Transcripts For CSPAN3 Discussion On Slavery And The Freedom

Nbc news special report from 1975 communist saigon on American History tv on cspan3. Up next on American History tv, law professor Lea Vandervelde tells the stories of slaves who use the law as a pathway to freedom in the precivil war era. She describes how slaves contributed to building frontier communities and discusses several legal cases that illustrate the struggles of both enslaved and freed blacks in the antebellum west. This event from the National Archives is about 45 minutes. Dr. Vandervelde i should say good morning. It is still morning, right . A few minutes until noon. I want to thank the National Archives and doug watson for this opportunity to speak. It is particularly a pleasure for me since it is like history black History Month and because the stories im about to tell you about our heroes of are heroes of black history in my opinion. In the history of the United States Supreme Court, there is one and only one case where a slave challenged his master and thats the notorious dred scott case. Dred scott versus stanford didanford. Now, the slave would lose. Does not seem surprising. That a slave with sue at all does. After all, what could slave do anyway . They had no agency. They were born, died, had children, and worked for other peoples gain. But far more often, they were persons who were acted upon. They were bought souls sent and sold, transported, and inherited, but they themselves did not buy, sell, contract and inherent. Slaves inhabit their masters agenda. They lived through their masters agendas and lives during a time of their enslavement. The subject and subjective quality of their lives is overtaken by their existence as objects. As objects who belonged to somebody else with an objective life. As such, slaves are often on notice. It is hard to find details about lives of inflated persons. Enslaved persons. They are described in the passive voice as having the characteristics of object. There are many lawsuits that involved slaves. The law books are full of them. They took place over the heads of slaves between free persons. Slaves did not sue. I wrote a book about 300 who did. And pardon me. And surprisingly, the majority won. This species of lawsuit is rare, indeed. In freedom cases before dred scott, the slave was pitted in fierce opposition to his or her master. What was a freedom suit . How did a slave get to court yucca . How did a slave get a lawyer . Under the procedure set out by a missouri statute, the slave began a lawsuit by orally telling his case, his life story, to a clerk or a justice of the peace. The affidavit told the slaves story and declared wrote the clerk wrote the story down. Then the slave signed with an x. Which was customary or illiterate persons. Ive arrayed some 300 xes here, which were the signatures of slaves in freedom petitions. The xes made at the bottom were the account of a slaves life and it must be remembered that slaves were forbidden to read or write. So for these individuals, it was probably most probably the very first time they had ever held a pen in their hands and they were making an x in defiance of their master to assert their freedom. These cases are the original filings of the trial court level. And so, there are a lot of details. They are authentic accounts you could not find other places about people whom you have never heard of before but will lift who lived fascinating interesting lives. And the petition read this if sometimes the clerk simply took ballot the dictation of what the slave had to say. There is a story behind every one of these xes. Behind one x, of course, is dred scott, notorious, the case. Unknown, the man. Behind another x is his wife harriet. But there are others. Many more xes than pictures. This is lucy delaney who signed an x when she was just a child and lived to write about it after the civil war. Swansee adams, one of the duncan slaves, which is one of my favorite stories in the book, because it is a story in which there is a superb victory for all of the duncan slaves over all of their duncan masters. But behind each of these stories is a family or an individual and, altogether, many of these freedom suits were family affairs. Whether the litigants sued jointly in tandem or in succession, a total of 160 persons of the 239 for whom we have records, were in the family. They sued as a family. Consider then some of these xes clustered together as mothers and children and brothers and sisters. There are some 11 litigants for whom we have no legal records at all, but of these 153 were women or girls and 126 were men. Or boys. Most of the petitioners based their claim on the fact they were taken to a place where slavery was banned. There are some other basis in the book as the book explains, but the primary centerpiece collection here are slaves, who by living and working in free territory, not as a runaway but with ones masters consent could be in a position to retain readiredeem their freedom by going to court. The bondage of the slave was broken by living and residing in free territory. Crossing the boundary with ones master and remaining there made the bondsman free. The rule was that simple. These cases were the centerpiece of st. Louis freedoms is in the cases were fomented through westward migration and national expansion. The role of freedom by residents, living on free soil was essentially derived from migration. And in these cases, from westward migration of owners with their slaves. In these cases, the petitioners directly opposed their masters wishes. They petitioned the court to override those wishes because for some time in the course of western migration, that person had lived on free soil. These cases were truly transformational. Most slaves were brought west by floating with the current down the ohio river. The northern shore was free. And missouris longest border was with a free state illinois. This border had to be passed by or through in getting west. St. Louis was as a marketplace for the west. St. Louis was the end depot for most westward immigrants. It was the place to change steamboats whether you are going north, south, or whether you are going further west on the missouri river. And disputes brewing elsewhere were funneled into the st. Louis court by gravitating to the transportation hub. A steady stream of petitioners satisfy the criteria for freedom by having lived on free soil before arriving in st. Louis in a slave state. St. Louis was the natural cashman area for slaves who had experienced a mixed pattern of residence in the course of migrating west. St. Louis was the perfect storm. The western labor market needed slaves. St. Louis found slaves were brought down the ohio river principally to tame the west. And they were needed as domestic laborers in order to advance the prophecies of settlements faster than could be done by the doityourself yeoman farmers and merchants. Slaves occupied a slightly different role in the west than they did in the south. First, the slave men were needed as the muscle to move the cargo to supply the west and to provide for western expansion. Second, in a few limited areas particularly where they were lead and salt deposits, slave men were set to work in mining. These were jobs that free men did not want to do and you could not find large numbers of free men to do these jobs. Hired labor was available only at a premium, so slaves were imported. And third, slave men and women were brought into the antebellum frontier as labor to provide the basic needs of sustenance for things that could not be bought in the market for jobs, tasks errands, that could not be hired. Slaves were available for settlement and lands were available. There was a lot of land in great supply. You could buy a farm for a far less amount than the cost of a slave. Slaves were set to work building cabins, fences, stills, chopping wood, making fires, feeding and watering people and animals, cooking, laundering, and where there were travelers providing for those travelers. In remote areas, slaves provided the later of a sick household basic household sustenance so that that community could gain on the equation of their survival. Who could build the state, attend a court, found the school, build a library, or form a legislature if all hands were needed simply to maintain survival . Only when some household members were free from the tasks of maintaining survival could the community built the infrastructure of roads, governments, and institutions on which to advance. Work done by slaves permitted the settlement to advance faster than the settlements could have done without them. The goal of freedom in these cases was always the same. Freedom was the ability to go and do and serve whomever one wished. And just as important, to refuse to obey others who had no legitimate claim to them at all. And also, the freedom to remain in place if they wished, not to have to run and to keep running. These cases highlight also freedoms opposite the power of enslavement that can be exercised without any accountability whatsoever. The litigants entered the courts in different ways, and they pay different prices for winning their freedom. The price that freedom promised to them by law was surprisingly high for many of these litigants. I wrote the stories by looking at the xes and reading backward. Reading the accounts, the petitions, the slaves had given for themselves. Had provided in the elements necessary for the lawsuit to establish their freedom. And then constructing the world around them. Could i verify that they had, in fact, lived in this particular place in illinois for three or four months . Surprisingly in many instances i could. I checked censuses, tax records, homestead records, i checked everything available in order to map the world in which the slaves traveled in order to find the story behind these xes. Each of these chapters is a different short story. And the slaves subject life is at its center with a Redemption Song, the transformative moment. I would like to tell you about just a few of the stories. One is peter and his wife queen. Peters case is the very earliest case to be decided under the northwest ordinance determining slaves to be free. This is decided before 1800. In an area that is now illinois sorry, indiana. Vincenze, indiana. This story was never told before because it was hidden in the papers of a private collector. And it is also the only story occurring in the book that takes place in a free jurisdiction. Peter and his wife queen are suing for their freedom in indiana. It should have been an easy case. Peters story demonstrates the difficulty of establishing ones freedom in a relatively unsettled portion of the United States territory. Peter and his wife set off from kentucky for free land, for free soil. But two persons traveling alone and camping beside the falls of the wabash river were quickly noticed by Indian Tribes who occupied the area. We do not know which tribes captured peter and queen, but they were taken captive and held for several days. And then they were taken to a very destination, but they were sold to the people as slaves. The indians got two rifles and some ammunition and peter knew exactly the price of his head. Peter is living in free territory. He and his wife are sold to a man named vanderburgh. And they basically stay with him for the winter because there is no place else for them to go. They had to wait until spring, until the very first judge came to the territory for the very first time before they had anyone to appeal to. And peter wasted no time. He approached the judge on the very day that judge turner arrived. Judge turner quickly saw that peter deserved a writ of habeas corpus and should be freed from his master and peter was also probably entitled to some money for his treatment. But he allowed peter and queen to go back to the punitive master, mr. Vanderberg. And that is where a conspiracy began. Peters story is the story of a perfect conspiracy. It is almost the blueprint for one. How you separate one slave from another. How you deceive them. How you send them off on an errand, only to be taken captive. And what was the objective here . The objective was to keep him away from the judge. Well, peter is later freed. The story is a dramatic one. But there is one further note. Peter was actually a soldier in the revolutionary war. I found his veterans pension. The two men who kidnapped and tormented him are far better known because they have counties named after them in indiana. Jean marie was born in illinois. Sometimes called g. Mary , depending on whether youre pronouncing it in the french he grew up in or in english, which was customary in st. Louis. He was born to a woman who was enslaved by the french and had been brought into the area before it was even deemed to be american territory. Jean marie fought for his freedom and the freedom of his wife and his two children. He was kidnapped twice and should downriver to new orleans twice in manacles for sale. And twice he beat them back, escaped, made his way north, and seated for his soonued for his freedom. The first time he sued for his freedom, he sued in st. Louis, appealing all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court. I was able to find that on that day the Missouri Supreme Court ruled in his favor, he had a party. I know that because people who lost try to bring an action for Disorderly Conduct for him for creating such a ruckus. That was not the end. He was kidnapped one more time and this time sent back to new orleans. There he filed suit again and appealed all the way to the louisiana Supreme Court. And jean marie and a family ended their lives and freedom in st. Louis. Lydia titus established her freedom very early in illinois. She went on to marry a free demand friedmaneed man and purchased 160 acres. They raised livestock. They had a family. They raise their children. And at one point, her husband died. Several years after that, on one fateful night, heirs of her former master, a generation later, appeared at her door and in the cover of darkness and forcibly kidnapped her children and grandchildren. With them was illinois secretary of state who is acting as their lawyer. The secretary of state was a large man, very imposing, and he said that was doing this for the law and his clients. He also wielded a gun and he made lydia lie facedown on the floor while her children and grandchildren were taken off in a wagon. Grandmother lydia was not going to allow that to stop her. The next morning, she was at court before court even opened, filing a freedom suit to get their return. These cases are full of paradoxes, so when the sheriff found lydias children and the kidnappers on the road south, he arrested them both. The kidnappers. Because they had kidnapped lydias children. Lydias children for their own safekeeping and all parties warehouse warehouse were held in the same jail. Lydia frees her children and her grandchildren but at some cost. Two of her children do not survive the ordeal. They die in the cold jail. And at the very end, the homestead that she had built up with her husband had to be sold to pay her lawyer. David shipmans story is far more uplifting because David Shipman was a kentucky mill owner and he was falling into debt and he knew his creditors were coming to seize the slave family if they could. He wanted them to instead take the mill. Take the livestock. And so, in order to free them from the prospect of being captured and sold at auction, he took them first to indiana and later to a Quaker Settlement in illinois and he gave them their freedom papers. There was enough money left behind for his creditors. But his creditors wanted the slaves because remember, a slave was more valuable than a farm. So they went after the slaves, kidnapping them from this Quaker Settlement near peoria. Undercover, in the dead of night, and a team of quakers set off after them in a mother in another canoe. The fracas ended up in st. Louis with a freedom suit filed by the family. Eventually, everyone became free. They all inherited the property that David Shipman had bought for them. Leah charlottesville lived a double life. She was something of a gangster small gangsters moll. She was playing off two black men at the same time. One her husband, and the other a handsome, dapper barber. As she was running a boarding house, she was also the head of a getting of riverboat leaves that lived at her house. She importuned wealthy men who came to town, finding out how much money they had and sent the these to get there good, to get their money to steal their , chests. This went on for quite a long pe riod of time. She was clever about this because she was always in church proclaiming her love on jesus on exactly the moment the thieves were grabbing the goods. She had an alibi and she made a point to sit near the front so she would be seen. No leupp placed now leah placed her children in the ministers home for guidance. And over the course of her life, she went to court not because her freedom was uncertain but in order to leverage someone who had threatened her livelihood. Light skinned eliza tyler was deceived in one of the worst possible ways. She lived with an africanamerican man as a commonlaw wife in illinois. And one day, a slave trader offered her commonlaw husband money to sell her to a brothel in new orleans. She was lightskinned, and so she could bring a higher price. She was deceived into boarding a steamboat. By the time she got to st. Louis, she figured out what was going on and quickly made her way to court before she could be hustled off to the second steamboat. Hector norton was given papers by her master for herself and child. He moved to new york. He did not need a slave. She lived independently in st. Louis for a while among a community of free blacks. One day he changed his mind and traveled to st. Louis and tried to sell her and his own child into slavery. She filed a freedom suit and was free. But one of my favorite stories is the story of the duncan family. The Duncan Brothers, black and white brothers. Imagine that when Jessie Duncan died, his nine black slaves were divided in the will among his six white sons. They all share the last name duncan and the common parlance of the day. Each of the white Duncan Brothers inherited a different black duncan slave and the white Duncan Brothers were quite wild young men. Each one had a different device. One was subject to alcohol. One was subject to gambling. None of them were really womanizers. T