T.D. Rice and the Invention of Jumpin ’ Jim Crow

1. T.D. Rice and the Invention of Jumpin’ Jim Crow • Thomas “Daddy” Rice • white performer and playwright from New York City, who used African-American vernacular speech, song, and dance to entertain white audiences through the mid-1800s. • Rice’s “Jim Crow” character became synonymous with black inferiority • Spawned popularity of blackface minstrel shows and entertainment and legitimized assaults on black citizenship, rights, and humanity in the free North • Cast African Americans to American and global audiences as uncouth, intruding, and inherently ill-equipped for citizenship Playbill of Thomas Dartmouth Rice as “Jim Crow”, 1832

3. Sheet Music to “Coal Black Rose,” 1830 Was among the most popular songs sung by white performers in minstrel shows

4. Irish-Americans and Blackface Minstrelsy • Blackface minstrelsy permitted persecuted Irish-Americans to purchase their “whiteness,” specifically by ridiculing and perpetuating denigrating stereotypes about African Americans, who were also their economic competitors

5. Second and third grade children being made up for their Negro song and dance at May Day-Health Day festivities. Ashwood Plantations, South Carolina. 1939.

6. Slaveholders

7. Slaveholding in 1850 Individual slaveholders made up ~3% of the southern population in 1860. 25-31% of southern families owned slaves.

8. The largest slave-driven plantations were located in coastal South Carolina and Georgia and along the Mississippi River.

9. Slaves were also used by the masters and mistresses as social accessories to demonstrate their wealth and ascendancy Into southern aristocracy.

10. Southern Family Pictured with Enslaved Woman Caretaker, ca. 1859

11. Native American Slaveholding in 1860 • Cherokees – 4,600 slaves • Choctaws – 2, 344 slaves • Creeks – 1, 532 slaves • Chickasaws – 975 slaves • Seminoles – 300 slaves

12. African-American Slaveholders • Numbered 3, 775 in 1830 • 80% were located in Louisiana, South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland • 50% were city-dwellers, with most in New Orleans and Charleston • Overwhelmingly owned members of their immediate or extended families

13. Non-Slaveholding Whites

14. Yeoman family in Cedar Mountain, VA, ca. 1862 Three out of four southern white families owned no slaves during the antebellum era.

15. Published The Impending Crisis of the South (1857) • Criticized the social, political, and economic monopoly of the planter class, which he argued held back the South’s economic and industrial growth • Despised blacks and proposed that slaveholders be taxed and compelled to resettle their slaves in either Africa or Latin America Hinton Rowan Helper

16. Slaves

17. Growth of U.S. Slave Population Slaves made up 39% of the southern population in 1860. 57% of the population in South Carolina were slaves. 49% of families in Mississippi owned slaves.

18. Where was the enslaved population concentrated?

19. Free Blacks in the South

20. Free Black Population, 1860 The largest free black population was located in Maryland, where they made up 49.1 % of the total black population. Substantial free black populations could also be found in Virginia, Louisiana, and North Carolina. Texas had the smallest free black population in 1860 with only 355 free blacks.

21. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.” - Thomas Jefferson, 1785

22. “Many in the South once believed that [slavery] was a moral and political evil…That folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world.” -John C. Calhoun, SC 1837

23. Sources of Sectional Crises of 1850s • Ideological Differences • The Role and Future of Slavery in the U.S. • Namely, will slavery be allowed to expand into the territories

24. Wilmot Proviso • First introduced on August 8, 1846 • Sought to prevent the extension of slavery in any territory acquired as a result of the Mexican-American War • Repeatedly fails to pass in the U.S. Senate; but intensifies sectionalism David Wilmot (PA)

25. Potential of the MO Compromise 36 30’ Line to Solve Conflict

26. On the Wilmot Proviso: “If we flinch we are gone!” John Calhoun

27. Compromise of 1850 • Negotiated by Henry Clay (KY) and Stephen A. Douglas of (IL) • California would enter Union as a free state • Texas border would be adjusted in favor of New Mexico • New Mexico was slated to be organized as two territories (New Mexico and Utah) and when admitted as states they could decide for either slavery and freedom • Slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia • Enacted a stricter fugitive slave law

29. Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 • Subjected federal officials who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave to a fine of $1,000 • Only required a person claiming ownership of slave to submit an affidavit to a federal commissioner, who could accept or reject • Note: Federal commissioners received $5 if they rejected an affidavit and $10 is they ordered the alleged runaways arrest. • Accused runaways were prohibited from testifying on their own behalf. • Subjected free citizens caught aiding fugitive slaves were subject to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

30. Impact of Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 • Hastened black migration to Canada • Radicalized and increased the ranks of northern abolitionist movement • Led to the enactment of personal liberty laws in 9 northern states, which enabled state attorneys to defend fugitives, appropriated funds to pay their defense costs; and denied the use of public buildings to detain accused escapees

31. The Case of Anthony Burns (1853-1855) • Escaped from slavery in Richmond, VA in 1853 at the age of 19 • Arrived in Boston and began working for a clothing dealer • Arrested on May 24, 1854 in Boston; Spurred violent protests among Boston abolitionists, who repeatedly tried to free Burns • Prompted President Franklin Pierce to send in federal marshals • Convicted and returned to his master. • Bostonians raised $1200 to purchase Burns, which they did by 1855

32. Published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. • Sold over 300,000 copies in its first year in the U.S. and over 1 million copies in Great Britain • Helped increase abolitionist sentiment throughout the North though it relied on racist and sexist depictions of African Americans, since Stowe had extremely limited contact with the South. Harriet Beecher Stowe

33. Jefferson Davis U.S. Senator from Mississippi (1847-1851) Future President of the Confederates States of America “Slave labor is wasteful labor, and it therefore requires a still more extended territory than would the same pursuits if they could be prosecuted by the more economic labor of white men.”

34. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 • Introduced by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of IL • Created territories of Nebraska and Kansas • Opened two territories up for settlement and stated that settlers would vote on the issue of permitting slavery before statehood • Repealed section of the MO Compromise that forbade slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36˚30’.

35. Salmon P. Chase, U.S. Senator from Ohio Joshua Giddings U.S. Congressman from Ohio “We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” -” Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States,” January 1854

36. Abraham Lincoln “Our progress in degeneracy appear to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘All men are created equal except negroes and foreigners, and Catholics.” Lincoln in letter to Joshua Speed, August 24, 1855

37. Pottawatomie Massacre • Date: May 24-25, 1856 • Brown, his sons, and several abolitionists murdered 5 pro-slavery white settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. Led to all-out war in KS. • Catalysts: 1) fraudulent territorial elections in 1855, which authorized slavery, passed a harsh slave code, and disqualified from office anti-slavery citizens; 2) Pierce removal from Andrew Reeder as governor of KS after Reeder refused to use her position to make KS a slave state; and 3) pro-slavery attack on free-state legislature in Lawrence, Kansas in 1856 John Brown, c. 1856

38. Lithograph by John L. Magee, 1856 On May 22, 1856, U.S. House Representative Preston Brooks (SC) viciously beat U.S. SenatorCharles Sumner (MA) unconscious after Sumner denounced the violence in Kansas and pro-Slavery South, especially Brooks’s uncle U.S. Senator Andrew Butler (SC).

39. Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857) • Scott and his family were still slaves • Scott (as a black person and slave) was not a citizen and had no rights • Scott’s stay in Wisconsin did not make him free since Congress did not have the power to exclude slavery from a territory, nor could a territorial legislature • Means popular sovereignty cannot keep slavery from a territory. • Declared the MO Compromise and the NW Ordinance of 1787 unconstitutional • Left fate of KS and NE uncertain

40. Roger Taney Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court (1836-1864) “It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” -Taney Opinion in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857)

41. Lincoln Douglas Debates

42. Race for U.S. Senate • Stephen A. Douglas • Incumbent (D-IL) • Illinois Republicans meet and nominate Abraham Lincoln as their candidate.

43. 1858 Debates • Formal political debates between Lincoln and Douglas in a campaign for one of Illinois' two United States Senate seats. • Debates launched Lincoln into national prominence.

44. Issues of the Debates • Expansion of slavery • Popular sovereignty • DredScott decision • African American Citizenship

45. Abraham Lincoln “If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South.”

46. Harper Ferry’s Raid • Designed plan to create a slave revolution to bring down slavery • Raised funds in abolitionist circles throughout New England, though most thought the plan undesirable • With sons and an interracial band of supporters raided the federal armory at Harpers Ferry in present-day West Virginia on Oct. 16, 1859 • Eventually captured, tried, convicted, and executed for treason. John Brown, 1859

47. "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.“ - December 2, 1859, the day of his execution

48. “Let the consequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies or whether the last vestige of liberty is swept from the face of the American Continent, the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.” - The Atlanta Confederacy, 1860

49. U.S. Presidential Election of 1860

50. Southern Secession before War • South Carolina – December 20, 1860 • Mississippi – January 9, 1861 • Florida – January 10, 1861 • Alabama – January 11, 1861 • Georgia – January 19, 1861 • Louisiana – January 26, 1861 • Texas – February 1, 1861