BEFORE FREEDOM CAME

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BEFORE FREEDOM CAME

• African-American Life
• in the
• Antebellum South

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A Project of The Museum of the Confederacy,
Richmond, Va.

• The pictures contained in this presentation were
  obtained from a book published to accompany the
  1991 exhibition of the same name. This book was
  edited by D. C. Campbell, Jr. and Kym S. Rice.
  The exhibition was on view at the museum from
  July to December 1991 and received both national
  publicity and acclaim.

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1860 Slave States Population

• Whites 8,036,995
• Slaves 3,950,511
• Free Blacks 250,787

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Total African-American Population in the Slave
States

• The percentage of free blacks varied from a high
  of 92 in Delaware to 0.1 in Mississippi.
• Maryland 49 free
• Virginia 11 free
• South Carolina 4

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SLAVES AS PERCENT OF TOTAL POPULATION IN 1860

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White Population in the Slave States
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Percent of Whites in Confederate States Owning
Slaves

1860
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The PLANTER as Master

• A planter was defined as someone who owned twenty
  or more slaves. The 1860 United States Census
  reported that 47,264 planters lived in the
  fifteen slave slaves. While contemporary movies
  and television suggest that most African-American
  slaves lived on plantations, such was apparently
  not the case.

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Percent of Whites in Confederate States Who Were
Planters

1860
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Master-Slave Relations

• The master-slave relationship shifted daily,
  causing slaves
• to lead a double life. One life they show their
  masters and another life they dont show,
  recalled Robert Smalls in 1862.

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The Household Slave

• Household slaves lived in close contact with
  whites. Although they may have received better
  food and clothes than the field hands, they were
  watched more closely by their masters.

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Uncertain Bonds Between Races

• A Louisiana nursemaid and her young charge are
  captured in this circa 1850 daguerreotype.

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To Serve the Master

• An unidentified African-American is included in
  an album of formal portraits taken of Robert E.
  Lees slaves.

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SOCIAL DISTINCTIONSAccording to the MASTER

• For an 1857 photo at a South Carolina plantation,
  the master organized slaves by rank. The driver
  and cook are followed by the house servants
• and field hands respectively.

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The Driver as Community Leader

• Carrying loads of cotton balanced on their heads,
  field laborers at Woodlands plantation, near
  Charleston, followed the driver back from the
  fields at sunset.

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THE SLAVE COMMUNITY

• The relative isolation from white owners and the
  close living conditions of the quarter
  undoubtedly strengthened the slave community.
  (Port Royal Island, South Carolina, 1862)

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THE SLAVE QUARTERS

• Arranged in a broad arch and twelve feet apart,
  these cabins on a Florida plantation were
  differentiated by size. Four larger cabins
  probably served as quarters for the drivers.

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Quarters at The Belair Plantation

• Planters built housing on sugar plantations to
  accommodate the sizeable work force the crop
  required. These multi-family brick cabins were in
  Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.

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Breaking Lifes Monotony

• On one Louisiana plantation, slaves earned money
  or merchandise for doing jobs or raising produce
  for sale on their own time. The plantation
  ledger included the slaves accounts.

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Threat to the Slave Family

• Sale of a loved one continually threatened the
  slave family. An owner advertised these
  African-Americans as desirable objects of
  property both acclimated and excellent.

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A Mothers Lesson Survival

• One former slave recalled her mother taught her
  self-reliance and independence. Ill kill you,
  gal, if you dont stand up for yourself. Fight,
  and if you cant fight, kick if you cant kick,
  then bite.

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The Close Ties of the Slave Family

• A doll found in the attic walls of the Bennehan
  plantation, near Durham, North Carolina, is
  believed to have been made by an African-American
  for one of his or her children.

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SUGAR MILL IN LOUISIANA

• The most dominant landscape form on a Louisiana
  sugar plantation was the mill for processing the
  slave-harvested cane.

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Louisiana Sugar Warehouse

• The Mississippi River was the principal
  transportation route for the Louisiana sugar
  crop. Each plantation had a warehouse for
  storing processed sugar in hogsheads.

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AFRICAN CULTURE ENDURED

• In the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands,
  the large slave populations had little contact
  with whites. This isolation allowed significant
  elements of African culture to persist.

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AFRICAN CULTURE PRESERVED

• In coastal South Carolina and Georgia
  African-Americans continued the African custom of
  decorating graves with items belonging to the
  deceased long after slavery had ended.

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Omar ibn Said or Uncle Moro

• Brought to South Carolina as a young man, this
  Moslem slave fled his cruel master but was later
  caught in North Carolina. In jail, Said
  attracted attention by writing on the walls in
  Arabic.

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African Cultural Influence

• Africans taken as slaves brought the banza, or
  banjo, directly to the Americas. A 1794 account
  said that on Sundays African Americans meet
  together and amuse themselves with Dancing to the
  Banjo. The smaller gourd fiddle is an example
  of a related instrument also made and played by
  slaves.

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The Skilled African Farmer

• Slaves followed methods of rice cultivation and
  processing first developed in Africa. Mortars
  and pestles, used by slaves to husk the rice
  grain, were traditional tools used in Africa.

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Cowrie Shells African Currency

• Archaeologists have found cowrie shells at
  several different slave sites in the South.
  Native to the Pacific basin, cowrie shells were
  used as a form of currency throughout Africa.

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QUARTERS in the CITY

• Often visible from the street, urban slave
  quarters frequently were more detailed and
  finished. The Ward mansion in Charleston,
  flanked by two large brick service dependencies.

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Life for the Urban Slave

• A large, two-story, stuccoed kitchen and slave
  quarter (right), and a stable, carriage house,
  and slave quarter (left), frame the service yard
  at the Robinson-Aiken house
• in Charleston, S. Ca.

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The Urban Experience

• A city slave is almost a freeman, compared with
  a slave on the plantation, reflected Frederick
  Douglass. He is much better fed and clothed,
  and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the
  slave on the plantation.

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Richmonds First African Baptist Church , 1841

• This autonomous black congregation included both
  slaves and free blacks among its members. First
  African sponsored benevolent societies that paid
  for burials and cared for the old and sick.

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Gens de Couleur Libre

• Prosperous free blacks, mostly Creoles of color,
  composed a significant part of New Orleans
  society. Marie Lassus, the daughter of a black
  mother and Parisian father, posed in 1860.

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Crossing Union Lines to Freedom

• Thousands of slaves took advantage of the wars
  uncertainties to free themselves. One Virginia
  group sang, Sun, you be here an Ill be
  gone.Bye, bye, Dont grieve arter me.

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Contraband of War

• When asked by a Union officer why he had fled
  slavery, one slave replied, Cause I want to be
  free. Freed slaves in a camp at the Baton
  Rouge Female Seminary in Louisiana.

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EMANCIPATION

• A group of former slaves posed for a photographer
  at Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, shortly
  after receiving their freedom.