(L20) Lives of the Enslaved – Second Middle Passage, Resistance & Community

Cultural Symbolism – “Follow the Drinking Gourd”

• Spiritual/folk song served as a coded geographical instruction for self-emancipating slaves.
• “Drinking gourd” = Big Dipper; pointer stars lead to the North-Star (Polaris).
• Metaphorically promised a path out of the slave South; literally mapped night travel.
• Irony: while the song aimed north, the great bulk of enslaved people in the early $19^{\text{th}}$-century were being forcibly moved south-west into the new Cotton Kingdom.

Ira Berlin’s Interpretive Lens – Unbroken Humanity

• Key quotation: Even in an "uneven contest," masters "never quite carried the day."
• Denied marriage rights → Enslaved formed families.
• Denied independent worship → Built churches & secret religious life.
• Denied property → Accumulated possessions.
• Overall: Enslaved people rejected total dehumanization and carved spheres of autonomy.

The Second Middle Passage – Internal Slave Trade

• Center of slavery shifted from Chesapeake (Virginia/Maryland) → Deep South (Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas).
• Historians label $1820\text{–}1860$ migrations a "second middle passage."
• Parallels to trans-Atlantic ordeal: sudden removal, chains, disease, death, auction blocks.
• Typical transit:
• Overland coffles: adults chained, children in ox-carts; occasional coastal shipping (Norfolk ➜ New Orleans).
• Buyers visually "doctored" enslaved bodies: grease on scars, dye on gray hair, forced exercises to appear vigorous.
• Auctions:
• Inspections compared to livestock appraisal; invasive, humiliating, traumatic.
• Frequent resales created permanent instability of place and kinship.

Mutiny at Sea – High-Profile Revolts

• Creole ($1841$):
• Leader Madison Washington + $134$ others seized U.S. coastal slave ship; forced course to Bahamas; British granted freedom (slavery abolished $1833$ empire-wide).
• Amistad ($1839$ event, U.S. Supreme Court decision $1841$):
• Kidnapped Africans from Sierra Leone mutinied on Spanish vessel; captured off Long Island.
• Legal fight: property claims by Spain, Cuba, U.S. Navy vs. federal ban on Atlantic trade.
• John Quincy Adams argued for freedom; Court ( $7!:!1$, Justice Story) freed captives; rebels repatriated.
• Significance: Rare victorious revolts; fueled abolitionist literature (e.g., Frederick Douglass’s novella "The Heroic Slave").

Trauma’s Ripple – Fear of Sale & Uprisings

• Threat of separation fueled resistance (e.g., Nat Turner’s $1831$ rebellion partly tied to sale anxiety).
• Every Chesapeake slave lived under psychological shadow of being "sold South."

Escape Narratives & Underground Railroad (URR)

• URR = decentralized network of safe houses, guides, codes; operated by free Blacks, Quakers, other abolitionists.
• After Fugitive Slave Law $1850$, routes extended to Canada.
• Key individual stories:
• Henry "Box" Brown ($1849$): mailed himself in a $3$-ft crate from Richmond → Philadelphia; toured North as abolitionist speaker.
• Jeremiah Colburn ($1857$): fled Charleston, at times riding atop trains; motivation—fear of future harsher owner.
• Frederick Douglass ($1838$): escaped Maryland via train + ferry; became pre-eminent orator, founded "North Star" paper in Rochester.
• Harriet Tubman:
• Born Araminta Ross, Dorchester Co., MD; traumatic head injury from overseer’s iron weight.
• Escaped $1849$; returned ≈ $13$ times, liberated ≈ $70$ people (including nieces) using North-Star navigation.
• Nickname "Moses"; later Union nurse, scout, spy.

Life in the Cotton Kingdom

Environment & Labor Regime

• Planters clustered near rivers → Malaria & yellow-fever zones.
• Frontier clearing + cotton cultivation = grueling physical toll.
• Gang labor system replaced older task system:
• White overseers, sunrise-to-sunset pace, quota escalation, reduced personal discretion.

Violence & Sadism

• Corporal punishment intensified due to owner-overseer distance & profit pressure.
• Iconic photograph "Peter" (a.k.a. Gordon): keloid-scarred back from Baton Rouge whipping; circulated $1863$ in North to illustrate cruelty.

Psychological Wounds

• Uprooting severed kin networks; despair, depression, elevated mortality.

Patterns of Resistance within Plantation Order

• Major recorded revolts ≈ $313$ (Denmark Vesey $1822$, Nat Turner $1831$, etc.).
• Civil War "general strike" (Du Bois): $400\,000$ enslaved fled to Union lines; $\approx 90\,000$ enlisted in U.S. Colored Troops ( $\approx 1!:!4$ died during flight).
• Day-to-day sabotage:
• Work slowdowns, feigned illness, tool breakage.
• Music tempo manipulation: overseer demanded fast songs; singers subtly ritardando-ed to preferred pace.

Re-Creating Community & Culture

Family as Nexus

• Although sale dismantled households, concept of nuclear & extended family persisted.
• Families governed courtship, childcare, moral norms, property (garden plots, "overwork" earnings).

Religion

• Secret "invisible" churches; blended West-African cosmology w/ evangelical Christianity.
• Biblical emphases: Exodus, Isaiah, Gospels → liberation theology.
• Call-and-response worship, ring-shouts, ecstatic dancing.

Funerals

• Sometimes illegal; nevertheless large gatherings asserted deceased’s inherent worth & communal humanity.

Music & Oral Form

• Field hollers → roots of the blues; communal spirituals fostered solidarity, coded messaging.

Economics of "Overwork" & Property

• Sundays/holidays: individuals cultivated gardens or small cotton rows; proceeds formed "family stock"—independent material cushion & symbol of autonomy.

Negotiated Norms & Paternalist Myth

• Owners learned that breaking minimal "customary rights" (Sunday rest, holiday rations, avoiding marriage break-ups) provoked resistance.
• Thus "paternalism" often a pragmatic bargain, not altruism; revealed agency of enslaved in shaping daily conditions.

Urban Slavery & Free Black Communities

• By $1860$, ≈ $140\,000$ enslaved persons lived in Southern cities ( $\approx 4\%$ of total slave pop.).
• Charleston: enslaved = one-third of population.
• Richmond, New Orleans similar.
• Jobs: construction laborers, shipyard hands, artisans (carpenters, masons, butchers).
• Housing: back rooms/attics of owners, or separate clusters; closer proximity moderated overt violence.
• Hiring-out system: enslaved leased to third parties; could retain small wages → path, though narrow, toward self-purchase.
• Douglass: "City slave is almost a free man compared with plantation slave."
• Free Black numbers (approx.):
• Charleston $\approx 3\,200$; New Orleans >11\,000.
• Virginia statewide $\approx 58\,000$ ( $44\%$ of Confederate total free Blacks).

"The Weeping Time" – Largest U.S. Slave Sale ($03/03\text{–}03/04/1859$)

• Location: Savannah Race Track, Georgia.
• Context: Heir Pierce Butler’s debts; liquidation of inheritance.
• Rain poured as $436$ people auctioned; buyers cherry-picked, families pleaded to be sold together.
• Event symbolized ultimate commodification & emotional brutality on eve of Civil War.

Ethical & Philosophical Stakes

• System fused economic profit, racial hierarchy, psychological domination.
• Yet persistent self-assertion of enslaved (family, faith, music, revolt) complicates narrative of "total powerlessness."
• Understanding these lived experiences is indispensable for interpreting:
• Antebellum political crises (e.g., Fugitive Slave Law, abolitionist mobilization).
• Civil War dynamics (contraband policy, Black enlistment).
• Ongoing debates on reparative justice & collective memory.

Connections to Earlier & Later Lectures

• Builds on previous discussion of cotton-driven southward migration.
• Foreshadows next topics:
• Fugitive Slave Act $1850$ & Northern resistance.
• Formal structure of Underground Railroad.
• Abolitionist politics of Douglass, Tubman, and free Black northern communities.

Numerical & Statistical Recap (selected)

• "Second Middle Passage" peak timeframe ≈ $1820\text{–}1860$.
• Recorded major revolts ≈ $313$.
• Creole mutineers $=134$; Amistad Supreme-Court vote $7!:!1$.
• Civil War self-emancipations $≈400\,000$, fatalities $≈25\%$, USCT enlistment $≈90\,000$.
• Harriet Tubman rescue missions $≈13$; people liberated $≈70$.
• "Weeping Time" sale $=436$ individuals.
• Enslaved population $1860$ ≈ $4\,000\,000$.