searchhsearch Television o Org s-1a Org t Dating researche Television isearchisearchnsearchosearch Org e Dating isearchgsearchtwww.ssstt.cone 1978 w Television r 1978 sa Dating asearcha Class esearch2 Dating 7search7search Class C Dating as Television 8 searche 1978 ev Television sion Television 2search Television oman Television wissearcharc Woman e Woman Datsearchnsearch s
a Class er 1978 n searchhsearch Org n 1978 t Woman d Woman Ssearcha Woman esearch&search8 1978 2 Dating ;tued8w
ek Woman a
tsearchr Org wsearcheporn%E5%8D%8E%E4%BA%BA+%E6%80%A7+%E7%88%B1+free a Dating ter Dating w Television e Class n Class d 1978 ub Dating Woman a 1978 Org Org usearchl
m%E5%AD%95%E5%A9%A6%20cuntn Org l Woman ef Org ct o Dating rsearchad 1978 rsearch.searchIsearche Dating ssearchcon 1978 e Org n Org ng Dating h 1978 t Class searchlsearchv Class ssearcha 1978 dsearchw Woman isearche Org ssearcha Org e
y Television e Woman e
f Television en Org rantdsearchon Dating the
fice+woman+from+kolumbienosearcht
pa 1978 e. Television A Class s Org mp
in Org o
Dating u Woman h Class ar Woman i Class l Woman s
i Dating c Org ud
s
”A White Girl Kidnapped and Sold as a Slave” which involved being lured to New Orleans under false pretenses; “White Woman Sold as a Slave” where Violet Ludlow was sold several times despite her legitimate claim that she was white; “A White Girl Nearly Sold Into Slavery” which related how an orphan named Madeline, “aged about nine years…a lovely girl, delicately formed, white as the purest of Circassian race,” was to be sold at auction but was reprieved with the intention “that a Jury shall pass upon her blood.”
“The Sally Miller Case” told readers about how eleven jurors found the defendant to be a white German girl, “while one insisted on believing her to be a colored woman, a slave by birth, and rightfully the property of the demandants.” An untitled piece related the story of how a young white boy was kidnapped and was about to be auctioned off when his father appeared on the scene, grabbed him, and exclaimed, “My child a slave? a slave? Have you dared to seize and sell a white child?”
There were other interesting accounts as well. An article entitled “Curious Case of White Slavery” appeared in the National Era, wherein a teenage girl with white parents was sold as a Negro slave by her father and was rescued by her mother. In speaking of Georgia where the event had occurred, the newspaper said,
“This fact proves that white slavery in Georgia is not so uncommon that a case of it is likely to excite any remark….Slavery has no ‘prejudice against color.’ ” Another piece was entitled “Woman, Apparently White, Surrendered to Slavery” and had to do with a woman named Pelasgie who was claimed as a fugitive slave even though she had been living as a free person for more than twelve years.
In “An Arkansas White Girl Sold as a Slave,” Alexina Morrison’s lawyer argued that she “had not claimed her freedom because she had brown hair, or fair skin, or blue eyes, but because she had been born free, and was kidnapped.” Likewise, in “White Slavery in Alabama,” readers were told of a white girl from Georgia named Patience Hicks who was kidnapped and sold into slavery.
Three different accounts were presented in an article entitled “White Slavery.” In the first, a seven-year-old white boy named Washington was placed in the care of a Negro woman when his mother became ill. He was subsequently kidnapped and sold into slavery. In the second, an aristocratic Virginia couple had an illegitimate love-child named Eliza who was placed in Negro quarters and raised there from infancy.
She was subsequently sold as a slave. In the third, a white girl was purchased out of slavery for $400 and then freed. Ellwood Harvey, a Pennsylvanian, attended a slave auction in Virginia with some friends and wrote of his visit in a letter which was printed in the Pennsylvania Freeman.
The Anti-Slavery Bugle republished the letter, a part of which read, “A white boy, about 12 years old, was placed upon the stand. His hair was brown and straight; his skin exactly the same hue as other white persons, and no discoverable trace of negro feature in his countenance.
Some coarse and vulgar jests were passed on his color, and $5.00 was bid for him, but the auctioneer said ‘that is not enough to begin on for such a likely young nigger!’–Several remarked they ‘would not have him as a gift.’ Some said a white nigger was more trouble than he was worth. One man said it was wrong to sell white people….
He was sold for about $250.” Earlier in the letter, Harvey wrote that “my friends were not abolitionists before, and pitied my credulity when I told them the horrors of slavery; but one week in the Old Dominion has added two staunch adherents to our cause. I wish every proslavery man and woman in the North could witness one slave auction.” The preceding accounts of white slavery from the abolitionist press were only concerned with examples of white people being white slaves.
As documented in the last two chapters, however, this issue became more and more of a threat to the white populace in the North as Southern power grew, and many publications, abolitionist and otherwise, which addressed white slavery started to include political commentaries as well.
This additional aspect notwithstanding, the abolitionist press was a powerful force and had impact because of the size of the abolitionist movement. In 1838 James G. Birney who was the corresponding secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society observed that the organization had 1,300 chapters with about 109,000 members.
Henry Wilson, a politician and author who detailed the rise and fall of Southern political power, stated that in 1840 at the height of the abolitionist movement there were some 2,000 organizations with a membership of about 200,000. That of course was 200,000 formal members, those who paid dues and participated actively.
Many others, perhaps in the many hundreds of thousands, were to various degrees empathetic to the abolitionist cause but did not formally join. Both formal and informal antislavery advocates read the abolitionist press. The abolitionist newspapers in which accounts of white slavery appeared were widely read. If anyone had doubt about the existence of white slaves, the picture “EMANCIPATED SLAVES, WHITE AND COLORED” in an 1864 edition of Harper’s Weekly would have been proof (Frontispiece).
The article in Harper’s was entitled “White and Colored Slaves.” All of these slaves were set free by General Benjamin F. Butler in New Orleans and were attending a school for emancipated slaves when this picture was taken. The article went on to name and describe each individual. The descriptions of the white slaves were as follows: “Rebecca Huger is eleven years old….
To all appearance she is perfectly white. Her complexion, hair, and features show not the slightest trace of negro blood….Rosina Downs is not quite seven years old. She is a fair child, with blonde complexion and silky hair…. She has one sister as white as herself…. Charles Taylor is eight years old.
His complexion is very fair, his hair light and silky….this white boy…has been twice sold as a slave…. These three children, to all appearance of unmixed white race, came to Philadelphia last December.” Harper’s Weekly was very popular, having a circulation of around 200,000 before the Civil War. Another example involving white slavery made public had to do with the work of Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who held mock slave auctions of light and white slaves at his church in Brooklyn, New York. The moneys raised were used to purchase their freedom.
The choice of skin color was intentional, given that whites could more readily identify with slaves who were themselves white or approaching white. Such slaves also had appeal to those who were only concerned with the enslavement of white people and their plight. In 1848 the Edmonson sisters– “two respectable young women of light complexion”–were sold at auction. Beecher’s son and biographer recorded that “this case at the time attracted wide attention.”
A young girl named Pinky who was “too fair and beautiful a child for her own good” was auctioned off and also freed with the moneys raised. In 1856 another slave woman was rescued. Beecher’s son had “a handful of photographs of children, white and beautiful, who had been set free…white-faced, flaxen-haired children born under the curse of slavery.”
The art produced at any given time in any given culture reflects the reality of that particular time and place. The artist as part of that context is in effect a contemporary spokesperson. White slavery was on the mind of the public in the antebellum North, and this was reflected in the fictional literature of the period. The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore by Richard Hildreth was published in 1836 and holds the distinction of being the first antislavery novel. Archy is a white slave (PLATE 3) who tells his readers early on,
“From my mother I inherited some imperceptible portion of African blood, and with it, the base and cursed condition of a slave.” Later he laments, “I had found, by a bitter experience, that a slave, whether white or black, is still a slave; and that the master, heedless of his victim’s complexion, handles the whip, with perfect impartiality.” The novel was greatly enlarged and expanded in 1852 with the new title,
The White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive. Why was the character of Archy Moore depicted as a white slave? Why was the title changed from The Slave in 1836 to The White Slave in 1852?
Art imitates life. Hildreth’s choices were in accord with public concern over white slavery. White readers could readily identify with the trials and tribulations of a slave who was as white as they were. Before the first word in the book was read, the impression of the title alone enabled empathetic readers to emotionally experience the words, “The White Slave” (PLATE 4).
The character of Archy Moore as a white mulatto set the precedent for the heroes and heroines of antislavery novels that followed. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was published in 1852. Twenty thousand copies were sold in three weeks and around three hundred thousand by the end of the year. George Harris, a slave, is described as “a very light mulatto” who could “pass for a white man.” E. Bruce Kirkham has analyzed the novel and called attention to Stowe’s change in the description of Eliza from a mulatto to a quadroon.
“The change is important because, whereas a mulatto is either a Negro with one white parent or merely a Negro with some white blood, the term ‘quadroon’ is applied only to a Negro with three white grandparents. Eliza’s blood line and therefore, to some degree, her color, education, and social background are more clearly defined by ‘quadroon’ than ‘mulatto’; she is made whiter.”
Avery O. Craven has studied antebellum culture and concluded that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was successful because the “morally confused North had been supplied with concrete stereotypes with which to clarify and simplify its thinking.” George Harris, Eliza, and their son Harry were indeed “concrete stereotypes” of light and white slaves.
In the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s contemporary, George Fitzhugh, a Southern writer about whom there is much said in Chapter 6, “To defend and justify mere negro slavery, and condemn other forms of slavery, is to give up expressly the whole cause of the South–for mulattoes, quadroons, and men with as white skins as any of us, may legally be, and in fact are, held in slavery in every State of the South.
The abolitionists well know this, for almost the whole interest of Mrs. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, arises from the fact, that a man and woman, with fair complexions, are held as slaves.” Up through 1861 no less than seventeen novels utilized a stereotype known as the “tragic mulatto.”
The heroes and heroines featured in these novels had light or white complexions and found themselves in such “tragic” situations as the surprise discovery of slave status, death before dishonor, or being sold into slavery. William Bedford Clark has studied this genre and states that a white-looking woman was most often the “tragic mulatto” in such stories.
This choice was absolutely intentional. “As students of this tradition note, the fact that the slave protagonist in such novels was to all appearances white and shared the characteristics of the typical white heroine of melodramatic romance helped address the arbitrary nature of racial distinctions in general and therefore short-circuited whatever racial biases the northern audience itself maintained.”
The Octoroon, a very popular play scheduled to be performed at Ford’s Theatre the night after Lincoln attended Our American Cousin there, shows that the “tragic mulatto” character had broad appeal and was not limited to novels. White readers and theatergoers were readily able to identify with white or nearly white characters and their oppression under slavery.
This explains the reason they were utilized instead of characters with darker complexions. There were two distinctly different ways of looking at white mulattoes–socially and physiologically. Socially, a white partus slave looked as white as any white person but was considered a black person because he or she had “one drop” of black blood from a distant black female ancestor who was a slave. Such was the case when Mr. C. was told,
“That’s not a white girl; she is a nigger, sir.” Physiologically speaking, however, white partus slaves were white people because all traits of their remote black ancestry had disappeared. The North saw these white slaves as whites. The South saw these white slaves as blacks. An 1857 issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune commented on racial classification in the South.
“The southern census takers, it is notorious, returned all persons as blacks who, were not more than half white. Those who possessed straight hair and Anglo-Saxon features they set down as mulattoes, many of whom were as white-skinned as their owners.”
The actual number of white mulatto slaves is unknowable because all shades from “one drop” to those showing some discernible degree of black admixture were classed together as mulattoes without any distinction as to color.
Travelers who spoke of white slaves in the South, advertisements for white runaway slaves, newspaper articles about white slaves, and light and white heroes and heroines in “tragic mulatto” fiction all served to validate that there were white people who were enslaved in the South. Disbelievers were shown, in the words of the newspaper article cited earlier, that “Slavery has no ‘prejudice against color.’