Enslavement to
freedom

 
  Young African American man sitting at a desk in circa 1910 clothing composes a letter by oil lamp light.

 

 

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2004 Mail

Regarding Quakers and Slavery

From Calobe Jackson, Jr., January 6, 2004

Dear Ann:
I read your letter to Afrolumens with great interest, especially your thoughts on Quakers owning slaves. I have read about a Quaker minister who was proslavery. Also three presidents of Dickinson College were pro slavery. Slavery is called the "Particular Institution" and justly so. Free Blacks owned slaves, even slaves owned slaves. Denmark Vessy, a slave, hit the lottery. The money went to him, not his master. Vessy bought his freedom and then used his money to start a slave revolt. He planned to capture the Arsenal at Charleston and arm the slaves. John Brown copied this idea when he attacked the Arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

Benjamin Bannaker's grandmother, an indentured white servant, bought a slave, freed and married him. This happened so much in Virginia that the state passed laws against inter-racial marriage.* Women in need of male farmhands often had little choice than to buy a slave.

Even stranger was the inter-relationship between free and slave parents. Many slaves were married to free persons. If the mother was free, the child was free. If the mother was a slave, the child was a slave. The status of the father had no effect on the social position of the child. The foundations of slavery were set up in the 17th century. Usually we associate them with the slavery of the nineteenth century.

Best regards,
Calobe Jackson

*Editor's Note: In the 18th century Pennsylvania also passed statutes prohibiting inter-racial marriage. Click here for Pennsylvania's infamous "Black Codes."

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