Middle Passages and Forced Migrations: Liberated Africans in Nineteenth-Century US Camps and Ships
2010; Frank Cass & Co.; Volume: 31; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/01440390903481670
ISSN1743-9523
Autores Tópico(s)Race, History, and American Society
ResumoAbstract Between 1858 and 1860, Africans liberated by the US Navy from four slave ships near the Cuban coast were detained in Federal custody before being transported for resettlement in Liberia. This article draws on the concept of 'middle passage' and 'forced migration' to explore the conditions under which the US government seized, detained, and transported Africans rescued from illegal trafficking. Looking at slave trade suppression through the lens of forced migration rather than legal process not only illuminates the traumatic aftermath of the original Middle Passage but also connects the voyages of liberated African shipmates to a broader history of coerced global movement. Acknowledgements A Huntington Library Mellon Fellowship and Faculty Enrichment Grant from Occidental College made research and writing of this article possible. Fellow American Studies Association Conference panelists and audience members Gabrielle Foreman, Jean Pfaelzer, Lisa Yun, and Sandra Gunning provided encouraging critique of earlier versions of this essay. I greatly appreciate the close reading of the manuscript and insightful comments of Emily Abel, Nancy Bercaw, Janet Brodie, Carla Bittel, Jeannine DeLombard, Alice Wexler, Devra Weber, LeeAnn Whites and the anonymous readers of Slavery & Abolition. Finally, I thank Corey Malcolm for providing an expert tour of sites in Key West. Notes 'Arrival of a Slaver', Charleston Daily Courier; ' Slaver – Her Crew and Cargo'. Georgia Telegraph. The brig's original name was the Putnam, which had been painted over with the false name, Echo. 'An Act in Addition to the Acts', Act of 3 March 1819, 533. The phrase 'serial displacement' is from Byrd, 'Captives and Voyagers', 37–49; see also Brown, The Reapers Garden, 32, 277 n.32. Christopher, Pybus and Rediker, eds. Many Middle Passages, 2. The transatlantic passage is distinguished in this essay using the upper case, Middle Passage. Quirk, 'Trafficked into Slavery', 184; Quirk, 'Ending Slavery in All Its Forms', 529–554. Younger, 'Liberia and the Last Slave Ships', 426–429, 438–441. 'An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves', Act of 2 March 1807, 428; 'An Act in Addition to the Acts', Act of 3 March 1819, 533. Kerber, 'Statelessness and the Citizen's Other', 14. Adderley, New Negroes from Africa, 3. Younger, 'Liberia and The Last Slave Ships'; Conyers and Malcom, 'Evidence for the African Cemetery'; Malcom 'Transporting African Refugees'. Younger. 'Liberia and the Last Slave Ships'. 424–442, quote on 425. Schuler, Alas! Alas! Kongo; Schuler, Liberated Africans in Nineteenth Century Guyana; Adderley, New Negroes from Africa; Sherwood, After Abolition: Fernández, 'The Havana Anglo-Spanish Mixed Commission'; Conrad. 'Neither Slave nor Free'. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade; Boyd, 'The American Colonization Society', 108–126; Howard, American Slavers; Sinha, The Counter-Revolution of Slavery, 153–186; Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholding Republic, 135–204; Canney, The Africa Squadron; Obadele-Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers; Finkelman, 'Regulating the Slave Trade'. Wells, The Slave Ship Wanderer; Calonius, The Wanderer; Diouf, Dreams of Africa. Akpan, 'Black Imperialism'; Newman, 'The Emergence of Liberian Women'; Clegg III, The Price of Liberty, 93–94; Tyler-McGraw, An African Republic, 133–135, 160. Phrase from a proslavery author who recommended enslavement in South Carolina as the form of 'liberty' best suited for recaptive Africans. Curtis, 'Native Africans in the Bay'. Canney, Africa Squadron, 201–6; Howard, American Slavers, 221–3; Younger, 'Liberia and the Last Slave Ships', 441. I use the word 'camp', to designate the detention areas used for Africans in 1858 at Fort Sumter and in 1860 in Key West near Fort Taylor. The contemporary terms for the camp at Key West included 'barracoon', a word associated with African coastal slave trading and 'the African Depot', a word that constructed the liberated Africans as travellers in waiting. I have used the term, 'camp', as an umbrella term to denote the temporary nature of the recaptives' facilities and to evoke the vulnerability of refugee populations. 'Africans at Key West', New York Times; 'Latest Slave Capture', Liberator. 'Slave Trade in Full Blast', Douglass' Monthly, 283. Such evidence raises questions about African awareness of slave-trade suppression procedures and whether enslaved captives below deck deliberately made noises to signal their presence to boarding officers. For examples of Africans alerting British officers to their enslaved status, see Alpers, 'The Other Middle Passage', 29. John Seys to Jacob Thompson, 31 October 1860, Reel 10, ROSI. 'An Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves', Act of 2 March 1807, 427; 'An Act in Addition to 'An Act …', Act of 20 April 1818, 450. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 109. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade, 109. 'An Act in Addition to the Acts', Act of 3 March 1819, 532–534. 'An Act to Continue in Force', Act of 15 March 1820, 600–601. Finkelman, 'Regulating the Slave Trade', 403, emphasizes the 1819 and 1820 legislation as a moral watershed in US policy. Pybus, 'A Less Favourable Specimen', 110. Pybus, 'His Country Marks', 36–8. Schuler, Alas! Alas! Kongo, 17–28, 54–64. Wong, 'The Crime of Color', 11 (manuscript quoted by permission of author). Levien, The Case of the Slaver Echo, 7. Levien, The Case of the Slaver Echo, 58. Once the court denied the Africans their rights of liberty by dismissing the writ of habeas corpus, the defence then slyly asserted that the court could not indict slave traders for the same act. Sinha, Counter-Revolution of Slavery, 156. 'Slaver Prize in Our Port', Charleston Daily Courier; Levien, The Case of the Slaver Echo, 51. On the slave captain's use of liquor to animate his crew during their attempted escape from the navy, see 'Captain of the Slaver', Georgia Telegraph. Scarlet, 'Key West Marine Correspondence'. 'Slaver – Her Crew and Cargo', Georgia Telegraph. Christopher, Pybus, and Rediker, Many Middle Passages, 2. The Echo shipmates disembarked first at Castle Pinckney (a less active Federal fort closer to Charleston) then were quickly moved to Fort Sumter. Pybus, 'His Country Marks', 36. Conrad, 'Neither Slave nor Free', 57–58. 'Slavers in Port', 8; 'Three African Boys', 8. 'Slave-Trade', 1. 'Africans of the Slave Bark "Wildfire"', 344–345; 'Slaver Echo and Her Cargo', New York Times. 'Full Particulars of the Capture of the Slaver Wildfire', New York Herald. The USS Wyandotte sent a Marine Guard on shore to Key West with six weeks of rations. 'Log of United States Steamer Wyandott [sic]', 17 May 1860; 'African Depot', Charleston Daily Courier. Levien, The Case of the Slaver Echo, 7–11, 56–58; Sinha, Counter-Revolution of Slavery, 153–186. Young, 'Ship Log', 1 July 1860; Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 25 July 1860, Reel 6, ROSI. For rumours that Key West graves stood empty to mask the sale of recaptives sold in New Orleans, see Diouf, Dreams of Africa, 77–78. For rumours of intended raiding of liberated Africans as they embarked for Liberia from Fort Sumter, see 'Steam Ship Niagara', 2. Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 10 May 1860, Reel 6, ROSI. Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 2, 6, 10 May 1860, Reel 6, ROSI, quoted in Newman, 'The Emergence of Liberian Women', 97. Crew and captain on illegal slavers frequently claimed to be 'passengers' to avoid prosecution. Fernando Moreno to Jacob Thompson, 28 May 1860, 10 June 1860, Reel 6, ROSI. The ACS continued to characterize the Bogota shipmates as 'fierce and intractable' after their resettlement at Sinou. 'From Liberia', 161–162. 'Slave trade refugees' is a term from Adderley, 'New Negroes from Africa', 2. 'Africans of the Slave Bark 'Wildfire'', 315. 'Africans at Key West – Affecting Scenes Among the Negroes', New York Times. Malcom and Conyers. 'Evidence for the African Cemetery'. Browne, Key West, the Old and the New quoted in Malcom and Conyers, 'Evidence for the African Cemetery', 8. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes'; Young, 'Ship Log', 1 July 1860. 'Capture of the Slave Vessels', Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper; 'Dreadful Sufferings Caused by the Slave Trade', 108–110. 'The Negros at Key West', Macon Daily Telegraph. 'Captured Africans', Charleston Daily Courier. 'What Is to Be Done with the Africans?' Charleston Daily Courier. 'For Africa Direct', Charleston Daily Courier. Examples of how proslavery advocates spoke for the Africans' desire to remain in US slavery include: 'Later from Havana', Charleston Courier; Ruffin, 'African Colonization Unveiled', 644; 'Captain of the Slaver', Georgia Telegraph. 'Africans at Key West – Their Departure for Liberia', The World. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 122. 'The Africans of the Slave Bark 'Wildfire'', 245. 'Sentiment of the Congoes – the Liberian Herald', 94. 'The Slaver Echo and Her Cargo at Charleston', New York Times; 'Africans of the Slave Bark "Wildfire"', 345. Young, 'Ship Log', 21 July 1860. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 7 Webster Lindsly to William McLain', 3 September 1860, Reel 10, ROSI. Lindsly reported that he was unable to provide the ACS with the requested roster of names, ages, sexes, and origins because of his inability to communicate with the Africans on the South Shore. 'Key West Africans', Constitution, 83. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 21. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 22. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 20–22. On the Castilian, for example, a rope stretched across the deck marked an area off limits to the passengers. Young, 'Ship Log', 1 July 1860. J. On slave-ship conditions, see Woodruff, Report of the Trials, 8. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr Grymes', 9–16. 'Return of the Niagara', 2. On the Castilian, Young reported 17 deaths within the first week, primarily from diarrhoea, which he attributed to the impact of the slave ship and the 'difference in water and food at Key West'. Young, 'Ship Log', 8 July 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 1 July 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 21 July 1860 and 7 August 1860. Young, 'Ship Log',12 July 1860 and 15 July 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 29 July 1860. Further references to flogging of Africans as punishment for fighting appear in Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 10–11. Nowhere have I found direct evidence of sexual assault, either on women or children of both genders, although both William Young and John McCalla refer to sexually suggestive nicknames given by the crew to African women. For a reference to a woman who died after appearing in the morning with an injury to her eye caused by an apparent rope blow, see Young, 'Ship Log', 2 August 1860. 'Copy of the Contract between the United States Government and the American Colonization Society', McCalla Journal. Young, 'Ship Log', 14 July 1860. 'Webster Lindsly to William Mclain', 3 September 1860, Reel 10, ROSI. Young, 'Ship Log', 31 July 1860. For suicide on the Star of the Union, see 'Report of Doctr Grymes', 24. McCalla Journal, 23 and 28 July 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 15 August 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 2 August 1860. Rediker, The Slave Ship, 10. See, for example, Johnson, 'White Lies'; Pfaelzer, 'Muted Mutinies on Nineteenth-Century Chinese Slave Ships' (cited with permission); Jones, Mutiny on the Amistad; Anderson, 'Convict Passages in the Indian Ocean'. Collective resistance did occur, however, in the Liberian 'receptacles' (holding areas for newly arrived recaptives). 'From Liberia', 161–162. Grymes, 'Report of Doctr. Grymes', 13–14; McCalla Journal, 3 August 1860. Naval officers testified to the presence of brands on the backs and shoulders of the Echo shipmates. Woodruff, Report of the Trials, 8. Young, 'Ship Log', 6 July 1860. Young, 'Ship Log', 17 August 1860. If the woman was six or seven months pregnant as Young guessed, she would have conceived before embarking from the Congo region. This would have been either in Luanda, if she had resided there before being sold to American traders or most probably on the march to the coast or in the coastal barracoons. Brown, The Reaper's Garden, 45–46. Hartman, 'The Time of Slavery', 758. Strykes, 'Roll of Names of Recaptives'. Jacob Thompson to D.H. Hamilton, 16 July 1860, Reel 1, ROSI. Jacob Thompson to James Conner, 12 Oct. 1859 and Jacob Thompson to John Y. Bryant, 29 Oct. 1859, Reel 1, ROSI. Quirk, 'Ending Slavery in All Its Forms', 'Frigate Niagara and Her New Mission', New York Times. For examples from just one newspaper, see Editorial, The World, 19 July 1860, 4; 'What Shall Be Done with the Captured Africans?' The World, 6; Trelawny, 'Colored Emigration to Jamaica'. The World, 6; Editorial, The World, 13 July 1860, 5. Eltis, 'Mortality and Voyage Length', 301. Eltis, 'Mortality and Voyage Length', Table 1, 303.
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