The
Imperatives of Economic Interest and National Identity
For the post-revolutionary
generation of white Americans, the most pressing political problem was
formation of a viable national union.
The existence of the United States of America was
not - and it sometimes requires effort of mind to remember this – inevitable. It
is easy today to
underestimate the disintegrative pressures that bore upon the union of
ex-colonies forged by the necessity of uniting against British
“tyranny.” By examining these pressures‘ as well as the efforts
made to resist them, it is possible to see how closely the primary political
problem was interrelated with the presence of Africans in,
America and with white men’s thoughts about black.
The major factor making for sectional division in the United
States was the proportion of blacks in the population. By the 1790’s
it was clear that slavery was going to survive only in the area of high
concentration of blacks in the states south of Pennsylvania. Yet in
the late eighteenth century sectional division lacked the clarity it was
later to take on. Economic differences and the pattern of antislavery
sentiment within the South blurred the distinction between northern and
southern states, since it was by no means definite that Virginia and
Maryland would not be come “northern” states by accomplishing
general emancipation. Despite the presence in the tobacco colonies of
the twin factors which eventually proved determinative, slavery and a
high proportion of Negroes, there was every reason to set off the
upper “South” from the lower: proportion of blacks, profitability of
slavery, abolition sentiment‑the very tone of society. North
Carolina served as an anomalous borderland, characterized by a
relatively low proportion of Negroes, and a culture which belonged,
everyone agreed, almost in a class by itself. There was not one South
but two and a half.
While attending to these sectional realities and especially
to economic changes which were working to solidify them, it is necessary
to bear in mind that sectional discord over, slavery depended on the
existence of a rational union and that existence of
a union made the presence of blacks in America a national
problem. Discussion of certain issues, especially in the national
Congress after 1789, stirred dormant hostilities. Of itself the rise of
an independent American nation contained
subtle and elusive implications for the Negro which were of
far‑reaching importance. For task of building a new nation
did‑not consist simply in laying down the bricks and mortar of
national government; a rationale for the new structure was needed.
Without some sense of who and why Americans were a people, and therefore
a nation, work could not even begin,
THE
ECONOMICS OF SLAVERY
Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793. Its impact may
be seen in statistics of cotton production. The nation harvested 6,000
bales in 1792; and 178,000 in 1810 Expansion of cotton production was
not, however, the midnight reprieve of a doomed institution, for in 1793
slavery was flourishing in the Lower South.
Thus when South Carolina banned slave importations in 1787
the Assembly was not responding to lack of demand for slaves, nor of
course to antislavery sentiment. Many South Carolina planters were in
debt; they had purchased more slaves than they could pay for, partly
because they had lost slaves to the British occupation. For sixteen
years South Carolina stuck by its decision, gingerly extending the ban
on imports for two or three years at a time. After 1794 members of the
legislature had to face the unpleasant fact that reopening the trade
would bring down the outrage of the nation on South Carolina for being
the only state to permit slave importation. But the imperatives of
expanding agriculture proved
irresistible. South Carolina’s ports were at last thrown open in 1803.
The way west was to be paved with Negroes. Even after the federal
prohibition of January 1, 1808, slave importation continued on a much
reduced scale as a smuggling operation.
In the Upper South, the dynamics of economic development
drove in a different direction. Virginia’s principal crop, tobacco,
recovered rapidly after the war but underwent no great expansion.
Cotton was grown, but not in great quantity. Many tidewater planters,
the riches of their soil robbed by tobacco, turned to more diversified
farming and especially to grains such as wheat. It was in the tidewater
region that blacks were concentrated, an ever-growing proportion
of the eastern population. Far from wanting more slaves, many white
Virginians wanted to rid them selves of the ones they had. In the
I790’s a British traveler re ported that Virginia’s slave population
was increasing rapidly; estates were “overstocked,” a
“circumstance complained of by every planter,” though “humanity”
(hopefully) prevented planters selling their slaves or casting them
loose. While the unprofitability of slavery in the Upper South pointed
toward eventual emancipation, it also suggested a more immediate,
rewarding remedy. Superfluous slaves could be sold to the Lower South.
And they were. The price differential told the story: in 1797 prices for
prime field hands ran about $300 in Virginia and $400 in Charleston.
UNION AND SECTIONALISM
Even prior to these developments there had of course been
sectional disagreements. The first rumblings of sectional discord
appeared with the first tenuous “continental” union in 1774. Members
of the Continental Congress argued over inclusion of blacks in the army
and whether slaves should be counted when taxes were apportioned among
the states. After the ‘war the slavery issue reappeared in novel form
when Congress debated the future of the Northwest Territory. In 1784 a
vote in the Congress to exclude slavery north of the Ohio River was lost
for the inelegant reason that a New Jersey delegate was home sick in
bed. The sectional pattern of voting was clear. Northern delegates were
unanimous for exclusion, while only two southerners voted for it. On the
third try, in 1787, proponents of excluding slavery were successful.
That same year, when the Constitutional Convention met in
Philadelphia, delegates found that forging a new national government
necessitated dealing with the hard facts of slavery. One major issue
concerned slave representation and taxation: the several states’ very
different proportions of blacks raised the question whether slaves were persons or property. If slaves were to be included
when apportioning representation, northerners asked, why not cattle as
well? Despite the implications of this question, the dispute involved
political definition and practice, not ethical evaluation of Negroes,
No one claimed that slaves were not human beings. In the end, of course,
the Convention decided to count three-fifths for apportionment of
representation and taxes. This famous compromise was a practical
resolution –of political interests, but it embodied more logic than has commonly been supposed. For the slave was, by social
definition, both property and man, simultaneously partaking of the
qualities of both; the three-fifths rule treated him accordingly, adding
only a ludicrous fractional precision. Framing a national constitution
forced men to say it outright: the Negro as a slave was only threefifths
a person.
Manifestly
the Convention could not consider even the eventual abolition of
domestic slavery; proposals for this would have sent half the delegates
packing. The overseas slave trade, so widely deplored, was another
matter. An overwhelming majority of delegates wanted to ban the
traffic immediately or after a few years. But South Carolina and Georgia
were, as James Madison put it, “inflexible on the point of the
slaves.” C. C. Pinckney of South Carolina warned that, while he did
not favor the traffic personally, the two southernmost states would
most certainly reject the Constitution if denied slave imports. The
founders wanted‑and the point requires emphasis‑union m or h
n an end to the slave trade. With the aid of New England votes obtained
by concessions on navigation laws, the twenty-year prohibition on
federal action was inserted in the Constitution, a monument to pragmatic
politics and to the ideal of national union.
Far from soothing sectional disagreements, creation of a new
national government fostered sectional tension over slavery. A
powerful federal Congress looked like a magnificent fulcrum to
antislavery organizations, and in 1790 petitions against the slave trade
were presented to the House of Representatives. Several southern
Representatives wanted the House to refuse consideration
of the petitions, and the debate which followed laid bare sectional
interests before the nation. Representative Thomas Scott of Pennsylvania
set forth the antislavery case in language which would have been almost
inconceivable a generation earlier: “I
look upon the slave trade to be one of the most abominable things on
earth; and . . . I . . . oppose it upon the principles of humanity, and
the law of nature.” William Loughton Smith of South Carolina, whose
bitter speech on the same issue lasted two hours, dwelt insistently on
the horrors of racial intermixture, to which every man in the House, he
hoped, had the utmost aversion. Like so many southerners after him,
Smith lectured the nation on the peculiar sociology of the South: “The
truth is,” Smith declared, “that the best informed . . . citizens of
the Northern States know that slavery is so ingrafted into the policy of
the Southern States, that it cannot be eradicated without tearing up by
the roots their happiness, tranquillity, and prosperity.” Smith’s
angry speech revealed the near impossibility of defending slavery
without derogating the Negro: “It is well known that they are an
indolent people, improvident, averse to labor: when emancipated, they
will either starve or plunder.” Pennsylvania’s Scott, appalled
beyond eloquence, could only gulp in reply that advocacy of slavery was
“a Phenomenon in Politics.”
As time went on, sectional anger over slavery seemed to
subside. For several sessions after 1800 Congress was undisturbed by the
slavery issue. Antislavery groups no longer petitioned the House - a
reflection of growing timidity and declining zeal in the antislavery
movement. Relative quiet might have prevailed until the end of the slave
trade’s twenty-year immunity from congressional prohibition had not
South Carolina reopened old wounds in 1803. Legal resumption of the
traffic in South Carolina aroused proposals in Congress for a $10 duty
on imported slaves, the maximum permitted by the Constitution. Debate
was warm but not unrestrained. Samuel Latham Mitchell of New York,
though strongly antislavery, stressed joint sectional responsibility:
“the citizens of the navigating States bring negroes from Africa, and
sell them to the inhabitants of those States which are more distinguished
for their plantations.” Such careful phraseology was characteristic of
the debate. More striking still was the pathetic need for reassurance
that the slave trade received no public support: speaker after speaker
arose to declare that he and everyone present abhorred the noxious
traffic, and South Carolina’s Representatives, while vigorously
opposing the tax, were at pains to point out that they personally would
have opposed their state’s action.
It became clear, though, that the international trade would
be ended. When the Constitution finally permitted action, in the session
of 1806-7, congressional debates on the bill prohibiting the trade were
hard‑fought and bitter, but significantly they bore on enforcement
and on disposal of contraband slaves, not on whether a bill should be
passed. And with enactment of the law banning the international slave
trade which took effect January 1, 1808, slavery was no longer a really
divisive issue in the Union. The chief aggravation was relieved: the
albatross of the slave trade was no longer strung around the national
conscience. The prevailing sense of victory and elation was heightened
by Britain’s prohibition of the trade that same year. Congress and the
nation turned their energies to quarreling with Great Britain about
other matters, and, when the Second War for Independence came in 1812,
it brought, striking contrast to the first, no benefit to black
Americans. Not until westward expansion reintroduced sectional
bitterness in the Missouri Compromise debates of 1819-20 did Congress
find itself troubled again by Negro slavery. Americans had learned to
fear its divisive power, particularly after the first and bitterest
clash in 1790. Jefferson’s “firebell in the night,” in 1820, was
actually a second alarm. The first fire had been brought under control,
many thought, in 1807.
NATIONHOOD AND IDENTITY
To many of Jefferson’s contemporaries the Revolution was
not the end but the beginning of a glorious chapter in the history of
man, the opening act of a glorious drama to be played out on the open
stage of a virgin continent, with sympathetic vibrations confidently
expected in the Old World. It was not the past which required
elucidation so much as the present and future - including the future of
America’s Negroes.
Americans inherited from their Revolution instruction as to
the future in only one area ‑ government. Thus the Revolution gave
a peculiarly political bias to American nationalism; it provided
instructions to establish governments suitable for the “republican
genius” of the American people. But it failed to give guidance
concerning the peculiar nature of the American people other than that
they were “republican,” which was principally a political concept.
Important questions were left unanswered: Who were these people to be
governed? What were they like? Why was there any reason to place them
under one national government?
To some extent the assumption of republicanism answered these
questions. As it bore upon Afro-Americans the republican self-image was
logically negated or blurred by chattel slavery, and as the national
destiny continued to unfold, the antislavery people seized upon what was
in a very real sense a violation of self. As Theodore Dwight proclaimed
in 1794, “If any thing can sound like a solecism in the ears of
mankind, it will be this story - That in the United States of
America, societies are formed for the promotion of freedom.” While
Americans knew themselves to be a republican, virtuous, and politically
independent people, however, their character - as they saw it -
nonetheless remained unclear. Their struggle for cultural independence
involved fighting on two fronts, proving both difference from the Old
World and unity among Americans. With non-political institutions,
perceptible progress was possible. Americans could point, for example,
to more than a dozen new colleges, scores of academies, and hopes for a
national university. Genuine cultural independence from England could
not, however, be adequately assured by a proliferation of extra-political
organizations. How could Americans be sure that they had acquired their
own truly independent culture?
For a century and a half the white people of the
American continent had thought of themselves primarily as colonial
Englishmen. The Revolution undercut this self-conception with
disconcerting suddenness. Political independence discredited the old
self-image by strongly implying that Americans were not in fact
Englishmen of any sort. To proclaim convincingly non-Englishness as an
accomplished fact was at once essential and impossible; the clash
between political independence and the inertia of cultural heredity made
for uncertainty and ambivalence. Americans still spoke English.
Institutions such as family, churches, learned societies, and
representative government had arisen on English models, no matter how
markedly transformed by New World conditions. White Americans could
scarcely toss these aside as mere excess baggage.
For additional confirmation of their own distinctive
character, Americans might perhaps have seized upon the indisputable
fact that their continent had not been settled by Englishmen exclusively
but by peoples from all the western regions of the Old World. In
defining themselves, ,Americans might have pointed to a new amalgam of
nationalities as confirmation of American distinctiveness. Physically,
by blood, the American could accurately have been described as a new
man. On this matter it has been customary to quote St. Jean de
Crevecoeur’s Letter from an
American Farmer (1782):
. . . whence came all these people?
they are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans,
and Swedes . . . . What then is the American, this new man? He is either
an European, or the descendant of an European, hence that strange
mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. Here
individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men . . . .
These are striking words; few observations on the American
people have been quoted more frequently, with approval, as demonstrating
both the fact of amalgamation and America’s warm welcoming of the
process. But in fact Crevecoeur (a naturalized American who was born,
and died, in France) was not expressing a common view, and historians
have since relied heavily on his words because at the time virtually no
one else was saying the same thing. Certainly no one else put such
emphasis on the fusion of bloods. In the late eighteenth century the
idea that the “American” was a “new man” by reason of physical
amalgamation was the exceptional opinion of a romantic French immigrant.
Of course physical amalgamation had in fact occurred.
Non‑English people had flocked to America in large numbers and in
many cases had lost their genetic distinctiveness. But they had
lost as well their cultural
distinctiveness to the voracious dominance of English customs,
institutions, and language. Especially, one of the most powerful forces
making for cultural homogenization in the colonies was the overwhelming preponderance of the English
tongue, which was native to many “non‑English” settlers, such
as the Scots, Irish, and Scotch‑Irish. This is to say that
Americans had good reason for thinking of themselves as modified
Englishmen rather than as products of a European amalgam.
The postwar need for strong unified government tempted
Americans to emphasize the nation’s unity even, to the point of
utterly ignoring existing diversities. As John Jay wrote in the first Federalist paper,
“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country, to
one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking
the same language, professing the
same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very
similar in their manners and customs.” This thinking left Afro-Americans
in an obvious place - out.
To assess the nature of the American people was to assess the
Negro by implication, simply because blacks lived in America. Because
they viewed the architecture of their culture as modified English rather
than fused European, most white Americans were not led to ponder
the dynamics of cultural amalgamation in America, much less the
pronounced African element involved. In fact there was little
consideration given to the possibility that African language and manners
had contributed to American uniqueness. Even more so with physical
intermixture. Even St. Jean Crevecoeur could praise physical
amalgamation in America only by ignoring utterly the single most
important element in the process as it was actually occurring: “What
then is the American, this new man? He is either an European, or the
descendant of an European . . .. .” Presumably the Negro was not an
American.