Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Crossing the Ohio Into Freedom ... By Decries or By Degrees?




Reproduction of a picture depicting a fugitive slave that is typical of the images that appeared on handbills of southern slave owners searching for escaped slaves. The image was collected by Ohio State University professor Wilbur H. Siebert (1866-1961). Siebert began researching the Underground Railroad in the 1890s as a way to interest his students in history.

Local history records that the “Crossing at Scioto County” was an important stop in the Underground Railroad where William McClain, riverboat captain, would pick up runaways on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River and transport them to Portsmouth. McClain resided with his wife Sarah Ann (Thompson) in a court between Fifth and Sixth Street. They risked facing federal charges for aiding and abetting these fugitives; however, their means of transport was simple yet practically clever and secretive.

McClain would dock his boat at Portsmouth and employ a horse-drawn cart to transport barrels filled with fugitives up the Ohio bank to the brewery crossing at Front and Second Street. Once inside the local brewery, the runaways were taken to the cellar where they would wait to begin the next stage of their journey to freedom. From there, others would deliver them safely to the Portsmouth stations of Joseph Ashton and Milton Kennedy or northeast to J. J. Minor in South Webster. Canada was their ultimate goal.

* Historical Note – William and Sarah Ann McClain are interred in Greenlawn Cemetery. Historian William Cullen writes that the Riverboat Man symbol used by the Portsmouth Brewing Company today likely honors those like the McClains who bravely helped slaves escape.

In addition to the McClains, James Preston Poindexter, an African-American barber and local resident, would pick up fugitives in Kentucky and row them across the river to Portsmouth and deliver them to John Adams in his home on Chillicothe Street near Eleventh.

Poindexter (1819-1907) later became pastor of Second Baptist Church in Columbus in 1858. He was an articulate speaker and prolific writer, speaking out against slavery and discrimination in his many speeches. He became a member of the Columbus City Council, the Columbus Board of Education, the State Forestry Board of Directors, the Columbus Pastor's Union, an Ohio School for the Blind and Wilberforce University trustee, and a contributor to the Ohio State Journal. Poindexter received many honorary degrees and served Second Baptist Church for 40 years.

These stories of freedom still inspire us and remind us of a time not so long ago when slavery existed in the South. The Ohio River was a watery dividing line between bondage and freedom. Yet, Scioto County, Ohio was not a place of safety for runaway slaves. Indeed, it was a perilous location for those seeking asylum. Runaway slaves more often than not were taken as swiftly as possible to the next station north of town because they risked being returned to confinement.

Slavery was abolished in Ohio by the state's original constitution (1802). But at the same time, Ohio, with slave-state Kentucky across the river, took the lead in aggressively barring black immigration. It was evident Ohio’s opposition to slavery did not represent pro-Black advocacy.

Many Northerners did not welcome a fugitive invasion. They sought solutions other than permanent settlement. The American Colonization Society (1816) proposed to raise funds from public and private sources to send blacks “back to Africa.” The society secured Liberia on the West Coast of Africa as a place for relocation. Of course, most slaves had never been there – which makes it impossible to take them “back.” But, Northerners feared colonization efforts would ignite a much greater flood of immigrants into their states.

* Historical Note – In 1822, the American Colonization Sciety established a colony that in 1847 became the independent nation of Liberia. By 1867, the society had sent more than 13,000 emigrants. Beginning in the 1830s, the society was harshly attacked by abolitionists, who tried to discredit colonization as a slaveholder's scheme. And, after the Civil War, when many blacks wanted to go to Liberia, financial support for colonization had waned. During its later years the society focused on educational and missionary efforts in Liberia rather than emigration. In 1913 and at its dissolution in 1964, the society donated its records to the Library of Congress.



What happened in Ohio when slaves sought settlement? You may be surprised. When Virginian John Randolph, Roanoke tobacco plantation owner and member of the Democratic-Republican Party died in 1833 and emancipated his 518 slaves while giving them land near Carthagena, Ohio, so they could begin their own lives as free people, the population rose up in indignation. In fact, an Ohio congressman warned that if the attempt were made, "the banks of the Ohio ... would be lined with men with muskets on their shoulders to keep off the emancipated slaves."

It was not until the 1840s that the former slaves tried to make their way to Carthagena. Randolph's brother had disputed the will and declared that John was insane when he wrote it. After thirteen years, the court ruled in John's favor and granted his slaves their freedom. When the African Americans reached Carthagena, white mobs confronted them and drove them away. The former slaves were forced to scatter. They settled in a number of other Ohio communities, including Piqua, Sidney, and Xenia.

* Historical Note – Exact totals vary, but a large sum of Randolph's money was designated for the purchase of between 2,000 and 3,200 acres of land in Mercer County in the free state of Ohio. Any male slave among the 383 emancipated people who was above the age of 40 would receive “not less than ten acres of land each.” Carthagena was already the site of a functioning black community established in 1835 by Augustus Wattles, an Eastern Quaker – a place with blacksmiths, shop owners, churches, sawmill operators, and teachers.

The incident at Carthagena illustrates that prejudice existed in Ohio during the years before the American Civil War. Ohio was a state that did not allow slavery. Nevertheless, that did not mean that whites were open to granting African Americans equal rights. Free African Americans found that it was difficult to get fair treatment.

There were also anti-immigration laws that could be invoked to harass Negro residents in Ohio. On January 5, 1804, Elias Langham and Nathaniel Massie, Speaker of the House and Speaker of the Senate respectively, created an act designed to limit the actions of Black people in the North. These so called “Black Laws” demanded that any Person of Color caught without freed papers would be sent to the South, regardless of whether they had ever been enslaved before.

Furthermore, those papers had to be recorded by the Clerk of Courts in the Ohio county in which they resided. This also required a fee of twelve and a half cents per family, costly for those who had spent much of their lives toiling for free.

Ohio enacted other Black Laws in 1807 that required black people to prove that they were not slaves and to find at least two people who would guarantee a surety of five hundred dollars for the African Americans' good behavior. The laws also limited African Americans' rights to marry whites and to gun-ownership, as well as to several other freedoms that whites held.

Historian Leon F. Litwack wrote: "No extensive effort was made to enforce the bond requirement until 1829, when the rapid increase of the Negro population alarmed Cincinnati. The city authorities announced that the Black Laws would be enforced and ordered Negroes to comply or leave within thirty days."


Fugitive Slave Act and Dred Scott Decision

Slave owners pursued fugitive slaves into Ohio. Important legislation supported their evil work. In reality, laws required those north of the Mason-Dixon to become compliant with slave catchers who entered free territories to capture runaways.

In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which allowed slave owners and their authorized agents to “pursue and reclaim” escapees on free soil. A pursuer could swear out an arrest warrant that a United States marshal was obliged to enforce. The act also permitted slave owners to kidnap people and force them into federal court. After a short hearing, a commissioner would determine the status of the person in custody. Commissioners were paid ten dollars upon ruling that a person was a slave, but only five dollars if they determined that he or she was free. Anyone interfering with the recapture of a fugitive faced prison and thousands of dollars in fines.

The Fugitive Slave Law brought the Southern viewpoint, that a black person was assumed a slave until proven otherwise, into the northern states, where all people, white and black, were assumed free until proven otherwise. It required neither the alleged fugitive slave nor the alleged slaveowner to appear in person to testify.

Even the Cleveland Plain Dealer, noted for its vehement anti-abolitionist opinions, complained that the law was not “confined to the slave States,” but was enforced “wholly in the free States… by free men. The service it requires is not the kind we owe to either God, man, or the devil.”

Lewis Tappan, the abolitionist New York merchant and key benefactor of Oberlin College, minced no words: “It (the act) constitutes at the North, in our neighborhoods, and by our firesides, the most anomalous, overshadowing, insulting, and despotic police that perverted mind can contrive, or guilty power sustain – a police which guilty power cannot sustain, until honor, and purity, and freedom have fled from among us, and we have consented to be the most drivelling, and base, and worthless slaves that ever crawled at the foot of tyranny.”

Over the next few years scores of blacks were arrested under this law, with the vast majority being remanded to slavery. But other than a handful of rescues, Northerners were powerless to do anything about it.

Then, six years later, the Supreme Court went one step further than Congress. In the Dred Scott decision, the Court ruled that, slave or free, members of the “unhappy black race,” “separated from the white by indelible marks,” were not citizens of the United States. According to Chief Justice Roger Taney, although the words of the Declaration of Independence “would seem to embrace the whole human family, . . . the enslaved African race were not intended to be included.”

The decision was a hard blow against abolitionists and a triumphant victory for slave owners. Now, according to the Supreme Court, slaveholders could take their slaves with them anywhere within the United States they chose without the slaves automatically earning their freedom.

Even though there were brief victories of the Free Soilers, the Ohio state government was back to its old ways, and it expelled a black reporter from a freedman's newspaper from the Senate press galley because his presence there violated "the laws of nature and the moral and political well-being of both races."

When the Republicans arose as the Northern political party in Ohio, as in Pennsylvania, they kept their distance from abolitionists and blacks to assure their success. "The 'negro question,' " one state leader of the party wrote as Lincoln's election approached, "as we understand it, is a white man's question, the question of the right of free white laborers to the soil of the territories. It is not to be crushed or retarded by shouting 'Sambo' at us. We have no Sambo in our platform. ... We object to Sambo. We don't want him about. We insist that he shall not be forced upon us."


Of Local Interest

Imagine pre-Civil War days and reflect upon the climate of social acceptance in Scioto County during that time. Examining the past allows us to better understand how a turbulent era truly affected our lives today. Local history is up-close and personal. Allow me to share a few accounts of interest.

Greenup Slave Revolt

Records confirm in the “1850 Slave Schedule” that Greenup County, Kentucky had 135 slave owners, 443 black slaves, 163 mulatto slaves, and 44 free blacks. The county will long be remembered as a place where a foiled attempt for freedom made history.

The Greenup Slave Revolt would inspire Boston’s leading abolitionist David Walker, who recounted it in his electrifying anti-slavery pamphlet the “Appeal.” Walker, unlike better known abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, advocated slaves rise up violently against slaveholders when they had an opportunity to free themselves.

The “Appeal” was arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents. It caused a great stir when it was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. Walker wrote, ". . .they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us … therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed … and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty."

Andrew Lee Feight, Ph.D. writes of the Greenup uprising that occurred in August 1829:

“A negro driver, by the name of Gordon, who had purchased in Maryland about sixty negroes, was taking them, assisted by an associate named [Gabriel] Allen [of Paris, Kentucky], and the wagoner who conveyed the baggage, to the Mississippi …

“About 8 o’clock in the morning, while proceeding on the state road leading from Greenup to Vanceburg, (modern-day US Route 23) two of them dropped their shackles and commenced a fight, when the wagoner (Petit) rushed in with his whip to compel them to desist. At this moment, every negro was found to be perfectly at liberty; and one of them seizing a club, gave Petit a violent blow on the head, and laid him dead at his feet; and Allen, who came to his assistance, met a similar fate, from the contents of a pistol fired by another of the gang.”

Here is a further account of the revolt by Nick Douglas, author of Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana:

“Early in the morning on the road near Greenup, Kentucky, the male slaves managed to free themselves. The three helpers attempted to resist but each was killed with a club. The slaves held Gordon and attempted to shoot him in the head. The bullets only grazed him but the slaves then beat Gordon with a club, leaving him for dead. The slaves pillaged the wagon that they had been traveling with and 16 slaves escaped into the woods.

“Gordon had not been killed and, helped by a female slave, mounted a horse and fled. One of the freed slaves chased him on horseback with a loaded pistol. Gordon was able to get to a nearby plantation and ask for help. When the slave that had been chasing Gordon saw him arrive at the plantation he returned to the site of the revolt.

“The community was alerted and eventually about 40 of the slaves were recaptured. Eight men and one woman were tried for murdering Gordon’s three helpers, but only four were hanged. When a crowd gathered in Greenup to see them hanged, the slaves shouted that they were completely justified in killing men who were depriving them of their freedom. Julius Bingham of the Western Times reported that they told the crowd 'they had done no more than their judges and executioners would have done under similar circumstances; and that too, with solemn appeal to the Judge of heaven and earth, for the integrity of their motives, and the justice of their cause.'

“On the cart as they were about to be hanged, one of the four exclaimed to the crowd: “’Death! Death, any time, in preference to slavery!’

Black Friday”

On Friday, January 21st, 1831, the following notice appeared in the Portsmouth paper:

“The citizens of Portsmouth are adopting measures to free the town of its colored population. We saw a paper, yesterday, with between one and two hundred names, including most of the house-holders, in which they pledged themselves not to employ any of them who have not complied with the law. The authorities have requested us to give notice that they will hereafter enforce the law indiscriminately.”

This enforcement led to the “Black Friday” forced expulsion of approximately eighty black people from town. At the time, this accounted for much of the city's black population. Historian Nelson Evans noted: “They were not only warned out, but they were driven out … The town authorities had been worked up to the point of agreeing to enforce the savage and brutal ‘Black Laws’ of Ohio.”

A Slave Coffle

Here is a report of an incident in 1834 on the public landing in Portsmouth involving a slave coffle. A coffle is now a little-known term defined as “a line of animals or slaves fastened or driven along together.” What a demeaning reference to the past.

“On a visit to this city, Colonel William Gilmore, of Chillicothe, then a boy of 10 years old, relayed his story. He was on the river bank and a flatboat had just landed, when loud cursing and a fight caught his attention. With a boy’s curiosity, he neared the crowd of people and saw 'three Negro men, handcuffed and tied to a rope, one Negro woman and four Negro men, tied to a rope but not handcuffed, and five Negro girls, from twelve to fifteen years of age, following and carrying heavy bundles on their heads.'

“Three white men were in charge. One carried a double-barreled shotgun and the others carried whips and pistols. One was cruelly beating a slave that was handcuffed and swearing with each hit. One of the other white men cursed and threatened the black citizens watching, that they may not talk to anyone in the coffle or they would get shot. The slave coffle was confined to the Portsmouth jail for the night, and until they could be on their way on another boat down the river.”

I believe it is very important for residents to understand the direct effect of history upon their lives. I think people should read about the perils faced by local abolitionists and fugitives and consider those times not to chastise present-day inhabitants for sins of long ago, but instead to judge rationally the state of our commitment to freedom. Our American Dream of equality is ever evolving. It is not yet a reality. The Free State of Ohio comes closer to fulfilling its promise of 1802 when we examine our progress in terms of our own local history.

Sources

“African-American Mosaic.” Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/afam002.html

Appendix to the "Congressional Globe,"30 Cong. 1 Sess., p.727.

William Cullen. A History of Brewers in Portsmouth, Ohio with an Emphasis on the Portsmouth Brewing Company. 2017.

Nick Douglas. “Know Your Black History: Slave Revolts, Part 3.” Afropunk. November 3, 2015.

“Early Scioto County African American History.”

Andrew Lee Feight, Ph.D. “The Greenup Slave Revolt & “Walker’s Appeal.” https://sciotohistorical.org/items/show/67.

Nelson Wiley Evans. A History of Scioto County, Ohio: Together with a Pioneer Record of Southern … 1903.

George W. Knepper. Ohio and Its People. Kent State. 2003.

Leon F.F. Litwack. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860. 1965.

“Race In Ohio.” http://slavenorth.com/ohio.htm Litwack, North of Slavery, Chicago, 1961



Life Membership Certificate for American Colonization Society, ca. 1840. Certificate. American Colonization Society Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (3)

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