African Americans in the Early Republic in two minutes
- Northern states ended slavery gradually, and New York freed everyone still held in lifelong slavery in 1827. The free Black population grew, but many Northern states restricted Black voting and settlement.
- Free Black Northerners built the African Methodist Episcopal Church (1816), schools, Freedom's Journal (1827) and the first Colored Convention (1830). Most opposed the American Colonization Society, which founded Liberia in 1822.
- Enslaved Southerners had no legal marriages and faced sale at any time. They kept kin networks together, made Christianity and spirituals their own, and resisted through slow work, broken tools and escape.
- Gabriel's plot (1800), the German Coast uprising (1811), the alleged Denmark Vesey plot (1822) and Nat Turner's revolt (1831) failed. Southern states tightened slave codes and banned teaching enslaved people to read.
- David Walker's Appeal (1829) urged resistance, and Maria Stewart spoke publicly in Boston. Frederick Douglass escaped in 1838, published his Narrative in 1845 and founded The North Star in 1847.
- The Supreme Court freed the Amistad captives in 1841 without challenging slavery. The free share of Black Americans barely moved, from about 11 percent in 1800 to 12 percent in 1850.
- On the exam: expect continuity and change over 1800–1848, comparison of Northern and Southern Black experience, and the range of responses, from institutions and protest to flight and rebellion.
Topic 4.12 key terms
- Free Black Americans
Black Americans who were not enslaved: about 108,000 in 1800 and about 320,000 by 1830. Most states still limited their rights, including the vote.
- Freedom's Journal
1827–1829. The first newspaper owned and operated by African Americans in the United States. Samuel Cornish and John Russwurm founded it in New York City to speak for Black Americans and report on their communities.
- Disfranchisement
Denying or limiting a group's right to vote. By 1826 New York required no property from white men, but Black men still had to own $250.
- Gradual emancipation
Northern laws that ended slavery slowly, usually by freeing children born after a set date once they had served their mothers' owners into adulthood.
- African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church
Founded in Philadelphia in 1816 by Richard Allen and other Black Methodists. The first independent Black denomination in the United States.
- American Colonization Society
Founded in 1816 to move free Black Americans to Africa. Some backers opposed slavery; many just wanted free Black people gone. It started the colony of Liberia in 1822.
- New York emancipation (1827)
On July 4, 1827, New York's 1817 law ended lifelong slavery in the state. Children born after 1799 still owed their mothers' owners years of service.
- Enslaved families and kin networks
The law recognized no slave marriages and owners could sell anyone, so families and neighbors built their own bonds of kinship. They protected dignity and memory (KC-4.1.II.D).
- Spirituals
Religious songs created by enslaved people, blending African musical traditions with Christian stories. Many drew on the Exodus story of Moses leading the Israelites out of bondage.
- Day-to-day resistance
Everyday acts that resisted slavery without open revolt: slowing work, breaking tools, hiding in the woods for days. Owners called it 'laziness.'
- Congo Square
A public square in New Orleans where, on Sundays, city rules let enslaved and free Black people gather to trade, sing and dance to African-rooted music.
- Claims and evidence
Skill 3.D. Explain how a source's claims or evidence support, modify or refute its argument. A source's own details can undercut what its author says about them.
- German Coast uprising (1811)
Enslaved people in Louisiana's sugar country rose in January 1811 and marched toward New Orleans. Militia and U.S. troops crushed the revolt in two days.
- Haitian Revolution
1791 to 1804: enslaved people in French Saint-Domingue overthrew slavery and founded Haiti. Slaveholders everywhere feared another.
- Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831)
An enslaved preacher led a revolt in Virginia that killed about 55 white people. Southern states answered with harsher slave codes.
- Slave codes
State laws that controlled enslaved people: no reading, no meeting without whites, no travel without a pass, no testimony against whites.
- Walker's Appeal (1829)
David Walker's pamphlet urging enslaved people to resist slavery, by force if they had to. Slaveholding states seized copies and passed new laws against it.
- Colored Conventions
National and state meetings of Black leaders, held from 1830, to demand rights and schools and to press for an end to slavery.
- Maria W. Stewart
Black Boston writer and speaker. In 1832–33 she was one of the first American women to lecture in public on politics, before audiences of men and women.
- African Meeting House
Built in 1806 by Boston's free Black community. It served as a church, a school and a meeting hall, and it still stands on Beacon Hill.
- Black laws
State laws that limited free Black residents in the North and Midwest, such as bonds to settle and bans on voting. Ohio's laws of 1804 and 1807 are the best known.
- Underground Railroad
Secret networks, many run by free Black Northerners, that hid and guided people escaping slavery. It was people, safe houses and boats, not a real railroad.
- Slave narrative
An account of slavery written or told by someone who had escaped it, published to win readers to the abolitionist cause.
- United States v. The Amistad (1841)
The Supreme Court freed the Amistad Africans because they had been taken illegally from Africa, not because slavery was wrong.
- The North Star
Frederick Douglass's antislavery newspaper, published in Rochester, New York, from December 1847. It argued for abolition and equal rights for Black Americans.
- Continuity and change
What stayed the same and what shifted over a period. AP short-answer questions ask for one of each, with evidence. Here: new Black institutions (change) and a free share stuck near 11 to 12 percent (continuity).
- Dred and Harriet Scott
An enslaved couple who sued for their freedom in St. Louis in 1846, arguing that years living in free territory had made them free. Dred Scott's case reached the Supreme Court in 1857.
- Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
A federal law that made it easier for slaveholders to reclaim people who had escaped. It denied them a jury trial and ordered officials and citizens in free states to help.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The First Page
1827
Key terms: Free Black Americans, Freedom's Journal, Disfranchisement
In 1827, America had hundreds of newspapers. When Black Americans appeared in them, it was mostly in ads for sales and runaways, or in jokes.
So in New York, two free Black men decided to print their own.
No Black American had ever owned and run a newspaper.
Samuel E. Cornish
We wish to plead our own cause.
John B. Russwurm
Too long have others spoken for us.
They were free men in a Northern state. But New York made Black men own $250 in property to vote. White men needed none.
They weren't alone. Black Americans pleaded that cause from a Charleston church in 1822 to a printing press in Rochester in 1847.
Some argued in print, some in court. Some ran. A few rose up. What changed for Black Americans between 1800 and 1848, and what didn't?
Some argued in print, some in court. Some ran. A few rose up. What changed for Black Americans between 1800 and 1848, and what didn't?
Freedom by Installments
1799–1828
Key terms: Gradual emancipation, African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, American Colonization Society, New York emancipation (1827)
In the North, slavery ended slowly, one law at a time.
New York's 1799 law freed no one who was already alive. Only children born after July 4 would go free, at twenty-five, or twenty-eight for boys.
Still, the free Black population nearly tripled by 1830.
Free Black Northerners built their own institutions. In 1816 Richard Allen's church joined others to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first Black denomination.
In Boston, Black families built a meeting house in 1806. Its basement soon held a school.
In 1813 Pennsylvania's senate took up a bill making Black newcomers register. Anyone caught without papers could be sold into servitude.
James Forten, a rich sailmaker and Revolutionary War veteran, answered in print.
James Forten
Has the God who made the white man and the black, left any record declaring us a different species?
The bill died.
In 1816 prominent white men founded the American Colonization Society, to send free Black Americans to Africa. One founder was Francis Scott Key. Yes, that Francis Scott Key.
About three thousand Black Philadelphians packed Bethel Church to answer it. They wouldn't abandon the enslaved:
James Forten
they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering, and of wrong.
About twelve thousand did go to Liberia before 1860. Most stayed.
On July 4, 1827, New York freed everyone it still held in lifelong slavery. Many Black New Yorkers celebrated on July 5.
Isabella, freed that summer, found out her five-year-old son had been sold illegally to Alabama. She sued, and won him back. Later she renamed herself Sojourner Truth.
What They Kept
1800–1831
Key terms: Enslaved families and kin networks, Spirituals, Day-to-day resistance, Congo Square, Claims and evidence
In the South, enslaved people had no legal marriages and no right to testify against whites. They had no say in being sold.
Families held on anyway. Douglass's mother, hired out twelve miles away, walked to him at night after a day's work.
Frederick Douglass
I do not recollect of ever seeing my mother by the light of day. She was with me in the night.
Many parents named children for relatives who'd been sold away. Neighbors raised children whose parents were gone.
Many made Christianity their own. They prayed in the woods at night, out of the patrols' hearing, and sang about Moses.
Most resistance was quiet: slow work, broken tools, days in the woods. Every runaway ad was a person who ran.
Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar, had studied for twenty-five years in West Africa before he was shipped to Charleston.
Omar ibn Said
My name is Omar ibn Seid. My birthplace was Fut Tur, between the two rivers.
In 1831 he was still enslaved. He wrote his life story in Arabic. It opens with a chapter of the Quran: dominion belongs to God.
New Orleans, 1819. The city let enslaved people gather to dance on Sundays, in a place the mayor chose.
People called it Congo Square.
Hundreds danced in rings, sold what they had grown, and kept African music alive by making it new.
Our best description comes from the architect Benjamin Latrobe. He called the dancing savage and dull. Then he took careful notes on the drums and drew a string instrument. His evidence undercuts his claim.
Rising
1811–1831
Key terms: German Coast uprising (1811), Haitian Revolution, Nat Turner's Rebellion (1831), Slave codes
A few chose rebellion, nearly the only antislavery action possible in the South. It almost always failed.
In 1800, a storm and two informers stopped Gabriel's planned rising near Richmond.
January 1811, the sugar country above New Orleans. Charles Deslondes, an enslaved foreman, led the largest slave revolt in U.S. history.
Two hundred or more marched toward New Orleans with cane knives and a few guns.
Militia and U.S. troops crushed them in two days and killed nearly a hundred.
Planters put the heads of the dead on poles along the river road.
Charleston, 1822. Denmark Vesey was a carpenter who had won a lottery and bought his freedom. He led classes in the African Methodist church.
A court later said he planned a midsummer rising, then flight by ship to Haiti.
Informers talked. A court hanged thirty-five men, Vesey among them, and the city tore the church down.
Historians still argue how big the plot was. The evidence came from men questioned under threat of death.
Southampton County, Virginia, August 1831. Nat Turner, an enslaved preacher who read signs from God in the sky, led a revolt.
It killed about fifty-five white people, many of them children.
Militias and mobs then killed Black people across the county, most of them uninvolved. Virginia hanged Turner in November.
Harriet Jacobs
Not far from this time Nat Turner's insurrection broke out; and the news threw our town into great commotion.
In Edenton, North Carolina, patrols searched and whipped Black families.
Nearly every word we have from Turner came through Thomas Gray, a white lawyer. He interviewed Turner in jail and sold the result.
Thomas R. Gray
He is a complete fanatic, or plays his part most admirably.
That is how Gray introduced Turner to his readers.
Gray asked if he saw his mistake now. Gray printed this reply:
Thomas R. Gray
Was not Christ crucified.
That's Turner as Gray chose to print him.
After each scare, Southern states tightened their slave codes. They banned teaching enslaved people to read and silenced Black preachers.
Appeal
1829–1833
Key terms: Walker's Appeal (1829), Colored Conventions, Maria W. Stewart, African Meeting House
Boston, 1829. David Walker, born free in North Carolina, sold used clothes to sailors near the docks. He had also been Freedom's Journal's agent in Boston.
That fall he published an Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.
David Walker
America is more our country, than it is the whites—we have enriched it with our blood and tears.
He argued that enslaved people had every right to fight back.
Sailors carried it south. Officials found copies in Savannah, Charleston and New Orleans. Georgia answered with a law against teaching enslaved people to read. North Carolina followed.
Walker died in August 1830. Rumor said poison. His death record says consumption, the old word for tuberculosis.
A month later, Black delegates from several states gathered at Bethel Church in Philadelphia. Bishop Richard Allen, seventy, presided. It was the first of the Colored Conventions.
Two years later, Maria Stewart, a widow, spoke to men and women in Boston. Few American women ever had.
Maria W. Stewart
Why sit ye here and die?
Maria W. Stewart
Come let us plead our cause before the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they kill us, we shall but die.
In Boston, those voices met in one building.
One year later, on the same date, Stewart gave her farewell address in this building. Many listeners objected to a woman speaking. She moved to New York and taught school for decades.
The Road North
1835–1841
Key terms: Black laws, Underground Railroad, Slave narrative, United States v. The Amistad (1841)
Free states were not safe states.
In May 1838, a Philadelphia mob burned Pennsylvania Hall, a new antislavery meeting place. Firemen hosed the buildings next door and let it burn.
That fall, Pennsylvania's new constitution gave the vote to "every white freeman." Black men who had been voting lost it.
Black Northerners protected each other. Vigilance committees hid people fleeing slavery and fought kidnappers who sold free people south.
On September 3, 1838, a ship caulker boarded a Baltimore train, dressed as a sailor. He carried a free Black sailor's papers. They described someone else.
Train, ferry, train, steamboat, train. By Tuesday morning he was in New York.
David Ruggles took him in. Anna Murray, who helped pay for his escape, came north and married him. In New Bedford he took the name Douglass.
Frederick Douglass
I appear before the immense assembly this evening as a thief and a robber.
Frederick Douglass
I stole this head, these limbs, this body from my master, and ran off with them.
In his 1845 Narrative, he named names but would not say how he escaped. Telling might close the road for others.
In 1839, fifty-three Africans, kidnapped into the illegal slave trade, seized the Cuban schooner Amistad. They landed in a Connecticut jail.
No one in court could translate Mende, so a Yale professor learned to count to ten in it. He counted aloud along the New York docks until a sailor answered.
Kale
All we want is make us free, not send us to Havanna.
Former president John Quincy Adams took their case to the Supreme Court.
On March 9, 1841, the Court freed them, seven to one. It ruled they had never legally been slaves. It said nothing against slavery itself.
The North Star
1846–1848
Key terms: The North Star, Continuity and change, Dred and Harriet Scott, Fugitive Slave Act of 1850
Nine years after escaping slavery, Frederick Douglass put out the first issue of his own newspaper.
Frederick Douglass
…the man who has suffered the wrong is the man to demand redress.
Twenty years apart, two papers made the same argument: we speak for ourselves.
In fifty years, Black Americans had built churches, schools, newspapers, conventions and a road north. Yet the share who were free barely moved: about eleven percent in 1800, about twelve in 1850.
Douglass's British supporters could buy his freedom. In St. Louis, an enslaved couple, Dred and Harriet Scott, sued for theirs. In 1850, a new federal law would help slaveholders seize people who had escaped, even in the free states.