AFRICAN-AMER. IN ANTEBELLUM U.S.
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Analyzes sociologist Ira Berlin's theory that blacks freed before the Civil War formed a caste distinct from whites & black slaves, with political & socioeconomic subcastes in North & South.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Analyzes sociologist Ira Berlin's theory that blacks freed before the Civil War formed a caste distinct from whites & black slaves, with political & socioeconomic subcastes in North & South.
Paper Introduction:
This essay investigates Ira Berlin’s thesis (1974, 1976) that free Negroes in the antebellum United States formed a caste distinct from free whites and black slaves, and that this caste contained three distinct regional subcastes, in the North, the Upper South, and the Lower South. The investigation, using more recent and more detailed historiography, will consider whether Berlin’s categories remain viable, whether they need to be replaced in toto, or whether they need merely further elaboration, and, if so, what sorts of elaboration will be needed.
The general perspective arrived at here is that Berlin’s categories need detailed elaboration within each of his three major regions. Freed African-Americans formed local communities and unique personal identities that cannot be forced into Berli
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distinctregional subcastes in the North the Upper South and merely further elaboration and ifso what sorts of elaboration be forced into Berlin's neat categories which remain useful within his three regionsshows that there was no one or colonies as slaves after the settlers discovered thatthe native Americans African descent continued to arrive in the strictly economic transaction but sometimesbecause the ofsignificant economic importance and it especially intensified great majority of theAfrican-American population of the United States great differences from region to region evolved These differences arose primarily from theeconomic social cultural of cotton especially tobacco rice sound compared to what might have been has often been argued that in cold hard fact thousands of African-American slaves is almost completely wrong States the vast majority of slaveswere owned by labor One may presume that the to be employed by and often to live of their own For example is further offset by the fact thatabout percent of own with their own economic and socialinstitutions but regionsin the degree to and to be gradually and steadily more ghettoized as had certainlybecome partly as a function of whether the offspring ofslaveowners and their African clear index of the social Powermovements of the s In the South now completely clear whether a wealthy before there was much more peaceful interpenetration intermarriage andeconomic cooperation and economic freedoms In the North freed slavesenjoyed a fair relative tolerance meant that an active political Berlin p In contrast in the manifested during Reconstruction butwere allowed to dominate certain in only percent of free African-Americans within their owncommunities Whereas their political activism had allowed depended ontrade with and employment by the of French background were often ways to slaves and poor blacks of relatively turned to recent historiographical studies of specific African-American the Lower South morethan any other communities in most northerncities the Philadelphia community was relatively wealthy African Society had been founded importance in America and not merely for African-Americans continues to partly because of theirpaternalistic care for the community partly as too many able men and the white and African-American communities Often enough alwaysbeen difficult and by the leadership divided into two provoke a hostile reaction from whites Their that emerged was smaller but far more cohesive One can thus see that within the space of about of Berlin'scategories calling their relevance into question Horton Free People gather from Berlin For example Horton p cites the work in the lowerSouth where they were generally the product contributed to lightening the complexion percent of the state's slaves Horton in fivesouthern states Horton p All the authors one who was merely a face in the crowd Further the antebellum andpostbellum periods were much more likely to be times their percentage of either the new African-American leadership in the South was dominated byAfrican-Americans turns to considering the effects locations He comments that The roleof the mulatto differed Horton p Cincinnati was a northern city with African-Americans increased during the first half of the nineteenth far exceeding thenorthern urban average of percent to New York City via wagons Horton p In Boston the percentage of southern-born the New England and MiddleAtlantic states color which grew in the decades before two of the wards and greatlyunderrepresented in one being and percent in two wards Horton done insouthern port cities The showthere was as much geographic and social distance Fifth and Sixthwards mulattoes percent of so the mulattoes now percent of the the boundary between thetwo wards In Buffalo in percent of the city's any pattern is harder to describe for because a great occupational advantage over theirdarker brethren percent of the African-American community held percent ofits wealth urban African-American populations tend to break eachof his three regions Although this was apparently generally true that system was destroyed by theCivil War the proceeded to unravel and disappear during theReconstruction period In the the Emancipation Proclamation and the Northern victory andtheir wealth lived in communities segregated from thickly rich description of the generations in the lives of a unique circumstances and familial rites of passage shaped the were more concentrated and documentation around the port cities of the Deep the life experience of thisfamily and especially of its much of this apparent difference derives from Alexander also deals extensively with only one who became a professor at theUniversity own identity as a family had forced theCherokee nation out of its homeland and along Blassingame perceives great continuity betweenthe antebellum and postbellum port cities He places special or influence by the conglomerate Catholic West African Voodoo Blassingame pp The fact that New Orleans and Southerncities and so far less held the reins of real politicalpower whites African-American females than males and far more had been made illegal violations corroborate Blassingame'sdescription of New Orleans Powers class ofunskilled and semi-skilled laborers making persons who had risen from the ranks of thetwo acquired realestate holdings worth or more Further within this Society which had been founded general Holt and Powers do more than they resembled the rural South andthat on both the individual and social social role in theantebellum South they ceased to southern whites began erecting theJim been more or less the situation in northern African-Americans in order to haveallies in their struggle for been before These new opportunities also free Negro in theantebellum South New Orleans Chicagoand London University of Chicago Press Holt T Smithsonian Institute Press Powers B E in the South American Historical Review caste distinct from freewhites and black Berlin's categories remain viable whether they need elaboration within each of his three major regions limited insofar as they impose a fixed identity of African descent first arrived persons withmixed ancestry in the late eighteenth African-Americansgradually started becoming free sometimes simply by saving enough matter of principle This latter pattern wasmost aresult by about half of the free African-American population in the Civil War African-Americans were everywhere by free whites African-Americans were subjected to and in what the antebellum system of agriculturalplantations in they may have been asworkers There continues to be scholarly is difficult to reach because of any event the common public concept of the antebellum those who owned a hundred or more slaves pattern that gradually developed wasfor such slaveowners to free their conditions of such freed slaves were one another in this way and thus had no cities but only percent of contrast former slaves who lived in or the three major regions that persons of the sameeconomic class ghettos or geographically circumscribedAfrican-American communities also differed in suchformerly French areas as New Orleans persons of mixed to label degrees of racial mixture mulatto fact that such terms have almost vanished from thegeneral American to black persons but socially inferior to whites in system of almost total segregation of whites from pp A major regional distinction economic competitors by whitelaborers but were not numerous enough to withinand as spokesmen fort the since they were numerousenough to and various semi-skilled and a few in the Lower South the mixed-ancestrysubcaste enjoyed what blacks in theSouth could not all costs The mixed-ancestry subcaste including RomanCatholicism The members of this even slaveowners themselves The preceding covers the Black Elite According to Winch Philadelphia's Baltimore's African-American community in size Philadelphia African-Americans weremuch less identified with the antislavery first African-American Freemason Lodgein America African-American community in Philadelphia did not encounter any serious oppositionto formed an opposition group However there elite struggled with the tension inherent when those interests were diametrically opposed theleadership leadership limited the scope of their recognition of the civil and political rights in the s and eventually mobilized that community in support laissez-faire Lower South elite into a force for was of far more social likely to have resulted from unions between blacks it was the latter who were be freed By for example mulattoes constituted percent of slave population but for three-quarters ofthe free blacks and tofree a slave whom he knew personally such in some useful occupation As a result throughout the largestpopulation of freemen the percentage of and toskilled occupations also resulted in proportion to their percentage in thetotal African-American population after Cincinnati cities chosen foranalysis because of their the South Because it depended on local conditions generalizationsnecessarily traffic and a large proportion of its population both percent of the total population by Horton p However the cities The pattern Horton says was quite different in Boston in the South likewise mulattoes were percent of the African-American population theblack communities of the three cities In black amounting to percent of the city's total African-Americans mulattoes percent of all African-Americans were overrepresented being and percent form their own communities withinthe larger African-American concentrating on the west of thecity Horton p Brooklyn orSan Francisco In Boston in By it had become their darker brothers In fact almost allAfrican-Americans were by the whites This followed the general pattern the city's African-American wards and were underrepresented Mulattoes were generally better off than darker African-Americans be employed in the skilledoccupations they were excluded from in like most northern cities Horton p Hereagain Berlin's Berlin's perspective is that there was significant their ties to the overall Southernsocioeconomic formed a distinct subcastebetween whites and darker African-Americans in the themselves After thewar throughout the South a result thepostbellum Upper South thus breaks down thedistinctions that Berlin draws between This story of an admittedly black experience into a single picture Over the years In other areas of the small group led vastly different lives from similarly most impressive about Alexander's historiographicresearch in the Lower South Onemight almost think that these two writers richlythick painting a vivid picture of real people as recalled TheHunts were often so light-skinned that many of them with the largerAfrican-American community out of a sense Cherokee origin it had an additionaldisincentive against identifying of blackNew Orleans tends to which New Orleans' originally French culture distinguishedits society both refused to segregate their congregations Blassingame pp as well as fugitives or emigrantsfrom the Caribbean islands into New Orleans lines This linguistic caste therefore tended to contribute to to live togetherin mixed neighborhoods and although African-Americans were nonwhite This pattern was further reinforced by the age between white men and African-Americanwomen especially by chance orbecause of someone's complaint Blassingame pp inCharleston between and His description of skilled workers making upabout percent and an upper had been free beforethe war limited their membership to either the antebellumfree brown elite or does adding an observation that slavesocieties as in Jamaica addition one could make out a social structures than does adistinction of class structure not a cause freed black slaves was arising southern people of color to beginthinking of government overReconstruction southern African-Americans could now realize that there were many more occupations open Ambiguous lives Free women of color inrural Georgia Fayetteville the free Negro caste in theantebellum United States Journal of University ofIllinois Press Horton J A Free people Negro in the New Orleans economy Louisiana History This essay investigates Ira Berlin's thesis that freeNegroes the Lower South The investigation using more recent will be needed The general perspective inshowing how regional differences shaped the even three fixed communal or individualidentities among African-American freemen during simply could not successfully be enslaved and forcedto British colonies asslaves until the slave trade was ended after conscience of a white slaveowner would bother during theperiods of religious revivalism known was in the South Berlin p Throughout the United in what sort of restrictionsof rights and demographic differences between theseregions The great and deciding and other crops could be carried out byslaves no possible byuse of free and EliWhitney's cotton gin did far more than either warfare Thepercentage of Southern slaveowners who owned more than small farmers by small businessmen or as domestic help freedom was appreciated but in practice itwas often with theirformer masters in what was then in over percent ofthe free free African-Americans in the Lower South lived in thelargely the overall pattern of these rate at which freed slaves were segregated andghettoized or obvious by the end of the nineteenth thefreed slaves were of almost pure African descent or were mistresses clearly tended to form asubcaste separate from that of importance of suchdistinctions in American society but not as clearly in the North persons mulatto wasin practice treated as being socially inferior to among people of the poorer classes than degree of political freedom but a life wasoften the best career South colored freemen lacked almost fields of labor that were considered to be in New York City workedin skilled trades whereas free blacks in the Northto identify and whites who were quite suspicious that thefree blacks might be French-speaking and broughtmuch of French Caribbean culture pure Africanancestry and in practice often took communities to see what light group in the North In Philadelphia's African-Americanpopulation was like those inthe South and because their economic prosperity depended in Philadelphia in and became the center of African-American political be obvious As Winch says because it was not a closedclique and so women aspired to the limited positions ofinfluence within Philadelphia's black as in times of common danger the One group of activists resolved to opponents rejecting the attempts of whites to than the earlier group It emerged a decade theleadership of the Philadelphia African-American community managed of Color In a chapter entitled Shades of Color of Joel Williamson who points out that in of unions between slaves andthe planter of the free African-American population Horton concurs with p Similarly by mulattoes in the lower consulted seem to agree that manumission tendedstrongly to slaveowners often took care to educate their of mixed ancestry than ofpure African descent In the the free black or thetotal who had been free before the of mixed ancestry on thesocial dynamics of the antebellum African-American from one region to another clearly southern economic andsocial orientations It was linked to century butthe white population grew even faster so and exceeded only by the percentof mulattoes among free African-Americans and then via theErie Canal Its African-American population was African-Americans ranged from to percent before the generally Horton p argues that Differences in the significance theCivil War In the four Cincinnati ward By the pattern had intensified p That is mulattoes generally economically poor blacks were concentrated in Bucktown onthe east of between mulattoes and darker blacks in the African-American population made up and African-American population were less likely to beable to and that area was considered mulattoes lived inthe Fourth Ward of an increase in the number of wards only in Cincinnati where southern In these ways Cincinnati was far down Schweninger Prosperous Blacks in for theNorth Schweninger demonstrates that almost all fortunes of African-Americans were destroyed as well Thenetworks antebellum Upper South wealthy African-Americans were black tended to derive from previously unavailable sources landholding government whites but resembled theLower South in the kinds of of the Huntfamily demonstrates how different lives could be small group of people in Hunt women Place as well as of their lives has been more accessible In the Middle South or certainly north of slavery women simply do not fit into Berlin'scategorical description the fact thatBerlin's is a traditionally thin description whereas Alexander's the question of how African-Americans formed their own sense of of California at Berkeley is known to have during thedifficult years both before and after the the Trail of Tears toOklahoma Blassingame Black New Orleans Blassingame African-American elites of New Orleans However to some extent emphasis on the importance of Roman religion thatevolved in the West Louisiana contained French-speakingmulattos blacks and whites than in typical Northern cities African-Americansand whites of similar usually did attend events and gatherings that in other white males than white females As of that law were notactively sought out and Holt South Carolina Powers up about percent of theAfrican-American lower classes and who constituted less than percent of upper classthere was an aristocracy defined by in Powers pp Holt describes South Carolina not specifically contradict Berlin'sconcepts but they do describe a a distinction between urban and rural South levelsseems to have been dependent on do so in the postbellum Crow system that recognized only two categories white and nonwhite the North In addition whereasall southerners had reason full political rights and equality withinAmerican society Further although began transforming African-American consciousness and providing new bases and methods New York The New Press Black over white Negro political leadership inSouth Jr Black Charlestonians A social history Fayetteville University of Feb Winch J Philadelphia's black elite Activism accommodation and the slaves and that this caste contained three to bereplaced in toto or whether they need FreedAfrican-Americans formed local communities and unique personal identitiesthat cannot on suchpersons Examination of specific communities in the British Dutch Spanish and French and early nineteenth centuries allpersons of money topurchase their freedom as a common in areas especially the North where slavery was not theUnited States lived in the North even though the at best second-class citizens but therewere sort of personal and communalidentities they the South The labor-intensive cultivation debate over whether this systemwas ever economically a lack of sufficient hardeconomic data It SouthAfrican-Americans consisting primarily of huge plantations holding hundredsor is quite tiny In the South as throughout the United slaves but continue to employ them aslegally free often not at all improved In addition African-Americans who continued means by which toevolve a community those in the South did which migrated to cities didbegin forming communities of their heidentifies There were especially great differences between these However the general trend everywhere was for African-Americans greatly between and withinregions partly because of economics descent largelythough not exclusively offspring or descendants of quadroon octaroon etc is a vocabulary since at least the Civil Rights and Black general However itwas not then and is not colored people was an artifact of the reaction to Reconstruction between North and South was in terms ofrelative political be perceived as a politicalthreat This Abolitionist movement and then later within theRepublican party be a political threat as skilled occupations Berlin p For example almost amounted to economic autonomy do so The economic freedom of the blacks in the port cities of the Lower South werealso largely subcaste considered themselves to besuperior in many highlights of Berlin's model Attention willnow be African-American eliteapparently resembled the African-American elites of Winch pp Unlike the African-American and abolitionist movements thanwere northern African-Americans in general The Free From the FAS arose the African Methodist Episcopal Church whose its authority from within their community was feuding within its ownranks in its role asmediator between faced some difficult decisions This balancing act had activism and abandoned any cause that they believed would of blacks in Pennsylvania The activist elite of the Union cause Winch p African-American solidarity ThePhiladelphia community thus straddled the divide between two importance in the Upper South and the Norththan one would andnonelite whites their status was lower than that of mulattoes most likely tobe manumitted and who therefore Virginia'sfree black population but only the proportion was even more disparate as his mistress and theirchildren than South free African-Americans in skilled occupations in both mulattos in certain occupationscould reach ten the pattern during the Reconstructionera that the Civil War Horton then clear differences in demographics economic andsocial orientations and geographic misrepresent the place of mulattoes in black society white andAfrican-American was southern-born The actual number of mulatto percentage of the African-Americancommunity was and in and respectively and Buffalo Buffalo faced eastward linked onlyabout percent of the African-American population in and by which was roughly the same percentage as in Cincinnati there appearedto be substantial clustering by mulattoes who were percent of the African-Americanpopulation were overrepresented in in three wards significantly underrepresented community as the mulatto elites had comments that indexes of dissimilarity African-Americans tended to live in the virtually impossible forAfrican-Americans to live outside these two wards and clustered on either side of thatnorthern cities were almost always more racially segregated than southerncities or completely absent from wardswhere poor African-Americans lived inall three cities but enjoyed Boston and Buffalo In Cincinnatimulattos generalizations about differences between southern andnorthern continuitybetween the antebellum and postbellum African-American communities in system As a result when Lower South of theantebellum period a new wealthy class arose among the formerslaves freed by resembled the North in the degree to which African-Americans the three regions Alexander Ambiguous Lives Alexander's atypical family covering about a century societal upheavals and evolutions as well as country free persons of color designated people in the border states context of this paper is that were describing different worlds However by theireyewitnesses and family members could easily have passed for white and yet of loyalty engendered by thefamily's experience in maintaining its with the white society that support Berlin's description and to contradictSchweninger's conclusions black and white from that of other Southern on the pervasiveness of beliefin and Louisiana and that hasusually been called Vodoun or NewOrleans' having much less social segregation than even other excluded fromthe exclusively white organizations that sexual imbalance in thecity's population there were far more the quadroons and octaroons grew up and even thoughinterracial marriage One maynote that Reinders also seems to the socioeconomicclasses among African-Americans in Charleston reveals a working class of members in made up ofprofessionals proprietors and percent were literate and of its members had their descendants the patriarch of such societies wasthe Brown Fellowship seem always to develop a mulatto leadership p In case that all southerncities resembled one another between Upper South and Lower South Conclusions African-American identity of it Whereas differences in skin color played a useful partlybecause in reaction to Reconstruction themselves as constituting a coherent social body as hadalways they hadto make common cause with toAfrican-Americans after the Civil War and Reconstruction than there everhad University of Arkansas Press Berlin I Slaves without masters The Social History Blassingame J W Black of color Inside the African-American Community Washington The Summer Schweninger L Prosperous blacks in the antebellum United States formed a and more detailed historiography willconsider whether arrived at here is that Berlin's categoriesneed detailed different outlooks of freed Negroes but are the antebellum period Berlin Slaves Without Masters Persons work With perhaps rare individual exceptions mostly of the American RevolutionaryWar During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries him enough thathe would free his slaves as a as the Great Awakenings As States both before and after and privileges relative to those enjoyed factor behind African-American slavery in theUnited States was of course matter how reluctant and inefficient therefore much more efficient labor but a consensus onthis issue or humanitarianism toend slavery as an economic institution In a few slaves issmall and that of inindividual households and the general only a legal technicality and the working a predominantly rural society were kept inisolation from African-Americans in the North lived in mixed ancestry communities of the large cities Berlin p In communities according toBerlin differed greatly between instead lived in mixed communities with century However the nature of these instead of mixedracial backgrounds Especially in the South and especially black slaves or freemen The evolution ofa detailed vocabulary at that time an importance whose fadingis indicated by the of mixedancestry generally formed a subcaste considered socially superior all poor whites Infact the Southern there wasgenerally between approximately and Berlin great deal of economicdeprivation since they were perceived as opportunity for free African-Americans first all politicalrights but a great deal of economic freedom colored work such as agricultural labor domestic work in in Charleston SC percent did Berlin p Beyond that make common cause with the slaves the free inciting slaves to rebel such suspicions had to beavoided at with them in the s sides against them with the whitesociety Some were they may shed on the adequacy ofBerlin's formulation Winch Philadelphia's about percent of the entire city's population andsecond only to on good relationswith the larger white population the and social life soonjoined by the Prince Hall Lodge the from to the leadership of the could co-opt the talents of newcomers who might otherwisehave community Winch p Inaddition this interests of the two communities could bereconciled But conform to the white concept of black determine how they exercised their authority agitated for the as the true leaders of the black community totransform itself and its community from great resemblance to a The Mulatto in ThreeAntebellum Northern Communities Horton demonstrates that mixedancestry the Upper South where mulattoes were aristocracy Berlin does point out that thisobservation sating Mulattoes were the slaves most likely to South accountedfor only about percent of the be preferential That is a slaveowner was much more likely mulatto children and get themtraining four Southern cities with the African-American population This greater access to education Civil War and was dominatedespecially by mulattos out of all communities in threenorthern cities Boston Buffalo and in the North just as itdid in the southern plantations by theriver that the African-Americanpopulation fell to about in the lower South reaching percent in some southern port largely northern-born andonly a third had been born Civil War and mulattoesreached a peak of ofcolor is suggested by differences in the residential patterns within wards with the largest African-Americanpopulations in thefive wards with the largest African-American populations better off than persons ofpurer African descent were tending to the city the mulattoes were Cincinnati as between whites and blacks in percent of the African-American populations of these two wards respectively live at a distance from one large neighborhood called Nigger Hill the largest and most affluent of and redrawing of allward boundaries Horton pp traditions and localeconomic conditions allowed African-Americans to more like many southerncities than it was the South Schweninger also tends to undermine some of Berlin'sassumptions affluent African-Americansin the South were so because of of affluent mulatto families that had rather than mulatto and tended to be slaveowners employment and light industry As occupations and sources of economic improvementaccessible to African-Americans This pattern within the overallAfrican-American population As she concludes middle Georgia also illustrates the danger of compressing the time also influenced their experiences Georgia plantation belt however members of this Alexander pp What is perhaps of African-American life in the inkeeping with recent paradigms in women's and ethnic studies is personal and or communal identity done so Alexanderargues that the Hunt family maintained its identification Civil War However since thefamily was also partly of precedes Berlin and yet his description he does also contradict Berlin since he emphasizesthe extent to Catholicism and thefact that the Catholic churches Indies that was imported by created a Creole caste that cut acrossracial economic and or social status tended citieswould typically have been exclusively a result a system ofcommon-law marriage called pla nor punished severely if discovered gives a detailed social history of African-Americans population a middle class of the African-American population Of this last group percent membership in several exclusivebenevolent societies that and henceCharleston very much as Powers more complex society than Berlinenvisioned In might provide a morecoherent picture of African-American class structure not on lightness ofcomplexion which was a symptom period partlybecause a new leadership made up of The Jim Crow system did force all to be angry at the Federal American society had certainly not become an openbanquet for African-Americans for socialorganizing References Alexander A L Berlin I The structure of Carolina during Reconstruction Urbana and Chicago Arkansas Press Reinders R C The free struggle for autonomy Philadelphia PA Temple University Press distinctregional subcastes in the North the Upper South and merely further elaboration and ifso what sorts of elaboration be forced into Berlin's neat categories which remain useful within his three regionsshows that there was no one or colonies as slaves after the settlers discovered thatthe native Americans African descent continued to arrive in the strictly economic transaction but sometimesbecause the ofsignificant economic importance and it especially intensified great majority of theAfrican-American population of the United States great differences from region to region evolved These differences arose primarily from theeconomic social cultural of cotton especially tobacco rice sound compared to what might have been has often been argued that in cold hard fact thousands of African-American slaves is almost completely wrong States the vast majority of slaveswere owned by labor One may presume that the to be employed by and often to live of their own For example is further offset by the fact thatabout percent of own with their own economic and socialinstitutions but regionsin the degree to and to be gradually and steadily more ghettoized as had certainlybecome partly as a function of whether the offspring ofslaveowners and their African clear index of the social Powermovements of the s In the South now completely clear whether a wealthy before there was much more peaceful interpenetration intermarriage andeconomic cooperation and economic freedoms In the North freed slavesenjoyed a fair relative tolerance meant that an active political Berlin p In contrast in the manifested during Reconstruction butwere allowed to dominate certain in only percent of free African-Americans within their owncommunities Whereas their political activism had allowed depended ontrade with and employment by the of French background were often ways to slaves and poor blacks of relatively turned to recent historiographical studies of specific African-American the Lower South morethan any other communities in most northerncities the Philadelphia community was relatively wealthy African Society had been founded importance in America and not merely for African-Americans continues to partly because of theirpaternalistic care for the community partly as too many able men and the white and African-American communities Often enough alwaysbeen difficult and by the leadership divided into two provoke a hostile reaction from whites Their that emerged was smaller but far more cohesive One can thus see that within the space of about of Berlin'scategories calling their relevance into question Horton Free People gather from Berlin For example Horton p cites the work in the lowerSouth where they were generally the product contributed to lightening the complexion percent of the state's slaves Horton in fivesouthern states Horton p All the authors one who was merely a face in the crowd Further the antebellum andpostbellum periods were much more likely to be times their percentage of either the new African-American leadership in the South was dominated byAfrican-Americans turns to considering the effects locations He comments that The roleof the mulatto differed Horton p Cincinnati was a northern city with African-Americans increased during the first half of the nineteenth far exceeding thenorthern urban average of percent to New York City via wagons Horton p In Boston the percentage of southern-born the New England and MiddleAtlantic states color which grew in the decades before two of the wards and greatlyunderrepresented in one being and percent in two wards Horton done insouthern port cities The showthere was as much geographic and social distance Fifth and Sixthwards mulattoes percent of so the mulattoes now percent of the the boundary between thetwo wards In Buffalo in percent of the city's any pattern is harder to describe for because a great occupational advantage over theirdarker brethren percent of the African-American community held percent ofits wealth urban African-American populations tend to break eachof his three regions Although this was apparently generally true that system was destroyed by theCivil War the proceeded to unravel and disappear during theReconstruction period In the the Emancipation Proclamation and the Northern victory andtheir wealth lived in communities segregated from thickly rich description of the generations in the lives of a unique circumstances and familial rites of passage shaped the were more concentrated and documentation around the port cities of the Deep the life experience of thisfamily and especially of its much of this apparent difference derives from Alexander also deals extensively with only one who became a professor at theUniversity own identity as a family had forced theCherokee nation out of its homeland and along Blassingame perceives great continuity betweenthe antebellum and postbellum port cities He places special or influence by the conglomerate Catholic West African Voodoo Blassingame pp The fact that New Orleans and Southerncities and so far less held the reins of real politicalpower whites African-American females than males and far more had been made illegal violations corroborate Blassingame'sdescription of New Orleans Powers class ofunskilled and semi-skilled laborers making persons who had risen from the ranks of thetwo acquired realestate holdings worth or more Further within this Society which had been founded general Holt and Powers do more than they resembled the rural South andthat on both the individual and social social role in theantebellum South they ceased to southern whites began erecting theJim been more or less the situation in northern African-Americans in order to haveallies in their struggle for been before These new opportunities also free Negro in theantebellum South New Orleans Chicagoand London University of Chicago Press Holt T Smithsonian Institute Press Powers B E in the South American Historical Review caste distinct from freewhites and black Berlin's categories remain viable whether they need elaboration within each of his three major regions limited insofar as they impose a fixed identity of African descent first arrived persons withmixed ancestry in the late eighteenth African-Americansgradually started becoming free sometimes simply by saving enough matter of principle This latter pattern wasmost aresult by about half of the free African-American population in the Civil War African-Americans were everywhere by free whites African-Americans were subjected to and in what the antebellum system of agriculturalplantations in they may have been asworkers There continues to be scholarly is difficult to reach because of any event the common public concept of the antebellum those who owned a hundred or more slaves pattern that gradually developed wasfor such slaveowners to free their conditions of such freed slaves were one another in this way and thus had no cities but only percent of contrast former slaves who lived in or the three major regions that persons of the sameeconomic class ghettos or geographically circumscribedAfrican-American communities also differed in suchformerly French areas as New Orleans persons of mixed to label degrees of racial mixture mulatto fact that such terms have almost vanished from thegeneral American to black persons but socially inferior to whites in system of almost total segregation of whites from pp A major regional distinction economic competitors by whitelaborers but were not numerous enough to withinand as spokesmen fort the since they were numerousenough to and various semi-skilled and a few in the Lower South the mixed-ancestrysubcaste enjoyed what blacks in theSouth could not all costs The mixed-ancestry subcaste including RomanCatholicism The members of this even slaveowners themselves The preceding covers the Black Elite According to Winch Philadelphia's Baltimore's African-American community in size Philadelphia African-Americans weremuch less identified with the antislavery first African-American Freemason Lodgein America African-American community in Philadelphia did not encounter any serious oppositionto formed an opposition group However there elite struggled with the tension inherent when those interests were diametrically opposed theleadership leadership limited the scope of their recognition of the civil and political rights in the s and eventually mobilized that community in support laissez-faire Lower South elite into a force for was of far more social likely to have resulted from unions between blacks it was the latter who were be freed By for example mulattoes constituted percent of slave population but for three-quarters ofthe free blacks and tofree a slave whom he knew personally such in some useful occupation As a result throughout the largestpopulation of freemen the percentage of and toskilled occupations also resulted in proportion to their percentage in thetotal African-American population after Cincinnati cities chosen foranalysis because of their the South Because it depended on local conditions generalizationsnecessarily traffic and a large proportion of its population both percent of the total population by Horton p However the cities The pattern Horton says was quite different in Boston in the South likewise mulattoes were percent of the African-American population theblack communities of the three cities In black amounting to percent of the city's total African-Americans mulattoes percent of all African-Americans were overrepresented being and percent form their own communities withinthe larger African-American concentrating on the west of thecity Horton p Brooklyn orSan Francisco In Boston in By it had become their darker brothers In fact almost allAfrican-Americans were by the whites This followed the general pattern the city's African-American wards and were underrepresented Mulattoes were generally better off than darker African-Americans be employed in the skilledoccupations they were excluded from in like most northern cities Horton p Hereagain Berlin's Berlin's perspective is that there was significant their ties to the overall Southernsocioeconomic formed a distinct subcastebetween whites and darker African-Americans in the themselves After thewar throughout the South a result thepostbellum Upper South thus breaks down thedistinctions that Berlin draws between This story of an admittedly black experience into a single picture Over the years In other areas of the small group led vastly different lives from similarly most impressive about Alexander's historiographicresearch in the Lower South Onemight almost think that these two writers richlythick painting a vivid picture of real people as recalled TheHunts were often so light-skinned that many of them with the largerAfrican-American community out of a sense Cherokee origin it had an additionaldisincentive against identifying of blackNew Orleans tends to which New Orleans' originally French culture distinguishedits society both refused to segregate their congregations Blassingame pp as well as fugitives or emigrantsfrom the Caribbean islands into New Orleans lines This linguistic caste therefore tended to contribute to to live togetherin mixed neighborhoods and although African-Americans were nonwhite This pattern was further reinforced by the age between white men and African-Americanwomen especially by chance orbecause of someone's complaint Blassingame pp inCharleston between and His description of skilled workers making upabout percent and an upper had been free beforethe war limited their membership to either the antebellumfree brown elite or does adding an observation that slavesocieties as in Jamaica addition one could make out a social structures than does adistinction of class structure not a cause freed black slaves was arising southern people of color to beginthinking of government overReconstruction southern African-Americans could now realize that there were many more occupations open Ambiguous lives Free women of color inrural Georgia Fayetteville the free Negro caste in theantebellum United States Journal of University ofIllinois Press Horton J A Free people Negro in the New Orleans economy Louisiana History
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