Sesquicentennial News---Slave Auction Reenacted in Missouri

Slave Sale Reenactment Held As Part Of Civil War Anniversary, Fox2 St. Louis, Missouri, January 16, 2011.

It was a Civil War era reenactment like St. Louis had never seen: a slave sale on the steps of the Old Courthouse. It was part of a Lindenwood University history professor's mission to remember the overlooked figures in St. Louis history. The ugly chapter of that history came alive Saturday. Hundreds showed up, snapping photos, rolling video of an event that seemed very real.

About 50 reenactors wore the dress of the day: slaves, slave owners, sheriff's deputies, and courthouse clerks. There were no news cameras, home video when such a slave sale was really happening in St. Louis. Maybe it wouldn't have drawn cameras anyway. Slave sales and the now-uncomfortable trappings were a part of life then; with auctions held at the Old Courthouse when property owners would die, for instance; their property, slaves included, sold at a sheriff's sale; old paintings inside the Old Courthouse Museum didn't seem to tell the whole story.

"These were human beings who wanted the same things we want now," said Angela da Silva, a reenactor and Lindenwood history professor. "Now we look at them as one lump of black mass. There's no individualization. These were maybe not even people. But they were. They had names."

They bore the pain. In reenactor Chris Sutton's home video, you don't just see it, you feel it. The idea is to keep what happened from becoming just flat old photographs and documents in history books and instead - make it true to life: three-dimensional, real people -- from the slaves who were sold to the slave owners who purchased them. "I paid close to $800 for a skilled cook. While I was transacting business the person was hauled away and transported in a wagon, to the DeMenil mansion," said reenactor, Phil McGourty of DeMenil Reenactors. "Some [people] were actually appalled."

Professor da Silva said it was all part of honoring those history had yet to give their due. "We pulled those [slave] names from actual sale bills. We resurrected them from files in this building," da Silva said. "They had children. They had desires. They wanted one thing: freedom." Dred Scott was one such name. He sued for his freedom at the Old Courthhouse only to have the U.S. Supreme Court rule in 1857 that Scott and other slaves "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect ... [they] might justly ... be reduced to slavery".

"That was this case had such a pivotal part in history leading to the Civil War," Jeffrey Blair instructed his daughters at the Dred Scott exhibit in the Old Courthouse, not missing this teaching point, with history coming alive. "My goal has been accomplished," da Silva said. "People do understand the horrors of what it was for families to be separated, never to be seen again and on these very steps that St. Louisans pass every single day."

It really happened ... here. She said the last slave sale at the Old Courthouse was in 1861. Sunday's event marked the beginning of St. Louis's commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War.

Text Source: Fox2 News with Video

CWL: Between the December 20th revelers in Charleston, SC and the Missouri Slave Auction in January, it is shaping up to be a lively Sesquicentennial.
Better unfurl my Wide Awake for Lincoln banner, fill my street torch with oil and head over to Washington D.C. for the Lincoln Inauguration in March.

News---200th Anniversary: Before the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, 1811 Slave Revolt

The Largest Slave Revolt in U.S. History Is Commemorated, Littice Bacon-Blood, The Times-Picayune, January 04, 2011,

More than a century before the first modern-day civil rights march, there was Charles Deslondes and his make-do army of more than 200 enslaved men battling with hoes, axes and cane knives for that most basic human right: freedom. The 200 year anniversary of the 1811 Slave Revolt in St. John and St. Charles Parishes that reverberated around the country because of the large number of enslaved people involved, the organized nature of it, and oddly enough -some say it finally demonstrated that all was not well among those held in bondage. Destrehan Plantation, along with Tulane University and African American Museum in Treme are hosting a yearlong look at the uprising that stared Jan. 8, 1811 through a series of events and exhibits. The commemoration starts with the exhibit opening at Destrehan on Jan. 8, 2011.

They spoke different languages, came from various parts of the United States, Africa and Haiti, and lived miles apart on plantations along the German Coast of Louisiana. Yet after years of planning at clandestine meetings under the constant threat of immediate death, they staged a revolt on Jan. 8, 1811, that historians say is the largest uprising of enslaved people in this country.

"Slavery was very harsh and cruel, but the slaves themselves were not mindless chattel with no aspirations and no basis for humanity,'' said John Hankins, executive director of the New Orleans African American Museum. "This revolt demonstrates that there were people willing to make the ultimate sacrifices to better not just themselves but other people."

To mark the 200 year anniversary of that revolt, Destrehan Plantation, in conjunction with Tulane University and the African American Museum, located in Treme, is organizing a yearlong look at the uprising that reverberated around the fledgling nation because of the large number of enslaved people involved, its military strategy and oddly enough, because it demonstrated that all was not well among those held in bondage.

"I don't think the United States as a whole understood that the enslaved black population were as unhappy as they were,'' said Hazel Taylor, the special project coordinator at Destrehan Plantation. "Slave owners had a tendency to say that (slaves) were happy. What this did was put awareness on the people who were being oppressed."

It occurred just a year before Louisiana gained statehood and 50 years before Louisiana and 10 other southern states voted to secede from the union in favor of forming the Confederacy. One of the central issues driving the secession, historians say, was an attempt to keep slavery legal because of its huge economic benefits for farmers. Still the battle remains largely unheard of outside historical circles, according to Taylor and others who hope the year's events will change that.

"These were real people and we have many of their names and we hope to encourage people to continue to study these brave individuals," Hankins said. "We want to provide the platform for a discourse about these moments in history and in this case a very important movement. What we want to do is put the Slave Revolt of 1811 into the national discourse to give it just due."

"It's an introduction to the subject, a museum exhibit that you can walk through and get a whole picture of what happened,'' Taylor said. While historians may differ on whether there was one specific catalyst for the uprising, the historical accounts of the events that unfolded on Jan. 8 are generally uniform. It started in LaPlace on the Woodland Plantation, led by Charles Deslondes, the son of an enslaved black woman and her white owner.

Deslondes, along with more than 200 others known mainly by first names, were headed to New Orleans in the hopes of joining with other revolution-minded free and enslaved black people. Historian Daniel Rasmussen spent two years researching the revolt as part of his senior thesis at Harvard University and has expanded his initial work into a recently published book, called "American Uprising: The Untold Story of America's Largest Slave Revolt." According to Rasmussen, the revolt had been planned for years and was "highly organized."

"There were 11 separate leaders of the revolt, representing various different ethnic groups. In my book, I profile a few of these leaders, mainly Charles Deslondes, Kook, and Quamana. Kook and Quamana were Asante warriors brought over from Africa a mere five years before," Rasmussen said. "Charles Deslondes was the half-white son of a planter who had risen to the rank of driver, but was, actually, the ultimate sleeper cell, plotting revolt. These leaders took advantage of clandestine meetings in the cane fields and taverns of the German Coast, the slave dances in New Orleans, and the vast network of slave communications that extended throughout the Caribbean."

Full Text is continued at Times-Picayune

News---The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family Goes To the Bank With $25,000 Frederick Douglass Book Prize

Annette Gordon-Reed, Professor of Law at New York Law School, Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard University, has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition. Gordon-Reed won for her book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. The prize is awarded by Yale University's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

In addition to Gordon-Reed, the other finalists for the prize were Thavolia Glymph for Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household and Jacqueline Jones for Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War. The $25,000 annual award is the most generous history prize in the field.

"In Annette Gordon Reed's The Hemingses of Monticello, an enslaved Virginia family is delivered -- but not disassociated -- from Thomas Jefferson's well-known sexual liaison with Sally Hemings," says Bonner, the 2009 Douglass Prize Jury Chair and Associate Professor of History at Dartmouth College. "The book judiciously blends the best of recent slavery scholarship with shrewd commentary on the legal structure of Chesapeake society before and after the American Revolution. Its meticulous account of the mid-eighteenth century intertwining of the black Hemingses and white Wayles families sheds new light on Jefferson's subsequent conjoining with a young female slave who was already his kin by marriage. By exploring those dynamic commitments and evasions that shaped Monticello routines, the path-breaking book provides a testament to the complexity of human relationships within slave societies and to the haphazard possibilities for both intimacy and betrayal."

Text Source: Gilder Lehrman Center and Institute. The Institute maintains two websites: www.gilderlehrman.org and the quarterly online journal www.historynow.org

News---U.S. Senate Apologizes For Its Role In American Slavery And Segregation Laws

Senate Apologizes For Slavery, David Welna, All Things Considered, June 18, 2009.

The U.S. Senate apologized Thursday for slavery and for the segregationist Jim Crow laws, 144 years after the Civil War and 45 years after passing the Civil Rights Act. The action came in a nonbinding resolution adopted unanimously by voice vote.

The Senate chamber was nearly empty as Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin rose to call for a measure that he said was long overdue for the descendants of 4 million blacks who were enslaved in the U.S. "A national apology by the representative body of the people is a necessary collective response to a past collective injustice," Harkin said. "So, it is both appropriate and imperative that Congress fulfill its moral obligation and officially apologize for slavery and Jim Crow laws."

The resolution states the congressional apology is made to African-Americans on behalf of the people of the United States for "the wrongs committed against them and their ancestors." That is followed, however, by a disclaimer that says nothing in the resolution authorizes any claim against the United States. Kansas Republican Sam Brownback, who co-sponsored the measure, says that disclaimer was necessary to win the support of senators who feared the apology could be used by African-Americans seeking reparations. "It was a difficult negotiation," he says. "We had to get the reparation issue right."

Last year, the House passed a similar resolution, but without the reparations disclaimer. New York Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, says he isn't sure he supports the Senate's reparations disclaimer. "If it ... can be construed to mean that ... it rules out [reparations], then that's a problem," Meeks says.

Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen, who sponsored last year's House resolution, says he hopes the House passes the Senate's apology soon, but he wants it done by voice vote. "This should be a congenial, kumbaya moment," he says. "A roll call could expose some fissures in what should be a cohesive spirit of apology and rectitude and more perfect union."

CWL: I am looking on the web for the text of the apology. Let's see what the House of Representatives does and the Supreme Court.

Text Source: National Public Radio

Image Source: Washington University Library

CWL---Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South

Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, A Brief History with Documents, Paul Finkelman, Bedford St. Martins Press, chronology, index, bibliography, 228 pp., $13.95

One of The Bedford Series in History and Culture series, Defending Slavery places the words of Southerners in the hands of the reader. Beginning a small portion of Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia(1787)and concluding with Josiah Nott's Instincts of Races (1866), this book displays the knowledge and opinions that Southerner's held regarding slavery and blacks. In a forty-four page introduction, Paul Finkelman outlines the legitimacy of slavery in the classical world, colonial America, Revolutionary America, and the early national period. He makes the case that the first defenses of slavery that were based upon races appeared after the American Revolution and were an attempt to reconcile the Declaration of Independence with the fact of perpetual forced labor. Outlining antebellum proslavery thought, Finkelman sets forth the racial theories and ideologies promoted by Southerners. Primary documents reveal the historical and classical defenses of slavery and the religious, economic, legal, political and racial defenses of slavery.

The economic, legal, political rationales are provided by famous men in Southern and Confederate history. In an 1837 senate speech John C. Calhoun argues that slavery is indispensable for the peace and happiness of both whites and blacks. Edmund Ruffin argues that slavery treats blacks better than the North treats wage laborers. Thomas R. Cobb states that slavery is essential for blacks because there are no examples of blacks achieving prosperity outside of forced servitude. James Henry Hammond understands that wage labor and slavery are necessary for a prosperous culture which needs a mudsill people to perform onerous tasks. Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declares in 1861 that slavery is the cornerstone of the Confederate nation and culture.

Ministers reflect upon the duties of Christian masters, the Bible's presentations of slavery, slave marriages and divine revelation. Judges and courts weigh in on the definitions of slavery and its foundation in natural law. Diseases particular to blacks, physical peculiarities of Negroes, and the instincts of the races are forcefully and bluntly states by Southern doctors and naturalists.

Finkelman's introductory essay and his selection of documents are approachable for the student, the layman and the specialist. With a clear and concise narrative style and a precise use of vocabulary, Finkleman develops both the context and the content of the Southern frame of reference for the institution of slavery.

News---U.S. House of Representatives Passes Apology For Slavery

House Issues An Apology For Slavery, Darryl Fears, Washington Post Staff, July 30, 2008.

The House yesterday apologized to black Americans, more than 140 years after slavery was abolished, for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" segregation. The resolution, which passed on a voice vote late in the day, was sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white Jew who represents a majority-black district in Memphis. Cohen tried unsuccessfully to join the Congressional Black Caucus this year. "I hope that this is part of the beginning of a dialogue that this country needs to engage in, concerning what the effects of slavery and Jim Crow have been," Cohen said. "I think we started it and we're going to continue." Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is considering introducing a companion measure in the Senate, he said.

Cohen faces a tough fight against airline lawyer Nikki Tinker, who is black, in the Democratic primary Aug. 7. His measure was co-sponsored by 42 members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), the House majority whip; Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee; and Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. None of those caucus members has endorsed his reelection bid. A total of 120 lawmakers, including two Republicans, co-sponsored the resolution, Cohen said.

In February, the Senate apologized for atrocities committed against Native Americans, and the body apologized in 2005 for standing by during a lynching campaign against African Americans throughout much of the past century. Twenty years ago, Congress apologized for interning Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. Congress has considered a similar apology for the slavery and Jim Crow eras, a gesture long sought by African Americans. Such efforts were always bogged down by concerns that the apology would prompt a greater call for reparations for slavery. In recent years, black activists seeking reparations for slavery have gotten private companies, such as banks, insurers and railroads, to apologize for playing a role in bankrolling, insuring, capturing and transporting slaves.

In 2005, Wachovia Corp. revealed that one bank it acquired had put thousands of slaves to work on a railroad. That same year, JPMorgan Chase apologized for the role that a subsidiary had played in using 10,000 slaves as collateral and accepting more than 1,000 slaves as payments when owners defaulted on loans. Several states, including Virginia, North Carolina, Florida and Alabama, have issued apologies for slavery. "They had a greater moral authority on this issue than the United States Congress," Cohen said. "I'm proud we did this as a part of this Congress."

Source: Washington Post, July 30, 2008

CWL----Reptile Slave Traders, Proslavery Propaganda, and Paternalism with Pain (Part One)

The Reputation of the Slave Trader in Southern History and the Social Memory of The South, Michael Tadman, American Nineteenth Century History, 8:3 September 2007, pp. 247-271.

Common depictions of the antebellum domestic slave trade reveal that it occurred on a small scale, that slave traders were on the lowest rung of the Southern social ladder and plantation owners avoided using them. Slave traders dealt only with runaway or criminal slaves. Slave trading had a contradiction in it: Plantation paternalism avoided breaking up slave families yet the domestic slave trade from 1809 to 1861 carreied about 1.25 million 'units', three times as those carried from Africa to America before the Constitutional embargo of 1808.

Michael Tadman's focus in this essay is on the clash of paternalism and the slave trade. If slaveholder disliked the slave trade, then the slaveholder must have felt guilty when he engaged with a trader in the buying or selling of slaves. If the slaveholder had no remorse then paternalism has a problem as a paradigm for understanding master-slave relations.

He argues that "the white South was comfortable with the domestic slave trade and that the trader was not an outcast." Slaveholder did not wrestle with the issues raised by the slave trade, and did not see contradictions between paternalism and the buying and selling of humans. He adroitly reviews the historiograph of both paternalism and the slave trade; then he explores the petitions and presentments of Southerners before the court in cases of buying and selling slaves.

White supremacy, slave trading and the paternalism in the antebellum South
When the matter of the slave trade was addressed in the South, the conditioned response was to demonize the slave trader with the understanding that breaking up families was wrong. For propoganda purposes the slave trader was then marginalized in discussions by stating that the exchange of slaves for cash or credit was in infrequent occurence in the South. The idea that slaves had an meager amount of emotions gave justification to the infrequent splitting up of slave families.
The claims were that 1.) the slave trader was an outcast, 2.) black people did not emotionally suffer like white people. The first claim was propoganda and the second claim was acted upon as an actual truth.

Historians and the Trade
Covering Collins (1904), Phillips (1929), Bancroft (1931), Holmes (1938), Stampp
(1956), and his own work (1989), Tadman traces the historic treatments of the slave trader and the victims of family separation. The reputation of the slave trader moved from outcast to businessman with real estate holdings and slave trading from being not typical and infrequent to typical and frequent. Begining with Stampp's work, slave trade began to be viewed as being constant and of a great scale. Tadman, in his works, concluded that traders were both men of wealth and standing, and men who were speculators who found acceptance at the highest levels of society. He concludes that in the slaveholders' minds that outcast slave traders were "rarely anything more that devices available for sectional progaganda."
MORE TEXT FORTHCOMING