Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865 : a history of human bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin

229 Pages·2011·1.541 MB·English

by  Christopher P. Lehman

Slavery in the
Upper Mississippi Valley,
1787–1865
ALSOBYCHRISTOPHERP. LEHMAN
ANDFROMMCFARLAND
A Critical History of Soul Train
on Television (2008)
American Animated Cartoons of the Vietnam Era:
A Study of Social Commentary in Films and
Television Programs, 1961–1973 (2006)
Slavery in the
Upper Mississippi
Valley, 1787–1865
A History of Human Bondage
in Illinois, Iowa,
Minnesota and Wisconsin
C P. L
HRISTOPHER EHMAN
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Lehman, Christopher P.
Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787–1865 : a history of
human bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin /
Christopher P. Lehman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-5872-1
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Slavery—Middle West—History—19th century. 2. Slavery—
United States—Extension to the territories. 3. Middle West—
Politics and government—19th century. 4. Middle West—Social
conditions—History—19th century. 5. Middle West—Race
relations—History—19th century. I. Title.
E415.7.L44 2011
305.800977—dc22 2011003416
BRITISHLIBRARYCATALOGUINGDATAAREAVAILABLE
© 2011Christopher P. Lehman. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover images © 2011 Shutterstock
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
CHAPTERONE
Slavery in the Northwest Territory 5
CHAPTERTWO
The Politics of Indentured Servitude: Slavery in Illinois 27
CHAPTERTHREE
Miners and Soldiers: Slavery in Wisconsin 59
CHAPTERFOUR
Migrating Southerners: Slavery in Iowa 85
CHAPTERFIVE
Hoteliers and Local Slaveholders: Slavery in Minnesota 114
CHAPTERSIX
Dred Scott and the Boom in Upper Mississippi Slavery 142
CHAPTERSEVEN
Upper Mississippi Slavery in the Civil War Years 170
Conclusion 195
Chapter Notes 203
Bibliography 209
Index 217
v
Acknowledgments
ARCHIVISTSHAVEASSISTEDMEtremendously with this book. Some present and
former staff members of the Stearns History Museum have assisted me
throughout my seven years of research on Midwestern slavery. I offer my
thanks to Charlene Akers, John Decker, June Kalla, Robert Lommel, Ann
Meline, Cindy O’Konek, Jessica Paulsen, Steve Penick, Rosemarie P uerta-
Curnutt, Diane Smith, Sarah Warmka, and Ken Zierden. I thank the staff of
the Minnesota Historical Society; Don Parker of the Hancock County (Illi-
nois) Historical Society; the Wilson County, Tennessee, Courthouse staff;
Mary L. Kludy of the Virginia Military Institute; and the First Presbyterian
Church of St. Cloud, Minnesota, staff.
I am thankful to St. Cloud State University for providing funding for
my research over the past seven years and to the co- workers and staff of my
department for their support.
Ambar Espinoza of Minnesota Public Radio was gracious to report on
my work in May 2010. I am thankful to her for all of the assistance I have
received from people who heard about my research from having listened to
her radio interview of me.
My work would not have been possible without feedback from some of
the descendants of the people I researched. Andrew Calhoun and Paul Cal-
houn helped me understand the development of slavery in Minnesota better.
Lynne Bie and Marque Henson were similarly helpful with slavery in Iowa.
Barry Cannedy, Lisa Canterberry, Billie Dewey, Karen S mith-C lopton, and
Mary Tomcsanyi assisted me with slavery in Wisconsin. Kathleen Schott
helped me with slavery in Illinois.
I am eternally grateful to my family for their support. My parents gave me
the tools to conduct research. My children, Imani and Erik, inspired me to
write the book so that they would know the l ong-s tanding presence of African
Americans in the Midwest. My wife, Yolanda, has encouraged me to continue
working on my most tired days, and I appreciate her endless enthusiasm.
vi
Introduction
THE UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER VALLEY is an unlikely setting for a book about
slavery in the United States. The land was unsuitable for the plantations that
characterized slavery in the South, in large part because of the extremely cold
climate in the Northwest Territory. Very few people with slaves lived there.
Most importantly, the region was officially free. The federal government pro-
hibited slavery in the territory in 1787, upon the passage of the Northwest
Ordinance. Also, when states formed from Northwest Territory, they followed
Congress’ lead in banning slavery in their state constitutions.
Still, African American slavery in the Upper Mississippi existed from
before the Revolutionary War to the end of the Civil War. Moreover, the prac-
tice in that region played a significant role in the development of the United
States. As the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, they debated the
legality of forbidding the trafficking of unfree labor into the territory. To
protect the slaveholding that had persisted in the Northwest as the politicians
argued, the country then fought wars against the British, the indigenous, and
ultimately itself for over half a century.
Local and national politicians, including presidents from George Wash-
ington to James Buchanan, manipulated the meaning of the ordinance accord-
ing to political expedience. Whenever they tried to appease antislavery leaders,
executive officials promoted the Upper Mississippi as free from slavery. On
the other hand, whenever placating the slaveholders and supporters of slavery,
the executives allowed exceptions to the ban on human bondage in the ter-
ritory. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison paid explorers allowances for
their slaves.
Federal appointees defied the prohibition of slavery in the Upper Mis-
sissippi, often with the blessings of the presidents. Among the earliest violators
were soldiers whom presidents allowed to bring slaves with them from the
South or to occasionally purchase African Americans from other soldiers in
the Northwest Territory. The federal government gave the officers stipends
1
Introduction
2
for their slaves, too. In addition, governors appointed by presidents to lead
subsequent territories in the area received permission to take their human
chattel with them. Some of the governors, in turn, appointed southerners to
territory offices, and they followed the federal government’s lead in refusing
to enforce the Northwest Ordinance. Whenever a new territory formed in
the Upper Mississippi, each one—Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota—
experienced this extralegal slavery.
Caught in the crossfire were the slaves themselves. They were at the
mercy of the capriciousness of the federal government and the southern
migrants who brought them to the Northwest. Some African Americans sued
in courts to become free by virtue of their forced migration into an officially
free land. Others lived similar lives to their southern counterparts. Slave-
holders identified most female slaves as servants or domestic servants. In
addition, Upper Mississippi slaves experienced painful auctions and sexual
abuse at the hands of the slaveholders, just like any slave living below the
Mason- Dixon Line.
Nevertheless, African American slavery in the Upper Mississippi was sig-
nificantly different from southern slavery. The institution in the Northwest
Territory never became central to the agriculture of the region. Slavery con-
sequently never became crucial to the economy there. In addition, southern
migrants brought very few slaves up the Mississippi River. The slave popu-
lation in the new land was too small for slaveholders to politically benefit;
the three-fifths compromise, which mandated that slave populations count
toward representation among southern states in the federal government, made
little impact in the Upper Mississippi Valley. These factors led to critics of
slavery giving nearly all of their attention to the practice in the South and
virtually ignoring the practice in the Northwest.
The present workdiscusses the existence of African American slavery in
the Northwest Territory from Congress’s passage of the Northwest Ordinance
to the end of the Civil War. The book analyzes the effects of the federal gov-
ernment’s appointments of proslavery southerners to offices in the Upper
Mississippi. The book also examines the encouragement of slavery in that
region by migrants from the East Coast who came to the Upper Mississippi
to profit from the patronage of vacationing southern slaveholders by building
hotels and starting various other businesses. The various laws from Congress
concerning slavery over those eight decades and their influence upon slavery
in the Upper Mississippi also receive attention. In addition, the book looks
at the lives of the slaves, whose labor did not create the economy of the region,
as in the South, but who nonetheless joined their southern counterparts in
suffering family separation, sales, and identification as a white man’s prop-
erty.
For the purposes of this study, the Upper Mississippi Valley refers to
Introduction
3
counties and towns bordering the Mississippi River above the 36˚ 30' parallel.
The Northwest Ordinance (1787) and later the Missouri Compromise (1820)
were federal laws forbidding slavery north of that parallel. The slaveholding
soldiers stationed there barely enforced the laws, and the federal government
turned a blind eye as long as the soldiers effectively protected the region from
attacks by the indigenous people there. After steamboat travel improved to
allow wealthy and powerful southerners to travel upriver, even less incentive
existed for e xecutive-b ranch officeholders to enforce the ban. Bonded African
Americans made round trips from slave states to free areas and back to slave
states, and their time in the Upper Mississippi did not emancipate them.
The book is written as a chronological narrative. It starts with a discus-
sion of how the federal government weakened its own ban on slavery in the
Upper Mississippi Valley through vague legislation and allowing slaveholders
to settle in the area. The first chapter focuses on slavery in the Northwest in
the first decade following the passage of the Northwest Ordinance. The fol-
lowing chapter illustrates how the United States protected slavery there by
fighting the War of 1812 and by sending executive officials and military officers
and their slaves to protect the land from the indigenous. Meanwhile, the Ter-
ritory of Illinois—the first from the Upper Mississippi to become a state—
ushered in many of the legal and extralegal methods of defiance of the
Northwest Ordinance that characterized slavery in the Northwest, including
federal financial support to slaveholders utilizing African American slave labor
in mines.
The next three chapters explore how slavery influenced the transition of
three territories—Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota—into states between the
1830s and 1850s. Wisconsin followed the lead of Illinois in employing slaves
in mines, but a nti-s lavery migrants successfully petitioned the state and its
communities to stop doing so before the end of the 1830s. Iowa, on the other
hand, developed some communities of slaveholders and their slaves, and the
population of both groups increased in Iowa over time. Moreover, the federal
government sent slaveholders there to serve in political offices, which in turn
made Iowa Territory more attractive to owners of African Americans. The
residents of that state were especially resistant to the emancipating of local
slaves, and they banned free African Americans from Iowa’s borders for years.
Minnesota, despite being the last territory of the region to receive statehood
in 1858, still carried on the traditions of hosting federal slaving appointees
and developing s lave-o perated businesses. Its migrants were mostly tempo-
rary residents either obeying military orders while stationed in a new land or
spending vacations there. Some migrants came from beyond the South to
capitalize on the vacationers by developing hotels that catered to a slavehold-
ing clientele.
The final portion of the book is about the transition of the federal gov-