VII Negro and Indian Children
The encounter between white society and nonwhite children-Negro and Indian-became more acute during the eighteenth century. Slave or free, the child of nonwhite parents was reared in a different way from the free white child, and the way in which the state and the organized community impinged upon his young life was dissimilar. Shifts in the magnitude and distribution of the population help to explain some of the changes in law and custom. The numbers of both black slaves and freemen increased dramatically throughout the eighteenth century. In 1700 there were approximately twenty-five thousand Negro slaves, or about one in every ten inhabitants. When the War for Independence broke out seventy-five years later, there were about five hundred thousand slaves, or one Negro in every five inhabitants, a proportion that has not since been equaled. In South Carolina at the time of the Revolution over two-thirds of the population was black. Whereas southern farmers had previously relied on their own families and servants for cheap, unskilled labor, the wealthier among them increasingly turned to black workers from Africa.
Owing to several causes, there was a small number of free Negroes in the American colonies. Released from slavery as a reward for services, or allowed to purchase their freedom, they might be found scattered throughout colonial towns engaged in trades and common labor. A large addition to their ranks resulted from the War for Independence. Some blacks earned freedom through service in the armies; others obtained it on the basis of the principles of natural right and human equality that justified the war. In Massachusetts, suits for freedom were brought by slaves, the best known being the case of Quok Walker in 1783, on the grounds that slavery was incompatible with the protection of individual rights in the new state constitution. [1a] By 1790 the federal census in Massachusetts failed to report any slaves still in the state. The movement of the northern economy toward trade and even manufacturing made emancipation seem economically advantageous. One after another, northern states made provision for the freedom of slaves. In most instances a scheme for the gradual abolition of slavery was adopted, granting freedom as the children of slaves reached a stipulated age; in some states the mechanism was so slow in its operation that a few slaves were to be found in northern states on the eve of the Civil War itself.
Gradual emancipation plans, such as Pennsylvania's, the first to be enacted by one of the original thirteen colonies, freed the next generation rather than the present one. In fixing a legal status for black children, northern legislators followed the model of bond servitude, making some alterations. For example, the period in which a Negro child could be held in servitude before becoming entirely free was longer than was customary for whites who were bound out as servants in infancy or childhood. Rarely did legislators provide any special protection or assume new obligations in behalf of Negro children; it was even more rare for them to keep promises. In Rhode Island, for example, where the emancipation statute obligated towns to supply an elementary education to free black children, many grew up without schooling. Private schools were the principal recourse for black children since the states and other governing agencies assumed no consistent policy of support. Religious societies with an interest in their education continued to maintain schools. Anthony Benezet, the Philadelphia Quaker, taught Negro students until his death in 1784. The Philadelphia Society for Free Instruction of Colored People, founded five years later, encouraged and coordinated Quaker instruction of black children in Baltimore, Providence, Newport, and Burlington, New Jersey. [1b] The manumission societies of northern towns and states characteristically turned to education once emancipation statutes had been enacted. These philanthropic organizations, ordinarily led by influential and capable white citizens, sometimes succeeded in obtaining intermittent public support for their schools. In addition, black parents, despite limits on their resources, participated in the founding of schools for their children. In Washington, D.C., as in Philadelphia and even some southern cities and towns, such as New Orleans and Charleston, they contributed money and time to the instruction of black children. Even with these efforts probably most free black children grew up without formal instruction. The magnitude of the task far exceeded the resources that were devoted to it.
Following emancipation in the North most Negro children were still slaves. The federal census of 1820, the first to record the nation's black population by age, listed 763,747 blacks under fourteen years; of this number only 93,551 were free while 670,196 were in slavery. The conditions of life for these children as well as adult slaves varied enormously by place, kind of work, and master. No simple generalization covers all cases. Masters had virtually complete legal authority. Willful murder could be punished, provided there were white witnesses willing to testify, but short of murder a master could do almost anything to his slave. On the other hand, masters were subject to internal ethical, religious, and economic restraints on their behavior, and they had to face the fact that slaves might respond to mistreatment with slow-downs, sabotage, or flight. Between these two poles lay a vast arena of conflict in which masters contended with the dilemmas of interest versus conscience and slaves sought the means of preserving life and a measure of comfort and dignity as best they could. The situation of slave families amply illustrates the insecurity of personal relationships. In a legal sense the slave family did not exist. Although marriage was some times sanctified by a religious ceremony and respected by slaves themselves, it was not protected by the bonds of the law. In the eighteenth century masters could sunder husband and wife, parents and children, as they wished. Some whites acknowledged the humanity of slaves and their capacity for feeling by assisting them in maintaining the forms of family life. A kindly judge might prevent separate sale of a slave mother and her children to satisfy the debts of a deceased master or to facilitate the division of property among heirs. Such instances were exceptional although not altogether rare. In general, slaves of the same family were kept together or divided as the interests of the master dictated.
Before the eighteenth century the slave population was so small that its education presented few sustained issues for decision. Missionaries here and there had tried to supply that small amount of training required for conversion to Christianity. This might consist of no more than memorization of a simple catechism although some missionaries tried to instruct slave children in the rudiments of reading and writing. Despite the fact that it touched relatively few, the education of slaves raised serious questions for masters. If educated slaves accepted Christianity, did they then acquire a claim to freedom? If slaves assembled to learn to read and write, would not rebellion be encouraged? If they gained even a small amount of learning, would not enhanced self-esteem lead them to scorn field and domestic labor? The answers given to these questions tended to curtail opportunities for the education of slaves. Although the ancient idea that acceptance of Christianity was incompatible with the status of a slave was struck down by both colonial and imperial authority, the education of slaves found little encouragement in other ways. As the number of slaves in the southern colonies increased, their lives were hedged with restrictions designed to maintain white power. Missionaries still kept schools for slaves but the trend in southern colonies was directed against any kind of education. The first assembly action came in 1740 in South Carolina. A wave of fear swept that colony following the Stono rebellion in which a band of perhaps one hundred slaves had risen, killed some whites, and set out for Spanish Florida for refuge before they were headed off and rounded up by the militia. Severe measures were adopted by the assembly to prevent a recurrence, including a law making it a crime to teach a slave to write. The same law, with a lesser penalty, was enacted in Georgia in 1770, and in South Carolina, following another rebellion scare in 1800, meetings of slaves "for the purpose of mental instruction in a confined or secret place" were outlawed. [1c] For the time being, these laws were not imitated in other slave states and even in South Carolina and Georgia they were not ordinarily enforced. Conscientious masters, missionaries, free Negroes, and other patrons of slaves taught many to read and write, and in other colonies the provision of elementary education for slaves was not uncommon. Nevertheless, the laws of 1740 and 1800 suggested a willingness to keep slave children in utter ignorance if that was deemed necessary for the security of whites.
Education occasioned few contacts between Indian children and whites in the eighteenth century. Some missionary organizations, like the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, continued their efforts. John Eliot had his successors in David Brainerd and Eleazar Wheelock, and in the Southwest Spanish Catholic padres built churches at mission stations where Indians worshipped and worked. The main thrust in relations between whites and Indians, however, ran counter to the peaceful pursuits of the church and the school. A long and devastating series of colonial and national wars, at first between the English colonists and the French, later between the Americans and the British in Canada, drew Indian tribes into diplomatic and military alliances that worked against the presence of missionaries and schoolmasters among them. Not until the conclusion of frontier wars with the American victory over the northwest tribes in the War of 1812 was a peaceful status established sufficient to encourage sustained missionary and educational endeavors. In the eighteenth century, with a few exceptions such as Eleazar Wheelock's Indian school in Connecticut and later New Hampshire, the principal modes of contact and influence between whites and Indians, including children, were trade and warfare.