859, the day of his execution

“Let the consequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and

Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies or whether the last vestige of liberty

is swept from the face of the American Continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and

degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”

- The Atlanta Confederacy, 1860

U.S. Presidential Election of 1860

Southern Secession before War

• South Carolina – December 20, 1860• Mississippi – January 9, 1861• Florida – January 10, 1861• Alabama – January 11, 1861• Georgia – January 19, 1861• Louisiana – January 26, 1861• Texas – February 1, 1861

Why did the deep South states secede after the presidential election of 1860?

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to

be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where

the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful

in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.”

-Abraham LincolnFrom Speech on June 17, 1858 in Springfield, Illinois When He Accepted the Republican

Nomination for the state’s U.S. Senator

-

“We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by

the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the

rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they

have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their

homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing…A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have

united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be

entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the

course of ultimate extinction.”

-Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, Dec. 20, 1860

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of

the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become

necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the

point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union,

whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.“

-A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union, Jan. 9, 1861