Free Blacks in Charleston

 Free Blacks in Charleston (CCPL; Sciway)ⁱ

iFree Blacks in Charleston (CCPL, Sciway)

The first census, in 1790, found 8,089 white persons, 7,684 slaves, and 586 free blacks in Charleston. This tells us that very early in Charleston's history free blacks constituted nearly 3.6% of the city's population. By 1861 free blacks comprised 7.8% of Charleston's population.

Although these 3,441 persons formed a small community by Northern standards, of the ten largest Southern cities, only Baltimore, New Orleans, and Washington contained larger free black communities prior to the Civil War.

Browsing through the earliest surviving public records of colonial South Carolina, we find that there were a handful of “free negroes” in the Lowcountry by the turn of the eighteenth century. Their numbers increased slowly but steadily through the remainder of the colonial era, and grew rapidly in the years immediately after the American Revolution. Some lived in scattered locations across the rural landscape, but the vast majority lived and worked within the urban confines of peninsular Charleston. By the time of the federal census of 1800, the Palmetto City was home to several hundred free people of color who formed approximately three percent (3%) of the urban population. Their numbers increased from several hundred to several thousand by the early 1860s, at which time they continued to form a small percentage of the city’s urban residents (see Frederick Ford’s Census of the City of Charleston, South Carolina, for the Year 1861).

Although their numbers were relatively small, free people of color formed an important and interesting part of Charleston’s population. The city’s history was enriched by the lives of such notable free people as the clergyman Morris Brown, saddle maker Richard Holloway, harbor pilot Thomas Jeremiah, hotelier Jehu Jones, pastry cook Sally Seymour, house carpenter Denmark Vesey, master builder John Williams, and many, many others. Rather than narrate their respective accomplishments or attempt to construct a roster of notable individuals, I’d like to focus on the bigger picture. The lives of all of these free people of color were constrained by a number of prejudicial laws that defined their position and status within a society dominated by a free white minority. In short, they lived in a world very different from our present reality. In order to understand better the lives of Charleston’s free people of color, it’s necessary to understand the legal forces that shaped the boundaries of their respective lives.

Let me make it clear that I’m not a lawyer and I certainly don’t consider myself to be a legal scholar. But I’ve spent enough time studying Charleston history to realize the importance of understanding the legal code that framed the lives of our predecessors. A legal code, as you know, is a systematically organized collection of rules intended to govern the actions and behavior of individuals within a given community. In this sense, a community’s legal code of laws is very similar to the code of a computer program. Both are comprised of written statements and instructions that were articulated and set in motion by humans. Our laws and our computer programs succeed or fail depending on the quality of the instructions and ideas they contain. In the case of early South Carolina, our laws were created by white men who viewed the world very differently than you and I do today. The legal system they created here, as elsewhere, was colored by a profound disrespect for the rights and liberties of non-white men and of women in general. That was the reality of our community in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.

The English settlers who founded Charleston and South Carolina brought with them a tradition of English laws intended to govern a community comprised of and governed by people of English descent. The presence of Native Americans in and around the early settlement and the importation of enslaved people of African descent forced the early settlers of this colony to amend their legal code to recognize the emerging differences within the community. Between 1691 and 1735, the South Carolina General Assembly ratified a series of laws intended to promote what white legislators described as “the better ordering of slaves.” Within these slave laws, which borrowed elements from the earlier laws of Antigua, Barbados, and Jamaica, the definition of an enslaved person in South Carolina gradually evolved. Following the bloody Stono uprising in September 1739, our provincial legislature adopted a robust and more comprehensive slave law in the spring of 1740 that endured, with some modifications, for more than a century. The “Negro Act” of 1740, as it was commonly called, provided South Carolina’s first clear legal definitions of who was, and who was not, a slave. The provincial and state legislatures continued to create additional laws relating to slaves and slavery over the years, but the definitions of status articulated in 1740 endured with little change.

In short, South Carolina’s early laws recognized four categories or classes of humans. First, in the eyes of the law, were free white men, women, and children of European ancestry. The law did not view women as equal to men, but that’s a matter for a separate conversation. Second, the law recognized free Native Americans living “in amity” or in a state of friendship with the government of this colony or state. The law recognized their right to exist and to live freely, but afforded them few civil rights within the legal framework of the dominant white community; the law expected these free Indians would live separately from the urban and suburban centers of South Carolina society. Third, the law acknowledged that some free citizens held other humans (specifically those of African descent) in a state of legal servitude or bondage. This practice, in the eyes of the law, reduced enslaved people to the status of mere property. More specifically, they were legally identified as movable, or chattel property. As such, they had no discernable legal identity or legal existence beyond their servitude. Fourth, the laws of early South Carolina acknowledged that some non-white people here were (for a variety of reasons) not enslaved servants, and thus not considered property. The law viewed those people, generally known as “free people of color,” as valid, sui juris (independent) members of the community. The law did not recognize them as fully-formed citizens, however. The mere facts of their skin color and non-European ancestry created legal “disabilities” that diminished their civil rights. . . .

Persons classified as “free negroes,” whose parents were both of African descent, persons called “free mulattos,” whose genetic admixture included African and European ancestry, and a third category of “free mestizos.” The latter term, “mestizo,” which was borrowed from the Spanish language and has a variety of connotations in other parts of the world, was used in South Carolina to describe people of mixed African and Native American ancestry. Occasionally one will find the word “mestizo” spelled “mustee” in eighteenth-century Charleston records. Persons whose genome included African, European, and Native American lineage might have been classified as free mulattos or free mestizos, depending on their physical appearance.

. . . The term “free person of color,” frequently abbreviated to “FPC” in our early records, and the plural forms “free people of color” or “free persons of color,” emerged in the eighteenth century as a sort of legal shorthand to describe a number of free people from diverse ancestral backgrounds. More technically and specifically, that phrase encompassed three distinct groups of people who are regularly mentioned in South Carolina’s early laws: persons classified as “free negroes,” whose parents were both of African descent, persons called “free mulattos,” whose genetic admixture included African and European ancestry, and a third category of “free mestizos.” The latter term, “mestizo,” which was borrowed from the Spanish language and has a variety of connotations in other parts of the world, was used in South Carolina to describe people of mixed African and Native American ancestry. Occasionally one will find the word “mestizo” spelled “mustee” in eighteenth-century Charleston records. Persons whose genome included African, European, and Native American lineage might have been classified as free mulattos or free mestizos, depending on their physical appearance.

In light of these legal definitions and the colorful vocabulary of early Charleston, one can see that not all free people of color were “black.” In fact, some insisted in no uncertain terms that they were not “black.” Witness the existence of the Brown Fellowship Society of Charleston, whose members differentiated themselves from their darker-skinned brethren who formed separate clubs such as the Humane Brotherhood and the Friendly Moralist Society. Modern historians often use the term “free black” as a convenient and comprehensive label for the diverse population of free, non-white people, but that phrase is not without its own issues. Most everyone in our society today feels uncomfortable with the historical terms “colored,” mulatto, and mestizo, so historians and citizens alike continue to struggle to find the most acceptable and appropriate vocabulary to describe this complicated subject.

The use of the term “color” in the phrase “free person of color” does not refer to any specific hue or shade one might use to describe the color of his or her skin. South Carolina’s early laws did not take notice of the various gradations of browns, blacks, yellows, or any such vocabulary that one finds in the literature of earlier centuries. Nor did the early laws of this state define or recognize any proportional system of racial classification, such as quadroon, octaroon, or hexadecaroon. Rather, South Carolina’s early laws used the term “color” to imply the presence of any discernable quantity of non-European or non-Caucasian blood in a person’s ancestry. In the eyes of the law, individuals were either white (or at least appeared to be white), or they were something “other.”

Freedom could be earned by birth (status of mother), by private manumission (including the slave buying out the slave owners interest), or by public manumission.

Private:

The legal framework of slavery in South Carolina’s history is such a thorny and confusing morass of evolving regulations, requirements, and revisions that it’s easy to get confused by the details. There are a number of very reputable scholars, for example, who point to the colony’s next major revision of the slave code, adopted in the spring of 1740, and declare that it mandated the practice of banishing newly-manumitted persons from South Carolina. That sweeping, draconian slave law, enacted in the wake of the bloody Stono Rebellion of September 1739, certainly exhibits a strong degree of white paranoia, but it is, in fact, quite silent on the subject of manumission. The “Negro Act” of 1740, as it was once commonly called, consists of a preamble and fifty-eight paragraphs, but my tired eyes find within that lengthy text no restrictions on private manumission, and no requirement obliging newly-emancipated people to depart from the province.[4]

In other words, South Carolina’s famously awful “Negro Act” of 1740 marks a sort of tipping point in the state’s African-American history because of its tacit acceptance of the practice of private manumissions. By omitting a very specific and ostensibly important provision contained in the two previous versions of the colony’s slave code, designed to suppress the numbers of free persons of color, provincial lawmakers had decided either that the banishment clause was ineffective, or that the presence of formerly-enslaved people in South Carolina was not a serious concern. In either case, the silence of the 1740 act regarding private manumissions coincides with the appearance of a more robust collection of records documenting the practice.

For example, in the spring of 1740, the executors of the estate of the late John Breton, formerly a merchant of Charleston, sought permission from the South Carolina General Assembly to manumit an enslaved man named Sambo, in accordance with Breton’s last will and testament. Sambo apparently planned to remain in South Carolina, so Breton’s executors followed the prescriptions of the Negro Act of 1735 and petitioned the provincial legislature to legitimize his residence. Both houses of the Assembly and the governor approved the request, and Sambo, for all we know, never left South Carolina. One week after confirming Breton’s final request, the legislature ratified the “Negro Act” of 1740 that omitted the very requirement that had driven his executors to petition the government in the first place.

The aforementioned examples of Sambo and Flora illustrate the most common legal pathway out of slavery in early South Carolina—that is, by means of the slave owners’ last will and testament. Many slave owners—especially those in the second half of the eighteenth century—included a clause in their respective wills directing their executors to manumit a specific, named enslaved person or persons, after the death of the said testators. Most simply directed their executors to free a person without providing any clues to their motivation. In his 1772 will, for example, Charleston merchant Othniel Beale instructed his executors to distribute his numerous slaves among his heirs, “except Robin the Bricklayer to whom I do hereby give his freedom at the time of my decease.” . . .

In contrast to that taciturn, passive expression of appreciation, other testators used more articulate language in their wills to explain their proposed acts of manumission to later readers. In such relatively rare cases, we find the kernels of intriguing human stories that provide a modicum of insight into those now-distant lives. Mary Basden, for example, articulated a clear reason for wanting to manumit Flora in 1741: “In consideration of the faithful services of my Negro woman Flora I do hereby give her her freedom and do manumittand discharge her from all Slavery whatsoever . . . as I have long experienced her to be a faithful just honest and laborious woman.” As a further reward to her enslaved companion, Mary Basden also directed her executors, following her death, “to pay to the said Flora the sum of thirty pounds currant [sic] money [of South Carolina] as a further token of my value for her.”

In an even smaller number of extant wills, some testators deployed oblique language and sentiments that we might be inclined to interpret as expressions of filial affection. One or two of these very rare documents might address the matter directly, but most simply skirt around the topic of miscegenation, or the reproductive mixing of different “races.” I’ll cite just one example to give you a flavor of this interpretive quagmire. Hugh Cartwright of Charleston was a master bricklayer who owned dozens of enslaved laborers who generated significant income that he invested in real estate speculation. In the spring of 1752, thirty-something-year-old bachelor Cartwright penned a brief note directing the executors of his future estate to manumit two young children after his death. Hugh’s curious document, which is like a will but is not actually a will, does not explicitly claim paternity of the said children, but the emphatic nature of his instructions suggests—at least to me—that Cartwright was their father. Since it’s a rather unusual document, I’ll give you the entire text:

“Know all men by these presents that I Hugh Cartwright of Charles Town in the province of South Carolina bricklayer as well for the good will I have for my mullatto [sic] boy named Dick & for my mullatto [sic] girl named Sally as for divers other good causes & considerations me hereunto moving have given and granted and by these presents do give and grant unto the said Dick and Salley and to each of them their freedom from and immediately after my decease hereby manumising [sic] enfranchising & discharging from the bond of slavery fully freely clearly and absolutely them the said Dick & Sally and each of them so that my heirs ex[ecut]ors or adm[inistrat]ors nor any other person or persons whatsoever for them or either of them or in their or either of their names shall or may hereafter claim challenge or demand any manner of dues duty or service from them the said Dick and Salley or from either of them to have hold and injoy [sic] the freedom & enfranchisment [sic] aforesaid with all privileges appertaining thereunto unto the said Dick and Salley and each of them from and immediately after the decease of me the s[ai]d Hugh Cartwright as fully and amply to all intents and purposes as if they the s[ai]d Dick and Salley had been actually born free.”[9]

Scarce little information survives about the man Hugh Cartwright, but at least we know that he really, really wanted Dick and Sally to be free. I’ve been digging into this case for a while, and I haven’t the slightest clue to the identity of their enslaved mother. Just over a year after creating the aforementioned document, which might have followed the birth of aforementioned mulatto children, Cartwright made his formal will in the autumn of 1753. In it, he repeated the instructions for manumitting the children he called “my mulatto boy named Dick and my mulatto girl slave named Sally.” In addition, he directed his executors to invest £1,000 current money of South Carolina (approximately £143 sterling) in some interest-bearing account and to hold such funds in trust for the aforenamed children. It was his desire, said Mr. Cartwright, “that the interest money arising from the loan thereof shall be applied towards the support and maintainance [sic] of the said boy and girl during their minority and when they attain their respective ages of twenty one years then the said sum of one thousand pounds [is] to be equally divided between the said mulatto boy and girl.”[10] Hugh Cartwright and the several executors of his estate were dead long before Dick and Sally reached adulthood, unfortunately, and I haven’t yet found any trace of their fates.

We could continue to sample the texts of various manumissions for hours, but time compels me to push forward with the chronology of this topic. The manumission of enslaved people by private parties was the most common legal path to freedom in eighteenth-century South Carolina, and the slave owner’s last will and testament was the most common instrument for effecting that freedom. This private practice grew from a tentative start in the early years of the century and swelled during the second half of the 1700s. At the turn of the nineteenth century, however, the South Carolina General Assembly voted again to curtail the practice. Their complaint was not necessarily the general growth of the population of free persons of color, but the manumission of persons who were, for one reason or another, unable to support themselves independently. In the minds of the legislature, therefore, the relative simplicity of the emancipation process had created a social welfare problem that the state was unwilling to address.

The seventh paragraph of “An Act respecting Slaves, Free Negroes, Mulattoes and Mestizoes; for enforcing the more punctual performance of patroll [sic] duty; and to impose certain restrictions on the emancipation of slaves,” ratified in December 1800, complained that “it hath been a practice for many years past in this state, for persons to emancipate or set free their slaves, in cases where such slaves have been of bad or depraved character, or, from age or infirmity, incapable of gaining their livelihood by honest means.”

In order to discourage the future emancipation of such people, the state legislature established a new, more rigorous protocol for private manumission. From now on, slave owners desiring to free a slave must notify a local magistrate, who would then summon five local freeholders to inspect and interview the said enslaved person in order to determine whether or not he or she was capable of “gaining a livelihood in an honest way.” If they approved of his or her character and abilities, the magistrate and freeholders were required to draft a certificate testifying to the same. Copies of this certificate, along with a formal deed of manumission created by the slave owner, must be delivered to the formerly enslaved person and recorded by the clerk of the local district court within six months from the date of the transaction. Private manumissions performed henceforth in any other, less-rigorous manner would be void and of no effect.[11]

Public Manumission:

Only for exceptional service.