Race in early America
Historian’s book tells complex story of racial ideals and shifting attitudes among the founding fathers and the early republic
Abraham Bishop of Connecticut wrote each word clearly. He did not want to be misunderstood. His message was simple, America is not a country where “all white men are free, but all men are free.”
What’s intriguing about Bishop’s words is not so much the argument as is the time period — the year was 1791.
It’s a narrative that’s often missed by history books. Well before the American Civil War, some of the nation’s founding fathers imagined the world differently. They envisioned a freedom that did not automatically bar participants on the stipulation of race.
Dr. Kristen Foster, associate professor of history, has always been fascinated by how groups viewed the ideas of equality and liberty during the American Revolution. Her latest body of research looks at how members of the elite and non-elite classes interpreted these ideals.
Working through documents of the country’s history, Foster was amazed at what she saw.
The first constitutions of 10 of the first 13 states did not stipulate voting rights based on race. In fact in these states, as long as one owned the legally required amount of property, free black men were constitutionally able to vote.
“There seems to be this period between 1776 and 1790 when some of the new state constitutions were experimenting with black freedom,” Foster said.
However, by the Civil War only five of the original 13 states remained without racial voting restrictions. Something had dampened the lofty ideals of racial equality, but what?
Foster’s forthcoming book, Haiti’s Mirror: The Impact of the Haitian Revolution on American Revolutionary Idealism, argues that the reversal of views was influenced by the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). Foster contends that the bloody race war in Haiti caused white Americans to reassess their revolutionary ideals and eventually change their views of black freedoms.
The slave revolution in the French colony of Saint-Domingue eventually founded the Republic of Haiti. The coffee and sugar industry made Saint-Domingue France’s wealthiest colony, resulting in more and more slaves being imported. At the time of the revolution, slaves in Saint-Domingue outnumbered free people at a rate of ten to one.
Inspired by the push for equality in the recent French Revolution, a slave rebellion began in the colony in 1791. Over the 13-year period, the former slaves held off invasions by the French and British to become the first black republic in the world.
Haiti’s Mirror analyzes the role of the Haitian Revolution in America’s views on race. While a direct relationship between the violence and policy changes is difficult to determine, Foster asserts that the idea of slaves taking up arms to fight for their freedom caused a great deal of fear for white Americans.
Giving full citizenship and voting rights to free black men also included the right for those citizens to bear arms. However, when accounts of the bloodshed in Saint-Domingue filled American newspapers, people became nervous. Descriptions of the civil war painted an eerie picture.
One account of the violence in a 1793 edition of South Carolina’s Columbian Herald reads:
All the terrible passions are here in full operation; jealously, rage, envy and even fear, combine to blacken the scene — and to cast a darker blade of horror over the usual misfortunes of all military operations.
Refugees from the area arrived in US ports. Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1793 about the possibility that Haiti’s success could cause slaves to revolt in the South. A slave rebellion in Richmond, Va. in 1800 only furthered concerns about free black men arming themselves and slaves.
“After Haiti, the black race became something to fear in the white mind,” Foster explained.
These are only a few of the many connections Foster draws upon for her argument in Haiti’s Mirror. Her work gives voice to the historical silence of an under-researched topic. The book will challenge long-held notions of early America.
“People assume that racism has always been part of the United States,” Foster said. “But the word is meaningless without context.”
Challenging the historical norms places Foster in what she refers to as “strange company.” She explained that arguing for the high-mindedness of the founding fathers is not a popular topic. The book contends that the topic of race and the Revolution is “much more complex than historians like to admit.”
What makes Foster’s research unique is that it approaches the topic from a micro- and macro-level. Legislation and policy changes provide the framework for understanding the time period. Foster also dug deeper, researching stories of free blacks to determine their societal participation.
This part of the work has been the most challenging.
“To put the lives of these people back together is absolutely painstaking,” Foster explained. “It’s more than a lifetime of research.”
Unlike researching the founding fathers or other prominent historical figures, finding information on the non-elite is difficult. Records, diaries and letters are often not kept or preserved. Foster’s research usually begins by scanning census records.
From there, she cross-references names to other documents, such as court or church records, to piece together the lives of free blacks in the early years of the United States. She noted that family history websites, such as Ancestry.com, have proven beneficial in finding various documents.
Despite the time-consuming nature of researching social history, Foster has uncovered several compelling leads.
Initially she believed the New England region to be the most progressive in post-revolution America. However, her findings suggest that the link is in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Quaker communities in this part of the nation were the most inclusive, living out their belief of the inner light in all human beings. Another interesting discovery for Foster has been Gouldtown, a thriving mixed-race community in New Jersey.
Foster believes the book will spark a new discussion about the experience of free black Americans and the hopeful mindsets of the country’s founders. It will also provide insight into the lives of free blacks, who dealt with changing policies and mindsets. In the end, she hopes to illustrate how this eighteenth-century revolutionary idealism all but disappeared by the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Haiti’s Mirror will be finished in 2015.
Research and reporting by Wyatt Massey, a junior studying writing-intensive English and advertising. Connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.
