Record Data
“Slaves, Free Negroes, and Emancipation,” National Era 11, no. 522, Washington D.C., 1 January 1857, p. 4.
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and other typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
From the New Orleans Delta, Dec. 3, 1856
SLAVES, FREE NEGROES, AND EMANCIPATION
The Legislature that is to meet next month will have many subjects of importance before it, but none, we are persuaded, of greater importance than the revival of the laws in regard to the police and emancipation of blacks. Circumstances have occurred during the last year well calculated to awaken alarm, lest, through the inadequacy of existing statutes, or neglect in their enforcement, Louisiana should be overrun by free negroes.
In this city, we understand that there have been emancipated within the last twelve months, before one court alone, between five and six hundred blacks; and we cannot be wrong in supposing that, before all the courts, there have been between a thousand and fifteen hundred! If this continues, what is to be the result? How long will it be before the free negroes outnumber the whites? In the interior of the States, the evil has been felt to that degree as to have demanded attention from grand jurors and judges. In the parish of Pointe Coupée, where the vote cast at the late election was between seven and eight hundred, we are told that the free negroes are only eight less than the number of white voters. So great is the evil felt to be there, that, although there were twenty-five applicants for emancipation at the last term of the court, not one was successful. In the parish of Rapides, the evil is felt to be quite as great, and Judge Ogden delivered as able charged to the grand jury on the subject.
Our entire law on this subject requires revision. It is not for the advantage of the negro that he be thrown without a protection upon society. Free negroes are probably better off in New Orleans than in any other of our large cities; but even here they are being every day more and more driven out of reputable employment by the competition of white labor. Formerly, they drove our drays, owned hacks, kept shops, and waited at our hotels; now they are forced into positions of inferiority, and made to feel that they are, as at the North, outcasts on society, not associated with by the whites, and without that provision of home and subsistence that our law secures to every slave. Much of this is owing, no doubt, to the changed character of our population within the last ten years. Persons from the North, accustomed to be waited on only by white servants, cannot easily get over their prejudice to be waited on by black servants; and thus it is that just in proportion as New Orleans has become Northernized, has the free negro in our midst been driven from employment. The consequence is, that in order to live, he becomes a hanger-on and dependent of the negro who has a master. He encourages him to cheat and defraud his owner, and buys from him to sell again to those whites who fear the penalty of trading with slaves. But what is worse than all is, they constitute a mass of inflammable material, dangerous to the peace of society, and ready to be worked upon by incendiaries from the North. During the late canvass, in more than one parish, negroes were heard to declare that in the event of Fremont’s election they were to be free. In Ouachita parish, several were taken up, and confessed to a regularly-planned insurrection, to be consummated just after the November election. In Pointe Coupée parish, the same indications, white mean had been among them, inciting to insurrection, and familiarizing them with the idea of Kansas being a free State for their advantage, and that Fremont was to be their deliverer. In Point Coupée, several newspapers advocating Fremont’s election were picked up, where they had been scattered by a man from the North, who had been through the parish, acting ostensibly as agent for the sale of some Northern corn or cotton mill.
At this time there are two persons in the jail of that parish, for inciting to insurrection the negro population. Upon one of these was found a list of nearly every free negro in the parish. He was told upon by a free negro with whom he had tampered. One of these is a foreigner, the other is from the North. It is bad enough that we should receive Abolition teachers and preachers into our families, and that we should buy Abolition books, and read Abolition papers in New Orleans, but it becomes a more serious matter, when vagrant agents for pretended patents and books can with impunity traverse our country parishes, and whisper incendiary doctrines in our negro quarters. It is time the people of the interior were roused to the importance of action in this matter, or before they are aware of it, Louisiana as New Orleans, will become Bostonized with Abolition.
In this connection, we again call attention to the propriety of our having a slave exemption law. Such a law will certainly pass the Mississippi Legislature. It has been recommended by the Governor of South Carolina, and is imperiously required in this State, and especially in this city, to wed more closely together the interests of the white man of small means and the large planter who has his hundreds of slaves.