When Alabama turned up the heat on free blacks before Civil War, some of them chose slavery
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In her January 1861 petition to Mobile County Probate Judge John A. Hitchcock, Sally Johnson describes her desire to surrender her freedom and become the slave of Mobile physician Dr. Thomas S. Easton.
This document, on file in the archive section of the Mobile County probate office, shows the signature -- marked by an "X" -- on Sally Johnson's petition to become a slave. It is one of a number of such petitions filed by free blacks who were under increasing pressure from white authorities nervous about possible insurrection in the years before the Civil War.
Sally Johnson, having spent much of life in bondage as a victim of the South's "peculiar institution," was by 1860 one of more than 800 free blacks living in Mobile.
Facing increasingly hostile and paranoid state and local governments as the Civil War approached, however, Johnson felt trapped - technically free but dangerously vulnerable. So she did what would be considered unthinkable today: She petitioned the Mobile County probate judge to allow her to become a slave.
The handwritten document - which the illiterate Johnson signed on Jan. 4, 1861, with an "X" - is one of at least nine on file in the Mobile County probate office. An archivist said she suspects those documents represent only a fraction of the petitions that the office received between 1860 and 1862.
"The petitioner says she is now sixty five years old, and of a feeble constitution," Johnson's petition states. "She is told she must leave this city and state - and this she must do because she is not a slave. The authorities of the city do order. She is told, however, that by an adjudication act of the legislature she may remain by consenting freely to become a slave."
Dr. Thomas S. Easton, a white University of Pennsylvania-educated physician who agreed to become Johnson's master, also signed the petition. "I think that's so sad. She's caught between the devil and deep blue sea," said Collette King, a part-time archivist at the probate office. "Sixty-five years old and no family. Where is she going to go?" 'Total contradiction of history'
The probate office received petitions to become slaves at a time of rising tensions between the North and South, and an aggressive clampdown on the South's small free black population. Historians said it is important to consider that context.
Lonnie Burnett, a Civil War expert at the University of Mobile, said it is likely many of the petitioners felt coerced."They feel like that's their best option," he said, trying to put himself in their place. "There's no other reason someone would do it."
King said that when people first learn of the probate office's unusual records, they often have to see the petitions for themselves before they can believe it. "It's a total contradiction of history," she said.
Johnson's petition indicates that she believed the state was forcing her to leave the state. It does not appear that the state legislature ever actually passed a law expelling free blacks, but some states did. According to Richard Wade's 1967 book "Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820-1860," Louisiana passed a law in 1831 giving newly freed blacks 30 days to leave the state. In 1859, the state provided for free blacks to be re-enslaved. Michael W. Fitzgerald, who wrote a book on the Reconstruction era in Mobile, said lawmakers in Alabama debated proposals to expel blacks. That came on top of a decade's worth of laws designed to make life uncomfortable for them, said Fitzgerald, a professor at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. "They think of them as a destabilizing factor. They think of them as a security threat," he said, referring to white leaders. "It was certainly proposed (to expel free blacks). It might have been short-circuited by the secession. ... Clearly, people thought something had passed or was going to pass."
Fitzgerald said fears of an uprising among free blacks were prevalent throughout Alabama, but he noted that white Mobilians had more cause for concern. Free blacks made up only 2 percent of men and women of African descent in Alabama, but half of them lived in the Port City. A review of the legislative record from 1856 through 1861 shows all sorts of laws targeting blacks in Alabama, both free and slave.
In 1856, the legislature required slave owners or overseers to live with their slaves "to better secure them." In 1861, lawmakers decreed that no more than one slave could live in any place unless a white owner or overseer lived with him, and provided for a $100 fine for violation.
Fitzgerald wrote in his book, "Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile 1860-1890," that the city government estimated in the 1850s that as many as 1,000 slaves lived apart from their masters. This freedom of movement - and slaves' association with free blacks - was a growing source of concern among whites. So was drinking and gambling among blacks. According to "Slavery in the Cities," the mayor of Mobile in 1856 devoted a good portion of his annual message to the problem.
In February 1858, state lawmakers outlawed gambling by slaves and free blacks. The punishment was 10 to 35 stripes - administered by a constable or, in the case of a slave, by the owner if he wished. Also that year, the legislature passed a law allowing for liquor-selling establishments that slaves or free blacks regularly visited to be labeled a public nuisance.
The law also prohibited ship captains from supplying liquor to slaves not on the vessel. In February 1861, the sate outlawed selling or giving liquor to any free Negro and increased the penalties for providing liquor to slaves.
In January 1860, the legislature made it illegal to emancipate slaves through wills "either directly or indirectly." It made it illegal to remove slaves from the state for the purpose of freeing them, and prohibited giving a slave as a gift to a person or corporation from a place where African slavery did not exist. It also repealed all laws allowing for the emancipation of slaves through the courts.
In February 1861, the state made it a crime for any free Negro mariner to work on any vessel other than the one to which he was assigned. Any Negro caught doing so could be hauled before a justice of the peace in Mobile or Baldwin counties and, if convicted of the misdemeanor, given 100 lashes. The master of the vessel also would be forced to pay all costs of conviction. If the master of the black sailor's vessel and the captain of the other ship both were found to be complicit, they could be fined up to $200 each.
It wasn't just the state government. Fitzgerald notes in "Urban Emancipation" that the Mobile city council voted to raise a special tax on free blacks with the evident intention of driving them out of the city.
"There's all sorts of harassment legislation," Fitzgerald said in an interview. "They're ratcheting this up." Choosing slavery
In the face of this, the legislature began entertaining requests form free blacks to become slaves. Lawmakers approved several of them in 1860.
In February of that year, the legislature passed a set of procedures allowing a free Negro to petition his local probate judge "to become a slave of some white person of good moral character and standing."
It required a declaration from both the black person and the white
master-to-be. The probate judge was required to set a hearing within 10 days to determine that the petitioner was "free from undue influence" and appoint a lawyer to represent the applicant if he or she was younger than 18.
The Alabama legislature in 1860 passed this law, setting up a procedure for free blacks to seek permission from a probate judge to give up their freedom and become slaves to white people of good moral character.
"And from thenceforward, they shall be deemed and held in law and in equity, the slaves of the said person by them so selected," the law stated.
The statute also provided a mechanism to appeal the judge's decision and forbade the master from selling the new slave to repay his debts. The master also had to pay the fees of the judicial proceedings -- $5 to the probate judge and $15 to any lawyer appointed to represent a minor.
It was this procedure that Sally Johnson would follow a year later when she petitioned Mobile County Probate Judge John A. Hitchcock to let her become a slave of Dr. Easton.
Most of the petitions currently on file contain few details beyond the required declarations. But Johnson's contains a brief description of her personal history. She had lived in Alabama for about 30 years, 20 of them in Mobile. She formerly was a slave of a woman named Beverly Crawford, who put her "in the hands" of Judge P.T. Harris of Mississippi in about 1845.
Harris, according to the petition, promised to free her but instead sold her to a man named W. Rufus Greene, who in turn sold her in May of that year to her own husband, Pleasant. The file includes the bill of sale showing that Pleasant paid $125 to purchase his wife.
After he died, she became free. But she indicated that she had the worst elements of both free and servant. The petition stated that Johnson "has no one to control her or to protect her." She was a "slave without a protector and master or a free person without the privileges of freedom."
Records show that a free black woman named Millie Mason was raised by a man named Col. JNO B. Hogan and that she worked for him and later his widow. After their daughter died, Mason was 45 years old and apparently had no employment. She petitioned in 1860 to become of slave of Thomas A. Hamilton, a Mobile lawyer.
Other petitions include a December 1860 request by Catherine Emmerson to become the slave of Raphael Navero; Sarah George to become the slave of Eleanor Jane Mellgran in January 1861; and Clem Jackson in August 1862 to become the slave of Jesse T. Cain.
Fitzgerald, the historian from St. Olaf College, said that when emancipation became more difficult legally, a form of "nominal slavery" evolved where some owners freed their slaves in practice and held them as slaves in name only. This was more common in Mobile's urban environment than other parts of the state. It was not uncommon for free blacks to have good relations with white residents of the city, he said. "If you felt like you were harassed and you have somebody white that you trust," Fitzgerald said, becoming that person's slave in the eyes of the law seemed to be a good option for some.
Historian John Sledge said the practice also indicates what a difficult position free blacks in Alabama faced. Prior to the Civil War, they were not in bondage but never equal citizens, either.
"It's one of the most tragic, to me, episodes in the history of Mobile," he said. "It's heartbreaking."
https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2015/02/when_alabama_turned_up_the_hea.html
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