The Slaves of Liberty

Freedom in Amite County, Mississippi, 1820-1868

Dale Edwyna Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN:
  9780815330820
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136747748
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This study focuses on the lives of the black slave majority in the deep South in the mid-19th century. The topics of civil law, demographics, the role of the church, family life, plantation economics, and gender issues are all revealed through careful study of primary sources previously unexamined by historians. The author has meticulously researched newspapers, court transcripts, county archives, church minutes, plantation journals, and oral histories to produce an astonishingly detailed picture of the lives of blacks and whites during this critical period. The readable narrative was nominated for the Allan Nevins Prize for dissertations in American history in 1993.

CHAPTER 1

Amite County, Mississippi

It was perched at the frontier's edge. By 1840, the Mississippi River marked civilization's divide—to the west lay California, Texas, the banished Indian nations, outlawry. Staked out thirty miles east of the Mississippi River by decree in 1809, Amite County had been carved from the western half of Wilkinson County, which hugged the far southwestern corner of Mississippi, wedged in by the Mississippi River's rambling course and the forked border at Louisiana's eastern side. The line of demarcation bisected Wilkinson county, allotting Amite County 700 square miles, or a total of 462,080 acres, and making it the fifth county organized in the territory that became the state of Mississippi; its four predecessors were Claiborne, Jefferson, Adams, and, of course, Wilkinson. Until 1811, the land that now comprises Pike County, due east of Amite, was also part of Amite County; but in 1811, another decree created Marion County, which was to include the land that, in 1815, became Pike County. (Pike is of interest both because of its proximity to Amite and because they share an early history; the Pike courthouse, repository of its particular history, was destroyed by fire in 1876 and much of what is known of Pike County's early days has been reconstructed using the civil record of Amite and Marion counties, as well as the personal memorabilia of its residents.) Claiborne, Jefferson, Adams, Wilkinson, and in some reckonings, Amite, arcing north to south along the Mississippi River, came to be known as the Old Natchez District, a prosperous plantation society transformed from wilderness by huge numbers of black slaves and made prosperous by the enormous volume of cotton the blacks were forced to cultivate.¹

The Amite River, from which the county took its name, traces a parallel course east of the Mississippi River. For much of the Old Natchez region, the soil was overlaid with a layer of heavy brown clay which provided for especially fertile agricultural conditions: a variety of trees—including oak, hickory, elm, pine, magnolia, peach and a number of berry trees flourished. In addition, “sweet” water from an abundance of streams—Beaver Creek, the streams named Tickfaw, Brushy, Hominy, Dawson, and the Tangipahoa—was also plentiful. Wild game such as deer, raccoon and squirrel, as well as wild turkeys, pigeons and water fowl were present when the first whites and blacks arrived, bringing with them domesticated animals—oxen, mules, cattle, and hogs—and scattering a portion of the four-legged wild life deeper into the frontier. For example, for many years after, there were occasional tales of wolverines that had been bold enough to enter the slave quarters as near as Adams County (bordering Wilkinson on the north) and carry off an untended child. Several classes of freshwater catfish, as well as perch, trout, mackerel, bass, and buffalo swam the rivers and streams of Mississippi, and the mockingbird, oriole, hummingbird, eagle, owl and hawk patrolled the skies. And there is fossil evidence that the mastodon had also roamed the region that became Wilkinson County.²

The white population of Amite County had been, for the most part, born in America. Nearly eighty percent of the settlers came to the Mississippi territory from Virginia, or from the Virginia stock that had settled areas of North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. In fact, with the opening of the then-west facilitated, and even encouraged by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, several South Carolina and Virginia families (led by Agrippa Gayden and a mysterious adventurer named Thomas Batchelor, and including members of the Lea and Wren families), migrated en masse to the southwest, bringing large numbers of black slaves with them. The group made camp, finally, in the eastern part of Wilkinson County in the Mississippi Territory (which had been organized in 1798), and some of its members became the original settlers and first officeholders of Amite County. The numbers of whites and blacks mushroomed, and the Choctaw Indians, whose home the biracial horde occupied, were, in time, removed—first northward in Mississippi and finally, together with Chickasaws, squeezed roughly westward by the growing white population of Tennessee during the early 1830s, to uninhabitated and uncultivated lands west of the Mississippi River. Counties bearing the names Choctaw and Chickasaw were later established near the heart of the state. Thomas Batchelor, who appears in the record for the first time as an adult in Virginia during the Revolutionary War, became one of the delegates to Mississippi's constitutional convention in 1817; serving with him in the capacity of delegate were Henry Hanna, Thomas Torrence, William Lattimore, and Angus Wilkinson. A town named Liberty, in the geographic center of the county, was established as the county seat in 1809, although it was not incorporated until 1828. In 1832, a second constitutional convention was convened, which “prohibited the introduction of slaves into the state as merchandise after May 1, 1833, and the introduction of them even by actual residents for their own use after the year 1844.”³

The perception of what freedom meant was certainly colored by the fact that, in Amite County, black slaves very soon outnumbered whites. Only South Carolina's slave population surpassed that of Mississippi: in South Carolina in the census years 1840, 1850, and 1860, the slave population was 55%, 57.6%, and 57.%, respectively; while in Mississippi in the same years, the black slave population was 52%, 51.1%, and 55.2%. And in the Old Natchez District as a whole, the percentage of black slaves in the total population was 75.5%, 77.9%, and 77.6%, respectively. In 1816, a state general assembly to determine the total Mississippi population prior to a grant of statehood recorded 3,365 whites, 19 “free coloreds,” and 1,694 black slaves in Amite County; and the number of “free” blacks remained amazingly constant through the years until the Thirteenth Amendment rendered every black in Mississippi forever free. The 1830 federal census listed a total county population of 7,934, of whom 3,816 were white, 4,089 were black slaves, and 29 were free “coloreds” (of this last number, 23 were males of various ages and only 6 were female). Of the 3,816 whites (in 760 households), 435 of the households (or 57.2%) owned slaves; the largest number (150 or 19.7% of the total population and 34% of slaveholders) owned between 2 and 5 slaves, but 76 households (10% of total; 17% of slaveholders) recorded between 6 and 10, and 111 (14.6% of total; 25.5% of slaveholders) between 11 and 30. About two dozen households (3.1% of total; 5.5% of slaveholders) possessed 31 or more slaves, while 68 (8.9% of total; 15.6% of slaveholders) owned a single slave. The marked increase in the black slave population caused the white population of Mississippi considerable consternation. So much so that, in 1837, a state law was enacted barring the further importation of black slaves from outside the state; free blacks were strongly encouraged to relocate, or face re-enslavement. An additional incentive to the 1837 law was likely that period's economic woes; declaring importations of slaves between the statute of 1832 (which prohibited importation of slaves for the purpose of sale) and the 1837 ban to be “illegal”—and “notes arising from slave-trade purchases [between] 1833–1837 … void,” many Mississippi speculators doubtless hoped to protect their financial interests in the state.⁴

By 1840, the total population of Amite County was 9,511, of which 3,741 were white, and 5,741 were black slaves, while the number of free blacks remained at 29. Elsewhere in the state, however, the total free black population had mushroomed (to over 2,000), with the population of black slaves held to an increase determined by the rate of births over deaths (and, it is likely, surreptitious importations), so that in 1846, the state rescinded its former prohibition against bringing black slaves into Mississippi from outside the state. In 1850, Amite County's total population was 9,694; in 1860, 12,336, of whom 7,469 were black slaves; and by 1870, 10,973. The preference, it seems, was to be surrounded by black slaves rather than by free blacks; thus, the institution of slavery and the habit of enslaving black persons was utilized throughout Mississippi, including in Amite County, as a means of population control.⁵

It is possible to conclude, based upon a comparison of a variety of sources—census reports, plantation journals, conveyance and other records of slave transfers, and the recollections of former slaves—that the ratio of female to male slaves in Amite County, Mississippi, remained almost even in the years between 1820 and the coming of Civil War to the county. Such figures might even suggest that something akin to stability in black slave families was the norm. However, that was not the case. For example, both Victoria Street (whose strategy for maintaining an efficient plantation operation is closely scrutinized in Chapter 4) and Eli Capell (see Chapter 6) seemed to strive for a gender balance between the slaves on their respective farms because it was considered a boost to productivity to have as many of the adult slaves as possible “paired” and living in family groups; but this seemingly constant population balance was not based upon the continued residence at their farms of the same slaves throughout the period studied. That is, both Victoria Street and Eli Capell frequently and routinely sold and traded slaves, both female and male, from infants to the elderly, without regard to the slaves' familial attachments or connections at their home place. Thus, the consistent gender ratio among black slaves in the county nonetheless represents a constantly shifting population of black people whose loved ones were most often left behind.

The concentration of the white population in the region eventually resulted in a demand for elementary schools, as well as institutions of higher learning, and the county's overall prosperity provided the wherewithal to establish and maintain them. By 1850, a number of white men, both Southern-born and migrants from the north, answered the call to teach in Amite County; among them were Allen Avery, James L. Flowers, and Riley Cockerham of the county; Joseph Lyon, a Kentuckian; and William A. Spencer and Lorenzo Hawkins, who came to the county from New York. James Smylie, a Presbyterian minister, initially acted as principal of Pine Grove Grammar School, a boarding school established in Amite County in 1814; the school charged $100 per year and was consolidated with Amite Academy the year after Pine Grove was established. Smylie also, acting with other Presbyterian ministers from the district, helped to establish Oakland College in 1829, although it was ultimately located in Claiborne County, north of Amite and nearer to Natchez. An 1838 notice in the Piney Woods Planter and Amite Union Literary Reflector announced the opening of a “Classical School”; while an 1840 edition of the Liberty Advocate advertised openings for the Clinton Female Seminary at nearby Clinton, Louisiana, where “the various branches of classical and polite literature” would be taught by James Ritchie, “a graduate of Harvard University,” to be assisted by his “Lady,” as needed. Prior to 1829, Zion Hill Academy operated in the northern part of the county. And a number of schools were operated in Liberty itself: the Liberty English and Classical Academy; a school dedicated to “Female Education” (with a curriculum including Rhetoric, Drawing and Painting, and Embroidering in Silk, as well as English Grammar, Arithmetic, Chemistry, Ancient and Modern History, and Mental and Moral Philosophy); and, in 1853, the Amite Female Seminary was established. Sponsored by the Mississippi Baptist Association, it was the only college in the county founded during the antebellum period. The college was razed by Union troops during the Civil War.⁶

The white citizens of Amite County, Mississippi, were not isolated from the cultural pursuits of the day, and in fact enjoyed a variety of recreational activities. Natchez, which was roughly sixty miles northwest of Liberty on the Mississippi River, was a center for theatre in the area, largely due to its position on the river, which routinely placed it on the itinerary of professional companies. And even towns like Liberty could occasionally look forward to appearances by performers of dramatic readings, and by acrobats and magicians. Newspapers, which printed not only local, regional, and national news, but also devoted much column space to fiction and poetry; were also popular; and in Amite County, at least, such newspapers also devoted significant column space to advertisements for either the sale of slaves or of the paraphernalia connected with slavery.⁷

The county also supported a number of professionals very well, mostly lawyers, doctors, politicians, and preachers, with lawyers and preachers drawing the highest community approbation. Perhaps in order to forestall a perceived natural affinity between politics and the pulpit, the state's earliest constitution stated that “a minister of the gospel should not be permitted to allow the glamor of political life to entice him into … the legislature.” By 1850, a young Louisianan named Hamilton McKnight had already begun to carve a prosperous legal practice for himself from the myriad possibilities that the county offered. Evidence gleaned from civil records, as well as local newspaper notices and personal notations in estate files, indicate that McKnight was active both in the marketing of slaves and in their “apportionment” during the settlement of estates; McKnight's name was rarely absent from estate transactions involving the movement of slaves for cash. In 1850, the lawyer Henry Goodall Street was already middle-aged; a Virginian, his property was valued at $5,500, but a notation in the margin next to that estimate indicated that the property belonged to his wife, the former Victoria Caroline Batchelor. James M. Smiley, who was editor of The Liberty Advocate for a time during the 1840s, was also, by 1850, one of the county's most prominent attorneys. These men shared the profits from a flourishing legal plantation with James F. Lowry, William T. Robinson, and David Wiley Hurst, who began his professional career in the law office of James M. Smiley and was appointed a judge while serving as a Colonel for the Confederacy. Among the medical men who settled in Amite County was Joseph Redhead, who practiced for a number of years at Rose Hill, one of the plantations owned by Eli J. Capell, before moving out on his own. Although a native of England, Redhead married Mary, the daughter of Amite County co-founders Agrippa and Margaret Gayden, which doubtless greatly eased his acceptance in the county.⁸

The county also attracted a number of skilled artisans, which supplied the needs of the region's residents. John L. Tarver, a native of Amite, gave his occupation as “carpenter” in the 1850 census, as did David Huff, a Virginian, and Thomas and James Drummond of Ireland. In fact, a number of foreign-born whites settled in the county and acted as purveyors of assorted goods: the German Jacob Half in, Benjamin Harris of Poland, and Canadian William Smith thus worked and competed shoulder to shoulder with Amite Countians James F. Anderson and C. C. Cain. Because Amite County's principal crop was cotton for export, a number of ginwrights also found steady work. And the wagons to carry the cotton to Liberty or Gillsburg for shipment south to New Orleans were built and maintained by local wagonmakers, and kept in good repair by journeymen, who included at least one free black man, named Claiborne. There was also the persistent rumor among the freedpersons of Am...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Crosscurents in African American History
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series Editors' Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Amite County, Mississippi
• Chapter 2. The Color of Law
• Chapter 3. The Broken Circle: Our Family, Black and White
• Chapter 4. ‘The Kindlier Sphere’: The Women of Amite County
• Chapter 5. Plantations of the Lord
• Chapter 6. War
• Chapter 7. Emancipation
• Chapter 8. ‘I and Tone’: The Lives of Eli and Tony Capell
• Chapter 9. Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index