Re: Tim Richards Slaves Of 18
Aleck Coulombe
Perhaps in response to that persistent threat, Bowser soon headed to Africa, to live in Liberia. At the time, there was increasing pressure for former slaves to leave the U.S. and settle there, and perhaps Bowser sought a new life in a place where she did not face the threat of the pervasive racism that faced even free blacks in the abolitionist North. But for whatever reason, Bowser did not stay in Africa. Instead, she returned to Richmond illegally.
"And whereas I have heretofore mentioned to some of my negro slaves, that upon condition of their good behavior and fidelity, I would, in some convenient period, grant them their freedom--this I must leave to the discretion of my wife, in whose judgement & prudence I can fully confide, and therefore I do will, that in case my sd [said] slaves shall behave to her with that obedience & fidelity which I have before mentioned as the condition of..."
RG 29 Records of the Bureau of the Census (crop schedules)
RG 36 Records of the United States Customs Service, 1745 - 1982
Congress created the Custom Service on July 31, 1789 and made it a part of the Department of Treasury (September 1789). The service assisted other agencies in the enforcement of the slave trading laws that were passed between 1794 to 1820. In particular, the 1807 law prohibited the transportation of slaves after 1808, and section 9 required that all vessels of 40 tons or more carrying slaves in the coastwise trade file duplicate manifests (ports of origin and destination) showing name, age and description of each slave, the name and residence of exporter and consignee, and pledge that the slave had not been imported after 1807. Manifest records exist for four ports.
Following arbitration by the Emperor of Russia in 1822, a mixed claims commission was provided for in a convention signed to settle U.S. claims against Great Britain concerning slaves and property lost during the War of 1812. Because of difficulties faced by the commission, a new convention was signed in 1826 in which Great Britain agreed to pay a sum in satisfaction of all claims awarded under the arbitration of the Emperor. A domestic claims commission was established by an act in 1827 to handle the disbursement of awards. In 1853, another mixed claims commission was established to settle claims presented to either government since December 24, 1814.
There are several series that pertain to the business of the mixed claims commissions and the domestic claims commission. These records are located at Archives II in College Park, Maryland.
Established within the Department of Treasury by an act of 1817 that authorized four additional auditors and an comptroller. The 1789 Act that established the Treasury provided for a comptroller to superintend the adjustment and preservation of the public accounts and auditor to supervise disbursements.
There are several series that account for the Department of Treasury involvement with the African slave trade. These records are located at Archives l in Washington, D.C.
Settled Accounts of Claimants and Disbursing Officers of the First Auditor. 1790-1894.
Claims case files include: African shipping;the bounty on Blacks illegally imported;the support of captured Africans illegally entering the United States; bounty for the capture of illegal slave ships; expenditures of the American Colonization Society in support of persons of African descent.
Abstract of Accounts for Bounty for the capture of ships in the Slave Trade. 1857-60, 1 vol.
Gives name of the claimant, name of captured and capturing ships, and name of the payee. There is a list of vessels captured for engaging in the slave trade, 1857-60, date of seizure, names of vessels making seizure, the squadron, and the locality of the capture.
Records of the Board of Commissioners for the Emancipation of Slaves in the District of Columbia, 1862-63
An act of April 12, 1862 (12 Stat.376) abolished slavery in the District of Columbia. The President was authorized to appoint a board of commissioners to examine petitions for compensation from former owners of freed slaves in the District. Petitions disclosed name of petitioner, slaves, and value of slaves claimed in the petition. Bound volumes also show summary of action taken,number of the petition, amount awarded, and signature of the claimant. These records are microfilmed under Microfilm Number 520. There are 6 rolls.
An Act of July 13, 1862, (12 Stat. 257) prohibited commercial intercourse between people residing in the seceded states and citizens of the United States and provided that merchandise transported for commercial purposes from or to the Confederacy would be forfeited to the United States. The Treasury Department received control over commercial intercourse, and Special Agents under the Special Agency system were given authority to supervise trade and commerce in areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union forces. Under Treasury Department regulations of July 29, 1864, it established "freedmen's home colonies" to provide employment and welfare to assistance to freed slaves. Nine Special Agencies were ultimately established in the Confederate States, each responsible for a prescribed geographical boundary.
Mary Jane Richards was likely born in Virginia, and was possibly enslaved from birth by Eliza Baker Van Lew and John Van Lew (parents of Elizabeth) or their extended family.[4][5] The first record directly related to her is her baptism, as "Mary Jane" at St. John's Church in Richmond, on May 17, 1846.[2] Mary Jane's baptism at the Van Lew family church, rather than at Richmond's First African Baptist Church where the other Van Lew slaves were baptized, indicates that someone in the Van Lew family took special notice of Richards.[1] Not long after this baptism, Elizabeth Van Lew, sent Richards north to school in Princeton, New Jersey.[1][2]
In Jamaica there exists a community called Pennants. It was named after a family that arrived from Flintshire, who also gave their name to their slaves. Many people living there still bear the surname today.
In the 18th century the Jamaican sugar fields were worked by hundreds of slaves whose wealthy European masters also lived on the island. However, many settlers returned home because of high death rates.
The letters Pennant wrote are full of discussions on slavery. Many times Pennant asks for his managers to treat his slaves well. Whether he was looking out for his workers or his profits is unclear, but the slaves were a valuable asset to him.
Virginian Richard Henry Lee was a born aristocrat. An active participant in many key events in the Revolutionary War, Lee protested the Stamp Act in Virginia (1765), sat on the committee that named George Washington Commander-in-Chief of the Continental army (1775), and introduced the motion that led to the Declaration of Independence (1776). While in the Continental Congress (1774- 1780, 1784-1787) he also worked to stop importation of slaves into the American states.
The South's other constitutional advantage stemmed from the three-fifths clause, the stipulation that slaves were to be counted as three fifths of free persons in apportioning direct taxes and seats in the House of Representatives. Since the federal government rarely resorted to direct taxes, the fiscal impact of this clause was minimal, but its political impact was enormous. On average, the slave states received in each decade one-third more members in the House than their free population alone would warrant. Moreover, these additional seats translated into more Southern votes in the electoral college. In the Adams-Jefferson election of 1800, these votes accounted for the margin of Jefferson's victory.
With few exceptions these men were slaveholders. The federal census of 1790 listed thirty of the forty as owning slaves. Of the other ten, nine were either not listed or were from counties for which the data have been lost. Only one trustee, William Porter of Rutherford County, was listed in 1790 as owning no slaves. However, we know from other sources that Hugh Williamson, a scholarly physician who disapproved of slavery, also owned no slaves.
By far the largest slaveholder among the original trustees was Benjamin Smith, who had 221 slaves in 1790. Others who owned large numbers were Stephen Cabarrus with 73, Samuel Johnston with 96, Willie Jones with 120, and Richard Dobbs Spaight with 71.
In this dissertation, I contend that sugar planters in the antebellum South managed their estates progressively, efficiently, and with a capitalist political economy and ideology. By embracing slavery, technology, and a host of improvements, sugar planters strove to create integrated units producing, manufacturing, and marketing sugar on an agro-industrial scale. Despite a century of historiographical debate, historians remain divided over the incompatibility of slavery with industrial and agricultural innovation. Whether they look to Adam Smith or Karl Marx, most historians deem free labor a necessity for technology and growth. This, however, appears inaccurate, as antebellum sugar planters confidently advocated improvement and saw no contradiction between capitalism and slavery. The quantitative and qualitative growth of the antebellum sugar industry remains testament to that fact. In the past twenty years, a group of scholars challenged the notion that slavery and the antebellum South were pre-capitalist. Their work, while underpinning my own study, failed to satisfactorily prove that antebellum planters operated as entrepreneurial capitalists. My dissertation hopefully fills this void as few scholars have systematically analyzed the growth of a single planter class that was so reliant on the synchronization of agriculture and industry as the Louisiana sugar masters. These agricultural magnates responded to a burgeoning market for sugar by spatially expanding their cane crops, adopting modern agricultural techniques, embracing technological improvement, practicing innovative management and shaping the dynamics of slavery to maximize labor productivity. Progressive and entrepreneurial, the sugar planters brought south Louisiana into an age of capitalist modernity. Southern progress, however, differed fundamentally from that of the North because the laborers who transformed the sugar industry and manned the steam engines were African-American slaves who materially advanced the process of modernization. By imposing order and discipline in the work-place, the planters hoped to transform their laborers into industrial workers who toiled at the mechanical pace of the steam age. To a large extent, they were successful, but to obtain the labor they required, the planters adopted both the lash and a complex system of rewards to motivate their workers during the harvest season.
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