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00:00:00Your country, how came it yours? Before the pilgrims landed, we were here.
00:00:14Your country, how came it yours? Before the pilgrims landed, we were here.
00:00:42At the close of the first revolution in this country with Great Britain, there were but
00:00:4713 states in the Union. Now there are 24, and the whites are dragging us around in chains
00:00:57and handcuffs to their new states and territories, believing we were made by our Creator to be
00:01:04an inheritance to them and their children forever.
00:01:10The whites want slaves and want us for slaves. But some of them will curse the day they ever
00:01:19saw us.
00:01:24God will cause them to rise up one against another, to be split and divided, and oppress
00:01:32each other with sword in hand. David Walker.
00:02:07The master was fixing to tie them up and whip them. They said, Master, you ain't gonna lick
00:02:13me.
00:02:15He runs down to the river. The overseer, he sure thought he can catch them when they get
00:02:21to the river. But before he can get to them, they rise up in the air and fly away. They
00:02:30fly
00:02:30right back to Africa. I think that happened on Butler Island. Shad Hall, a slave of Georgia.
00:02:44In the sea islands of Georgia, the slave community at Butler Island and St. Simons was almost as
00:02:51old as the nation. The labor of these enslaved men and women made the Butler family one of the richest
00:03:04in the United States.
00:03:15In 1830, Pierce Butler was waiting to inherit his share of the family fortune. He was a 20-year-old
00:03:23Philadelphia
00:03:23socialite and had never seen the family plantation that preserved his affluence. Butler traced his lineage to the founding of
00:03:31the Republic. His grandfather, Major Pierce Butler,
00:03:35was a signer of the Constitution and wrote its fugitive slave clause. The younger Butler had little interest in politics.
00:03:44But like other men of his class, he rested easy in the knowledge that the democracy his grandfather helped create
00:03:50was firmly in the grasp of slavery men.
00:03:55You come to Washington, the seat of the government, of the nation that sees itself as the freest nation on
00:04:02the face of the earth. And in that capital, what you see is slave auctions, slave holding pins. Groups of
00:04:13slaves being marched through the streets on their way to Virginia or farther south. So that slavery is very much
00:04:19in evidence in the nation's capital.
00:04:23And not a few foreign visitors make note of the fact that they come to the seat of American freedom
00:04:31and they are struck by the presence of American slavery.
00:04:40Although 75% of southern whites did not own slaves, the new president, Andrew Jackson, was a slave holder, as
00:04:48were four of the six presidents preceding him.
00:04:51Men loyal to slavery dominated the Supreme Court and the presidential cabinet. Within a few years, their influence in the
00:04:59House of Representatives would prevent petitions against slavery from even being read on the floor.
00:05:06The relation which now exists between the two races has existed for two centuries. It has grown with our growth
00:05:15and strengthened with our strength.
00:05:17It has entered into and modified all our institutions, civil and political. We cannot permit it to be destroyed. Come
00:05:28what will, should it cost every drop of blood.
00:05:33We cannot permit it to be destroyed.
00:05:33John C. Calhoun, Senator, South Carolina.
00:05:38Money invested in slavery was by far the largest concentration of capital in the country. By 1830, two million African
00:05:47Americans were enslaved in the United States, worth over a billion dollars to their owners. By comparison, annual federal revenues
00:05:56were less than 25 million.
00:06:00The vast majority of the world's cotton was being produced and exported in the South. They were sort of like
00:06:05Saudi Arabia and Kuwait with oil at certain points in this century. They had it all and everyone else wanted
00:06:12it. And this gave them a tremendous amount of economic power in the world. And of course, all this rested
00:06:19on slave labor.
00:06:21And the cotton was shipped by northern ships and it was financed by northern insurance companies. The cotton trade was
00:06:28the basis of shipbuilding, of shipping, maritime enterprise, banking, insurance, as well as the early factories, which would be developing
00:06:36in this period, transforming the cotton into textiles.
00:06:40So there were many thousands or hundreds of thousands of northerners whose livelihoods depended directly on slavery.
00:06:47So what that says is that African American slavery can march right along with the nation as it progresses. And
00:06:57African American enslavement is part of the progress of America, of white America.
00:07:05For America, progress meant westward expansion.
00:07:10President Andrew Jackson forced Cherokees, Choctaws, and other tribes off their ancestral lands.
00:07:1825 million acres were seized from the Indian nations to make room for more white settlers, more cotton, more slaves.
00:07:2825 million acres.
00:07:5825 million acres.
00:07:5825 million acres.
00:07:5925 million acres.
00:08:0425 million acres.
00:08:0525 million acres.
00:08:0525 million acres.
00:08:0725 million acres.
00:08:0725 million acres.
00:08:0825 million acres.
00:08:0925 million acres.
00:08:0925 million acres.
00:08:1125 million acres.
00:08:1225 million acres.
00:08:1625 million acres.
00:08:1725 million acres.
00:08:25will Harriet Jacobs one cannot argue that slaves were content you might have
00:08:37ten slaves one night when you go to bed the next morning you can almost be
00:08:43bankrupt if the slaves if those ten slaves have left that could be as much
00:08:48as twenty or thirty thousand dollars worth of investment there and they just
00:08:54disappear any attempt to escape bondage was an act of rebellion runaways were
00:09:06hunted by local patrols and professional slave catchers in Edenton North Carolina
00:09:14Harriet Jacobs was 21 years old when she decided to run she hid under floorboards
00:09:22in the swamp and finally in her grandmother's house a small shed had been
00:09:29added to my grandmother's house years ago between the boards and the roof was a
00:09:34very small garret to this hole I was conveyed the air was stifling the
00:09:41darkness total the gap was only nine feet long and seven feet wide the highest
00:09:49part was only three feet high rats and mice ran over my bed for a window she made a
00:09:58small hole through it she watched almost every day the master who had beaten her
00:10:03and stalked her sexually since she was 15 and she saw her children whom she
00:10:09couldn't take with her but whom she dared not leave relatives brought her food in
00:10:15secret and cared for her son and daughter I lived in that dismal hole almost
00:10:22deprived of air and light with no space to move my limbs for nearly seven years
00:10:29yet I would have chosen this rather than my lot as a slave
00:10:38who better to define freedom than a slave a slave probably never loses sight of the
00:10:47idea of freedom or when he or she does is the probably the moment when they are doomed
00:10:51our sense of freedom was something spiritual it was like a fire inside of us
00:11:00free African Americans were one of the greatest threats to slavery 182,000 in
00:11:07the south 137,000 living in the northern states in churches newspapers anti-slavery
00:11:14meetings and Negro conventions they openly denounced racial bondage and worked to
00:11:20overthrow it slavery in the south had an impact on the life of every black person
00:11:28in the country no matter where that black person was it was almost impossible that
00:11:34if you are a free black person you wouldn't have a friend or a relative mother
00:11:37father-son daughter in slavery and so you had that very personal connection in
00:11:44Boston David Walker had never been anyone's property he made a good living
00:11:49as a used clothing merchant but his father had been a slave and in 1829 Walker
00:11:56launched his own private war on slaveholders
00:12:03America is more our country than it is the whites the greatest riches in all
00:12:08America have arisen from our blood and tears and they will drive us from our
00:12:13property and home they must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift
00:12:20destruction upon them David Walker Walker's appeal to the colored citizens of the
00:12:27world violently condemned American slavery and racism and call for slaves to
00:12:32rise up against their masters racial bondage prophesied Walker was an
00:12:37abomination which would call divine wrath down upon the country Walker said no
00:12:44black people are Americans and they deserve to be not only freed but treated as
00:12:50citizens of this country he he utilized the rhetoric of the nation the
00:12:56rhetoric of liberty of equality the Declaration of Independence and threw it
00:13:00back in the face of white America charging the nation with being hypocrites with
00:13:04violating their own professed ideals Walker smuggled his appeal into the south
00:13:12by sewing it into the coats of black sailors its fiery rhetoric announced a
00:13:17radical shift in the struggle to abolish slavery southern officials put a price on
00:13:22Walker's head $1,000 dead 10,000 if taken alive three states Georgia Louisiana and
00:13:33North Carolina as a direct result of Walker's appeal passed legislation making it a
00:13:40crime to teach slaves or in fact blacks free or slave from being able to read and
00:13:46right and the south will now begin after the early 30s to limit civil liberties in a major way limiting
00:13:55freedom of press freedom of the speech as a result of the abolition movement David Walker died under
00:14:04mysterious circumstances two years later in 1831 when that Turner slave revolt in
00:14:10Virginia left more than 55 whites dead southern officials blamed it on publisher
00:14:15William Lloyd Garrison and his Boston newspaper the Liberator at age 26 Garrison was
00:14:24impoverished he slept in his tiny press office and was ridiculed for hiring a black
00:14:29apprentice his anti-slavery newspaper was in continual danger of going under but
00:14:35Garrison's passion to destroy slavery soon made him notorious among slavery
00:14:40supporters like other abolitionists he threatened an American way of life
00:14:47Garrison was also one of the few white abolitionists who shouldered up to David Walker
00:14:52and actually he serialized parts of Walker's appeal in the Liberator and 1831 after Walker's
00:15:00death Garrison believed that through moral suasion as it was called at the time by an
00:15:06onslaught of persuasion that southerners over time could be convinced of the sin of slaveholding
00:15:16before God such a glaring contradiction as exists between our creed and practice the annal of six thousand
00:15:24years cannot parallel I am ashamed of my country I am sick of our unmeaning declamation in praise of liberty
00:15:33and
00:15:33equality of our hypocritical cant about the unalienable rights of man we are guilty all guilty horribly guilty
00:15:46william lloyd garrison black activists gave Garrison money sold subscriptions and filled his newspaper with their own anti-slavery writings
00:16:01three out of four subscribers were black the Liberator became the voice of the abolition crusade
00:16:13abolitionist white and black trained themselves to be professional agitators they preached their anti-slavery message in open fields and
00:16:22churches in cities and villages
00:16:27but as their assault on slavery intensified so did the backlash from northern whites a mob dragged Garrison through Boston
00:16:36streets at the end of a rope in all
00:16:38in Malton Illinois rioters murdered white anti-slavery publisher Elijah Lovejoy and destroyed his printing press
00:16:49what the abolitionists didn't realize was how deeply embedded in the social economic and political structure slavery was they didn't
00:17:02realize how powerful the slaveocracy was and they didn't realize how much
00:17:08racism had embedded the fabric of American life most white Americans knew that slavery was wrong the way they reconciled
00:17:19themselves to it was that to think that it could be abolished would bring worse consequences on the country one
00:17:30is that it would disrupt the Constitution it would perhaps unleash civil war that it would unleash a large mass
00:17:37of free
00:17:38black people who were regarded as not assimilable in the society that it would lead to calamities
00:17:50dear beloved mother Satan has come down in great wrath in the city of brotherly love knowing his time is
00:17:59short William Lloyd Garrison
00:18:05in Philadelphia the new abolitionist meeting place Pennsylvania hall had only been open three days when the national anti-slavery
00:18:14convention of American women gathered there as women speakers took the podium they could hear an angry mob outside
00:18:24do you ask what has the North to do with slavery the spirit of slavery
00:18:30the spirit of slavery is here and has been roused to wrath by our abolitionist speeches and conventions for surely
00:18:37liberty would not foam and tear itself with rage cast out first the spirit of slavery from your own hearts
00:18:47Angelina Grimke Weld they were bringing women to the platform and having women speak in public which was a brand
00:18:54new affair and a threat to the order as people understood it and perhaps most notably they brought black abolitionists
00:19:02onto platforms speaking in public telling their own stories in their own voices all of this now to many white
00:19:10northerners was a threat to the social order as they understood it
00:19:15the next day the black and white women held their ground but that night as they emerged from the building
00:19:20linked arm in arm the mob stoned them
00:19:24the mob now increased to several thousand and got in the hall by dashing open the doors with their axes
00:19:31they then set fire to this huge building and in the course of an hour it was a solid wall
00:19:39of flame
00:19:45for abolitionists the message was clear demands for racial equality threaten not only the slave holding south but the privileges
00:19:54of whiteness in the north
00:19:59we think of the jacksonian era as the era of the common man and in a sense it was the
00:20:05era of the common man as long as the common man was white and so here to be a
00:20:10here we have a great distinction between whiteness giving citizenship or standing or almost personhood and no matter how rich
00:20:23you are if you're black you are not a person or you are not a citizen and in the 1830s
00:20:31over and over again places like Pennsylvania new legislation inserts the word white
00:20:40white into the regulation of voting so this is the I would say the great watershed of where whiteness makes
00:20:49the big difference in becoming a citizen
00:20:54the racial system the system of white preferment and employment and political access and citizenship came to embrace virtually all
00:21:03so-called white people in this country who did in fact have a stake in the advantage of the
00:21:09racial supremacy they had access to jobs from which even free Negroes were excluded they had the right to vote
00:21:16so definitely white people gained from the system of racial supremacy without that white itself would have been a meaningless
00:21:23category it would have been simply a physical description like tall
00:21:40in all social systems there must be a class to do the manual duties to perform the drudgery of life
00:21:49that is a class requiring but a low order of intellect
00:21:56its requisites are vigor docility fidelity such a class you must have or you would not have that other class
00:22:09which leads progress civilization and refinement
00:22:16fortunately for the south she found a race adapted to that purpose
00:22:24james henry hammond senator south carolina
00:22:42by 1838 pierce butler of philadelphia and his brother john had inherited the butler family plantations on the altamaha river
00:22:51in georgia ownership included 730 human beings slaves and
00:22:58who grew sea island cotton on saint simons and rice on butler island
00:23:05at age 28 pierce butler a man with a taste for high living was now one of the richest men
00:23:12in the country
00:23:18his new wife was english born fanny kimball an actress of international acclaim
00:23:27kimball believed in abolitionism and even tried to publish an anti-slavery tract
00:23:32butler stopped her fearing it would bring the mob to their doorstep
00:23:38their mansion was only six blocks from the ruins of pennsylvania hall
00:23:46there's some controversy over whether or not fanny kimball knew where her future husband's wealth came from
00:23:52there certainly was no controversy over the fact that she knew he was very wealthy and that was very attractive
00:23:58to her
00:23:58and many philadelphia families were attached to the plantation south by marriage by inheritance
00:24:05in december 1838 kimball made the ten day journey to the sea islands with her husband and their two young
00:24:12daughters to see the source of their wealth
00:24:23she hoped to persuade peers to gradually emancipated slaves as some slaveholders had
00:24:32but she was entering into a world for which nothing in her life had prepared her
00:24:40we now approached the low reedy banks of butler island
00:24:44the wharf began to be crowded with negroes shouting laughing and clapping their hands
00:24:50a usual expression of savages and children to express their ecstasy at our arrival
00:24:55they seized our clothes and our hands and almost wrung them off
00:24:59i believe i was almost frightened and it was not until we were safely housed and the door shut
00:25:05that we indulged in a fit of laughing quite as full on my part of nervousness as of amusement
00:25:16although kimball brought with her all the racial anxieties and prejudices of her time
00:25:21she was drawn to the people in this place she called negro land
00:25:29she kept a very careful journal while she was there she got acquainted especially with slave women
00:25:39who gradually came to trust her because she was different from any white person that they had ever seen before
00:25:48the butler rice plantation was the largest in georgia one of the biggest in the united states
00:25:55here on her husband's estate kimball expected to find the people well cared for
00:26:11well one evening nine women came in and she thought well she had been getting these stories about
00:26:19how many miscarriages they had had and how many children had died and so on
00:26:23she thought well this evening i'll ask them all i'll ask every single one of them
00:26:30nanny has had three children two of them are dead
00:26:35she came to implore that the rule of sending them into the fields three weeks after giving birth might be
00:26:41altered
00:26:43leah caesar's wife has had six children three are dead
00:26:50sarah stephen's wife this woman's case and history were alike deplorable
00:26:56she had had four miscarriages had brought seven children into the world
00:27:01five of whom were dead and was again with child
00:27:07on butler island chronic malaria sickened the mothers and created miscarriages and weak infants
00:27:17more than half the enslaved children died before the age of six
00:27:27i stood in profound ignorance sickening with the side of suffering which i knew not how to alleviate
00:27:34and i beg you to bear in mind that the negroes on mr butler's estate are generally considered well off
00:27:49280 000 people were enslaved in georgia in 1838 almost half the state's population
00:27:55effective slave management the science of caring for and working negro slaves was widely discussed in agricultural journals
00:28:04in this essay butler overseer roswell king jr offered readers expert advice on proper diet and medical treatment for negroes
00:28:13but kimball discovered king and his father had raped numbers of slave women at butler island
00:28:24betty frank's wife was taken from him by the overseer the all-efficient and all-satisfactory mr king
00:28:32and she had a son by him
00:28:36i do not know how long mr king's occupation of frank's wife continued
00:28:41this outrage was notorious among the slaves
00:28:47frank was headman frank the black driver second only to the white overseer
00:28:53a skilled planter frank supervised other black drivers and their work gangs
00:28:58he assigned daily jobs according to the overseer's instructions
00:29:03serious infractions against the system like stealing or running away were punishable by a cool 100 lashes
00:29:11on another plantation georgia slave charles ball saw punishment even more disturbing
00:29:18and charles ball witnesses um a house servant as he finds out who's being brutally lashed she's tied
00:29:29her legs and her arms are tied to the ground she's stripped to the waist the owner um beats her
00:29:41brutally
00:29:41and she's bleeding and she's bleeding and then he goes into the house and he brings back a candle
00:29:48and he lights the candle and he's dripping um the the wax on the wounds of this woman
00:29:56but what he also found striking was that as she's being whipped he looks at the house and he sees
00:30:05that the
00:30:05planter's daughters are looking out and watching this as well
00:30:09as little baby don't you cry
00:30:18for you'll be an angel by and by
00:30:28suppose you were a child growing up on the plantation
00:30:37the people who raise you your surrogate mother your mammy is a black woman
00:30:44this is a person that raises you from the time you are this high until adulthood
00:30:50what is the impact on this child of having his surrogate mother become his property
00:30:59what is the impact of having his best friend who is a black slave child come to him one day
00:31:08and say
00:31:08do you know that your father has sold my father what is the impact of that on the white child
00:31:30i am getting perfectly savage over all these doings
00:31:35and really should consider my own throat and those of my children well cut
00:31:42what if some night the people were to take it into their heads to clear off scores in that fashion
00:31:53at butler island the preacher cooper london secretly asked kimball for bibles to teach the people to read
00:31:59something they both knew was against the law
00:32:02when kimball asked him how he learned to read he kept silent
00:32:09kimball continued to bring her husband slave petitions for more food for rags for a longer resting period after childbirth
00:32:18the men forced to pull their own plows asked for mules
00:32:22finally pierce butler had enough of petitions
00:32:30today i have had a most painful conversation with mr butler who has declined receiving any of the people's petitions
00:32:37through me
00:32:40whether he is wearied with these supplications or whether he has been annoyed at the number of horrible stories of
00:32:46oppression
00:32:46which cannot be done away with by his angry exclamations of why do you believe such trash
00:32:53don't you know the niggers are all damned liars i do not know
00:33:00this is no place for me
00:33:04since i was not born among slaves and cannot bear to live among them
00:33:22i longed to draw in a plentiful draft of fresh air
00:33:26to stretch my cramped limbs
00:33:29to feel the earth under my feet again
00:33:32my relatives were on the lookout for a chance of escape
00:33:36but none seemed tolerably safe
00:33:40harriet jacobs
00:33:46on a night in 1842
00:33:48friends at last smuggled harriet jacobs north to philadelphia by sea
00:33:53her son was safe with her free grandmother
00:33:56her daughter was already in new york
00:33:58after seven years in hiding
00:34:00harriet jacobs was free
00:34:06the next morning i was on deck as soon as the day dawned
00:34:11to see the sun rise for the first time on free soil
00:34:16we watched the reddening sky and saw the great orb come up out of the water
00:34:26soon the waves began to sparkle and everything caught the beautiful glow
00:34:37we had escaped from slavery
00:34:41and we supposed ourselves to be safe
00:34:55once you're free i mean that's not the end of your problem
00:34:57you've got to work you've got to have a place to live
00:35:00you have to have very practical kinds of things
00:35:02i mean these are people coming out of the south
00:35:03so what do you do in terms of dealing with northern winters
00:35:06very practical kinds of things clothing
00:35:10were you going to stay in that city
00:35:12were you going to try to move farther north
00:35:16well when blacks came to the north
00:35:17and lived in in black communities in philadelphia or boston or new york
00:35:22or out west even in cincinnati
00:35:23they found themselves living in in largely all black enclaves
00:35:28they found themselves living in communities where they created their own churches
00:35:32where they struggled to create their own schools
00:35:35where they occasionally as in new york would create orphanages
00:35:38where they also attended they tried to create a mutual relief associations
00:35:44to try to provide people with insurance policies
00:35:47with the ability to buy land if they wanted to move out to rural areas
00:35:52in most northern cities colored americans were denied the right to vote
00:35:57testify against whites sign a binding contract or attend white schools
00:36:03but even this segregated freedom was jealously guarded
00:36:07runaways kept a lookout for slave catchers
00:36:09they found jobs and raised money to purchase loved ones out of slavery
00:36:27by eighteen forty over a thousand anti-slavery societies had risen up in the free states
00:36:32with black and white membership numbering two hundred thousand
00:36:43abolitionist women and men were sending thousands of petitions to congress demanding an end to the slave trade in the
00:36:50capital
00:36:52abolitionists boycotted slave-grown rice sugar and cotton
00:36:57anti-slavery slogans and emblems were seen on everything from sugar bowls to children's primers
00:37:24but it was the powerful voices of fugitive slaves in the north that infused the movement with new urgency
00:37:44well the slave narratives were in some ways an argument with america
00:37:48they were an argument with the system of slavery
00:37:51these were ways now that a former slave could not only publish his own story
00:37:57to release his own identity
00:37:59to sort of gain a kind of order over the chaos of his or her own life
00:38:05but it was a way now to directly challenge the people who had owned him
00:38:10with a free voice from a free place
00:38:13when i was a slave i hated the white people
00:38:22when i was ten years old we was all sold
00:38:25i said oh god my mother told me if i asked you to make my master and mistress good you'd
00:38:32do it
00:38:34they didn't get good god maybe you can't do it kill them
00:38:41you see i know what it is to be taken in the barn
00:38:46and tied up and the blood drawed out of your bare back
00:38:51sojourner truth
00:38:56and it's very important for these people who for white people who live in small towns isolated
00:39:03who may really have never seen certainly never seen a slave may may not have ever seen a black person
00:39:08to have a real living breathing person stand before them and say i was a slave
00:39:14this was my life this is what slavery is like
00:39:19in 1845 the narrative of frederick douglas quickly became an international bestseller
00:39:26douglas a fugitive from maryland risked recapture by becoming an outspoken leader in the abolitionist cause
00:39:34we hold slavery to be a system of lawless violence
00:39:40that it never was lawful and never can be made so frederick douglas
00:39:48it was not only slavery that douglas and other abolitionists were calling into question
00:39:53but the belief that the constitution protected the right to own human beings
00:40:00the constitution of the united states inaugurated to form a more perfect union
00:40:05and secure the blessings of liberty could not well have been designed at the same time
00:40:11to maintain and perpetuate a system of rape and murder like slavery
00:40:17not one word can be found to authorize such a belief
00:40:23the abolitionists you might say invented a new and different constitution
00:40:29a different reading of the constitution very much informed by the declaration of independence
00:40:33and its affirmation of human equality and posited as an alternative to the dominant vision of america as a white
00:40:41society
00:40:42which was so prominent in this period
00:40:44so that the abolitionists you might say reinvigorated the rhetoric of the american revolution
00:40:50which stated that this was an asylum for liberty for all mankind
00:40:55but that rhetoric had not been put into reality by the founding fathers
00:40:59they had created a society of white entitlement
00:41:02in 1847 in rochester new york douglas founded the north star his own anti-slavery newspaper
00:41:12in the anti-slavery bookstore above his offices worked another fugitive from slavery harriet jacobs
00:41:31in january 1848 the discovery of gold in california's american river created what one newspaper called a revolution in the
00:41:41ordinary state of affairs
00:41:44many white southerners saw the new territory as a last link in a great slave-holding republic that would stretch
00:41:52to the pacific shore
00:41:55within a year 80 000 pioneers made the trek to the gold coast many masters brought their slaves
00:42:05by one estimate african-americans sent home from california over three quarters of a million dollars to buy loved ones
00:42:12out of bondage
00:42:16when californians petitioned congress to be a free state
00:42:19southern leaders threatened to quit the union and form their own country
00:42:26the price for saving the union would be the rights of black people
00:42:29in 1850 in return for free california
00:42:33southern leaders in congress demanded a tough new fugitive slave law
00:42:38no black person fugitive or freeborn would be safe
00:42:45under this law a person white or black could be deputized on the spot to help in the recovery of
00:42:54a fugitive slave
00:42:55so that if you were on the street and a marshal was chasing a fugitive that marshal could deputize you
00:43:03and you would have to participate in the recapture of that fugitive
00:43:06under penalty of imprisonment and fine
00:43:10special commissioners were appointed to try suspected runaways
00:43:14those accused were denied a trial by jury and the right to testify
00:43:18commissioners received ten dollars for every person returned to slavery
00:43:23only five dollars if the man or woman was acquitted
00:43:26it now made the federal government
00:43:30and northern citizen northern citizens complicitous in the process of retrieving and retaining slaves
00:43:38back to their masters
00:43:42it is the first time really in the lives of many white northerners that the slavery issue the slavery problem
00:43:49kind of comes home to their neighborhoods
00:43:51it comes home to their communities
00:43:53it means now to harbor a fugitive slave or even to be aware of a fugitive slave is to be
00:43:58committing a felony
00:44:01in new york harriet jacobs was trying to make a new life when her former master's daughter armed with the
00:44:08new law came north to kidnap her
00:44:13it was the beginning of a reign of terror to the colored population
00:44:17many families who had lived in the city for twenty years fled from it now
00:44:22many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before
00:44:25that her husband was a fugitive
00:44:28many a husband discovered that his wife had fled from slavery years ago
00:44:32and the children of his love were liable to be seized and carried into slavery
00:44:38I seldom ventured into the streets
00:44:41I went as much as possible through back streets and byways
00:44:45all that winter I lived in a state of anxiety
00:44:56I found my way to Boston
00:44:58I got employment
00:45:00I worked hard
00:45:01but I didn't tell anybody I was a slave
00:45:05one night
00:45:06I heard someone running behind me
00:45:09almost before I could speak
00:45:11I was lifted off my feet by six or seven others
00:45:14and it was of no use to resist
00:45:17Anthony Burns
00:45:22in 1854
00:45:24the arrest of Anthony Burns
00:45:26triggered a showdown between Boston abolitionists
00:45:29and the federal government
00:45:33abolitionists swore never to allow a fugitive slave to be taken
00:45:39the south perhaps understandably said look this is our constitutional right
00:45:43it's in the constitution that we have a right to get our fugitive slaves back
00:45:46how can illegal groups of northerners prevent this
00:45:51as news of Burns arrest spread
00:45:53hundreds of white citizens met at Boston's Fanuel Hall
00:45:57black citizens gathered in the basement of Tremont Temple
00:46:02the white meeting is going on debating about what they should be doing and so on
00:46:07when the word comes that the blacks are attacking the courthouse
00:46:09and the white meeting empties out
00:46:11pretty soon they're all around the courthouse
00:46:13trying to break in to get Anthony Burns out
00:46:18there was but room for one to pass in
00:46:21I glanced at my black ally
00:46:24he did not even look at me but sprang first
00:46:27we found ourselves face to face with six or eight policemen
00:46:31who laid about them with their clubs
00:46:34driving us to the wall
00:46:37I did not know until the next morning
00:46:39that one of the marshal's deputies
00:46:41a man named Batchelder had been killed
00:46:45T.W. Higginson
00:46:50the mayor ordered two artillery companies into the streets
00:46:54President Franklin Pierce sent in the U.S. Marines
00:46:59Boston abolitionists were already notorious for invading courthouses and jails
00:47:04to free captured runaways
00:47:06President Pierce was determined to show southern supporters
00:47:10he would enforce their fugitive slave law anywhere
00:47:13even in the so-called great abolitionist headquarters of Boston
00:47:20over the next three days
00:47:22the crowd of protesters grew to 7,000
00:47:25they surrounded the courthouse
00:47:27and threatened the troops who guarded Burns
00:47:29black waiters refused to serve the soldiers
00:47:34Douglas and others refused to apologize
00:47:36for Deputy Marshal Batchelder's death
00:47:42for a white man to defend his friend unto blood
00:47:45is praiseworthy
00:47:47but for a black man to do precisely the same thing
00:47:51is a crime
00:47:53we hold that when Batchelder undertook to play the bloodhound
00:47:58he forfeited his right to live
00:48:00Frederick Douglass
00:48:04you could think what you wanted about slavery hundreds of miles away
00:48:07but when a individual comes to your community
00:48:10a black individual fleeing marshals
00:48:12who are going to try to grab him and send him back to slavery
00:48:16it put slavery on a human level
00:48:19it made people have to choose
00:48:27on June 2nd Anthony Burns was convicted of being a fugitive slave
00:48:34when the captain of the watch was ordered to bring Burns out of the courthouse
00:48:38to send him back
00:48:39he resigned in protest
00:48:44the streets are ringed or lined with people who have come in from the outlying areas
00:48:51into Boston from Worcester and other distant places
00:48:57shopkeepers have draped their windows in black crepe
00:49:01and there's a coffin that hangs across the street with the message
00:49:05here lies liberty
00:49:10I feel my investment in life here is worth many percent less
00:49:15since Massachusetts deliberately restored Anthony Burns to slavery
00:49:21my thoughts are murder to the state
00:49:24my thoughts involuntarily go to plotting against the state
00:49:30Henry David Thoreau
00:49:3650,000 citizens crowded the streets
00:49:40companies of U.S. Marines, local militia and artillery
00:49:44marched Anthony Burns to the wharf
00:49:46and onto a ship bound for Virginia
00:49:51the showdown was over
00:49:53but some southerners asked themselves
00:49:56if the recapture of one man was worth
00:49:58hundreds of troops
00:49:59the enormous expense of $50,000
00:50:02and the life of a deputy marshal
00:50:07two months later on the 4th of July
00:50:10William Lloyd Garrison publicly burned the fugitive slave law
00:50:14then as the crowd said amen
00:50:16he burned the constitution itself
00:50:19it was a covenant with death he said
00:50:22an agreement with hell
00:50:37by the 1850s
00:50:38Americans had begun to measure progress in miles of track laid
00:50:43southern states were building railroads faster than Germany, France or England
00:50:52cotton
00:50:52cotton financed the railroads of the south
00:50:54it purchased the African Americans
00:50:57who became laborers and cargo for the iron road
00:51:03when the cars began to start and the conductor cried out
00:51:07the colored people cried out with one voice
00:51:10as though the heavens and earth were coming together
00:51:13as the cars moved away
00:51:15we heard the weeping and wailing from the slaves
00:51:18as far as human voice could be heard
00:51:20and from that time to the present
00:51:23I have neither seen nor heard from my two sisters
00:51:27nor any of those who left cloths and depot
00:51:30on that memorable day
00:51:33Jacob Stroya
00:51:43in 1854 America was poised to build a railroad across the continent
00:51:48west of the Kansas territory
00:51:51whether that railroad would pass through a Kansas free state
00:51:54or a Kansas slave state
00:51:56was a question Americans north and south were now ready to settle with blood
00:52:01the Kansas-Nebraska bill passed by Congress
00:52:05declared that whoever settled Kansas
00:52:07could choose slavery or freedom for the new state
00:52:11to a lot of northerners
00:52:13their conception of the future of the west
00:52:17was held together by this geographical guarantee
00:52:21that slavery could never exist above the 36-30 parallel
00:52:25the Kansas-Nebraska act now in 1854
00:52:28erases that 34 year old vow
00:52:31which had the sanction of the Constitution
00:52:33it now meant
00:52:35that the settlement of this vast territory of the west and the northwest
00:52:39was open to slavery
00:52:41it was open to the possibility of 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 new slave states
00:52:48from northern states
00:52:50thousands of pioneers set out to settle Kansas
00:52:54the New England Immigrant Aid Company
00:52:57financed the settlement of entire villages
00:53:00in Brooklyn, New York
00:53:02abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher
00:53:05raised funds to give rifles to the free soil settlers
00:53:14from Missouri, Georgia, and other southern states
00:53:18white settlers came to Kansas
00:53:20armed to the teeth for the slavery cause
00:53:26if Kansas is not made a slave state
00:53:28it requires no sage to tell that
00:53:31without some very extraordinary revolution
00:53:34there will never be another slave state
00:53:37the sovereign squatter newspaper
00:53:40Kansas, 1856
00:53:44but most northerners who came to the plains
00:53:47did not want to end slavery nationwide
00:53:50they simply did not want to compete with it in Kansas
00:53:53and they didn't want to work alongside black people
00:53:56slave or free
00:53:58their movement was called free soil
00:54:03free soil meant free states for free whites
00:54:11white men
00:54:12is the future of America going to be
00:54:14America as white man's country
00:54:18or America as a country in which
00:54:21there are multiple races
00:54:24one of the ways you can ensure
00:54:27that America is in the future white man's country
00:54:30is to make sure that that West was
00:54:34as white as possible
00:54:36as free as possible from blacks
00:54:39whether these blacks were slave
00:54:41or whether these blacks were free
00:54:45settlers who only came hoping to build farms
00:54:48discovered they were homesteading a battlefield
00:54:50two opposing territorial governments emerged on the plains
00:54:55one pro-slavery
00:54:57the other free soil
00:54:58each government outlawed the other
00:55:01and both pushed to exclude free African Americans
00:55:07Cousin Sidney
00:55:09we heard that five men had been killed by free state men
00:55:13the men were butchered
00:55:15ears cut off
00:55:16and bodies thrown into the river
00:55:18the murdered men
00:55:20pro-slavery
00:55:22had thrown out threats and insults
00:55:24yet the act was barbarous and inhuman
00:55:27whoever committed by
00:55:30since yesterday
00:55:31I have learned that those who committed the murders
00:55:34were a party of Browns
00:55:37the war seems to have commenced in real earnest
00:55:42Edward Bridgman
00:55:47in 1856 a raiding party led by John Brown and his sons
00:55:51avenged the burning of the free soil town of Lawrence
00:55:54with the blood of five pro-slavery men
00:55:59at age 56 Brown was one of the few white men
00:56:03who didn't want an all-white Kansas
00:56:06he was a fiery abolitionist who hated slavery
00:56:09believing as one acquaintance put it
00:56:11that he was made by God
00:56:13to break the jawbone of slaveholders
00:56:20as white men killed white men in bleeding Kansas
00:56:24David Walker's prophecy of an American apocalypse seemed close at hand
00:56:33on the 4th of March 1857
00:56:36the new president James Buchanan
00:56:38promised the nation that the US Supreme Court
00:56:41would at last settle the question of slavery in the United States
00:56:44where it could go and where it could not
00:56:50Dred Scott a slave from Missouri
00:56:52has sued for his freedom on the grounds
00:56:55that his master had once taken him to free northern soil
00:56:59in his opinion for the court
00:57:01Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney resolved to decide
00:57:05African American destiny once and for all
00:57:10Dred Scott was not a citizen of Missouri
00:57:13and not entitled as such to sue in its courts
00:57:18we think they were not intended to be included under the word citizens in the Constitution
00:57:23and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges
00:57:28they were considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings
00:57:35subjugated by the dominant race
00:57:37and altogether unfit to associate with the white race
00:57:43it is obvious they were not even in the minds of the framers of the Constitution
00:57:48when they were conferring special rights upon the citizens
00:57:53Mr. Chief Justice Roger B. Tawney
00:57:55for the United States Supreme Court 1857
00:58:01no black person could be a citizen of the United States said Tawney
00:58:05this is a country the family of America as he called it was white
00:58:09and the South had a perfect right he said under the Constitution
00:58:12to expand slavery into all the territories of the United States
00:58:17in other words
00:58:19Tawney said that slavery existed wherever the owner wanted to take his slave
00:58:24and then he made that very famous statement that
00:58:28that a black man has no rights
00:58:33that a white man has to respect
00:58:491857 the year of the Dred Scott decision
00:58:52was a time of financial panic brought on by overextended credit
00:58:57over building of railroads
00:58:59and over speculation in western lands
00:59:01one of those who faced disaster was Pierce Butler
00:59:07Butler had ended his marriage to Fanny Kimball
00:59:10in a scandalous public divorce in 1849
00:59:15Kimball returned to the theater supporting herself by reading
00:59:18from Shakespeare on stage
00:59:22Butler was still famous for his extravagance
00:59:25he once lost $24,000 in a single hand of cards
00:59:30by the time of the panic he was already in debt
00:59:35to protect the family's interest
00:59:37trustees were given control of his estate
00:59:40after the stock market collapse in 1857
00:59:44it was rumored Butler had gone through an inheritance worth over $700,000
00:59:51to appease creditors
00:59:53the trustees sold the Butler family mansion in Philadelphia
00:59:56then they traveled south to Georgia
00:59:59to assess the slave property
01:00:03allotment A was Pierce Butler's share of over 900 slaves
01:00:07at Butler Island and St. Simons
01:00:12allotment A totaled 476 men, women and children
01:00:16with a market value estimated at over $260,000
01:00:24by February 1859
01:00:27the Butler Island people had to know
01:00:29that something terrible was coming
01:00:37head man Frank was listed as superannuated
01:00:42too old for the block
01:00:44so was the preacher Cooper London
01:00:47who 20 years before had asked Fanny Kimball
01:00:50to send back bibles and prayer books from Philadelphia
01:00:54Pierce Butler did not want to put his people on the block
01:00:57but in February 429 men, women and children
01:01:03including a child named for the master
01:01:06were loaded onto railway cars and steamboats
01:01:09and shipped to Timbroke Racetrack in Savannah
01:01:13it would be the largest sale of human beings
01:01:17in the history of the United States
01:01:21and the soonest time get tough
01:01:22and he said he was going to lose
01:01:24his 500 acres of better
01:01:27because of taxes and hard time
01:01:29first thing he did he was going to sell
01:01:31his supposedly family member which was you
01:01:35your skin was black
01:01:36so you were going to be sold to make a difference
01:01:38you were sold for as cheap as 200 bucks
01:01:41to as high as $2,000
01:01:42but you were sold to save whatever he needed to save
01:01:45he was going to sell his mother and father
01:01:48his sister and brother
01:01:49we were going to sell you and I
01:01:51days after the Butler Island people arrived for inspection
01:01:55a cold drizzle began to fall
01:01:59the affair was regarded with unusual interest
01:02:03throughout the south
01:02:04nothing was heard of for days
01:02:06in bar rooms and public houses
01:02:09but talk of the great sale
01:02:10criticism of the affairs of Mr. Butler
01:02:13and speculation as to the probable prices
01:02:17the stock would bring
01:02:19Mortimer Neal Thompson
01:02:25Thompson came to Savannah from New York
01:02:28disguised as a slave speculator
01:02:30to record the event for the New York Tribune
01:02:37none of these Butler slaves had ever been sold before
01:02:40on the faces of all was an expression of heavy grief
01:02:45some appeared to be resigned to the hard stroke of fortune
01:02:53by the first day of the auction the drizzle had become a hard rain
01:02:59desperate fathers and husbands tried to convince benevolent looking planters
01:03:04to bid for them and their families
01:03:08you think love would be different than it is now
01:03:11their phrase was try to keep the family together at all costs
01:03:15and that's what they tried for
01:03:16that's what they prayed for
01:03:17keeping the family together
01:03:19and they do anything to keep the family together
01:03:22practically anything to do it
01:03:25the women never spoke to a white man unless spoken to
01:03:29and then made the conference as short as possible
01:03:325106, Marion Worcester
01:03:33where'd he go
01:03:34how many dollars
01:03:34good race hands here
01:03:35two good ones
01:03:36how many dollars
01:03:36what'd he afford
01:03:37two times the count now
01:03:38you're gonna buy them both
01:03:39how many dollars
01:03:39through all the insults to which they were subjected
01:03:42they conducted themselves with perfect self-respect
01:03:49the children were of all sizes
01:03:51the youngest being fifteen days old
01:03:54six hundred dollars
01:03:56five seventy-five
01:03:56six hundred dollars
01:03:57six hundred dollars
01:03:58six hundred dollars
01:03:59the buyers
01:04:00who were present to the number of two hundred
01:04:03clustered around the platform
01:04:05the wind howled through the open side
01:04:08the rain came pouring in
01:04:10how many dollars
01:04:11five hundred dollars
01:04:11here you go
01:04:12five hundred
01:04:12two and a half
01:04:13they were sold in families
01:04:17but let us see
01:04:19the man and wife might be sold to the pine woods of North Carolina
01:04:23their brothers and sisters scattered through the cotton fields of Alabama
01:04:27and the rice swamps of Louisiana
01:04:29while the parents might be left on the old plantation
01:04:34they had a thousand dollars
01:04:35up to be a thousand dollars
01:04:36a thousand dollars
01:04:36that was a hundred dollars
01:04:37good
01:04:37eleven hundred dollars
01:04:38eleven hundred dollars
01:04:40eleven hundred dollars
01:04:41last and final call
01:04:42for eleven hundred dollars
01:04:43sold
01:04:44one thousand dollars to the gentleman from Camden County
01:04:47believe that
01:04:50who can tell how closely intertwined are a band of four hundred persons
01:04:56living isolated from all the world besides
01:05:00do they not naturally become one great family
01:05:04each man a brother unto each
01:05:10at Tim broke race track
01:05:12no legendary powers of flight could save the Butler Island people
01:05:18for two solid days
01:05:20remembered for generations as the weeping time
01:05:22the heavens broke
01:05:24as husband after wife
01:05:26brother after sister
01:05:28child after mother
01:05:30ascended the dreaded block
01:05:32to be called off individually
01:05:35or in family lots
01:05:37as stated in the catalog
01:05:41the New York Herald reported
01:05:43that only after the last slave was sold
01:05:47did the rain stop
01:06:06months after the great sale in Georgia
01:06:09Dangerfield Newby a free man
01:06:11learned that his own wife and children were soon to go
01:06:14under the auctioneer's hammer in Brentville Virginia
01:06:22dear husband
01:06:24I want you to buy me as soon as possible
01:06:28for if you do not get me
01:06:30somebody else will
01:06:32dear husband
01:06:34you know not the trouble I see
01:06:36it is said master is in want of money
01:06:40if so
01:06:41I know not what time he may sell me
01:06:44and then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted
01:06:48for there has been one bright hope
01:06:51to cheer me in all my troubles
01:06:52for if I thought I should never see you
01:06:55this earth would have no charms for me
01:06:58do all you can for me
01:07:00which I have no doubt you will
01:07:03your affectionate wife
01:07:05your affectionate wife
01:07:06Harriet Newby
01:07:16Dangerfield Newby had no money
01:07:18but that fall
01:07:19he joined up with 21 other abolitionists
01:07:23in a conspiracy against the government of the United States
01:07:26they would invade the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry Virginia
01:07:30and use the weapons to free slaves throughout the Virginia countryside
01:07:34as Newby saw it
01:07:36this was his last chance to save his wife and six children
01:07:44the conspiracy's leader was John Brown
01:07:47a wanted man with a price on his head
01:07:50after the fighting in Kansas
01:07:52he circulated secretly among black and white abolitionists
01:07:56collecting money weapons and volunteers to attack the federal arsenal
01:08:01his extraordinary plans suited the mood of many black abolitionists
01:08:05some were already preparing themselves for what they called
01:08:09the irrepressible conflict
01:08:12there is an increasing sensibility among abolitionists
01:08:16by the late 1850s
01:08:18though they do not know how to plan it
01:08:21that slavery is only going to be destroyed through some kind of violence
01:08:27besides Dangerfield Newby
01:08:28there was Osborne Anderson from Chatham, Canada
01:08:34from Oberlin, Ohio came Lewis Leary
01:08:38Leary's Irish grandfather and his free black great grandfather
01:08:41had fought in the revolution
01:08:45Leary recruited his nephew
01:08:46college educated John A. Copeland Jr.
01:08:50both had already risked their lives to rescue a fugitive
01:08:53from the hands of Kentucky slave catchers
01:08:57and there was Shields Green
01:08:58himself a fugitive slave
01:09:03of the 16 white raiders
01:09:05some were Quakers
01:09:06some had fought alongside Brown in Kansas
01:09:09three were Brown's own sons
01:09:12Owen, Oliver and Watson
01:09:14but missing from the roster was the man Brown wanted most at his side
01:09:19Frederick Douglass
01:09:21Brown had tried to recruit him and failed
01:09:26in order for John Brown's raid to have been successful
01:09:29he would have had to overcome not only local military authority
01:09:33not only state militia
01:09:35but ultimately the US Army
01:09:37I mean slavery was protected by the US government
01:09:41not just by some local officials
01:09:45and Douglass knew this
01:09:48I told him and these were my words
01:09:51that he was going into a perfect steel trap
01:09:54and that once in he would never get out alive
01:10:03on Sunday October 16 Captain Brown called his men down to worship
01:10:08he read from the Bible and then offered up a fervent prayer to God
01:10:12to assist in the liberation of the bondsmen in that slave holding land
01:10:19every man there assembled seemed to respond from the death of his soul
01:10:28at eight o'clock on Sunday evening
01:10:30Captain Brown said
01:10:32men
01:10:33get your arms
01:10:35we will proceed to the ferry
01:10:38Osborne Anderson
01:10:40Harpers Ferry Raider
01:10:44at first they moved swiftly with military precision
01:10:47the armory
01:10:48the federal arsenal
01:10:50and Hall's rifle works were captured without a shot
01:10:54a squad recruited black men willing to fight from neighboring plantations
01:10:59but Brown waited in the town too long
01:11:02and his men were discovered
01:11:08Riders galloped to spread the word that the nightmare of Nat Turner's rebellion
01:11:11had fallen years ago
01:11:12and now descended on Harpers Ferry
01:11:19as the sun rose the panic spread like wildfire
01:11:24men, women, and children
01:11:26could be seen leaving their homes in every direction
01:11:29impelled by fear
01:11:32the judgment day
01:11:34could not have presented more terror
01:11:36in its awful and certain punishment
01:11:40Osborne Anderson
01:11:44by morning there was full-scale war in the streets
01:11:50farmers and militiamen poured into the town
01:11:52some of Brown's men were pinned down at the rifle works
01:11:59others barricaded themselves in the firehouse
01:12:06along the river
01:12:07in the streets
01:12:08the raiders were hunted and shot down
01:12:11their bodies mutilated
01:12:21of the men shot on the rocks when the party were compelled to take to the river
01:12:25some were slaves
01:12:27some were slaves
01:12:28they suffered death before they would desert their companions
01:12:31and their bodies fell into the waves beneath
01:12:36Osborne Anderson
01:12:40in 36 hours
01:12:42it was finished
01:12:43troops led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stewart
01:12:47stormed the firehouse
01:12:49of the 22 raiders
01:12:51ten were dead
01:12:52John Brown's sons Oliver and Watson were dead
01:12:55Lewis Leary was dead
01:13:00Osborne Anderson and four others escaped
01:13:02seven more were captured and would stand trial
01:13:06among them John Copeland
01:13:08Shields Green
01:13:09and John Brown
01:13:15for slaveholders
01:13:16the raid was proof of a northern conspiracy to invade the south
01:13:20and destroy its institutions
01:13:22but more shocking
01:13:24were the bodies strewn along the river banks
01:13:26and in the streets of Harpers Ferry
01:13:28proof that white men and black were willing to die to end slavery
01:13:36in the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother's arms
01:13:41in the name of the slave mother
01:13:43her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations
01:13:48I thank you
01:13:49you have rocked the bloody Bastille
01:13:52and I hope that from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom
01:13:59Frances Ellen Watkins
01:14:04on December 2nd John Brown 59 years old
01:14:08sat on his coffin and rode to the gallows
01:14:10convicted of murder insurrection and treason
01:14:13across the north bells told
01:14:15in churches public meetings and in newspapers
01:14:18he was proclaimed a Christian martyr
01:14:23the charges of treason against John Copeland and Shields Green were dropped
01:14:28according to the Dred Scott decision they were not citizens and therefore not traitors
01:14:34but on charges of murder and conspiring to incite insurrection
01:14:39they were sentenced to death
01:14:44to death
01:14:44my fate so far as man conceal it is sealed
01:14:48but let not this fact occasion you any misery
01:14:52for remember the cause in which I was engaged
01:14:55remember it was a holy cause
01:14:57one in which men in every way better than I am have suffered and died
01:15:03farewell
01:15:03farewell
01:15:04goodbye
01:15:05serve your God and meet me in heaven
01:15:07your son and brother to eternity
01:15:10John A. Copeland
01:15:13John A. Copeland
01:15:37the next year civil war began
01:15:48the irrepressible conflict had come at last
01:15:53freedom to the slave should now be proclaimed from the capital
01:15:57and should be seen above the smoke and fire of every battlefield
01:16:02let the slaves and free colored people be called into service
01:16:06and formed into a liberating army
01:16:09to march into the south and raise the banner of emancipation
01:16:14Frederick Douglass
01:16:17across the country black men rushed to join the Union army
01:16:20but were turned away
01:16:21for President Abraham Lincoln
01:16:24this was a war to save the Union
01:16:26not to end slavery
01:16:30Lincoln feared offending the sensibilities of northern whites
01:16:34as well as the border slavery states
01:16:36who remained loyal to the Union
01:16:41in 1862
01:16:42Congress at last outlawed slavery in the nation's capital
01:16:47a year later
01:16:48faced with the need for more troops
01:16:50and pressure from abolitionists
01:16:52Lincoln took the first steps toward emancipation
01:16:58an immense assembly convened in Tremont Temple
01:17:01we were waiting and listening
01:17:04as for a bolt from the sky
01:17:06eight, nine, ten o'clock came
01:17:09still no word
01:17:10at last
01:17:11a man exclaimed in tones
01:17:14that thrilled all hearts
01:17:16it is coming
01:17:17it is on the wires
01:17:21the Emancipation Proclamation
01:17:23freed only slaves in states
01:17:25and parts of states
01:17:26still loyal to the Confederacy
01:17:28a million slaves within the Union territory
01:17:31were not freed
01:17:32but Douglass and others were convinced
01:17:35this was the beginning of the end of slavery
01:17:40in 1863
01:17:42the Union army began accepting free African Americans
01:17:46and runaway slaves into its ranks
01:17:48over 180,000 would take up arms in the struggle
01:17:53as Union soldiers fought their way south
01:17:56they were met by thousands of escaping slaves
01:18:00Sergeant George Hatton was stationed near Jamestown, Virginia
01:18:04where the first African slaves had come ashore over 200 years before
01:18:07there
01:18:09he saw how much the fortunes of freedom and slavery had turned
01:18:12we captured several colored women that belonged to Mr. Clayton
01:18:17who had given them a most unmerciful whipping
01:18:20on the arrival of Mr. Clayton in camp
01:18:23the commanding officer determined to let the women have their revenge
01:18:28the white commanding officer first ordered Mr. Clayton tied up
01:18:32and flogged by a black soldier in Company E
01:18:34a man who had once been Clayton's property
01:18:40after some fifteen or twenty well-addressed strokes
01:18:43the ladies one after another came up and gave him a like number
01:18:48to remind him they were no longer his
01:18:51but under the protection of the star-spangled banner
01:18:54and guarded by their own patriotic though once downtrodden race
01:18:59oh that I had the tongue to express my feelings while standing on the banks of the James River
01:19:05on the soil of Virginia
01:19:06the mother state of slavery
01:19:08as a witness of such a sudden reverse
01:19:14Sergeant George W. Haddon
01:19:16Sergeant George W. Haddon
01:19:16Company C
01:19:171st Regiment
01:19:18U.S. Colored Troops
01:19:23The nation's healing would be long in coming
01:19:27over 600,000 Americans died in the fight over slavery
01:19:31as many deaths as in all of America's other wars combined
01:19:36when the Civil War was over slavery was dead
01:19:43three new amendments to the Constitution outlawed slavery and promised
01:19:47that no American would be denied the rights of citizenship on the basis of race
01:19:51four million enslaved Americans were now free
01:19:59Dear Mrs. Chaney
01:20:00I would like to write to you a line from my old home
01:20:04I am sitting under the old roof
01:20:06twelve feet from the spot where I suffered all the crushing weight of slavery
01:20:13thank God there is no more need of hiding places
01:20:17Harriet Jacobs
01:20:21Jacobs was one of thousands who came back to the counties where they had been slaves
01:20:26like their former masters
01:20:28they too began the business of remaking their lives in a new land
01:20:33the road to freedom they all started down now would be longer more difficult and more painful
01:20:39than they could imagine
01:20:41but they began
01:20:43I cannot tell you how I feel in this place
01:20:46the change is so great I can hardly take it in
01:20:50I was born here
01:20:51I have hunted up all the old people done what I could for them
01:20:56many of them I have known from childhood
01:20:58many will learn to act for themselves
01:21:01I never saw such a state of excitement
01:21:07my love to Miss Daisy
01:21:09I sent her some jasmine blossoms
01:21:12tell her they bear the fragrance of freedom
01:21:17Harriet Jacobs
01:21:20their struggle to be free
01:21:23to be us
01:21:24was only beginning
01:21:30here's the idea
01:21:32freedom
01:21:33is worth it all
01:21:35Moses Mitchell
01:21:38ex-slave
01:22:02to learn more about Africans in America
01:22:05and to see the teacher's guide for the series
01:22:07visit the Africans in America website at www.pbs.org
01:22:14to purchase the Africans in America home video
01:22:17companion book
01:22:19or CD soundtrack
01:22:21call 1-800-255-9424
01:22:28oh
01:22:29oh
01:22:29oh
01:22:31oh
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