Exodus and Emancipation : Biblical and African-American Slavery [1 ed.] 9789655240863, 9789655240207

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Exodus and Emancipation Biblical and African-American Slavery

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

KENNETH CHELST

URIM PUBLICATIONS Jerusalem • New York

Exodus and Emancipation: Biblical and African-American Slavery By Kenneth Chelst Copyright © 2014, 2009 by Kenneth Chelst All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and articles. ePub ISBN: 978-965-524-085-6 Mobi ISBN: 978-965-524-201-0 PDF ISBN: 978-965-524-086-3 (Hardcover ISBN: 978-965-524-020-7) Tri-color background from the universal black flag adopted by UNIA in 1920. The picture is of former slaves on Edisto Island, SC in 1862. The Passover Seder plate is from 19th century Prague. Front cover design by Nachman Levine Full cover layout by The Virtual Paintbrush ePub creation by Ariel Walden Urim Publications P.O. Box 52287, Jerusalem 91521 Israel www.UrimPublications.com

In recognition of the generous patronage of Flora S. Hoffman, this book is dedicated to her memory and the loving memory of her dearly beloved parents Meyer and Bessie Beckman and cherished memory of her dearly beloved daughter Myra Jacqueline Hoffman, gone but not forgotten.

CONTENTS ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................... 11 THE JOURNEY AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................... 13 PREFACE ....................................................................................................................... 16 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 18 PART I - JOURNEY INTO SLAVERY: WAGONS AND SHIPS CHAPTER 1: THE ISRAELITE BEGINNINGS OF SLAVERY ..................................... 25 Uncertainty • Brother Selling Brother • State of Mind CHAPTER 2: BEGINNINGS OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE ............................ 33 Captives of War • Poverty and Justice • State of Mind • Journey to the Coast CHAPTER 3: GROUP JOURNEY INTO SLAVERY ...................................................... 40 Pharaoh’s Wagons • Middle Passage PART II - SLAVE EXPERIENCE: POLITICAL SLAVERY VS. PERSONAL CHATTEL CHAPTER 4: EVOLUTION AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SLAVERY ............ 51 Political Enslavement of the Israelites • The Egyptian Masses and Personal Enslavement • African-American Slavery: an Evolving Legal Structure • Animal Imagery CHAPTER 5: BREAKING THE HUMAN SPIRIT ......................................................... 65 Affliction • Women in Slavery • Separating Husband and Wife • Rape

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CHAPTER 6: THE BURDENS OF SLAVERY ............................................................... 72 Hard Work • The Whip and the African-American Slave • Leaders as Instruments of Oppression • Work of African-American Slaves • The “Laziness” of the Enslaved • Lying by Master and Slave CHAPTER 7: CULTURAL IDENTITY ........................................................................... 90 What’s in a Name • African-American Names • The Group Name “Hebrew” • The Group Name “Negro” • African Cultural Identity CHAPTER 8: POPULATION GROWTH AND FEARS ............................................... 101 The Israelite Population • African-American Population CHAPTER 9: CONTROLLING THE POPULATION .................................................. 109 Egyptian Slave Bureaucracy • Plantation Overseers and Slave Drivers • Controlling African-American Slaves CHAPTER 10: REBELLION ........................................................................................ 117 Passive and Active Rebellion of Israelites • The Day-to-Day Resistance of Enslaved Blacks • Major Slave Rebellions in North America CHAPTER 11: RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS ............................................. 127 The Egyptian Princess• Quakers CHAPTER 12: RELIGION OF THE SLAVE................................................................ 131 Israelite God of Their Forefathers • The Religion of African-American Slaves CHAPTER 13: HOPE .................................................................................................. 141 Israelite Traditions • African-American Hopes CHAPTER 14: CHILDREN’S VOICES ........................................................................ 146 Miriam • African-American Children CHAPTER 15: LEADERSHIP ...................................................................................... 150 The Unique Individual: Joseph in Potiphar’s House and Uncle Tom • Antebellum Leadership Among African Americans • Tribal Leaders of Israel • Moses and Aaron • Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass

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PART III - FREEDOM’S ROAD: EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION CHAPTER 16: SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS OF THE OPPRESSED .. 169 Justice: Punishment Measure for Measure • Compensation from the Oppressor • Fear of Continued Victimization • Rebuilding Self-Image • The Oppressor’s Superior Culture CHAPTER 17: HASTY DEPARTURES ....................................................................... 213 Matzah: Unleavened Bread • Runaways and Contraband of War CHAPTER 18: KNOWING AND PERCEIVING GOD: SEEING IS BELIEVING .... 219 An All-Powerful God • The African-American Perception of God • God Who Sees and Knows • God of Justice and Retribution • God’s Other Attributes • God’s Hand in the Civil War CHAPTER 19: BREAKING THE WILL OF THE OPPRESSORS ............................... 235 Widespread Destruction • Union Army Policy on Destruction • Oppressors Reassert Control • Devastated Aftermath • Breaking the Will of the Leadership • Leader Incredulity • Leadership Legitimacy • Signs, Wonders, and Negotiations • The South Considers Emancipation • Climax: Negotiating a Lost Cause CHAPTER 20: THE CELEBRATION OF FREEDOM ................................................ 257 The Eve of Emancipation • Commemorative Celebration • African Americans Celebrate Emancipation • Celebrating Gradual Emancipation CHAPTER 21: REMEMBERING ................................................................................. 276 West Indian Blacks Choose Not to Look Back • Relevance and Reexperience as Jews Study Their History • Remembering Without Shame • The Egyptian Experience as a Positive Value • Celebration in Darkness CHAPTER 22: FREEDOM’S TROUBLED JOURNEY THROUGH STAGES ............. 285 Israelite Freedom: Five Stages • African-American Freedom: Five Stages • African Americans as a Nation • Americans: One People and One Nation Under God • Searching in the Wilderness • The American Colonization Society: an Alternative • Un-Promised Land

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CHAPTER 23: FREEDOM’S TRANSFORMATION AND CONSEQUENCES ........... 322 Education and Freedom • The Family Unit • Economic Security and Freedom • Travel • Religious Independence • Archenemies and Never Ending Struggle EPILOGUE: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES ............................................................. 353 NOTES ......................................................................................................................... 357 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 412 HEBREW BIBLE COMMENTATORS AND HEBREW WORDS ................................ 421 INDEX .......................................................................................................................... 426 INDEX TO BIBLICAL VERSES ................................................................................... 444

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ILLUSTRATIONS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

Photograph of scars from whippings (p. 39) Slaves tied together as they were marched towards the sea (p. 39) Slave distribution in 1790 (p. 48) Slaves tightly packed in the hold of a ship (p. 48) Infant in field with parent (p. 149) Slave catcher warning in Boston (p.183) The riots in New York: The mob lynching a Negro in Clarkson Street (p.184) The burning of a freedmen’s school during a riot in Memphis in 1866 (p. 184) The Hunted Slaves by Richard Ansdell (p.189) A Negro guard asks General Grant to throw away his cigar before entering an army storehouse (p. 189) Confederate generals Johnson and Stewart as prisoners under Negro guard. (p. 197) Recruiting poster: “Men of Color – To Arms!” (p. 198) Fort Pillow massacre of surrendered blacks (p. 201) The 20th U.S. Colored Infantry received its colors in Union Square, New York (p. 201) Marching On! The Fifty-Fifth Massachusetts Colored Regiment marches into Charleston on February 21, 1865 (p. 212) A cartoonist’s depiction of northerners’ perceptions of “rebel chivalry” (p. 212) Emancipation by William Travis – a mural of slaves fleeing at night. (p. 218) Reproduction of the program of Fast-day Services at Beth Shalome Synagogue, Richmond (p. 234) Emancipation celebration in Washington, D.C. – April 19, 1866 (p. 261) Black soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation in a slave cabin (p. 261)

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21. “Am I Not a Man and a Brother” – Motto and image that appeared on banners and china (p. 269) 22. Program for January 1st Celebration, Columbus, Georgia (1973) (p. 269) 23. Program for September 20th & 21st Celebration, Gallia County, Ohio (1980) (p. 270) 24. Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, Monday, April 3, 1905 (p. 275) 25. A New England carpetbagger teacher at a beginners’ reading class in Vicksburg, Mississippi (p. 335) 26. The Barrow Plantation: Oglethorpe County Georgia – 2,000 acres; 1860: Communal slave quarters; 1881: Sharecroppers disbursed (p. 335) 27. The Ku Klux Klan (p. 352) 28. Vote Democratic (p. 352) Illustration 24 appears compliments of Virginia Commonwealth University; 3: US Census Bureau; 5: provided by Wilson Library University of North Carolina; 7, 10, 11, and 13 New York Public Library; 14, 15, 16, 19, 25, 27, and 28: Harper’s Weekly; 9: Liverpool Museum; 17: Smithsonian; and 20: Library of Congress; and 26: Scribner’s Monthly.

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THE JOURNEY AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HOW DID A CHAIR of a department of industrial and manufacturing engineering and a professor of operations research, the mathematics of decision making, come to write a book about the Bible and AfricanAmerican slavery? I must admit it was a long circuitous journey with a number of individuals playing critical roles along the way. It began with a dual education in Jewish and secular studies. My advanced Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University culminated in rabbinic ordination at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary where I had the good fortune to study with both Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein. My most advanced secular degree was in Operations Research from MIT where my research focused on the application of mathematics to police work. My studies under Professors Richard C. Larson, Philip M. Morse, and Arnold Barnett also exposed me to a multidisciplinary approach to problem solving. For more than thirty years since completing my formal education, I have given talks and classes about Jewish law and the Hebrew Bible that also incorporated aspects of broader history, sociology, science, and economic theory. Rabbi Feivel Wagner, a long-time friend of blessed memory, was the first to offer me a platform from his pulpit to share my thoughts and analyses. For this I am forever grateful. Almost twenty years ago, I began sporadically drawing limited parallels and contrasts between Israelite and African-American slavery. The core idea evolved from a challenging sequence of verses in Genesis. Abraham had a vision which concluded with God’s prophecy that Abraham’s descendants would be strangers in a foreign land where they would be enslaved. Ultimately, they would be freed and leave with great wealth while their persecutors were severely judged. This was followed by an enigmatic statement that Abraham would join his ancestors in peace and die at a ripe old age. I had trouble imagining how Abraham could receive such a dire prophecy and not be in turmoil the rest of his life. What was it in God’s words that offered some comfort? To resolve this dilemma, I focused on God’s promise of judgment of the oppressor and the departure with wealth. I studied these verses from the perspective of a victim’s needs. Abraham knew his descendants would return to Canaan but might have wondered what permanent sociological scars they would bring as a result of the enslavement. God’s promise of justice and compensation were but two

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elements of His action plan for the exodus. The exodus with its ten plagues was designed so that the scars of slavery would fade in a generation and leave core values such as sensitivity to the oppressed as well as a contract with the Almighty to become a Holy nation. I began to ponder the analogous transformation for blacks during and shortly after the Civil War. My efforts took a quantum leap forward when David Tanzman encouraged me to develop and deliver a series of talks on the topic at the Young Israel of Oak Park. Afterwards, he challenged me to write a book on the topic. He proceeded to work with his friend Jules Kohenn to obtain a substantial grant from a local philanthropist, Flora S. Hoffman, to fund a black studies researcher to assist me in my task and pay for editing. Even more important than the funding, Dave Tanzman has encouraged me every step of the way and is now working to bring my work before the local black community in which he has numerous contacts. The generous grant from Flora S. Hoffman was housed appropriately in the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State University, which is directed by another important supporter of the project, Fred Pearson. The grant enabled me to recruit two key professionals, Kathryn Beard and Eric Schramm. Kathryn was responsible for most of the research needed to develop the African-American perspective on the issues I expound upon in this book. She presented, discussed, and debated with me both the dominant thesis and its alternatives on a wide range of topics. She provided the necessary source material especially numerous quotes of individuals living in the time period we studied. She did an outstanding job and it is hard for me to imagine completing this comprehensive work without her research. Eric Schramm had an equally challenging task, editing my prose and often reorganizing whole sections to make the book a highly readable flowing work. At times he also used his extensive knowledge of the Bible and history to support or question my arguments. Marvin Zalman shared his insights drawn from a wide range of knowledge of law, political science, and history and also shared his excellent home lending library. Shalom Lamm made contributions on a variety of topics especially with regard to events leading up to the Civil War. Irv Goldfein believed in the importance of the project from early on, provided critical and sage guidance in identifying a publisher and artist for the cover, and helped develop a marketing strategy. Numerous other members of the Young Israel of Southfield shared their reactions and ideas as I presented different aspects of the evolving book on numerous occasions. Nachman Levine designed the strikingly colorful cover. Tzvi Mauer of Urim Publications took a chance on a book that did not naturally align with his company’s portfolio of publications. Rahel Jaskow completed the tedious 14

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final editing. Along the way, I received much encouragement and advice from my brother of blessed memory Marvin Chelst and his wife Florence and my sister Anita Kessler and her husband Larry. I also received support from Richard Wagner, Anthony Van Niel, and Philip Lanzisera at various stages of the project. Our children Avishai, Azriel, Dassy, and Dov deserve special mention for their sustained support and interest over many years of discussions, questions, more discussions, and more questions. Lastly, I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude to my wife, Tamy whose support for teaching and research long preceded this specific effort. She introduced me to a different style of Biblical analysis taught to her by her father, Rabbi Isaac Simon, master teacher of Chumash and Talmud for more than 30 years at Maimonides School in Boston. She encouraged me to develop adult education classes in Bible. As this effort evolved over a ten year period, Tamy encouraged, supported, listened, and sometimes questioned the ideas I developed. Fittingly, she was the last to read the final edit one last time.

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PREFACE FOR READERS AND STUDENTS of the Bible, the biblical narrative is an open

book containing universal messages that are appropriate for all times. Through its narratives, laws, poetry, rhetoric, and prophetic visions, the Bible touches upon almost every aspect of morality and the human saga. One such drama in the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch, is the story of the Israelite nation’s exodus from Egyptian bondage and its forty-year sojourn in the wilderness of Sinai. This book is a collection of essays – my reflections about the biblical description of the exodus. It presents a new perspective on the saga of the Israelites by comparing and contrasting it with the African-American experience in the United States during the era of slavery, the emancipation and the subsequent fight for dignity and equality. I recognize that the comparison is between the proverbial apples and oranges or, better yet, of bricks made from straw and mud compared with cash crops of cotton and sugar cane. The Hebrew Bible is sacred literature that was canonized more than two thousand years ago. Associated with this text are oral traditions, some of which go back to ancient times, and hundreds of commentaries. All of these build upon the biblical text to explore religious, moral, and philosophical issues. In contrast, the African-American experience is not centered on a single narrative. It is self-reported, summarized, and analyzed in a vast array of literature written over the past two centuries. These include slave narratives, published letters, eyewitness accounts, recorded interviews of former slaves, and numerous historical, sociological, economic and political analyses of this era in American history. Despite these obvious differences in breadth and perspective, I have found that a study of African-American slavery and oppression yields important insights regarding the biblical narrative. In addition, this analysis highlights a wide range of developments up through the reconstruction era that precluded African Americans from bringing closure to this part of their history. Because I treat the Hebrew text as a self-contained, unified entity, I do not explore issues associated with the Bible’s historical accuracy or its authorship. The analysis of the text is supplemented by references to the Midrash, a collection of Jewish oral traditions recorded more than fifteen hundred years ago. The principal goal of the Midrash is to highlight religious,

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moral, or philosophical issues even though a superficial reading seems to suggest that the midrashic literature fills in missing historical details. Finally, I draw on primarily Jewish biblical commentaries, both traditional and modern, that explore the subtleties of narrative and language in the Hebrew text. Although I attempt a comprehensive analysis of the biblical text with regard to the exodus experience, this work’s exploration of AfricanAmerican experiences is far more selective for several reasons. The first is that there was no single common experience. The nature of slavery in the continental United States varied with time, region (the North, the Border States, the Atlantic Coast, the deep South), and slaveholder’s demographic status (city dweller, small farmer, or plantation owner). In highlighting this history, my primary interest is the relevance to the biblical narrative. In so doing I present not a complete picture but rather a collage of the African American experience of slavery and its aftermath. This collage offers a unique perspective on the biblical story told in the Book of Exodus. In addition, special attention is given to the symbol of hope and national identity that the ancient Israelites offered African Americans of the nineteenth century. This development is analyzed and chronicled by Glaude in Exodus!: Religion, Race, and Nation in Early NineteenthCentury Black America.1

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INTRODUCTION THE ISRAELITE NATION was born in political slavery in Egypt. The national identity of the Israelites was forged in over two hundred years spent in the Egyptian crucible, elevated by the events of the year before and after the exodus and refined in the forty years of sojourn in the Sinai Wilderness. The biblical narrative presents a relatively terse description of these events in which key words and phrases may be overlooked when read through a modern-day prism. Today’s Western readers generally lack the perspective of having endured massive political oppression. Such a viewpoint may be gained, however, by studying the biblical narrative in light of the more recent and better-documented history of African-American slavery in the United States.1 Perception works best by way of contrast and analogy. The human eye sees most effectively when the object stands in sharp relief from its background. Our brains interpret what we see by comparing and contrasting the visualization with information stored in our memory. Similarly, the African-American slave experience provides a rich source of both personal narratives and historical analysis that can enhance our perception of Israelite bondage and redemption. Both peoples experienced oppression that stretched over centuries, with the African-American slave population at the time of emancipation in the 1860s roughly double that of the Israelites at the exodus.2 However, the two groups’ respective ups and downs in status occurred in reverse order. The Israelites started out in Egypt as welcome guests, became estranged from the political establishment and masses and ended up as slaves. Upon leaving slavery, they received instant citizenship in an emerging nation. By contrast, Africans arrived in the New World as slaves, leaving behind citizenship in various nations. Upon emancipation, their status changed to strangers in the land of their birth even though they received official citizenship several years later. It took a hundred years for them to achieve de jure full citizenship and decades more to approach de facto equality. This power of contrast and analogy continues to enrich my reading of the biblical text. The abundant details of the arrival of Africans in America and slavery’s pernicious and pervasive attack on the family unit highlight, by contrast, the significance of the simple phrase that concludes the opening verse in the Book of Exodus, “They came as man and household.” These

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words sharply differ from the individual African experience of arriving with no family unit. The principle of analogy sharpens my understanding of the biblical description of Moses stopping the brutal whipping of an Israelite slave. In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass recounts awakening at dawn to the shrieks of his aunt. “The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped; and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush.”3 Douglass called the whipping of slaves “the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery.” The photographs of black slaves with backs so scarred that they resemble the mangled branches of a small bush (Illustration 1) and the narratives describing their scarred psyches add color and dimension to the understanding of the story that introduces us to Moses, the human face of the exodus.4 Try to imagine how many Hebrew children awoke to the sight of their parents being beaten and how many watched helplessly as their siblings submitted to the power of the taskmaster. Yet the biblical narrative is succinct: “He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, of his brethren.” What was Moses thinking? We do not know. What was Moses feeling? The phrase “of his brethren” might be a terse hint at his emotional state. Not surprisingly, Moses became a powerful and compassionate symbol of hope for the African-American slave, as articulated in the famous Negro spiritual “Go Down, Moses.” Harriet Tubman earned the sobriquet “Moses” for leading more than three hundred slaves to freedom.5 The biblical narrative has also helped me gain insight into the history of black slavery and its aftermath in the United States. Whatever the setting, slavery takes a terrible toll on the slave community’s self-esteem and value system. The God of the exodus revealed His omnipotence on history’s stage; He directed the Hebrews’ conversion from slaves to free people, from slave families to families sharing the paschal lamb,6 and from a nation of individual slaves to a nation of priests, a holy nation. Many of God’s deeds and commandments were designed to speed this conversion and rebuild the Hebrew slaves’ self-esteem. His actions to end the enslavement of one people by another established a precedent for believers to follow under the principle of imitatio Dei, the emulation of God. Unfortunately, the American public and its government did not learn from the comprehensive approach of the God of the exodus. The story of black emancipation in the United States lacked closure. Many problems created by centuries of slavery were never addressed. As a result, AfricanAmericans continue to struggle with an inequality whose roots lie in slavery

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but which continues to linger more than a hundred years in various forms in both the South and North. The analogy between the histories of the biblical Israelites and African Americans is not new. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, AfricanAmerican spokesmen began to identify publicly with the story of the Israelites’ slavery. This concept became a powerful uniting image in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Abolitionists extended the comparison of Jews and blacks beyond the biblical narrative. Several leading abolitionists used the history of anti-Semitism to illustrate how unfounded bias led to centuries of oppression. William E. Channing made the equation simply. “For ages Jews were thought to have forfeited the rights of men, as much as the African race at the South, and were insulted, spoiled and slain.”7 Frederick Douglass compared the two. “For, with the single exception of the Jews, under the whole heavens, there is not to be found a people pursued with a more relentless prejudice and persecution, than are the Free Colored people of the United States.” In 1845 James Russell Lowell wrote in his work, The Prejudice of Color: “Jews, who by a series of enormous tyrannies were reduced to the condition of the most abject degradation among nations to whom they had given a religious system, and who borrowed from them their choicest examples of eloquence and pathos and sublime genius. Here was and is a people remarkable above almost all others for the possession of the highest and clearest intellect, and yet absolutely dwarfed and contracted in mind and by being sternly debarred from any but the very lowest exercise of mental capacity.” He noted that Jews could escape their fate by adopting the prevailing religion, an option not available to African Americans, who could not escape the color of their skin.8 Prejudice was alive and well even after emancipation, when George William Curtis noted “the bitter prejudice against the colored race, which is as inhuman and unmanly as the old hatred and contempt of Christendom for the Jews.”9 The contrast embodied in the title Exodus and Emancipation is the subject of this collection. This volume opens with a comparison of the two journeys into slavery and the nature of the respective slave experiences. Later on, it explores the exodus from Egypt and the start of the transformation from slave to free individual. It treats the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, the composition of the Song by the Sea and events leading to the revelation at Mount Sinai as closing this phase of the exodus. I compare this period to the experiences of both black and white Americans during the Civil War both before and after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, through 1870 and the first half of the Reconstruction era. I have tried to be circumspect in making direct linkages between past and present. Thousands of years have passed since the exodus. Its impact on 20

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modern Jewry is primarily through biblical narrative, commandments, and shared literary and historical roots. On the other hand, more than a century of legal and de facto discrimination and oppression bridge and color the gap between the end of black slavery and the end of the twentieth century. It is therefore likely that the roots of the problems that have confronted and plagued the African-American community in the latter part of the twentieth century lay as much in the last hundred years’ struggle for political and social equality as in the slave history of previous centuries.

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PART I JOURNEY INTO SLAVERY WAGONS AND SHIPS INCIDENTS OF BROTHER selling brother and tribe selling tribe began both

the Israelite and the African journey into slavery. In the book of Genesis, the ten eldest children of Jacob turned against their brother Joseph, their father’s favorite son, in order to prevent Joseph’s dreams of future leadership from coming true. The brothers even considered killing him before ultimately deciding to sell him into slavery. Ironically, it was in that distant land, Egypt, that all the brothers eventually came to live, each becoming the head of his own tribal family. In effect, then, the elder brothers sold another future tribal leader into slavery. Similarly, the African’s entrance into the Atlantic slave trade most often began with one tribe selling the captives of another tribe at a local inland slave market. The next phase was an overland journey that lasted for weeks or even months until the captive arrived at a port on the western coast of Africa. Once there, the captive might wait months in deplorable conditions in a stockade until being sold again and placed on a ship, which might wait months1 more in port or along the coast until making its six-week journey to the New World. In this section we discuss the events leading to the long-term mass enslavement of both the Israelite and African peoples. We begin by exploring the individual’s transition from free individual to slave. That discussion is followed by an analysis of Joseph’s journey to slavery in Egypt. Joseph’s journey is compared to the African slave, who was taken by force from his native land to the seacoast in order to be sold again. Finally, we explore the sharp contrast between the stately caravan journey of Jacob’s family into what eventually became Egyptian bondage with the journey of the near-naked African, the Middle Passage, endured in an overcrowded ship’s hold, in the depths of despair.

CHAPTER 1 THE ISRAELITE BEGINNINGS OF SLAVERY

THE EVENTS LEADING TO Israelite slavery commenced long before the sale of Joseph. They began with God’s prophecy to Abraham, which outlined a fearful future but gave no specific details. The prophecy was part of the events and the dream state that surrounded the covenant God made with Abraham, known as the Covenant amongst the broken pieces (Genesis 15). In this covenant God reaffirmed the agreement to give the Land of Canaan to Abraham’s direct descendants, who would one day number as many as the stars of heaven. However, before this could happen, Abraham’s descendants would spend their formative years as strangers and ultimately oppressed slaves in a foreign land. This forecast was so bleak and foreboding that God delivered the message to Abraham while he was in a deep sleep. As the sun began to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a great dark dread descended upon him. And He said, “Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years; but I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve, and in the end they shall go free with great wealth.” (Genesis 15:12–14).1 The end of this prophecy, “but I will execute judgment,” gave hope to future Israelite generations who experienced the brutality of Egyptian servitude. Although African Americans had no similar prophecy, they possessed something that was almost as powerful: the story of the Israelites’ exodus from bondage. African-American slaves knew that the God Who had heard the Israelites’ cries throughout the long night of slavery heard theirs as well. They hoped, prayed, and expected that He would deliver them from bondage as He had delivered the ancient Israelites. Uncertainty When, where, and how slavery would come to an end was as unknown to the African Americans as it was to the Israelites. God’s prophecy to Abraham was enigmatic. Abraham’s descendants would be strangers, later enslaved and oppressed, but the duration of the various stages was not foretold.2 Even the period of four hundred years mentioned in the prophecy was considered only an approximation, especially when no starting date had been specified.3 The dream gave no hint as to how soon and where this

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journey into slavery and oppression would take place. Although we as readers recognize that Joseph’s sale into bondage began the process that led to the Israelites’ descent into Egypt and later slavery and oppression, Joseph himself did not perceive it as such. Although he saw God’s guiding hand in his life story, as when he told his brothers in Egypt, “God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance” (Genesis 45:7), he could not know what was to follow. Even Joseph the dreamer could not imagine that Egypt would become the place of enslavement and oppression foretold to Abraham, as evidenced by his recounting to his brothers of how God “has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt” (Genesis 45:8). As the elderly Jacob approached the last habitation of Canaan, the city of Beer Sheba, on his way to see Joseph in Egypt, he had a vision in the middle of the night in which God told him: “I am God, the God of your father. Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation, and I Myself will also bring you back” (Genesis 46:3, 4). The Bible does not record Jacob’s emotions at this time, but from God’s response we can intuit a fear for the destiny of the Jewish people. Although he knew that Egypt would provide his family with much-needed sustenance in a time of famine, he was concerned that his descendants would grow comfortable there, forget their destiny, and not wish to return to the land promised to their forefathers.4 Thus God offered him a personal guarantee that Jacob’s fears would not be fulfilled. As he neared death, Jacob passed the message on to Joseph: “I am about to die; but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers” (Genesis 48:22). Nothing in the vision or in Jacob’s words explicitly referred to slavery and oppression, but the reader senses that Abraham’s earlier prophecy is lurking behind these words. Joseph’s dying exhortation to his brothers also carried no hint of the dreadful time of slavery that God had foretold to Abraham, but he reminded his brothers that the destiny of the Jewish people as a nation with a homeland would be played out not in Egypt but rather in Canaan. God would see to that. “God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Genesis 50:22). Joseph went so far as to demand that his brothers swear to carry his bones with them on their return to Canaan. This would ensure that his descendants, though born in Egypt to an Egyptian woman, would share in the destiny of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Yet his statements to his brothers, all of whom outlived him, seemed to apply to a time in the near future when they themselves might return to Canaan. There 26

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was no hint that more than two centuries would pass before the Israelites would journey back to their ancestral homeland. The lack of specificity in the original prophecy to Abraham suggests that God had not, in fact, pre-ordained any of the ensuing details. There would be enslavement, but by whom, for how long, and with what degree of severity were as yet undetermined. Since the free will of human beings would establish the direction and timeline within the broad parameters that God had established,5 the instigators and perpetrators would be held accountable for their choice to impose an oppressive form of slavery: “I will execute judgment on the nation they shall serve.”6 The initiating act of bondage surely engendered a range of responses from those who were captured. Joseph was almost certainly shocked by the sudden attack of his brethren that quickly transformed his privileged status into servitude. In contrast, an African captive sold into slavery might not have been too surprised by his fate. The slave trade was a common element of the local economy. However, the captive’s sense of uncertainty as to his fate could only have grown if his journey into slavery stretched into weeks and months and passed far beyond familiar territory and recognizable tribal dialects. He must have been terrified at the sight of the Atlantic Ocean as he was herded into large holding complexes. His terror certainly would have peaked as he met Europeans for the first time, a bizarre-looking race whose complexion, facial expressions, and hair were so unlike his own. As he was handed over to them and placed in the stifling hold of ship, his first thought might have been that he was destined to be eaten.7 As a result, the stunned captives often attempted to jump overboard, seeking the certainty of suicide over the uncertainty of what lay ahead. Later, on the American continent, the enslaved African and his AfricanAmerican descendants could not have known, over hundreds of years, when or even if their slavery would end. Events along the way might have seemed misleading or full of false hope. The nineteenth century, for example, began with the passage of laws prohibiting the importation of slaves. The 1830s were even better: Great Britain eliminated slavery in its territories, patrolled the seas, and negotiated treaties in order to end the transatlantic trafficking in human beings. However, the 1850s saw a series of major political setbacks for the abolition movement in the United States. In January 1861, as the secessionist movement gained momentum among the southern states, no slave could have dreamed that five years later, constitutional amendments would be passed that would not only end slavery but also guarantee the rights of the newly freed.

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Brother Selling Brother The first Israelite steps toward national political enslavement began tragically with one brother’s journey into slavery. Almost from the very moment that Joseph, the favored seventeen-year-old son of Jacob, is introduced in the biblical narrative, his dreadful descent into slavery is set into motion. His first reported activity involved helping the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah as they tended their flocks. However, immediately we read that Joseph reported some unspecified misbehavior of these brothers back to Jacob.8 Clearly this presaged a difficult relationship with his brothers. Then as the brothers saw Jacob’s special love for Joseph, as symbolized by the gift of a special garment,9 “they hated him; and they were not able to speak to him peaceably.” This failure to communicate compounded their misunderstanding of Joseph’s every motive, most of all the symbolism of his dreams and their validity as prophecy rather than as reflections of his personal desire for power. To make matters worse, Joseph insisted that his brothers hear his dream: “And Joseph dreamt a dream and told his brothers and they hated him even more. He said to them, ‘Please hear this dream that I dreamt…. My sheaf arose and also stood, then behold, your sheaves gathered around and bowed down to my sheaf” (Genesis 37:5–7). The brothers quickly read a disturbing meaning into the dream: “‘Would you then reign over us? Would you then dominate us?’ and their hatred of him grew more” (37:9). His final dream seemed even more explicit and radical. Unlike the first dream of bowing sheaves of grain, in this second dream the focal point was Joseph himself. He saw “the sun, and the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to me” (37:9). The Joseph story is often characterized as jealousy taken to extremes, complicated by an inability to communicate. However, classic Jewish commentaries found this simplistic analysis difficult to accept because each of the brother protagonists was to become the founder of a tribe within the Israelite nation.10 Their tribal leadership formed the basic structure of the first Commonwealth of Israel. Each tribe had its own area of the land to settle, its own stone on the jewel-studded breastplate of the high priest, and a distinct mission within the community of Israel, as envisioned by Jacob on his deathbed.11 This diversity was supposed to be an integral part of the Jewish people as it pursued its national and religious destiny. Given the status accorded the brothers, many commentators have wondered how these powerful leaders who became such a critical element of Jewish nationhood could succumb to petty jealousy over a father’s favoritism. How could their jealousy of Joseph’s special coat drive them to the point of considering murder before deciding to sell Joseph into slavery in 28

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a far-off land? These commentators believe that the reason is much more than mere jealousy over favoritism shown toward a son who had dreams of grandeur. The commentaries combine several midrashic traditions to present a deeper analysis of the motivations that drove ten of Joseph’s brothers to debate extreme strategies. The brothers’ core fear was that they would end up like Ishmael and Esau, cut off from the destiny promised to the patriarchs. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent the pre-nation status of the Jewish people and religion. Each patriarch, who had a unique personal relationship with God, offered future generations a distinct role model. Each was given his own promise that the Land of Israel would pass to his descendants. However, both Abraham and Isaac faced the difficult choice of passing on their primary heritage to just one of their two sons. Isaac, not Ishmael, and Jacob, not Esau, were promised the land of Canaan and a unique relationship with God. The birth of Jacob’s twelve sons presaged a new era, the development of a nation. With Jacob, the chain of transmission blossomed such that all of his children would be part of the development of nation-state and religion.12 However, the brothers felt that Jacob’s treatment of Joseph and the unique status accorded him undermined and possibly precluded this broader destiny. Jacob’s favoritism took the form of declaring Joseph a ben zekunim, a son of old age. This term is more than just a descriptive statement that Joseph was born to Jacob in his old age. This would be true of all of Jacob’s children.13 Rather, the designated ben zekunim had the primary responsibility for staying with and caring for the elderly father and was almost always at his side. The midrashic tradition asserts that Jacob took special interest in educating Joseph and personally taught Joseph the traditions he had received from his father, Isaac, who in turn had received them from his father, Abraham.14 An extraordinary robe symbolized this special status; it was more than just a fashionable multicolored garment. In effect, Jacob had declared Joseph to be first among equals or, worse yet, the heir apparent. The brothers saw in Joseph’s dreams a growing threat to their vision of a shared destiny. It was clear to them that Joseph saw himself as more than first among equals; rather, Joseph dreamed that he would be in charge and all his brothers would be subordinate to him. Joseph’s persistent recounting of his dreams seemed to indicate his desire to rule over them. The second, more grandiose dream conveyed an even more ominous message. It was as if Joseph, upon seeing the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him, had elevated himself to godlike status with not only his family but also the whole universe under his domain. It seemed that even before Jacob died, 29

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Joseph envisioned usurping the role of leader and guiding the family destiny. Yet unlike the earlier dreams of the patriarchs, Joseph’s did not include a vision of God or an angel to validate the prophecy.15 Thus, the brothers judged him guilty and concluded that in order to save the shared destiny of the children of Israel, drastic action would be necessary. The opportunity to act out upon this conviction arose while they were tending the family’s flocks in Shechem, several days’ journey from Jacob’s home base in Beer Sheba. As the unsuspecting Joseph approached, they said to one another, “Here comes that dreamer” (Genesis 37:19). At the suggestion that he should be killed for his perceived misdeeds and in order to prevent his future usurpation of power, the thoughts of at least one unspecified brother may have been on revenge: “We shall see what comes of his dreams” (Genesis 37:20).16 They stripped Joseph of his special tunic, cast him into a waterless pit, and continued their discussions over a meal. Soon after, Joseph was sold for twenty pieces of silver to a passing caravan of Midianites and Ishmaelites and ultimately sold in Egypt to Potiphar, a courtier and chief steward of Pharaoh.17

State of Mind The Bible is silent in this chapter about Joseph’s reaction to his brothers’ attack. The Midrash views the low price paid for him as evidence that his confinement in the pit so depressed him that his appearance deteriorated rapidly.18 Much later, however, the Bible records the brothers’ remorse for their action when their initial meeting with the unrecognized Joseph, the vizier of Egypt, turned hostile: “Alas, we are punished on account of our brother, because we looked upon his anguish, yet paid no heed as he pleaded with us” (Genesis 42:21). Implied in their statement were three reasons that they should have reconsidered their plans and shown Joseph mercy. He was their brother; they saw his anguish; they heard his pleas. However, they were unmoved and simply continued to eat as the caravan of traders drew near. Thomas Mann, in his three-part novel Joseph and His Brothers, goes beyond the biblical narrative to give voice to Joseph’s unrecorded pleading: “Brothers, where are you? Ah, go not away, leave me not alone in the pit. It is so earthy and so horrible. Brothers, have pity and save me still out of the night of this pit where I perish. I am your brother Joseph. Brothers, hide not your ears from my sighs and cryings, for you do falsely to me. Reuben, where art thou? Reuben, I cry thy name from below in the pit…. Brothers,” he cried, “do not that with the beast and the robe, treat not the father so, for he will not survive it. Ah, I beg you not for myself, for body and soul are broken in me and I lie in the grave. But spare our father and bring him not the bloody garment – it would kill him.”19 30

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Mann also explores Joseph’s psychological state while in the pit.20 The suddenness and brutality with which the brothers stripped him of his robe had shocked him even before his imprisonment in the depths of the earth. Mann goes on to describe Joseph’s thoughts in solitude, in which he slowly comes to realize how his behavior had engendered such hatred. For this he is overcome with remorse, especially because he knows it will lead Jacob to grieve for his missing son. Much had gone on with him, ever since the astonishing and horrible moment when the brethren fell upon him like wolves and he had looked into their faces distorted by fury and hate…. My God, the brothers! To what had he brought them? For he did understand that he had brought them to this: through manifold and great mistakes which he had committed in the assumption that everybody loved him more than themselves…. In the brothers’ distorted and sweating masks he had read clearly with one eye that the premise had gone beyond human power and over a long period had strained their souls and given them great suffering…. With amazement he contemplated the riddle of selfdestructive arrogance presented to him by his own extraordinary behavior…. He wept over poor Jacob, who would have to summon his endurance, and over the brethren’s confidence in his death.21 The novelist’s insights, midrashic in nature, give the reader a glimpse of what might have been Joseph’s mindset at the time, speculation that fleshes out what the biblical narrative chooses not to discuss. In Genesis, Joseph’s journey by caravan from the waterless pit near Shechem down to Egypt was evidently too insignificant to be recorded, except for one interesting aside. The caravan was transporting gum, balm, and laudanum (Genesis 37:25). Thus, the smells and scents that accompanied Joseph on the ship of the desert were far different from those smells that overwhelmed the senses of Africans and their transporters as they traversed the Middle Passage.22 One former slave, Olaudah Equiano, recalled, “I was soon put down under decks, and there I received such a salutation in my nostrils as I had never experienced in my life; so that with the loathsomeness of the stench, and crying together, I became so sick that I was not able to eat, nor had I the least desire to taste anything.”23 Once in Egypt, Joseph was sold to Potiphar, a courtier of Pharaoh and his chief steward. It is at this point that the Bible offers us a simple insight into Joseph’s fortunes: “The Lord was with Joseph” (Genesis 39:2). The phrase is used when Joseph’s fate took a turn for the better through his success in the house of an important Egyptian personage. The same phrase is repeated (Genesis 39:21) when Joseph’s world was turned upside down and he was cast into Pharaoh’s political prison. This sense of God being with Joseph is a message that resonates throughout Joseph’s life in Egypt. In 31

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addition, Joseph perceived this and ascribed his life experiences to God’s intervention so that the phrase “God was with Joseph” also a represented a corollary characterization of Joseph’s state of mind. After thirteen years in Egypt, including two years in prison, Joseph, now age thirty, had risen to the rank of vizier of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. The Bible offers the reader another look at Joseph’s state of mind on the birth of each of his two sons: “Joseph named the first-born Manasseh, meaning, ‘God had made me forget completely my hardship and my parental home.’ And the second he named Ephraim, meaning, ‘God has made me fertile in the land of affliction’” (Genesis 42:51–52). The first-born’s name implies a puzzling contradiction. Joseph praised God for taking away the pain; time heals wounds through the blessing of forgetting. But was he really thankful that he had forgotten his parental home? Naming his son Manasseh in its own way served as a constant though indirect reminder of a life gone by.24 How could he ever forget his home if his son’s very name reminded him of what he had forgotten? The second name makes it clear that Joseph did not view his current status as ideal. He again praised God, this time for his bounty. Yet he described his adopted country as a “land of affliction.” Although the pain he had suffered thirteen years earlier had abated with time, Joseph was still afflicted by an as yet unresolved family conflict.

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CHAPTER 2 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE

THE EARLY MARITIME PROWESS of the Portuguese laid the foundation for

Western European trade in African slaves in the first half of the fifteenth century. The Portuguese captured the first slaves themselves by attacking Africans living on the coast of the Bay of Arguin in modern-day Mauritania. Some Africans were captured at sea, while others were taken in attacks on coastal villages.1 However, it was not long before the Portuguese realized it was more efficient to make use of the existing African slave trade. Prince Henry authorized the negotiation of treaties with Africans in which the Portuguese agreed to barter for slaves rather than steal them. One price reported in 1460 was six slaves for one horse. These early slaves were generally shipped to the Iberian Peninsula, where they were auctioned, although some were shipped to Elmina, Ghana, and traded for gold.2 In 1510 King Ferdinand authorized the shipment to the New World of the first batch of fifty African slaves.3 They were to work in the mines of Hispaniola and were selected for their strength. Soon afterward, he authorized additional shipments of hundreds of slaves that were to be put up for sale in Santo Domingo. In 1518, the first licenses were offered for direct importation from Africa to the New World.4 Slaves were shipped to Cuba to work in gold mines and to Puerto Rico to help establish the sugar industry. By 1530 four to five thousand slaves were being shipped from the Congo each year.5 “Great caravans of blacks” routinely arrived at ports where the Portuguese did business.6 Portugal, which continued to dominate the Atlantic slave trade for the next two hundred years, was the primary slavetrading nation when more than fifty thousand slaves each year were still being shipped to Brazil at the end of the 1840s, as the Atlantic trade was drawing rapidly to a close.7

Captives of War The majority of Africans sold to New World traders were taken in battle. The wars ranged from massive invasions to annual war expeditions. However, it has been argued that many of these captives were already enslaved and therefore had little incentive or ability to flee during battle.8 Long before the first Portuguese arrived in Africa, wars and captive slavery

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

were prevalent. The new European demand for slaves encouraged periods of increased aggression by some local leaders and even created pockets of under-population. One of the first to respond directly to this new economic opportunity was King Alfonso (Nzinga Mvemba) of Kongo (c. 1456–1542 or 1543). Alfonso initiated wars to obtain slaves but later rued the impact of the slave trade on his country as sections became depopulated. However, war and slave trade were such an integral part of the African economy that modern historians downplay the negative impact of several centuries of the Atlantic slave trade on Africa’s overall development.9 Mungo Park (1771–1806), the author of an African travelogue in the 1790s, reported that he observed a ratio of three slaves to one freeman in West Africa.10 The slaves most often sold to Western Europeans were simply a natural by-product of intertribal wars.11 The Fulbe Muslim states were an example of an economy rooted in war because of their penchant for jihad. Their first holy wars in the early 1700s were part of their strategy for converting nonMuslim neighbors. A later jihad in 1804, however, was against the neighboring Muslim state of Hausa, which was considered to be tolerant of paganism in many rural villages. This action triggered throughout the region of northern Nigeria and Cameroon a whole series of wars that lasted for decades.12 The Fulbe built their trading economy around the slave captives that resulted from their numerous military campaigns. They traded to the Europeans a wide array of items including ivory, rice, hides, livestock, and gold, but found that the Europeans were less interested in trading if slaves were not a regular part of the commerce. In some instances those captured had been the initiators of aggression but were defeated in an ill-planned campaign. One interesting story was told by Venture Smith, who was taken captive at the age of six by a marauding army of six thousand. After he was captured, the invading army marched more than four hundred miles toward the coast. They picked up more and more war booty by attacking tribe after tribe on their way to the coastal slave markets. By the time they reached the coast, however, they were exhausted and were easy prey for a coastal tribe.13 The practice of war captives taken home as slaves dates back to antiquity. It is referred to in both the beginning and end of the Five Books of Moses. Chapter 14 of Genesis records a series of battles between kings of city-states. In one battle, as the invading army fought its way home, Lot, Abraham’s nephew, was taken captive along with other residents of Sodom. Upon hearing the news, Abraham gathered a small force and led a nighttime surprise attack as the enemy was returning home. He succeeded in freeing his nephew and returning the war booty to Sodom. In Deuteronomy (21:10– 34

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14), Moses discussed the laws related to the taking of captives in one of his final speeches, less than a month before the Israelites were to launch a conquest of the Land of Canaan.14

Poverty and Justice Africans became slaves in a variety of other ways. Extended drought and famine left parents with few viable options for maintaining their households. Often, they even found that the most effective way to provide for their families was to sell their children to wealthier individuals. John Barbot, an agent for the French Royal Africa Company, observed on his second voyage to the West Coast of Africa that “in times of dearth and famine, abundance of those people will sell themselves, for a maintenance, and to prevent starving. When I first arrived at Goerree, in December, 1681, I could have bought a great number at very easy rates, if I could have found provisions to subsist them; so great was the dearth then, in that part of Nigritia.”15 In the Bible this dynamic was played out during the seven years of famine foretold in Pharaoh’s dreams in Genesis. In the first years of the famine, the average Egyptian used money to buy from the federal granaries that had been established in each city. When money ran out, they exchanged their livestock for grain until there were no livestock left. Finally, they approached Joseph, saying, “Let us not perish before your eyes, both we and our land. Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh” (Genesis 47:19). Although Joseph accepted the land proposal in part, he did not turn the masses into serfs. Joseph imposed a sharecropping system that was generous by American standards. In exchange for providing seed, a farmer was to turn over twenty percent of his crop to Pharaoh (Genesis 47:13–26). In the American South, black farmers routinely turned over one-half to two-thirds of their produce, depending on what the landowner provided the former slave.16 Biblical law also recognized that dire straits could lead an individual to choose a form of slavery to provide for himself and his family’s basic needs. “If your kinsman under you continues in straits and must give himself over to you, do not subject him to the treatment of a slave. He shall remain with you as a hired or bound laborer; he shall serve with you only until the jubilee year. Then he and his children with him shall be free of your authority; he shall go back to his family and return to his ancestral holding. For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude” (Leviticus 25:39–42). In an 1854 study, S.W. Koelle interviewed one hundred forty-nine former slaves who had been rescued by British patrols to investigate how Africans had originally become slaves.17 Although the late date of the survey 35

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suggests that the results are not representative of earlier periods, Koelle found that of these former slaves, then living in Sierra Leone,18 only a third had been captured in war and almost as many reported having been kidnapped by fellow tribesman.19 Travel was especially hazardous. The stranger in a foreign market was easy prey for kidnappers and slavers. Koelle reported that one thirty-year-old had been kidnapped while on a journey to buy corn; another had been kidnapped while on a trading tour by a “treacherous friend who had enticed him aboard a Portuguese ship.”20 This danger in travel was also already noted in biblical times. Both Abraham and Isaac expressed serious concerns when they traveled outside their home districts. They feared they would be killed and their wives taken by the local potentate. Joseph’s brothers took advantage of the presumed danger of travel to hide their deed by claiming that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal. Ten of the former slaves surveyed by Koelle (seven percent) had been sold by relatives. One man had sold his six-year-old brother over a dispute regarding their inheritance from their father, who had been killed in battle. Interestingly, one of those interviewed reported being sold by his countrymen “out of jealousy of his ability and influence.” An equal number were taken to repay a debt. However, the debt need not have even been their own. Several individuals reported being taken as slaves while on a journey to another city as payment for a debt owed by a fellow villager. Sixteen (eleven percent) reported ending up in slavery as a result of a judicial process. Murder, theft, and witchcraft were some of the crimes that resulted in enslavement, but adultery was listed as the most common offense. In some instances enslavement was not even for a crime committed by the individual in question but rather by a close relative. One five-year-old was sold because his sister had been accused of witchcraft.21 The process, however, was not always formal. A king might abuse his power so that “upon any pretense of offences committed by their subjects, they order them to be sold for slaves without regard to rank.”22 Joseph’s brothers saw slavery as a valid quasi-judicial response not only to their brother Joseph’s behavior but also for their own misdeeds.23 When Joseph’s brothers returned to Egypt, now with Benjamin as part of the group, Joseph had his silver goblet planted in Benjamin’s sack. After they departed, Joseph pursued them and accused them of theft. Judah spoke up and offered the following proposal: “Whichever of your servants it is found with shall die, the rest, moreover, shall become slaves to my lord.”24 Later, when the goblet was found in Benjamin’s pack, Judah again offered his brothers’ servitude as collective punishment: “Here we are then slaves of my lord, the rest of us as much as he in whose possession the goblet was found” 36

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(Genesis 44:1–17). Finally, when Joseph insisted only on the enslavement of Benjamin, Judah offered himself alone in exchange. After the family had been reunited in Egypt and shortly after the death of Jacob, Joseph’s brothers once again made an offer of servitude, this time as retribution for having sold Joseph into slavery. “When Joseph’s brothers saw their father was dead, they said, ‘What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong we did him!’” (Genesis 50:15). To avoid this possibility, they sent him a message in the name of their dying father asking that Joseph forgive his brothers. Finally, “his brothers went to him themselves, flung themselves before him, and said, ‘We are prepared to be your slaves’” (Genesis 50:18). Joseph, however, turned down their offer and reassured them that he bore no grudge and would continue to sustain the whole family. The Bible itself records no explicit condemnation of the actions of the brothers, nor does it report any punishment other that their sale set in motion the eventuality of national enslavement.25 The Midrashic tradition is more forthcoming and harsher in its judgment of Joseph’s brothers. The Midrash views the actions of the brothers as having stained the fabric of the Jewish people in a way that would one day demand retribution, both personal and national, in order to expiate the guilt. One Midrash linked the torture and martyrdom of Jewish scholars during the Roman era with the unpunished crime of selling Joseph. It tells the story of a Caesar who, upon studying the Bible, learned that the punishment for kidnapping and sale of an innocent person was death. He subsequently demanded that leaders of Jews bear the punishment that had not been meted out to Joseph’s brothers. The Midrash goes on to list ten great scholars who were martyred and acknowledges that Caesar’s action was a decree from God.26

State of Mind Various African slave narratives portray the deep depression experienced by these captives, especially when they saw their first Europeans and boarded the ships that would take them far from their homelands with absolutely no chance of return. Worse yet, they often thought that Europeans were buying them to be eaten. Suicide and attempted suicide were daily occurrences among slave captives, which ship officials constantly worked to prevent. John Barbot wrote that “many of those slaves we transport from Guinea to America are prepossessed with the opinion, that they are carried like sheep to the slaughter, and that the Europeans are fond of their flesh; which notion so far prevails with some, as to make them fall into a deep melancholy and despair, and to refuse all sustenance tho’ never so much

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compelled and even beaten to oblige them to take some nourishment: notwithstanding all of which, they will starve to death.”27 Olaudah Equiano recalled his first reaction when he boarded a ship and saw his first Europeans: “I was now persuaded that I had got into the world of bad spirits, and that they were going to kill me. Their complexions too differing so much from ours, their long hair, and the language which was very different from any I had ever heard, united to confirm me in this belief.” Imagine his interpretation of what he saw next. “When I looked around the ship too, and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted my fate.”28 Finally, Equiano described himself as “abandoned to despair. I now saw myself deprived of any chance of returning to my native country, or even the least glimpse of hope of gaining the shore and I even wished for my former slavery, in preference to my present situation, which was filled with horrors of every kind, still heightened by my ignorance of what I was to undergo.”29

Journey to the Coast Joseph’s journey to Egypt probably lasted no more than a few weeks, during which he was sold several times.30 For Africans traveling from the interior, the journey was far longer. They were also sold and resold to various slave traders along the way. A typical example of this journey was experienced by a slave named Ajayi, who was taken captive in 1821 from his town in the war-torn empire of Oyo. An army of twenty thousand men attacked his village and he was captured along with his mother, two younger sisters, and a host of other relatives. “Within the space of twenty-four hours, I was made the property of three different persons,” he later recalled. The last owner kept him for two months and swapped him for a horse. Three months later he was sold again, this time in a market town to a woman who kept him for three months as a companion for her son. She sold him to a trader when she realized he was considering suicide as his means of escape. Ajayi was next sold to a trader nearer the coast in exchange for rum, tobacco, and other products of the Atlantic trade. Two months later, he reached the coastal city of Lagos, where he was sold once again. Three more months passed before he was finally sold to a Portuguese ship. Four more months passed in close confinement while the Portuguese trader accumulated more slaves and sought an opportune time to depart to evade British patrols. In sum, Ajayi was sold seven times and was a captive for more than a year before setting foot on a ship.

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On many of his journeys and for extended periods of time in captivity, Ajayi was restrained with either a rope or chain around his neck31 (see illustration 2). This image calls to mind the experience of Joseph, who is remembered in Psalms (105:17–18): “He sent ahead of them a man, Joseph sold into slavery. His feet were subjected to fetters; an iron collar was put on his neck.”32 Although Ajayi’s journey to the coast may have been typical, his story did not end in New World slavery as with millions before him. His journey was interrupted by a British patrol enforcing an end to the slave trade north of the Equator. He was resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and eventually became the Anglican bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther.33

Photograph of scars from whippings.

Slaves tied together as they were marched towards the sea. 39

CHAPTER 3 GROUP JOURNEY INTO SLAVERY

Pharaoh’s Wagons

EARLIER WE DESCRIBED parallels between the journey of Joseph, the first enslaved Israelite, and the experiences of Africans, whose journeys began in central Africa and continued to the continent’s west coast, where they were placed on slave ships. The journey of the entire Israelite clan from Canaan to Egypt prior to the period of their mass enslavement, however, was quite different from the Africans’ journey to America. In the case of the Israelites, Pharaoh authorized the dispatch of special wagons to transport Jacob and his family in comfort to Egypt. The children and wives were given special attention. Joseph added a special gift for his father, “ten he-donkeys laden with the best of Egypt and ten-she donkeys laden with grain, bread and food for his father for the journey” (Genesis 45:23). A total of sixty-six descendants plus their wives made the trip in a well-provisioned open-air wagon train.1 The events leading up to Jacob’s journey began with rejoicing in Egypt over the news that Joseph was from a prestigious family living in Canaan: “The news reached Pharaoh’s palace: Joseph brothers have come. Pharaoh and his courtiers were pleased” (Genesis 45:16). Joseph’s rapid rise to power from slavery had been an embarrassment to Egyptian society and its rigid class structure. This public announcement of his prestigious lineage made him truly “worthy to stand before kings.”2 Joseph’s status was to become even more critical as the impact of the famine played out in the Egyptian countryside and he made and carried out decisions that restructured Egyptian society. In the seven years of plenty, Joseph had wisely stored surpluses for the famine that he had foreseen in Pharaoh’s dreams. This did not involve any shifts in Egyptian society. However, as the famine grew and surpluses rapidly ebbed, Joseph acted in Pharaoh’s name in ways that made fundamental changes throughout the nation, shifting tremendous wealth and power to the central government and uprooting much of Egyptian society from the countryside to cities. He left only the priestly class untouched. Once Joseph’s lineage became known at court, Pharaoh could not wait to have the family close at hand and on display. Pharaoh offered immediate

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inducements for Jacob to relocate with his entire family. In his desire to speed up the process, he offered Jacob the “best of all of the land of Egypt.” Jacob was told not to worry about leaving property behind, as he would be compensated for any losses that he might incur. To speed the transition even more and add status to their arrival, Jacob and his family were to be carried in the king’s own wagons, dispatched on Joseph’s command. When Joseph’s brothers returned home, they brought Jacob the news that Joseph was the ruler over all of Egypt. Jacob could not believe what he was hearing: “his heart went numb.” Although they continued to regale Jacob with what had transpired, it was not until he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent that “the spirit of their father Jacob revived.” These wagons from Pharaoh’s own treasury must have been an impressive sight, laden with the produce of Egypt. Jacob’s children returned to Egypt dressed in new clothes provided by Pharaoh and Joseph.3 This sudden transformation in the mood of Joseph’s father is captured by the way the text refers to him. Joseph’s brothers brought the news back to Jacob, the name signifying the trod-upon heel of Jewish history.4 (The Hebrew name Jacob has the word “heel” as its root.) As his mood changed and he came back to life after more than two decades of mourning, the Bible records that Israel declared, “Enough! My son Joseph is alive! I must go and see him before I die” (Genesis 45:28). Once he comprehended the news, Jacob was transformed back into Israel, the name signifying an individual who had been able to battle and triumph over a mysterious angel.5 Israel, the undaunted, quickly gathered up his minions and property and headed southeast toward the city of Beer Sheba and offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac.6 Yet as night fell, Jacob was troubled. He knew that Abraham had received a prophecy of a long-term mass enslavement of his descendants in a foreign land. Was this journey the starting point for the developing tragedy? If so, would his family survive the mass enslavement? Would they assimilate into the local culture? In his state of anxiety he is no longer referred to just as Israel but also as Jacob.7 God called to him in a dream state, an experience that is succinctly characterized as a “vision of the night” that hints at the underlying dread Jacob felt: “‘Jacob, Jacob!’ He answered, ‘Here I am’” (Genesis 46:2).8 God assured Jacob that his family would survive and even thrive: “Have no fear of descending to Egypt, for I shall establish you as a great nation there” (46:3). However, God went beyond simply prophesying a bright future. God promised not to abandon them as they descended into the abyss of slavery. Their lost status would only be temporary; He would personally lift them out of slavery. “I shall descend with you to Egypt, and I shall surely bring you up” (46:4).9 41

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Despite God’s commitment, Jacob did not shed this concern on the way to Egypt, although his children were evidently oblivious to the impending tragedy. They knew only that their brother Joseph had risen to a position of authority and wealth and that they would be protected. This contrast is captured again by the subtle choice of names: “So Jacob set out from Beer Sheba. The sons of Israel put their father Jacob and their children and their wives in the wagons that Pharaoh had sent to transport them.” To the Children of Israel, the symbolism of Pharaoh’s wagons defined their view of what lay ahead. There was no dread, just privileged status. But the father who journeyed with them was not the high and mighty Israel, but rather the wary and worried Jacob.10 As they set out on their journey, they traveled as a family unit. The Bible emphasizes this family entity by carefully delineating and enumerating each of Jacob’s children, grandchildren, and great-grand children.11 The family transported all of its possessions, especially its livestock. This point is noted again in the opening verse of the book of Exodus: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household.” As the family approached the land of Egypt, Jacob followed the recommendation of Joseph that they settle in Goshen, a district that was close but not too close to the seat of government. Jacob sent Judah ahead to make arrangements with Joseph for them to settle there. The strategy was to keep the Israelite family both geographically and socially isolated from the broader population. It was hoped that this would mitigate the erosion of family identity and values that would occur as they were overwhelmed by the power and attraction of the leading society of its day. Joseph quickly fleshed out a plan that was built around a simple concept. The long-standing traditional occupation of the House of Israel, cattle breeding, necessitated that they be allowed to live in an area with sufficient grazing land. The necessity of separating from the native population was explained by the observation that “all shepherds are abhorrent to Egyptians” (Genesis 46:34).12 Joseph raised this issue with Pharaoh and had his brothers make the same case soon after, but he set the plan in motion even before Pharaoh’s formal approval. The family had already set up camp in Goshen and Joseph sent only five of his brothers to the meeting with Pharaoh. Then Joseph came and reported to Pharaoh saying, “My father and my brothers, with their flocks and herds and all that is theirs, have come from the Land of Canaan and are now in the region of Goshen.” And selecting a few of his brothers, he presented them to Pharaoh. Pharaoh said to his brothers: “What is your occupation?” They answered Pharaoh, “We, your servants, are shepherds, as were also our fathers. 42

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We have come,” they told Pharaoh, “to sojourn in this land for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks, the famine being severe in the land of Canaan. Pray then let your servants stay in the region of Goshen.” Then Pharaoh said to Joseph: “As regards your father and your brothers who have to come to you, the land of Egypt is open before you: settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land; let them stay in the region of Goshen. And if you know any capable men among them put them in charge of my livestock” (Genesis 47:1–6).

The dialogue between Pharaoh, Joseph, and his brothers seems scripted.13 Joseph announces his family’s arrival and closes with reference to their settlement in Goshen. Pharaoh, as if on cue, asks only one question and later, in response to the brothers, does not answer them directly but rather turns to Joseph. He places the family under Joseph’s authority and commands Joseph to formally establish their residence in Goshen. It was as if the dialogue had to be performed before an entourage of courtiers so as to establish the official protocols that governed the presence of Joseph’s family. This would establish their privileged protected status. Pharaoh had a final request that family members consider taking up positions of authority (“And if you know any capable men among them put them in charge of my livestock”). There is no evidence in the biblical narrative, however, that Joseph’s brothers or their descendants assumed positions of power within Egyptian society. The family apparently stayed put in Goshen, as evidenced by references to the Israelites in Goshen being spared the plagues of wild animals and hail (Exodus 8:18 and 9:26).14 And yet we see that they were not isolated from the general Egyptian population after all. At the time of the exodus, their next-door neighbors were in fact Egyptians, as reflected in the very term “Passover,” describing how the Angel of Death bypassed houses with blood on the doorposts, not simply houses located in a distinct region. Also, just prior to leaving, the Israelites approached their Egyptian neighbors to request gifts to take with them, suggesting that they did not live completely apart. The extent to which Joseph’s plan succeeded in maintaining the Israelite cultural identity is debated in both the Midrashic literature and biblical commentaries. One classic Midrash praises the Israelites for keeping their Hebrew names and language.15 No such maintenance of heritage was possible for African slaves in America, however. Africans from different regions of the continent were deliberately mixed together on slave ships to make it nearly impossible to overcome the linguistic barriers between them. In all other matters as well, the break with their native cultures was sharp and swift. In addition, unlike the Israelites in Goshen, African-American slaves did not stay confined to a narrow region as their numbers multiplied. 43

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In the early days they tended to congregate in small sections of the various colonies, often along the coastline. In the census of 1790, Virginia was home to forty percent of the slave population of all the colonies. Along parts of the South Carolina coastline near Georgia, slaves accounted for over eighty percent of the local population. In the nineteenth century, however, population migration patterns in the South and changes in agricultural economics led to a broader spread of the slave population by the time of the Civil War.16

Middle Passage Weeping willow tree, tell me what you know. River, were you crying, many rains ago? Sacred baobab tree, lost your children to the sea, Taken from the land many rains ago. – from the song “Middle Passage” by Quincy Jones

The forced migration of Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World became known as the Middle Passage. Although horrific in itself, the Middle Passage served as but one step in turning freeborn Africans into captives and eventually into members of an enslaved population. The process began with a forced march from the interior of the continent to the slave factories, or barracoons, on the coastal regions of West and West Central Africa.17 Some twenty to forty percent died during the march to the coast, and another three to ten percent died in the barracoons. Altogether, between a third and a half of the captives obtained in the interior of Africa died prior to reaching the New World, with four hundred thousand Africans transported across the Atlantic to the British mainland colonies over a three–hundred-year period.18 In West Africa, traffic in enslaved Africans centered on three regions: the Gold Coast, the Bight of Benin (known as the “Slave Coast”), and the Bight of Biafra. For the period between 1595 and 1867, forty-eight percent of all slaves departed from these three regions.19 Since slavers tended to place captive Africans on board ship at particular ports, the captives often became associated, rightly or not, with these ports and often identified ethnically by them in the New World. For instance, those embarking at the Gold Coast port of Elmina became known as Mina, and those from Kormantine as Cormantee.20 While some historians argue on the basis of sources in the New World that “randomization was not a function of the middle passage; rather slave ships drew their entire cargo from only one or 44

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two African ports, and their catchment areas were homogeneous,” most maintain that “heterogeneity still seems the most accurate description” concerning the ethnic distinctions of enslaved Africans.21 There is a wide range of evidence to support the heterogeneity argument. Africans were taken from throughout the vast regions of the continent’s interior over the course of the slave trade. In addition, upon arrival in America, Africans were frequently resold and ended up on various plantations across the South, further confusing the notion of distinct ethnic identities for both Americans and Africans: “So-called African ethnic or national identities… [were] often convenient reconstitutions or inventions.” When enslaved Africans did arrive in the New World with distinct ethnic identities, intermarriage between groups often eroded those distinctions.22 Thus Africans had no allegiance to a continent or part of a continent. Their sole identity was with a family, clan, or community.23 The origin of the name Middle Passage comes from the widespread notion that the journey from Africa to the New World was the middle leg of a three-part journey: Europeans would sail to Africa to capture Africans, transport them to America, and then return to Europe with valuable commodities such as sugar. This description is misleading, however. The slave ships were actually smaller than the vessels that sailed to Europe from places such as the West Indies, where slave ships often stopped before and after reaching the mainland. Most slave ships made the return voyage with small cargoes, if any.24 Nevertheless, the small, specialized nature of the slave ships, which by 1750 were built with platforms between the decks to help pack in more captives, points out the horrific conditions that Africans experienced on board. From a distance the slave ships may have been a stately sight – “One day the white men arrived in ships with wings, which shone in the sun like knives”25 – but for the slaves in transit there was nothing stately about their journey. They were packed tightly in putrid holds for six weeks. Illustration 4, which was commissioned by a British committee of inquiry of the Privy Council first formed in 1788, depicts their living quarters. The transport of Africans across the Atlantic was fraught with both physical and emotional suffering. The physical agony came from a variety of conditions aboard the slave ships. An enslaved West African Muslim named Mahommad Baquaqua recalled his experience of the Middle Passage during the 1840s: We were thrust into the hold of the vessel in a state of nudity, the males being crammed on one side, and the females on the other; the hold was so low that we could not stand up, but were obliged to crouch upon the floor or sit down; day and night were the same to us, sleep being denied 45

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us from the confined position of our bodies, and we became desperate through suffering and fatigue. Oh! The loathsomeness and filth of that horrible place will never be effaced from my memory; nay, as long as memory holds her seat in this distracted brain, I will remember that. My heart even at this day, sickens at the thought of it…. The only food we had during the voyage was corn soaked and boiled…. We suffered very much for want of water but were denied all we needed. A pint a day was allowed, and no more; and a great many slaves died upon the passage…. When any of us became refractory, his flesh was cut with a knife, and pepper and vinegar was rubbed in to make him peaceable. I suffered, and so did the rest of us very much from sea sickness at first, but that did not cause our brutal owners any trouble…. Only twice during the voyage were we allowed to go on deck to wash ourselves – once whilst at sea and again just before going into port.26

Captains strove to make the journey with as few losses in lives as possible, their main concern being profit, not comfort. By the mideighteenth century the average slave ship weighed two hundred tons and carried more than 500 captives. Women and children were often allowed to remain unchained while men and adolescent boys were secured below deck, at least until they reached the open sea, where the fear of revolt lessened. The segregation of the sexes allowed the ships’ crew greater access to the women and young girls aboard. Altogether, about a third to a quarter of the captives were women, and about ten percent were children.27 There was thus no semblance of families being transported as a unit – a far cry from the Israelites’ journey to Egypt, in which each man came with his household. The majority of deaths on slave ships occurred because of disease. Yellow fever, malaria, smallpox, and measles were common. Dysentery afflicted many and the diarrhea that accompanied the disease, called the “bloody flux,” produced much of the filth associated with slave ships. Ship surgeon Alexander Falconbridge described the lack of sanitation aboard the vessels he sailed on in the 1780s: In each of the apartments are placed three or four large buckets, of a conical form, nearly two feet in diameter at the bottom and only one foot at the top and in depth if about twenty-eight inches, to which, when necessary, the Negroes have recourse. It often happens that those who are placed at a distance from the buckets, in endeavoring to get to them, tumble over their companions, in consequence of their being shackled. These accidents, although unavoidable, are productive of continual quarrels in which some of them are always bruised. In this distressed situation, unable to proceed and prevented from getting to the tubs, they desist from the attempt; and as the necessities of nature 46

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are not to be resisted, ease themselves as they lie. This becomes a fresh source of boils and disturbances and tends to render the condition of the poor captive wretches still more uncomfortable. The nuisance arising from these circumstances is not infrequently increased by the tubs being too small for the purpose intended and their being emptied but once every day. The rule for doing so, however, varies in different ships according to the attention paid to the health and convenience of the slaves by the captain.28

Water, especially, was frequently insufficient in quantity and tainted when available, making dehydration in the humid, fetid holds of the ships a virtual certainty. Fed once around 8:00 a.m. and again around 4:00 p.m., the captives, if they refused food, were induced by the crew to eat by various means of torture, including “coals of fire, glowing hot, put on a shovel and placed so near their lips as to scorch and burn them.” Sailors force-fed other captives by means of unique appliances, which often left them with broken or missing teeth. One captain poured molten lead on captives who refused to eat.29 The emotional terror of the captives rivaled their physical suffering. One reason some preferred to starve was the fear that their captors were cannibals and witches, intent on boiling and eating them. If they were to starve themselves, they reasoned, they would be resisting plans to fatten them up before they were to be consumed. Associating the consumption of European goods with the consumption of African lives, they believed whites intended to turn their blood into red wine, their skin into leather, and their bones into gunpowder. Furthermore, Central Africans believed that the ocean and the spirit world were intertwined. This exacerbated their terror of the Middle Passage: Europeans arrived from the sea and then carried them across it, and so were considered beings from the spirit world, evil spirits with “their blood-red skin and their insatiable appetite for captives identified them as the people of Mwene Puto, the Lord of the Dead, whose minion took captive Africans back across the sea and ate them.”30 The captives also saw starving themselves to death as a way out of their misery. Jumping overboard became common enough that most slave ships had netting to prevent it. Many captives reached such a level of despair that they viewed death as “the last friend” to be courted in a desperate attempt to “take them back to the ancestors at home.” The ocean, viewed as the boundary between the living and the spirit worlds, as well as the home of the dead, served as the perfect mode of transport back to Africa.31 Some twelve to sixteen percent of the captives died during the Middle Passage, at times reaching as high as twenty-four percent on ships experiencing widespread disease or an unexpectedly long voyage. Crew 47

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members, who, unlike Africans, repeated the voyage several times, were also affected by disease on board slave ships. It was their mortality rates, though well below those of Africans on any individual voyage, that led Parliament to pass an amendment to the Dolben’s Act requiring greater sanitary conditions on slavers flying the English flag.32 As a result, the mortality rate for captives fell to 5.65 percent between 1791 and 1797, though this was still well above that for all transatlantic voyages of the time. When mortality is calculated at a rate per month, the numbers show that captives died during the Middle Passage at a rate of sixty per thousand boarded per month, which is about six times higher than the rate on ships that transported emigrants from Europe.33

Slave distribution in 1790.

Slaves tightly packed in the hold of a ship. 48

PART II SLAVE EXPERIENCE: POLITICAL SLAVERY VS. PERSONAL CHATTEL

THE PHRASE IN Deuteronomy 6:21, “We were slaves to Pharaoh1 in Egypt,”

succinctly articulates the nature of the Israelites’ slave experience.2 The Children of Israel were the political slaves of a state whose authority rested in Pharaoh. The location of their enslavement was Egypt, which was arguably the most powerful nation of that time. In contrast, African Americans were chattel slaves sold first in slave markets in the port cities of Charleston, Richmond, Baltimore, and New York, and later in inland locales. They came from regions of the world that Western Europeans and Americans looked upon as uncivilized. This distinction between political and chattel slavery is crucial for exploring the commonalities and differences in the respective slave experiences. However, this contrast is not absolute. As the Children of Israel declined in status, the Egyptian masses seized the opportunity to make the Israelites also their personal slaves by requiring them to work their fields (Exodus 1:13, 14).

CHAPTER 4 EVOLUTION AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF SLAVERY

Political Enslavement of the Israelites JOSEPH’S FAMILY ARRIVED in Egypt as invited and honored guests of Pharaoh. Joseph, who had started his sojourn in Egypt as a slave and became second only to Pharaoh in authority, advised his brothers to use their occupational needs as an excuse for living apart from the mass of Egyptians. “So when Pharaoh summons you and asks ‘What is your occupation?’ You shall answer, ‘Your servants have been breeders of livestock from the start until now, both we and our fathers’ – so that you may stay in the region of Goshen. For all shepherds are abhorrent to Egyptians”1 (Genesis 46:33–34). This stratagem worked. Pharaoh told Joseph, “The land of Egypt is open before you: settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land; let them stay in the region of Goshen” (Genesis 47:6). This privileged status lasted more than one hundred years, throughout the lives of the original arrivals.2 Within this setting, “they multiplied and increased very greatly so that the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:7). The Bible then records that “a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). Who and how this king arose has been the subject of fascinating debates.3 Was he simply from a new dynastic family? Or did he represent a leadership change that resulted from a recent invasion and conquest? Or did he represent the return of an earlier dynasty that had succeeded in overturning the temporary rule of invaders? If the latter was true, it is understandable why Joseph’s family lost their privileged status. In any case, this new monarchy saw the Israelites’ size and power as a threat. Pharaoh stirred a primordial fear that has been used against Jews and other minorities throughout history: that in the event of invasion, the Israelites would form a fifth column and side with the enemy. “And he [Pharaoh] said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with it4 [the nation of Israel], so that it may not increase; otherwise in the event of war it may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground’”5 (Exodus 1:9–10). Pharaoh framed the situation as a potential conflict between his people and the Israelites. The Hebrew word used here, twice, is am, which also means nation. Pharaoh was the first

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to recognize that the Children of Israel were becoming a nation and that someday there would be a national conflict between Egypt and Israel.6 Even as Pharaoh attempted to curtail the population growth of the Israelites, their special status as invited guests of an earlier Pharaoh shielded them from a direct frontal assault.7 Instead, he suggested, “Let us deal shrewdly with it.” He developed a plan of labor taxation that took husbands away from their homes for extended periods of time. The Midrash imagines a hypothetical justification given by a taskmaster to the Israelite slaves as to why they had to live and sleep near their jobs: “If you were to go home to sleep at night, by the time we send for you and you return to work the next morning several daylight hours would have passed and you would not be able to fill your daily quota.”8 In the biblical narrative, Pharaoh’s slowly developing plan began. “So they set taskmasters over it [the Israelite nation] to oppress it with forced labor;9 and it built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Ramses”10 (Exodus 1:11). The Hebrew words sarei misim, translated as “taskmasters,” also suggest that the work requirement was a form of labor tax (mas) or tribute.11 The Israelites were required to provide a rotating workforce to meet a specific public need.12 This interpretation of the first stage of the Israelite enslavement is also buttressed by the Hebrew word “sivlot,” which is translated here as “forced labor” but which is a variant on an ancient term, “sablum,” meaning a form of work conscription or labor tax.13 The ancient root of the word also implies that work is performed in labor gangs.14 The image of a labor gang is reflected in Pharaoh’s articulation and modification of the daily brick quota; it was clearly a communal rather than an individual responsibility (Exodus 5:8, 13, 14). The requirement that nonresidents contribute to public works would not have been unusual and therefore did not generate any complaints from the Israelites.15 Also, the project they were required to participate in was a glorious venture, building garrison (or store) cities16 for Pharaoh that were named in his honor.17 How could they possibly refuse to go along?18 However, when a tax is in the form of labor, it is difficult to judge when and if the experience exceeds the bounds of humane behavior and ultimately becomes mass enslavement. Were the victims to complain of abuse or overwork, the natural response was the accusation, “You are lazy, you are lazy”19 (Exodus 5:17). Also, whatever abuses occurred could be blamed on the whim of the taskmasters who were perhaps exceeding their authority. There were no official edicts, and Pharaoh could deny any evil intent or knowledge of taskmaster abuses. The Bible, however, leaves no doubt as to Pharaoh’s real intention toward the nascent Israelite nation; the goal was “to

52

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oppress it.” This had been foretold in God’s prophecy to Abraham hundreds of years earlier, “And they will be oppressed” (Genesis 15:13). Interestingly, throughout the biblical narrative, Pharaoh himself never refers to the Israelites as slaves, nor was any decree ever issued defining their status as slaves. For example, when Moses and Aaron initially confronted Pharaoh, Pharaoh’s response was “Why do you distract the people from their tasks?”; to the masses he merely said, “Get to your labors!” (Exodus 5:4). To Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron were simply interfering with the natural work order of the day, the people’s ability to meet their daily quota of bricks. Even Pharaoh’s first short-lived attempt to kill male children was done behind the scenes in a failed strategy to recruit the Hebrew midwives as his secret accomplices. It was only when that stratagem failed that Pharaoh issued his first formal decree.20 “Then Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, ‘Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but every girl let live’” (Exodus 1:22). This extreme decree should have shocked the conscience of the people. However, a careful reading of this verse suggests that the edict was not broadcast to the masses of Egyptians after all but rather limited to “all his people.” These same “people” were Pharaoh’s partners in developing and implementing the original plot in response to Pharaoh’s express concern as to the large numbers of Israelites. This could refer to the coterie that attended his court. Alternatively, given the theory that Pharaoh was from the ranks of an invading power, it could refer to the people from his own ethnic group. Despite the words Pharaoh used to describe and deceive the Israelites, there can be no mistake that the Israelite experience was one of slavery. The first of the Ten Commandments bears witness to this: “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Israelites were not simply assigned to work details; theirs was a house of bondage. Similarly, throughout the Bible, God challenges each Israelite to “remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there” (Deuteronomy 5:15). To this very day, every Jew at the Passover Seder restates the experience in its simplest form, “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 6:21).

The Egyptian Masses and Personal Enslavement The first phase of enslavement, leading to the building of Pithom and Ramses, was unsuccessful in achieving its goal of reducing the number of Israelites. In fact, it backfired. “But the more they afflicted them the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad” (Exodus 1:12). The midrashic literature sees these events as a battle of wills between God and Pharaoh, with God ensuring that the Israelites would continue to increase in 53

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number.21 The Egyptians’ reaction to the failed plan was emotional and extreme. “They became disgusted with everything on account of the presence of the Children of Israel”22 (Exodus 1:12). According to the Midrash, they were, simply put, sick and tired of seeing Israelites everywhere they went. “If they went to the theatre it was full of Jews, if they went to the circus, again all Jews.”23 Until this point, the Israelites are referred to in the third-person singular, “it.” This reflects the fact that the Israelites bore the initial burden as a group, a single entity sharing a communal work tax imposed by the political hierarchy. “Outwardly, the action had the form of legally controlled measures.”24 However, in Exodus 1:12, a change occurs. The text begins to refer to “the Children of Israel” rather than just the nation. Subsequently, the text refers to the Israelites with plural Hebrew pronouns. In addition, the entire Egyptian nation, not just the king and his coterie, become directly involved. “The Egyptians ruthlessly25 imposed upon the Israelites the various labors that they made [them] perform” (Exodus 1:13). The Israelites are no longer just a common, politically-enslaved group of people. Either by an unstated national decree or simply on their own initiative, each Egyptian assumed the right to commandeer Israelites for his own work. Thus, without political protection, each Israelite became subject to peremptory abuse from his Egyptian neighbors, who took advantage of the Israelites’ reduced status. In articulating the “imposition of various labors,” the Bible used, for the first time, a verb form of “enslavement,” va-ya’avidu, to describe their state. But the oppression did not stop there. “Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks of the field” (Exodus 1:14). Not only did the Israelites make bricks, but they were also required to work Egyptian fields. Ironically, the famine in Joseph’s time had driven the Egyptians to desperation; they offered to become slaves of Pharaoh and to cede to him all their property. Rather than accept their offer, Joseph imposed a twenty-percent produce tax. The same properties that Joseph could have made into an arrangement of unending slavery and serfdom became instead part of the structure of Israelite bondage. Hirsch sees this as a natural consequence of a nation’s failure to accord non-citizen foreigners protection under the law: “In Egypt, the cleverly calculated lowering of the rights of the Jews on the score of their being aliens came first, the harshness and cruelty followed by itself.”26

African-American Slavery: an Evolving Legal Structure Unlike the Israelites, who came as invited guests to Egypt, the first Africans came to the New World as servant-slaves. The legal status of these first arrivals is unclear. The word “slave” rarely appeared in documents and 54

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records in the first decades of African importation. Often, these first arrivals were simply referred to as Negroes. They arrived in continental North America in groups of twenty or fewer people from the Caribbean. The first group of twenty servant-slaves was sold to John Rolfe of Jamestown in 1619,27 just twelve years after the settlement’s founding and a few years after the first export of tobacco. The direct import of slaves from Africa did not develop until after 1670.28 These early African arrivals were often not treated much differently from white indentured servants, who outnumbered them for much of the seventeenth century.29 Although indentured servants were bought and sold in the same ways as the African slaves were, early records suggest that white and Negro servants were treated differently. While white indentured service typically lasted four to seven years, there is evidence that for blacks, terms of twenty years or more were common. Also, when punishment was meted out, there could be significant differences for whites and blacks. For example, of a group of three runaway slaves, the two whites were punished with an added year of servitude and were also required to work an additional three years on public projects. The one black was sentenced to servitude for life.30 However, not until the 1660s did Virginia law support the standard criterion for slavery: service for life for both the slave and his children. To place the concept of indentured servant in perspective, it is important to remember that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century class-conscious British society viewed all poor with contempt. It employed policies that often confined them to workhouses and characterized the poor as vicious, idle, and dissolute.31 Nevertheless, there was an important qualitative difference between indentured service and slavery. “Slaves experienced a more encompassing denial of rights than did other forced laborers. The slave suffered not only loss of control over labor-power but also loss of control of person.”32 These first southern slaves became part of a society with slaves that evolved over the next hundred and fifty years into a slave society. The differences between a slave society and a society with slaves, as discussed by Berlin, are summarized in Table 1.

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Table 1: Society with Slaves Contrasted with Slave Society33 SOCIETY WITH SLAVES CLASS MOBILITY ECONOMIC ECONOMY WORK ENVIRONMENT

TRAVEL

The line between slave and free is permeable and fluid Slavery was marginal to main production Diverse economy Labored alongside other workers, and even the master and perhaps master’s wife and children Slaves travel both on behalf of economic activities of the master as well as for sanctioned independent economic activity that was widespread

POPULATION

Minority

LABOR CLASS

Slavery was just one form of labor among many

SLAVE OWNERS’ SOCIAL STATUS

SLAVE OWNERS’ POLITICAL STATUS

SLAVE CONTROL

Master-slave relationship not a social exemplar Slave owners only a portion of the propertied elite Maltreatment of slaves was a general reflection of the mistreatment of all subordinates. They were subject to rule of law that could mitigate worst practices.

SLAVE SOCIETY Little or no movement between groups – later attempts to make manumission illegal Center of economic production Cash crop Less daily equal contact between master and field slave Restricted travel and extremely circumscribed opportunities for economic activity (skilled slaves were an exception) Majority of laboring class and possibly population Slaveholding drove other forms of labor to the margins, often leading to migration to elsewhere People aspired to join the slaveholding class and behave like that class Slave owners as ruling class – monopolize power, create laws and executive powers that protect and reinforce their status Owners sought almost supreme sovereignty over the life and death of the slave.

One quantitative indicator of the difference between the two societal types is the proportion of the population that is enslaved. Slaves comprised less than five percent of the population of the region during the first fifty 56

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years of slavery in Virginia. The percentage started to climb toward the end of the 1600s until by 1750, slaves comprised more than forty percent of the population of Virginia. In contrast, South Carolina began as a slave society.34 Slaves made up over half the population in 1708, more than sixty percent in 1750, and stayed near that level up to the Civil War. There were also broad sections of the colony’s coastal lowland rice country in which slaves were more than eighty percent of the population.35 At the time of the Civil War, slaves were almost fifty percent of the total population of a continuous string of coastal states that ran from South Carolina to Louisiana.36 By contrast during the eighteenth century, the North’s slave population was no more than fifteen percent in any state. In the first post-American Revolution census, slaves comprised only six percent of the populations of New York and New Jersey in 1790, and slavery was ending in Rhode Island.37 Table 2: Slave Population as Percent of Total CENSUS 1860 PRE-REVOLUTIONARY WAR STATE PERCENT STATE PERCENT South Carolina 59 Rhode Island 10 Georgia 44 New York 11 to 15 Florida 45 New Jersey 12 Alabama 45 Mississippi 55 Louisiana 50 Aggregate 50

The first slaves arrived before the enactment of local laws that defined their status and governed their conduct.38 Slavery in each colony was a natural extension of the society from which the original settlers came. In the seventeenth century, slaves worked side-by-side with indentured servants, and their work lives were often governed by the same norms. In the early days of modest-size farms, slaves or servants often experienced “sawbuck equality” with the master, each working one end of the two-person sawbuck. The first slave-related law, passed in Virginia in 1640, addressed not the core concept of slavery but a side issue: black slaves were excluded from the requirement that masters arm members of their households. Twenty years later, the legality of slavery was formally recognized in Virginia. Then, in 1667, slavery was declared a lifelong status as well as a hereditary one, forcing the children of slaves to remain slaves. This law originated after a slave went to court to obtain his freedom, claiming that “he was a Christian and had been several years in England.”39 Maryland’s law, passed in 1663, was an extreme extension of Virginia’s. It strove to make slaves out of all Negroes in the colony; all Negro children born in the colony were to be 57

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slaves even if their mothers were free. However, the law was changed in line with Virginia’s in 1681.40 For its part, the North was only a few years behind in passing slave legislation. For example, Massachusetts passed a law in 1670 that legitimized an owner’s right to sell a slave’s child into bondage. Slavery’s intellectual and economic roots were much deeper in the Carolinas. John Locke, whose philosophy is often credited with forming the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, found no contradiction in framing the concept of slavery in the charter for Carolina. He wrote, “Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his Negro slaves.” The original settlers in 1663 were offered incentives to bring slaves with them. They were given twenty acres of land for every male slave and ten acres for every female slave.41

From Slave to Freeman One characteristic of these early societies with slaves, such as Virginia and Maryland, was that during most of the 1600s the barrier between slave and freeman was highly permeable. These first slaves were allowed time on the weekend and evenings to work for themselves. This enabled some to accumulate capital with which they could buy their freedom. According to one estimate, in the 1660s and 1670s in a number of Virginia counties, almost one-third of the black population was free.42 Anthony Johnson and Frances Payne, members of the Virginia charter generation, became prominent landowners and passed their freedom and wealth onto succeeding generations of Virginia blacks. The situation was so fluid in this first century of slavery that at times blacks even voted. In 1706 several petitioners complained, “For at this last election Jews, Strangers, Sailors, Servants, Negroes, and almost every French Man in Craven & Berkly County [South Carolina] came down to elect, & their votes were taken.”43 However, as Virginia changed from a society with slaves into a slave society, laws were passed that made it harder for African Americans to become free. In 1691 Virginia began to restrict manumission and the next year, slaves lost the right to own property.44 South Carolina similarly imposed restrictions that made it harder for slaves to earn their freedom. In 1691 Saturday afternoons were no longer a free time for blacks and a law in 1714 restricted their right to own cattle.45 In 1723 Virginia, like North Carolina, limited manumission as a reward for “meritorious services,” which was to be certified by a public authority. Maryland prohibited postmortem manumission in 1752. It was not until after the American Revolution that Virginia in 1782 restored owners’ rights to free their slaves as part of their last will and testament.46

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While the Revolutionary War created disorder in the operation of slavery, it made no change in its intrinsic definition. Tens of thousands of slaves throughout the South used the turmoil that war created to escape bondage.47 The war also created fervor among certain populations to bring gradual emancipation of slaves to individual states. The legislative wrangling over slave clauses in the Constitution, however, was about political power rather than the essence of slavery. Without using the term “slavery,” the South was able to gain additional members in the House of Representatives by counting each slave as three-fifths of a person in the census.48 Another clause prohibited for twenty years, until 1808, passage of any laws that interfered with the import of slaves. Lastly, the Constitution restricted the rights of northern states with regard to fugitive slaves who had fled from the South. The Bible, though lacking a detailed socioeconomic picture, suggests that Egypt may have made a transformation similar to the colony of Virginia. In the time of Joseph, Egypt was a society with slaves. Joseph’s own life experience characterized extreme fluidity of position and status. In the house of Potiphar he rose to the top of the slave class until he was banished to prison following the incident with Potiphar’s wife. From there he was eventually elevated from slave to prince of Egypt with one declaration by Pharaoh. Other evidence that Egypt was a society with slaves comes from the reaction of the Egyptian farmers to the years of famine in Joseph’s days. As noted, when faced with a persistent famine, the Egyptian masses readily offered themselves as slaves: “Take us and our land in exchange for bread, and we with our land will be serfs to Pharaoh” (Genesis 47:19). In contrast to this earlier biblical period, the Israelite sojourn in Egypt eventually became the essence of a slave society. The Israelite population increased so much that Pharaoh declared, “Look, the Israelite people are too numerous for us” (Exodus 1:9). As their servitude increased, they also became an important element of every aspect of the economy. They built the massive public works, made the bricks, and were available to “work every task of the field” (Exodus 1:14).

Slave Rights A slave’s rights and personal protection also eroded with time. After 1669, a master in Virginia was no longer culpable if he accidentally killed his slave while punishing him. In 1692, a slave charged with a capital offense lost the right to a jury trial and the rules of evidence became less restrictive. The punishment for striking a white man was thirty-nine lashes in Virginia (1705) and death in South Carolina (1714).49 By the 1800s, the master’s power was essentially absolute. Judge Thomas Ruffin of the Supreme Court 59

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of North Carolina wrote, “The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect.”50 Similarly, the Supreme Court of Alabama gave open-ended, practical significance to this right. “Absolute obedience, and subordination to the lawful authority of the master, are the duty of the slave. The law cannot enter into strict scrutiny of the precise force employed [by the master], with the view to ascertaining that the chastisement had or had not been reasonable.”51 The French colony of Louisiana followed its own legal and cultural tradition in the development of a slave society. Its legal structure was based on the Code Noir that was instituted by the king of France in 1685 and introduced to Louisiana in 1724. This was long before intensive development of the colony began. The population of the territory did not exceed ten thousand until after 1750; the slave population was more than half the total.52 The code discouraged manumission and self-purchase, and even when freed the slave was required “to defer to his former owner.”53 The Code Noir, when compared to laws of the Atlantic colonies, gave slaveholders greater authority to discipline their slaves.54 It also provided some protection against the breakup of the slave family and encouraged owners to include their slaves in religious rites.55 The states that developed in the mid–1700s or later adopted slave codes that had already been written and tested with time. Slavery arrived in Georgia after 1750 and was governed by adaptations from South Carolina’s laws. While Alabama and Mississippi were Spanish colonies, French planters dominated the economy. As a result, Spain acquiesced to the use the Code Noir as modified by the Cabildo in New Orleans to govern slavery. In general, the Spanish were more supportive of offering slaves the opportunity to obtain freedom through self-purchase or negotiations. This liberalization of manumission also spread to Louisiana, which Spain controlled from 1762 until 1803.56 They also offered former slaves greater economic freedom, including the right to serve in local militias.57 By the early decades of the 1800s, the legal infrastructure that governed slavery and the lives of the individual slave and his family was well established. The importation of slavery was outlawed as of January 1, 1808, under the initiative of President Thomas Jefferson, but enforcement was slow in coming. The big political fights that dominated the first half-century of congressional debate were not about the status of slaves, which was controlled by individual states, but rather about the expansion of slavery to new territories and political power. Within states there was still legislative and judicial activity regarding restrictions on manumission, travel, assemblage, and interaction between slaves and free blacks. Random acts of rebellion produced waves of fear and legislation designed to disrupt 60

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attempted conspiracies and collaboration between freemen and slaves. The issue of fugitive slaves was a constant irritant in the relationship between the North and South, though more symbolic than practical; the number of fugitive slaves was small compared to the explosive natural growth that slavery experienced during the 1800s. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 touched the essence of what it meant to be not only a slave but also a black in America. The Supreme Court declared a slave to be absolute property of his master who had the right to take him into any territory without losing his right of ownership.58 At the heart of the case was the right of a black to sue. Under the direction of Chief Justice Roger Taney, the Supreme Court in a 7–2 decision stripped all blacks in America, whether free or slave, of United States citizenship. Taney declared in the name of the Court that Negroes descended from slaves could not become part of the federal political community. No constitutional safeguards could protect blacks, who now stood vulnerable before federal law. Their only protection was that accorded them by individual states, and this protection extended only to each state’s borders. The core logic was that whether slave or free, “they were not included nor intended to be included, under the word citizens in the Constitution,” nor did the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal… with certain inalienable rights” refer to them, since they were not “men.” The Court described Negroes as “subordinate and inferior beings,” “altogether unfit to associate with the white race… and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect… might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”59 This opinion issued by the high court declared that slavery was not just a peculiar sectional institution of the South but rather woven into the national identity of the United States. For the southern slave owner, the Court’s decision also swept away any claims that slavery was immoral and provided justification for the enslavement of blacks in perpetuity. The Court’s decision, just four short years before the first shots of the Civil War, left all blacks subject to state legislatures. Slavery in the South now had implied federal protection. Although the decision had little or no practical impact on the life of blacks, it shook the precarious equilibrium of every free black in the South. Every freedman had to wonder if the state legislature might one day declare he too had no rights and was to be sold to the highest bidder. The decision calls to mind Hirsch’s description of the status of the Israelite in Egypt (Exodus 1:14): “Without political protection, these Israelite strangers were oppressed and then enslaved without any right of appeal or redress for any wrongs committed against them.”60

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Racism and Slavery The Dred Scott decision was a natural progression from the racist philosophy that had developed in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Throughout history, slaves have often been viewed as inferior to the master class. That inferiority was generally perceived as cultural – namely that the enslaved group was from a backward or weak society, which was one reason they had been conquered. However, as individuals within the enslaved group or even the society as a whole adopted the values and systems of the ruling class, there was no innate barrier to their achieving the same successes. In contrast, American slavery during its last one hundred years nurtured a growing belief that blacks were innately inferior, that they were incapable of handling freedom, and that freedom would not enable blacks to match the achievements of whites. These claims were buttressed by pseudo-scientific arguments that had the support of several of the greatest eighteenth-century philosophers and writers: Voltaire, Edward Gibbon, and the Scottish philosophers David Hume and Henry Home.61 Interestingly, an individual could accept the thesis of racial inferiority and still believe that no human being should enslave another and that no class of individuals should hold another in servitude forever. One could believe that slavery was wrong not only from the perspective of the enslaved but also because it corrupted the owners of slaves and the society in which slavery was rooted. Thomas Jefferson was such an individual. He believed that his words in the Declaration of Independence would place America on a path of gradual emancipation. He expected the next generation of Virginians to lead the way in this effort. When he drafted a constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1783 for a proposed convention, he included a clause that all children born of slave parents after 1800 were to be free after reaching adulthood. However, the state constitutional convention that he envisioned never materialized. Jefferson also led the effort to prohibit the expansion of slavery and involuntary servitude through the Northwest Ordinance of 1784.62 Finally, as president, Jefferson pushed for legislation that outlawed the importation of slaves on the earliest date allowed by the Constitution, January 1, 1808.63 Nevertheless, Jefferson was the leading Southern intellectual who wrote of the natural intellectual inferiority of blacks. In Notes on Virginia, he contrasted the abilities of blacks and whites based on what he claimed was scientific evidence obtained through his own empirical observation. He hypothesized that “Afro-Americans were superior to whites in music, and equal to them in courage, memory and adventurousness and the moral sense but inferior to Caucasians in reasoning powers, forethought, poetry and imagination.” One of his pieces of “evidence” for the intellectual inferiority 62

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of blacks was the lack of poetry within the slave culture. He argued that if blacks had the intellectual abilities of whites, great poetry would have arisen naturally in response to the oppression and degradation of slavery.64 Jefferson even believed that blacks were perhaps a separate, inferior creation of God and not descended from Adam and Eve.65 It is ironic that a country founded on the principle of equality of all men nurtured from its very birth a philosophy that excluded one class of people by implicitly or explicitly suggesting that they were not human beings. Southern leaders of the American Revolution and their representatives in Europe were thus able to cope with the charge of ultimate hypocrisy. They were fighting a revolution to take control of their own affairs even as they enslaved more than six hundred thousand blacks – fully twenty percent of the total population. Thomas Jefferson drafted the clause that inspired revolutionaries: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Yet for fifty years afterward, Jefferson lived a life of liberty and pursuit of happiness with the help of more than two hundred slaves on his plantations, slaves whom he, unlike Washington, did not emancipate upon his death. Although his words on freedom long outlived him, the principles of racial inferiority that he helped to propagate outlived the institution of slavery by more than another hundred years.

Animal Imagery During the early years of slavery in America, the slave-owning classes often characterized the Irish, the poor, indentured white servants, other underclasses, and black slaves in subhuman terms. Common descriptions included “filthy,” “shiftless,” “irresponsible,” “disloyal,” “dishonest,” and “scum.” There was a prominent difference, however, in the derogatory language used to describe black slaves as compared to that applied to white indentured servants. Black slaves were much more frequently likened to animals and beasts both in terms of their general behavior and their sexuality.66 This imagery was accompanied by treatment that paralleled the treatment of domesticated animals. Slaves were bought in the open market, often branded by their owner, given a metal neck collar and a name. One British observer compared a late-eighteenth-century Virginia slave market to stockyards: “Buyers handle [their intended purchases] as their Butchers do Beasts in Smithfield, to see if they are proof in Cod,67 Flank, and Shoulders.” Other stated comparisons included owners “who looked on their slaves with 63

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half the kindness and affection which they consider their dogs and horses.” In the extreme, it was observed, a planter might “shoot a Negro with as little emotion as he shoots a hare.” Finally, a comparison that would gain even more frequent usage in the nineteenth century was that “blacks were a kind of animal closer to monkeys than a man.”68 Scientists involved in classification of species debated where to place the Negro on the spectrum between the ape species and humans.69 The biblical narrative also contains animal imagery as applied to the Israelites, specifically to their fertility, Pharaoh’s primary concern. The Hebrew word for “were prolific” in the verse “But the Israelites were fertile and prolific” (Exodus 1:7) is va-yishretzu. Its Hebrew root, sheretz, refers to animal classes of land, sea, or air known for their multiple births, or to animals that creep on the earth.70 In Leviticus the term sheretz is most frequently used as an adjective describing non-kosher animals within the broader categories of land, sea, and flying animals.71 Given this negative association, it is not surprising that Seforno interprets this analogy as a derogatory statement and not simply a neutral characterization of Israelite fertility.72 Similarly, the Hebrew’s midwives used an animal image to justify their inability to fulfill Pharaoh’s charge that they kill all the male children: “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous” (Exodus 1:19).73 The Hebrew word hayyot, which is translated as “vigorous,” is also the term used to refer to wild animals. The midwives claimed that Israelites were not like Egyptian women, who gave birth at home, thus enabling the midwives to be at their side. In contrast, the Israelites were like wild animals giving birth in the fields with little warning. This derogatory imagery of Israelite women as animals resonated with Pharaoh’s desire to reduce the status of the Israelites. Thus the midwives managed to avoid punishment after Pharaoh had originally accused them of duplicity.

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CHAPTER 5 BREAKING THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Affliction

EARLIER IN THIS SECTION, the Israelites’ descent into political slavery was presented in unemotional terms, as the Egyptian masses took advantage of the Israelites’ diminished status. It is clear that the strategy of Pharaoh and his advisers was designed to break the spirit of the Israelite people. The terms most associated with this aim are variations on the word “inui,” which means “oppression” or “affliction” and is closely linked to the Hebrew words for “impoverishment” and “misery.” God used the word in the original prophecy to Abraham (Genesis 15:13), and as did Pharaoh in his first edict (Exodus 1:11). God, in His initial meeting with Moses, begins with the observation: “I have surely seen the impoverishment [or affliction] of my people.” And later (3:17), God referred to the exodus as lifting them up out of the oni, or misery, of Egypt. The remembrance of oppression is at the core of reliving the Israelite experience on Passover night. The Seder meal is highlighted by the eating of matzah, what the Bible calls lehem oni, or bread of affliction. The terms oni or inui are often used in the Bible in other contexts that refer to pain and suffering at a deeper psychological level, including oppression felt by the most vulnerable in society. The term is associated with second-class status, a person who is an outsider, a stranger, or one of the classically disadvantaged: a convert, widow, or orphan. Thus, Mosaic law directly links the treatment of the disadvantaged with the pain and suffering of the Israelite slaves. Another word used in both these contexts is lahatz, which also means “oppressed,” but which suggests both physical and psychological pressure. In Exodus, God says, “I have indeed seen the affliction [oni] of My people that is in Egypt and I heard its outcry because of its taskmasters, for I have known of its sufferings…. And now, behold! The outcry of the Children of Israel has come to Me and I have also seen the oppression [ha-lahatz] with which the Egyptians oppress [lohatzim] them” (Exodus 3:7, 9). Within weeks of the exodus, as the Israelites camp at Mount Sinai, God prohibits the abusive treatment of certain disadvantaged classes, demanding that each Israelite recall the

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experience of his ancestors who were “strangers in Egypt.” The outcast’s pain, oppression, and subsequent outcry are all described using the language that characterized the Israelite slave experience. “You shall not taunt [toneh] or oppress [tilhatzenu] the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not cause pain [te’anun] to any widow or orphan. If you dare to cause him pain [aneh te’aneh]! For if he shall cry out to me, I shall surely hear his outcry. My wrath shall blaze and I shall kill you by the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children orphans” (Exodus 22:20–23).

Women in Slavery The Hebrew word oni is also used in various forms to characterize the difficult or extreme life experiences of women. It is used to describe the oppression of Hagar, the Egyptian second wife of Abraham, who was treated harshly by Sarah (Genesis 16:6, 9). It was applied to Leah, the unchosen and unloved wife of Jacob who named her firstborn Reuben, “for she declared, ‘It means the Lord has seen my affliction’” (Genesis 29:33). Hannah, the barren but beloved wife of Elkanah, prayed from the depths of her soul as she suffered at the hands of the fertile second wife, Peninnah, pleading with God to “look upon the suffering (be-oni) of Your maidservant” (1 Samuel 1:11). The suffering of women is strongly implied in the exodus narrative. The Bible records a terrifying period when Pharaoh decreed that all male children be killed at birth. It is not difficult to imagine the terror felt by all Israelite pregnant and nursing mothers. Yet the Bible is silent as to how the masses of women and their families handled this threat. All the reader is told is how one anonymous family of the tribe of Levi responded: “A certain man of the House of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw how beautiful he was, she hid him for three months. When she could hide no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among reeds by the bank of the Nile” (Exodus 2:1–3; JPS). Linda Brent, a black South Carolina slave born in 1818, described her emotions at having a child born into slavery and then trying to decide whether she preferred life or death for her infant. When he was a year old, they called him beautiful. The little vine was taking deep root in my existence, though its clinging fondness excited a mixture of love and pain. When I was most sorely oppressed, I found solace in his smiles. I loved to watch his infant slumbers; but always there was a dark cloud over my enjoyment. I could never forget that he was a slave. Sometimes I wished that he might die in infancy. God tried me. My darling became very ill. The bright eyes grew dull, and the little 66

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feet and hands were so icy cold that I thought death had already touched them. I had prayed for his death, but never so earnestly as I now prayed for his life; and my prayer was heard. Alas, what mockery it is for a slave mother to try to pray back her dying child to life! Death is better than slavery.1

Despite these ambivalent emotions, African-American slaves still bore children and loved them as mothers had throughout history.2 Unfortunately, these slave mothers were extremely circumscribed in the time and energy they could invest in their children given the rigors of slave life.3 Frederick Douglass observed, “The domestic hearth with its holy lessons and precious endearments, is abolished in the case of the slave mother and her children.” Booker T. Washington’s experience was not much better: “My mother… had little time to give to the training of her children during the day. She snatched a few moments for our care in the early morning before her work began, and at night after the day’s work was done.”4 The most important lesson parents could teach their children was how to accept the burden of slavery without constantly being beaten and abused. Where possible, some mothers bore the whipping intended for their children: “De old overseer he hate my mammy, ‘cause she fought him for beatin’ her chillen. Why she get more whippin’ for dat dan anthin’ else.”5 Slave mothers surely steeled themselves against the often arbitrary sale of their children; nevertheless, a child’s subsequent departure could drive them to hysteria and acts of desperation, such as a hastily planned escape. Harriet Beecher Stowe included these images in the opening chapters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She described a slave trader’s advice on the right and wrong way to separate a slave mother from her child. I’ve seen ’em as a would pull a woman’s child out of her arms, and set him up to sell, and she screechin’ like mad all the time; – very bad policy – damages the article – makes ’em quite unfit for service sometimes. I knew a real handsome gal once…. The fellow that was trading for her didn’t want her baby; and she was one of your real high sort, when her blood was up. I tell you, she squeezed up her child in her arms, and talked, and went on real awful. It kinder makes my blood run cold to think on’t; and when they carried off the child, and locked her up, she just went ravin’ mad, and died in a week.6 This fictional account paralleled the memory of Josiah Henson, who recalled the scene when he was five. “My brothers and sisters were bid off first, and one by one, while my mother, paralyzed by grief, held me by the hand…. My mother, half-distracted with the thought of parting forever from all her children pushed through the crowd, while the bidding for me was going on, to the spot where Riley [her new master] was standing. She fell at 67

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his feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him in tones that a mother could only command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one, at least, of her little ones.”7 The pattern of breaking up of the family was an element of the African slave trade from its very inception. A Portuguese chronicler described the scene on August 8, 1444, surrounding the sale of one of the first shipments of slaves in Portugal. “What heart could be so hard as not to be pierced to see that company?… But to increase their suffering still more there now arrived those who had charge of the division of the captives, and… then was it needful to part fathers from sons, husbands from wives, brothers from brothers. No respect was shown to either friends or relations, but each fell where his lot took him.”8 This was still true in New York in the early 1800s as slavery was coming to an end there. Sojourner Truth, a New York slave originally named Isabella, retold her own experience. “I have borne thirteen chilern and seem em mos’ sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard – and ar’n’t I a woman?”9 Even legal restrictions did not actually stop the sale of children away from their mothers. In New York, legislation that declared the end of slavery on January 1, 1827, also made it illegal to sell slaves to states where slavery would continue. Nevertheless, through a series of transactions, Sojourner Truth’s five-year-old son was sold to relatives of her master in Alabama. In one act of legal hubris, Sojourner Truth went to court to reclaim the boy. Ultimately she won the case and was reunited with her son.10

Separating Husband and Wife The midrashic tradition identifies another dimension of the oppressive weight felt by every Israelite husband and wife struggling to cope with the death decree upon their sons. As a result of Pharaoh’s decree, a Midrash suggests that Moses’ father, Amram, led a movement of husbands to separate from their wives.11 Husbands and wives thus ceased conjugal relations so as to avoid the moral dilemma eventually faced by Moses’ parents. When the author of the Haggadah cites the verse, “We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our affliction, our travail, and our oppression” (Deuteronomy 26:7), he comments that the word onyeinu, “our affliction,” refers to “the disruption of their family life.” Lehmann observes that people are capable of bearing any burden for the sake of their families. However, if family life is destroyed, all burdens gain added weight: “Burden him with intolerable loads and at the same time rob him of the family for which he would gladly accept all the difficulties and burdens of life, is a form of misery compared with which all 68

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political and social oppression appears unimportant. God alone knows the deep, indescribable pain that this causes, for it is His love that has woven the family bonds, whose delicate threads have here been broken by the brutal savagery of tyranny.”12 For the Israelites, faced primarily with political enslavement, this frontal attack on the family was short-lived and ineffective. Amram and his peers separated from their wives by choice. Husbands were also separated from their wives for months at a time as result of work on Pharaoh’s massive projects. For African-American slaves, the forced separation of husbands and wives was the result of harsh economic reality or a punishment for misbehaving. The separation was usually permanent. Charles Ball, a Maryland slave, was sold away from his family and sent to Georgia. He recorded his first thoughts: “My heart dies within me. I felt incapable of weeping or speaking.” Later he dreamed of his wife and children “beseeching and imploring my master on their knees not to carry [me] away from them.”13 One study of post-Civil War marriage certificates examined 2,888 slave unions in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Louisiana, and found that almost onethird were broken up by the master.14 If you envision the immediate family as encompassing parents, husbands and wives, siblings and children, it would have been rare for a slave not to have felt the pain of forced separation many times over. The last plague in Egypt carried with it the description, “for there was no house where there was not someone dead” (Exodus 12:3). The plague that attacked the African-American family could be characterized similarly: “for there was not a family where there was not someone who had been sold away, never to be seen again.” The ever-present threat of future separations was a real and tangible sword of Damocles, not just dangling but held tightly in the hand of every master. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe used the breakup of the slave family as her opening attack on the brutality of slavery even in the household of a supposedly kind master. Because of financial difficulties, Master Shelby goes back on his word and sells Uncle Tom down the river. He also sells a five-year-old child away from his mother. There were, however, periods and locales where the norm was to sell groups of slaves so as to keep a modicum of family integrity, especially with regard to husbands and wives and small children.15

Rape In the Bible the word inui is also used in the context of the most horrific crime perpetrated against a vulnerable individual, the rape of a woman. The term first appears in the story of the abduction and rape of Dinah, the 69

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daughter of Jacob (Genesis 34:2). It is reprised in the story of the rape of the concubine of Givah that led to a civil war (Judges 20) and is also used to characterize the rape of King David’s daughter Tamar by her half-brother, Amnon (2 Samuel 13:32).16 However, with regard to the Israelite slave experience, the midrashic tradition lists the sanctity of the family as one of the behaviors for which they merited redemption. This tradition is based on a principle that the exception proves the rule. One individual in the Bible, the profaner of God, is singled out as having been born to an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father (Leviticus 24:10). The Midrash suggests that the child’s father was an Egyptian taskmaster who took advantage of an Israelite wife while her husband was outside at his labors.17 The society the Israelites built within their political enslavement enabled them to keep their family structure. Their women were generally protected from sexual abuse. In contrast, the African-American female was subject to rape not only from her master but also his adult children and extended family as well as the overseer or taskmaster. One former slave recalled how three boys, ages twenty-one, nineteen, and seventeen, brutally raped her mother while the Old Mistress was away on a daylong trip. “While she [my mother] was alone, the boys came in and threw her down on the floor and tied her down so she couldn’t struggle, and one after the other used as long as they wanted, for the whole afternoon.”18 The reality of sexual harassment that often led to rape was a horrific element of female slaves’ adolescence. Linda Brent provides an almost diarylike description of her attempts at the age of fifteen to ward off the advances of her master, who was forty years her senior. “My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such as only a vile monster could think of. He told [me] I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings.”19 The intermittent sexual abuse of the female slave often led to secondary daily abuse at the unrestrained hands of a jealous mistress of the household.20 Marriage offered limited protection. Some masters and overseers hesitated to abuse married women to avoid undermining the harmony and ultimately the efficiency of the plantation. A slave husband in a fit of rage might ignore his enslavement and spring to the defense of his wife or seek retribution after the fact.21 “One man said he stood it as long as he could and one morning he just stood outside, and when he [the slave master] got with his wife, he just choked him to death. He said he knew it was death, but it was death anyhow; so he just killed him. They hanged him.”22 However, a lustful determined master or overseer could not really be prevented from 70

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acting out his desires.23 Henry Bibb wrote in his narrative, “A poor slave’s wife can never be… true to her husband contrary to the will of her master. She dare not refuse to be reduced to the state of adultery at the will of her master.”24 The foundation on which the two slave experiences were built differed greatly. Nevertheless, the abuse of political and personal power produced an oppressive weight that ground the respective groups under relentless pressure for generations. It is therefore no wonder that images of the Hebrew slave and the God of the Hebrews were a powerful symbol for the African-American slave: “For if he shall cry out to me, I shall surely hear his outcry. My wrath shall blaze and I shall kill you by the sword, and your wives will be widows and your children orphans” (Exodus 22:23). AfricanAmerican slaves found hope in the exodus story and solace in God’s words: “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people that is in Egypt and I have heard its outcry because of its taskmaster, for I have known of its suffering. I shall descend to rescue it from the hand of Egypt.” For the rebellious slave, however, the exodus story carried a different message, inspiring him to imitate God’s actions and resist tyrants.25 Samson Raphael Hirsch, writing in mid-eighteenth-century Germany, drew this conclusion from the exodus narrative and subsequent laws: “The degree of justice in a land is measured not so much by the rights accorded the native-born inhabitants, to the rich, or people who have at any rate, representatives or connections who look after their interests, but by what justice is meted out to the completely unprotected stranger.”26

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Hard Work THE BIBLE USES two words from unrelated Hebrew roots to describe the Egyptians’ strategy of oppression against their Israelite slaves, though the words share a similar meaning. The Hebrew word sivlot, which in other contexts is related to the concept of work gangs, is traditionally translated as a heavy burden borne upon the shoulder. It is the burden that Moses saw when he went out to see his brethren. It is also the burden to which God referred when He characterized the exodus not once but twice as taking the Israelite people out from “under” the burden.1 A second related image, that of bone-crushing work, comes from the term be-farekh, which is always combined with some form of the word for labor, avodah. There was more, however. “They embittered their lives with hard work” (Exodus 1:14). As Hirsch notes, “One can even be a slave, have to work hard, but not have annoying spiteful treatment, refined, thought-out spite, to embitter every spark of life.” The bitterness came from both the demeaning nature of the work and its sheer, unrelenting oppressiveness. The Israelites had responded to an initial request to bear their fair share of the public tax burden to build grand structures, functional monuments to the leaders of the day.2 To this was then added the responsibility of making the very bricks and mortar for these buildings. In their final stage of slavery, Pharaoh decreed that the Israelite slaves must meet their daily quota while gathering the raw material for the bricks as well. “Then the people scattered throughout the Land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw” (Exodus 5:13). They were now like the poorest of the poor, gathering not even the remnants of food left by careless harvesters but rather stubble, which had no worth other than providing the substantive raw material for bricks when trampled underfoot in pits of dirt and water. Although the most imposing surviving Egyptian structures are made of stone, bricks made from the alluvial mud of the Nile River were common building blocks. These were often used to build sixty-foot walls around cities and in the construction of private dwellings, administrative buildings, and several pyramids. It was estimated that 24.5 million bricks were used to

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construct the brick pyramids of Sestoris at Dahsur. The process of making bricks involved a division of labor that started with water carriers and gatherers of stubble. The artisan brickmaker was then given a basket of water-soaked clay mixed with stubble. He formed the bricks by hand or in a wooden mold. The bricks were then left to dry in the sun for six days. Although one leather scroll reported a daily quota of two thousand bricks per worker in a group, the quota was rarely reached.3 The ancient Egyptian text from the Satire on the Trades paints a picture of the brickmaker. “He is dirtier than vines or pigs from treading under his mud. His clothes are stiff with clay; his leather belt is going to ruin. Entering in the wind, he is miserable…. His arms are destroyed with technical work…. He is simply wretched through and through.”4 When the day had ended and the Israelite slaves wished to rest at night, they were subject to the whim of each Egyptian landowner, who had the right to demand they assist him in field work. The most taxing of the tasks would have been building and continually maintaining an elaborate network of irrigation ditches designed to bring the waters of the Nile far afield.5 Every aspect of these labors was done in a soul-crushing way, allowing the hot Egyptian sun to sap the physical and emotional strength of each Israelite. Frederick Douglass used similar language to describe his experience at the hands of a slave-breaker named Covey. “If at any one time of my life than another, I was made to drink the bitterest dregs of slavery, that time was during the first six months of my stay with Mr. Covey. We were worked in all weathers. It was never too hot nor too cold; it could never rain, blow, hail, or snow too hard, for us to work in the field. Work, work, work, was scarcely more than the order of the day than of the night. The longest days were too short for him, and the shortest nights, too long for him.”6 Interestingly, the midrashic literature adds another psychological dimension to the bitter work experience. One Midrash makes a play on the names Pithom and Ramses, the cities the Israelites built, and suggests that the structures the Israelites built were tenuous and fragile, continually collapsing or built on quicksand and slowly disappearing. Thus, the Israelites could not even point with pride to what they had accomplished. Another Midrash interprets be-farekh as meaning that the taskmasters reversed the work duties of men and women as part of an elaborate scheme to break the Israelites’ spirit. In general, slave labor in the South included the gender-specific tasks that were kept as men’s work and women’s work. But a malevolent master might behave as Pharaoh did and switch the roles as a form of humiliation. Bennet Barrow, a slave owner and diarist, humiliated

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his workers by assigning three rugged field hands to wash clothes. He also forced a young man to wear women’s clothing.7 The broken spirit of the Israelites is elegantly captured in one brief selfdescription. When Pharaoh raised the quota on the number of bricks the Israelites were required to produce, the people turned on Moses, accusing him of “making them loathsome in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his courtiers and putting a sword in their hands to slay us” (Exodus 5:21). It was then reflected in their reaction to Moses’ attempt to rally their support after he had talked angrily to God about the situation. “So Moses spoke accordingly to the Children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of shortness of breath and hard work” (Exodus 6:9). The description “shortness of breath” is akin to our term “broken spirit.”

The Whip and the African-American Slave Breaking the slave’s spirit was a recurring theme in African-American slavery. Charles M. Christian, a modern historian, summarized a process of five steps: The first step was to establish and maintain strict discipline. Slaves were to obey at all times, in all circumstances, cheerfully and with alacrity. “Unconditional” submission was the goal. The second step was to create a sense of personal inferiority. Slaves had to “know their place.” They were made to feel the difference between “the place of the master and the slave,” and that their African ancestry was a curse and their color a badge of degradation. All white people, no matter their position, had to be respected, slaves had to give way on the streets to whites of the lowest social position. The third step was to train slaves to be in awe of the master’s enormous power, instilling fear in the minds of the slaves. Some slaveholders on large plantations carried and used a whip or cane frequently, to create fear and to convey a sense of their power. The fourth step included teaching the bondservants to take an interest in the master’s enterprise. It was important for the master to show the slaves that his improved status directly influenced their well-being. The fifth step was to reconstruct the slave as a helpless and perfectly dependent individual. The master thus set out to keep the slave ignorant of all things that would encourage independence…. Slaves were encouraged to direct after-work hours to rest and simple entertainment rather than education, so they would be less likely to develop or pursue their own ambitions or think of ways to provide for themselves.

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The slave narrative literature provides numerous examples of these five steps. Whipping was the most common implement for enforcing the master’s will, often used while demanding that slaves smile and express satisfaction with their lot, as servants to a superior race. Douglass wrote, “Does a slave look dissatisfied? It is said, he has the devil in him and it must be whipped out. Does he speak loudly when spoken to by his master? Then he is getting high minded, and should be taken down a button-hole lower. Does he forget to pull off his hat at the approach of a white person? Then he is wanting in reverence and should be whipped for it.” Other punishable crimes included “impudence” for answering back and “presumptuousness and getting above himself” for making suggestions.8 Lewis Clarke, a Kentucky slave, recalled that the instrument his mistress used was not a whip but an “oak club, a foot in a half length, and an inch and a half square.” It was used in response to “the least degree of delinquency, either in not doing all the appointed work, or in a look or behavior.” Clarke felt he was target of special abuse from his mistress because he was descended from her father. “There are no slaves that are so badly abused, as those that are related to some of the women, or the children of their own husband; it seems as though they never could hate these quite bad enough.”9 A desperate owner who was unable to “train” his slave might seek the assistance of a slave-breaker, who would take the slave for a fixed period of time, often a year. The slave-breaker would use the slave as he wished for no fee in exchange for returning a more docile slave. Frederick Douglass wrote on these cruel individuals: “Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute.”10 For the slave the darkness was interminable: “No day dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all night – night forever.”11

Leaders as Instruments of Oppression Owners would also try to break spirited slaves who demonstrated leadership ability and moral values by turning them into instruments of oppression of their peers. This was a major theme in the closing chapters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Simon Legree, who earlier in the novel used his slaves Sambo and Quimbo to coerce his plantation slaves, plans to break Tom’s spirit by forcing him to whip feeble and ill Lucy, whom Legree had accused of not meeting her cotton-picking quota. Tom refuses: “No! no! no!, my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it, – ye can’t buy it!”12 This attitude 75

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ultimately led to Tom’s being beaten to death when he refused to turn against his peers who had recently run away. Two Israelite groups similarly refused to be active participants in the most extreme elements of Pharaoh’s plans. Midwives in ancient societies enjoyed a high status because of the critical role they played in family life. The Hebrew midwives were the first heroines of the exodus narrative, undermining Pharaoh’s plan to kill all the male children (Exodus 1:15–21). Unlike Uncle Tom, they did not openly refuse to cooperate; instead, they rebelled surreptitiously by claiming that they were unable to carry out Pharaoh’s directive. Later, Pharaoh established an unrealistic brick quota. When that quota was not reached, “the foremen of the Israelites, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten” (Exodus 5:14). Instead of pressuring their countrymen to meet the quota, the overseers’ initial response was to appeal directly to Pharaoh. They declared the quota immoral, “a sin for your people” (5:16), but to no avail. Pharaoh repeated the quota and the Israelite foremen came to realize how they had become instruments of his oppression. “Now the foremen of the Children of Israel found themselves in trouble because of the order ‘You must not reduce your daily quantity of bricks’” (Exodus 5:19).

Work of African-American Slaves The oppressiveness of American slavery varied by skill, task, region, and cash crop, each playing a role in determining work cycle and labor conditions. The greater the skill required, the more a slave was able, explicitly or implicitly, to negotiate better working conditions and thus mitigate the most brutal aspects of slavery. A slave’s workload might also be adjusted according to his own efficiency, given the seasonal nature of agricultural life, unlike the unremitting pace of a factory. Fluctuations in workload often led owners to reallocate slaves from domestic to field labor or vice-versa. However, before reviewing the nature of slave labor in different parts of the South, it is important to place slaves’ physical labors in the context of nineteenth-century work history.13 Southern defenders of slavery studied the working conditions of the laboring and peasant classes in Europe and Mexico. They contended that black plantation slaves, especially children, often had a better economic existence than peasants and workers elsewhere.14 Indeed, the nineteenthcentury British factory and mine workers of the early Industrial Revolution worked harder than the typical slave and under less healthy working conditions.15 To the owner of a factory, that individual was less a person than a slave was to his master. The relationship between the worker and the 76

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factory was exclusively economic and limited to daily work hours. There was no socialization beyond the workplace. The goal of an unscrupulous factory owner was to squeeze as much profit as possible from his laborers. Should any falter, there were always others to replace them in the unskilled job. Even worse was the life of the child worker in a textile factory or mine. With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, “women and children are enabled to execute those tasks which formerly required the ingenuity or strength of a man,” and as a result “children and women became the servants of the machine.”16 Other children started work in mines, alongside family members, at the age of four or five. Chimney sweeps, “human brushes,” rarely saw the light of day. In England, before a series of laws were passed beginning in 1833, a child under the age of twelve might work seventy-two hours per week. Afterward, a forty-eight hour workweek was the maximum for a child under thirteen and sixty-five hours for teenagers until the age of eighteen.17 Later these were reduced further. The result was widespread reports of stunted and malformed growth among children of working-class families. In contrast, a child of a slave was unrealized potential capital for a plantation owner, who thus had a vested interest in the child’s health and fitness.18 Plantation children started out life as companions to the master’s children and were slowly integrated into field work. Nevertheless, the fugitive slave Linda Brent wrote, after escaping to New York City: “I would ten thousand times rather that my children should be half-starved paupers in Ireland than to be among the most pampered slaves of America.”19 Although the majority of slaves worked on plantations with ten or more slaves, the plantation class was a small portion of even southern society. Nor was the plantation owner’s workday typical of most Americans at the time.20 More typical was the American farmer, who eked out a living by working as hard and as long as a slave did, albeit without the ever-present threat of physical violence. If the farmer owned a slave or two, they worked all day side by side in a manner described as “saw-buck equality,” as if owner and slave were operating opposite ends of a two-handled saw. However, the differences in the workload of women, owner and slave, were more significant. The plantation owner’s wife would typically maintain the home and a small vegetable garden but would generally not work in the fields. In contrast, a female slave often worked the field right alongside the men. Sojourner Truth described her own abilities to work the field as a slave on a modest upstate New York farm. “I have as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work. I have plowed and reaped and husked and chopped and mowed, and can any man do more than that?”21 In the Bible, however, there is no hint as to any work-related activities of female slaves. The 77

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Midrash describes the Israelite women going out to their husbands who were working in the hot sun, bringing them water and fresh fish.22 Another Midrash suggests that the Israelites coped with Pharaoh’s decree that they had to collect their own straw for the bricks by enlisting the aid of their wives and children.23 The slave’s work cycle paralleled the rhythm of the primary export of his plantation. In exploring this cycle through the agricultural rhythm of three major export crops – tobacco, rice, and cotton – we highlight the most demanding step in producing or processing each crop, discuss how skills played a role, and provide some insight into each crop’s seasonal rhythm.24

Tobacco The Chesapeake, one of the earliest-settled regions in colonial America, became one of the key tobacco-producing areas, although it had a diversified agricultural economy. Both free and enslaved labor, white and black, produced tobacco on plantations and small farms, often working side by side. As a “poor man’s crop,” tobacco could be successfully produced on small farms as well as large plantations, but still needed intensive, closely supervised labor throughout its cultivation.25 The relatively long cycle of tobacco production began in late January with laborers clearing fields and developing seedlings. In April, slaves created hills in which they would transplant the tobacco seedlings during the spring rains. Although each hill might take less than two minutes to create, slave owners could require as many as 350 hills a day. The demands of this work were so extreme that April became the peak month for Virginia slaves to run away. Even domestics and artisans were called to assist in transplanting seedlings during this short time window. In the summer months, slaves had to continuously transplant and replant the maturing plants, remove insects, and weed the fields. Finally, the plants were pruned to ensure the leaves were of highest quality and yield. Harvesting began in August and continued through September as the plants became ripe. Curing, stripping the leaves from the stalks, and then packing them into hogsheads closed out the annual cycle of work.26 The repeated transplanting of tobacco plants was a delicate process. Mistreated slaves could easily avenge themselves on an exceptionally malicious owner or taskmaster by ruining the fragile plants without anyone noticing. In addition, cutting the plants that were properly ripened required special skills. Morgan reported one planter whose “operations were seriously disrupted when his ‘Negro Tobacco Cutter’ ran away for two months.”27

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Rice The work cycle of rice cultivation required a full year of labor performed almost entirely by hand. Unlike the gang-system used for growing tobacco and wheat in the Chesapeake, slaves on lowcountry rice plantations often labored by the task system, under the auspices of black slave-drivers.28 Planters attempted to establish precise work regulations, but much of the practice of rice cultivation had to be decided out of the sight of the driver or overseer. Although less regimented than gang-labor, slaves who labored under the task system in rice cultivation had an arduous, uninterrupted cycle of backbreaking work in very unhealthy and inhospitable conditions. Historian Charles Joyner lists some of the tasks associated with rice cultivation: For every kind of work on the plantation there was a specified task. For instance, the ground breaking task for an able-bodied hand was to break up 1,200 square feet with a spade after the ground had been plowed. A trench digger… was expected to dig three quarters of an acre per day with a hoe. A sower was expected to sow half an acre per day…. Tasks were allotted by taking into consideration the age and physical ability of each slave: there were full-task hands, three-quarter-task hands, halftask hands, and quarter-task hands…. Slaves were not to be assigned tasks beyond their capabilities;… [however,] both the slave narratives and present-day oral tradition are replete with instances of slaves having been beaten for not having finished tasks, as well as cases of slaves been assigned impossible tasks and then having been beaten for failing to complete them.29

The rice-cultivation cycle started almost instantly after the previous crop had been harvested when slaves turned the stubble left in the field over with plows. Slaves prepared the fields in March by plowing them using draft animals. Using hoes, slaves broke up dirt clods, leveled the ground, and “dug trenches roughly twelve to fifteen inches apart to receive the rice seed.” Slaves planted the rice in April with the planters’ goal of having completed planting by May 1. Retaining African planting methods, slaves placed the seed in trenches, which they covered using the heels of their feet. With the completion of planting, there began a cycle of flooding and draining of the fields that continued through August. One especially arduous period involved three weeks of dry cultivation in July. The hot, muddy work in the lowland humidity made dry cultivation an intensely unpleasant task for the enslaved. Using small hoes, the slaves were required to clear the rice fields two or three times during the season. September was the beginning of the harvest and processing of rice. Processing was done by hand until the middle of the nineteenth century, when machinery took over. Many of the 79

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hand processes used gave strong evidence of the retention of African work patterns. By mid-November the rice cultivation cycle came to completion when slaves prepared the rice for shipping. Then the workload lessened considerably. Field workers repaired the sluice gates, dug ditches and canals, constructed dams, harvested the crops in the provision grounds, tended livestock, and began to prepare the fields for cultivation in the spring.

Cotton During the Revolutionary War, when cotton became scarce, cotton production for internal consumption increased, with slave women and children working in plantation spinning houses. After the war, commercial cotton production commenced. Growing cotton required few specialized skills and lent itself to gang labor, rather than the task system associated with rice cultivation. This led to slaves having less control over the work regime as planters attempted to implement new processes of production, increase labor demands, and impose severe discipline. Thousands of slaves were imported into the lower South with the introduction of widespread cotton cultivation in the post-revolutionary period. Soon after, the appearance of cotton gins in the 1790s in the Natchez District produced a spike in cotton production, and the reign of “king cotton” began. Slaves in the Natchez District produced three thousand bales of cotton in 1796 and ten thousand bales in 1801.30 Preparation of the fields for planting usually began in February. Cultivation began at the end of March and continued through early April when slaves planted the cotton seed. The slaves always planted the seed by hand “at the rate of about two bushels of seed per acre,” and the freshly planted ground was smoothed with a wooden scrape.31 Late frosts often destroyed the crop, forcing slaves to repeat the planting process. The painstaking work of thinning the cotton plants began once they reached a height of several inches. During the summer months, the weeds and insects had to be removed from the growing cotton plants. Each slave had the responsibility of caring for eight to ten acres of cotton. While the plants matured, slaves cleared new land for further cultivation, built and repaired fences, and tended and slaughtered livestock. The harvest, which began in August, could continue until February. During the period from 1825 to 1860, slaves in Mississippi generally picked one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty pounds of cotton per day. The most important skills associated with the cotton harvest included speed and the ability to pick the bolls while leaving the refuse attached to the plants. Slaves often ginned cotton well into the night. The harvest of the corn crop began only when the slaves finished picking the cotton.32 80

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Artisans Slave ships from West and Central Africa included blacksmiths, carpenters, coopers, tanners, cobblers, millers, and masons in their human cargo. These workers applied their skills on the self-sufficient plantations of the colonial period. The number of artisans in the enslaved population increased steadily through the Revolutionary War era. The growth of urban areas led to changes in the economic structure and, consequently, the work lives of these artisans. As the South became more urban, a greater dependence on goods manufactured in local towns replaced the self-sufficiency of the plantation. Urban employment drew enslaved artisans off the plantations and into the towns to hire themselves out. The artisans who sold their skills in the freelabor market had opportunities denied the plantation slave, including more mobility and the chance to accumulate cash, to live without the direct supervision of the owner or overseer, and to acquire property. Unlike the plantation laborer, artisans did not have to depend on handouts of food and clothing from the slave owner, but could purchase their own. They often added luxury items to their possessions, or traded surplus goods that they had made or bought. Some enslaved urban artisans became petty merchants in their own right, establishing accounts and selling freely in the market. The opportunities afforded enslaved artisans allowed them to make better provisions and have more authority in their families, who normally remained on rural farms and plantations. The independence and worldliness of the urban artisans often led to further discontent with slavery, as they felt they lived “half-free.” Many, like Frederick Douglass, a ship caulker on the docks in Baltimore, found the situation intolerable and escaped permanently from slavery. The economic and social skills they developed assisted them in passing as free. The art of Africa was integrated into practical life in the form of pottery, weaving, metal work, and woodworking. The fine woodwork in plantation Big Houses was the most visible evidence of the transfer of this artistic tradition. These included ornate grilles and balconies, decorative furnishings, and finely carved cabinets.33 Enslaved artisans decreased during the late antebellum period as certain types of labor became racialized. Immigrants from Western Europe included many artisans who resented competition with enslaved labor. Fewer enslaved children received apprenticeships as skilled artisans when the older generation died out and the supply of labor overran the demand. The independence of enslaved urban artisans took on a sinister cast as they became associated with plots and conspiracies to rebel. By the

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Reconstruction period, artisans were synonymous with white men, and the most menial labor was associated with former slaves.34 In describing the slave labor of the Israelites in Egypt, the Bible makes no reference to highly-skilled laborers or craftsmen. Yet it is obvious that there was an artistic class. Several months after the exodus, God initiated the building of a Tabernacle and its related utensils, furniture, and accoutrements. The development of these various religious props required a wide array of craftsman. The multitalented Bezalel directed the team that built the sanctuary according to its divine design. He has endowed him [Bezalel] with a divine spirit of skill, ability, and knowledge in every craft. And has inspired him to make designs for work in gold, silver, and copper, to cut stones for setting and to carve wood – to work in every kind of designer’s craft – and to give directions. He and Oholiab son of Ahisamach of the tribe of Dan have been endowed with the skill to do any work – of the carver, the designer, the embroiderer in purple, crimson yarns, and in fine linen, and of the weaver – as workers in all crafts and as makers of designs. Let then Bezalel and Oholiab and all the skilled persons whom the Lord has endowed with skill and ability to perform expertly all the tasks connected with the service of the sanctuary carry out all that the Lord has commanded. (Exodus 35:31–36:1) This group was supplemented by the women who were skilled in weaving (Exodus 35:25, 26).

The “Laziness” of the Enslaved Slaves have long been accused of being lazy and shiftless, looking for any excuse not to work, by those whose luxurious lifestyles and grandiose projects depend upon their enforced labor. When Moses and Aaron audaciously petitioned Pharaoh for a three-day religious holiday for the Israelites, Pharaoh responded by increasing the demands on his slave labor force. Even though the Egyptians would no longer provide straw for the slaves, their quota of bricks would remain unchanged. Pharaoh concluded his new decree, “Do not reduce it [the quota] for they are lazy; therefore they cry out saying, Let us go and bring offerings to our God” (Exodus 5:8, SE). And later, when the quota went unfilled and the impossibility of the task was argued before Pharaoh, he responded predictably. “You are lazy, lazy! Therefore you say: Let us go and bring offerings to God” (Exodus 5:17, SE). Nevertheless, Pharaoh’s primary aim was to make the Israelites understand that it was the impudent request by Moses and Aaron that had increased their burden.

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Likewise, southern planters invariably accused the enslaved of laziness. They often thought that malingering, “shamming and dissembling,” were tactics used by the enslaved to resist the rigors of enforced labor.35 Black slaves were accused of an anti-work ethic, in sharp contrast to the Puritan heritage on which the English-descended colonies rested. The historical record is replete with planters’ complaints about their slaves work habits: “It takes two white men… to make a black man work.” “With Negro slaves… it seems impossible for one of them to do a thing, it mattered not how insignificant, without the assistance of one or two others. It was often said with a laugh by their owners that it took two to help one do nothing.” “I find it almost impossible to make a Negro do his work well. No orders can engage it, no encouragement persuade it, nor no Punishment oblige it.” The editor of Planter’s Banner, a periodical devoted to the concerns of the planter class, commented in 1849: On a plantation they can neither hoe, nor ditch, chop wood, nor perform any kind of labor with a white man’s skill. They break and destroy more farming utensils, ruin more carts, break more gates, spoil more cattle and horses, and commit more waste than five times the number of white laborers do. They are under instruction relative to labor from their childhood, and still when they are grey headed they are the same heedless botches; the Negro traits predominate over all artificial training.36 One European visitor to the American South in the 1780s placed these accusations in perspective when he commented, “The white men… are all the time complaining that the blacks will not work, and they themselves do nothing.”37 The characterizations of laziness were not limited to the master class. The enslaved themselves also referred to their laziness.38 Some blacks, like whites, believed “[d]e black man is natchally lazy, you knows dat,” and attributed cultural traits to biology. “De reason he talks lak he does, is ’cause he don’t want to go to de trouble to ’nounce his words lak dey ought to be.” Others made a connection between blacks’ inherent laziness and their feelings about whites: “Ever since the first time de nigger found out he had to work, he has silently despised de white man.”39 The economic data indicate that whatever the truth of the charges of laziness, plantations were nevertheless efficiently run and highly productive. Fogel reported that slave plantations were at least as productive as free farms, and slaves on small farms were as productive as free farmers. In addition, medium and large plantations run on the gang system were seventy percent more productive; their output in thirty-five minutes was equal to one hour’s output of a free farmer.40 83

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“Lying” by Master and Slave Masters coupled their accusations of laziness with charges that slaves routinely lied. There was truth to their claim as slaves used lying, feigning, and deception to cope with the brutality of slavery and rebel against their owners or taskmasters. However, these lies were mirrored by the lies and fictions that the master class created to keep their slave populations under control. The lies of the ruling class are reflective of Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”41 The biblical narrative includes both aspects of deception. Pharaoh’s lies Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Israelites began with a strategy of deception. He was concerned about the Israelite population growth and so hatched a plan to stem it. This plan was introduced with the phrase, “Let us deal wisely with them” (Exodus 1:10). In his commentary, Ramban explores the growing deception connoted by the phrase “deal wisely,” or alternatively, “deal shrewdly.”42 He argues that Pharaoh could not directly attack a group that had been the invited guests of a previous ruler. The strategy was, therefore, to bring enslavement in subtle stages, starting with a guest tax, which in and of itself would not have aroused Israelite suspicions. This tax was in the form of required labor in support of major public works, labor that ultimately became enslavement. All the while, Pharaoh hid his enmity of the Israelites and never issued an official decree declaring them to be slaves. When this plan to inhibit population growth did not work, Pharaoh secretly told the Israelite midwives, Shifra and Pua, to kill all the Israelites’ male children. The Bible’s language hints at the deception by using the terms “spoke” and “said” to characterize Pharaoh’s implied order to the midwives. Pharaoh was attempting to work in confidence with the midwives, whom he thought would be eager and willing participants in his strategy, and that the world need never know of his tactics. It is only when this plan has failed, through the midwives’ disobedience, that the Bible describes Pharaoh as explicitly “commanding” – in essence issuing a formal decree – that all Egyptians must drown all newborn Israelite males in the river.43 The Midrash reads into the Hebrew word be-farekh (Exodus 1:13), which means “soft words,” a Pharaonic strategy that would entice the Israelites to take voluntarily actions that ultimately would lead to their enslavement.44 In one midrashic scenario, Pharaoh wore a symbolic brick around his neck as an indication of his personal involvement in the public building projects and asked others to follow his example.45 Another Midrash goes a step further, depicting Pharaoh himself engaging in the work of making bricks and 84

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building on the first day,46 perhaps analogous to a modern-day groundbreaking ceremony in which a political leader turns the first shovel of dirt. A third describes an offer of financial incentives for the Israelites to work hard and thereby set a high standard of performance in the early days of construction. At the start, each Israelite’s output was carefully recorded so that he received appropriate compensation. Later, this total became a rigid quota used against him once he descended into slavery.47 Pharaoh’s lies take on a different spin in his confrontations with Moses. On several occasions, Pharaoh agrees to allow the Israelites to enjoy temporary freedom for a religious celebration in exchange for Moses’s calling a halt to a specific plague. Once the plague has ended, however, Pharaoh goes back on his word. This pattern first arises during the second plague: “Plead with the Lord to remove the frogs from me and my people, and I will let the people go and sacrifice to the Lord” (Exodus 8:4). Moses complies, and in response to his prayers the frogs die at the requested time, but Pharaoh’s resolve stiffens and he reneges on his pledge.48 The Bible records similar unfulfilled promises in the dialogue surrounding the fourth plague, wild beasts, and seventh, hail. Many southern slaves also endured promises of freedom that were later broken. Some promises were made without any intention of their being fulfilled, while in other instances, slave owners faced unanticipated financial exigencies that led them to sell rather than free their slaves. Uncle Tom’s Cabin opens with just such a scenario: Master Shelby’s financial difficulties have led him to sell Uncle Tom even though he had promised to free him.49 Another promise that was often broken was a commitment not to break up a slave’s family or to free a slave outright in return for years of loyal service. Although many owners promised that emancipation would take effect upon his death, few followed the lead of George Washington, whose slaves were indeed freed as per his instructions.50

Slave-owner Lies Whites tried to give the impression that they never lied while accusing blacks of being inherently dishonest, thus presenting themselves as benevolent parents to mischievous if not depraved black children. This selfdeception, which certainly did not fool blacks, allowed whites “to strengthen their own claims to being men of honor.”51 To encourage slaves to stay put, owners routinely lied about the dangers of attempted escape and how difficult the lives of runaway slaves were up North. Linda Brent’s master told her that he had seen a runaway friend of hers in New York. He described the friend as dying of starvation, living at

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times off one cold potato per day, and claimed that she had pleaded to be taken back home to slavery.52 Whites lied to the enslaved to create an atmosphere of fear. One formerly enslaved woman recalled that her “young mistress was allus telling us ghost stories and trying to scare the niggers.” After disguising herself as a ghost, the mistress barely missed harm when she scared the narrator’s uncle, the plantation blacksmith, as he walked home carrying his sledgehammer.53 The lying started even before slaves arrived in the New World and even though the lies would at times seem counterproductive. Sailors found humor in telling the slaves aboard ship that they would be purchased by cannibals upon arrival and would be eaten. The cook on board the Amistad paid for this lie with his life when Cinqué and his fellow slaves took control of the ship.54 Whites lied in attempts to inculcate a sense of inferiority in blacks. The whites who owned Katie Sutton explained procreation by telling “the little slave children that the stork brought the white babies to their mothers, but that the slave children were all hatched from buzzards’ eggs. And we believed it was true.”55 They lied to trick the enslaved into telling the truth. A former slave named John Crawford remembered that the white children taught the enslaved youth the alphabet and gave them a book on the plantation where he lived. When the “Old Mistus” caught the enslaved children with the book, “she come outside with stick candy held out in her hand, and she say, ‘I give you all of this you want if you tell me where you got the book and learned the letters.’ I spoke up smart as you please and told her.” Instead of candy in return for his honesty, John and his friends were severely whipped and stuck in a dark chimney for forty minutes.56 The Civil War brought lying to new heights as owners sought to stem the tide of slaves fleeing across nearby battle lines to freedom. Hannah Crasson’s mistress instilled a sense of fear of the Union soldiers by telling her that “the Yankees were going to kill every nigger in the South.” The plantation overseer told James Gill “dat a Yankee was somepin’ what had one great big horn on he haid and just one eye, and dat right in de middle of he breast…. I sure was s’prised when I seen a sure ’nuf Yankee, and seen he was a man, just like any of de res’ of de folks.”57 Similarly, Charlotte Ann Jackson recounted what her master told her as northern soldiers were nearing her slave home: “They said that the Yankees had horns and said that the Yankees was goin to kill us.”58

God’s Deception In God’s first encounter with Moses at the burning bush, He articulated the goal of the exodus. “I have come down to rescue them from the 86

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Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites” (Exodus 3:8). God’s words left no doubt that the plan called for complete freedom and a journey to a new land. Moses was directed to share this vision with the elders of Israel (Exodus 3:17). Thus it is surprising and puzzling why God told Moses to go with the elders to Pharaoh and request, “Now, therefore, let us go a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God” (Exodus 3:18). This deception continued to be played out throughout Moses’s confrontations with Pharaoh. It began with the first request: “Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for me in the wilderness” (Exodus 5:1). This deception was reflected in Pharaoh’s final words to Moses, “Go worship the Lord as you said” (Exodus 12:31). Biblical commentators have debated why God, the essence of truth, apparently used deception as part of his stratagem in dealing with an evil ruler.59 They offer a variety of justifications, both moral and strategic. One argument was that God had to prove that Pharaoh and the Egyptians were deserving of the punishment they were to receive. The crescendo of plagues proved that even when he and his country were threatened with near annihilation, Pharaoh was still unwilling to allow a three-day holiday.60 Another justification of the limited request was to prove to the Israelites that there was no alternative to a complete separation. It is easy to imagine that, as the burdens of enslavement were eased with each passing plague, many Israelites would have been reluctant to journey through a wilderness to an unknown land. God thus used this deceptive request to prove to them that Pharaoh would not yield and that it was not possible to develop the Israelite religion while they remained under Pharaoh’s jurisdiction. These two related theses are buttressed by God’s observation of Pharaoh: “Yet I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go, except through a strong hand” (Exodus 3:19). An alternative thesis for justifying a strategy of deception focuses on the end stage of the divine plan for dealing with the Egyptians.61 The exodus culminates with the splitting of the Sea of Reeds and the drowning of the Egyptians. The result is that the Israelites developed a firm belief in a powerful God and in Moses, His messenger: “Thus the Lord delivered Israel that day from the Egyptians. Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea. And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses” (Exodus 14:30–31). By the sea the Israelites experienced firsthand God’s awesome power in a more direct way than when the plagues rained down on the dispersed Egyptian population. 87

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The destruction of the Egyptian army before their eyes allayed their fears of further conflicts and gave voice to their hopes in the Song by the Sea. In order for these events to play out by the Sea of Reeds, God used a strategy of deception that allowed the Egyptians one last opportunity to seal their fate. If Pharaoh had in fact capitulated to a demand for complete and permanent emancipation, finally admitting defeat after the plague of the first-born, then a change of heart and a pursuit of the Israelites to the sea would seem less logical. Instead, Pharaoh realizes that, contrary to what he had been led to believe, the Israelites are proceeding to the Sea of Reeds because they intend to leave for good: “When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his courtiers had a change of heart about the people and said, What is this that we have done, releasing Israel from our service? He ordered his chariot and took his men with him” (Exodus 14:5–6).

Israelites Take Egyptian Property The Bible records that God told the Israelites, both early on and just before leaving Egypt, to go to their Egyptian neighbors and ask for gifts: “And I will dispose the Egyptians favorably towards the people, so that when you go, you will not go away empty handed. Each woman shall borrow from her neighbor and the lodger in her house objects of silver and gold, and clothing, and you shall put these on your sons and daughters, thus stripping the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:21–22). The key Hebrew verb that is the focus of ethical debate through the millennia is shoel. Its most general meaning is ask but in specific contexts it is narrowly construed as borrow. (The JPS translation uses the word borrow.) This has led to charges of unethical behavior against the Israelites for stealing from the Egyptians. The Midrash places this charge in the mouths of Egyptians who pleaded their case for restitution before Alexander the Great, who ruled over both Israel and Egypt. An aide’s response to Alexander was that the worth of all the labor of the Israelites through the centuries of Egyptian oppression more than balanced the scales of economic justice.62 Other commentaries see no need to justify the Israelite actions; they interpret the word shoel to mean “to request a gift.” Leibowitz, for example, provides a detailed analysis of the use of shoel in a variety of contexts that buttresses this interpretation.63 The Lies of African-American Slaves Like the charges of laziness and thievery, southern slave owners continually accused slaves of lying, partly in order to justify slavery morally and also to reinforce their sense of superiority. In truth, it was often the case that blacks routinely lied and deceived their masters. Lying acted as a part of 88

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the false face, the mask the enslaved constantly wore in the presence of whites, both to appease them and to express their contempt. Genovese asserts that lying had its foundation in African culture, where one avoided saying anything directly that one’s listener would find unpleasant. This manifested itself in the Americas as “the ‘etiquette of race relations’ within which courtesy and self-protective dissembling became inseparable.” To the enslaved, the art of “calculated cunning and deceit” became known as “puttin’ Ole Massa on.”64 The fugitive slave Lewis Clarke framed the issue of lying by slave and master as something inherent in the essence of slavery: Slavery is the father of lies. The slave knows he ought to have his freedom; and his master knows it; but they both say they don’t…. They both of ’em lie, and know it…. There never was anything beat slavery for lying; and of all folks in the world, there’s nobody deceived quite so bad, as the masters down South; for the slaves deceive them, and they deceive themselves…. The brighter a slave is, the more he has to lie; for the more the master is jealous of what’s working in his mind, and the harder he has to try to hide it… He daren’t tell him what’s in him; it wouldn’t do. The worse he is treated, the more he must smile; the more he’s kicked, the lower he must crawl. For you see the master knows when he has treated his slave too bad for human nature; and he suspects the slave will resent; and he watches him the closer, and so the slave has to be more deceitful.65 Whites viewed the propensity of the enslaved to lie as a genetically ingrained defect. One white preacher claimed that in blacks, “duplicity is one of the most prominent traits in their character, [while] the number, the veracity, the ingenuity of falsehoods that can be told by them in a few brief moments is astonishing”; but another critic of black morality has pointed to less biological causes and more accurately noted that the “slave children learn from their parents to regard white people with fear and to deceive them.” Taught to lie to whites from childhood, the enslaved had no moral qualms about lying and often dramatically boasted about their lies as a demonstration of their mental dexterity. A former slave, Elijah Green, told of how he “told a lie on [him]self by sayin’ nice thing about the person and hat[ing] the person at the same time” when having to speak about a woman who married into his owner’s family. Perhaps in slavery, as in war, truth is the first casualty.66

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CHAPTER 7 CULTURAL IDENTITY

THROUGHOUT

HISTORY,

slaves have found that their cultural identity is under siege by the enslaving society. The religious value system of the oppressed class finds itself confronted by the notion that “might is right,” reinforcing the superiority of the dominant culture. Indeed, the religious beliefs of both the Israelites and the African Americans were undermined by their transitions to slave status. The pantheon of Egyptian gods overwhelmed the Israelite belief in one god. Even after the exodus, the Israelites had trouble leaving these idolatrous beliefs behind, as evidenced by the worship of the Golden Calf (Exodus 32) and later of Baal Pe’or (Numbers 25). Nine hundred years later, the prophet Ezekiel spoke to the elders of Israel of their ancestors’ unwillingness to give up idolatry in Egypt. “I also said to them: Cast away, every one of you, the detestable things that you are drawn to, and do not defile yourselves with the fetishes of Egypt – I the Lord am your God. But they defied Me and refused to listen to Me. They did not cast away the detestable things they were drawn to, nor did they give up the fetishes of Egypt” (Ezekiel 20:7–8, JPS) Similarly, Africans forcibly imported to the New World adopted Christianity as their religion, usually by the second generation.1 Yet the political enslavement of the Israelites provided them an opportunity to sustain their culture in ways not available to the chattelbound African Americans. This is reflected in a Midrash which states that the Israelites were worthy of being redeemed from bondage for having maintained two aspects of their unique heritage:2 they continued to give their children Hebrew names, and they kept the Hebrew language alive. In contrast, African Americans had no opportunity to maintain their linguistic traditions, even among groups brought from the same region or tribe in Africa.3 Similarly, the Israelite family tradition did not face the constant threat of personal abuse and presumed prerogative that was inherent in the personal master-slave relations of the American South.4

What’s in a Name? The fact that the Children of Israel are praised in the Midrash for having kept their Hebrew names might initially be seen as ironic, given that names

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from the generations after Joseph are sparsely mentioned in the initial chapters of Exodus. In Hebrew the book is called “The Book of Names” because of its opening verse: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each coming with his household; Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. The total number of persons that were of Jacob’s issue came to seventy, Joseph being already in Egypt. Joseph died and all his brothers, and all that generation” (Exodus 1:1–7, JPS). But then, in stark contrast to this detailed list of names, the Israelites soon become a nameless, faceless mass of people as they proliferate and Pharaoh institutes political enslavement. Not only are the Israelites nameless, but so are the Egyptian taskmasters. Even Pharaoh is nameless, in a sense: the term “Pharaoh” is not a personal name but rather a title. Its Egyptian root means “Big House.” (In American terms this is the equivalent of referring to the president as “the White House,” as is often done in media discourse). It is the nature of mass political enslavement that both the oppressed class and their oppressors become dehumanized and lose their individuality relative to the broader society. The Bible allegorically reflects this loss of uniqueness by eschewing names. There is no need to call the slave by a name when he is just one cog in a massive system. In any case, the personal name of the reigning Pharaoh mattered little to the Israelites. What difference did it make if the lead oppressor was named Seti I or Ramses II or Tutmose III? In the midst of the oppression, the Bible records, “A long time after that, the King of Egypt died. The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out” (Exodus 2:23). The change in administration made no difference. The Israelites were still “groaning under the bondage” of this new, unnamed Pharaoh. If Pharaoh’s identity is unimportant, then the names of the faceless taskmasters were equally irrelevant. Thus it is striking that the first two named individuals who appear out of the faceless mass of slaves are Shifra and Pua, the midwives who circumvented Pharaoh’s decree to murder all male children at birth. Their heroism warranted their rescue from obscurity, as well as God’s personal reward of houses (1:21) – perhaps in order to repair the households mentioned in 1:1, or as an ironic comment on the enduring power of Israelite homes versus that of Pharaoh’s “big house.” The exodus narrative seems to go out of its way in the early chapters to leave significant personages unnamed, even though we ultimately know, for example, the names of Moses’s parents (from Exodus 6:20). But at the beginning of chapter 2, the Bible merely states, referring to the marriage that led to the birth of Moses, “A certain man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman” (Exodus 2:1). Moses’s sister and Pharaoh’s 91

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daughter are also not named in this chapter. In the case of Miriam, who plays a prominent role here, her name contains within it the root of the word meaning “bitter,” corresponding to the succinct but powerful characterization of the enslavement as having “embittered their lives” (1:14).5 Midrashic tradition places her birth at the peak period of oppression. In selecting this name, her parents were expressing the anguish they felt in giving birth to a child during that dark time.6 Amazingly, there is another Midrashic interpretation that credits the naming of Miriam to Pharaoh himself. According to this Midrash, Pharaoh intended to rub salt in the wounds of the slaves by calling the daughter of a prominent Israelite “bitter waters.” God, on the other hand, chose her to be the first of three siblings who would lead the Israelites out of Pharaoh’s house of bondage. Miriam of the bitter waters later became Miriam of the song by the Sea of Reeds. It is there that she is first mentioned by name, leading the Israelite women in songs of praise to God as Pharaoh and his army drown in bitter waters of their own design (Exodus 15:20–21). In addition, according to the Midrash, the miraculous well of water that God provided to the Israelites throughout their wilderness travels appeared in Miriam’s honor, and vanished when she died. Another irony of the Midrash’s praise of the Israelites for having kept their Hebrew names is that the first Israelite male to be identified – indeed, the most famous Israelite name of all – was not a Hebrew name given by a Hebrew mother. It is the name Moses, which was given by the daughter of Pharaoh. This woman, who was perhaps the first righteous gentile, was honored by having her act of heroism and rebellion remembered in the name of her adopted son. She glosses the name’s meaning by saying, “I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:10).7 Interestingly, the name’s literal meaning is simply to draw out or draw forth; water has nothing to do with the name itself. As such, Moses’s name also anticipates his role in drawing forth the Israelites out of Egypt.8 The next Israelite named is Aaron, Moses’s older brother. Strangely, Aaron is first mentioned as if the reader already knew that he existed: it is God himself who first speaks the name when he tells Moses to return to Egypt and that Aaron the Levite will assist in delivering God’s demands to Pharaoh. Nevertheless, no hint of any symbolism appears regarding this name. It has been suggested that the Hebrew root of Aaron is linked to the Hebrew word for river (nahar) and that it hints at Pharaoh’s decree to drown the male children.9 If so, then all three siblings from this leading Levite family have a connection in their names to water, just as their life stories are so closely linked to water.

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It was Joseph, surely a hero for the Israelites throughout their sojourn in Egypt, who had set a precedent for using names to maintain the roots of one’s cultural identity away from home. When Pharaoh elevated Joseph to a rank just below his own, he also gave Joseph a new name, Zaphenat-paneah (Genesis 41:45). Nevertheless, the text never again refers to Joseph by this new name, and he gives his own two sons names that recall his roots and experiences: “Joseph called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s house. And the name of the second he called Ephraim: For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Genesis 41:51–52). The firstborn’s name carried with it a paradox: Joseph thanked God for his successes, which dulled his memory of past travails but which simultaneously dulled his memory of his family. Perhaps he needed this break with the past in order to focus all his energies on the survival challenge that God had given him to save the House of Jacob from famine. However, his gratitude to God contained ambivalence, irony, and self-criticism in that Joseph would be reminded of his forgetfulness every time he called his son by name.10 Zornberg articulates this paradox and its associated ambivalence: “One suggestion, offered by the Ha’amek Davar [a nineteenth-century biblical commentary], is that Joseph is acknowledging the mercy in oblivion: he is grateful not to be haunted by memory. The dangers of obsession with the past are very real for Joseph; they have the power to cripple him in the essential task he has undertaken. Not only the evils of the past but its loves, its beauty, and its sweetness – all have become perilous to one whose business is survival. Joseph’s task, quite simply, is to ensure ‘that we may live and not die’” (Genesis 43:8; 47:19). She goes on: “By naming his son [Manasseh] for that oblivion, he expresses ambivalence. There is regret in the ironic celebration of forgetfulness, in the imagining of dislocation.” The second son’s name, Ephraim, even more clearly juxtaposes the fundamental contradiction of Joseph’s day-to-day existence. He rose to the highest rank open to a foreigner, yet characterized his adopted home as “the land of my affliction.” This paradoxical combination would have been a powerful anti-assimilationist symbol for the Israelite people as they multiplied and gained prominence in Egypt. This would never be their home. Thus the name Ephraim portended the sequence of events that eventually played out: first the Israelites multiplied, and later Egypt became a land of oppression for them. Throughout history, Jews all over the world have kept alive the tradition of giving their children Hebrew names. Even in times when Jews were integrated into the dominant society and their names were no different from those of their neighbors, they gave Hebrew names to each child at birth.11 93

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The Hebrew name was sacrosanct even if it played no role in mundane affairs. It appears in marriage contracts and divorce documents. A person’s Hebrew name is used when asking God to cure the person of illness or take him out of harm’s way. Also, when Jews recall the memory of departed loved ones during religious services, they refer to them mainly by their Hebrew names.

African-American Names The African slaves who arrived on the North American continent were in no position to stem the process of cultural erosion. One of the slave owner’s first acts was to strip away the slaves’ cultural identity by giving them new names. A prominent eighteenth-century Chesapeake grandee described the process to his overseer. “I name’d them here & by their names we can always know what size they are of & I am sure we repeated them so often to them that every one knew their names and would readily answer to them.” He also urged his overseer to continue to drill the new names into recent arrivals and to be sure to call them “always by ye names we gave them.”12 Similarly, the African arrival would have found it impossible to maintain his native language and pass it on to succeeding generations in this foreign land.13 Mastering the new language was critical for the new arrival to gain status within his local plantation society, and an inability to communicate in English would leave the slave feeling isolated. Although ignorance of English might initially serve as an excuse for not following the wishes or orders of his owner,14 this would not have been an effective long-term strategy. The owner had many forceful tools at his disposal to make slaves understand what was expected of them. First-generation African slaves attempted to keep their African roots by using African words and traditions in naming their children. One African tradition employed the weekday name for a child. Quaco, a name for a male born on Wednesday, would over time evolve into a name such as Jacco, Jacky, or Jack. Cudjo, Monday’s boy, could become simply Joe, and Phiba, a female born on Friday, might transform into Phoebe.15 Sambo, a corruption of Samba, meant “second son.” Eventually it became a quintessential derogatory name that symbolized obsequiousness, although in the legends of Futa it referred to “any bold and reckless warrior.”16 Interestingly, even arrivals who were unsuccessful in maintaining their own African name “bequeathed homeland names to their children in an effort to honor tradition and family ties.”17 The steady river of direct imports from Africa throughout the 1700s nurtured the use of African names. Nevertheless, the proportion of children with African names was almost always less than twenty percent.18 By the end of the first four decades of the 94

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nineteenth century, obvious African names were rare. Even those rooted in Africa were often Anglicized, and in each succeeding generation it became harder and harder to link the name to its African roots.19 Sometimes, masters imposed pompous-sounding names such as Caesar, Cato, and Pompeii. Upon emancipation, however, slaves quickly shed them.20 Although the slave population did not publicly fight to keep Africanrooted names,21 their chosen names were an issue of pride and sometimes conflict. The later generations of slaves used names of respected ancestors or other important individuals but rarely named a child after the master or mistress of the plantation.22 In general, slave parents exercised the right to name their own children, though it may have been with the master’s formal or informal approval. This approval might be withdrawn at a later date, as happened to a slave named William. He was stripped of his first name when his master’s nephew with the same first name moved in. William fought to preserve his identity. “This at the time, I thought to be one of the most cruel acts that could be committed upon my rights; and I received several severe whippings for telling people that my name was William, after orders were given to change it.”23 In another case, a mistress gave her newborn slave the honor of her own first name. However, her slave mother renamed her when the mistress died. A slave could cling to his name within his community, but in the public context he was expected to respond to whatever he was called. “It did not much matter what name I was called by. If master was looking at one of us, and call us, Tom, or Jack, or anything else, whoever he looked at was forced to answer.”24 And yet the Supreme Court of Louisiana recognized the inherent dignity of addressing a slave by his given name. It declared in 1827, “Slaves being men are to be addressed by their proper names.”25 The existence and selection of a surname was a more complex issue than the choice of a first name. In some cultures the possession of a surname was a statement of higher class and status. Slaves living in those parts of the South that were stable and dominated by large plantations were most likely to have the privilege of a surname. Even if the owner had not approved a specific name or even authorized the appropriation of any surname, the slaves might take one for themselves and use it within the slave community. Some simply adopted the master’s name, even if the master was not someone to be emulated. The adoption of the master’s name could give a slave a sense of rootedness to a place and time. If he or one of his children were sold away from the plantation, the surname would provide a historical link that could span generations. However, on a big plantation, one common surname for all slaves would have been confusing and undermined a slave’s ability to establish a slave family’s identity. Alternatively, as an implicit act of 95

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rebellion, a slave might choose the name of some other slaveholding family rather than his master’s. This was especially true of the slaves of the rice coast of South Carolina and Georgia. After the Civil War, former slaves without prior selected surnames felt they could now be “entitled.” If several masters had owned them, they might hark back to the first master that showed them decency. Others chose names of local whites “whom they looked [to] for friendship and protection in a dangerous world.”26 And there were others that picked surnames such as Freedman, Justice, or Lincoln, to celebrate their new status.

The Group Name “Hebrew” One group name does appear repeatedly in the first chapters of Exodus. “Hebrew” is used in reference to a number of individuals, both in Genesis and Exodus. Abraham was the first to be given this appellation. The grammatical root of the word refers to his journey from the other side of a river. God told him to leave his homeland and move to the land of Canaan on the other side of the river. The use of the Hebrew ethnic label often crops up in the Bible when the alien status of an ancient Jew was emphasized. Potiphar’s wife referred to Joseph as a Hebrew when she sought her household’s support for her accusation of rape against Joseph. The name is used to refer to the Israelite women who gave birth so quickly that the midwives could not arrive soon enough to carry out Pharaoh’s decree. The victim whom Moses protected from an Egyptian who beat him is called a Hebrew, as are the two combatants who appear two verses afterward. However, the name is a great deal more than an ethnic label. God chose to declare Himself to the outside world as God of the Hebrews. God told Moses to say to the king of Egypt, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, manifested Himself to us” (Exodus 3:18). And later in the narrative when Moses was asked, “Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and Let Israel go?” Moses and Aaron responded, “The God of the Hebrews manifested Himself to us” (Exodus 5:2–3). Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik suggested that the term “Hebrew” captures the Jew’s existential experience throughout history. The term means that even when a Jew has crossed a river and joined a new society, his roots are still on the other side. “Abraham [the first Hebrew] was never fundamentally uprooted from the place where he made a covenant with the Creator and accepted his mission to humanity. When he crossed the river to a new land, he became its faithful citizen. He joined in every creative sphere of activity. He built tents, reared sheep, conducted negotiations with kings and princes and made covenants with them. He learned their language, paid taxes, and 96

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when necessary defended the country. But at the very same time he lived on the other side of the river, in those wide open spaces where God and he had met.”27 All Jews who have maintained their religio-cultural identity live a Hebrew’s existence. In a world that values change and progress, they must constantly remind themselves that their own selves are deeply rooted in the past. There are times in history where there is a strong bridge between the two sides of the Hebrew’s river and he can move comfortably back and forth. At other times, whenever he crosses the river he becomes an alien, a strange and misunderstood figure without the rights and protection of the natives. So it was in the life of Joseph, the first Hebrew to live in Egypt. So it was for his family’s descendants when God declared that He was the God of the Hebrews. This dual consciousness has, as we shall see, a natural parallel for African Americans.

The Group Name “Negro” The first Africans and later generations also bore a common name. They were referred to as Negroes, a term derived from the Spanish and Latin word for black. These unwilling immigrants shared one common feature: the color of their skin, albeit with gradations of blackness. They came over the course of almost two centuries from widely dispersed disparate nations that covered a wide expanse of sub-Saharan Africa. Their languages, mannerisms, culture, and religion differed. The word Negro and the blackness it connotes contributed to the uniqueness of the slave experience. America became the only society in the history of the world to create a slave institution that attempted to keep one ethnic-racial group in slavery in perpetuity. A number of factors interacted to create the peculiar institution of southern slavery. These include the economics, geography, and climate of the South; English history, culture, and relative geographic isolation; African culture, industry, easy acclimatization, and relative immunity to some diseases; and the importance of property ownership in the American experiment.28 However, the blackness of their skin provided an easy and efficient marker that facilitated group slavery. It formed a key component of the racism that developed in the 1700s and was becoming institutionalized by the time of the American Revolution. It is ironic that the words and ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” – produced a moral dilemma for many of the Founding Fathers from Virginia and the Carolinas. Slavery was the essence of their luxurious lifestyle as well as the foundation of the American export economy. The words of the Declaration could be 97

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reconciled only if the Negro was sub-human. The differentiator between human and sub-human was the color of the skin.29 Although Thomas Jefferson spoke of God the Creator of Equals and of a God who defined the laws of nature, one historian characterized Jefferson’s view on race as “an indelible color line drawn by Nature between the two races and that this line determined the rights and liberties to which they were entitled in America.”30 For African Americans, therefore, the divider between them and the rest of society was not like the river a Hebrew might traverse by crossing a bridge but a color line that they could never fully cross. However, in both instances, their respective group names, Hebrew and Negro, corresponded to the development of a dual consciousness. For the Hebrew, it was a duality of values and rootedness in the past and present. For blacks, in the words of W.E.B. Du Bois, “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of other…. One feels his two-ness – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”31

African Cultural Identity The personal nature of chattel slavery in the colonies limited an African arrival’s ability to maintain his or her cultural identity and mitigated against its long-term survival.32 By the time of Emancipation, there were few direct links between the language, religion, or music of the newly freed slaves in the United States and their African ancestors. However, this simplistic statement hides more than it shows about the complex acculturation process that occurred when African culture came in contact with the indigenous culture of the higher-status whites. The fundamental core values and beliefs that Africans brought with them affected which aspects of the variegated American scene they most readily adopted and modified in light of their own values. Historian William Dillon Piersen goes even further and articulates a strong link between African culture and general Southern society. He argues that several behaviors often described as uniquely southern, such as southern hospitality, drawl, etiquette, and the code of honor, were influenced heavily by African values.33 We focus here, however, on specific examples of cultural retention and transformation. With regard to religion, Africans viewed spirits as near and present in everyday life. In Africa, becoming possessed by spirits was a social phenomenon often acted out in a group ceremony. It was associated with inspiration from communal song and dancing. Thus, as Africans left behind many of their polytheistic pagan practices and rituals, the Christianity they 98

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accepted and adapted included a church experience of song and dance and mass inspiration.34 It had parallels in revivalist movements that were a significant religious force in the South. However, social scientists debate the nature, magnitude, and direction of influence between white revivalist churches and the dominant form of African-American Christianity.35 African-American cemeteries and funerals also display links to their African roots. Graves were often located under or near a tree in both African and Southern black societies. The tree symbolized the persistence and immortality of the spirit.36 Africans believed that their ancestors were ever-present influences on their daily lives. Consequently, every life had to have a proper ending, as reflected in the importance ascribed to the funeral service. The funeral ritual had to manifest the status of the deceased in order for him to take his proper place in the next world. However, the ritual did not need to include the actual burial, and often was delayed to allow broad participation of key members of the family and community. A similar pattern, but within a different religious setting, was common among AfricanAmerican slaves. “There was one thing which the Negro greatly insisted upon, and which not even the most hard-hearted masters were ever quite willing to deny them. They could never bear that their dead could be put away without a funeral…. A funeral to them was a pageant. It was a thing to be arranged for a long time ahead. It was to be marked by the gathering of kindred and friends from far and near. It was not satisfactory unless there was a vast and excitable crowd…. It had about it hints of an elaborate function with festive accompaniments.”37 One important, related belief of the first generations of slaves was that death freed the soul to migrate back to Africa.38 For the Israelite population, the link between death and their roots in Canaan was built into the patriarchal burial ground in a cave near Mamre. Jacob reinforced this link on his deathbed when he requested that Joseph promise to take his body back for burial alongside his grandparents, parents, and wife Leah. Joseph reaffirmed this permanent connection to the Land of Canaan by insisting that his bones be transported for reburial at some distant point in time when God would fulfill the promise of the exodus and return the entire Israelite family to Canaan (Genesis 47:29–31, 49:29–33, 50:24–25). In some aspects of daily life, the link to Africa was obvious, as in the case of diet and certain work habits. Vegetables such as okra and yam were imports from Africa. As in Africa, African Americans used a wide array of herbs, spices, and oils to flavor and enliven their simple diet. These culinary patterns eventually ended up as key components of southern cooking because African-American servants controlled much of what happened in the Big House kitchen.39 This was paralleled by an understanding of the 99

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medicinal role that roots and wild plants could play in the treatment of illness. Although the specific medicinal remedies were not transferable, their perspective and approach resulted in greater support in the South for the use of homeopathic remedies.40 Africans also brought with them experience in cultivating rice, which helped rice become a diet staple and cash crop of the Carolina economy. Certain work mannerisms were also carryovers. Women carried baskets on their heads and rice was planted with the same foot motions that had been used in Africa.41 Similarly, the children of Jacob brought their professions with them; they had been shepherds and herdsmen in Canaan. As noted above, Joseph planned to use their occupation as a way to maintain their group cohesiveness and cultural identity, to isolate them geographically and socially from the broader Egyptian society. Pharaoh acceded to their request for a separate region rich with pastures. This self-requested policy of segregation enabled them to maintain the cultural identity the Midrash spoke of and slow the process of assimilating Egyptian values.42 Although large concentrations of Africans in the Caribbean and Latin America facilitated the retention of Africanisms, African Americans in the southern United States had a much different experience. As Herskovits writes: Certainly the opportunity of the slave who was the sole human possession of his master to carry on African traditions was of the slightest, no matter how convinced such a Negro might have been that this was a desirable end. Even where slaves on a farm numbered ten or fifteen, it was difficult to achieve continuity of aboriginal behavior. Unless such a group was in the midst of a thickly settled area, which could afford them constant contacts with other slaves, it would be nigh impossible for them to live according to the dictates of a tradition based on large numbers of closely knit relationship groupings organized into complex economic and political structures.43 That which was nigh impossible for African Americans, however, was indeed possible for the Children of Israel, who, even in Egypt, were organized into twelve tribal units, with closely knit family relationships, and with a hierarchical governing structure of elders and family houses.

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CHAPTER 8 POPULATION GROWTH AND FEARS

BOTH THE SLAVES of Egypt and the American South experienced robust

population growth, which is unusual for slave populations. The Israelites arrived in Egypt as a family unit that numbered seventy. They left two hundred and ten years later with 603,550 adult males between the ages of twenty and sixty (Numbers 1:45). The total population, including females and males outside the age of conscription, is estimated to have been close to two million. Although not as dramatic, the African-American population also grew impressively in the South: whereas approximately four hundred thousand Africans were imported into the colonies throughout the slave trade, the 1860 census reported approximately four million slaves and almost five hundred thousand freemen.1 Throughout history, slave populations have generally not experienced natural increases. In order to sustain the population, slave societies typically have relied on a constant flow of slave imports, as in the Caribbean and South America. This pattern was even true in South Carolina in the early decades of the seventeenth century, where the vast majority of slave population growth was due to import.2 An estimated ten to twelve million slaves were imported into Caribbean and South American regions over the course of the centuries to maintain the institution of slavery. The horrible living conditions that worked against natural increase were driven by a calculation of economics: “it was cheaper to import full-grown slaves than to bring up young ones”3 given the cost of lost time for women bearing and raising children, as well as the cost of feeding the young. In any case, the conditions of slavery generally guarantee unusually high infant mortality.4 The natural rate of population decrease could have been as high as five percent per annum before 1700. In 1794, the population of Saint Domingue was 480,000 even though 864,000 slaves had been imported. In 1834 Great Britain freed their 781,000 slaves in the British West Indies whereas 1,665,000 had been imported. In the Dutch colonies, the population was only twenty percent of the total half-million slaves who had been brought there.5

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The Israelite Population The growth of the Israelite population in Egypt was foretold to Jacob in a prophetic vision he received in Beer Sheba as he journeyed to see Joseph: “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation” (Genesis 46:3). The prophecy’s fulfillment is recorded early in Exodus: “And Joseph died, and all of his brothers, and all that generation. But the Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so the land was filled with them” (Exodus 1:6–7). The Midrash frames the juxtaposition of Joseph’s death and population growth as a statement of contrasts. Joseph, who had brought an awareness of the one God to Egyptian hierarchy, had died. But God was very much alive and guiding the destiny of the Israelites, as their population growth transformed them into a nation.6 The Bible uses a multiplicity of verbs, paru, va-yishretzu, va-yirbu, and vaya’aztmu, to convey this amazing growth. As if that were not enough, it repeats the adverb me’od me’od, “very greatly.” Leibowitz characterizes this unusual sequence as a “concentrated crescendo” emphasizing the extraordinary population explosion.7 The six-fold reference to fecundity (four verbs and the double adverb) is used to support the Midrash’s extravagant claim that Israelite mothers routinely gave birth to six children at a time.8 As miraculous as the increase was and sustained over an extended period, one does not need to assume that the birth of sextuplets was common to account for the population totals at the time of the exodus. This increase by a factor of thirty thousand could have been achieved by families averaging a total of six children before parents reached the age of twentyfive, or eight children by their late twenties. These are still fantastic and perhaps miraculous rates, especially when sustained over a two–hundredyear period, but they do not require the birth of sextuplets.9 The first and third verbs, paru and va-yirbu, are from the same roots used in Genesis in the blessing given to Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the land,” and also given to the fish and birds so as to populate the waters and air (Genesis 1:28).10 The word va-yishretzu, translated as “were prolific,” conjures up a different part of the animal kingdom: it comes from the same root as the word for insects, whose birth rate exceeds all others combined. The Rashbam stresses a different sequence in the multiplicity of verbs. He interprets the four verbs as referring to different stages in a healthy progression from pregnancy to adulthood. Often, high infant mortality and physically frail children accompany high birth rates, especially involving multiple births. The unseen guiding hand of the Lord made sure that this did 102

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not happen in Egypt. The Israelite women experienced many pregnancies (paru), which almost always yielded live births (va-yishretzu). These children grew up healthy (va-yirbu) and were powerful when they reached manhood (va-ya’aztmu).11 Whatever the interpretation, the results frightened the new king of Egypt: “And he said to his people, Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground” (Exodus 1:9–10). Pharaoh voiced the classic fear of slaveholding societies in which slaves are a significant proportion of the overall population – that were the society to come under attack, the slaves would side with the enemy. The last part of the verse, “and rise from the ground,” is not clearly articulated. This enigmatic phrase could suggest a concern that the Israelites would use war as an opportunity to change their status. Others translate it as “go up from the land.” However, the Bible leaves out the object or the direction of their “going up.” It could refer to spreading beyond the region of Goshen and overwhelming Egyptian society with its numbers. Or it could simply mean leaving to return to Canaan, in which case the Egyptians would lose the economic benefits associated with the Israelite presence.12 The initial Egyptian strategy was to use oppressive service as a means of lowering the overall birth rate. The Midrash suggests that this was to be accomplished through high quotas requiring work until late into the evenings. Taskmasters argued that it was not worth the effort for slaves to go home at night. The slaves were forced to work on grandiose building projects in distant locales, Pithom and Ramses, that would have caused extended periods of separation between husbands and wives.13 The strategy failed abysmally: “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites” (Exodus 1:12). The Midrash frames God’s view of the situation: the Egyptian strategy was a challenge to His omnipotence. “I said to Abraham their patriarch that I will multiply his children like the stars in the sky, and you [the Egyptians] are working to negate this vision. Let us see whose vision will prevail.”14 Pharaoh, the god of Egypt, unknowingly had lost his first battle with the God of the Israelites even before the public confrontation with Moses, God’s spokesperson, triggered the start of the plagues. It was a battle waged in the privacy of the bedroom carried out by the unseen hand of God.

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The African-American Population In 1619 the first Africans to settle in the British colonies landed in Jamestown, Virginia. They numbered only twenty and were evenly split between males and females. The first birth occurred in 1623. Another small group of eleven was part of the group that settled New Amsterdam. In 1640 that city contained almost forty percent of the approximately six hundred Africans in the British colonies. Africans comprised less than five percent of the total colonial population until 1680. The rate of importation grew slowly, approaching a thousand per year by the end of the century, and continued at that rate into the early part of the eighteenth century. In the 1730s the import rate grew dramatically to an average of more than four thousand per year and peaked in the decade preceding the start of the American Revolution, when the rate approached seven thousand per year.15 Table 1: Eighteenth Century Slave Imports into British America DECADE 1701–1710 1711–1720 1721–1730 1731–1740 1741–1750 1751–1760 1761–1770 1771–1775 1781–1810

TOTAL IMPORTS 9000 10,800 9,900 40,500 58,500 41,900 69,500 15,000 91,600

AVERAGE PER YEAR 900 1080 990 4050 5850 4190 6950 3000 3050

There was significant variability from year to year as illustrated by the large fluctuation, from under twenty-five hundred to over ten thousand, in the annual number of slaves imported between the years 1768 to 1772. The highest import level occurred in the years just before importation of slaves became illegal. In one four-year period, approximately forty thousand slaves were imported through Charleston.16 There was also variability as to the percentage that passed through the West Indies before being re-exported to the British colonies. It was during this period that African Americans reached their peak as a percentage of the colonial population. It is estimated that they were 21.4 percent of the population in 1770. In the first U.S. census of 1790, this dropped to twenty percent, and by the time of the 1860 census just before the Civil War, African Americans accounted for 14.1 percent of the U.S. population.17

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Table 2: Number of Slaves Imported into the British Colonies: 1768–1772 SOURCES OF SLAVES YEAR AFRICA WEST INDIES TOTAL 1768 N/A N/A 2496 1769 5161 1222 6726 1770 2266 600 3069 1771 2754 2020 4970 1772 6638 3146 10165

Slave importation became illegal on January 1, 1808. Although smuggling continued to provide imports, especially when slave prices were high, these illegals would have been an insignificant fraction of the total AfricanAmerican population that reached 1.4 million in 1810. Thereafter, essentially all African-American population growth was attributable to natural increase. During each of the succeeding decades, this population segment grew by more than twenty-five percent and doubled in less than thirty years. By comparison, we estimate that the Israelite population would have had to quadruple every thirty years to grow at the rate it did over 210 years. By 1860 the African-American population included 3.95 million slaves and almost five hundred thousand freemen. Freemen accounted for between eight and fifteen percent of the African-American population in the United States during various periods. The peak of fifteen percent freemen was reported in the 1810 census, shortly after the law outlawing the importation of slaves took effect. If we compare the South to the Goshen of the Bible in terms of slave concentration, more than eighty percent of the population of African descent was found to be in southern states. In one state in particular the relative size of the slave population stands out. In South Carolina at the start of the Civil War, African Americans made up more than fifty-eight percent of the state’s population and constituted a majority of the population in Charleston, South Carolina.18 In the coastal regions, especially the area approaching the Georgia border, African-American slaves often were more than eighty percent of a county’s population.

Fertility and Family Size The data on fertility rates and family size is generally based on small samples. The interpretation of these data has been subjected to heated debate. One study of 136 slave women in four different plantations in four states indicates that the median and average age of the mother at the birth of the first child was between eighteen and nineteen years.19 The data in Table 3 illustrate the dramatic differences in fertility between the U.S. and the 105

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Caribbean island of Trinidad. First, a significantly higher proportion of U.S. slaves bore children, 0.86 as compared to 0.69 for Trinidad. Once these women bore children, the average span between births was twenty-five percent shorter and their child-bearing years continued fifty percent longer than those of their Trinidad counterparts.20 This latter statistic reflects the earlier mortality for both men and women in Trinidad as compared to the United States.21 In Trinidad, as well as Jamaica, the crude death rate, deaths per 100 people, exceeded the birth rate.22 Table 3: Fertility Data for Slaves in the U.S. and Trinidad in 1800s VARIABLE Total fertility rate Average childbearing span Average birth interval

DEFINITION Average number of children born to a woman living to age 49 Average number of years between first and last births Average number of years between successive births

Proportion of women ever bearing a child

U.S. (C. 1830)

TRINIDAD (C. 1813)

9.24

4.44

20.1

14.5

2.1

2.7

0.86

0.69

“The total fertility rate is defined as the total number of children born to a woman who lives through the child bearing ages (15–49) and who has an average fertility experience.” In the United States this number was more than eight children. In one extreme case, a slave was reported to have had twentytwo children.23 These norms do not directly translate into family size since they do not factor in high infant mortality rates.24 In addition, whether or not a slave grew up with many siblings was also affected by practices of selling off individual family members. Gutman studied the families living on the Good Hope Plantation in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the first half of the nineteenth century. The plantation housed 175 men, women, and children in 1857. Of the children born between 1800 and 1849, approximately one in five died, with most of the deaths occurring before their first birthday. More than half the children had at least seven siblings. The data were also analyzed from the perspective of twenty-three mothers who had their first child between 1820 and 1849. Ten of these women had at least seven children and about eighty percent had at least four.25

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Fears The slave aristocracy of the South understood well the fears expressed by Pharaoh of old – “In the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground” (Exodus 1:10).26 White South Carolinians, who lived amid a large slave majority, were often the most concerned. In 1741 Benjamin Martyn wrote, referring to South Carolina, “The greater number of blacks, which a frontier has, and the greater the disproportion is between them and her white people, the more the danger she is liable to; for those are all secret enemies, and are ready to join with her open ones on the first occasion. So far from putting any confidence in them, her first step must be to secure herself against them.”27 At the time of the Revolutionary War, slaves were offered an opportunity to side with the British and take up arms against their masters in exchange for freedom. John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, issued the infamous Dumore Decree in 1775 as he fled his post as Royal Governor of Virginia. An estimated eight hundred Virginia slaves joined the British forces. A common motto inscribed on their sleeves was “Liberty to Slaves.” However, even more slaves used the opportunity to fulfill Pharaoh’s prediction of “rise up from the ground” and leave slavery. As many as twenty thousand slaves left with the British forces after the war. Most departed from just two seaports, Charleston and Savannah. For some, their freedom was short-lived as they were sold back into slavery in the British West Indies. Thousands used the chaos of war to flee the South and escape slavery by finding refuge in northern cities. One historian estimated that South Carolina lost twenty percent of its slaves and Georgia seventy-five percent during the Revolutionary period.28 The war situation from a slave owner’s perspective was precarious: as militias marched off to battle, they left the homestead vulnerable. The wars of the colonial period gave rise to fears of “the villany of the Negroes,” requiring officials to “leave a proper number of soldiers in each county to protect it from the combinations of the Negro slaves, who have been very audacious.” Patriot soldiers lacked guns, which local whites possessed but refused to give up, choosing instead to “secrete them and say they [do so] for their own defence against insurrections of slaves or Tories.” Equally noteworthy was that five thousand African Americans fought in the Continental Army and another two thousand in the Navy. Most served in integrated units, and the overwhelming majority were already free and living in the North. George Washington authorized the recruitment of free blacks, but not slaves, into the army in December 1775.29 Most notable is the story of James Armistead, who served as a spy for Marquis de Lafayette and contributed to the defeat the British at Yorktown in 1781. Eventually, he 107

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was granted freedom in 1786 by a special act of the Virginia General Assembly.30 The worst fears of slave owners were aroused by the revolution in Haiti in 1791 that led to the first black nation in the Western Hemisphere. The revolution was brutal. All the French were chased from Haiti, and former slaves became masters of their future. Southerners were afraid that the revolution of Haiti would be exported to the South by insurrectionists or brought inadvertently by slaves imported from that region. Numerous restrictions on importation were created to screen out these potential troublemakers. The fears of southerners were even broader than Pharaoh’s. They were concerned about an insurrection of local slaves not even triggered by war.31 Every revolt that killed whites even in small numbers exacerbated this fear. The portending of “some dreadful calamity” would come to a head in the 1830s. Even prior to the Nat Turner Rebellion in 1831, southerners lived in a “constant state of alarm.” In July 1831, one writer cautioned the South that “[t]he slaves are men. They have within them that inextinguishable thirst for freedom, which is born in man. They are already writhing in their shackles. They will, one day, throw them off with vindictive violence.” Immediately preceding Turner’s revolt, a Baltimore editor warned that “vengeance is accumulating in the end of despotism; and it will assuredly burst forth with tremendous fury.” The events in Southampton County, Virginia, in August 1831 would manifest the worst of southern fears and lead to an evertightening system of repression in response to “abject terror.”32 During the years just prior to the Civil War, the fear of insurrection reached a level bordering on paranoia. Women in Georgia “would not dare to go to sleep without one or two pistols under their pillows.” Planters in Louisiana rarely “had a calm night’s rest; they then never lay down to sleep without a brace of loaded pistols at their side.” Descriptions of the “planter who lays himself to bed with pistols under his pillow, never knowing when the wild whoop of insurrection may awaken him to a bloody fight,” became common. In Mississippi in the late 1850s, the increasing number of slaves “was now felt to be so alarmingly great that many people never lay down at night without fears that their throats might be cut in this sleep.”33 The experiences during the Civil War were a tenfold fulfillment of Pharaoh’s and Benjamin Martyn’s worst fears. One hundred and eighty thousand blacks joined the Union Army. Hundreds of thousands of slaves left their homes and escaped slavery when the Union Army approached their plantations. Many of these became informants, giving directions to slave owners’ hidden valuables. Some pillaged their former plantations and repaid past injustices with attacks on their former masters.34 108

CHAPTER 9 CONTROLLING THE POPULATION

PHARAOH

both to control the population growth of the Israelites and to repress their ability to rebel. The primary mechanism of control was imposing massive public building projects that were physically demanding, especially in the manufacture of bricks. Given that most projects were far from the Israelites’ homes in Goshen, such efforts separated husbands from their wives and was supposed to have the effect of reducing the slave population (Exodus 1:9–10). To intensify the psychological pressure, taskmasters were assigned with a specific objective, “to oppress them” (Exodus 1:11), to inflict pain within the context of the massive construction projects that were just a means toward this goal of oppression. The Hebrew title sarei misim, which describes the taskmasters, has a secondary meaning that suggests they caused the Israelites’ hearts and souls to melt. The Midrash relates that uniquely cruel individuals were recruited for this work, much like the notorious Simon Legree of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.1 The Egyptian masses followed the taskmasters’ lead and compounded the oppression. Although they benefited financially from the Israelites’ labors, they too never lost sight of the real goal. Thus every task that was assigned was imposed be-farekh, “ruthlessly and with spite.” In terms of physical force, there is one incident recorded in the Bible in which an Egyptian beats an Israelite slave and Moses subsequently kills the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11–12). However, the reader is left in the dark as to what triggered the Egyptian’s beating of the Israelite.2 The use of brute force against slaves was clearly a standard practice. Later, when the Israelites were unable to maintain their quota of bricks, the Bible records that “the foremen of the Israelites were beaten” (Exodus 5:14). In the narrative following Moses’ first confrontation with Pharaoh, we learn more about the oppressive work quota and the hierarchical taskmaster structure. Pharaoh responds to the request of Moses and Aaron for a holiday by charging them with interfering with the sivlot of the people. This term, as discussed earlier, suggests a form of labor tax or quota that had been imposed on the Israelite community. However, in classic slavemaster style, Pharaoh attempts to blunt this challenge to his authority by increasing the USED SLAVERY

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burden, thereby warning Moses against rebellious impulses. He does so not by ratcheting up the quota, but by withdrawing the supply of straw needed to make bricks.3 Pharaoh uses as a pretext Moses’ request for a three-day holiday; thus, he charges, the Israelites are not really being pushed to the limits of their potential: “For they are lazy; that is why they cry, Let us go and sacrifice to our God!” (Exodus 5:8). The requirement that the Israelites must collect their own straw had multiple benefits for Pharaoh. Whereas brick making was a skilled job, collecting straw was at the lowest end of the work spectrum, reducing further the status of the Israelites. Equally important, to collect straw the Israelites had to disperse throughout the countryside: “Then the people scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw” (Exodus 5:12). This diminished the opportunity for the masses to collaborate and unite in opposition to Pharaoh’s decrees, and thus lessened any chance of rebellion. The nature of the quota also changed subtly. The decree announced by the taskmasters had a daily commitment: “You must complete the same work assignment each day as when you had straw” (Exodus 5:13). Instead of an aggregate quota delivered by the Israelite nation – perhaps weekly or monthly in accordance with the time required to cure brick – Israelite productivity was now measured daily and on an individual basis. The daily pressure was enormous, and opportunities for sharing work responsibilities diminished. The Hebrew for “daily quota” is even more emphatic about the new pressure imposed on the slaves, literally “a day’s amount in its day.”4 Pharaoh’s reaction to Moses’ and Aaron’s request also drove a wedge between them and the Israelites responsible for the slaves’ quotas, the shotrim. These shotrim blamed Moses and Aaron for the Israelites’ deteriorating circumstances, a classic case of the powerless turning against their own rather than focusing their anger on the real source of the problem. “May the Lord look upon you and punish you for making us loathsome to Pharaoh and his courtiers – putting a sword in their hands to slay us” (Exodus 5:21). In other words, they charged Moses with giving Pharaoh an excuse to impose whatever burdens he chose, even death. At first the shotrim did not even believe the new order came from Pharaoh, but was an unauthorized whim of the taskmasters. They complained directly to Pharaoh – “Your servants are being beaten, when the fault is with your own people” (Exodus 5:16) – only to be denounced by Pharaoh as “lazy, lazy!” This scenario of daily individual quotas calls to mind the cotton-picking scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin shortly after Tom arrived. In the field were Lucy, Tom, and Cassy. Lucy was too weak to work productively, and first Tom and then Cassy took some of their pickings and added them to Lucy’s basket 110

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so that she could meet her full weight requirements. The slave drivers informed Legree, who took special pleasure in declaring that Lucy had shorted her quota even though the scale showed otherwise.5

Egyptian Slave Bureaucracy Pharaoh initiated the enslavement with the appointment of sarei misim. Although often translated as “taskmasters,” these individuals were of higher rank, more akin to fiscal officers or senior political officials. They established and implemented the new policy but did not deal directly with the work effort. Below them were nogsim, or taskmasters, Egyptians who translated the policy decisions into practical quotas, and shotrim, the Israelite foremen or slave drivers who oversaw the actual work. When the quotas were missed, these foremen bore the brunt of the abuse. The Midrash praises their actions, noting how they took the blows of the taskmasters and never turned on their fellow Hebrew slaves. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Simon Legree is the heartless overseer. Below him are two African-American slave drivers, Sambo and Quimbo, whom he had converted into almost equally vicious participants in the abuse of slaves. Legree’s plan was to turn Uncle Tom into a co-conspirator in the evil of slavery. When Legree declared that Lucy had failed to meet her quota, he instructed and then demanded that Uncle Tom whip her. When he refused, Tom was beaten severely. Uncle Tom’s words would have resonated with the Israelite foremen. “I am willin’ to work night and day, and work while there’s life and breath in me; but this yer thing I can’t feel it right to do; – and, mas’r, I never shall do it, – never!” Later he added, “The poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ’t would be downright cruel, and it’s what I never will do, nor begin to. Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand agin any one here, I never shall, I’ll die first.”6 Plantation Overseers and Slave Drivers In creating the characters of Simon Legree and his black slave drivers Sambo and Quimbo, Harriet Beecher Stowe represented the abolitionists’ view of the overseer and his staff as harsh and cruel men who held the power of life and death over the enslaved. Traditionally, overseers have been viewed as originating from the landless, non–slave-holding class of poor whites who lived on nearly all plantations in the South. Others have characterized them more as a semi-professional class and the plantation owners as primarily responsible for the cruelty and brutality of slavery. In actuality, the overseer had an unstable place in plantation society, with much less authority than usually assumed. Most slaves did not labor under the direction of an overseer.7 Rather, the overseers, whom some planters viewed as a necessary 111

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evil and others as an indispensable agent, had to maintain the daily operation of the plantation, especially for owners who were frequently absent from home. The overseer had the responsibility to wake the slaves at daylight and drive them to the fields, attend the sick and prevent malingering, supervise the planting, tillage, and harvesting of the crops; show the slaves how to perform their work, keep a daily record of plantation events, see that the slaves’ food was properly prepared, and maintain fences and tools in good repair. In managing slaves in such a fashion as to ensure a large quantity and a high quality of the money crop, the overseer was required to “push the hands fast,” preserve the health and morals of slaves by prohibiting the use of alcohol, inter-plantation visiting, theft of plantation stock and produce, and trading with whites. He had to supervise and examine the work of each slave, regularly inspect each cabin and person to ensure cleanliness, order, sobriety, and ring the bell or blow the bugle to signal “lights out” in the quarters and make sure that all the laborers received enough rest to complete their tasks the next day.8 One major problem of the overseer’s job involved finding a balance between leniency and brutality. Overseers had to work slaves hard enough to please their employers, while not working them so hard that they rebelled. In order to perform the duties in a satisfactory manner, overseers realized they needed some “degree of support in the quarters, and accordingly, they tried to curry favor.” One of the quickest ways for an overseer to lose favor with the enslaved was to take a slave woman as a mistress. Equally damaging from the planter’s perspective was the overseer who could “injure the plantation a vast deal by placing himself on par with the negroes.” A strict adherence to class hierarchy had to be maintained. As Genovese notes, “Since the overseer lacked status and dignity, he had for the most part to rely on force; but since… he ultimately needed the approval of the victims of his force, he also had to win friends.”9 The overseers’ temporary and transitory position and their ultimate lack of authority are significant given their erroneous portrayal by abolitionists and other social reformers. Genovese notes that planters fired overseers for cruelty more often than for leniency. In spite of the responsibility overseers had in ensuring the profitability of the plantation, “any sensible master… trusted his slaves against his overseer. Overseers came and went; the slaves remained.” The fact that masters “consulted their slaves about the performance of the overseers” throughout the history of slavery attests to the lack of the overseers’ true authority as well as to the slaves’ internalization of the class hierarchy: they, too, looked down on poor whites who owned no slaves of their own.10

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The slave driver also acted in a managerial capacity on most plantations and on smaller farms as well. In some instances, a plantation had both an overseer and slave driver; in others the slave driver fulfilled the role of the overseer. The slave driver held the highest status slave position available on a plantation, but if the position of a white overseer held contradictions, the role of the slave driver had inherent difficulties. Termed by Genovese as “The Men Between,” slave drivers, as slaves themselves, occupied a position even more tenuous than that of the poor white overseers.11 The average plantation of fifty slaves or fewer employed one slave driver. On larger plantations with several slave drivers, one would be appointed to supervise the others, though the planter would himself rarely be absent. In the Upper South, small farmers used drivers rather than overseers, while in the Lower South only those who could afford to do so employed both. The position of slave driver conveyed prestige both to the other slaves and to the owners, who held the most effective ones in high esteem for their “intelligence, managerial skill, and practical knowledge of the intricacies of farming. Drivers of top quality made up a considerable portion of the whole and typically had the experience to run a plantation without white direction in all respects except marketing and finance.”12 Planters demoted slave drivers if they considered them too lenient in setting the pace of the work gangs under their supervision. Drivers also incurred the wrath of their fellow slaves for meting out corporal punishment and other penalties. They did, however, receive certain privileges, including larger allotments of food, better clothing and housing, tobacco and whiskey, and the avoidance of the most tedious aspects of plantation agriculture. Drivers also could protect their family members from the worst abuses of slavery. Drivers’ privileges included the right to carry a whip, wear a watch, and issue commands.13 The tenuous nature of the slave driver’s position and his efforts to please both his master and his fellow slaves are revealed in the following narrative of former slave Jeptha Choice: In the field was always a big strong nigger to keep peace among the hands. He was called by the other slaves “nigger traitor” behin’ his back, and was sorta like a straw boss man. He had to be good with his fists to make the boys who got bad in the field walk the line. ’Course, when Old Massa come to the field, anyone who was actin’ up started in to choppin’, and everything would get quiet as could be. The slave driver’s psychological reward of having status among his fellow slaves is revealed in the narrative of Rufus Dirt, who acted as the driver of the farm on which he was enslaved:

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I was a driver during slavery, and I recons I was about twenty somepin’. I don’ remember nothin’ in particular dat caused me to get dat drivin’ job, ’ceptin’ hard work, but I knows dat I was proud of it, ’cause I didn’ have to work so hard no mo’. An’ den, it sorta made de other niggers look up to me, an’ you know how us niggers is, boss: nothin’ makes us happier dan to strut in front of other niggers.14

Controlling African-American Slaves Brutal and sometimes lethal force was the primary mechanism for exerting control over the individual slave. There were no limits to what an owner could do to his slave, especially on isolated plantations. The most recalcitrant slaves, such as Frederick Douglass, were turned over to slave breakers for a year of re-education. The whip was the instrument of choice and the symbol of authority. It scarred the backs of slaves (see Illustration 1). An especially brutal beating was a warning to other slaves; the owner might even leave the victim to die slowly, as depicted in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The beatings often left the slave permanently disfigured. John Reddy, a physician in Montreal, recorded the examination of a former Texas slave in 1861: A V-shaped piece had been slit out of each ear; there is a depression on the right parietal one, where it had been fractured…. The corresponding spot, on the opposite side, has a large scar uncovered by hair; there is a large deep scar, 31/2 inches long, on the left side of the lower jaw; several of her teeth are broken out; the back of her left hand has been branded with a heated flat-iron; the little finger of her right hand, with a portion of the bone that it connected with, has been cut off; the abdomen bears the marks of a large letter 4 inches long in one way and 21/2 inches in another, also branded in with a hot iron;15 her ankles are scarred, the soles of her feet are all covered with little round marks apparently inflicted by some sharp instrument…. Her back and person are literally covered with scars and marks, now healed, evidently produced by the lash.16

The beatings also scarred the victims psychologically. However, the arsenal of psychological brutality as a means of control was not limited to physical violence. One of the most powerful and feared tools of the slave owner was the threat, too often carried out, of breaking up a family by selling one or more members. The threat of sale might be directed at a recalcitrant slave or at one of his immediate family members. The breakup of a mother and child was especially traumatic. This threat more than any other highlighted the impotence of the slave over his or her destiny. One of the primary fears of all owners was the possibility that a slave would run away. The institution of slavery was protected by laws and practices designed to limit escape opportunities and to facilitate recovery of 114

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slaves. It began with the protection afforded the owner in Article IV, Section 2, paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution. This paragraph guaranteed that escape to another state would not cancel an owner’s rights. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 added another level of authority to the owners’ efforts to recover escaped slaves. In addition to the post-escape remedies, slave states developed barriers to escape. Slaves were barred from travel without a pass. States fielded night patrols in order to intercept slaves on their flight to freedom. Another battalion of slave catchers aggressively pursued escaped slaves into the free states. Recaptured slaves faced severe punishment. In some instances the beating reached absurd proportions, killing the recaptured slave and thereby nullifying all the effort that had gone into recapture. Nevertheless, such a beating did serve a master’s ultimate ends by warning others against attempting to escape. Most southern states prohibited teaching slaves to read and write. One concrete goal of these laws was to limit the ability of slaves to forge travel documents that would help them to escape. Additionally, the slaveocracy reasoned that slave ignorance was bliss both for the slave and the owner. Owners believed that a slave who was educated would not be satisfied with his station in life. Slaves’ lack of education and knowledge of the outside world allowed the masters to fill their heads with lies about the horrors of life in the North for escaped slaves. In addition, illiteracy made it less likely that slaves would read some of the incendiary abolitionist literature that managed to sneak through the bans on distribution. Southern fears of rebellion led to other controls over slaves. States prohibited slave gatherings without white men present. Even prayer services required the presence of whites. Southern legislatures also debated and revised their statutes governing and restricting freemen throughout the nineteenth century, fearing that free blacks might conspire with slaves to aid in their escape or, worse yet, help plan a rebellion. This fear gained new credence from the rebellion led by Nat Turner, a slave who had purchased his freedom. Although in the eighteenth century there were ebbs and flows in the restrictions on an owner’s right to manumit his slave, the nineteenth century saw more consistent limits. Owners were generally prohibited from freeing a slave without approval of the judiciary in some states or of the legislature in others. These legal restrictions were reinforced by social attitudes that looked askance at owners who freed their slaves. Many statutes that in theory required newly freed slaves to leave the state shortly thereafter compounded the challenges faced by newly freed slaves. Overall, with the exception of a border state such as Maryland, these barriers to freedom sharply reduced the number of slaves who became free each year, especially in rural parts of the Deep South. 115

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Once free, these blacks faced many of the same or analogous restrictions that slaves faced, as reflected in the title of Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without Masters. They were required to carry papers testifying to their status and to register their presence with local authorities. They faced night curfews and were also restricted in their right to gather in significant numbers. Public officials intermittently enforced these codes but provided license for extra-legal groups to randomly assert their authority over the individual black.17 The existence of freedmen in large numbers in cities was a great concern of southern politicians and slave owners. They feared their status as role models and symbols of hope for every slave who came in contact with them. In addition, the freedom they enjoyed provided opportunities for conspiring to overthrow slavery or work effectively on a smaller scale to assist and harbor runaways on their flight to freedom. To reduce these risks, southern political leaders helped found and continually support the efforts of the American Colonization Society to move freed slaves to Africa. In response to the 1832 Nat Turner rebellion, legislatures in Maryland and Virginia allocated tens of thousands of dollars to support emigration of its freedmen.18

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CHAPTER 10 REBELLION

Passive and Active Rebellion of Israelites THROUGHOUT THEIR SOJOURN in the wilderness, the Israelites constantly rebelled against Moses and the new Divine code of law that he had given them. God therefore described them as “a stiff-necked nation” (Exodus 32:9).1 This image of defiance arises not only in the first two years of the sojourn but even just prior to their crossing the Jordan River, when they succumbed to the enticements of the “Moabite women who invited the people to the sacrifices for their god” (Numbers 25:1, 2). And yet there is little in the opening chapter of Exodus that indicates any stiff-necked opposition to their enslavement. The onset of their enslavement is captured in just four verses that intimate the speed with which Pharaoh’s strategy took effect. There is only one reference to an Israelite response: “But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites” (Exodus 1:12). This suggests that the Israelite reaction was an attempt to live a normal life, giving birth to children and raising them in the face of slavery, which did more to undermine Pharaoh’s initial scheme than active rebellion was likely to accomplish. This theme of normal life is best captured by a rather mundane description at the peak of the evil decrees that immediately preceded the birth of Moses: “A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son” (Exodus 2:1, 2). To highlight this act of routine rebellion, the Bible leaves us guessing as to their names and notes only that both the husband and wife were from the tribe of Levi. This anonymous couple, like so many before and after them, went through a normal life-cycle event in times that were anything but normal. The Midrash also sees the anonymity of the protagonists as indicating that the act of marriage was carried out in secret to avoid the watchful eyes of Pharaoh’s agents.2 In beginning the second chapter in this way, however, the biblical narrative leaves open a question, highlighted by the Midrash. Why does the verse say “A certain man of the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman”? Why not simply state, “A certain man of the house of Levi

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married a Levite woman”? What is implied by “went”? Where did he go? Furthermore, the couple’s new son is soon revealed to have an older sister (“And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him” [2:4]), so the couple clearly has a history that has not yet been detailed. The answer to where the father went, according to the Midrash, is that he “went along with the advice of his daughter, Miriam.” This approach begins to fill in some of the narrative’s gaps, such as any mention of emotional and moral conflict in Israelite households over having children when Pharaoh issued the decree to kill all newborn males. In the use of the verb “went,” the Midrash finds a hint at a major change in policy motivated by the persuasive argument posed by Miriam, Moses’s sister, who was six years old at the time. According to the Midrash, Moses’s father, Amram, a leader in the tribe of Levi, had responded to Pharaoh’s decree regarding newborn males by first separating from and then divorcing his wife. The actions of this leader were then copied by the masses, who agreed it was better not to bring children into a world in which they were threatened by Pharaoh’s decrees. The Midrash then presents Miriam’s challenge of her father’s decision: “Father, your decree is worse than Pharaoh’s. Pharaoh’s decree applies to only male children, but your decree affects both male and female children. Pharaoh’s decree applies only to this world; your decree applies to both this world and the World to Come. With regard to Pharaoh the wicked, it is in doubt whether his decrees will be successful, but you are a righteous individual, and so there is no doubt your decree will stand up.” The Midrash then records that when Amram went and remarried his wife, despite not being able to discern a real future for any potential newborn sons, others followed suit. At the birth of a boy, the mother’s emotions are captured by a simple observation: “And she saw him, that he was good” (Exodus 2:2).3 This parallels God’s unqualified assessment of each stage of creation, “And He saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:4, 12). The mother’s observation is enhanced by a midrashic comment that explores the name of this anonymous child. The Bible first calls him Moses (2:10), but that name was given to him by his adoptive mother. The Midrash suggests that during his first three months of life, his name was Tovyah, “God is good.”4 This was an amazing declaration of faith by Moses’ mother at a time when the Israelite situation was so very bleak. Although the pursuit of normal family life might be considered one form of rebellion, it is not depicted as one. The Bible does record one clear instance of passive resistance: the Hebrew midwives’ refusal to carry out Pharaoh’s decree to kill the male children.5

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“The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifra and the other Pua, saying ‘When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool. If it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.’ The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this thing, letting the boys live?’ The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.’” (Exodus 1:15–19) The Hebrew midwives’ rebellion was their refusal to carry out Pharaoh’s direct order to kill all male Israelites at birth.6 They did not confront Pharaoh and rebel publicly, since their goal was to serve God, not to seek martyrdom.7 Instead, like many an African-American slave, they feigned support for the order and attributed their inability to comply to circumstances beyond their control: the Israelite women gave birth before they arrived. In essence, the inaction of the midwives represents what Sarna calls “the first recorded case of civil disobedience in defense of a moral cause.”8 A careful reading of the Hebrew text suggests that the midwives did more than just passively disobey Pharaoh’s charge but rather actively contravened it. The translation above describes their action as “they let the boys live.” A more accurate translation is “they kept them alive.” According to the sages, they provided them with food and water.9 In addition, traditional midwifery included the responsibility “to cut the umbilical cord, to wash the baby in water, to rub its skin with salt and to swaddle it.”10 The Midrash adds another dimension to their active effort to keep the children alive. Because the decree might one day become public knowledge, the midwives pleaded with God that no baby die in childbirth and that each be born perfect so that no one would suspect that they had indeed collaborated with Pharaoh.11 The Bible records that God, who observed their quiet heroism, rewarded these midwives. Their first reward was that “the people multiplied and increased greatly.” In other words, their act of rebellion was successful. In addition, they personally benefited in a similar manner: “He established households for them.”12 There is only one true rebel in the early part of the Exodus: Moses. Although he had been born of slaves, he was raised in the house of Pharaoh. Despite his royal upbringing, his mother, who was hired as his nursemaid, apprised him of his roots and nurtured his familial identity so that “he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen” (Exodus 2:11). Moses’s response was 119

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quick and extreme: he murdered the Egyptian and then buried his body in the sand. Although his action was somewhat impulsive, he too was not seeking martyrdom for a cause. The Bible notes that before acting, “he turned this way and that” to see if anyone would see what he was about to do. When he discovered the next day that his actions were known, Moses fled the kingdom in order to save his life. The actions of Moses were not those of a rebel with a cause. He had no vision of overturning the Egyptian social order of things, of slave and master. Rather, Moses was an individual who had an instinctive sympathy for the underdog. Furthermore, his sensitivities were such that he could not tolerate the site of an Egyptian beating a brother Hebrew. His response did not break the chains of slavery. Rather, it severed the cord that bound him to his aristocratic and privileged upbringing in the House of Pharaoh.13

The Day-to-Day Resistance of Enslaved Blacks Rather than organize mass rebellions, it was more common for individual slaves to carry out day-to-day acts of resistance, either to mitigate the worst aspects of their enslavement or simply as a spur-of-the-moment reaction to an intolerable situation or event. Slave owners usually interpreted such resistance as malingering or stupidity. For example, farmers had to routinely transplant their tobacco plants at various stages, a delicate process that could incur risk to the crop. Slaves drawn toward non-confrontational forms of resistance could easily mishandle these fragile plants and cause a significant crop loss for their master. Similarly, slaves could abuse livestock or property as ways of rebelling. They even glorified their assertiveness in song: I’se Wild Nigger Bill Frum Redpepper Hill, I never did wo’k, an’ I never will. I’se done kill de boss; I’se knocked down de hoss; I eats up raw goose widout apple sauce!

Slave owners who failed to recognize such acts of resistance as protest were apt to denounce their slaves as thieves and liars and as lazy, subhuman creatures of base character.14 Nothing seemed to irritate white southerners more than when blacks talked back to them with even the slightest hint of insolence. Nevertheless, slave resistance sometimes took the form of verbal protest against ill treatment. For example, Scipio, a slave on a South Carolina rice plantation, 120

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reprimanded his owner for making fun of him, asserting, “[d]on’t bodder me Mossa, enty you know I bin libbin in dese woods fo’ erry udder nigger mek track yer – go way and don’t bodder me, or I run way fo’ tru – yerry wat I say.” Mary One, another slave in South Carolina, reportedly failed to complete her task. When the overseer intended to whip her, Mary protested: “Going drownded myself… I done my work. For I take a lick, rather drownded myself.” After an overseer struck him, one enslaved man shouted, “If you will give me a white man’s chance, I will whip you like damnation!”15 The enslaved also employed more aggressive means of resistance. Arson made a definite statement against the rigors of slavery. During the 1790s, major fires attributed to slaves occurred in New York (New York City and Albany), New Jersey (Newark and Elizabeth), Georgia (Savannah and Augusta), Virginia (Fredericksburg and Richmond), as well as Charleston and Baltimore. Lexington, Kentucky, suffered several fires in 1812 that were blamed on slaves and in the two-year period between 1829 and 1831, there were similar arson fires in Mobile and Huntsville, Alabama; Augusta and Savannah, Georgia; Frankfort, Kentucky; Camden, South Carolina; New Orleans; and Cambridge, Maryland.16 Poisoning and murderous attacks acted as two powerful modes of resistance as in the case of an enslaved woman in York, Pennsylvania, in 1803 who tried to poison two whites. Her conviction led to an eruption of arson in the town, as others continued her thwarted act of resistance. The art of poisoning was a skill Africans brought with them from the old country and often had an association with the supernatural, magic, and sorcery. The fear of poisoning was a special form of paranoia for slave owners since it could turn a simple meal into a frightening experience. Like many other acts of resistance, suspicion or detection of these methods led usually to quick and often brutal reprisals. Suicide, the inverse of homicide, acted “as a terrible final act of independence.” It was a form of resistance that began in the Middle Passage, when special procedures had to be established aboard ship to prevent slaves bound for the New World from jumping overboard.17 A more subtle form of rebellion was linked to religion. In the early days of slavery, a number of slaves petitioned for their freedom when they became Christians, claiming that a Christian could not be held captive in perpetuity.18 A similar message was propagated by the Spanish of Florida, who encouraged slaves in nearby states to flee to Florida and convert to Catholicism in order to become free.19 The anti-Establishment denominations, Quaker, Baptist, and Methodist, which opposed slavery on moral grounds, signified a further connection between religion and resistance.

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The act of prayer could also be a powerful symbol of resistance since both master and slave believed in its efficacy. For example, Praying Jacob stopped to pray three times a day and never faltered even when his master placed a gun to his head, threatening that if Jacob did not stop, he would blow his brains out. Another slave described how he was whipped while praying. “He was determined to whip the Spirit out of me, but he never could do it, for de more he whip the more of the Spirit make me content to be whipt.”20 Slaves would also find ways to take leave of their masters for an unlawful hiatus, called petit marronage, a temporary absence, or grand marronage, a longer one. In some cases, slaves would escape to relatives for short visits, or blend into urban areas and hope to avoid eventual punishment. Longer escapes usually involved fleeing from the South to the North. Slave lore is replete with stories of runaway slaves, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Most attempts at running away were unsuccessful, and invariably slaves were punished harshly upon recapture. Yet this did not stop tens of thousands from trying. Some slaves even earned the reputation as inveterate and perpetual runaways, their souls driven to seek freedom. They appeared oblivious to the pain and suffering they endured when recaptured. Only death would end their pursuit of freedom.21 The story of the Underground Railroad has been widely disseminated. Less well known to the average reader is that slaves often fled to nearby regions with difficult and inhospitable terrain, such as the Great Dismal Swamp of southeastern Virginia and North Carolina. Similarly, the mountains of Jamaica, visible to slaves throughout the island, beckoned to thousands of would-be runaways. Such desperate flights to freedom often resulted in the establishment of maroon22 communities, including Mose, headed by Francisco Menendez in colonial Spanish Florida, the “Negro Fort,” founded in the aftermath of the War of 1812 at Prospect Bluff near Florida’s Apalachicola River, and others in post-Revolutionary Wilmington, North Carolina (led by a runaway known as “The General of the Swamps”), along Georgia’s Savannah River in the 1770s, and in Norfolk, Virginia, led by Bob Ferebee in the 1830s. Most of these communities of runaways survived by raiding nearby farms and plantations, sometimes with the assistance of local slaves.23 These settlements rarely survived more than a year or two, as they came under attack from local militias. The most notable exception was Palmares, Brazil. At its peak this “Black Republic” provided refuge to more than five thousand escaped slaves and lasted from 1630 to 1697.24 There were also communities of blacks who gained their freedom by escaping to northern cities. These runaways passed themselves off as free, 122

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seeking a permanent escape from slavery. Especially after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, however, such escapees always lived in fear of capture, notwithstanding that their desire for freedom made the risks worth the fear. Harding writes: This self-liberating defiance of slavery involved tremendous additional risks and often exacted great costs. Most who made the trip north had no idea of the terrible pilgrimage to which they were committing themselves…. They knew that, if caught, they might be sold into an even crueler slavery than the one they had left. Recapture could mean severe, sometimes crippling beatings for themselves and their loved ones. It could mean maiming by the specially trained “Negro dogs.” It could mean death…. Nothing could convey the profound drama and courage, the overwhelming determination and hope, in the lives of these many thousand gone…. Their lives were concrete challenges to the system of slavery. They defied its power. They robbed its profits. They encouraged and inspired its opponents.25 The runaway, even when ultimately unsuccessful, gained the status of a hero. A former slave from Tennessee, Robert Falls, recalled his father: “He was as mean as a bear. He was so bad to fight and so troublesome he was sold four times to my knowing and maybe a heap more times.”26 In the biblical narrative there is no collection of stories of runaways. The Midrash simply notes that no slave was able to escape from Egypt. There is, however, a tradition that members of the tribe of Ephraim attempted a mass escape to freedom, but that, because it was not yet God’s appointed time for the exodus, they failed. Many of them were killed by the “men of Gath” (1 Chronicles 6:21–22). One Hebrew did, of course, run away – Moses – but he had not been a slave. Somehow, after killing a murderous Egyptian taskmaster, he managed to escape to the land of Midian, which was outside the reach of Pharaoh’s law and provided the same safety and protection that Canada offered the African-American runaway. However, many African–American slaves perceived the Israelite exodus as a story of a mass escape. They referred to it before and after their own escapes. Before their escape, William and Ellen Craft “prayed to our Heavenly Father mercifully to assist us as He did His people of Old, to escape from cruel bondage.”27 William Grimes spoke of it when he thanked God for his successful escape. “I was a poor wretched slave, and He delivered me out of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage; and that it was His hand, and not my own artfulness and cunning, which had enabled me to escape.”28 Like that of Moses, the black slave’s decision to run away was often triggered by a specific event, especially those for which the slave might 123

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anticipate severe punishment. However, the primary motivation for many escapes was the master’s death, which often led to turmoil that came with new ownership. The distribution of property to heirs routinely broke up slave families. If the heirs were minors, the slave lived a life controlled by a guardian whose guiding principle was to maximize the estate’s revenue.29 The plantation chaos surrounding the master’s death also offered greater opportunity for a slave to flee.

Major Slave Rebellions in North America The major violent slave rebellions of North America differed considerably from those in South America and the Caribbean. Most significantly, the rebellions in North America, while often having an African subtext, rarely were organized by ethnicity, nor did they result in successfully negotiated treaties, as in the case of the maroons in Suriname and Jamaica. Unlike the revolution in Saint Domingue, the rebellions of the enslaved in North America produced no free black republic like Haiti, only further repression by the southern authorities to reduce the risk of future rebellions. In fact, the rebellions in North America were always contained within days.30 Nevertheless, most of the major rebellions and conspiracies in all three regions shared common patterns. These included charismatic leaders (who frequently used the influence gained from a position they held in some type of religious organization or as skilled laborers) and a rumor of impending freedom. There were often ongoing changes in the international and domestic political economy, such as the American Revolution, England’s abolition of the slave trade, and British colonial emancipation in 1838.31 The rebellions in North America were distinctly regional in character. According to Aptheker, they were distinguished by a population increasing in the number of blacks in relation to whites, the expansion of industrialization and urbanization, and economic downturns. All these factors worked to swell the discontent of the enslaved at several points in American history. Major rebellions of the enslaved include those in New York City in 1712 and Stono, South Carolina, in 1739, and the plots conceived by Gabriel Prosser in 1800, Denmark Vesey in 1822, and Nat Turner in 1831. Other forms of day-to-day resistance are discussed elsewhere.32 The rebellion in New York City on April 6, 1712, arose in violent protest against overwork.33 Twenty-five enslaved Africans and two Native Americans lured whites into the open for an attack by burning a building. With guns, knives, and clubs the insurgents killed nine men and wounded seven others. Shortly thereafter, the local militia and a colonial regiment hunted down the rebels and alleged indirect participants, bringing about 124

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seventy into custody. The colonial court pardoned six of the accused but executed twenty-one by burning, hanging, and breaking on the wheel. The colonial legislatures in New York passed laws to deter “Conspiracy and Insurrection of the Negro and other Slaves,” while other northern colonies stopped or taxed the importation of more of the enslaved.34 This early insurrection was unusual in its relative spontaneity, but it had elements common to the previously mentioned rebellions and conspiracies: the slaves involved numbered in the dozens; a fellow slave helped alert authorities; the number of whites killed was of similar magnitude; arson was an element of the strategy; militias and regiments helped quell the incident; dozens of participants were tried and executed; each incident stoked the paranoia of the locals, and the legislature passed laws in response. In addition, the slaves typically did not have a clear plan of their end-game strategy other than perhaps to flee to some locale that would enable them to maintain their freedom. In many of the southern rebellions the ultimate goal was to gain control of a city and its armory, though with little or no thought as what to do if the insurrectionists succeeded in gaining control of the city other than to assume that masses of slaves in neighboring locales would arise in a broader-based rebellion. The first incident of note of revolutionary violence in the American South concerned an attempt by fifteen slaves to kill the whites and take control of Charles Town, Virginia, in June 1720. Before the attack was launched, however, this plot was uncovered and the leaders executed.35 The Stono Rebellion was led by an enslaved man named Jemmy and began on September 9, 1739, near the Stono River, twenty miles from Charleston. Eventually seventy or eighty slaves joined the effort, procuring weapons and killing dozens of white residents. The goal was to escape to St. Augustine, Florida, but the rebellion disintegrated only ten miles from its start on a battlefield near the Edisto River where the slaves were defeated by betterarmed planters.36 Although the conspiracies organized by Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vesey, and Nat Turner were much better planned and may have involved hundreds of slaves, fewer than a hundred were tried in each instance. Prosser, who recruited slaves from five counties, sought to take control of Richmond. His strategy included setting fire to part of the city as a distraction while gaining control of the armory. Gabriel’s brother Martin was a preacher who often quoted the Bible to illustrate parallels between contemporary slavery and that of the Israelites, and also to encourage the conspirators. Vesey and his supporters similarly read about how the Israelites were delivered out of Egyptian bondage. What was unique about Vesey among the leaders of the various rebellions was that he was not a slave at the 125

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time. He had purchased his freedom more than twenty years before, even as his immediate family members remained slaves. At his sentencing, the magistrate’s remarks could easily have applied to Moses had he ever stood trial. “You were a free man; were comparatively wealthy; and enjoyed every comfort, compatible with your situation. You had therefore, much to risk and little to gain. From your age and experience you ought to have known, that success was impractical.”37 Both Prosser’s and Vesey’s plots ended before they began because slaves who had rejected being recruited into the conspiracy notified authorities. In contrast, Nat Turner’s rebellion succeeded to the point of murdering whole families of whites before noon on the day of the rebellion. For that reason it remains the most memorable of all slave revolts. However, it too was quickly contained before the conspirators could achieve their immediate goal of taking control of Jerusalem, Virginia.38

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CHAPTER 11 RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

The Egyptian Princess THE ANONYMOUS LEVITE MOTHER described in the second chapter of Exodus was unable to continue to hide her child from Pharaoh’s agents. The midrashic literature suggests that all the Egyptians, including their maidservants, assisted in the search for newborn Israelite males. They would walk through the streets carrying Egyptian infants and make them cry, believing that hidden Israelite children would cry in response.1 The Midrash suggests that this is the reason that the maidservants’ households were included as targets of the tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn: “Every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the maidservant who is behind the millstones” (Exodus 11:5). Though the Egyptian aristocracy might alone be considered deserving of divine retribution, the Midrash includes maidservants as accomplices in the uncovering and drowning of the Israelite children.2 Moses’s mother prepared a wicker basket, sealed it against the waters of the river, and placed it among the reeds of the Nile River with her threemonth-old son inside. In a sense she fulfilled the literal decree of Pharaoh. She cast her infant male child into the river. His sister watched and waited to see what would happen. The Bible then describes the daughter of Pharaoh saving the child from the Nile. Her deed, in modern terms, would have earned her the approbation as the first righteous among the nations. Here was an individual who, although she was part of the political hierarchy, violated her father’s decree to save a baby whom she knew was an oppressed Israelite child. This awareness of the child’s roots is reemphasized when Pharaoh’s daughter agrees to the suggestion that a Hebrew woman nurse the child. The Bible adds one final irony to emphasize this woman’s righteousness: though the average Israelite received no recompense for his labors, Pharaoh’s daughter offered to pay the nursemaid – to nurse her own child. The princess’s reward for this act of righteousness was that the name she chose for the baby, Moses, became his permanent name.3 The most famous of all Israelite heroes and leaders was named by a righteous Egyptian, while

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the name his own mother gave him remains a subject of midrashic debate. What’s more, Moses’s name commemorated the princess’s act: “She named him Moses, explaining, ‘I drew him out of the water’” (Exodus 2:10). Yet the Bible does not record her own name. The Midrash refers to her as Batya, “daughter of God.” It is difficult to imagine the risks she took in saving the child. However, her heroism did not end in the rushes along the banks of the Nile. Once Moses was weaned, he was brought to her. She raised Moses as her son while allowing him to remain cognizant of his family identity and even nurture sympathy for his kinsfolk as they labored under Egyptian taskmasters.4 Pharaoh’s daughter was not alone by the banks of the Nile. Biblical commentators find the description tantalizing: “The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile” (Exodus 2:5). What were her maidens looking for as they “walked along the Nile”? The Midrash sees this as a subtle reference to their involvement in the decree to drown Israelite children. They were searching for Israelite castaways.5 Despite their proximity, Pharaoh’s daughter, acting out of compassion rather than righteous indignation, chose to intervene and save one child from the Nile. This heroic scene has been a favorite of artists throughout the ages from frescoes in a mid-third-century synagogue in Syria to three paintings by seventeenth-century painter Nicholas Poussin to twentieth-century artist Marc Chagall, and also as a popular illustration in Haggadahs.6 Although they are often assumed to have been Israelites themselves, the “midwives of the Hebrews” who rebelled against Pharaoh’s earlier decree may have been Egyptians who merely attended Hebrew women during childbirth. Many commentators argue they were indeed Egyptian, which would explain Pharaoh’s presumption that they would go along with his murderous plans. If they were Egyptian, then these women would join the daughter of Pharaoh as righteous gentiles in the Book of Exodus.7

Quakers Quakers, the Society of Friends, were the righteous risk-takers of the antislavery movement in America from its earliest days until the Civil War. Like Pharaoh’s daughter, they were part of the hierarchy that supported the infrastructure of slavery. Quakers were prominent in the development of financial institutions that enabled global commerce and were major players in international trade. Their economic successes were intertwined with the growth of the slave trade. Yet from its founding by George Fox in the seventeenth century, Quaker belief in the “absolute universality of God’s 128

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love, the brotherhood of man, and the sinfulness of physical coercion” placed it at odds with the institution of slavery. However, it took a hundred years before this belief transformed the official public policy of the Society of Friends into an active anti-slavery movement.8 In the days before the American Revolution, Ralph Sandiford, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet were Quaker pamphleteers who attacked the institution of slavery with passion and crusading spirit. Most notably, Benezet led the effort that finally won over the Friends. In their 1758 yearly meeting, members who bought and sold slaves were excluded from leadership positions. At their 1776 meeting, a motion was passed that expelled all members who refused to free their slaves.9 In the 1796 meeting, they declared that applications for membership would be “without respect of persons or color”.10 Numerous unnamed Quakers of the South freed their own slaves and accepted the social ostracism of their non-Quaker peers. When laws were passed prohibiting the manumission of slaves, Quakers developed the concept of a nominal slave. In the 1820s North Carolina Quakers held almost eight hundred slaves under this rubric. They eventually took or encouraged their bondsmen to move to non-slaveholding territories.11 The movement to end slavery gained new and broader momentum with the founding in 1833 of the American Anti-Slavery Society. One-third of its original sixty-two members were Quakers, most notably the poet John Greenleaf Whittier.12 Quakers were well stationed to serve in the Underground Railroad. The southern border of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the original home of the Quakers, was within easy reach of the slave states of Virginia and Maryland. Fugitive slaves could expect to find a friend and a helping hand once they crossed the border. Quaker communities on the Ohio side of the Ohio River provided a similar refuge for slaves fleeing to the Great Lakes and on to Canada. A knock on the door late at night was an opportunity to help and not something to fear. Fittingly, it was a Quaker named Levi Coffin who became known as the President of the Underground Railroad. Thomas Garrett of Wilmington Delaware risked all in support of the more than twenty-five hundred slaves he helped pass through his station on the Underground Railroad. His life was threatened and in 1848 when he was convicted in federal court of aiding and abetting slaves, the resultant fines wiped him out financially.13 The presiding judge Roger B. Taney, who was also Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the author of the Dred Scott Decision, reproved Garrett: “Thomas, I hope you will never be caught at this business again.” Garrett replied, “Friend, I haven’t a dollar in the world, but if thee knows a fugitive who needs a breakfast, send him to me.” 129

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The work of the Quakers did not stop at the shores of North America. Their compatriots in Great Britain initiated the first battle to end the Atlantic slave trade and eventually slavery itself. This happened despite the fact that Quakers were active in the slave trade. In 1787 a group of influential Quakers founded the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Although Quakers were themselves barred from politics,14 they were able to influence key politicians who took the battle for abolition to Parliament. Wilberforce, an Anglican, carried their battle to Parliament and in 1792 won support for gradual abolition in the House of Commons, but lost the battle in the House of Lords.15 It would take a decade more before Great Britain first eliminated the Atlantic slave trade on January 1, 1808, and ultimately freed all the slaves in the British West Indies in the 1830s. The Quakers were joined by other Christian denominations in their religiously inspired commitment to end slavery. The founders of Methodism, John Wesley, Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke, all opposed slavery. In 1784 at a Christmas Conference they established rules for emancipation and gave all Methodists twelve months to comply or be excluded from membership. When Thomas Coke preached in Virginia against slavery in 1785, he was threatened by a mob and indicted.16

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CHAPTER 12 RELIGION OF THE SLAVE

Israelite God of Their Forefathers THE ISRAELITES BROUGHT with them into Egypt a belief in the God of their forebears. This god was a personal god who forged a distinct but equal covenant with each of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.1 The original covenant was crystallized in the commandment that fathers circumcise their male children, which facilitated transmission of the beliefs of one generation to the next. The god of their ancestors was also a universal god. He guided Joseph in the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams that foretold God’s plan of seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Joseph, the first son of Israel to descend to Egypt, clearly maintained his belief in the God of his forefathers as well as his morality in the face of attempted seduction by his master’s wife. Similarly, the midwives of the Hebrews who defied Pharaoh’s edict maintained a moral compass anchored in a belief in God. The Bible’s characterization of them as God-fearing is identical to that applied to Abraham shortly after he passed the test of the Binding of Isaac (Exodus 1:17, 21, Genesis 22:16).2 Both the midwives and Abraham had taken supreme risks because of their belief in God. However, there is an irony in the contrasting situations. The midwives risked everything to save and nurture the lives of the newborn children. Abraham risked everything he believed in when, as an act of faith, he prepared to sacrifice the life of his own son and heir apparent.3 Less clear is how the Israelites, en masse, responded to the influence of the dominant idolatrous Egyptian culture. The opening chapters of Exodus provide limited insight as to what the Israelites in Egypt believed and whether or not they continued to practice circumcision. The Bible does record one mass primordial cry of the Israelite slaves that could be interpreted as prayer. When the reigning Pharaoh died and their status did not improve, “The children of Israel groaned because of the work and they cried out. Their outcry because of their work went up to God” (Exodus 2:23). A straightforward reading of the text does not indicate that these cries were prayers, but rather cries of anguish to which God listened and

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responded. The narrative depicts God as One who hears, sees, and knows the suffering of the oppressed even if they have not specifically called out to Him in desperation. That they did not cry out to God may be inferred from the book of Ezekiel and the midrashic tradition, which characterize the Israelites as steeped in the idolatrous religious milieu of Egyptian culture.4 Nevertheless, as the Israelites prepared for their entrance into Canaan some forty years later, Moses articulated a commandment to offer up to God the first fruits of the soil. Along with the gift, each Israelite was required to recite a formulaic review of the Egyptian enslavement, the exodus, and the journey to a land flowing with milk and honey. The verse that describes their cries in Egypt recalls them as a cry directed toward God, in essence a prayer. “We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our plea and saw our plight, our misery, and oppression” (Deuteronomy 26:7).5 Despite the paucity of direct descriptions of Israelite behavior in Egypt, we can infer their belief system from multiple sources: 1) God’s guidance to Moses as to how to speak to the Israelites, 2) the response of the Israelites to Moses’s words, 3) the commandments of the paschal lamb, 4) notorious incidents in the wilderness such as that of the Golden Calf, and 5) other biblical references to their behavior in Egypt. God’s guidance to Moses as to how to win the trust of the Israelites had two important elements. The first was the repeated reference to the God of their forefathers. God introduced Himself with the words “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). He also told Moses, “Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: the Lord, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:15). This formula is repeated a third time in the command to assemble and speak to the elders of Israel (Exodus 3:16). Clearly the appellation “God of your forefathers” resonated with the Israelites and struck a primordial spiritual chord. This belief in a God of their forebears was coupled with a tradition that He would one day take them out of slavery. This was first promised to Abraham and included in the dying words of Joseph: “God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land that He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Genesis 50:24) The midrashic tradition takes special note of the emphatic double phrase pakod yifkod (surely take notice). Joseph used the phrase twice, once in asking his surviving relatives to eventually take his bones out of Egypt. It also reappeared in God’s directive to Moses as to what to say to the Elders of Israel. The Midrash interprets this phrase as a secret code that was known to only a few elders and possibly a woman, Serah, daughter of Asher, who according to 132

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legend informed Moses as to the whereabouts of the bones of Joseph. Thus the savior of the Israelites was to use this same term to gain the people’s trust in his mission. However, Moses argued that words alone would not convince the Israelites that he was on a mission from God, and so he was given a series of signs to perform. The three signs were turning his rod into a snake, making his hand turn leprous, and turning water blood-red after dipping his rod into it.6 This strategy suggests that the people interpreted magical actions as indicative of divine powers and were easily swayed by what might be called conjurer’s tricks. During Moses’s time, Egypt was steeped in a multiplicity of gods that numbered in the hundreds, each with limited powers and none totally capable of controlling the forces of nature. Egyptian magicians were religious functionaries who used spells, incantations, and ritual objects in order to manipulate and tame these mysterious powers.7 Thus, it is not surprising that the initial strategy to win Israelite support for Moses’s mission used symbols that were consistent with the dominant belief system. Ultimately, these wondrous acts won the Israelites over: “He performed the signs in the sight of the people and the people were convinced” (Exodus 4:30–31). This juxtaposition of wondrous acts and belief in God’s prophet is problematic. Even up to modern times, Jewish tradition has been fearful that conjurers using sleight of hand might entice the masses into believing in a false prophet. The fact that Pharaoh’s advisers were able to replicate some of Moses’s actions shows the potential problem inherent in Moses’s using signs to prove that God had sent him. Nevertheless, Moses’s actions differed significantly from those of the Egyptian magicians. For example, Moses used no incantations at any time.8 In addition, Scripture tells us that he performed these acts solely at God’s behest, not in order to demonstrate any special skills or knowledge that he possessed. In the first instance, when he transformed the rod into a snake, the Bible records that “Moses recoiled from it” (Exodus 4:4), which would hardly be the reaction of a real magician to his own performance. Finally, as Moses prepared to leave Midian and return to Egypt, the staff that would soon become the agent of many miraculous acts was described as the “rod of God” (Exodus 4:20). The one concrete religious act that had been passed down was the commandment of circumcision, which represented the covenant between God and the Israelite nation starting with Abraham. However, several sources imply, and the midrashic tradition clearly states, that the Israelites in Egypt neglected this ritual.9 As a result, the first commandment given to the people, the sacrifice and eating of the paschal lamb, came with an unusual prerequisite: among the male Israelites, only those who were circumcised 133

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could participate in the Passover ritual.10 The law went even farther: the head of a household could participate only if all the males of his household were circumcised. This led to a mass circumcision several days before the first Passover eve. God ordered a second mass circumcision just after the Israelites crossed the Jordan River into Canaan. It immediately preceded the first celebration of Passover in the land of Israel. God characterized that event by saying, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt” (Joshua 5:9).11 This linkage between circumcision and the Paschal lamb at both the time of the Exodus and the conquest of Canaan conveyed an extremely powerful message. Each Israelite male had to make a personal commitment to the covenant of Abraham before sharing in the national destiny of Israelite people on Passover eve.12 Not surprisingly, national religious revivals from the days of King Hezekiah and Josiah until Ezra and the building of the second Temple revolved around the holiday of Passover. Although the Israelites had retained a belief in the God of their ancestors, that belief did not preclude them from absorbing the idolatrous culture of the Egyptians. The most obvious evidence of their dual belief systems was the incident of the Golden Calf. Only six weeks after hearing the Ten Commandments, they reacted to an unexplained delay in Moses’s return by asking Aaron to “make us a god who shall go before us” (Exodus 32:1). Once it was complete, they declared, “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:4).13 The commandment to sacrifice the Paschal lamb, an animal that was worshipped by the Egyptians as a god, had been an attempt to counter the dominant belief system. This act, which was meant to show the Egyptians that their gods were powerless, was also a message to the Israelites to turn away from the Egyptian gods. It was also intended as a mass act of repentance.14 However, nine hundred years after the exodus, the prophet Ezekiel quoted God’s damning description of Israelite behavior in Egypt. I also said to them, Cast away everyone of you the detestable things that you are drawn to and do not defile yourselves with the fetishes of Egypt – I the Lord am your God. But they defied me and refused to listen to me. They did not cast away the detestable things they were drawn to, nor did they give up the fetishes of Egypt. (Ezekiel 20:7,8).

The Religion of African-American Slaves The black experience of U.S. slavery in a land far removed from its African roots “systematically broke down the linguistic and cultural patterns” that had been their heritage.15 With respect to religion, African Americans in the colonies retained no formal religious rites that can be traced back to an 134

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African source.16 Nevertheless, the core values of their African heritage, as well as their experience of slavery, directly influenced the choices that they made concerning the adoption and adaptation of Christianity through a process of syncretism. In this section we identify many of the linkages, though in a simplistic and linear way that does not truly reflect the complex social dynamics at work.17 Christianity had little direct influence on the vast majority of the slaves during the first hundred and fifty years of American slavery. Early slaveholders were unconcerned with the immortal souls of their property. They viewed them as another species that was incapable of instruction and that had no right to sacrament. Catechism and instruction, which were the primary elements of conversion, were time-consuming, and there were not enough missionaries.18 The religious revivals in the colonies in the 1740s and in the last two decades of the eighteenth century and continuing into the nineteenth were important in spreading Christianity throughout the African-American populations, slave and free alike. The key element of revivalism is an inward conversion experience, a feeling that God has imbued and overwhelmed the individual with His spirit. The ecstatic possession of an individual was attractive to African Americans, consistent as it was with a core African cultural expression in which “spirit possession was at the center of religious worship.” The spiritual experience of revival is open to both high- and low-status individuals; it “levels the soul of all men before God.”19 Thus it has had special appeal to those whose humanity and self-worth are constantly under attack by the dominant culture. Revivalism is primarily experiential, assigning limited value to formal education and good works. This was critical for southern slaves because books were generally closed to them, both by law and by societal norms that prevented large numbers of slaves from attaining literacy. Slaves also “denied that God was concerned about every little sin.”20 In the world of the slave, in which his freedom had been stolen from him and without even a moment’s notice his master might break a long-standing promise and sell his family down the river, how could God care if the slave stole from or lied to his master? In the presence of broad religious hypocrisy in a white South that did not apply the principle of “good works” in the treatment of their slaves, it is unrealistic to expect good works to have been a core value of Christian slaves. The Uncle Toms of the South, whose moral superiority stood out against the corruption of their masters, were an important minority but not reflective of majority views. In contrast, the

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value of good works was a more significant element of the religion of free blacks in the North. African-American churches aligned themselves with Baptist and Protestant evangelical sects that allowed for congregational independence. This offered African Americans control over their organized religious destiny. This attitude of independence and freedom applied not only to the organizational structure of the churches but even to the individual religious meeting where inspired individuals could make their own contribution to the shared religious experience. It is therefore not surprising that African Americans in the South valued a clergy that was inspired and inspiring and whose eloquence exceeded its education.21 Within this church structure, African-American religion was visible on Sunday at church services but invisible on weekday nights when prayer meetings were held in secluded locations where their inspired voices were muffled by woods, gullies, ravines or thickets.22 The religious experience of inspiration also engendered an intimate relationship with God and the heroes of the Bible. It was comforting for the downtrodden that God was so close that He could hear and feel the suffering of the individual slave. This sense of intimacy was reflected in their spirituals. They referred to the biblical figures of Daniel and Mary as Brother Daniel and Sister Mary. They described their daily morning ritual in informal terms as if they were talking face to face with God or his prophets. In de mornin’ when I rise, Tell my Jesus huddy (howdy) oh, I wash my hands in de mornin’ glory, Tell my Jesus huddy oh.23

This feeling of intimacy between man and his god was a core element of the religious outlook that blacks brought with them from Africa.24 African culture saw little separation between the sacred and the secular. The religious experience was not confined or even focused on a regularly scheduled specific time or location. This value also arises within the Christian experience of black slaves. Negro spirituals resounded not just in the walls of churches but also in the late night meetings where the trees were the walls of their informal churches. Slaves doing everyday work in the fields or household chores in the cabins or rowing across a river might break forth in a song containing a spiritual message.25 The most widely-recognized link between African values and AfricanAmerican Christianity relates to the integral role that music and dance played in the religious experience.26 The Negro spiritual, which was the very essence 136

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of worship, was antiphonal in form. It started with the preacher slowly developing a rhythm that grew in power and invited the congregation to respond with “Amen” and then to become full participants, responding to each rise and fall in the rhythm. This would soon engulf the entire congregation as “the slave bodies rocked, their heads nodded, their hands clapped, their feet stomped a steady rhythm, pushing the preacher onward.”27 This integration of body movements and song was referred to as shouting. Though some Christians might have viewed this dynamic as undignified, African Americans pointed to the biblical model of “King David leaping and dancing before the Lord” (Samuel 2 6:16).28 His wife, Michal, daughter of King Saul, chastised him by saying that his behavior was undignified for a king. King David’s responded, “I will dance before the Lord and dishonor myself even more, and be low in my own esteem; but among the slave girls that you speak of, I will be honored” (Samuel 2 6:21– 22). One slave preacher described his own perception of shouting. “I used to wonder what made people shout but now I don’t. There is a joy inside and it wells up so strong that we can’t keep still. It is fire in the bones. Any time that fire touches a man, he will jump.”29 The dancing at late-night meetings around a fire often took on another meaning. Because African Americans saw themselves as the Children of Israel in bondage, these dances symbolized critical events in the Israelite journey to freedom and the Promised Land. First and foremost, these late night dances symbolized the Israelite march through the Sea of Reeds with their former masters in pursuit rushing unknowingly to their deaths. The Bible described the first communal song and dance as it occurred on the opposite shores of the sea: “Then Miriam the prophetess, Aaron’s sister, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her in dance with timbrels. And Miriam chanted for them: Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; Horse and rider He has hurled into the sea” (Exodus 15:20–21). Alternatively, African Americans imagined their late-night dances as recreations of Joshua’s army marching around the walls of Jericho.30 Religious ceremonies such as baptism, marriage, and funerals were an enriching element in the social life of the individual and slave community because they counteracted the monotony of slave life. Their celebration made a statement that even a slave’s life and family were special. They had dignity and meaning beyond slavery.31 Baptism in particular was a memorable occasion as it represented spiritual death, rebirth and initiation.32 African society was generally a non-literary society in which traditions were transmitted orally from one generation to the next. The same was true for slaves in the American South. The transmission of oral traditions did not involve strict word-for-word memorization of a story. In the South the 137

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opportunity for improvisation was reflected in the way that spirituals were freely modified as the spirit moved the song leader or anyone else who chimed in to add his spirit to the shared experience. These random variations around a common theme have bedeviled researchers trying to identify the standard version of each spiritual and to trace its roots and meanings. Like the Israelites who combined a belief in the God of their forebears with idolatry, many African Americans held onto belief systems that were inconsistent with mainstream Christianity. Two such beliefs involved evil spirits and conjuring. These evil spirits might assume the form of an animal or a hag – the disembodied spirit of a witch. They might also represent the return of a zombie, or dead soul. Conjurers played an important role in harnessing as well as protecting against these evil spirits. They also were called upon to address a wide variety of illnesses, since Africans and their American descendants viewed illness as a supernatural phenomenon that was often the result of social conflict.33 The Bible, particularly the story of the exodus, was the wellspring and the bedrock of African-American Christianity. While whites saw themselves as the Israelites in the Promised Land, blacks saw themselves as the enslaved Israelites awaiting the exodus. “They applied the exodus story, whose end they knew, to their own experience of slavery, which had not ended. In identifying with the exodus story, they created meaning and purpose out of the chaotic and senseless experience of slavery. It made it possible to project a future that was radically different from the present.” It was a biblical future guided by a vengeful and all-powerful god who would exact retribution for the brutality of slavery.34 Every aspect of the exodus story held a fascination for them and a burning ember of hope. Moses’s confrontations with Master Pharaoh contained words that every slave wished he could say to his master. Instead, the slave had to make do with singing the most famous spiritual of all, “Go Down, Moses,” while thinking of its relevance to his situation. Consequently, Moses stood out among all the Bible’s heroes. A Union officer observed that to blacks, “Moses is their ideal of all that is high, and noble, and perfect, in man.”35 Even Jesus was at times portrayed as an Old Testament warrior with sword and shield in hand, a second coming of Moses on the way to do battle with the evil slave owners and free the slaves.36 African Americans sang, “The God I serve is a man of war,” a phrase that recalled Moses’s words in the Song by the Sea, “God the Lord, the Warrior – Lord is His name” (Exodus 15:3). And many an AfricanAmerican prayer called for an immediate fulfillment of Moses’s statement

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that the Israelites “have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you today” (Exodus 14:13). They were also attracted to numerous other biblical heroes who were saved from dire consequences. He delivered Daniel from de lion’s den, Jonah from de belly of de whale, And de Hebrew children from de fiery furnaces, And why not every man?37

Of special interest was the unequal battle that was waged between little David and mighty Goliath, symbolic of the unequal conflict between slave and master. Such biblical heroes demonstrated the ability of the God of history to interfere in current events and that His justice was not limited to a future world. This was a common theme of slave spirituals. Jesus make de dumb to speak Jesus make de cripple walk, Jesus give de blind sight, Jesus do most anything.38

Slaves found that this world could not contain all their hopes for justice. Their spirituals were filled with images of a new life, often symbolized by a broom sweeping away the old or by a boat carrying them to other shores where they could build a house in paradise. Jacob’s ladder to heaven was an obvious metaphor for their dreams. An integral part of the slaves’ belief system was the coming of a day of judgment. They made this vision seem even more real by providing vivid imagery to characterize it: the world would be on fire, stars a-fallin’, moon ableedin’, with forked lightning, free air on mountain peaks, and the righteous marching. All it took was faith because “God would save all who believed in Him.”39 They believed that all bad slaveholders were consigned to hell and told stories of masters on their deathbeds seeking to assuage their feelings of guilt.40 The Bible and religion played another role: inspiring leaders of the major black rebellions. The exodus from Egypt has inspired revolutionaries throughout history, as articulated by Michael Walzer in Exodus and Revolution, and African-American slaves were no exception. One South Carolina legislator of the nineteenth century declared, “Anyone who wanted slaves to read the entire Bible belongs in a room in a lunatic asylum.”41 At Gabriel Prosser’s religious services, where an 1800 rebellion was planned, “the 139

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Israelites were portrayed as a type of successful resistance to tyranny; and it was argued that now, as then, God would stretch forth his arm to save, and would strengthen a hundred to overthrow a thousand.” Denmark Vesey in 1822 incorporated references to slavery in his religious remarks and his religious enthusiasm had been a motivating factor in the rebellion he led. Nat Turner in 1830 was a mystic driven by religious visions. He felt that God had anointed him for his special mission; when it failed, he saw parallels between his ultimate demise and the crucifixion of Jesus. Finally, the spirit of the exodus moved Harriet Tubman toward a different strategy: “There are three million of my people on the plantations of the south. I must go down, like Moses into Egypt, to lead them out.”42

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CHAPTER 13 HOPE

Israelite Traditions

THE POLITICAL ENSLAVEMENT of an entire population leaves little room for

individual hope. “We were the slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt” speaks volumes. The primary hope of the nationally enslaved is that a change in political leadership will lead to a dramatic improvement in their predicament.1 For that reason, when the Egyptian king died (Exodus 2:23) and the oppressive work did not let up, the Israelite masses felt that they were doomed to a life without hope and let out a collective cry that reached to the heavens.2 Hirsch offers a slightly different characterization of their despair when the king died. He argues that while the Pharaoh who had originated the decree was still in power, there was the chance that he might change his mind. Perhaps his conscience would awake to the injustice that he had perpetrated. However, once slavery became a national institution whose origins were forgotten, slavery became the norm and the masters could continue their domination with a clear conscience. This thesis finds a parallel among the Virginian aristocracy who, at the time of the American Revolution, often experienced an internal struggle on the question of slavery. As the years passed, however, fewer southerners questioned the morality of slavery as it increasingly became part of the fabric of southern society. At times when the Israelite oppression was intensified, the Israelites hoped for a slight amelioration. When they were told that their quota of bricks would remain fixed but that they would now have to gather their own straw, they hoped that the edict was the work of overzealous taskmasters. They wanted to believe that a direct appeal to the king would soften the decree. “Then the foremen of the Israelites came to Pharaoh and cried: Why do you deal thus with your servants?” (Exodus 5:15, JPS). Pharaoh’s reply left no room for hope. “You are shirkers…. Be off now to your work! No straw shall be issued to you, but you must produce your quota of bricks!” (Exodus 5:15–18, JPS). Without a natural change in political circumstances, the Israelites’ only hope lay in the traditions passed down from the Patriarchs. The life experiences of the Patriarchs were symbols of hope for their descendants. .

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The slavery they were experiencing had been foretold to Abraham hundreds of years earlier. That prophecy came with a promise that in four hundred years they would leave bondage with great wealth. If only they knew when the four hundred years were to have begun, they could have more easily anticipated their freedom. In addition, Abraham himself had experienced a perilous journey to Egypt. Yet he and his wife were protected by God and returned to Canaan with the wealth given to them by Pharaoh himself. Joseph’s life story was an even more important source of faith, testifying as it did that the Israelites’ sojourn and slavery in Egypt would end under the direct providence of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Israelites knew of Joseph’s rise from slavery and prison to the heights of Egyptian power. This story confirmed that God’s guiding hand could break the chains of slavery at a moment’s notice. On his deathbed, Joseph foretold, “God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land that He promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Genesis 50:24, JPS). He then made his brothers swear that they believed in this vision and would take his bones for reburial when they left. Consequently, Joseph’s bones symbolized and nourished a dream rooted in God’s oath to Abraham that He would redeem His children from bondage and take them back to the Promised Land.

African-American Hopes The hopes and aspirations of black slaves, with freedom first among them, took many forms. For slaves in border states, the dream took the form of escape to a free state or to Canada, where they would be out of the reach of slave catchers. Fulfillment of the dream might involve an opportunistic dash for freedom or a calculated strategy that took months or even years to plan and execute. The decision to flee was made more difficult because one had to leave family members behind, most often an elderly mother.3 Tens of thousands of slaves took this path to freedom.4 However, when border-state slaves were shipped downriver, their arrival in the Deep South might have brought to mind the words at the entrance to Dante’s Inferno: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” In the Deep South the odds against a successful escape were almost insurmountable. Consequently, just receiving word of an impending sale downriver could trigger a desperate, poorly-planned escape. Often the sudden flight took the slave to a nearby temporary refuge in an isolated forest or swamp or to freedom in the mass anonymity of a black urban neighborhood.5 In these instances the goal was not permanent freedom but an attempt to avoid being beaten or for respite from excessive work during the peak harvest season.6

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Even larger numbers traveled a road to freedom that they built with their own sweat and ingenuity. They worked long years to purchase their freedom and, in many cases, that of their loved ones. John Payne, a slave in midseventeenth century Virginia, worked even harder than the patriarch Jacob for his due. He worked seven years for his own freedom and another decade to free his wife and children.7 At the time of the Civil War, the 1860 census reported more than 230,000 freemen in the southern slave states.8 This path of hope was most available to skilled workers living in cities. Their masters often allowed them to seek out, pursue, and negotiate the best possible financial relationship available.9 This hope and opportunity was readily accessible before the start of the nineteenth century and in the original colonies. Later, out of fear of a growing population of freemen, several states passed laws restricting an owner’s right to manumit his slaves.10 However, slave owners such as the Quakers, who were committed to freeing their slaves, found ingenious ways to circumvent them.11 In general, the rate of manumissions reached its lowest point in the decade immediately preceding the Civil War in the Deep South. For some, the hope of freedom was tied to an owner’s distant promise. This commitment might be enshrined in the owner’s will. George Washington made and fulfilled such a promise. The idea of freeing a slave upon the master’s death appealed to the conscience of many owners concerned with their own final reckoning. It also meant that they would not have to give up the prestige and luxury of owning slaves during their lives on earth.12 However, these promises of manumission were often broken, especially when owners faced unanticipated financial hardships. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs. Shelby, upon hearing that the faithful Tom was to be sold, appealed to her husband: “O, Mr. Shelby! – and you have promised his freedom too, – you and I have spoken to him a hundred times of it.” He responded, “But there is no choice between selling these two and selling everything.”13 In general, promises and even agreements were not enforceable in the courts of the South, especially given the fact that even free blacks were not allowed to testify against a white. Also, when it came to a last will and testament, relatives who stood to inherit the valuable slave property aggressively contested any promises. An overbearing taskmaster compounded the anguish of slavery. Slaves could hope for a new foreman or actively precipitate a change by undermining plantation productivity and leading the master to conclude on his own that a replacement was needed. However, if the exacerbating factor was the cruel owner himself, slaves had little room for hope. Praying for the owner’s demise was a double-edged wish. His death created turmoil as inheritors fought over their property. While the estate was in limbo, the 143

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assigned manager had only one short-term goal in mind, to maximize productivity without regard to the immediate well-being of the slaves and their long-term survival. Further, the settlement of the estate among inheritors often led to the division of families and severing of friendships. Some threw all hope at the foot of the throne of a just and all-powerful God. They prayed that the God of the Israelites would repeat His triumphs in Egypt and free his new Chosen People, who were enslaved in the South. However, individual slaves dreamed not only of national redemption. They could ground their personal dreams of deliverance by God in the biblical stories of Daniel in the lion’s den or Jonah in the whale’s belly. If salvation in this world were unachievable, African-American slaves harbored a vision of heaven where they could “wash their hands in the clouds.” This future world offered respite from the oppression of slavery and an opportunity to reunite with family and friends from whom they had been separated. It also included a vision of a terrifying Judgment Day in which owners would be given their just deserts. Yet for others such as George in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, all hope was lost. “Yes, Eliza, it’s all misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as wormwood; the very life is burning out of me…. What’s the use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying to be anything? What’s the use of living? I wish I was dead!”14 All of these forms of hope and hope denied resonated throughout the Negro spirituals that were an integral part of every aspect of the slave’s daily life. The theme of permanent reunion is captured by the lyrics, “When we all meet in Heaven, there is no parting there.” The dream of an easier existence is reflected in these lines: No more rain fall for wet you, Hallelujah, No more sun shine to burn you, Dere’s no hard trials, Dere’s no whip a-crackin’, No evil doers in de Kingdom, All is gladness in de Kingdom.15

Speaking from personal experience, Frederick Douglass wrote, “The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of the heart; he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by tears.”16 However, W.E.B. Du Bois saw more duality in spirituals, simultaneously combining elements of sorrow and hope: “Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope – a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair 144

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change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurances of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.”17

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CHAPTER 14 CHILDREN’S VOICES

Miriam THE BIBLE DOES NOT record the voices of the Israelite boys who were thrown into the Nile. Their cries did not penetrate the walls of the palace of Pharaoh, nor did they stir the king’s hard heart.1 In the biblical narrative only one infant, the still-unnamed Moses, is given a voice; his cries represented the cry of every child, past and future, drowned in the Nile and whose small body turned the Nile blood-red. His voice evoked a response from Pharaoh’s daughter, who took pity on it. However, there is a second child in the story: Miriam, Moses’s six-yearold sister, who stood by watching: “And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him” (Exodus 2:4). She was a precocious child who took initiative. Once she saw that her brother had been initially spared, she acted quickly and unhesitatingly approached the princess, who had just determined that the baby was a Hebrew. “‘Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother” (Exodus 2:7–8). Her stratagem accomplished two goals. First, she enabled her mother to play a critical role in the early upbringing of Moses. Second, by taking Moses out of the palace, she helped to avoid questions about this sudden new arrival for a princess of Egypt who had not been pregnant. The Midrash adds another level of precocity to Miriam’s personality. There she argues with her father, a leader of the Israelite people, when he decides that it would better for Israelite married couples to separate rather than to have children who are destined to be murdered: Father, your decree is worse than Pharaoh’s. Pharaoh’s decree applied to only male children and your decree affects both male and female children. Pharaoh’s decree applies only to this world; your decree applies to both this world and the world-to-come. With regard to Pharaoh the wicked it is in doubt whether or not his decrees will be successful, but you, a righteous individual, no doubt your decree will stand up.2

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The Midrash also ascribes prophetic vision to Miriam, who anticipated the greatness of her younger brother. However, once Moses could no longer be safely hidden and no miraculous events saved him, the Midrash suggests that Miriam’s father reproached his daughter, challenging her to see what her words had led to. She therefore had another personal reason to follow her brother’s journey until its conclusion in the Nile.3

African-American Children The African-American infant slave would start out in the bosom of his mother, but it was only a matter of weeks, or at most, months, before she, like Moses’ mother, could no longer keep her child with her at home – albeit for a different reason. The new mother’s hiatus from full-time work in the field was relatively short, and her child would initially go with her into the field on her back. Oliver Bell of Alabama recalled, “My mammy was a plow hand, and she’d put me under the shade of a big old post-oak tree and go to work. There I sat all day, and that tree was my nurse.” At a later stage the child was turned over to the care of the plantation nursery, a chillun’s house, or her siblings.4 As the child grew and gained independence, his playmates often were his master’s white children. It was not uncommon for slave children to experience an almost idyllic childhood in which they had no real sense that their lives were fundamentally different than those of their white peers.5 They hunted and fished together, or went berry-picking or played marbles or shared in mischief-making. J. Vance Lewis, a Louisiana slave, wrote, “I played among the wild flowers, and wandered in high glee, over hill and hollow, enchanted with the beauty of nature, and knew not that I was a slave, and son of a slave.” Frederick Douglas echoed this. “It was a long time before I knew myself to be a slave.” For others, however, such as Tom Jones, there was no idyllic childhood in which they were equals with white children. Instead, “I was made to feel, in my boyhood’s first experience, that I was inferior and degraded.”6 No matter how the young black child felt about himself in early childhood, there was at some point a moment when the essence of slavery entered his consciousness. For some the shock came when they watched a parent or relative being flogged; that memory would stay vivid for decades afterward. Frederick Douglass wrote, “I remember the first time I ever witnessed this horrible exhibition. I was quite a child, but I well remember it. I never shall forget it whilst I remember any thing…. It struck me with awful force. It was the blood stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass.”7 For others, it involved watching the whipping of a sibling, knowing that “strong and athletic as I was, no hand of mine could be raised in her defense, but at the peril of both of our lives.” 147

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The moment might arise on a beautiful autumn day when the master’s child rode off to school and the slave child walked alongside carrying his books, beginning to assume the role of body-servant. In any case, the work of slavery began before the age of ten, although initially it was often sporadic. The slave child would help carry water, pick weeds, haul vegetables, maintain the family’s own garden, and work in other ways to supplement the family diet. Mary Island of Louisiana recalled that she washed dishes at four, carried water at six, cut sprouts like a man at seven, and could pick one hundred pounds of cotton at eight.8 The child also had responsibility for younger siblings. At the age of twelve, the slave took regular shifts working the fields but still did not earn his keep until the late teens. Though slavery it was, the typical young southern slave was, by stark comparison, “exempted from the cruel fate which befalls poor children of their age in the mining and manufacturing districts of England.”9 The first time the child slave was whipped was also a defining stage in his consciousness. The child struggled with thoughts of running away or seeking revenge. One of the most difficult lessons that parents had to teach their children was to accept the brutality of slavery without responding in ways that would get them hurt or even killed. Each child had to learn to subjugate his natural active rebelliousness and redirect his anger and frustration to less personally destructive forms of rebellion. Although a slave might win a single battle against an overseer or even against his master, there was no way that he could win in the long term through direct confrontation. Free African-American children in the North also gave voice to their thoughts about slavery. In 1834 elementary school students in Cincinnati gave these responses to the question “What do you think most about?”10 One youngster noted a recent tragic accident. And I am sorrow to hear that the boat Tiskilwa went down with two hundred poor slaves from up river. Oh how sorrow I am to hear that, it grieves my heart so that I could faint in one minute. Two others included prayers. Dear school-master, I now inform you in these few lines, that what we are studying for is to try and get the yoke of slavery broke and the chains parted asunder and slave holding cease forever. O that God would change the hearts of our fellow men. In my youthful days dear Lord, let me remember my creator, Lord. Teach me to do His will. Bless the cause of abolition – bless the heralds of the truth that we trust God has sent out to declare the rights of man…. My mother and stepfather, my sister myself were all born in slavery. The Lord did let the oppressed go free. Roll on the happy 148

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period that all nations shall know the Lord. We thank him for His many blessings.

Another asked for guidance: Dear Sir. – This is to inform you that I have two cousins in slavery who are entitled to their freedom. They have done everything that the will requires them and now they won’t let them go. They talk of selling them down the river. If this was your case what would you do? Please give me your advice.

Infant in field with parent. 149

CHAPTER 15 LEADERSHIP

The Unique Individual: Joseph in Potiphar’s House and Uncle Tom THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE of chattel slavery makes for frequent contact between master and slave, enabling the slave to rise in status by earning his master’s favor. The story of Joseph’s rise in the house of Potiphar illustrates this dynamic: The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he stayed in the house of his Egyptian master. And when his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord lent success to everything he undertook, he took a liking to Joseph. He made him his personal attendant and put him in charge of his household, placing in his hands all that he owned. And from the time that the Egyptian put him in charge of his household and all that he owned, the Lord blessed his house for Joseph’s sake, so that the blessing of the Lord was upon everything he owned, in the house and outside. He left all that he had in Joseph’s hands and with him there, he paid attention to nothing save the food he ate. (Genesis 39:2–6, JPS)

Joseph was fortunate to begin his enslavement as a house slave under his master’s watchful eye. Not only was he successful, but it was also apparent to Potiphar that Joseph was a lad of integrity whose morality was grounded in his religious beliefs. Joseph’s early achievement led to promotion to “personal attendant” to the master, and with that came authority over the entire household. As Joseph’s accomplishments continued to multiply, Potiphar expanded his slave’s authority and responsibility to include that which was both “in the house and outside” and “all he had.” Many African-American slaves throughout the South progressed from house slave to positions of authority and trust within the plantation system. In fiction, the early story of Uncle Tom parallels that of Joseph’s, although his efforts did not prevent his master from reaching the brink of bankruptcy. Mr. Shelby, Tom’s owner, described him as “steady, honest, [someone who] manages my whole farm like a clock.” He characterized Tom’s integrity as deeply rooted in religion, and therefore he had no fear of trusting Tom just

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as Potiphar had trusted Joseph. “He got religion at a camp-meeting. I’ve trusted him, since then, with everything I have, – money, houses, horses, – and let him come and go around the country, and I have always found him true and square in everything.”1 However, this position of status and power is fragile, subject as it is to the master’s whim. Joseph’s precipitous fall from grace came as a result of his refusal to yield to the demands of his master’s wife: “Look, with me here, my master gives no thought to anything in this house, and all that he owns he has placed in my hands. He wields no more authority in this house than I, and he has withheld nothing from me except yourself, since you are his wife. How then could I do this most wicked thing, and sin before God?” (Genesis 39:8–9, JPS). However, Potiphar’s wife, stung by Joseph’s refusal, spitefully accused him of rape, leading to his imprisonment. Although Uncle Tom never lost his master’s trust, this did not prevent his own fall from his relatively high position – a trust that he chose not to violate even when faced with the certainty of being sold downriver. To the suggestion that he flee to avoid being sold, he replied, “I never have broke trust, nor used my pass no ways contrary to my word and I never will.”2 But Tom exemplified only one type of Negro leadership on the plantation in Stowe’s novel. There were also black slave drivers who worked closely with the overseer Simon Legree. They also rose to positions of authority, though by demonstration of decidedly different qualities. Joseph’s fall from grace took him out of his slave home and landed him in prison alongside leading officials in the government: “So Joseph’s master had him put in prison, where the king’s prisoners were confined” (Genesis 39:20, JPS). Here, too, Joseph’s ability earned him favor, this time in the eyes of the chief jailer: “The chief jailer put in Joseph’s charge all the prisoners who were in that prison, and he was the one to carry out everything that was done there. The chief jailer did not supervise anything that was in Joseph’s charge, because the Lord was with him, and whatever he did the Lord made successful” (Genesis 39:23, JPS). Joseph’s contacts with senior officials in jail eventually led to an audience with Pharaoh in which he interpreted the king’s dreams and was promoted, against all likelihood, to viceroy of Egypt.

Antebellum Leadership Among African Americans In the antebellum era, black leadership both in slave communities and among free people of color hinged on such variables as origins, skills, physical strength, wisdom, and knowledge. Financial advantages sometimes played a role, as did access to powerful whites. While there was a wide gap between the status whites ascribed to blacks and the status African Americans attained among themselves, the characteristics of black leadership 151

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in plantation society were similar to those that had been associated with positions of authority in Africa. Elders, lineage heads, and those with specialized skills, especially skills associated with the supernatural and the healing arts, constituted the leadership of most African societies. These positions and abilities conferred respect and authority in the New World as well.

African Americans on Plantations The growth of the Creole population in the New World and a decrease in the number of blacks abducted and transported from Africa may have led to a rise in the influence of non-native-born blacks in the Americas. As fewer Africans landed on American shores, African immigrants gained respect and influence in the eyes of their Creole counterparts. They attained leadership in the slave quarters because they were freeborn, because of their direct links to the ancestral homeland, and because of their direct knowledge of African customs and rituals. Also, they were frequently the elders in the slave quarters, which conveyed authority in the African social structure. Whites, on the other hand, assigned a higher status to slaves who interacted with them intimately. The domestic slaves who directly addressed whites’ needs – house servants, personal attendants, musicians, coachmen, and valets – constituted, from the owners’ perspective, a slave elite. This view often influenced slaves’ images of each other as well.3 The pattern was most prominent through the end of the eighteenth century, particularly in the coastal colonies. However, in the nineteenth century, just as the importation of slaves was diminishing to a trickle of illegal shipments, slavery in the Deep South began to develop in earnest. By the 1830s and 1840s, few African natives were still alive. Craftsmen and semi-skilled workers could command respect and authority in the slave quarters and also gain favorable notice from whites. Skilled slaves frequently were older than field slaves because they lived longer. They possessed skills valued by and useful to both blacks and whites and were most likely to accumulate cash and material goods. Skilled workers and artisans also had considerable freedom of movement in comparison with field slaves, which allowed them access to information and knowledge of places and events denied to the majority of the enslaved population. This group included carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, boatmen and sailors, basket makers, potters, textile workers, and slave drivers or foremen.4 Slaves in supervisory positions, who managed slaves’ labor in the field and kept discipline in the quarters, were known as drivers, foremen, captains, and less frequently, overseers. They held the “most important post on a plantation.” Acknowledged for their “intelligence, managerial skill, and 152

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practical knowledge of the intricacies of farming,” slave drivers acted as the middlemen between the field laborers and the slave owner and sometimes a white overseer. According to historian Philip D. Morgan, “Drivers were significant authority figures in slaves’ lives.” Morgan describes how slaves may or may not have known the names of the men who owned them or in some cases their own names, but readily could give the names of their drivers. The slave driver “registered an impression on most slaves… [because] the driver could not be ignored.”5 In spite of the authority, prestige, and material reward accorded the drivers, their position between the slave community and whites “created ambiguities for everyone.” While drivers were frequently cited for their cruelty, brutality, and aligning themselves completely with their masters’ interests, most retained a primary allegiance to and identity from the slave community. In order to serve as effective leaders, drivers had to “protect their people and to represent their interests in the Big House.” While whites invested drivers with the authority to maximize productivity and maintain order, to do so proficiently required them to “earn and [keep] the trust of their fellow slaves by dealing with them fairly, if often sternly, and by representing their interests as best as they could.” A successful driver had to balance his master’s demands with the protection of his slave charges.6 One North Carolina planter viewed his two drivers as “partners in a great agricultural enterprise.” Often absent from his plantation, this planter communicated with his drivers through letters dictated by a neighboring white farmer. The planter wrote to his slave foremen in June 1856 that he had “placed much reliance in [his drivers’] management, industry & honesty by thus leaving the plantation & all on it in [the drivers’] charge.” Furthermore, he assured his foremen that he did not harbor “any fear that [they would] fall short of the confidence [he]… placed in [them].”7 Two profiles of slave drivers emerge: The first describes a single man in his thirties who in addition to his responsibilities as a driver was also a skilled artisan. The second profile depicts an elderly man with a large family, often the largest on the plantation. Heading a large family signaled to the master that a slave possessed the necessary reliability and steadiness required of a driver. Morgan notes that “mere aging did not disqualify a driver from fulfilling his functions; indeed, as a patriarchal head of a large family, his authority appears to have waxed rather than waned.” In addition, “such slaves, possessing an authority that derived as much from their age and patriarchal status as from the mandate of the estate, formed a significant proportion of… drivers.”8

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Leadership Among Free People of Color Free blacks resided mainly in the urban areas of the Upper South and the northern states. Never numerically significant, free blacks composed 2.4 percent of the total American population in 1820 and by 1860 a mere 1.6 percent. Those who attained leadership of free people of color largely consisted of black professionals and entrepreneurs, blacks involved in literary production and public speaking, blacks employed in both coastal and ocean-going voyages, and leaders of the black church. The leaders of free black communities commanded authority by virtue of “talent, wealth, occupation, family connections, complexion, and education.” Their influence far outweighed their numbers. Free people of color can be credited with founding mutual aid societies, fraternal orders, and the first independent black churches and schools. The establishment of these institutions began largely in the post-Revolutionary period and increased in size and number throughout the antebellum era. During the reformist 1830s, free blacks organized scores of benevolent societies, libraries and literary societies, newspapers and journals, temperance societies, and other groups dedicated to self-improvement and uplift. The segregation that free people of color encountered helped to produce a black professional elite of “physicians, lawyers, ministers, and undertakers who served an exclusively black clientele,” while free black skilled and domestic workers sought employment in white households. Other free blacks owned and operated their own businesses and some attained notable wealth and influence in spite of discriminatory practices. Leadership and literacy were linked in both the slave communities and those of free people of color. Those who produced literature in the antebellum era protested the bitter lot of the slave as well as the injustices suffered by the freemen. The themes of bondage and escape from its horrors formed the basis for much of the anti-slavery literature, as “black authors portrayed an America that had not lived up to its revolutionary ideals” to both black and white audiences. Others without the skill of literacy, such as the fierce freedwoman Sojourner Truth, spoke publicly of America’s failure to include its black citizens fully.9 Significantly, free black sailors were the first black authors to publish books in the autobiographical genre prior to 1800. In addition to a high level of literacy and personal freedom, black sailors “helped define and connect a new black Atlantic world.” Black mariners comprised a considerable proportion of the nascent black middle class in northern cities and were “looked to… as role models and community leaders.” Many free blacks who attained standing in northern cities of antebellum America had an 154

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association with seafaring. The reputation of black mariners is enhanced in consideration of the fact that in aspiring to middle-class status, the “best” black families in the North sent their sons to sea. Born a slave in 1790, James Mars bought his freedom, married, and became prominent in antebellum black Connecticut. Later, three of his four sons shipped out. Paul Cuffee, an internationally known Massachusetts merchant and shipmaster, and James Forten, a Philadelphia sailmaker who patented a device for handling sails, exemplify the financial success and respectability of northern black Americans. Each of them had sea experience, as did other men in their families.10 Conjurers, religious specialists who combined traditional African religious practices with the knowledge of herbal medicine, were respected for their supernatural prowess and often had considerable respect in slave communities. Known for the practice of obeah or voodoo, conjurers often received monetary compensation from those who used their services. Whites frequently patronized the conjurer as well.11 The conjurer’s Christian counterpart, the black preacher, commanded authority because he was often literate and “was usually highly intelligent, resourceful, and noted for his powerful imagination and memory.” The leadership of black Americans, slave and free, has been associated with religious officials even prior to the founding of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) by former bondsman Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816. Prior to the enactment of laws by southern legislatures to curtail their activities in the wake of the Nat Turner rebellion, free black preachers were ubiquitous. W.E.B. DuBois noted that the preacher acted as “a leader, a politician, an orator, a ‘boss,’ an intriguer, [and] an idealist.” After 1831, however, repression silenced many black preachers in the South.12 Southern black preachers never realized their potential for political action. They could provide their congregations with moral leadership and the spiritual rectitude to keep the ravages of slavery at bay, but at the expense of “the necessary surrender of the principle of political leadership and authority.” In the post-Civil War period, “[black] preachers began to develop themselves into a political leadership, and the freedmen did respect them…. But they could not carry their struggle onto political terrain.”13 The leadership of post-emancipation African-American society remained in the hands of those free prior to the Civil War. Able to draw on resources denied their recently-freed brethren, “throughout the postbellum South, they controlled a disproportionate share of black wealth, skill, political power, and social leadership.”

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Free people of color were especially well positioned to benefit politically. The evidence pointing to the advantageous political position of free blacks includes the fact that “Only 1 black person in 9 was free in 1860, but at least 10 of the 22 blacks who served in Congress between 1869 and 1900 were drawn from the old free Negro caste…. The freemen’s disproportionate influence was also felt on the local level. Of the 102 blacks to hold state office in Virginia between 1867 and 1890, 43 had been free before the war. In the states of the Lower South, where free people of color were not as numerous but enjoyed a comparatively higher social status, their postwar predominance was often overwhelming. All but 20 of the 111 black delegates to the Louisiana Republican Convention in 1865 were freeborn. Likewise, of the 59 black delegates to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention who were natives of the state, at least 18… were former free Negroes. Another 14 had been born in freedom in other parts of the nation, thereby giving the old free Negro caste a clear majority.”14

Tribal Leaders of Israel For over a hundred years, the Israelite community in Egypt, living in Goshen, developed in relative isolation before Pharaoh issued his decrees. A natural leadership structure of elders and tribal leaders developed with a prince, nasi, at the head of each tribe. The tribal prince symbolically represented the tribe in all national ceremonies or actions. For example, at the dedication of the Tabernacle in the wilderness, each tribal prince brought an identical set of animal sacrifices. The term “prince” was not, however, limited to the singular head of the tribe. The twelve tribal representatives whom Moses sent to spy out the land of Canaan were all called princes of their respective tribes. This leadership structure survived the imposition of political slavery. A group of elders is first mentioned as God directs Moses to return to Egypt to bring a message of deliverance. “Go and assemble the Elders of Israel and say to them: the Lord the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has appeared to me and said, I have taken note of you and what is being done to you in Egypt” (Exodus 3:16). These elders were to accompany Moses when he confronted Pharaoh for the first time. At this stage they played a dual role. They delivered God’s message to the masses, and were also expected to serve as official representatives of the people by standing beside Moses before Pharaoh. They lent credibility to Moses’s implicit claim that he represented the Israelites. As the events leading up to the exodus unfold, the elders serve the role of communicators in preparation for the first Passover. Moses summoned them in order to convey to the nation the various commandments associated 156

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with the paschal lamb. As representatives of the nation, they were invited to the special dinner that Moses arranged upon the visit of his father-in-law Jethro to the Israelite camp (Exodus 12:21). Also, when God told Moses to strike a stone in order to provide the people with water, He told Moses to do so in the presence of the elders of Israel so that they could see for themselves what he had done and ultimately testify as to what they had seen (Exodus 17:5–6). Within the broad category of elders, there was a subgroup of seventy. This number was considered symbolic of the entire nation, because that was the total population of direct descendants of Jacob that had come to Egypt (Exodus 1:5). This group of seventy elders accompanied Moses as he approached Mount Sinai to receive the tablets and the Torah. “Then he said to Moses, ‘Come up to the Lord, with Aaron, Nadab, Avihu and seventy elders of Israel, and bow low from afar’” (Exodus 24:1). They approached with Moses close enough that “they saw the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity” (Exodus 24:10). At this point in the exodus, these seventy elders had not fully assumed the role of spiritual leaders, nor does it seem that they yet played the role of adjudicators.15 The latter task was initially given to a separate hierarchical system, suggested by Jethro, that involved one judge per thousand, one per hundred, one per fifty, and one per ten (Exodus 18:13–26). The formal spiritual leadership was not put in place until the second year of the journey, when Moses personally selected seventy elders with whom he would share his spiritual gifts as well as the burden of spiritual leadership of the Israelite nation (Numbers 11:16–17).16 It was this group that Jewish tradition says became the supreme court of the Israelite nation, the Sanhedrin. There were two other groups whose leadership destinies were intertwined: the firstborn of every household and the tribe of Levi. In a tribal society, the family unit is the building block of the social leadership structure that begins with the household and rises through different levels of family aggregation. The tribe itself is often characterized as a father’s house, bet av (Numbers 3:24, 30, 35, and 17:17). Within this framework, the firstborn had special status and gained additional spiritual stature as result of the final plague. On the day of the exodus, Moses charged the Israelites to remember the night of Passover, when the Egyptian firstborn were killed and the Israelite firstborn spared. Throughout the generations, firstborn Israelites would serve as a reminder of this event because at birth each was instilled with a holiness that required ceremonial redemption (Exodus 13:2, 12–15).17 Hirsch saw the firstborn as God’s representative in each family, with the obligation to serve as the “bearer, cultivator, and defender of His 157

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will.” Their redemption did not negate their mission; rather, it expressed the thought that the home and not the Temple was where the Jewish calling reached its ideal and that “the true actual service of the holy mission of Israel is to be carried out by the whole ordinary life of our children.”18 The midrashic tradition presumes that the sanctity of the firstborn initially carried with it the responsibility to serve the religious service role that was ultimately accorded to the Levites and the priests.19 In the second month of the second year of the exodus from Egypt, Moses carried out a census of both the firstborn and the Levites and prepared a special ceremony in which the Levites would replace the firstborn as God’s servitors (Numbers 3:11–51). The Bible does not explain the reason for this change, but according to Jewish tradition it was because the firstborn stood accused of a failure of leadership during the incident of the Golden Calf. Not only did they not prevent it, but even when Moses asked, “Whoever is for the Lord, come here!” they did not step forward (Exodus 32:26). In contrast, the entire tribe of Levi gathered around Moses, and the Levites proceeded to execute God’s judgment against the worst perpetrators of the idolatry. As a result, they earned the right to take over the religious leadership role that had been initially accorded the firstborn.20

Moses and Aaron Moses’s leadership as well as his relationship with God evolved over the forty years of the biblical narrative. It would require an entire book to explore the breadth of his career.21 We limit our discussion to the Moses described in the events up through the Revelation at Mount Sinai. Moses’ childhood was spent in Pharaoh’s palace. Ibn Ezra suggests the divine plan was designed so that Moses would grow to maturity without the subservient mindset of a slave.22 In his first action recorded in the Bible, Moses “went out to his kinfolk and witnessed their labors, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:11–12). Moses appears on the scene as a curious man concerned with the suffering of his broadly-defined family, even though he had reached maturity in Pharaoh’s palace. He is clearly a man of action but with a practical sense of caution. He strikes and kills the Egyptian attacker but not before checking the horizon, and then attempts to cover up his deed. This characteristic of acting on behalf of the disadvantaged plays out again when Moses aids the shepherd daughters of Reuel (also called Jethro) when some local shepherds chase them away from a well. Not only does he protect their rights, but also, as the daughters report to their father, “drew water for us and watered the flock” (Exodus 2:19).23 158

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The Bible simply reports the events without framing Moses’s actions as reflecting his concern over and dislike of the social structure of his time. Nor did Moses reject the external signs of elite Egyptian society: Reuel’s daughters unhesitatingly identify him as an Egyptian man when they tell their father about the incident at the well. There is no description of a “personal metamorphosis in Moses due to his bitter experience with his mother civilization.”24 Aside from these decisive acts, the Bible provides neither insight as to Moses’s leadership potential nor any reason for God choosing him to be both the leader of the exodus and the deliverer and teacher of Jewish law. After a brief interlude that refocuses the narrative on events in Egypt, we see Moses again when God initiates a dialogue with him through the medium of a burning bush that was not consumed. God charges Moses to confront Pharaoh and lead God’s people out of bondage. Moses’s response throughout this initial meeting was, to say the least, uninspired, as he resisted God’s every attempt to assign him the role of redeemer. His responses were variations around a common theme that he was not a charismatic leader capable of offering a credible challenge to Pharaoh or inspiring the Israelites to follow his lead. Moses argued, “Who am I to go to Pharaoh and take the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11), “They will not believe me or listen to me” (Exodus 4:1), and “I am not a man of words… [but] slow of speech” (Exodus 4:10). God in frustration offers Moses two crutches to support his mission. He assigns Aaron the role of spokesperson: “You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth – I will be with you and with him as you speak, and tell both of you what to do. And he shall speak for you to the people. Thus, he shall serve as your spokesman, with you playing the role of God to him” (Exodus 4:15–16). God also converts Moses’s staff into an extension of His right hand, capable of producing miraculous transformations (a staff into a snake or water into blood) and initiating plagues. God warned Moses that Pharaoh would not yield immediately, but when Pharaoh responded by making the Israelites’ job of producing bricks even more burdensome, Moses’s faith in his mission sagged. His own people turned against him, and Moses responded by challenging God: “Why did you make things worse for this nation? Why did you send me?” (Exodus 5:21). Shortly thereafter he had occasion to reiterate his inadequacy: “Since the Israelites did not listen to me, how will Pharaoh heed me – and I am a poor speaker?” (Exodus 6:12). Ultimately, God accepted Moses’s sense of inadequacy and placed Aaron at his side at every step. “See, I place you in the role of God to Pharaoh, with your brother Aaron as your prophet. You shall repeat all that I 159

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command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from the land” (Exodus 7:1–2). Before each plague, God told Moses and Aaron what to say and do in Pharaoh’s presence, even to the point of specifying whether Aaron or Moses was to use the staff to initiate a plague. In essence, they were simply messengers with little room for initiative. God also repeatedly reminded them that Pharaoh would not yield until God had displayed His strong hand that controlled every aspect of nature. The mechanical literalness of Moses’s role is lastly reflected at the Sea of Reeds. “And God said to Moses, stretch forth your hand over the sea and the waters will return upon the Egyptians and its cavalry and its soldiers. And Moses stretched forth his hand over the sea and the waters returned” (Exodus 14:26).25 However, shortly after the return of the waters, we find Moses taking initiative in God’s presence for the first time. He composes the Song by the Sea and leads the Israelites in the recitation of its poetic verses and powerful imagery. Given Moses’s repeated claims of lack of eloquence, this is a surprising transformation. But the transformation from political leader to teacher of God’s law had yet to occur. Although Moses did convey to the Israelites God’s commandments regarding the Paschal sacrifice and other laws before their arrival at Horeb, it was not until the revelation at Sinai that his role as teacher was completely fulfilled. Without this transformation, Moses as leader or as agent of God’s will could appear to be lacking in comparison with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people and of monotheism. Recall that God commanded Abraham to leave behind his previous life and social contacts and travel to an unknown land without a clearly defined mission. Abraham accepted the challenge without discussion, nor did he question God’s plan when, after completing the first phase of his life’s journey and arriving in Canaan, he was forced to leave because of a famine. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik contrasts Abraham’s response and leadership skills with those of Moses: While (Abraham) the father of the nation voluntarily undertakes a historical mission without experiencing any duress or compulsion, the redeemer (Moses) is forced by apocalyptic command into a historical situation. Abraham became a leader through self-sacrifice, through suffering, through monumental effort. Moses’ leadership was thrust upon him, requiring no real effort. His role (at first) was almost mechanical as he simply followed God’s orders.26 Moses lacked initiative; he resisted God’s command; he did not experience the historical, fateful urge and drive to undertake the impossible. He did not display the unequivocal, resolute, fiery faith in the fulfillment of the covenant. He had to go through the purging and purifying experiences of the Sinaitic revelation, the golden calf episode, and his lonely 160

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rendezvous with God on the top of the rock before he could attain the great miraculous human stature.27

It was the unique greatness of Moses that carried him from his birth among an enslaved people to his rescue from the Nile and his residence in Pharaoh’s palace, then to his escape to Midian and reluctant acceptance of God’s mission, and finally to his role as his nation’s redeemer and law giver.

Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass Here we explore the background and leadership of two African Americans who played dramatically different roles in the effort to abolish slavery. Both were escaped slaves. Harriet Tubman, called the Moses of her people by her contemporaries, saw her people’s plight as the modern equivalent of the Israelites in bondage. She was a woman of action; in contrast Frederick Douglass was primarily a man of words, an orator who could hold an audience spellbound and whose writings still stir emotions.28 Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to slave parents. “Minty,” as she was known, endured a childhood characterized by neglect, abuse, and the constant fear that she or members of her family would be sold. When she was about twelve years old, an overseer threw a two-pound lead weight at a recalcitrant slave which struck Minty instead, knocking her unconscious and leaving her with narcoleptic seizures for the rest of her life. In 1840 Minty’s father purchased his freedom, and in 1844, she married a free man, John Tubman, and began using her mother’s first name, Harriet. That both her father and husband were free men may have fueled her own yearnings. In the county where Harriet lived, the slave and free populations were almost equal by 1850. Harriet herself negotiated a contract with her owner to hire out her labor, driving teams of mules and oxen, working as a stevedore, and hauling wood in her father’s lumber business in return for an annual payment of sixty dollars. Before her escape in 1849, Harriet experienced prophetic visions of flying across vast distances to reach the North, only to lose altitude when she reached a great gate which marked the barrier between slavery and freedom. At this moment she would begin to lose her strength, as “ladies dressed in white would stretch out their arms,” and with their assistance Harriet would safely arrive in the Promised Land. Like so many slaves before her, news that she and two of her brothers were about to be sold triggered a spur-of-themoment escape attempt. Her brothers lost heart long before reaching the border and turned back, but Harriet pushed herself onward toward Pennsylvania and finally reached Philadelphia.

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Upon crossing the state line she recalled, “I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory ober eberything, de sun came like gold trou de trees, and ober the fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.” However, there was also a feeling of hollowness since she was without her brothers. “I was free but there was no one dere to welcome me to de land of freedom, I was a stranger in a strange land, and my home after all was down in de old cabin quarter, wid de old folks, and my brudders and sisters.” In 1850, after hearing that her niece and her children would be sold, Harriet launched the first of nineteen successful forays into her home region in order to lead members of her family to freedom along with more than three hundred others. Using disguises and her considerable talents as an actress, Harriet also made use of forged documents and a symbolic code of communication based on spirituals and hymns to facilitate her escapes. Her resolve was unshakeable, and she expected the same of those she led. Known to use a revolver to threaten her passengers who balked at continuing the journey, Harriet drugged the small children in her charge and carried them in a pouch tied around her waist. Her common refrain was “If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going.”29 Through the toughest journeys she was sustained by her abiding faith in God and belief in the power of prayer. At especially difficult times she paraphrased Job (5:19): “Oh, Lord! You’ve been wid me in six troubles, don’t desert me in the seventh.”30 She was helped in her activities by a small circle of Quakers who played highly active roles on the Underground Railroad, most notably Thomas Garrett, Jr., of Wilmington, Delaware. Harriet also depended on a large network of free and enslaved African Americans from the Eastern Shore north to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. During the Civil War, Harriet performed many roles to assist the Union Army, serving as a scout, spy, nurse, and cook. In collaboration with the Second South Carolina Volunteers, a black regiment, Harriet assisted in the planning and implementation of raids that destroyed plantations and freed more than seven hundred slaves along the Combahee River. Upon their emancipation, many of these newly liberated slaves joined the Union Army. After the war, Harriet assisted elderly former slaves in acclimating to their new lives as free people. She purchased a home in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York from Senator William Seward, a future secretary of state. She assumed direct responsibility for some freedmen, partially financing the venture with a monthly pension of twenty dollars that she received after she and friends petitioned the federal government. She also became active in the women’s rights movement of the late nineteenth 162

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century. She was closely acquainted with Susan B. Anthony and participated in several conferences held by suffragists and early feminists.31 When she spoke at such events, her primary skill was that of a raconteur rather than orator. Her life story said much about the equality of women and men. Like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass also came from the Chesapeake region. His commanding presence, personal experiences as an escaped slave, and eloquence in oration made Douglass perhaps the best known African American in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America, as well as earning him international renown. Douglass eloquently contrasted their two life experiences: The difference between us is very marked. Most of what I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received encouragement every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night. I have had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction that comes from being approved by the multitude, while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling, scarred, and footsore bondmen and women whom you had led out of the house of bondage…. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witnesses to your devotion to freedom and of your heroism.32 Born Frederick Bailey to a slave mother and a white father around 1818, Douglass was separated from his mother while in infancy and lived with his maternal grandmother for the first five years of his life. Douglass resided on the plantation of Edward Lloyd V, who served as a senator and governor of Maryland and owned vast plantation holdings and five hundred fifty slaves. At age seven, he left the Lloyd plantation to live in Baltimore with the Auld family, who were employed by the Lloyds.33 The wife of Frederick’s master, Sophia Auld, began teaching him the rudiments of reading and writing until her husband, Hugh, forbade such instruction, warning that educating a slave would make him discontented, disobedient, and unfit for bondage. This encouraged Douglass to seek further instruction, which he received from white schoolboys in return for food. Hugh Auld’s admonition concerning the incompatibility of slavery and literacy proved correct in Douglass’s case, and he began to “feel that learning to read had been a curse rather a blessing,” for “it had given [him] a view of [his] wretched condition, without the remedy.” His awareness of the “wretched condition” of slavery contrasted with “[t]he silver trump of freedom” that gave Douglass a hatred of slavery so intense that he would escape in 1838.34 Douglass first settled in New York, but for safety reasons moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and changed his name. Shortly after arriving there, 163

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Douglass began subscribing to William Lloyd Garrison’s anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, and attending meetings of local anti-slavery societies. At the meetings convened by African-American abolitionists, Douglass had no hesitancy about speaking out against slavery, but he felt too self-conscious to speak at the meetings hosted by white abolitionists. One evening in August 1841, however, a white man invited Douglass to speak and from that point until his death in 1895, he “engaged in pleading the cause of [his] brethren.”35 Douglass became an active participant at the national and state black conventions held prior to the Civil War. At some point during the late 1840s, he shed his Garrisonian doctrine of moral suasion for an advocacy of political action as the most effective and expedient method to end slavery. In 1847, he began publishing the abolitionist paper, the North Star, to reflect his political views. In response to the Fugitive Slave Law, he argued for the use of force. “The only way to make the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter [is] to make a half dozen or more dead kidnappers.”36 Douglass saw and lashed out at the hypocrisy of the American experience of freedom and equality that did not extend to African Americans. In Rochester, New York, on July 4, 1852, speaking to a largely white group of citizens, he delivered a characteristically blunt and brilliant speech, asking, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” He began with a series of questions. What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, extended to us?… I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!” I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker than on this Fourth of July. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and 164

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trampled upon, dare to call in question and denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery – the great sin and shame of America! I will not equivocate; I will not excuse.”37

Like Tubman, Douglass rendered his considerable talents to the Union effort during the Civil War. The governor of Massachusetts asked him and other prominent northern blacks to recruit black soldiers, which he agreed to do once they were allowed to serve in combat roles. Douglass’s sons, Charles and Lewis, both served with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. He also met with President Lincoln to discuss the treatment of black soldiers and to plan for the evacuation of blacks from the South in the event of a Confederate victory. In 1866, he met with President Andrew Johnson to talk about blacks and the franchise. Johnson also asked Douglass to head the Freedmen’s Bureau, an offer he declined. In the 1870s, Douglass acted as editor of the New National Era. After the economic upheavals of 1873, the board of directors of the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust asked Douglass to serve as president of the bank and to invest ten thousand dollars of his personal savings to restore confidence in the institution. Although he did both, the bank failed in 1874. In 1877, Douglass became a United States Marshal and three years later was appointed recorder of deeds in Washington, D.C. From 1889 to 1891, he served as the consul-general to the black republic of Haiti.38

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PART III FREEDOM’S ROAD: EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION THE EXODUS FROM Egypt was the defining experience in the formation of

the Israelite nation and the establishment of its special responsibility toward God. It is woven into the fabric of the national identity and embedded in the nation’s collective memory. Although Passover is the preeminent occasion for remembrance, the exodus memory is threaded throughout Jewish law and ritual. The exodus from Egypt is recalled in the Jewish liturgy that is recited twice daily, morning and evening.1 The grace after meals also contains a prayer of thanksgiving to God for the exodus.2 The Sabbath, as mentioned in the restatement of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy, is linked not to the creation of the world but to remembering the slavery in Egypt and the exodus.3 Numerous obligations of empathy for the disadvantaged cite the Egyptian sojourn as their justification.4 Even biblical commandments regarding honest business dealings as manifested in accurate weights and measures draw on an implied contract that God made with the Israelite nation when He took them out of Egypt.5 The outlines of the slavery experience and the exodus were first foretold in Abraham’s vision.6 Several hundred years later, at the appointed time, God heard the cries of the suffering Israelites and responded. He chose Moses, giving him the mission to ask and ultimately demand that Pharaoh free the Israelites and allow them to worship God. Pharaoh and his countrymen were brought to submission through God’s awesome display of power over every aspect of nature. The climax came on Passover night when all first-born Egyptians were killed; the Israelites were urged to leave the next morning. Days later, Pharaoh and the Egyptian army pursued and caught up with them at the Sea of Reeds. The story concludes with the miracle of the splitting of the sea and the drowning of the pursuing army. It is at this point that the Bible records the major impact of the exodus. Israel saw the miraculous acts that God performed against Egypt; and the people revered God, and they had faith in God and in Moses His servant (Exodus 14:31).

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The exodus enabled the Israelites to realize that the forces of nature did not represent conflicts between opposing gods. Rather, there was but one God Who is master over all elements of the universe. It also established Moses as God’s emissary to the Children of Israel. They learned that the one God was a god of history who could and would become involved in an individual nation’s destiny. Finally, the Israelites’ redemption from slavery was a down payment by God on a covenant or contract that would require them to accept special responsibilities and develop into a holy nation. This section explores all these religious and philosophical issues, together with the impact on blacks of the Emancipation Proclamation, the North’s triumph in the Civil War, and the Constitutional amendments that guaranteed freedom and rights for former slaves. First, however, we will focus on the short-term transition from slave to free individual.

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CHAPTER 16 SOCIAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL NEEDS OF THE OPPRESSED

WHETHER THEY HAVE experienced long-term oppression or a single violent crime, victims of brutality have many social and psychological needs. Addressing these needs helps provide the victims with a sense of closure without which they may be unable to recreate normal lives for themselves. Former slaves are particularly vulnerable in this regard because they must create normal lives where they had had none in their previous state of bondage. They seek justice and punishment of the oppressors, compensation for their oppression, freedom from fear, and a positive self-image. When the oppression encompasses a whole class of people, they have an additional need to develop a positive social culture. The basic needs of victims are for justice and compensation, both in order to see the oppressor punished and to feel whole again.1 However, these needs do not address their trepidation that another attacker may await them around the corner. Thus, every victim also desires to be free from fear of future attack. That fear expresses the damage that the experience of victimization has done to an individual’s self-image. Even after liberation, an oppressed class may continue to feel powerless, unable to assert or maintain control over their lives. Extended oppression undermines basic beliefs in the equality of humanity, both for the ruling class and for the oppressed, especially the belief that all human beings are created in the image of God. Finally, it is not possible to erase an individual or collective memory of past wrongs completely and return intact to the status quo ante. Instead, the victim or former slave seeks a new beginning that will transform past wrongs into constructs for future good. Each of these needs is explored below through the biblical narrative of the Israelites in Egypt and the narratives, documents, and analyses of the African-American slave experience. The Israelite slave history begins with an enigmatic prophecy to Abraham: “And He said to Abram, ‘Know with certainty that your offspring shall be aliens in a land not their own – and they will serve them, and they will oppress them – four hundred years. But also the nation that they will serve, I shall judge, and afterwards they will leave with great wealth. As for you: you shall come to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good

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old age’” (Genesis 15:13–15). The prophecy’s concluding words are puzzling. How could Abraham live out his life in peace after hearing this frightening prophecy of slavery, even though it concludes with words of hope? How could the prophecy of justice and compensation in any way mitigate in Abraham’s mind the prophecy of slavery for his offspring? God’s prophecy addressed an implicit concern of Abraham regarding the resolution of his descendants’ slave experience. Would slavery leave permanent scars, or would it have only a short-term effect? Here, God was promising to address the victims’ desire for justice and compensation at the proper time. As a result, the slavery experience would have closure. The exodus from Egypt is the central element of the most important celebration on the Jewish calendar, the Passover Seder. In contrast, the African-American experience of emancipation did not fully address the needs of the freed slaves. Thus, no closure was attained in the decades that followed. African Americans rarely note positive outcomes of this period of their history, and indeed, few blacks celebrate the date of the Emancipation Proclamation as an anniversary of freedom. The sections that follow explore the contrasts between the Israelite and black slaves in light of the victims’ needs following the slavery experience.

Justice: Punishment Measure for Measure For the Israelites, God’s judgment against the Egyptians began with the Ten Plagues and culminated with the drowning of the Egyptian military in the Sea of Reeds.2 In the case of Negro slavery, Lincoln described the carnage of the Civil War in his second inaugural address as God’s justice against both the South and the North: “Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” These words are directed to the guilt of the South, but earlier in this address Lincoln also assigns guilt to the North. The North was guilty of not having ended slavery; slavery’s duration had passed God’s appointed time: “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of the offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time,3 He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came.” Lincoln implicitly finessed a fundamental theological question regarding the existence of the evil of slavery in God’s just world. He accepted God’s will that it should exist but argued that in God’s calculation, the time had come to put an end to this evil in the United States. It was the delay in 170

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fulfilling God’s new will that warranted the punishment of the American people. Analogously, God had planned and told Abraham that a slave existence would be an integral element in the development of the Hebrew nation. In a prophetic vision, God established His appointed time as four hundred years. Philosophers have debated why Pharaoh and his people deserved to be punished for having enslaved the Israelites. Wasn’t their slavery part of a divine decree? Lincoln’s explanation of God’s appointed time could be equally applied to the Egyptian context. The Egyptians’ punishment was not for past wrongs but rather in response to their unwillingness to let the Israelites go. Biblical commentators also argue that Pharaoh and his people were punished for oppressing the Israelites too strongly, specifically the murder of children. Similarly, southerners looking back as to why God visited them with the plague of the Civil War and the oppression of Reconstruction argued that it was not that slavery was evil but rather the abuse that had been heaped on the African-American slaves. They especially chastised themselves for not having allowed their slaves to develop and maintain a Christian family life. Harriet Beecher Stowe reported one slave mother’s experience and perception of God’s punishment.4 Her mistress had sold the slave’s eleven children. When the mistress’s last son was killed in the Civil War, the slave said, “Missis, we even now. You sold all my children. God took all yours. Not one to bury either of us. Now, I forgive you.” God’s justice, measure for measure, brought closure for the most trying aspect of this slave mother’s life experience. Lincoln’s eloquence, matching the drops of blood drawn by the lash to those drawn by the sword, has a parallel in the story of the first of the Ten Plagues. Aaron initiated the first plague at Moses’s direction, waving his staff and turning the waters of the Nile and all its tributaries blood-red, killing all the fish in its waters.5 The bloody water and dying fish were surely powerful symbols to Pharaoh, who had decreed to his nation that “every [Hebrew] son that is born [shall be] cast into the river.”6 Now their blood cried out for revenge from the waters. When the infants were seized and taken from their homes, their parents’ pleas had no softening effect on Pharaoh’s agents.7 As they were brought to the edge of the Nile, their parents’ shrieks could not penetrate the palace walls. As the infants were thrown into the water to drown, their pitifully weak cries could not pierce the already-hardened heart of Pharaoh. The plague of frogs picked up where the first plague ended. At Aaron’s signal, the bloody waters of dying and decaying fish gave rise to crowds of frogs with their penetrating, croaking voices. They entered the palace, including 171

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Pharaoh’s bedroom, and intruded into every Egyptian household – into all the places where the Israelites’ cries had not reached when the infants were killed. Moreover, when God decreed the end of the plague, the frogs did not simply disappear and return to their source. Instead, they died and “They piled up into heaps and heaps and the land stank” (Exodus 8:10). The first two plagues, which included dying fish and frogs, let Pharaoh and his people know that judgment for the murder of the Israelite children had arrived and that it was time to settle accounts. The final measure for measure was exacted when the Egyptian troops drowned in the Sea of Reeds just as they had drowned the Israelite children. Their chariot wheels became stuck in the seabed and fell off while their horses struggled with the slippery footing in a manner reminiscent of the Israelites stomping in mudpits to create the raw material for bricks.8 Lastly, as the waters came crashing down, Moses compared them to straw consumed by fire, a subtle reference to the straw that they had made the Israelites collect. “You send forth your fury and consume them like straw” (Exodus 15:7). The midrashic literature and biblical commentaries apply this concept of measure for measure by matching every one of the plagues to a specific abusive act by the Egyptians against the Hebrew slaves.9 Although the Israelites were political slaves of the empire, their low status enabled the mass of Egyptians to demand all sorts of work from them: “They embittered their lives with hard work, with mortar and bricks, and with every labor of the field” (Exodus 1:14). The Midrash, for example, explains that the plague of locusts that destroyed all the crops was punishment for the Israelites’ forced labor in the Egyptians’ fields and orchards. The Midrash also notes that the plague of body lice was punishment for forcing Hebrew slaves to clean private Egyptian homes, an abuse not recorded in the biblical text.10 Don Isaac Abarbanel notes that this plague began with Aaron striking the dust of the land, thus linking the lice with the soil that the Israelites used to make bricks. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch defines a framework of retribution that parallels the long-recognized pattern in the biblical narrative of three groups of three plagues each: (1) blood, frogs, and lice; (2) wild beasts, cattle disease, and boils; and (3) hailstorm, locusts, and oppressive darkness. In his analysis of the Israelite progression into the depths of slavery, Hirsch identified three stages: estrangement and second-class status, enslavement, and total oppression. The first plague in each of the three plague groups was retribution for the Egyptians’ having forced the Israelites to feel estranged from society. Thus these plagues of blood, wild animals, and hail made the Egyptians feel estranged from their normal lifestyle. When the Nile bled and the fish died, the river could no longer be a source of life for Egypt, which 172

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placed the Egyptian economy at risk. When wild beasts invaded urban life, the boundary between wilderness and civilization was blurred. When hail pounded the Egyptians from the heavens, they were forced to flee their daily outdoor activities and seek shelter. The second plague in each category attacked the sense of superiority that a master culture assumes toward its slave population. These plagues invaded the Egyptian symbols of status and wealth. The lowly frog invaded every corner of their homes. Disease attacked their cattle. The locusts devoured their food in the fields. The final plague in each of the three groups taught the Egyptians the meaning of living an oppressed and harassed life. The lice and later the skin sores (or boils) made daily life as unbearable for them as it had been for the slaves. The thick, all-enveloping darkness was a final, powerful message that summarized the oppressive weight that all slaves feel. In the final three days of darkness, all the Egyptians were unable to move beyond the spot that they had occupied when the plague began.11 They could not socialize with their neighbors or even attend to their own personal needs. No light could penetrate this Egyptian darkness just as few rays of hope penetrate the oppression of generations of slavery. The Egyptians lost all sense of time, just as time has little meaning for the slave when work is endless and there is no better future to anticipate. This image of darkness as the ultimate symbol of slavery finds expression in the words of Frederick Douglass: “Mr. Covey succeeded in breaking me. I was broken in body, soul and spirit. My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in upon me; and behold a man transformed into a brute.”12 For the slave, the darkness was interminable. “No day dawns for the slave, nor is it looked for. It is all night – night forever.”13 The penultimate plague, that of darkness, did not have the destructive force of its immediate predecessors. While the locusts and hail had left a lasting impression on the Egyptian landscape, the darkness was intended solely for its psychological impact and set the stage for an even darker moment: the death of the firstborn at midnight. The last plague was the quintessential measure for measure. Earlier in the narrative, as Moses made last-minute preparations for his family’s journey to Egypt, God gave him one more set of instructions. God said, “You shall say to Pharaoh, ‘So said God, My firstborn son is Israel. So I say to you. Send out My son that he may serve me – but you have refused to send him out; behold, I shall kill your firstborn son’” (Exodus 4:22–23).

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The Israelite nation was God’s firstborn nation, the first to bear the message of monotheism to the world. Its continued enslavement prevented it from fulfilling its mission. The punishment for Pharaoh’s continued policy of enslavement, measure for measure, was the death of his firstborn. A monarch’s firstborn son is carefully groomed to succeed his father and complete his vision. God’s attack against the first in line to the throne would destroy Pharaoh’s plans for the future of his monarchy and finally break his spirit of defiance, at least for the moment.14 Too often throughout history, as a period of oppression concludes and accounts are settled, the leadership, which bears primary responsibility for the conflict and suffering, either escapes punishment completely or suffers less than the masses do. Indeed, following the first post-Civil War election of 1866, the southern congressional delegation included the vice president of the confederacy, four generals, six cabinet members and fifty-eight legislators. Only Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, was imprisoned, and his term lasted only two years. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Virginia, served as a university president and lived out the life of a retired hero. Instead, individual members of the plantation aristocracy were the ones who suffered the casualties of war, as did the masses of soldiers who left behind fatherless families or returned home scarred or mutilated. In many parts of the South, plantations were ransacked, especially during General Sherman’s march to the sea and then up through South Carolina. There were also individual instances of former slaves seeking retribution from their former masters. William Middleton’s former slaves put him on trial for his life. They debated the pros and cons of killing him before finally allowing him to leave unharmed.15 In Choctaw County, Mississippi, former slaves whipped a planter named Nat Best in order to avenge the cruelties that they had suffered.16 Once the war ended and the soldiers returned home, the southern aristocracy could return to its former economic status. They had the upper hand in all negotiations with an impoverished and unprotected black rural population. State legislatures passed an array of laws known as “black codes” that included the crime of vagrancy – in other words, not having a job. Freed slaves were therefore under extreme pressure to seek quick employment, often with their former owners, in order to avoid arrest. By contrast, the entire Egyptian leadership, including Pharaoh, experienced the pain of the tenth and final plague. The firstborn in every Egyptian household was killed on the night of Passover. God’s prophecy and actions left no doubt about equal punishment before God’s law: “And it came to pass at midnight that God smote all the firstborn in the land of 174

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Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the animals” (Exodus 12:29).17 Thus ended the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that “I will also judge the nation that enslaves you.” As the Israelites marched out of Egypt in broad daylight, they could see the results of God’s justice first-hand: the Egyptians were burying their dead.18 At the end of the Civil War, however, many southerners viewed themselves as victims rather than as oppressors. Few shared Lincoln’s perception of God’s justified wrath. The Confederate political leadership and landed aristocracy saw no need to apologize for what they had done. George A. Trenholm proudly told the Chamber of Commerce of Augusta, Georgia, in 1866, “Sir, we have educated them. We took them barbarians, we returned them Christianized and civilized to those from whom we received them: we paid for them, we return them without compensation. Our consciences are clear, our hands are clean.”19 One southern mistress also found a different message in the war’s conclusion from Lincoln’s: “These same sorrows and unmerited punishments that we are now undergoing have been visited upon the brave, the deserving, the heroic, and the patient of all ages in all climes!”20 In the exodus narrative Pharaoh’s admission of guilt, while momentarily sincere, was also limited. At the end of the seventh plague, hail, Pharaoh begins his request to Moses that he pray to God on his behalf with a confession of personal and national guilt: “So Pharaoh sent and summoned Moses and Aaron and said to them, “I have sinned this time. The Lord is the righteous One, and I and my people are the evil ones” (Exodus 9:27). In his request to stop the eighth plague, locusts, Pharaoh also apologizes to Moses and Aaron for the way he spoke to them: “I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you” (Exodus 10:16). However, his apology is narrowly focused. He expresses remorse for refusing to agree to God’s request to let the Israelites serve their God but he does not express regret for the long-term oppression that he and his people imposed on the Israelites.

An Alternative Ending: The Haitian Revolution21 The Exodus and Emancipation narratives present two alternative extremes. In the American story, in the eyes of Lincoln, God’s punishment took the form of the Civil War. In the last year of the Civil War, more than a hundred thousand former slaves played an important role in the military victory and their own march from slavery to freedom. Both the North and South experienced the pain of war. In addition, slave-owners were left uncompensated for the loss of their slaves and experienced the psychological trauma of having to change the way they related to their former slaves. 175

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In the exodus story, God carefully planned the stages of retribution and every single Egyptian household and farm was subjected to the plagues. The Israelites played no role in delivering this punishment. During the final plague, the death of all firstborn Egyptians, the Israelites were expressly forbidden to leave their homes.22 The retribution and bloodletting were performed by God, an independent authority, rather than by the victims. In numerous instances throughout history, revolutionary change has been accompanied by decades of bloody conflict, continued turmoil, and often civil war. These run the gamut from the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Communist takeover of China, and the African wars for independence to the conflicts in Southeast Asia and the killing fields of Cambodia. One can easily imagine a different journey to freedom in which slaves turn on their former masters and take complete control. The history of the Haitian fight for freedom and independence from France presents such an alternative scenario. The fight for freedom began as France was caught up in its own revolution, which began in 1789. On August 21, 1791, tens of thousands of slaves in the northern section of Haiti rebelled. Their primary goal was freedom for the leadership and improved conditions for the masses. This began a decade of convoluted and shifting alliances involving parallel internal events in France and continuing conflicts between Spain, England, and France. The first turning point in the conflict arose when slave armies fought against the leaders of the French-controlled part of the island by joining with the attacking Spanish forces, while at the same time the British sent an expeditionary force to attack the French side. Their alliance recalled the fears expressed by Pharaoh, “that if a war will occur, it [the Israelites] too may join our enemies, and wage war against us and go up from the land” (Exodus. 1:10). This alliance in Haiti was short-lived. As the French Revolution evolved, high commissioners from France, supportive of the principles of equality, offered full emancipation to the island slaves. Toussaint L’Ouverture (1746– 1803) made a fateful decision to move to the side of France and fight not only for his own freedom but for the freedom of all slaves. Eventually he drove the Spanish out of Santo Domingo and freed the slaves in the Spanish half of the island. Toussaint consolidated his powers, moved the island toward dictatorship, and created laws to force former slaves to work. He supported a continued white presence on the island because of their administrative skills. However, the battle for freedom was not over. The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte (reminiscent of Exodus 1:8, “A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know of Joseph”) produced a major change in policy that included 176

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Toussaint’s capture and imprisonment. Napoleon strove to reinstitute slavery on the island with the support of the white upper class still there. The final phase of the Haitian revolution for freedom and independence involved attempts by the French to exterminate, together with their families, all blacks who had been “infected” with the spirit of rebellion. In return, the black armies, now led by General Jean Jacques Dessalines, adopted a policy of white extermination that led nearly all whites to flee with the remainder killed. Haiti became an all-black island of freedom surrounded by a sea filled with islands of slave colonies. As a result, almost all colonial powers treated Haiti as a pariah and placed it in an “economic and diplomatic quarantine.”23

Compensation from the Oppressor After freedom has been restored and punishment meted out, the victim wants to be made whole again, to be compensated for any and all losses incurred. Ideally, this compensation should come directly from the perpetrator who caused the loss. The concept that the attacker is responsible for compensating the victim is the essence of Jewish criminal and civil law, with the exception of homicide. Without compensation, the lingering effect of the abuse is a raw, constant reminder of the victimization. In the case of slavery, an essential element of the victimization is the forced labor without compensation.24 The plan for the compensation of the Israelites was an integral part of the original prophecy to Abraham, in which he was assured that his descendants “will leave with great wealth.” Details of this prophecy are included and expanded on in the first dialogue between God and Moses: “I shall grant this people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians and when they leave they will not go empty-handed. Each woman shall request of her neighbor and from the one who lives in her house silver vessels and gold vessels and garments, and you shall put them on your sons and daughters and you shall empty out Egypt” (Exodus 3:21–22). The divine plan decreed that the Israelites leave not only with great wealth but that the Egyptians themselves willingly present gifts of gold, silver, and garments in response to individual Israelite requests.25 As the Lord informs Moses of the last plague, He asks Moses to speak to the Israelites so that they ask the Egyptians for vessels of silver and gold. It is almost as if God feared that part of his original prophecy would be unfulfilled.26 At the very moment the Egyptians were chasing the slaves out of the land, the Israelites followed Moses’s directions, asking for gold, silver, and garments, and thereby “emptied the coffers of Egypt” (Exodus 12:35– 36). Thus, Egyptians who had refused to give the Israelites even straw stubble in order to make bricks ultimately handed over their own gold and 177

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silver treasures. Clearly, this transfer of wealth was part of the divine plan to punish the Egyptians for their actions and to force them to repay an accumulated debt. This parallels Lincoln’s statement in his second inaugural address: “until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk.” Ironically, during the peak of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln supported what was termed compensation legislation. This compensation, however, was for the “slaveowners,” to repay them for their loss of capital resulting from the freeing of slaves. In April 1862, an estimated 3,100 slaves in Washington, D.C. were the first to be emancipated and Congress allocated almost one million dollars to compensate their owners.27 Similarly, Lincoln proposed allocating several hundred million dollars to compensate all slaveowners for the losses that would accrue if the slaves were freed, but he abandoned this notion before the presidential campaign in 1864. Emancipation with compensation was Lincoln’s pragmatic proposal for trying to shorten the war. But he submitted no legislation to compensate the slaves for their labor and suffering or for the wealth they had helped the South to accumulate. He did continue to support funding that would enable freed slaves to emigrate to Haiti or Liberia.28 Free blacks even supported this concept on occasion. In the heady days following the American Revolution, free Philadelphia blacks offered to pay a special tax to fund compensated emancipation and speed the end of slavery for their brethren.29 Although there was no national movement for compensation, in some instances individual slaves took advantage of the chaos surrounding the Civil War to take the wealth of their former owners. Charles Manigault describes what happened to his abandoned plantations in South Carolina. “For they broke into our well furnished residences on each plantation and stole or destroyed everything therein. A Negro woman seized as part of the spoils my wife’s large and handsome mahogany bedstead and mattress and arranged in her own Negro house on which she slept for sometime.”30 Mrs. Allston of Chicora Wood, a southern mistress, saw a direct parallel to the exodus: “The conduct of Negroes robbing our house, store room, meat house, etc. and refusing to restore anything shows you they think it right to steal from us, to spoil us, as the Israelites did the Egyptians.”31 Ironically, she missed the point that Divine justice demanded that the slaves be compensated for their unpaid toil. The core belief in the South was that the slaves were owed absolutely nothing for having contributed to the economy of the South or adding to the wealth of the large plantation owners. Southerners had internalized the myths that they had created and propagated about the inferiority of African Americans. They believed that without the structures provided by slavery, 178

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the typical African American would have been incapable of caring for himself and his family. Southern masters held firm in their beliefs that their provision of basic needs and a civilizing environment were fair compensation for their slaves’ labors. The payment that the owner expected in return was the presumed loyalty of the slave to the plantation family. As Union army lines approached each plantation, hundreds of thousands of slaves fled and tens of thousands ultimately joined the Union army as soldiers. Rather than destroying the southern master’s belief in an equitable arrangement, these desertions added a new negative component to the African-American stereotype: charges of disloyalty and ingratitude. Needless to say, there was no support in the South for any form of land distribution to the former slaves. In the North, although there was some support for providing land to former slaves, this was driven primarily by a desire to make the former slaves self-sufficient. It was never viewed as compensation for past wrongs. Freed black slaves had little time or energy for philosophical issues of justice, punishment, and compensation. Their most pressing concerns were the daily needs of themselves and their families. The freedman in the city, especially the skilled ones, had new opportunities to offer services to a broader market. They were also in a favorable negotiating position because of their dominant presence in the artisan labor force. Unfortunately, the vast majority of slaves lived on plantations and small farms. They had almost no options but to continue to work for their former masters. From the early stages of the Civil War until shortly afterward, blacks still hoped to receive property confiscated by the federal government from either their former masters or from other lands. As part of the strategic attack against the leaders of the secession, Congress passed Confiscation Acts in 1861 and 1862. Blacks had hoped that property confiscated under these acts or in non-payment of taxes or simply abandoned would be used to provide each former slave family with forty acres and a mule. This hope was nurtured in the final stages of the Civil War when General Sherman issued Field Order Number 15 on January 16, 1865. The land of the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina and up to thirty miles inland that had been confiscated totaled 485,000 acres. These were divided among forty thousand blacks freed during the war. The establishment of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Land on March 3, 1865, reinforced their hopes. Lincoln’s appointment of the bureau’s commissioner included reference to a maximum of forty acres of land allocated to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman. That ownership was to be protected for a period of three years during which the occupants could purchase it. 179

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These plans for confiscated land were short-lived, however. On May 29, 1865, after six weeks in office, President Andrew Johnson issued the Declaration of Amnesty, a general pardon to all Confederate soldiers that excluded only the leadership of the Confederacy and its military as well as the wealthiest plantation owners.32 In addition, those not covered by this general pardon were encouraged to apply for a specific pardon from the president. An estimated fourteen thousand members of this leadership group were pardoned in the next nine months, as Johnson used his presidential power specified in the Constitution to pardon them as individuals. Of greater importance, both the general and specific pardons retroactively nullified all prior confiscation of individual property except for a limited amount that had been sold. Before the end of 1865, General O.O. Howard, the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau, traveled to the Sea Islands to deliver the message himself that the short-lived experience of freed blacks living and working their own fields was over.33 Thus the year ended with the punishment of the slave-owning South circumscribed and no compensation or economic freedom for the vast majority of southern blacks.34

Fear of Continued Victimization Victims do not think of compensation while they are being victimized. Even the wish or prayer that the oppressor be punished is often at most a fleeting thought, passing fancy, or a curse left unuttered. “Oh, how I despised him! I thought how glad I should be, if some day when he walked the earth, it would open and swallow him up.”35 Every victim of a serious crime, of an abusive relationship, of terror, or long-term oppression has a primal fear: that the criminal, abuser, terrorist, or oppressor will return and the living nightmare will be repeated or become more oppressive. As a result, oppression might quickly turn to mortal danger. Following Moses’s initial request in the name of God, “Let my people go and hold a celebration for me in the wilderness” (Exodus 5:2). Pharaoh shrewdly played on this fear. He changed the work rules, ordering the Israelites to get their own straw while maintaining the same quota of bricks. When the Israelite leaders whose responsibility was to see that the quotas were met encountered Moses next, they turned on him: “You have made our very scent abhorrent in the eyes of Pharaoh and the eyes of his servants, to place a sword in his hands to kill us” (Exodus 5:21). The sword placed in Pharaoh’s hands is a powerful metaphor that captures a victim’s core fear. Increased oppression is a classic response on the part of the victimizer when an attempt is made to change a bad situation. The victim lives with the fear that the situation can get worse. The victimizer

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makes sure that the victim understands exactly who is in control of the situation. Even after the Ten Plagues in Egypt, the Israelites bore this same victim mentality as they marched of the district of Goshen to the sea route. As they stood with their backs against the Sea of Reeds watching in terror as the Egyptians approached, they once again turned on Moses using sardonic humor: “Were there no graves in Egypt that you took us out to die in the wilderness? What is this that you have done to us, to take us out of Egypt? Isn’t this what we told you in Egypt, leave us alone and let us serve Egypt, for it is better to serve Egypt than die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11– 12). As the Israelites crossed the dry seabed, they could still see the Egyptians behind them. Even as they emerged from the seabed and saw the walls of water come crashing down, they still probably wondered whether or not the pursuing army had escaped to the other shore. This mindset of fear was not washed away until they were absolutely sure the Egyptians had drowned in the sea. The Bible records that not one Egyptian soldier survived. Even more importantly, “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore” (Exodus 14:30). They had to see that with their own eyes so that their fear would be dissolved once and for all. The power that God unleashed on that day enabled every Israelite to perceive His awesome power and state simply, “This is my God” (Exodus 15:2). This impressive display also addressed the secondary fear that some other national power would immediately fill the void left by the departed Egyptians. As the Song by the Sea expands beyond the immediate scene, the Israelites sing God’s praises: “Then the chieftains of Edom were confounded, trembling gripped the powers of Moab, all the dwellers of Canaan dissolved. May fear and terror befall them at the greatness of Your arm; may they be still as stone as your people passes through” (Exodus 15:15–16). The fears that had gripped the long-suffering Israelites were transferred to their enemies, who were now trembling before the allpowerful God of Israel. It was this image of God, the warrior who fought on their behalf that released the Israelites from their fears and brought closure to the long night of slavery.

Continued Victimization of Freedmen For the American Negro, freedom from slavery rarely meant an end to victimization in either the North or South in the 1800s. (Escape to Canada may have been the exception.) The legally free black lived with rampant racism, created in part by the racial theories the South had propagated and nurtured to justify the existence of the peculiar institution of slavery in a republic founded on principles of democracy and equality. In Ohio, Illinois, 181

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and Indiana and in the entire South, the black freemen could not testify in a court case against a white and no state, except Massachusetts, allowed blacks to serve as jurors.36 Therefore, black freemen were always at risk for legalized victimization in every transaction or conflict that could end up in court. One Ohio judge protested this inequity; “The white man may now plunder the Negro. He may abuse his person; he may take his life. He may do this in open daylight and go acquitted unless there be some white man present.”37 The judge could have added that even if there were a white man present the individual would have had to overcome his natural bias and be willing to testify on behalf of a Negro against his fellow white man. For the fugitive slave there was the added fear of discovery and the constant threat of return. The Constitution prohibited states from passing laws to protect a runaway slave from being returned.38 The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was a major psychological and legal blow. It sounded the death knell for any hopes that the country would gradually emancipate all slaves as the North had done. The law required northern authorities and even individuals to be accomplices in the capture and return of runaway slaves. It is estimated that fifteen to twenty thousand men, women, and children – four to five percent of the northern blacks – fled to Canada in the decade preceding the Civil War.39 President Franklin Pierce told federal officials to spare no cost in supporting the Fugitive Slave Law. Psychologically, the law fostered realitybased paranoia. Placards warning “Look out for kidnappers” and “Avoid conversing with watchmen and police officers” were posted in Boston, the heart of abolition country.40 There, the entire Fifth Regiment plus the Boston police force escorted Anthony Burns, a refugee from slavery in Virginia, to a ship waiting to return him to his master while a crowd of fifty thousand shouted, “Shame!”41 These fears were exacerbated by highly publicized anti-black riots in the North before and during the Civil War and in the South shortly afterward. The flickering lights of Cincinnati, which sits on the Ohio River just across from the slave state of Kentucky, were points of hope for the runaway slave, like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites to freedom at night. Yet in 1829, more than half the Negro population fled the city in the face of mobs. In the subsequent 1841 riot, Negro men agreed to disarm in the belief that it would prevent further violence. While they were in jail, white mobs attacked their wives and children. Philadelphia, the center of the Quaker values that supported the early construction of the Underground Railroad, experienced five major anti-Negro riots between 1832 and 1849.42 After the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War became not only a war to save the Union but also a fight to end slavery.43 As black and white 182

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Slave catcher warnng in Boston.

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The riots in New York: the mob lynching a negro in Clarkson Street.

The burning of a freedmen’s school during a riot in Memphis in 1866.

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abolitionists were still savoring the emancipation victory, on July 13, 1863, draft riots broke out in New York in which over one hundred people, mostly rioters, died. Military conscripts, especially recent immigrants, rioted to protest having to risk their lives to fight for black freedom while blacks, because of racism, were ineligible to be drafted. It also turned into a race riot; an orphan asylum was burned down and eleven blacks are known to have been viciously murdered. Thus, while blacks in the South could not receive the freedom promised by the Emancipation Proclamation until the North was victorious, free Negroes in New York were once again victims. “Driven by the fear of death at the hands of the mob, who the previous week had brutally murdered by hanging on trees and lamp posts, several of their number, and cruelly beaten and robbed many others, burning and sacking their houses.”44 George Templeton Strong compared the attacks on peaceable Negroes to Jew-hunting in the Middle Ages.45 One uniquely tragic story illustrates the various post-slavery endings. Blacks often used the opportunity of a passing Union army to escape their masters. On December 9, 1864, during a march from Augusta to Savannah, the corps of Major General Jefferson C. Davis crossed a swollen Ebenezer Creek on pontoon bridges. Davis’s forces were followed by hundreds of black camp followers. Confederate cavalry under Major General Joseph Wheeler, together with guerrilla fighters, were in close pursuit of his forces. After crossing the pontoon bridge, Davis ordered the bridge taken up. The black former slaves found themselves in the situation of the Children of Israel at the Sea of Reeds. Their journey to freedom was blocked by surging water, and mounted troops were fast approaching. However, for the Israelites the churning waters became a land bridge; for the escaping blacks, the pontoon bridge disappeared, leaving only the churning waters. Many died trying to swim the creek, while the pursuers massacred hundreds more. A northern soldier recorded his horror at the actions of the Fourteenth Corps commander, saying, “If I had the power I would [hang] him as high as Haman.”46 With the end of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation could finally be fully enforced. Because it had been an act of wartime necessity, its constitutionality was still in question, especially given the southern bias of the U.S. Supreme Court. Many in the South harbored the belief that states’ rights might still prevail. They worried that, at worst, they would have to live through gradual emancipation. On December 18, 1865, the legal ambiguity of the proclamation ended with the passing of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. Within a week, on December 24, the first branch of the anti-Negro terrorist group the Ku Klux Klan was founded in Central Tennessee.47 One of its founding leaders, 185

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General Nathan Bedford Forrest, had been among the South’s most able cavalrymen. As slavery ended, neither Pharaoh of old nor the southern aristocracy of the 1860s was willing to accept the change. Each in their own way attempted to impose their will on the recently freed populace. Within days of the exodus, Pharaoh changed his mind. Again, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to provide him with the courage to pursue his former slaves. He convinced his people of his error in freeing the Israelites and led his elite armored corps in rapid pursuit. As the army approached the Israelite camp, God’s fiery angel48 and the clouds of glory moved to the rear of the Israelite camp, preventing the Egyptians from approaching throughout the night.49 Thus once again God stood guard at night to protect the Israelites. In the morning, God destroyed the Egyptian attempt to reinstate slavery. In the United States, the story had a different beginning. When rioting whites approached the black neighborhood of Memphis in early May 1866, there was no angel of God or line of bluecoats of the Union Army to hold them off. On that day there were pillars of smoke by day and fire by night, but these were symbols of despair, not hope. They were the remnants of black homes, churches, and schools that had been torched.50 51 Similarly, in late July 1866, while a constitutional convention was in progress in New Orleans, nothing stood in the way of the massacre of forty-eight black laborers and the wounding of 1,166 others who were part of a large parade demanding equal suffrage.52 There followed in the South decades of sporadic but widely reported race riots and lynchings, concomitant with the growing menace of the Ku Klux Klan.53 These attacks were fueled by a new hatred of blacks following the Civil War. Blacks became a living symbol and constant reminder of the ignominy of the South’s defeat at the hands of the North. They were viewed as the cause of the war, as traitors who had turned their backs on their masters to side with the enemy at the first opportunity. Moreover, emancipation also wiped out a key class distinction between blacks and lower-class whites. Lastly, emancipation left blacks even more vulnerable to personal attack. Slaveowners’ economic self-interest could limit brutality against chattel slaves. More important, the blacks’ status as property protected them from random violence at the hands of other whites, who would be held liable for any damage they might inflict. After the Civil War, the justice system had little interest in guaranteeing the few rights that blacks possessed. All these elements conspired to ensure that for blacks the Emancipation Proclamation, the South’s loss of the Civil War, and amendments to the Constitution did not mean freedom from violence and brutality. For the 186

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blacks freed through their own labors, by action of the master, or by law, the moment of freedom and the years that followed could not bring closure to the slave experience. In contrast, the Israelites experienced true freedom on the shores of the Sea of Reeds as they watched the Egyptian war chariots tossed in the water and the Egyptian army die before their eyes. It was as if the returning tides washed away the Israelites’ fears, sinking them deep in the mud of the seabed together with the chariots’ wheels. These dramatic events closed the book on the Israelites’ years as slaves. However, their behavior over the next forty years in the wilderness of Sinai shows that certain elements of the slave mentality remained with them nevertheless. The process of emancipation from fear for the Israelites began on the night of Passover. As Pharaoh issued the departure proclamation, God provided them with an official night of protection.54 Moses conveyed God’s order that the Israelites smear the blood of the paschal lamb on their doorposts as a reminder of the trust they had placed in God when they slaughtered a god of Egypt in broad daylight. God then promised that as He unleashed the plague that would kill the firstborn of Egypt, “When I shall see the blood and I shall pass over you, there shall not be a plague of destruction upon you when I strike in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13). When Moses told the Elders of Israel to obtain and slaughter the Paschal lamb, he repeated God’s promise of protection: “He will see the blood that is on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God will pass over the entrance and He will not permit the destroyer to enter your homes” (Exodus 12:23). It is this promise by God to “pass over” and not allow the destroyer to enter that gave the holiday its name. Not only did the plague spare the Israelites entirely, but the Egyptians as well did not turn on the Israelites and seek revenge. The Bible records that not a single Egyptian dog barked as the Israelites prepared to leave Egypt.55 During the Civil War, however, southern black slaves fleeing their homes after January 1, 1863, were given no grace period of protection from the slave master except that which they could gain by becoming Union Army camp followers. For African Americans, barking dogs at the moment of liberation conjure up the image of runaway slaves being pursued, as in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or of freedom marchers a century later in Selma and Birmingham being attacked by police dogs. The dogs that were especially bred and trained for the tracking of runaway slaves were called “negro dogs.” Caribbean bloodhounds were the dogs of choice. General Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War and later the twelfth president of the United States, was a Louisiana slaveowner known for importing these hounds from Cuba. The search for the runaway 187

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was sometimes viewed as sport: “They would ride at a gallop until the dogs began baying, and they would slow to a trot. On one occasion they trailed a male slave about a mile, treed him, made the dogs pull him out of the tree, bit him badly.”56 The punishment of the oppressors, compensation from the oppressors, and the destruction of the Egyptian army before their eyes provided the Israelites a framework for closing one door on their slave experience. The Israelites were ready to move on to their ultimate destiny, to hear God pronounce the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai and for Moses to bring them down from the mountain engraved in two tablets of stone. Forty years later, as they were preparing to enter the Land of Canaan, Moses pronounced God’s prohibition: “You shall not reject an Egyptian, for you were a sojourner in his land” (Deuteronomy 23:8).57 The experiences and events of the exodus would become the foundation of the Jewish religion. The generation that left Egyptian slavery had their needs for justice and compensation satisfied. Their immediate fears were addressed. The slavery experience was to be viewed as a crucible that helped forge their national identity. As a result, the Israelites could be commanded to separate that experience from their attitude toward Egyptians of later generations, whom they were commanded to regard as the descendants of a society that had hosted the Israelites during their sojourn in a foreign land. Nevertheless, this commandment stood alongside another commandment that prohibited Jews from returning to live in Egypt58 for fear of absorbing the corrupting influence of Egyptian culture.59

Rebuilding Self-Image Oppression and victimization inflict a terrible psychological toll on both the victim’s self-image and his community’s identity. What is more, the victim’s sense of powerlessness and inferiority conflicts with the notion of free will, which God, Who created the universe of His own free will, bestowed upon humanity. By creating human beings in His image, God gave them the power to create their own existential world. This ability, coupled with selfawareness, defines each of us as uniquely human. In an Independence Day speech in 1852, Frederick Douglass noted the inherent inconsistency of southern laws that governed the behavior of African-American slaves. If these slaves were less than human, mere animals, lacking the ability to make choices of their own free will, then there would be no laws governing their behavior. “There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which if committed by a black man, subject him to the punishment of death,” he stated. “What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual and responsible being?”60 188

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The Hunted Slaves by Richard Ansdell.

The Negro guard asks General Grant to throw away his cigar before entering an army storehouse.

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All slavery, whether political enslavement of the masses or personalized chattel slavery, attacks the “free will” essence of human identity. It diminishes slaves and their entire social community in both their own eyes and in the eyes of others. This essence is not easily transformed when the victim is freed from bondage. Yet God aids in this transformation, which is the essence of Psalm 113:61 “He raises the needy from the dust, from the trash heaps He lifts the destitute to seat them with the nobles of His people.” God Himself emphasized this uplifting of the Israelites after the exodus: “I the Lord am your God who brought you out from the land of the Egyptians to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect” (Leviticus 26:13). In Egypt, events began but did not complete the rebuilding of the Israelite community’s self-image. In the final hours of their enslavement, Israelite men and women asked their Egyptian neighbors for silver and golden vessels and for garments (Exodus 3:22, 11:2, 12:35). These requests combined with what was perhaps the greatest miracle of all: “God granted the people favor in the eyes of Egypt” (Exodus 11:3, 12:36). A poor selfimage develops in response to the negative stereotypes that we see in others’ eyes. The Israelites had been strangers, second-class citizens, and ultimately slaves for generations. Yet as they were sent out of bondage, they left with gifts (or loans) that were given freely, not begrudgingly.62 Israelite compensation for past wrongs, which we discussed earlier, could have been achieved by other means. Moses could have demanded that Pharaoh’s government share its riches with the departing Israelites. The Israelites could have plundered the houses of their Egyptian neighbors during the ninth plague of darkness. Instead, God chose an unusual strategy that required individual Israelites to approach individual Egyptians and ask for gifts. Yet the Bible is very specific as to who found favor in Egyptian eyes: the Hebrew text always employs the word am, which can be translated as either “people” or “nation.” Thus it was not that the Israelites found favor in the eyes of the Egyptians as individuals, but that as a group they were now considered to have elevated their status.63 The Bible couples this favoring of the Israelites with special respect for Moses. “Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt in the eyes of the servants of Pharaoh and in the eyes of the people” (Exodus 11:3). It is this sense of acceptance, good feeling, and respect for their leader with which the Israelite nation left Egypt. This was a quantum leap on the journey to psychological freedom and self-worth. Though a boost to self-esteem, this change in Israelite status did not completely undo the damage done to the national psyche over the centuries of enslavement. In the second year after the Exodus, Moses dispatched 190

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twelve spies to the Land of Israel. These spies were all princes of Israel, each a leader of his respective tribe. The final words of their report capture the victim’s view of self and world: “All the people we saw in it were huge! We were like grasshoppers in our eyes, and so we were in their eyes!” (Numbers 13:32, 33). The challenge of conquering and settling their future homeland appeared overwhelming to these princes of Israel who saw themselves as no better than “grasshoppers” who could be easily squashed. As a result, “The people wept the night” in the Israelite camps (Numbers 14:1). The exodus had not repaired the low self-image that had become entrenched over two hundred years of slavery. God then decided that the generation that had reached maturity in Egyptian slavery could not meet the formidable task of conquering and settling Canaan. He decreed that the people would be punished by wandering the desert for forty years, during which time the generation that had left Egypt would die. Entrance to the Promised Land would be limited to those who had not reached maturity, the age of 20, at the time of the Exodus or who were born in the wilderness. Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who spoke against the majority report, were also exempted. The conclusion to Israelite slavery stands out as miraculous when contrasted with the African-American experience of freedom and emancipation. Equality and positive self-worth were not on the agenda of most northerners. In the South, these issues were rarely subject to serious debate. Slavery in the New World, not only in the United States but throughout the Western Hemisphere, was unique in history in that it was built along racial lines that kept one ethnic population as chattel slaves for hundreds of years. This peculiar institution was supported by the creation of the myth of racial inferiority that was almost universally believed in the South and widely accepted in the North as well. For example, a famous northern moderate, who supported the abolition of slavery, restricted his concern for the rights of blacks to freedom in daily life and the right to keep the fruits of their labor. While running for office, he proudly claimed: I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races [applause] – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and 191

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inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.64

For Abraham Lincoln, who spoke these words on September 18, 1858, the equality clause of the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” – was to be narrowly construed. When discussing his opposition to marrying a black woman, Lincoln said, “In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.”65 Equality applied only to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but not to social or political status. He implicitly assumed that these forms of equality were not prerequisites for the pursuit of happiness. Southerners, however, did not need Lincoln’s narrow interpretation to exclude blacks from the words of the Declaration of Independence. They simply believed that the clause “All men” did not apply to blacks. Lincoln’s words and ideas jar modern western sensibilities, yet he was widely revered by contemporary blacks, who compared him to Moses the liberator. His words need to be seen in their historical context. Pseudoscientific theories of racial distinctions were widely believed at the time. Even many black leaders challenged their compatriots to develop and exhibit behaviors and values that would convince the white majority that blacks were worthy of the rights being given them. Although some radical abolitionists preached total equality, Lincoln was still ahead of his time in his approach, both to finding a pragmatic and quick end to slavery and in his personal treatment of blacks. As early as 1854, Lincoln said, “My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them back to Liberia, to their own native land.”66 He pushed for the colonization of blacks outside the United States because, as he correctly foresaw, post-Civil War America would not give blacks equal rights or equal opportunity. The South’s defeat in the Civil War, coupled with black emancipation, added a mean spirit to southern white attitudes. Hatred of blacks was a new element that supplemented their belief of racial inferiority. The reasons for this hatred included the following: Ex-slaves were scapegoats for the South’s humiliating defeat.67 Former slaves betrayed former masters by fleeing plantations en masse. Over a hundred thousand runaway slaves joined the Union army, and hundreds of thousands more provided logistical support. Freedmen were a daily reminder of the dramatic economic and political changes. 192

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Slavery’s end crushed the poor white’s dream of slaveholding as the path to prosperity. Emancipation erased one of the major distinctions that allowed poor whites to feel superior. Thus as slaves of the South became free, there were no gifts from their former masters. They found no favor in their masters’ eyes or in the eyes of the majority of whites who had never owned slaves. No gold, silver, or clothing was placed on their children as they fled the plantations. If anything, they were viewed with less respect and affection than before. In short, the South lived out the fear first articulated by Pharaoh: “that if a war occur, it [the Israelite nation] too may join our enemies and wage war against us and go up from our land” (Exodus 1:10).

Earned Respect – The Sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb A positive self-image, although nurtured by encouraging remarks, cannot simply be a gift given by another. Of course, God could grant the Israelites temporary good graces in their brief last encounter with their Egyptian neighbors. But this could only be part of the process. Self-respect is in large part defined by an individual’s own actions. The march to freedom is more meaningful when it is obtained through one’s own actions rather than when it is granted by decree. As Corporal James Henry Gooding wrote in one of his weekly reports to the New Bedford Mercury, “Our people must know that if they are ever to attain any position in the eyes of the civilized world, they must forgo comfort, love, fear and above all superstition and fight for it.”68 The ebb and flow of the Civil War eventually offered African Americans ample opportunity to demonstrate their yearning for freedom and the sacrifices they were willing to make to earn it. As discussed below, the saga of the Negro soldier transformed not only his image of himself, but also the image of his entire race for those who fought by his side and for others who learned of his heroism. In contrast, the Israelites played no active role in this drama. The hero of the exodus was an all-powerful God vanquishing the masters. Therefore, the exodus posed an interesting challenge. What, if anything, would make the Israelites feel that they were worthy of freedom and respect? In what way would they participate in the overthrow of the old order? God set the clock of national Jewish history running by commanding the Israelite leadership to establish a lunar calendar beginning with the new moon of the month of the exodus (the Hebrew month of Nissan.) They were then commanded to take a sheep, an animal sacred to the Egyptians, on the tenth of the month and guard it until it was slaughtered on the afternoon of the fourteenth. (The Midrash suggests that the people tied the 193

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animals to the front of their homes.) Its blood was to be smeared on the lintel and doorpost. It was to be roasted whole over an open flame, which left no doubt to the Egyptian observer what had been slaughtered and cooked. Later that night, Israelites were to gather behind closed doors in order to eat the Passover lamb on Passover eve, the fifteenth of the month. The preparation and eating of the Passover lamb were subject to a number of specific commandments. Some of these were to be fulfilled every year on the Passover holiday, while others were unique to this first Passover.69 The Passover sacrifice contained many messages for the Children of Israel. On an elemental level, the Israelite ceremony that culminated with the public sacrifice and roasting of a sheep, a god of Egypt, was the single greatest act of mass courage. It was an act of reckless bravery, totally out of character for an oppressed class of people. Moses himself noted the danger of offering an animal sacrifice in Egypt. In his negotiations with Pharaoh to end the fourth plague, Moses rejected Pharaoh’s offer to allow the Israelites to perform their rites nearby: “If we were to slaughter the deity of Egypt in their sight, would they not stone us?” (Exodus 8:22). The sacrifice of the Passover lamb to God was also an act of faith. It demonstrated certitude that God would not allow the Egyptians to attack them as they proceeded with the Passover sacrifice and meal. Its very name, the Passover lamb, also displayed faith in the future. God had promised to slay the first-born of Egypt, but to pass over the households of the Israelites whose doorposts were marked with the blood of the Passover lamb as He went on through the country. In fact, God’s passing over did not occur until midnight, long after the animal had been slaughtered. The biblical commentator Ha-Ketav ve-ha-kabbalah emphasizes the public nature of the Passover sacrifice: “First they had to procure the lamb, lead it through the streets without fear of Egyptian reaction; second, to slaughter it family by family, in groups, and finally they had to sprinkle its blood on the doorposts for every Egyptian passer-by to see, braving the vengeance of their former persecutors. Their fulfillment of every detail of this rite was to be proof of their complete faith in God.”70 This act of bravado was part of the divine plan to begin the nation’s journey from slave mentality to free will. The symbolic placement of the blood on the doorposts sent a message, a sign, to the Israelites.71 It told them the reason why God’s tenth and final plague would pass over their homes. This sacrificial act of faith would protect them as they and their family and neighbors gathered at home to eat the Passover lamb with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The symbolic transition from slave to freeman did not end at the entrance to the Israelite home but rather permeated the entire meal of this 194

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first supper on the eve of freedom. The lamb was to be roasted, not cooked in a stew as was typical of the poor. The bones were not to be crushed, nor could anything to be left over for the next day. These added details were characteristic of the manner in which a nobleman would eat a festive meal.72 The public acts of courage associated with the Passover sacrifice had to be preceded by personal transformation and recommitment to the traditions of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Every male had to undergo circumcision before he could participate in the Passover sacrifice. God called this earlier lack of circumcision the “disgrace of Egypt.”73 In the allegory of the prophet Ezekiel, the blood of the circumcision rite and of the paschal lamb sacrifice are commingled in praise of the Israelite’s preparing for and earning the right of freedom.74

The African-Americans’ Self-Sacrifice Although African Americans also made sacrifices as they pursued freedom and ultimately equality, theirs were, unfortunately, of the human variety. Of the one hundred eighty thousand blacks who joined the Union army, more than thirty-eight thousand were killed. Of the total number of enlisted men, more than half had been slaves at the start of the war.75 These soldiers were supplemented by the hundreds of thousands of runaway slaves, many of whom provided support services for the army camps they followed. African Americans were a major factor in the North’s victory, at least from a broad manpower perspective.76 Every runaway slave who assisted the Union army could be counted as both a loss to the South and a gain for the North. As the war carried into its third and fourth years and casualties mounted, the South faced the specter of a northern army continually replenished from an almost endless supply of former slaves. Nevertheless, this flight from slavery had a disadvantage. Masses of fleeing slaves seeking protection from northern armies created logistical nightmares for Union forces. The simple act of shedding tattered rags and donning the Union uniform was a transformational experience in the lives of former slaves and even of freedmen. This transformation was even apparent to the casual observer: “Put a United States uniform on his back and the chattel is a man. You can see it in his look.”77 And: “They had a look of satisfaction in their faces, as though they felt they had gained the right to be more respected.”78 And in their own words: “Now we sogers [soldiers] are men – men de first time in our lives.”79 The change in dress affected not only the soldiers but also other blacks who saw them in uniform. The stature of the black soldiers was enhanced further when they moved up from merely infrastructure and logistics support workers to combat soldiers. “When Rebellion is crushed,” said 195

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Edgar Dinsmore, an educated free black man from Connecticut who served in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts regiment, “who will be more proud than I to say, ‘I was one of the first of the despised race to leave the free North with rifle on my shoulder, and give lie to the old story that the black man will not fight.”80 Perhaps the most powerful experience for the black soldier was to liberate his southern brethren or be the bearer of the news of emancipation. Imagine black soldiers walking into a southern city to the cheers of former slaves who rushed to embrace them and shake the hands of their liberators. However, even black soldiers’ routine roles affected their self-image. When they served on picket duty, they had the right to challenge anyone wishing to proceed and even insist that General Ulysses S. Grant extinguish his everpresent cigar before entering a storehouse.81 As the war moved toward a close and more Confederate soldiers were captured, black soldiers assumed the growing responsibility for guarding the captives. It was a topsy-turvy world for the recently escaped slaves who stood guard over captured Confederate generals Bradley Johnson and J.E.B. Stuart, and an amazing change in status for a slave to stand guard over his own master.82 Blacks succinctly described this turn of events as “the bottom rail is on top.” From the earliest days of the Civil War, blacks petitioned for the right to join the military. However, in 1861 the idea of blacks in uniform was anathema to northern masses and the vast majority of politicians. There were three major arguments opposing their enlistment. First, there was widespread racism in the North. The presence of blacks in uniform would imply an equality that was absolutely intolerable to the overwhelming majority of northerners. As one writer to The New York Times said, “I am quite sure there is not one man in ten but would feel himself degraded as a volunteer if Negro equality is to be the order of the battlefield.”83 A Pennsylvania sergeant wrote, “We don’t want to fight side by side by the nigger. We think we are too superior a race for that.”84 And The New York World editorialized, “To claim that the indolent, servile negro race is the equal in courage, enterprise and fire of the foremost race in all the world is a libel upon the name of an American citizen.”85 Conversely, black leaders and abolitionists saw enlistment and war service as laying the foundation for fundamental change. Frederick Douglas wrote: “Once let the black man get upon his personage the brass letters U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.”86 And when blacks began enlisting in the army, Wisconsin private Harvey Reid noticed, “They

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Confederate generals Johnson and Stewart as prisoners under Negro guard.

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Recruiting poster: “Men of Color – To Arms!”

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seem to consider the fact of their being soldiers to place them almost on equality with whites.”87 Second, there was a deep-seated belief that a people enslaved for more than two hundred years could not be trained to be fighters, especially to combat their former masters. Lincoln articulated a common belief that if blacks were given weapons, those weapons would soon end up in the hands of the enemy as blacks fled from the first taste of battle.88 Interestingly, God’s assessment of the Israelites’ fighting abilities followed this same line of reasoning. When Pharaoh expelled the Israelites, God decided to lead them on a circuitous route that would take them more than a year to reach their destination and begin the conquest of Canaan. The Bible records God’s reasoning: “God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, because it was near, for God said, perhaps the people will reconsider when they see a war and they will return to Egypt” (Exodus 13:16). Only a week after the exodus, Pharaoh’s army caught up with the Israelite masses at the Sea of Reeds. Despite the fact that there were 600,000 armed men in the Israelite camp, they were petrified at the sight of the army. There was no thought of combat and only yearning for the old days of slavery back in Egypt: “It is better that we should serve Egypt than that we should die in the Wilderness” (Exodus 14:12). The crisis was averted, of course, when the sea split, the Israelites crossed safely, and the Egyptians were drowned as the sea crashed down upon them. A third reason for not accepting blacks into the military involved the potential reaction of border states, such as Kentucky, that had not seceded. There, slavery was legal and economically important. Although these states supported the Union, they would have switched sides early in the conflict had they thought the war was being fought against slavery. As Lincoln stated, “To arm the Negroes would turn fifty thousand bayonets from the loyal Border States against us that were for us.”89 More to the point, he also said, “I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.”90 The role of blacks in the military changed dramatically over a period of two years. The changes began with the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, which freed slaves who had been conscripted into the Confederate army, and allowed them instead to build and maintain the infrastructure of the Union army.91 However, as the war continued and casualties mounted, the supply of new white recruits was inadequate. Northern soldiers eventually came to recognize the obvious truth that a black man can stop a bullet as well as a white man. This philosophy was captured in a song, “Sambo’s Right to Be Kilt,” that helped change attitudes. Some tell us ’tis a burnin’ shame 199

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To make the naygers fight; And that the thrade of bein’ kilt Belongs but to the white; But as for me, upon my sowl! So liberal are we here, I’ll let Sambo be murthered instead of myself, On every day of the year.92

The first black recruits served mainly in “fatigue” duty, building and maintaining forts or encampments. However, a number of widely-publicized battles, Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend on the Mississippi and Fort Wagner near Charleston, forcefully answered the question, “Would blacks fight?”93 Their heroism changed attitudes of both their white Union counterparts and civilians back North. An officer of the engineers declared, “You have no idea how my prejudices with regard to Negro troops have been dispelled by the battle the other day.” The New York Times wrote, “It is no longer possible to doubt the bravery and steadiness of the colored race, when rightly led.”94 These words were echoed in numerous official reports submitted by generals at the front and supported strongly by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. A white officer of colored troops succinctly summarized the new perspective: “The negro is a man, a soldier, a hero.”95 Not only did official government policy regarding the use of blacks in combat roles change, there were also modest changes in the attitudes of whites fighting side by side with black troops. The increasingly broad respect blacks gained through military service was noted in an 1864 Federal commission report: “Though there are higher qualities than strength and physical courage, yet, in our present state of civilization, there are no qualities which command from the masses more respect.”96 Corporal Long, a member of T.W. Higginson’s regiment, expressed the hope that these gains would be permanent: “Now tings can neber go back, because we have showed our energy and our courage and our naturally manhood.”97 It is doubtful that the change for the majority of whites went as far as the words of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston, who said, “It was their demeanor under arms that shamed the nation into recognizing them as men.”98 Nor is it reasonable to assume that the heroism completely achieved the goal of Negro poet J. Madison Bell, who wrote, “and purge from their race, in the eyes of the brave, the stigma and scorn now attending the slave.”99

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Fort Pillow massacre of surrendered blacks.

The 20th U.S. Colored Infantry received its colors in Union Square, New York.

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Black heroism had a reverse effect on southern whites. There was no increased respect, only growing hatred at the betrayal of southern beliefs and values. For southern whites, confronting blacks on the battlefield conflicted with everything they believed in; death at the hand of a black was most ignoble. This hatred was acted out in the most extreme in the Fort Pillow massacre. Hundreds of blacks were killed after surrendering.100 In addition, on May 1, 1863, Jefferson Davis signed a Confederate resolution that white officers “shall, if captured, be put to death or be otherwise punished at the discretion of the court.” They were considered as having instigated an insurrection, and therefore were not considered prisoners of war.101 Even in death they were given no respect. Colonel Robert Gould Shaw of the famed Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, after being killed in the battle of Fort Wagner, was buried in a mass grave with his troops.

African Americans Fight for Equality Although the black soldier dreamed of equality won on the battlefield, he had no illusions as to the need to fight for every individual right. The Civil War taught many a soldier how to petition the government for equal treatment. One set of petitions related to their unequal share of heavy labor and fatigue duty. Others addressed concerns about their treatment by the South should they be captured. They also experienced de jure, if not de facto, equality under military law in that they were allowed to testify against whites.102 However, one inequity was never addressed during the war: military leadership. With few exceptions, the commissioned officers that led the colored regiments were white.103 The most famous battle for equality related to pay. White northern soldiers were paid $13 per month plus $3.50 a month for a clothing allowance. However, the War Department established that “Persons of African descent” were to pe paid ten dollars a month, out of which they had to spend three dollars per month on clothing. One soldier noted: “Now it seems strange to me that we do not receive the same pay and rations as the white soldiers do. Do we not fill the same ranks? Do we not cover the same space of ground? Do we not take up the same length of ground in a graveyard that others do? The ball does not miss the black man and strike the white.”104 In protest, the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth colored regiments refused to accept any pay until salaries were equalized, which did not happen for eighteen months, imposing a major burden on their families back home. When Governor John Andrew of Massachusetts convinced the state legislature to pay the difference out of state funds, the regiments refused that offer as well, on principle. Theodore Tilton, a New York journalist, characterized their refusal as unwillingness to allow the 202

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“Federal government to throw mud upon them, even though Massachusetts stands ready to wipe it off.” Finally, on June 15, 1864, after much debate, Congres passed an act that declared retroactively that colored soldiers were to receive equal pay, clothing, rations, medical treatments, and other benefits. As the paymasters arrived at the various camps, the colored regiments broke into celebration; it was the first African American political victory allowing them to live and not just die as equals on the battlefield. The issue of equality arises in the biblical context, but in reverse. As the Israelites ascended the spiritual and emotional heights of receiving the word of God, they were repeatedly commanded to provide equal treatment to the stranger and the convert. This principle is incorporated in their first commandment to bring the paschal sacrifice: “One law shall there be for the native and the proselyte [convert] who lives among you” (Exodus 12:49).105

Parades Parades are expressions of group identity or purpose, affecting marchers and observers alike.106 Some parades are designed to unite the marchers and bystanders for a grand purpose. Soldiers marching off to war are encouraged by an exuberant sendoff that reinforces their commitment to the cause. Soldiers marching through liberated cities and villages in Western Europe during the closing days of World War II symbolized a return to traditional values. Parades for returning heroes, whether ticker-tape parades in New York City or victory parades in ancient Rome, are expressions of gratitude that maintain and reinforce society’s commitment to the value of a military. This commitment was absent when U.S. soldiers returned home from Vietnam and were given no welcoming parades. At other times, military parades into conquered cities carry a fundamentally different message. They do not unite marcher and observer but rather are intended to instill fear and demoralize the conquered into submitting peacefully to the new order. African-American Civil War history and the biblical narrative offer contrasting parade experiences. Black Civil War soldiers marched off to war to cheers in northern cities. They also paraded victoriously as both conquerors and liberators through Richmond, Charleston, and a whole array of southern towns and villages. Lastly, they marched at the head and rear of Lincoln’s funeral procession. The Israelites also paraded; they marched out of Egypt while their Egyptian neighbors were burying the first-born who had died the night before. Military parades offered a unique opportunity for blacks as a group or regiment to perceive the whites’ changed attitudes and increased respect toward them. On March 4, 1864, eight months after the July 1863 draft riots in New York, tens of thousands of New Yorkers turned out at Union Square 203

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for the presentation of colors for the Twentieth Regiment of Colored Troops:107 “A thousand men in black skin received a grand ovation at the hands of the wealthiest and most respectable ladies and gentlemen of New York all amid the enthusiastic cheers, the encouraging plaudits, the waving handkerchiefs, the showering bouquets and other approving manifestations of a hundred thousand of the most loyal of our people.”108 Parades of victory and conquest in southern cities were an even more powerful emotional experience. The parade into Charleston, South Carolina, the birthplace of the Confederacy near Fort Sumter, was especially significant. The first Union troops into the city on February 17, 1865, were colored troops, and the Fifty-fifth Colored Regiment marched in four days later. “Words would fail to describe the scene which those who witnessed it would never forget, the welcome given to a regiment of colored troops by their people redeemed from slavery. Men and women crowded to shake hands. Cheers, blessings, prayers and songs were heard on every side.’”109 This scene was replayed in small and diverse ways in the South. In New Orleans, James F. Jones wrote that he had “walked fearlessly and boldly through the streets without being required to take off his cap at every step.”110 In Beaufort, they marched behind a white regimental band. One man noted: “We didn’t look to de right nor to de leff. Eb’ry step was worth a half a dollar.”111 Needless to say, white southerners experienced the moment differently. For them the sight of black soldiers parading or walking with heads held high through their streets was humiliating. They did not use their hands to applaud or their mouths to sing God’s praise; instead “they shook their fists at the passing troops, spit at them behind windows.”112 Seeing a former slave in uniform was even more galling. An erstwhile master longed for an opportunity for revenge: “There’s my Tom. How I’d like to cut the throat of the dirty, impudent good–for-nothing.”113 More infrequently, however, the sight of a fully armed former slave returning to a plantation could also produce a surprising public display of affection. “I go back to my mastah and he treated me like his brother. Guess he wuz scared of me ’cause I had so much ammunition on me.”114 Applauding and cheering crowds were a sign of changing attitudes and increased self-esteem, but were by no means representative of equality even when on parade. The Twenty-second U.S. Colored Infantry was called from Petersburg, Virginia, to participate in the funeral procession of President Lincoln in Washington, D.C. They arrived at the last minute and assumed the only position that was easy to reach, which was the head of the parade. Dozens of colored organizations were placed near the rear of the procession as well, in what was considered their proper place in those days. In the 204

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funeral procession held in New York, the Irish protested and the New York City Community Council rejected African-American participation. The police commissioner did not agree with these sentiments. He overruled the Council and provided overwhelming police protection for approximately two hundred black marchers. As Lincoln was brought to his final resting place in Springfield, Illinois, black mourners were once again assigned their customary place in line, the rear. Ironically, blacks had led and then concluded Lincoln’s funeral procession, which had traversed more than sixteen hundred miles.115

The Israelite Parade out of Egypt “On the day after the Passover offering, – the Children of Israel went forth with an upraised hand, before the eyes of all Egypt. And the Egyptians were burying those whom God had struck, every firstborn; and on their gods, God had inflicted punishment” (Numbers 33:3, 4 SE). God had informed the Israelites of their imminent departure two weeks earlier. The very night before the exodus, they made final hurried arrangements under tremendous pressure from the Egyptians to leave. They did not abscond at night like fugitive slaves but rather left with arms upraised in the full light of day, in plain sight of the Egyptian masses. The upraised arm was probably a symbol of independence, defiance, and pride much like the raised black fist of the Black Pride movement of the late 1960s and 1970s.116 Instead of a marching band, the Israelites followed God’s cloud of glory by day and a pillar of fire by night.117 As they walked out, the Egyptians were too busy burying their dead to curse the sight of the Israelites marching out triumphantly. They were also confused by the apparent impotence of their gods in the face of the God of the Hebrews. The Israelites left Egypt fully armed118 and carrying their leftover matzah bound in garments carried on their shoulder.119 Their wives and children traveled in holiday dress that had been given to them by the Egyptians.120 They brought with them their flocks and cattle and a “mixed multitude”121 of future converts who had joined their ranks. Surely the most impressive sight was Moses personally carrying the mummified body of Joseph.122 The memory of Joseph had been a sustaining hope for the Israelites for hundreds of years. On his deathbed, Joseph had made his brothers promise that they would uphold the belief that God would surely remember them, and that they would see to it that his body would be returned to the Land of Canaan.123 Joseph’s own life story had embodied the hope of the slave, someone who rose out of slavery to unprecedented heights of national power. In carrying Joseph’s bones out of Egypt, Moses was reminding the Israelites that God’s promise had finally 205

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been fulfilled. They had come to Egypt as a family and multiplied into a nation. They had had survived an oppressive slavery, their enemies had been judged and punished, and the family of the Children of Israel was now leaving as the “Legions of God.”124 Not until the penultimate verse of the Book of Joshua (24:32) do we learn of Joseph’s burial in Shechem. Joseph’s final burial represented the last stage in the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver to the Children of Israel the land of Canaan as an inheritance.

The Oppressor’s Superior Culture Victims or members of an oppressed class feel powerless, unable to assert or maintain control over their lives or culture. Extended oppression undermines basic beliefs in the equality of humanity, both for the ruling class and the oppressed. It undermines the belief that all men are created in the image of God. In the clash of two cultures, the dominant culture constantly projects the message that its values and systems are superior. The oppressed come to believe that their culture truly is inferior and adopt the beliefs and values of their oppressors. The Israelites adopted the gods of Egypt as their own; blacks became Christians. The primary goal of the exodus was to lead the Israelites to a national destiny built on a new set of values and principles that would be articulated at Mount Sinai. In preparation for that mission, God had to destroy their belief in the superiority of Egyptian culture. Attacking the Gods of Egypt “I shall go through the land of Egypt on this night, and I shall strike every firstborn in the land of Egypt from man to beast; and against all of the gods I shall mete out punishment: I am God.” (Exodus 12:12) The Midrash expands on this text and graphically describes the destruction of the wooden and metallic idols of Egypt. “The wood rotted and the metal melted.”125 The Bible links the Lord’s punishment of the gods of Egypt to the pronouncement that He will kill all the firstborn. In the Book of Numbers, the striking down of every firstborn is again combined with the punishment of the Egyptian gods: “And the Egyptians were burying those whom God had struck, every firstborn; and on their gods, God had inflicted punishment” (Numbers 33:4). The twice-repeated juxtaposition of the Lord’s killing of the firstborn and the punishment of the Egyptian gods suggests that the two actions had a common goal: to undermine belief in the superiority of Egyptian culture.126 The primary targets for this re-education were Pharaoh and the Egyptian masses. Only later would the Israelites be expected to absorb the lessons as well.

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It is common for an oppressed class or even a group with second-class status to stand in awe of the dominant culture and come to believe that “might is right.” Members of the lower class eventually feel internal pressure to mimic and assimilate the dominant culture and to discard their own “primitive” habits.127 It is therefore not surprising that the Israelites had accepted Egyptian beliefs as their own and had come to worship the same gods of Egypt. They had even ceased to perform the ritual of circumcision that had set Israelite males apart from their Egyptian contemporaries.128 The Lord’s final judgment against the gods of Egypt coincided with the last plague against the Egyptian firstborn, the personal symbol of economic and political power. However, the targeting of Egyptian gods and Egyptian superiority actually began with the first plague. Aaron, at Moses’ direction, used a staff to strike the Nile River and turn its waters into blood. The Nile River, the sustainer of Egyptian agriculture, was worshiped as a deity called Hapi, the god of the Nile. Its life-giving sustenance was also considered an expression of support for Egypt by the great god Osiris. The second plague took aim at the Egyptian frog goddess, Heqt, who was imagined as aiding women in childbirth, much like a midwife. The mass extinction of the frogs and their rotting carcasses sent a doubly pungent message to the Egyptians. It attacked a symbol of Egyptian fertility and also repaid them measure for measure for attempting to transform the birth of every male Israelite into a tragedy.129 The ninth plague, that of darkness, set the stage for the final confrontation. The sun god, Re, was the official god of the palace and the highest god in the Egyptian pantheon. Every morning when the sun rose, Egyptians viewed this as the triumph of the sun god over the forces of darkness. Three days of heavy darkness chilled the palace to its core. For Pharaoh, whose ancestors were considered to have descended from Re, this plague brought God’s wrath close to the pedestal on which the throne rested. God attacked the antecedents of Pharaoh’s power and then, with the final plague, removed his designated heir. In the first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh, the latter’s sense of superiority was manifest in Pharaoh’s response to Moses: “Who is God that I should heed His voice to let Israel go?” (Exodus 5:2). God delayed His verbal response until just before the seventh plague, that of hail, when He stressed that the intensity of the coming plague would teach Pharaoh and the Egyptians that “there is none like Me in all the world” (Exodus 9:14). The attack against Egyptian culture reached a crescendo on the last day and night before the Exodus. The Israelites were called upon to demonstrate to the world that they no longer looked upon Egyptian culture as superior.130 Every Israelite had to join in a family or communal group and participate in 207

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the public sacrifice of a god of Egypt, the lamb, smearing its blood on their doorposts. They, too, had worshipped the lamb until recently. This act acknowledged an all-powerful God Who would soon destroy the ultimate symbol of the aristocracy, the firstborn sons of Egypt. On the day of departure, the Israelites were not alone in recognizing the change in cultural status: “Also a mixed multitude went up with them” (Exodus 12:38). Here was a “mixed multitude” that was not part of the family of Israel, and had no historical covenant with God at least as recorded in the Bible.131 They had no idea of the status they would be accorded if they joined the exodus with the Israelites. Yet after seeing what had transpired, this group chose to cast their lot with the Israelites and leave Egyptian culture behind. In so doing they provided a powerful symbol to the Israelites as to the superiority of their developing belief system. Nevertheless, it is difficult to judge the immediate impact of the exodus on the individual and national Israelite psyche. As the Israelites left Egypt, they raised their hands high.132 Was this simply an act of false bravado? There is a huge gap in the exodus narrative, which at that moment of departure fails to record a single comment, cheer, celebration or fear of the average Israelite. The last time the voice of the Israelites was noted was when they complained to Moses shortly after his first meeting with Pharaoh, when he introduced himself as God’s appointed leader of the Hebrews. In the final days before the exodus, the Bible records only that they obeyed God’s commands. It is not until they stand with their backs to the Sea of Reeds that we become privy to their continuing fears and their preference for slavery over what they thought would be certain death: “It is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:12). Could the exodus have achieved all of its social and psychological goals for a generation born in slavery? Can a slave be psychologically converted into a free individual overnight, or even in a year or two? This is a formidable task. In the Israelites’ case, it would take forty years of education in the Sinai wilderness to grow a new generation of free people committed to serving God. Those who would eventually enter Canaan would preserve the national memory of slavery, but the Exodus and Mount Sinai experiences would liberate them from its “hangover.”

Southern Whites: An Unchanged Perspective As the peculiar institution of slavery evolved in the nineteenth century, it was bolstered and justified by the widespread belief even in the North that the African race was innately inferior and that African Americans were elevated by their exposure to white European-American culture.133 In addition, white southerners and their religious leaders claimed that black 208

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souls had been saved by conversion to Christianity. These slaveholding beliefs were coupled with the hypocrisy of keeping blacks uneducated and illiterate, unable even to read the Bible. The white southerners’ self-image of superiority at the time of the Civil War applied not only to blacks but also to their view of the less cultured, less genteel, “money-grubbing” North. The South entered the Civil War, later referred to in the Confederate states as the “War of Northern Aggression,” absolutely convinced of the rightness of its cause. In southerners’ eyes, the battle was a continuation of the fight for freedom started by their ancestors in the Revolutionary War. The British tax impositions that triggered the first conflict seemed minor compared to the limitations they felt that the North was attempting to impose on their way of life.134 In their view, the freedoms that were under attack were biblically sanctioned and their war for independence was divinely approved. They also saw the conflict as having another religious dimension: it was a battle of the god Mammon and atheism against Christianity. They imagined that the progress of humanity was at stake in this “social, cultural, and spiritual Armageddon that gripped the American nation.”135 This religious war did not end with the surrender at Appomattox, however; during Reconstruction southerners continued to fight to preserve their culture and unique religious identity in the face of a postwar invasion from the North. This sense of cultural superiority was not undermined by their defeat in the Civil War, which they considered a heroic effort against massively superior numbers. After the war and readmission to the Union, the surviving aristocracy resumed the South’s continuing political battles in the halls of Congress. In addition, the Southern Historical Society, under the direction of former Confederate General Jubal Early and the Reverend Mr. John William Jones, rewrote much of southern history. In the process they reinforced the myth of the “Lost Cause” and made General Robert E. Lee into a Christ-like figure for the South.136 As time passed, the image and nostalgia for the Old South grew in stature once the obvious blemish of slavery was removed.

Northern Whites: Changing Perspectives In the 1800s white northerners, much like white southerners, generally accepted the belief in African-American racial inferiority. The only difference was they did not accept it as a justification for the enslavement of blacks. Their view of southern aristocracy was generally favorable. Indeed, many of the early presidents were southern slave owners who had been generally held in great esteem. Northern attitudes began to change with the passage in 1850 of a new Fugitive Slave Act that required northern bystanders to participate in the capture of runaway slaves or face civil 209

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penalties. Negative feelings intensified with the 1852 publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This work personalized the corruption and viciousness of the whole system of slavery, detailing its impact on the morality and decency of all who came into contact with it. The Civil War then added a new emotion: anger. Northerners were angered by the human toll both in lives and broken bodies that southern secession had brought about. Local newspapers also widely reported the atrocities at Fort Pillow, in which captured black soldiers were massacred. Andersonville, the Confederates’ largest military prison, symbolized the South’s brutality toward prisoners of war. Then, just two weeks after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, southern conspirators assassinated Abraham Lincoln and, at the same moment, made an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Secretary of State William H. Seward as he lay in bed, recovering from a near-fatal carriage accident. By the end of the war, the northern masses’ view of southerners and southern values had changed almost completely. One cartoon depicted this transformation in the image of southern chivalry. On the left was a welldressed, clean-cut nobleman with his impressive steed. On the right was a threadbare, disheveled and barefoot man in front of his sickly-looking horse.137 Alonzo H. Quint of New Bedford, Massachusetts, articulated one of the most extreme transformations in a sermon he delivered on the Sunday afternoon after Lincoln’s death. It was titled, “Southern Chivalry and What the Nation Ought to Do with It.”138 Quint summarized his earlier attitude: “It was long the feeling that a Southern gentleman was the perfection of humanity. He was a noble, generous man, above mean and petty acts. His honor was proverbial. His hospitality was boundless.” With the close of the Civil War and the murder of Lincoln, however, Quint’s view of Southern chivalry had changed: “The Southern Gentleman lives by robbing. His property, when he is a slavemaster, is a robbery in itself. To rule without law is another characteristic. His own passions are, virtually, his only control. He grows up a tyrant.” However, these changes in northerners’ perceptions and attitudes did not last long. Before the close of the nineteenth century, both the North and South came to accept and admire the cherished myth of the Old South. Terms and images such as “southern hospitality” and “southern gentleman” lived long into the twentieth century. General Robert E. Lee was even canonized as a national hero and in 1900 elected to the American Hall of Fame by a nationwide board of electors.139 Northern historians and writers facilitated this reversal. As they wrote of the shortcomings of American Yankee culture, they contrasted it with nostalgia for the charming and 210

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vibrant days of the Old South. Typical was this comment from Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords: “The South’s long-standing commitments to family, leisured living, honorable conduct, and chivalry seemed to be precisely the values and virtues which America most lacked.”140

African-American Views American blacks at the time of the Civil War generally viewed their Christian religion and culture as superior to their ancestral roots in an Africa that they hardly knew. Black intellectuals might refer to ancient Ethiopian history in order to claim that their cultural roots led to Egyptian greatness and subsequently to the development of European civilization.141 However, there was little that they would point to with pride in Africa in the nineteenth century. African-American intellectuals of the North mounted a vigorous response to charges of racial inferiority. They did not argue that blacks at the time of the Civil War were equals but noted the rare opportunities available for their education and advancement: “I admit the condition of my race, whether considered in a mental, moral, or intellectual point of view, at the present time cannot compare favorably with the Anglo Saxon,” wrote William Wells Brown, a black lecturer and author.142 In 1861 the Anglo-African newspaper addressed white society in an editorial: “If we are ignorant, it is you that have shut the light of knowledge from our souls and brutalized our instincts.”143 Another Negro newspaper, San Francisco’s Pacific Appeal, focused on issues of morality: “Is it strange that licentiousness is the rule and chastity the exception, when the holy marriage tie is disregarded (not of their choice) and dissolved at the will of another?”144 The end of the Civil War and emancipation led to increased separation of blacks and whites in terms of daily living and religious practices. Black leaders issued a renewed challenge to members of their race to prove that they were the equals of whites. Their strategy was mass education. White northern women who volunteered as teachers guided this effort. They taught their own cultural values with an air of superiority. An unfortunate result was that education brought increased pressure for the assimilation of white values even as segregation took root in the South. Blacks looking back at slavery saw little that they wanted to preserve or remember. Robert Russa was upset when he arrived at the Hampton Institute and heard Negro spirituals:145 “I had come to school to learn to do things differently, to sing, to speak, and to use the language, and of course, the music, not of coloured people but of white people.”146 This was typical of many first- and second-generation freedmen. Fortunately, the founder of 211

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the Hampton Institute, former Confederate General S.C. Armstrong, was among the first to see the beauty and value in preserving the above characteristics of African-American ante-bellum culture.

Marching On! The 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment marches into Charleston on February 21, 1865.

A cartoonist’s depiction of northeners’ perception of “rebel chivalry.”

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CHAPTER 17 HASTY DEPARTURES

Matzah: Unleavened Bread THE ISRAELITES RECEIVED two weeks’ notice of their imminent departure at the time God commanded them to take and sacrifice the paschal lamb. This first Passover meal had a unique requirement,1 “So shall you eat it: your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; you shall eat it in haste – it is a Passover offering to God” (Exodus 12:11). The divine plan intended that the exodus be experienced in “haste” and not as a wellplanned, well-provisioned, stately departure. Matzah was to be the enduring symbol of the hasty departure from Egypt. “They baked the dough that they took out of Egypt into unleavened cakes [matzah], for they could not be leavened, for they were driven from Egypt for they could not delay, nor had they made provisions for themselves” (Exodus 12:39). This atmosphere of hurrying runs throughout the narrative. Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and ordered, “Rise up and go out from among my people” (Exodus 12:31). The Egyptian masses followed suit and “hastened to send them out of the land.” The Bible then records: “The people picked up their dough before it could become leavened, their leftovers bound up in their garments upon their shoulders.” There are multiple messages in this sense of urgency that is linked to the unleavened bread. This first generation of the Israelite nation was asked to trust God to provide its daily sustenance. This trust went beyond faith in a historical God who would perform miracles on their behalf. The Israelites would have to rely on God to provide them with their bread from day to day. The Israelites left Egypt not knowing what lay ahead and without the well-stocked provisions that they needed for the journey. Hundreds of years later, the prophet Jeremiah summed up this display of faith when God betrothed the Israelite nation. “Thus said God: I recall for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your nuptials, your following Me into the wilderness, into an unsown land” (Jeremiah 2:2). Hirsch sees in the hurried departure an emphasis on God’s role in stagemanaging the exodus. The biblical narrative established a framework for

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future generations to recall the exodus story. The paschal lamb and matzah were designed to encourage the youth of future generations to ask about their symbolism and, in the process, to explore and relive the exodus experience. One might imagine that, with the passage of time, the story of the departure from slavery might have evolved into a different collective memory. Their descendants might fashion a glamorous story of a slave rebellion headed by the heroic Moses. In this scenario, God could disappear from center stage and be relegated to a supporting role behind the scenes. The repeated reference to haste was embedded in the exodus narrative as antithetical to a rebellion adaptation of the exodus story. This was no multiyear Civil War or Haitian revolution. Unlike the slaves of Texas, the Israelites did not wait two and half years to become free from the time that Pharaoh ordered their departure. At midnight, Pharaoh issued the emancipation directive and by morning all of the Israelites were on their way. An enervated Egyptian populace hurried them out. The baking of flour and water for several minutes without being allowed to rise symbolized the speedy departure that Jews would recall in recounting the exodus. No honey or flavoring could be added to give it the richness of freedom. God declared, “You shall not eat leavened bread with it [the paschal sacrifice]. For seven days you shall eat matzot because of it, the bread of affliction, for you departed from the land of Egypt in haste – so that you will remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3). The hurriedly-prepared matzah retained the essence of the daily rushed meal of slavery: “The whip of the overseer and the breathless rush of overwhelming labour was always behind them and only permitted the quickest and easiest preparation of their food.”2 No wonder the opening statement at the Passover night meal (Seder) includes “It is the bread of affliction that our forefathers ate in Egypt.” God transformed these simple oppressed slaves’ bread into a symbol of hurried freedom. It was a freedom not earned but given by God. The Maharal sees another message in the “hasty departure” from Egypt.3 The core image of the exodus is God acting through nature with “a strong hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 4:34). The hastiness of the exit and its commemoration are meant to reflect the awesome power that God displayed. Picture nature’s most awe-inspiring acts, such as the initial tremor of an earthquake or the touchdown of a tornado. Each one might last no more than a few seconds. How much advance notice did the inhabitants of Pompeii receive before the deadly ash came raining down, leaving them frozen in motion? Even the explosive force of a bolt of lightning lasts less than a second. 214

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The biblical narrative notes the duration of the plagues of blood (seven days) and darkness (three days), giving the general impression that each of the other plagues continued for less than a week. However, God’s tenth and final plague, the death of the Egyptian firstborn in each household, like a bolt of lightning, lasted only a moment at the stroke of midnight.4 “It was at midnight that God smote every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on the throne to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn animal” (Exodus 12:29). This final display of God’s outstretched hand reached abruptly into every home, from the Pharaoh’s palace to the lowest hovel. It drove the Egyptians to cry out, “We are all dying,” and led to the rushed departure of the Israelites (Exodus 12:33). God’s own choice of language demonstrates the link between His strong hand and the rush to leave Egypt by embedding a double entendre in Exodus 6:1. “Now you will see what I shall do to Pharaoh, for through a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand will he drive them from his land.” The phrase “through a strong hand” could refer to either God’s or Pharaoh’s actions.5 On the night of Passover, Jews are commanded to eat matzah in order to recall that God forced Pharaoh to bow to His will and free the Israelites. In order to insure that the message of matzah is clearly received, the Bible prohibits eating, or even possessing, leavened bread for a total of seven days.6 Matzah is the only option if bread is to be eaten. In addition, in the Temple period, only offerings made from matzah meal could be brought as part of the Temple service. Thus, the bread of Temple sacrifice was forever the bread of Egyptian affliction that linked freedom from servitude to Divine service. Matzah reminds Jews that the ultimate goal of the exodus was not freedom for its own sake, but rather the formation of a binding covenant with God at the foot of Mount Sinai.

Runaways and Contraband of War A hasty departure is a common theme in slave narratives. However, unlike the Israelites, who left en masse at daybreak, the escapee from southern slavery often left late at night in ones and twos or at most in small groups. This was true for pre-Civil War runaway slaves as well as for the families who fled to Union Army lines during the Civil War. The mural reproduced below depicts a plantation’s slaves absconding on a winter night with all that they could carry in bundles on their shoulders.7 A hasty departure could be driven by desperation and precipitated by impending doom or could reflect an escape opportunity that had to be seized quickly. The motive and manner of escape is the theme that opens the classic anti-slavery work, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Eliza overheard Master Shelby 215

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agree that the next day, he would hand over her son, Harry, and Uncle Tom to a slave trader in exchange for cancellation of his debt. In the dark of night, she packed a small bundle of clothing, a toy for her son, some apples and cakes, and fled. Like the Israelites of old, her pursuer caught up with her near a water barrier. She was resting in a house nearby, contemplating crossing the Ohio River that blocked her way to freedom, when her owner approached the house. It was early spring and the river was filled with random cakes of floating ice. Upon seeing her pursuer, Eliza fled through the back door and, with Harry in her bosom, took a leap of desperation and faith: “and, nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate, with one wild cry and flying leap she vaulted sheer over the turbid current by the shore, on to the raft of ice beyond. It was a desperate leap – impossible to anything but madness and despair. With wild eyes and desperate energy she leaped to another and another cake; – stumbling-leaping-slippingspringing upwards again! Her shoes are gone – her stockings cut from her feet – while blood marked every step.”8 Not every escape was this dramatic, hurried and unplanned. Harriet A. Jacob’s escape involved an elaborate scheme that took years to play out. It, too, had begun as part of a strategy to spare her children from slavery.9 She fled her household just after midnight but hid in the immediate vicinity. Harriet eventually moved to her grandmother’s loft, where she hid for almost seven years. She developed an elaborate scheme to convince her master that she had long ago settled in Boston. Only later did she flee on a vessel bound for Brooklyn. Slaves of the South experienced a hurried parallel to the Israelite exodus. In the early years of the Civil War, tens of thousands of slaves took advantage of their owners’ absence and the chaos to flee north. Some of the first fugitives arrived at Fortress Monroe, Virginia in the spring of 1861. The first two arrived; then, several days later, eight more; and yet, the next day, fifty arrived. The word spread and thousands fled to what became known as the “freedom fort”.10 Wherever the Union Army took control of a section of southern territory, hundreds if not thousands of slaves in the immediate vicinity rushed to Union army lines.11 In the earliest stages of the war, they were rarely offered comfort or hope regarding a future free of slavery. Fugitives could be returned to their owner at the discretion of the presiding Union officer. However, the Second Confiscation Act passed in July 1862 prohibited Union officers from passing judgment that would allow a master to reclaim a runaway slave. The escaped slaves were officially declared contraband of war.

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The coastal region and islands around Port Royal, South Carolina were amongst the first southern territory to be occupied by the Union Army. The local slaves were declared free. The goal of many escaped slave families was to reach that region. In February 1862 a New York Times correspondent in Port Royal, South Carolina reported, Everywhere I find the same state of things existing; everywhere the blacks hurry in droves to our lines; they crowd in small boats around our ships; they swarm upon our decks; they hurry to our officers from the cotton houses of their masters.12 Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and changed these dynamics. He signed the proclamation late in the afternoon, after the regular New Year’s Day activities and celebration in the White House were over. The only individuals who cheered and benefited immediately from the proclamation were those who had already run away from slavery. They were now assured of their freedom. For the typical slave in the South, the proclamation had no immediate effect. However, Blacks now had a direct vested interest in each success of the Union army. Every piece of southern ground that was conquered was also liberated from slavery. Union officers as well as many black soldiers carried the words of the Emancipation Proclamation to towns, villages and remote plantations along the route of the Union Army. Harriet Tubman recorded one experience of hasty departure. She had sailed on Union gunboats up the Combahee River in South Carolina and supervised the removal of local plantation slaves. For the soldiers, as for the slaves who were now rushing to the gunboats, a holiday atmosphere prevailed. “I nebber see such a sight,” an exultant Harriet Tubman declared, “pigs squealin’, chickens screamin’, young ones squallin’.” Elderly couples vied with the young to reach the boats, determined to leave “de land o’ bondage"; numerous women came aboard, one of them balancing a pail on her head (“rice a smokin in it jus’ as she’d taken it from de fire”), most of them loaded down with baskets and bags containing their worldly possessions. “One woman brought two pigs, a white one an’ a black one,” Harriet Tubman recalled; “we took em all on board; named de white pig Beauregard, and de black pig Jeff Davis.”13 Ultimately, hundreds of thousands of slaves left their homes hurriedly. They left as ones and twos and tens with all that they could carry on their backs. Each traveled a unique path to freedom. Occasionally, they rode a former master’s horse or piled his wagon high to facilitate their exodus. As many as two hundred thousand blacks ended up in the camps and the employ of the Union armies as cooks and laborers.14 More ended up in huge camps or were temporarily settled on confiscated land. However, the vast 217

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majority, more than three million other slaves, did not depart the only home they knew. They simply had nowhere to go. Direct word of emancipation had limited meaning for these blacks who stayed put. When the Union army moved on, the freed slaves remained at the mercy of their former owners. In summary, the African-American exodus was a diverse experience of individuals throughout many days and nights. They each traveled along varied routes. Perhaps, as a result, blacks have not adopted any universal or even widely-held symbol comparable to matzah of their journey to freedom. In addition, there is no Passover eve, no single date that serves as the focal point to commemorate an experience that was shared, albeit lived out in diverse ways.

Emancipation by William Travis – a mural of slaves fleeing at night.

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CHAPTER 18 KNOWING AND PERCEIVING GOD: SEEING IS BELIEVING

SOCIAL

AND PSYCHOLOGICAL dynamics embedded in the experience of leaving slavery were not the paramount goal of the exodus. Simply stated, the goal was that “You [the Israelite nation] shall know that I am the Lord your God, Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt” (Exodus 6:8). All the miracles, from the first plague until the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, were designed to instill in the Israelite nation knowledge and understanding of the one omnipotent God. The miracles achieved this goal. “Israel saw the miraculous acts that God performed against Egypt; and the people revered God, and they had faith in God and in Moses” (Exodus 14:31).1 For them, seeing was believing. Knowledge of God was to be intimately linked with a grasp of His role as the God of history and coupled with the personal experience of God’s unique relationship with the Children of Israel. God delivered this message to Moses at the beginning of negotiations with Pharaoh. Later, He thundered it from the top of Mount Sinai and afterward carved it in stone: “I am the Lord, your God, Who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). This knowledge of God was a prerequisite for the covenant at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites accepted God’s commandments as a contract that would bind all future generations. This bond between the exodus and Mount Sinai was emphasized in Moses’s initial words to Pharaoh on the banks of Nile before the first plague: “Send out My people that they may serve Me in the wilderness” (Exodus 7:16).2 The divine plan did not envision physical freedom from bondage as the goal but as a means of assuming religious awareness and responsibility. The intent was that the nation of Israel replace Egyptian servitude with Divine service. The lesson that there is one God was designed not only for the Israelites but also for the Egyptians and for Pharaoh. In his first confrontation with Moses, Pharaoh challenged the premise of God’s authority: “Who is the Lord that I should obey him and send out Israel? I do not know the Lord, nor will I send out Israel” (Exodus 5:2). In preparation for Moses’s return to the palace to initiate the first plague, God states, “Egypt shall know that I am

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the Lord when I stretch out My hand over Egypt” (Exodus 7:5). The goal of “knowing the Lord” is brought up nine more times in several contexts. The theme first arises in the opening dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh and last appears just before the Egyptians drown in the Sea of Reeds.3

An All-Powerful God What knowledge did God want to impart to the participants in the exodus? What was it that He wanted them to know about Himself? The first and foremost message throughout the plagues was the concept of an all-powerful God. This image is most commonly presented anthropomorphically: “The Lord took us out of Egypt with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, with great awesomeness and with signs and wonders” (Deuteronomy 26:8).4 So powerful is this image that it is repeated in the final verse of the Five Books of Moses.5 Pharaoh’s sorcerers were the first to perceive and acknowledge God’s power. When they were unable to rid themselves of the lice in the third plague, they told Pharaoh, “It is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:14). At that point they perceived only the finger of God, but not His full hand. Pharaoh acknowledged God’s existence after the seventh plague, hail, and he and his aides referred to God again after the next two plagues, locusts and darkness. However, there were subtle differences in the references to God after the eighth and ninth plagues. Within Pharaoh’s worldview, gods were identified with specific political entities or peoples. Conflicts between cultures were perceived as manifestations of battles between their respective gods. To Pharaoh’s mind, the plagues were evidence that his gods were losing the war. After the eighth plague, he repeatedly referred to “your God” when speaking with Moses. It was only after the plague of darkness that he acknowledged one deity, dropping the word “your” and speaking simply of God. God’s own words emphasized the challenge of proving that He was the Supreme power with no equal, “so that you shall know that there is none like Me in all the world” (Exodus 9:14). The concept of a powerful god was refined through the sequence of plagues to demonstrate God’s ability to control the awesome forces He had unleashed. One can imagine powerful forces in the universe that a god might be able to release but not control. The plagues were designed to counter that concept and describe instead a God who is “in the midst of the land,” able to start and stop destructive forces at will. Moses asked Pharaoh to specify the date of removing the plague of frogs.6 Pharaoh named the next day and Moses responded, “As you say, so that you will know that there is none like the Lord our God.” This God is also capable of controlling the scope and direction of each plague.7 In five of the plagues, God explicitly specified that 220

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He would not allow the plagues to affect the Israelites. This demonstrated that the plagues were more than mere uncontrollable destructive forces released by a supernatural being. The diversity of the plagues emphasized a unified vision of God in control of all elements of nature. This was a universal God who could compel the smallest creatures of the earth (lice) and the air (locusts) to do his bidding. His will could break the natural boundaries of the animal kingdom and cause amphibians (in this case, frogs) to invade bedrooms and kitchens and induce wild animals to attack areas inhabited by human beings. He could turn water into blood and day into extended night. This God could send plagues that killed cattle and turn ashes into boils that would inflict pain on both human being and beast. He also could, at the stroke of midnight, mysteriously wipe out the first-born of every Egyptian household. He could even mix ice and fire in an unnatural thunderstorm of hail. He ruled the mundane animals below and the heavens above. The plagues through their diversity presented a monotheistic view of a God who controlled all the forces of the world. God’s power as demonstrated by the plagues in Egypt paled in comparison with His actions by the Sea of Reeds, at least according to the Midrash. During the Seder, the Passover meal, Jews recite an ancient Midrash that suggests the miracles at the splitting of the Sea of Reeds were five times as impressive as the ten plagues combined.8 On this day in history, all God’s powers were focused on an event that was publicly observed by two conflicting cultures and broadcast to neighboring countries. It was an event that would be impossible to rationalize as an natural if extraordinary occurrence, unlike the plagues of hail, locust or lice. God made the water stand like a wall on each side of the entire population of Israel as it passed through on the seabed that God had made into dry land for them. When the Egyptian chariots followed, God removed their wheels in mid-crossing. Finally, when Israel saw the waters come crashing down and the Egyptian bodies lying dead upon the seashore, the Bible records the impact on their collective psyche: “The people feared God, and they believed in God and in Moses, His servant” (Exodus 14:31). It was on the shores of the Sea of Reeds that God’s presence became so palpable that even the least spiritually-conscious person could almost point to Him, as it were, and say, “This is my God.” It was this experience that inspired the Song by the Sea with its imagery of a powerful warrior deity. One phrase in particular stands out: “Who is like You among the heavenly powers, O God? Who is like You, mighty in holiness, too awesome for praise, Doer of wonders?” (Exodus 15:11). Morning and night, the Jewish liturgy includes this verse as preparatory for asking for divine intervention in 221

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daily life. Jewish ritual challenges the supplicant to recall this experience by the sea so as to stand in awe of God in preparation of reciting the prayer of “Eighteen Benedictions,” which includes requests for a wide range of individual and collective needs.9 The liturgy also includes one of the closing verses of the Song as both an observation and a hope: “God shall reign for all eternity” (Exodus 15:18).

The African-American Perception of God When the Divinely appointed time came for the freeing of America’s black slaves, God did not split a sea. Instead, He took advantage of a split in the Union and the ensuing conflict to punish both the South and the North for having supported slavery, whether actively or passively, beyond its appointed time. (Lincoln emphasized this idea in his second inaugural address, as mentioned earlier.) During the Civil War, walls not of water but of soldiers formed repeatedly on two sides of a dry and desolate battlefield. Before the day ended these walls came crashing down, the battlefield was drenched in blood and countless soldiers from both sides died on both shores of the sea of battle. Enslaved blacks had adopted a cultural identity that linked their destiny with that of the ancient Israelites. Spirituals such as “Go Down, Moses” were filled with a vision and longing for the God of history, the God of the ancient Hebrew slaves. African Americans were powerless to rise up in mass rebellion against the overwhelming power of their southern masters and a federal government that supported the status quo.10 However, their sermons11 could have closed with Moses’s order at the sea: “Do not fear! Stand fast and see the salvation of the Lord” (Exodus 14:13). When the Civil War broke out, many blacks began to see Providence at work. John Rock, a black physician, said it best in January 1862: “I think I see the finger of God in this. Yes, there is the handwriting on the wall; Break every yoke, and let the oppressed go free. I have heard the groans of my people, and am come down to deliver them.”12 As the war progressed and the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, there remained no doubt in the African-American community that God’s mighty, outstretched hand was at work. “This was the coming of the Lord. This was the fulfillment of prophecy and legend.”13 “God was real. His plan for them was clear; they were to suffer and be degraded, and then afterwards by Divine edict, raised to manhood and power; and so on January 1, 1863, He made them free.”14 The imagery at the Sea of Reeds was an important element of Negro spirituals both before and after emancipation. One slave song envisioned blacks passing safely with their pursuers dying: “My army cross ober, My army cross ober/O Pharaoh’s army drownded.” After emancipation, the 222

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same biblical image was included in prayers of thanks. “Sound the loud timbrel15 o’er Egypt’s dark sea, Jehovah has triumphed, his people are free.”16 It even came to mind when a former slave at the bedside of his dying former master recalled that his master had served as an officer on horseback in the Confederate army.17 He remembered the image of the drowning horse and rider in the Song of Moses: “He is exalted above the arrogant, having hurled horse with its rider into the sea” (Exodus 15:1, 15:21). Now imagine a stone statue of a Confederate general on horseback and recall the verse, “Deep waters covered them; they sank in the depths like a stone” (Exodus 15:5). Or touch a bronze captain on his steed and think, “The sea enshrouded them; the mighty sank like lead in water” (Exodus 15:10). For blacks in the south, the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation made God’s providence as visible to them as the splitting of the Sea had done for ancient Israel. Blacks were not the only ones to see a link between Exodus and Emancipation. At this time in America, religion was a serious element of most people’s lives. One teacher of freedmen observed, “Oh what a privilege to be among them, when their morning dawns; to see them personally, coming forth from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage.”18

God Who Sees and Knows The imagery of an all-powerful God dominates the story of the plagues, but it was not the first attribute of God presented in the exodus narrative. The first time the reader is introduced to the God of exodus, He meets a compassionate God who hears the anguish of the oppressed and keeps His promises: “God heard their groans, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24). The same message is given to Moses at the burning bush. God again introduces Himself as the God of the patriarchs and then states, “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people that is in Egypt and I have heard their outcry because of its taskmasters, for I have known its sufferings” (Exodus 3:7).19 The God of exodus hears, sees, and knows not only the mass suffering of the Israelite nation as a group, but also responds to the suffering of the individual. The God of Israel saw the Israelites as a group, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saw them as individuals. This concept of a God who sees His people’s affliction and hears their cries of pain and suffering both as a group and as individuals was a powerful optimistic message for blacks. It was one of the core messages of many Negro spirituals. The Israelites’ cries were both simple cries of pain and prayers directed toward God, Who acted to alleviate their suffering.20 One 223

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former slave, Alice Sewell, summed it up after emancipation simply: “God planned dem slave prayers to free us like he did de Israelites, and dey did.”21 The view of God answering prayers applied not only to the masses who were freed during the Civil War but also to individuals who had escaped slavery earlier. It could arise in a prayer just before running away from slavery: “And prayed to our Heavenly Father mercifully to assist us, as He did His people of old, to escape from cruel bondage.”22 It also might appear in a recollection after having escaped: “The Lord heard my prayers when I was a poor wretched slave, and delivered me out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage; and that it was His hand, and not my artfulness and cunning, which had enabled me to escape.”23 Daniel was another Old Testament figure whose experience resonated for the slaves. God protected him from imminent danger in the lion’s den. As one spiritual asked: Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel, d’liver Daniel, d’liver Daniel? Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel – and why not every man? He delivered Daniel from the lion’s den, Jonah from the belly of the whale, and the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace, and why not every man?24

For Christian slaves, God not only heard and saw their suffering and humiliation. He also felt their pain in a physical sense. Jesus’s crucifixion provided them with a concrete symbol of God’s intimate knowledge of physical suffering. Hearing and seeing can occur at a distance. Touching requires proximity and, therefore, represents an extremely personal knowledge. Jesus had suffered both physical pain and humiliation while on the cross and consequently, God could feel and share the slaves’ experiences, as recorded in another spiritual: “Nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen, Lord;/Nobody knows like Jesus.”25 This all-knowing God was also a God of hope. The hope He offered extended beyond mere cessation of suffering to include a vision of a better future in a promised land. In the first confrontation between God and Moses, God coupled the end of slavery with a promise of a better future: “I shall descend to rescue [the Israelite nation] from the Land of Egypt and bring it up from the land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). Not surprisingly, Canaan became the symbol for a new beginning for the African-American slave. Though at times the symbolism of Canaan in the Negro spirituals referred to a physical existence, often it was synonymous with Heaven. 224

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God of Justice and Retribution In Abraham’s prophetic vision of slavery, God had promised that He would punish the nation that enslaved and oppressed his descendants. The ten plagues and the drowning of the Egyptian army in the sea redeemed this pledge. This God of retribution was an important element of the belief system of the black slaves as they struggled to cope with brutal masters or overseers in a patently unjust world. This thought nourished their souls as they listened to hypocritical clergymen preach to them of their obligation to serve their masters. The God of the exodus offered a visible worldly symbol of retribution for which the slave could only hope. It was a message repeated by the biblical prophets: God punishes corrupt societies, especially those that take advantage of the poor and oppressed. While not all slaves remained optimistic that they would see redemption in their own lifetime, every religious slave could believe in a Heaven and Hell in which justice would be done. Slaves imagined a Heaven with few, if any, former masters.26 Even the kindest master would be admitted there only if his former slaves interceded for him. This belief was reinforced by stories of slaves being called to their master’s deathbed with the master begging for forgiveness and prayers. The belief in a God of retribution is a core belief of any religion that is based on the Bible. For Northerners, especially those fighting for the elimination of slavery, the Civil War was divine retribution. The abolitionist poet, Julia Ward Howe, captured this piety and patriotic fervor in The Battle Hymn of the Republic.27 Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps, They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps; I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps: His day is marching on.

God’s Other Attributes There are other attributes of God that arise in the context of the exodus for which it is difficult to weave a parallel or contrast with black emancipation. One critical Jewish tenet is that God makes and fulfills covenants. He made a covenant with Abraham and reconfirmed it with Isaac and Jacob. The covenant with the patriarchs was later supplemented with a covenant between God and the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai. 225

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At the very moment that the reader of the Bible is introduced to the compassionate God, he is also introduced to the God of the covenant: “God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob” (Exodus 2:24). When God first spoke to Moses, He referred to Himself as the God of the patriarchs. It was the same characterization that Moses was charged to bring before the Israelites and their elders. The message to the masses carried an added emphasis: “This is My Name forever, and this is My remembrance from generation to generation” (Exodus 3:15). The commitment to fulfill His patriarchal covenant is repeated one more time when Moses returned to God after the first unsuccessful negotiation with Pharaoh.28 The fulfillment of the covenant would ultimately be delayed forty years until Joshua led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Land of Canaan. The opening dialogue between God and Moses explores other attributes of God. God’s essence is captured in an enigmatic response to Moses’s question, “What is His name?” God’s answer: “I shall be as I shall be.”29 The enigma of God’s essence is compounded at the start of chapter 6. God declares, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty,30 but with My Name, Lord [the Tetragrammaton, the sacred four-letter name of God], I did not make myself known” (Exodus 6:2–3). Biblical commentaries and philosophers have offered various interpretations as to the meanings of the alternative names, “God,” “Lord,” “ I shall be as I shall be,” and “God Almighty.”31 Hirsch interpreted the phrase “I shall be as I shall be,” with its double emphasis on the future, as representing God’s total and absolute free will to act as He chooses. Hirsch sees implicit in the phraseology that God has also granted free will to human beings.32 Both dimensions of freedom would have been meaningful for the Israelites. God’s ability to do as He chooses suggests that nothing could have forestalled the exodus. The idea that God grants free will to human beings had special meaning for slaves, who had limited free will. Hirsch sees the later terms as continuing the description as to how God carries out His will. The Hebrew term “El Shaddai” (God Almighty) describes a God who worked through nature and behind the scenes to help the Patriarchs “come successfully through all the vicissitudes of life.”33 The Tetragrammaton denotes the God who can work outside the normal laws of nature in a manner that is visible to all.34 Although the Patriarchs had not experienced this, the Israelites would. In addition, at Mount Sinai they would become God’s own nation, their survival and existence throughout history a living demonstration of the existence of the Lord God. An alternative interpretation sees in the names of God a reference to God’s attributes of justice and mercy. God as Judge was visible throughout 226

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the ten plagues. God as the Merciful One appeared in an unlikely place – the midst of a hailstorm.35 In the advance pronouncement of this plague, people were urged to gather in their livestock to protect them. God even set a specific time for the beginning of the plague. “Behold, at this time tomorrow I shall send down a very heavy hail.” The Bible records that some Egyptians took heed. “Whoever among the servants of Pharaoh feared the word of the Lord chased his servants and his livestock to the houses” (Exodus 9:20). When Pharaoh subsequently summoned Moses and Aaron, he declared that “the Lord is the Righteous One.” The Midrash36 notes the Pharaoh used this description because he realized that God had offered him and his people a chance to limit the destruction that the hail would cause. Unfortunately, he and most of his people suffered because they ignored the warning. Perhaps the most important attribute of the God of Israel is the message of monotheism: that there is one single God. Judaism is credited with disseminating and popularizing this message. However, the awesome power displayed by the God of exodus does not automatically imply that there is only one God. The God of the Israelites might simply have been ascendant and supreme at the time of the exodus. God’s own claim that He punished the gods of Egypt might even be misinterpreted to mean that there are, in fact, other gods. It was not until Mount Sinai that God formally required monotheism of the Israelites. In the first of the Ten Commandments, he refers to Himself as the Lord of the exodus. He follows this with “You may have no other god before Me.”37 In a sermon that he gave the month before his death, Moses repeated this linkage. He challenged the generation that was about to enter Canaan to recall the miracles and power of the exodus, when God took for Himself a nation from among another nation.38 Moses concluded his summary of the exodus by proclaiming, “You have been shown in order to know that the Lord is God! There is none beside Him” (Deuteronomy 4:35).

God’s Hand in the Civil War A central theme of the Bible is that God is involved in the destiny of nations and has a special relationship with His chosen people, the Israelites. The Lord gave them a mission to disseminate monotheism and serve as a national model of righteous behavior, and through them He illustrated His own role in history. “The God of Israel chose just this people with their absolute lack of power to reveal Himself in their fate and endurance as the sole Conquering Force in the history of man,” according to Hirsch.39 This linkage was refined by God’s choosing as their home the land of Canaan which, unlike Egypt, was totally dependent upon heaven-sent rain for its inhabitants’ sustenance. As a result, agricultural success in Canaan was 227

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closely tied to Divine intervention.40 Should the Israelite nation turn astray, “then the wrath of God will blaze against you; He will restrain the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce, and you will be swiftly banished from the goodly land that God gives you” (Deuteronomy 11:17). This principle of national accountability is an integral part of Jewish belief, with this section of Deuteronomy recited in both the morning and evening prayers. It is also a core belief of those who look to the Bible for divine guidance and inspiration. As the exodus from Egypt began, there was no mistaking God’s role. Yet it would take forty years of wanderings in the Wilderness led by a cloud by day and a pillar of smoke by night, with daily manna to sustain them and many other miracles, for the people to understand God’s role in their destiny. The Bible records that God also played a less discernible role in hardening the hearts of Pharaoh and his advisers. It is this less visible role that is most relevant to the history of United States, the Civil War and emancipation. The idea of God’s guiding hand in history had special meaning for Americans at the time of the Revolution, since they also saw themselves as God’s chosen people. Samuel Langdon delivered an Election Day sermon to the New Hampshire legislature on this theme in 1788 entitled “The Republic of the Israelites: an example to the American States.” The God of heaven hath not indeed visibly displayed the glory of his majesty and power before our eyes, as he came down in the sight of Israel on the burning mount; nor has he written with his own finger the laws of our civil polity. But the signal interpositions of divine providence in saving us from the vengeance of a powerful irritated nation from which we were unavoidably separated by their inadmissible claim of absolute parliamentary power over us; in giving us a Washington to be captain-general of our armies;… and finally giving us peace with a large territory and acknowledged independence; all these laid together fall little short of real miracles and an heavenly charter of liberty for these United States…. We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people.41 Patrick Henry, in his famous “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, articulated the same principle in simpler terms: “There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations.”42 This unique American perspective on history continued in the Civil War era. Both sides personalized the Bible’s message that God was active in the history of nations. “Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other,”43 Lincoln declared in his second inaugural address. Earlier he had noted a fundamental contradiction arising from such circumstances: “God 228

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cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.”44 This was more than just a superficial truism. Americans of the nineteenth century believed that they, like the Israelites, were a chosen people and that their mission was to live a grand, divinely-inspired experiment in democracy that was changing the world. It was an experiment that Lincoln deeply believed would not survive unless secession was reversed: “If it shall please the Divine Being who determines the destinies of nations that this shall remain a united people, they will, humbly seeking Divine guidance, make their prolonged national existence a source of new benefits to themselves and their successors, and to all classes and conditions of mankind.”45 Lincoln thus cast a reunited America as a “light to the nations,” similar to the Children of Israel. As in the exodus, one can easily see the hand of God playing a behindthe-scenes role in the period leading up to the Civil War, hardening the positions, thinking, and emotions of the respective sides in ways that made war inevitable. The decade before the Civil War was a time of unprecedented political success for the South, suggesting that slavery might have continued in the region for at least another fifty years.46 Ironically, these successes and the northern backlash produced an obstinacy of both sides that led to the end of slavery within a few years and to over six hundred thousand deaths, a number commensurate with the Israelite population of military age that left Egypt. Lincoln himself saw the hand of God in the mounting casualties of the war. In September 1862 he noted, “I am almost ready to say this is probably true – that God wills this contest to continue, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere quiet power on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”47 In practical terms, slavery in the South in 1860 faced no immediate threat, political or otherwise. A united South could count on northern Democrats to help win most political battles in Congress. The problem of fugitive slaves even before passage of the 1850 act was more a symbolic issue than a significant practical one. In the decade of the 1840s, the slave population of the United States grew from 2.48 million to 3.2 million, an increase of almost thirty percent, and grew to 3.95 million by 1860. Although John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1861 stoked southern paranoia, there was no realistic threat of a massive slave insurrection similar to the one that had occurred in Haiti. The southern slaveocracy’s political successes in the 1850s destroyed blacks’ hopes that the tide of American history was in their favor. The decade began with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which strengthened 229

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the rights of slave owners to pursue their fugitive slaves in the North. In 1854 a united South joined with northern Democrats in Congress to win passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, opening up the possibility of slavery in areas that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had originally prohibited. The fallout from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, “one of the sad ironies of history,”48 quickened the pace of sectionalism and the stridency of the pro- and anti-slavery debates; only later would some of the participants see God’s imprint upon the hearts and minds of the leaders and the masses. In 1857 the Supreme Court, under strong southern influence, issued the Dred Scott decision declaring that no black, slave or free, could be a citizen of the United States. Worse, the court used the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property without due process, to declare that Congress could not interfere with the right of slave owners to take their slave property into the territories. In his 1858 “House Divided” speech, Lincoln expressed the fear that soon there would be “another Supreme Court decision that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits.” Despite winning the Kansas-Nebraska Act battle, the slaveocracy lost the war for the hearts and minds of the people of the Kansas Territory. Southern politicians with the support of President James Buchanan narrowly failed in their attempt to admit Kansas to the Union as a pro-slavery state, relying on a fraudulent constitution protecting slavery that had not won the support of Kansans.49 Kansas was subsequently admitted as a free state in early 1861, just as southern states were beginning to secede. This turn of events helped to turn public sentiment in the North against any expansion of slavery and to create the Republican Party, but it did not lead to widespread support for the abolition of slavery. As the election of 1860 approached, “Each party to the (Kansas-Nebraska) controversy seemed obsessed by the fear that its own preservation was at stake. The one side (North) fought rancorously for what it was bound to get without fighting; the other (South), with equal rancor, contended for what in the nature of things it could never use.”50 God hardened their positions. In a final bid to save the Union, Lincoln offered support for a Constitutional amendment that would preserve slavery where it already existed. The proposed amendment included a clause that this amendment would be irrevocable. The only issue upon which Lincoln would not compromise was at the core of the Republican platform: preventing the expansion of slavery into new territories. Both sides accepted the thesis that without the addition of slave territories, slavery in the South would gradually disappear; thus each side was prepared to fight for its position at every 230

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opportunity.51 However, as historian Charles Ramsdell noted, the battle over the expansion of slave territory was irrelevant to the future of slavery in the United States. The agricultural environment and emigration patterns suggest that it was highly unlikely than any new territory, if left to an honest popular vote, as in Kansas, would enter the Union as a slave state.52 Even after the start of the Civil War, however, had God willed a different pattern of victory and defeat, slavery could have continued in the South for decades. If the North had won a quick victory and the Union had been saved, Lincoln would never have issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Most likely he would have graciously accepted a return to the status quo, and thus the federal government would never have put in place a legal structure for the protection of blacks. Had the war not been so fiercely contested, Lincoln would not have needed or supported the use of black soldiers, whose courage on the battlefield resulted in broad northern support for their emancipation. Had there not been a reversal of fortunes for the Union army that yielded a long string of Union victories in 1864, emancipation might not have gained acceptance, and Lincoln might have been defeated for reelection by a peace candidate who would have allowed the secession to stand, thereby nullifying the effect of the proclamation. Finally, if God had not hardened the resolve of the South, it might not have fought to the bitter end and not battled afterward to maintain the status quo. It was the South’s intransigence and unwillingness to accept defeat that gave impetus to the passage of the Thirteenth and later amendments to the Constitution. Without these amendments, a future Supreme Court might have declared the Emancipation Proclamation unconstitutional.

Religious Interpretation and the Clergy As the secession movement spread during the final weeks of his presidency, Buchanan declared January 4, 1861, a national day of fasting and penitence. Later, both Presidents Lincoln and Davis would similarly declare days of fasting53 as the fortunes of their respective sides in the Civil War rose and fell. In 1862 the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia articulated their belief in a link between human actions and God’s intervention: “At first God did not seem to smile on our defensive operations. Then God put it into the heart of Jefferson Davis to call for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. The united supplication of the whole people went up before the God of battles and was graciously accepted through the intercession of our great High Priest. Gloriously did God avenge his own elect. We were wonderfully delivered out of the hands of our enemies.”54 Jewish congregations, both northern and southern, joined their respective sides in supplicating the God of history. They participated in local and national public fast days and 231

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organized traditional Jewish afternoon prayer services for a public day of fasting (see Illustration 18). Lincoln himself, on the day after the surrender at Appomattox, called for a national day of thanksgiving: “He from Whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten.”55 The clergy on both sides were an important influence on their congregants in the Civil War era, although those in the North were less united in their support for war. Some northern clergy opposed to slavery nevertheless argued that political questions should not be mixed with religion, and this was similarly true of northern Jewish congregations. Reverend Judah Wechsler of Portsmouth, Ohio felt that avoiding military conflict was a higher good than ending slavery: “Under the pretext of philanthropy, the everlasting slavery question has been made the text of almost every sermon. This more than anything else has been instrumental in [bringing on] this war. Had the clergymen excluded politics from the pulpit, I for one believe we should not have experienced this war.”56 His words were classified as disloyal and held against him when he later applied to return to a position he had once held at the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation.57 In the South, the clergy were important to the morale of Confederate forces, increasing their support as the war progressed even as it became a “Lost Cause.” After the war, they helped to maintain the South’s religious self-image as heaven’s favored nation, notwithstanding that the God of history had allowed the Confederacy to lose a devastating war. While the slaveocracy may have tried to deny God’s hand in their defeat, others – prominent among them the clergy – expressed confidence in God’s ultimate deliverance, believing that the outcome of the war merely obscured His beneficent plans for the region. In the early stages of the war, the southern clergy were quick to see Divine guidance in human affairs. After the fall of Fort Sumter, for example, Bishop Stephen Elliott of Savannah declared, “The hand of God seems as plainly in it as in the conquest of the Midianites.”58 Later, following the Confederate victory of First Manassas, he preached that “God has now so signally displayed himself to our wondering eyes, that the pillar of the cloud by day and of fire by night was not more plain to the children of Israel.”59 As the war dragged on and began to ravage the South, however, Confederate senator Herschel V. Johnson was one of the few who suggested that “God is permitting us by our own folly to work out the emancipation of our slaves.”60 Most southerners were unwilling or unable to accept the explanation that defeat was punishment for continuing to enslave the blacks, no matter that the rest of the Western world was making great strides in eliminating slavery.61 The Confederate leadership’s belief in the 232

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righteousness of slavery went far beyond that of the slave-owning Founding Fathers of the Republic,62 as an unrepentant Alexander Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, recognized: The prevailing ideas entertained by [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.63 This fundamental belief was not even overturned in the war’s aftermath, as the South struggled with the religious significance of their defeat. Those clergy who acknowledged a link between God’s wrath and slavery limited their remarks by saying that slavery as practiced in the South had not lived up to the humane standards of the Bible. In other words, southern masters had failed in their parental responsibility to care properly for the spiritual and physical welfare of the slaves. Most egregious was the failure to respect slave marriages as well as the lack of encouragement for Sabbath worship.64 When looking for an overall cause of God’s disfavor, however, the clergy were more likely to refer to the sins of covetousness, worldliness, and greed rather than point the finger at slavery.65 Furthermore, southerners did not see God’s punishment as implying that God favored the North. James H. McNeilly, a chaplain during the war and a Presbyterian minister in Nashville afterwards, pointed to a common occurrence in the Bible: “The Bible contained accounts of God’s chosen people led into captivity by heathen conquerors, but that fact did not prove the heathen to be right in the cause nor that the Israelites were upholding a bad cause.”66 Southerners could not imagine God favoring the chaotic, unrestrained northern society that, as the South believed, worshipped the god Mammon. The most common interpretation in postbellum sermons was that the Civil War was one of God’s unfathomable trials for His chosen people. The clergy emphasized the religious challenge the people faced to keep their trust in God and accept His will. One commonly used quote was from Job: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”67 Various preachers composed 233

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their own formulations. John Girardeau of South Carolina declared: “They were not so much harsh retributions from a judge as loving corrections from a father.”68 Bishop Elliott proclaimed, “God’s people must always be tried or they would not be worthy of their status as God’s special favorites.”69 Moses Drury Hoge, pastor of Richmond’s Second Presbyterian Church, noted that “defeat is the discipline which trains the truly heroic soul to further and better endeavors.”70 To the South the war had been a righteous endeavor, and now it was time to submit to God’s mysterious ways. Father Abram Ryan, “Poet Priest of the Lost Cause,” wrote: Ah! I forgot Thee, Father, long and oft, When I was happy, rich and proud and free; But conquered now, and crushed, I look aloft, And sorrow leads, Father, back to Thee.71

Reproduction of the program of Fast-day Services at Beth Shalome Synagogue, Richmond. 234

CHAPTER 19 BREAKING THE WILL OF THE OPPRESSORS

THE FIGURE OF

a cruel and scheming Pharaoh is a classic image of the exodus narrative. In chapter 1, Pharaoh orders the midwives to kill Israelite boys at birth. When that edict fails, he commands his entire nation to drown all newborn boys in the river. As the narrative proceeds, Pharaoh becomes increasingly hard-hearted and unyielding in the face of God’s destructive plagues. For enslaved American blacks, these images of Pharaoh were reincarnated in every taskmaster.1 The analogy was not simply a matter of comparing bondages, but actually offered black slaves hope. They prayed that their masters, like Pharaoh, would someday be forced to yield to God’s will and set them free, while receiving God’s full measure of justice. The Lord’s plan for the exodus called not only for Pharaoh to “let My people go” but for Pharaoh to eventually expel the Israelites from Egypt. To do so, Pharaoh’s will had to be broken, just as God told Moses: “I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go except through a strong hand” (Exodus 3:19). Similarly, the Civil War was not just a conflict of armies but also of ideals. The Confederacy’s will had to be broken in order for the war to end. The North fought for the preservation of the Union and the survival of a still-youthful experiment in democracy. The South fought for the right to decide its own destiny, viewing its struggle as a continuation of the American Revolution. Generals William T. Sherman and Ulysses S. Grant came to understand that military victories alone would not end the conflict. This realization motivated Sherman’s final total war and destructive march through Georgia and thereafter through South Carolina. The goal was to “demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and individual ruin are synonymous terms.”2 What does it take to break the will of a people? How is it that so many of those who rise to positions of power learn to harden their hearts to the suffering around them? Why do leaders remain attached to their path even as they see their people’s lives ruined? This section addresses these questions by examining both the period of the Ten Plagues in Egypt and the Civil War in the South, during which both

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nations were wracked with destruction. We will also examine the actions and reactions of three separate groups whose will to resist was being severely challenged: the common people, the advisers and officers of Egypt and the Confederacy, and the leaders themselves. Although the common people bore the brunt of the destruction, their suffering did little to influence the decision-makers. In Egypt, Pharaoh’s advisers were the nobles, diviners, magicians, and necromancers who were often at his side when Moses and Aaron either predicted or initiated a plague. During the Civil War, the parallel group included Davis’s cabinet, influential state and Confederate officials, and leading generals. The last group is the two leaders themselves, who hardened their hearts and resisted even as the destruction grew.

Widespread Destruction Both conflicts passed through phases of increasing destruction. In Egypt the first three plagues caused little permanent damage. During the first plague, the water turned into blood for only seven days and the Egyptians were still able to get water from wells dug near the Nile. Although the Nile’s transformation killed the fish, creating a stench in the water, it is likely that as water flowed from the Nile’s headwaters, the fish were quickly replenished. The plagues of frogs and lice were nothing more than a pervasive but temporary annoyance. The lice infested both human and beast (Exodus 8:13). Hirsch suggests that the plague of lice attacked the Egyptian people’s self-image. The Egyptian soil, the source of national pride, was converted into irritating creatures that crawled upon the bodies of the proud and haughty “master race.”3 The next three plagues – wild animals, cattle disease, and boils – posed greater risk to life and property. The massive invasion of wild animals was substantially more dangerous than the earlier one of frogs, gripping the country in fear. The Bible declares, “The land was being ruined because of the swarm” (Exodus 8:20), but provides no details as to the nature of the impact. Biblical commentators refer to lions, snakes, and scorpions, all of which would have threatened life and limb. However, the following plague brought the first clear manifestation of permanent damage. God warned that animals left in the field would be attacked, and the Bible records that “all of the livestock of Egypt died” (Exodus 9:6).4 The sixth plague, boils or blistering skin disease, caused more pain and discomfort than had the lice. Although these three plagues increased the level of attack, their consonant theme was the clearly differential treatment of Israelite and Egyptian.5 The former were left unscathed in Goshen as the plagues ravaged the Egyptian heartland. With 236

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regard to the wild animals, the Bible notes, “I shall make a distinction between My people and your people” (Exodus 8:19). For the cattle epidemic it states, “God shall distinguish between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt” (Exodus 9:4) and in the end records that “all of the livestock of the Egyptians died, but of the livestock of the Israelites not a beast died” (Exodus 9:6). In the final four plagues, the dominant theme is the unprecedented level of destruction. There is a quantum leap in both God’s rhetoric and deed. The plague of hail is introduced with the phrase, “For this time I shall send all of my plagues against your heart, and upon your servants and your people, so that you shall know that there is none like Me in all the world” (Exodus 9:14). Thus this plague was a direct attack on the will of Pharaoh, against his very heart. The plague itself, unlike any preceding plague, is described as “very heavy such as had never been in the entire land of Egypt from the time it became a nation” (Exodus 9:24). The devastation impacted every Egyptian person or animal outdoors as well as the grass of the fields and the trees. The plague of hail occurred during the season when the barley was ripening and the flax was in its stalk (Exodus 9:31). Later in the growing season, when spelt and wheat were ripening, the final stage of economic destruction was carried on the wings of the locusts. They came in swarms that “covered the surface of the entire land and the land was darkened” (Exodus 10:15). They consumed the residue that had been left by the hail. Afterward, no greenery remained on the trees or in the fields. The magnitude of this eighth plague was similarly unprecedented, “such as your fathers and your grandfathers have not seen from the day they came onto the earth until this day” (Exodus 10:6); “before it there was never a locust swarm like it and after it there will not be its equal” (Exodus 10:14). By the time of the exodus, the Egyptian agricultural economy had been destroyed.6 In addition, as the Israelites were preparing to leave, they requested gifts and “so they emptied Egypt” (Exodus 12:36). Throughout, the Bible gives the Egyptian common people no voice. Only after the final devastation of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, does the Bible record “a great outcry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was no corpse” (Exodus 12:30). And when Pharaoh finally authorized the exodus, the Egyptians hastened the departure, crying out, “We are all dying” (Exodus 12:33). Not surprisingly, the pain and suffering of the common people were not the critical issue in this conflict. It is unlikely that the common people even knew of the confrontations that occurred between Moses and Pharaoh. Initially, all they saw were week-long periods of annoyance. These were 237

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followed by periods of pain and suffering, culminating with unprecedented devastation and death. At the same time, they could observe that the Israelites had been spared. However, as in most despotic societies, the opinions and reactions of the populace had no impact on the events of the day and their voices remained unheard in Pharaoh’s palace. The Bible implicitly acknowledges their impotence by leaving no record of their response and recording only the reactions of Pharaoh and his advisers.

Union Army Policy on Destruction President Lincoln saw God’s guiding hand in the massive destruction brought about by the Civil War. Foremost in his mind was the human toll in both the North and the South. More than six hundred thousand soldiers lost their lives during the war: approximately 360,000 northerners and 260,000 southerners. Of this total, approximately one-third died of battle-related wounds, while two-thirds died of infectious diseases such as typhoid fever, dysentery, pneumonia, cholera, or malaria. In addition, tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides came out of the war with permanent injuries, such as useless or amputated limbs.7 A Scottish clergyman, David Macrae, toured the South after the war and noted that “it was painful to find many who returned were mutilated, maimed or broken in health exposure.” One soldier who looked whole “showed me that he had an iron rod to strengthen his limb, and enable him to walk without limping, half of his foot being off. Seven wounds had left their marks upon his body.”8 In any battlefield engagement, the number of casualties is a product of several factors including the terrain, the fortifications, and the generals’ strategy and tenacity. Of course, these factors may have various effects upon the combatants. In the Civil War, for example, economic destruction was overwhelmingly concentrated in the secessionist states of the South.9 Civilian populations also suffered differentially as a result of broad policies that escalated as the war progressed. In his work The Hard Hand of War, Mark Grimsley characterizes three stages in the Union army’s policy toward the southern civilian population and their property: conciliation, pragmatism, and hard war.10 Each phase was the result of varying assumptions as to the nature and duration of the conflict and a formula for victory. The conciliatory stage lasted until June 1862, a few months before the issuing of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. The pragmatic phase ended in January 1864. The third phase of hard war lasted the final sixteen months of the war, best represented by Sherman’s quick and crushing March to the Sea. At the beginning of the Civil War, leaders of the North generally believed that a slaveholding aristocracy had started the war, with minimal 238

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support from the masses. This idea – that a handful of demagogues had instigated secession without accurately assessing that it would lead to fullscale war – was reflected in Lincoln’s July 4, 1861, message to a special session of Congress: “There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded South.”11 Consequently, northern leaders assumed that the war would be over in a matter of months. They thought that a series of quick victories would lead rapidly to a dissipation of support for secession and the state of rebellion would cease. It was therefore considered important not to alienate the civilian southern population, because instances of wanton destruction might harden the South’s resolve and even lead to the secession of border states. The policy of military restraint was exemplified in General Order 13a issued by Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell during the occupation of Nashville in February 1862: “Peaceable citizens, regardless of their sympathies, would not be molested in their persons or property. Private property could be used for public purposes whenever military necessity required but only with fair compensation for the owner.”12 Needless to say, not every soldier in every battlefront or occupation fulfilled the letter and spirit of this general order.13 Nevertheless, on the whole these orders were followed. In June and July of 1862, during a campaign to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Union army forces under the command of General George B. McClellan suffered a major defeat at the hands of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, destroying any illusion of a quick Union victory. As a result, northern military and political leaders worked to change the policy governing the treatment of the enemy’s civilian population. On July 12, 1862, Congress passed the Second Confiscation Act, which was harsher and more pragmatic with respect to immediate military needs. This act both authorized the seizure of all property belonging to individuals who continued to engage in rebellion and freed any of their slaves who might reach Union lines. General orders issued by Major General John Pope reflected this new pragmatic policy. His decrees included the following: Soldiers should live off the land as far as practical and compensate only loyal citizens for goods requisitioned. A house from which a Union soldier was fired upon should be destroyed. There should be no guards posted to protect private property.

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As a result of the policy changes, a Chicago Tribune headline declared, “The Kid Glove Policy Abandoned.”14 The new orders produced a brief, atypical wave of pillaging that, according to one officer, “completely desolated the country, vegetables, fruits, corn and everything that could be used, are swept clean as if a swarm of Pharaoh’s locusts had been here.”15 At this stage of the Civil War, moderation still reigned. General Grant’s goal was to create a passive civilization and not a demoralized one.16 Destruction was generally driven by short-term needs rather than by longterm policy. Railroad track and infrastructure were destroyed so as to disrupt southern supply lines. Local industry was destroyed when it was clearly linked to the war effort. In one case, such destruction included even a cloth factory that was manufacturing material stitched with the insignia of the Confederacy.17 Both sides often foraged for food, taking as much as was needed and also at times destroying crops that could be of immediate value to the enemy.18 Frequently, foraging armies did not differentiate between property owned by friend or foe. The governor of North Carolina used biblical imagery to denounce the ravages of his own Confederate cavalry: “If God Almighty had yet in store another plague worse than all others which he intended to have let loose on the Egyptians in case Pharaoh still hardened his heart, I am sure it must have been a regiment or so of half-armed, halfdisciplined Confederate cavalry.”19 Union generals tried to avoid uncontrolled pillaging by restricting foraging to specially identified units under specific guidelines. There was also a general prohibition from entering private homes. If a house were entered, the intrusion was supposed to be limited to the common areas.20 The most severe destruction was in response to southern guerrilla activity, as noted in Major General Pope’s second edict. Guerrillas were viewed as “enemies of mankind with rights due to pirates and robbers.”21 On the whole, local inhabitants were held accountable for guerrilla actions. Union General Henry W. Halleck wrote, “We have no other remedy for this ambush firing than to hold the neighborhood fully responsible, though the punishment may fall on the wrong places.” Sherman burned down the village of Randolph, Tennessee, in response to bushwhackers firing on the vessel Eugene. In another instance of firing on river steamers, he ordered the destruction of all houses and crops along a fifteen-mile stretch of the Mississippi River. Similarly, Brigadier General Thomas C. Ewing banished approximately ten thousand people from a four-county area in Missouri in retaliation for continuing irregular warfare in northern Missouri. The final phase of the war, beginning in early 1864, Grimsley labeled the “hard hand of war.”22 When Grant was elevated to General-in-Chief in 240

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command of all the armies of the North, he defined the primary goal of the war as demoralizing the South. He strove to prove to the South that it could not withstand the Union’s might and that the existence of a Confederate government was a mere illusion. This policy made large-scale destruction of southern property routine and allocated significant military resources to implement this “directed destruction.” Factories were now destroyed because of their significance to the overall southern economy, even if they made no direct contribution to the war effort. The railroad infrastructure was destroyed even though it was not part of a southern military supply line. General Sherman’s march of two hundred twenty miles from Atlanta to Savannah began on November 15, 1864. The goal was to demonstrate to the South that the Confederate armies were no longer capable of protecting their citizens.23 “If the North can march an army right through the South, it is proof positive that the North can prevail.”24 This vision of the war articulated by Sherman was also consistent with his much earlier words to Grant – “They cannot be made to love us, but they can be made to fear us, and dread the passage of our troops through their country. We cannot change the hearts of those people in the South, but we can make the war so terrible that they will realize the fact that, however, brave and gallant and devoted to their country, still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.”25 Sherman made the strategic decision not to hold Atlanta. After evacuating its citizens, his forces destroyed a foundry, an oil refinery, a freight warehouse, dry goods stores, theaters, fire stations, hotels, and slave markets.26 Fires set by Union troops got out of hand and ultimately destroyed two hundred acres.27 The sixty thousand soldiers who marched for five weeks to Savannah left behind a sixty-mile wide swath of desolation across the center of Georgia. From Savannah Sherman wrote, “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies.”28 The destructive force of Sherman’s army took on added ferocity as it crossed the border into South Carolina, the heart of the Confederacy. South Carolina, the first state to secede, was where the first shots of the war had been fired. Union soldiers wanted to punish the state for all the pain and suffering that resulted from its lead.29 Entire towns were torched and their finer residences pillaged and destroyed. The greatest destruction occurred when one-third of Columbia, the state capital, burned to the ground; however, the cause of this massive conflagration is shrouded in the fog of war.30 One survivor, Rabbi Henry S. Jacobs, described his experience: “I will not now recall the horrors of that Sabbath eve (the 17th of February), when I 241

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and my family were driven forth from our home to a park in the suburbs, where wrapped in blankets we passed Friday night, and nearly the whole Sabbath. Save a change or two of raiment and my phylacteries, I lost everything in the world – clothing, furniture, books, manuscripts, provisions, even my canonicals and prayer shawls.” Rabbi Jacobs was able to recover only one partially burned Torah scroll out of eight that had been in the Tree of Life Synagogue.31 Clearly both Egypt and the South experienced massive economic destruction that intensified throughout the conflict. The ruin almost fulfilled Lincoln’s words from his second Inaugural address: “Yet, if God wills that [the war] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” In both instances, the single largest financial loss that the slaveowners incurred was the loss of slave labor. Furthermore, Egypt and both sides in the Civil War incurred a heavy toll in human lives. In each case, the pride of the next generation was struck down in its prime. The firstborn of Egypt were killed in their sleep and its military elite drowned in the sea. In both North and South, their youth were destroyed by fatal plagues: dysentery, typhoid fever, and a hail of steel bullets.

Oppressors Reassert Control Both the vanquished Egyptians and southerners strove to bring closure to their suffering. After the tenth plague, the humbled Egyptians hurried the Israelites’ departure. In the South the will to fight was gone, reflected in the South’s high desertion rates at the close of the war. Although the average soldier had no voice in the politics of peace, he could vote with his feet. By early spring 1865, Confederate strength east of the Mississippi had been reduced by half.32 As Sherman’s army “loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,” Major James A. Connolly observed, “citizens everywhere look paralyzed and as if stricken dumb as we pass them.”33 There was probably the same defeated look on Egyptian faces as “the Children of Israel went forth with an upraised hand, before the eyes of all Egypt” (Numbers 33:3). Yet the battle was not over. Amazingly, Pharaoh rallied his troops for one last attempt to retain control of the slave population. “The heart of Pharaoh and his servants became transformed regarding the people and they said, ‘What is that we have done that we have sent away Israel from serving us?’ He harnessed his chariot and took his people with him. He took six hundred elite chariots and all of the chariots of 242

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Egypt, with officers on them all” (Exodus 14:5–7). This last attempt to reassert control ended only when the chariots became stuck in the mud and the walls of the Sea of Reeds came crashing down. The South was more effective than Pharaoh in its attempts to reassert control immediately over former slaves. Within a couple of months of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, the vast majority of southern forces were well on their way home. Military historians have debated why the war did not carry on in the form of guerrilla warfare; the conditions were well suited for such a continued struggle.34 Although the will to prolong the struggle on the battlefield was gone, there was still considerable political energy to continue the fight to save the southern way of life. The South was not ready to accept the end of slavery: “Their whole thought and time will be given to plans for getting things back as near to slavery as possible.”35 Before 1865 came to a close, state legislatures in Mississippi and South Carolina established a trend by passing a series of laws, so-called Black Codes, designed to limit the freedom of blacks, especially their ability to control their economic destiny. These codes required blacks to sign annual contracts with employers, with severe penalties for leaving a job before the contract’s expiration, and punished the crime of vagrancy with forced labor on plantations. Worse yet were the apprenticeship laws, which were abused to force thousands of minors to work for white “guardians” without compensation and split up families once again.36 Fortunately, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867, curbed the worst of these legislativelysanctioned abuses, at least temporarily. It would be another hundred years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forced the South as well as the North to take the next leap forward to African-American equality.

Devastated Aftermath As the walls of water engulfed the Egyptian army, the Bible closed the book on Egypt. The narrative goes on to follow the Children of Israel on their sojourn into the Wilderness of Sinai toward their national destiny, first at Mount Sinai and then on to the Promised Land. The Egyptian bodies and body politic were left behind with no further mention for the Bible reader. We cannot even guess the post-exodus turmoil in Egypt, but we can summarize the continued economic and social turmoil of postbellum South. It took two decades for the South’s total commodity output to reach 1860’s prewar levels.37 Per capita income in the South declined from $103 in 1860 to $88 in 1880, while in the North it grew from $141 to $205.38 The South sustained an estimated $1 billion to $1.5 billion in direct property damage.39 This included a third of its livestock and half its farm machinery. 243

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Factories and railroads were destroyed and leading commercial centers such as Richmond, Charleston, Columbia, and Atlanta were decimated by fire and remained so for years following the end of the military conflict.40 The continued impoverishment and slow recovery until 1870 could be directly linked to the devastation of war. However, Ransom and Sutch argue that the physical devastation was not the primary cause of the long-term stagnation. Freed blacks, men, women, and children, no longer worked the egregious hours forced upon them by masters intent on maximizing the return on their investment. They estimate that per-capita decline in manhours was between twenty-eight and thirty-seven percent and that this reduction closely corresponded to the estimates of economic decline in the South.41 Freedmen sharecroppers had to give fifty percent of their yields to the farm owner. Therefore, they had little incentive to work harder and longer hours, especially now that they had opportunities to enjoy their leisure time. Furthermore, black men asserted their freedom and pride by reducing the time that their wives and children worked the fields.42 Other factors also restricted long-term economic revitalization. The financial markets were inefficient and there was not enough capital available to help jumpstart a postwar revival.43 The total regional decline mirrored losses at the individual level. The hardest hit psychologically were the wealthy plantation owners who had owned hundreds of slaves. In 1860, nearly two-thirds of the richest men in the United States, with estates worth more $100,000, were to be found in the South. By 1870, four-fifths of the richest were northerners.44 In a letter to a former staff officer, General Braxton Bragg described his own postwar experience as “left without a dollar at the close of our shameful and degrading contest.” He continued: “All was lost, except my debts and not even sympathy much less assistance was extended to me. I wended my way back to the woods here, where I was offered a place to hide my head.” His new backwoods abode was a “Negro cabin.” A common postwar theme was that the change in circumstance was particularly difficult for women. “It is crushing when I look to my poor wife, raised in affluence and luxury, but now without the comforts and expecting to be even deprived of the necessities of life.”45 David Macrae, the Scottish traveler and observer, similarly wrote, “Ladies who before the war had lived in affluence with black servants round them to attend to their every wish, were boarding together in half-furnished houses, cooking their own food and washing their own linen, some of them, I was told, so utterly destitute that they did not know when they finished one meal where they were to find the next.”46 William Faulkner’s novels and short stories portrayed the fall of

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the antebellum planter class. Miss Emily Grierson, a character in a Faulkner short story, personifies the helplessness of its members.47 From the biblical narrative we know that in Egypt “there was not a house with no corpse” (Exodus 12:30). The death of all the firstborn would have created enormous turmoil. The firstborn had preference in inheritance and right of succession.48 They would have been educated and trained to be the leaders of the next generation. Their sudden death wreaked havoc in all plans for succession both at the national and personal level.

Breaking the Will of the Leadership God’s battle against Pharaoh and the Egyptians had two objectives. The primary goal was to set the Israelites free to journey toward their destiny at the mountain of God, Mount Sinai. However, this could have been achieved more quickly with one catastrophic, all-encompassing plague. The sequence of ten plagues demonstrated that one God controlled all the diverse forces of nature. The development of God’s complex message required that Pharaoh not yield too soon: “But I shall harden Pharaoh’s heart and I shall multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 7:3). This same message was reiterated before the start of the locust plague: “Come to Pharaoh, for I have made his heart and the heart of his servants stubborn so that I can put these signs of Mine in his midst. And so that you may relate in the ears of your son and your son’s son that I made a mockery of Egypt and My signs that I placed among them – that you may know that I am God” (Exodus 10:1–2). Philosophers have long debated the extent to which Pharaoh’s free will was circumscribed when God hardened his heart.49 This philosophical issue is beyond the scope of this work. Instead, our focus is on the language used to describe Pharaoh’s persistence in the face of seemingly overwhelming power. Throughout the extensive narrative, Pharaoh’s rejoinders are not a mere repetition of “No, I will not let them go.” The dialogue between Pharaoh and Moses provides insight into Pharaoh’s changing attitude. These conversations often occurred in the presence of Pharaoh’s advisers. The two main groups that were by Pharaoh’s side were magicians or necromancers who specialized in incantations, and servants or senior aides.50 The Bible’s record of the reaction of these advisers to the sequence of plagues and their remarks to Pharaoh provide added perspective on the changing attitudes wrought by God’s plagues. Leader Incredulity In the first meeting with Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh cavalierly dismissed the whole premise of the initial request in the name of God. “Who is God that I 245

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should heed his voice?” (Exodus 5:2). One can hear the sarcasm in his words. When they repeated and clarified the request, the reader can well imagine Pharaoh rising in anger and attacking them personally: “Moses and Aaron, why do you distract the people from their work?” (Exodus 5:4). It is easy to understand Pharaoh’s incredulity when he was first approached by Moses, the leader of the Israelite slaves and the representative of a previously unknown deity. The Midrash embellishes the story, describing how Pharaoh sent his scribes scurrying throughout his extensive library in a vain search for the name of the god to whom Moses referred. It was then that Pharaoh asked, “Who is God?” Similarly, neither Abraham Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis expected secession to actually occur, nor did they anticipate a civil war of any significant duration. Throughout the 1850s, Lincoln belittled southern threats of secession. As late as 1858 he joked, “There was no more likelihood that the North and South would be at war with one another than for the people of Vermont to raise sugar cane.” During the campaign of 1860 Lincoln wrote, “The people of the South have too much good sense and good temper to attempt the ruin of the government, at least so I hope and believe.”51 Although Lincoln was elected in November of that year, he did not take the oath of office until four months later. Before the year was out, South Carolina became the first state to secede; within a matter of weeks, six other Lower South states followed its lead. Lincoln refused to acknowledge the threat of war. To him, the current situation was analogous to the Nullification Crisis of 1832, which had also been precipitated by South Carolina.52 At that time, President Andrew Jackson threatened and prepared to use troops in order to enforce the laws of the United States. His decision was supported by the passage of the Force Bill in 1832. In the end, South Carolina backed down and rescinded the nullification. Thereafter, Congress passed a compromise on the tariff issue and the nullification crisis was over. Despite bloody battles in Kansas starting in 1856, Lincoln could not envisage a massive conflict on the scale that became the Civil War. To Lincoln, threats of secession were mere political posturing that was reminiscent of the negotiating tactics of the 1850s. In his inaugural address, he appealed to southerners to exercise restraint and give his administration time to demonstrate its willingness to accept the status quo. Fort Sumter was attacked five weeks later. Even then, Lincoln started preparing the country for limited military action. At that point, his goal was only to recover the forts that had been taken over.

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On the other hand, Southern leaders did not believe that their actions would precipitate a full-scale military response from the north. One can imagine many southern leaders saying, “Who is Lincoln that I should heed his voice?” Jefferson Davis and his vice president, Alexander Stephens, did not believe that the North would invade the South to impose its will or that northerners would kill their brethren to save the Union. Furthermore, they trusted that the South would be victorious if the North were to attack, and that even if the war were to stretch for many years, King Cotton would prevail. For one thing, southern leaders were counting on the British, a world superpower, to enter the conflict on their side to ensure a steady supply of cotton for the growing British textile industry. On occasion, Southern leaders predicted a bloody war in hopes that the prospect would discourage the North from attempting to resist their secession from the Union. The South viewed its actions as a continuation of the first American Revolution, and wanted the North to know that southerners were prepared to fight to preserve their way of life. In the end, both sides were blind to the reality of what could and would happen once the country plunged into war. They could no more see the future than Pharaoh was able to perceive God.

Leadership Legitimacy At the close of the initial confrontation with Moses, Pharaoh decreed that the Israelites must now gather their own straw but still meet their quota of bricks. Pharaoh’s words and deeds are classic negotiating tactics for a situation in which the opposing negotiators have not even established their legitimacy to represent the group for whom they claim to speak. His action was designed to drive a wedge between Moses and the Israelites. Pharaoh could challenge Moses and Aaron’s right to speak for Israel because they stood alone before Pharaoh. The original divine plan had fallen victim to the free will – and the cowardice – of the Israelite elders. God had told Moses, “You and the elders of Israel shall come to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord God of the Hebrews happened upon us. Now let us go on a three-day journey in the wilderness, and we shall bring offerings to the Lord our God’” (Exodus 3:18). The Bible records that at the conclusion of the meeting between the elders and Aaron and Moses, the people had come to believe the signs that God had given. However, later the Bible records, “Afterward, Moses and Aaron came and said to the Pharaoh.” There is no mention of elders accompanying them. The Midrash fills in the narrative gap, describing how the elders started out by accompanying Moses and Aaron to the first

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meeting with Pharaoh but disappeared one by one before reaching the palace. Nehama Leibowitz renders the Midrash in modern prose: How typical a picture! How true to life! All greet the dramatic tidings with expression of joy and gratitude. Enthusiasm is boundless. Confidence in Moses and Aaron is at a zenith. Unanimously” it is decided to go to Pharaoh, to demand their freedom, to follow Moses and Aaron to the ends of the earth. Early the next day, they march en masse towards Pharaoh’s palace. But soon sobriety sets in. Doubts sprout up like mushrooms. Will Pharaoh heed? What are the chances? Will our appearance really make a difference? Is it all worth it? And so one by one they begin to drop out. Not according to prearranged plan, not by a “unanimous” vote, but quietly, stealthily. And upon arrival, Moses and Aaron are alone, two individuals facing the king of the great Egyptian empire, a powerful and ruthless monarch. They were but two old men, without an army, without military force, without a rearguard, lacking even strong moral support; for representatives of the poor and pitiful nation in whose name they have come to speak have abandoned them.53

At the start of the Civil War, the issue of legitimate leadership was at the core of the conflict. The South viewed Lincoln’s status as president as illegitimate. Conversely, President Lincoln viewed the act of secession as illegitimate. He refused to recognize the Confederates States of America as a legal entity. Abraham Lincoln was the first president to be elected by just one region of the country. He won the electoral vote by taking all the free states with the exception of part of New Jersey, which was won by Stephen Douglas, the northern Democratic nominee. Although Lincoln’s share of the total popular vote was just under forty percent, it was enough to win almost sixty percent of the Electoral College.54 The South wondered how Lincoln could be president of all the United States when he publicly and repeatedly denounced the lifestyle of the southern states as immoral. His party platform and personal ideals were committed to leading the country toward the ultimate extinction of slavery and reconstructing a “house undivided,” a nation that was totally free. Before the election, Otho Robards Singleton, a southern Democrat, articulated the southern attitude that any future Republican president would be in violation of his oath of office by not enforcing laws that protect slave holdings, thus abusing his role as Commander-in-Chief to achieve his own goals: A man who will walk into the United States Senate and put his hand on the Bible and take an oath to support the Constitution of the United 248

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States so long as he remains a member of that body, and then, before he is seated in his place, rise up and declare that there is a higher law than the Constitution to control his action upon the subject of slavery, is not fit to be the ruler of the nation. We will never commit our institutions to the keeping of a man who will not respect the Constitution though sworn to do it. We can never quietly stand by and permit the control of the Army and Navy to pass into the hands of a Black Republican President.55 With the military and naval forces at his command, he would be prepared to execute the threats of coercion indulged in upon this floor.56

On the other side, Lincoln refused to acknowledge the existence of the Confederate States of America. He would not enter discussions or negotiations related to the relationship between the CSA and the United States. Before the country entered a war triggered by the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln sent signals of his intentions regarding plans to provision the fort, but refused formal negotiations on the fort’s future. He repeated his commitment not to attack slavery directly through legislation. He even supported an amendment to the Constitution that would protect slavery permanently in the states in which it already existed.57 But he would do nothing to undermine the sanctity of the Union as it had existed prior to secession: “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would do that.”58 Thus, recognition of the Confederacy as a legitimate political entity was out of the question for Lincoln.

Signs, Wonders, and Negotiations When Moses and Aaron returned for a second confrontation, they brought with them signs to demonstrate that they were God’s emissaries. They turned a staff into a crocodile in front of Pharaoh and his aides.59 Pharaoh, unimpressed, called his magicians, who replicated the transformation. Egypt was, after all, a society steeped in magic. Its belief system included hundreds of gods and magicians.60 Conjurers were constantly challenged to use their special incantations to keep the pantheon in balance. Unfortunately for Pharaoh, however, in this instance, Aaron’s staff swallowed those of the magicians. “The heart of Pharaoh was strong and he did not heed them” (Exodus 7:13) is the narrative’s abrupt comment. The magicians who stood beside Pharaoh through the first three plagues had a special role: to undermine the credibility of Moses and Aaron.61 The two Hebrew leaders initiated the plagues with dramatic effect but, in contrast to Pharaoh’s magicians, Moses never used an incantation to bring about a plague. Before some of the plagues, he merely told Pharaoh what was about 249

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to happen. He spoke to God only to ask that a plague be halted, never in order to begin one. At the announcement of the first plague, Moses and Aaron again confronted Pharaoh in the presence of his aides on the banks of the Nile. Aaron used the staff to turn the water into blood, but again the magicians with their incantations were able to do the same thing. Having seen two socalled signs of God replicated by his magicians, Pharaoh left and returned to the palace. “He did not take this to heart either” (Exodus 7:23). In introducing the plague of frogs, Moses identified distinct groups that would be attacked: Pharaoh, his aides, and finally the common people. Once again, magical incantations were able to replicate the bringing forth of frogs. However, unlike the plague of blood, which ended after seven days, the invasion of frogs went on longer. When Pharaoh called upon Moses and Aaron to pray to God to end the plague, he implicitly admitted the existence of this God. Along with the prayer, Pharaoh perfunctorily included the statement that the Israelite nation would be sent out to bring offerings to God. Once the plague had ended, however, Pharaoh hardened his heart and ignored the original request once again. At this stage, Egypt had experienced no permanent damage, and Pharaoh had seen no hint of the breadth and strength of the God of the Hebrews in whose name Moses spoke. Since Moses gave no advance warning of the plague of lice,62 there was no dialogue. As the lice infestation spread, the sorcerers stepped forward on their own initiative and attempted to demonstrate their mastery over the kingdom of lice, but they failed. Amazingly, they acknowledged to Pharaoh, “It is the finger of God!” (Exodus 8:15). Yet although they were the first to recognize that the power arrayed against Egypt was not just some new magic trick, their words were unconvincing and Pharaoh steeled his heart. In the next phase, the plagues were intended not only to demonstrate God’s power but also to emphasize God’s guardianship of His nation, the Israelites. The warning of the approaching plague of wild animals targeted Pharaoh, his aides, and the Egyptian people separately once more. For the first time the Bible notes permanent damage: “The land was being ruined because of the swarm” (Exodus 8:20). For the first time, Pharaoh seems to react seriously. He begins his remarks to Moses and Aaron with the offer to allow them to sacrifice to “their” God without first requesting an end to the plague. Pharaoh’s offer was an opening position in exploratory negotiations, as he attempted to discern the true limits to Moses’ request. Pharaoh restricted the Israelites to bring “offerings in the land.” This was a reasonable limitation, especially in light of God’s own choice of words in describing the goal of this plague, “So that you will know that I am God in the midst of the land’” (Exodus 8:18). 250

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Was it not reasonable, therefore, for Pharaoh to suggest the Israelites make their offerings within the land of Egypt to a God who wishes to prove that He is present upon the earth? Moses argued the unacceptability of the offer and requested permission to journey three days into the wilderness. Pharaoh tentatively agreed to the wilderness journey but did not acknowledge the three-day specification. Instead, he countered with “only do not go far off” (Exodus 8:24). In this negotiation, Moses ignored the last comment, accepted Pharaoh’s offer, but tendered a last warning cognizant of the fact that Pharaoh had backed out of his commitment once before: “Only let Pharaoh not continue to mock, by not sending out the people to bring offerings to God” (Exodus 8:27). Unfortunately, the Bible does not come with a tape recording that would enable us to appreciate Moses’ tone of voice – perhaps one suggesting that Pharaoh should, in essence, “stop playing with us”? Nevertheless, when the plague ended, Pharaoh stiffened his resolve and again refused to send the Israelites on their way. The infectious disease that struck the Egyptian cattle – the fifth plague – once again demonstrated God’s ability to protect the Israelites while attacking the Egyptians. This was noteworthy since the cattle of the two groups grazed side by side in Goshen.63 Pharaoh’s reaction was both interesting and puzzling. He sent out people to check what had happened. They reported back that in fact, not a single head of Israelite-owned cattle had died. Pharaoh’s astrologers might have been able to provide an astrological sign that explained why the land of Goshen had been protected from the previous plague of wild animals, but how could they explain the difference between a disease that killed one of two animals that lived side by side?64 Yet all that is recorded in the next verse is that Pharaoh stiffened his resolve once more. Unlike the earlier plagues, there was no reason to summon Moses and Aaron, since the plague ended with the death of the Egyptian cattle. Here, at what would turn out to be the halfway point of the plagues, Pharaoh demonstrated little willingness to yield, even though on several earlier occasions he had made half-hearted offers to negotiate. Shortly thereafter, the plague of boils and blisters arrived with no warning. Moses stood before Pharaoh and dramatically tossed handfuls of furnace soot toward the heavens. This soot, like the ash of a volcanic eruption, spread far and wide, blistering the skin of the people and animals of Egypt. At this juncture there was a break in the unified support for Pharaoh. The Bible records, “The necromancers could not stand before Moses because of the boils.” The attack of boils was especially focused on the magicians and disabled them so badly that they could not stand. However, 251

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the Ramban interprets the inability to “stand before Moses” to be the result of their embarrassment at their failure to cure themselves.65 They could no longer argue that everything Moses had done was mere magic. Pharaoh, who had drawn strength from his court magicians, might have faltered and yielded at this point but for the fact that, as the Bible notes for the first time, “God strengthened the heart of Pharaoh.” God thus circumscribed Pharaoh’s free will in order to lead him down the path that Pharaoh himself had demonstrated repeatedly that he wished to pursue. With the next set of plagues, which emphasized God’s omnipotence, the Bible records how Pharaoh began to lose the support of his aides. In introducing the plague of hail, God first raised the pressure on Egypt: “This time I shall send all of My plagues against your heart” (Exodus 9:14). He then offered the Egyptians the opportunity to avoid the hail simply by gathering their cattle and people indoors. The Bible notes that some of Pharaoh’s aides who had come to fear the word of God heeded the warning. Of course, Pharaoh did not, but it was during the fiery hailstorm that he summoned Moses and Aaron and admitted for the first time that he had sinned and that he and his nation were in the wrong. He even made a hurried unconditional offer to let the Israelites go. Moses responded rapidly to his request, praying to God and stopping the hail. Interestingly, there did not seem to be any serious negotiation about sending out the Israelites. Pharaoh simply stated, “I will let you go and you shall stay no longer” (Exodus 9:28). For his part, Moses made it clear that he did not believe this was a serious offer. “I know that you will not yet fear the Lord God” (Exodus 9:30). Indeed, once Pharaoh saw the hail subside, he recovered the strength to resist and instilled the same in his aides. But their continued support would not last long.

The South Considers Emancipation In contrast, the South did engage in serious debate about emancipating its slaves, with some leaders seeing emancipation as a desperate measure to save what they considered their primary objective: independence. On January 2, 1864, General Patrick Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee made one of the first formal proposals for recruiting slaves into the Confederate army and for guaranteeing freedom within a reasonable period of time to those slaves who would remain true to the Confederacy: “Emancipation would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause and place independence above every question of property.”66 However, Jefferson Davis quashed for the time being any discussion of the Cleburne’s recommendation. In the latter half of 1864, the Civil War turned decidedly against the South. They had already lost the battle of Gettysburg and Sherman was 252

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marching through Tennessee and Georgia. Overall, morale was weakening and desertions were escalating. Accordingly, Judah P. Benjamin, the Confederacy’s pragmatic secretary of state, orchestrated a behind-the-scenes effort to win support for Cleburne’s radical proposal. He hoped this plan would achieve three goals: win intervention from Great Britain and France in favor of the Confederacy, provide crucial manpower for the Confederate forces to counterbalance losses from disease, desertion67 and defeat, and take away a major justification for the North to continue the war.68 Benjamin’s strategy was to gain support for the proposal from General Robert E. Lee in order to win over Congress, and from First Lady Varina Davis to win over her husband. Although Benjamin contemplated outright emancipation, he was only able to convince Davis to consider freedom for slaves who would fight for the South. As it was, Davis made only an ambiguous reference to this idea in his November 7, 1864, annual message to Congress. Four months later, General Lee wrote to a Virginia state senator, “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves used against us, or use them ourselves at the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our social institutions.”69 Benjamin, with support from Davis, put forth his proposal in February 1865, provoking intense public debate. Ironically, he spoke at a public rally held in what was the largest auditorium in Richmond – a Negro church. For the most part, however, his plan was greeted with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Howell Cobb, the former governor of Georgia, wrote to the Secretary of War, “If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”70 Even Robert Toombs, the first Secretary of State of the Confederacy71 and a leading advocate for peace negotiations, wrote, “The worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves.” In four days of debate and voting, the Senate passed only a watered-down version of the plan while also debating a resolution of no confidence in the secretary of state. What eventually emerged from the Congress in early March was a slave enlistment bill that made no reference to emancipation.72 Not surprisingly, few slaves responded to this call to volunteer. Within two months, Robert E. Lee had surrendered and the whole issue became moot.

Climax: Negotiating a Lost Cause Egypt headed toward the final, climactic three plagues with Pharaoh obstinately refusing to let the Israelites leave. The warning regarding the arrival of the locusts was the most graphic of all: “It will cover the surface of the earth so that no one will be able to see the earth. They will fill your houses, the houses of all your servants and all of Egypt” (Exodus 10:5–6). 253

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After issuing the warning, Moses and Aaron turned and left, but they probably did not go far. They sensed the crumbling spirit of Pharaoh’s advisers.73 The aides then turned on Pharaoh: “How long will this be a snare for us? Send out the men that they may serve the Lord their God! Do you not yet know that Egypt is lost?” (Exodus 10:7). For them, the conflict was over. They needed no more convincing. Thus it seems that their response forced Pharaoh into unwanted negotiations. Moses and Aaron were brought back but, unlike past instances, the Bible does not record that Pharaoh sent for them.74 His opening line was, essentially, “Very well, you may go, but who is going with you?” Moses responded that the men, women, children, and all their cattle would go to worship their God. Pharaoh, the leader and reluctant negotiator, then used a classic ploy for a time when one’s aides have lost their nerve: entering negotiations in order to prove that the other side’s request is unreasonable. He asked a leading question: “Which ones are going?” Within his frame of reference, it would have been natural for only the male elders to go and hold the ceremony, and it was exactly what his aides had requested: “Send out the men.” There should be no need for everyone to go if Moses and Aaron simply desired a national celebration of their God. However, Pharaoh was trying to prove that Moses’s request had an unstated ulterior motive – complete and total emancipation.75 “The evil intent is before your faces,” said Pharaoh (Exodus 10:10). Jefferson Davis faced a similar situation in the latter stages of the Civil War. When the Second Congress of the Confederacy convened in November 1864, it considered several proposals to make peace. At about the same time, Governor Joseph E. Brown of Georgia, a leading proponent of states’ rights within the Confederacy, pushed for a peace convention of Confederate states.76 Another major advocate for peace negotiations was Vice President Alexander Stephens. However, Davis continued to be unrealistically optimistic about winning the war and if the war were to be lost, he preferred losing it on the battlefield rather than negotiating a cowardly peace. He placated the peace movement by authorizing a commission of three peace proponents, including Stephens, to represent the Confederacy at a meeting on February 3, 1865. That meeting became known as the Hampton Roads Peace Conference. Representing the Union was not only Secretary of State Seward but President Lincoln as well. Davis’s ploy was to attempt to prove that Lincoln was unreasonable. He told the commissioners that “they could make any treaty but one that involved reconstruction of the Federal Union,”77 since the Confederacy’s independence remained a non-negotiable

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issue for Davis. Of course, he knew that Lincoln’s single-minded desire to save the Union made this one condition a negotiation non-starter. Lincoln’s response lived up to Davis’s expectations. Lincoln was also unwilling to entertain serious negotiations by this late date in the conflict. His conditions included restoration of the national authority in Washington as the government of one country, total end to war, disbanding of forces hostile to the Union government, and no receding on the emancipation of slaves. (The House of Representatives had completed Congressional ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery on January 31, 1865, just days before the conference.)78 Davis’s strategy thus worked. The commissioners’ report turned southern sentiment away from further negotiations and was used to rekindle the South’s last days of fighting spirit. A few days later, Davis declared, “Never to submit to the disgrace of surrender” and predicted that southern armies would yet “compel the Yankees, in less than twelve months, to petition us for peace on our own terms.”79 At this point, Vice President Stephens apparently had had enough, calling Davis’s rhetoric “brilliant but little short of dementation.” He left the Confederate capital and returned home to Georgia.80 Despite the hopelessness on the battlefield, Davis had his closest adviser in Secretary of State Benjamin, who nurtured his optimism. He was described as “the last man outside the ark, who assured Noah of his belief that ‘it would not be such a hell of a shower after all.’”81 Benjamin’s support did not waver until Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In the biblical narrative, Pharaoh was now alone, his obstinacy no longer defensible in the view of his magicians and aides. When the plague of locusts struck, Pharaoh hurried Moses and Aaron back in the hope of saving the trees, even if all the fruit and grain had been destroyed. Once again, he used the phrase “I have sinned.” Interestingly, the Bible records no dialogue about negotiations over the departure of the Israelites. Neither Pharaoh nor Moses raised the issue. The ninth plague, impenetrable darkness, arrived without warning or dialogue of any sort. Afterward, Pharaoh called Moses back and modified his earlier offer to include the young ones in their sojourn. However, even faced with a “lost cause,” Pharaoh continued to negotiate, asking that the flocks and herds stay behind. This restricted offer is almost incomprehensible since it had been made clear earlier that the Israelite celebration would include animal sacrifices. Moses’s response was that of someone confronting a totally defeated enemy. He increased his request, saying that not only would they take all their own cattle but that the Egyptians would also have to contribute to the celebration. This additional demand pointed to an end of negotiations. 255

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God hardened Pharaoh’s heart not to give in, but God did not put the words and feelings into Pharaoh’s response. Pharaoh responded by also calling an end to negotiations angrily and irrationally: “Go from me! Beware – do not see my face any more, for on the day you see my face you shall die!” (Exodus 10:28). Yet before Moses left, he delivered the warning of the final plague, death at midnight of all firstborn, “and he left Pharaoh’s presence in hot anger” (Exodus 11:8). The source or cause of Moses’s anger is unexplained in the text. Was he angry at the insolence of Pharaoh’s threat? Moses’ immediate response to the threat was matter-of-fact and to the point: “You have spoken correctly. I shall never see your face again” (Exodus 10:29). Or perhaps he was angry at Pharaoh’s unresponsiveness when told that the next plague would begin with the death of his own son, the firstborn of Pharaoh.82 After all the firstborn had died, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and authorized the Israelite departure according to Moses’s request. The Bible employs an interesting literary style to emphasize Pharaoh’s total acquiescence to Moses’s demands. Five times Pharaoh uses the word gam, which translates as “also,” “even,” or “as well,” as he enumerates each detail of who and what would be allowed to go: “also this” and “even that” (Exodus 12:31–32). In his final words to Moses and Aaron, he asks that when the Israelites celebrate before God, that Pharaoh be personally included in their prayers. Although his capitulation to God now appears complete, it is only temporary. Only a few days later, he will gather his army to pursue the Israelites. On the other hand, Jefferson Davis never even temporarily capitulated. He was captured while fleeing in an effort to continue the war on the other side of the Mississippi River. He was imprisoned for two years awaiting trial, but no trial was ever held. He spent the latter years of his life writing a defense of the lost cause and his actions, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, published in 1881. “Our cause was so just, so sacred that had I known all that has come to pass, had I known what was to be inflicted upon me, all that my country was to suffer, all that our posterity was to endure, I would do it all over again,” he wrote.83 Davis, the Confederate of unconquerable heart, died in in New Orleans in 1889 as a hero in the South. Tens of thousands came to pay their last respects in every city where his body lay in state: New Orleans, Montgomery, Atlanta, and Richmond, his permanent burial place.84

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CHAPTER 20 THE CELEBRATION OF FREEDOM

IN PREPARATION FOR the Exodus, God initiated a new calendar to mark the

start of the Israelite journey through religious history1: “This month shall be for you the beginning of the months, the first of the months of the year” (Exodus 12:2). As the lunar cycle progressed toward the tenth day of this first month, under the zodiac sign of the ram, which the Egyptians worshipped, the Israelites were commanded to select a lamb (or goat) for sacrifice. On the afternoon of the fourteenth, they slaughtered the paschal lamb before returning home to mark their door posts with its blood, participating in a nation-building ritual that also served as a symbolic destruction of Egypt’s gods. The lamb was then consumed in a gathering with family and neighbors on the night of the fifteenth.2 As night fell, the first Passover was transformed from a public-national act of rebellion against the religious culture of Egypt into a private-familial experience. Although the animal sacrifice, the symbol of rebellion, was public, the feast that followed did not allow informal groups and individuals to wander casually from place to place. Instead, it was to be a familycentered, planned activity: “A lamb or kid for each father’s house, a lamb or kid for the household. But if the household should be too small for a lamb or kid, then he and his neighbor who is near his house shall take according to the number of people” (Exodus 12:3–4). Indeed, the household unit was at the center of the miracle: “Who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but He saved our households” (Exodus 12:27). The word “Passover” enshrined in its name the commemoration of the household as the center of the miracle. This focus was reaffirmed for future generations with the law that decreed, “In one house shall it be eaten; you shall not remove any of the meat from the house to the outside” (Exodus 12:46). Behind closed doors the Israelites ate their Passover meal of lamb, matzah, and bitter herbs with their loins girded, sandals on their feet, and staves in hand, signaling their readiness for departure. It was a tense night filled with expectation. God had foretold that “There shall be a great outcry in the entire land of Egypt, such as there has never been and such as there shall never be again” (Exodus 11:6). Then, the Israelites heard their Egyptian

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neighbors reacting to the sudden death of the firstborn: “There was a great outcry in Egypt, for there was not a house where there was no corpse” (Exodus 12:31). The Israelites themselves were prohibited from leaving their homes until daybreak. God had warned them that the forces that would be let loose that night would not differentiate between Israelites and Egyptians outside the houses marked with blood on the doorpost. With reference to the first Passover eve the Bible records simply, “All the Israelites did as God had commanded Moses and Aaron, so did they do” (Exodus 12:50).3 However, in the process of performing the Passover rituals and preparing to leave, did the Israelites really celebrate? Did unrestrained joy fill each household? The Bible is silent on this point. The Midrash, however, notes that the Israelites sang God’s praises, though not songs of joy, in reaction to the entire series of God’s miracles that culminated on this night with the most dramatic and miraculous plague, the death of the firstborn.4 Otherwise, the midrashic literature, which describes the turmoil in the Egyptian homes, provides few details and insights regarding the Israelites’ emotional state.5 Could it be that the fear of an unknown future overwhelmed any sense of joy? They were still surrounded by a powerful Egyptian society that had only recently relaxed its grip on their daily lives. Would the respite be only temporary? What would stop the Egyptians from imposing their will once more? And what of this journey to a Promised Land? Was the land not filled with numerous city-states whose kings would lead a furious battle in order to preserve and protect? The Bible, ex-post facto, implies that the Israelites were not ready to celebrate on that Passover eve. Their fears would not allow it. Only when they saw the miracle at the Sea of Reeds and the military might of Egypt drowned did the message of the exodus sink in: “The people revered God and had faith in God and in Moses His servant” (Exodus 14:31). The Bible’s next words are significant: “Then Moses and the Children of Israel chose to sing this song to God” (Exodus 15:1). The simple word “Then” that begins the Song by the Sea reflects the tremendous sense of relief, joy, and appreciation that the Israelites and Moses felt the moment that the waters closed over their pursuers. They could sing because the image of God the warrior not only allayed their past fears but also inspired courage about the future. “Nations heard and became agitated,” the Israelites sang. “Terror gripped the dwellers of Philistia. Then the chieftains of Edom were confounded, trembling gripped the powers of Moab, all the dwellers of Canaan dissolved.” The song also included a brief prayer: “May fear and terror befall them” (Exodus 15:14–16). With closure brought on by the crashing waves of the Sea of Reeds came this song of relief, celebration, and amazement. Then, when the men were finished singing, the women 258

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commenced their own celebration: “Miriam the prophet, the sister of Aaron, took her drum in hand and all the women went forth with drums and with dances” (Exodus 15:20). In contrast, the Bible records no singing, music, or dancing on the last night in Egypt nor any religious transformation on Passover night when the curtain on the Egyptian sojourn came crashing down.

The Eve of Emancipation The Passover night of expectation has an interesting Civil War parallel: the eve of the confirmation of the Emancipation Proclamation. On September 22, 1862, Lincoln announced a preliminary proclamation and gave one hundred days’ notice that a final proclamation would cover designated states and parts of the states of the South still in rebellion on January 1, 1863. The legality of this war measure was not clear. Many feared that Lincoln would change his mind or delay because of pressures from a variety of sources, including politicians in four border slave states that had not seceded from the Union. Churches in abolitionist strongholds in the North held vigils on New Year’s Eve, singing and praying that Lincoln would stay the course. Blacks placed candles in the windows of their homes. Early on New Year’s Day a large crowd of abolitionists gathered in Boston’s Music Hall. The event included many of America’s greatest poets of the day, including John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, who read his poem “Boston Hymn.” In the evening a crowd gathered at Tremont Temple in Boston still waiting to hear affirmation of the original proclamation.6 Frederick Douglass recounted the scene: Every moment of waiting chilled our hopes, and strengthened our fears. We were waiting and listening as for a bolt from the sky, which would rend the fetters of four million slaves; we were watching, as it were, by the dim light of the stars, for the dawn of a new day; we were longing for the answer to the agonizing prayers of centuries. Eight, nine, ten o’clock came and went, and still no word. A visible shadow seemed falling on the expecting throng. “It is coming!” “It is on the wires!” Joy and gladness exhausted all forms of expression from shouts of praise, to sobs and tears.7

That same afternoon in the District of Columbia, the black community awaited the publication of that day’s Evening Star so they could read Lincoln’s proclamation. Reverend Henry Turner of Israel Bethel Church tore off a section of the newspaper with the proclamation and ran headlong through the streets to his church while he waved the piece of paper over his head. After an emotional reading in the church, “great processions of colored and white men marched to and fro and passed in front of the White House and 259

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congratulated President Lincoln who appeared at a window and acknowledged them by bowing.”8 The celebrations in Boston were far removed from the nearest slave affected by the proclamation. The slaves of Washington, D.C., were also not covered by the proclamation, since they had already been freed on April 16, 1862, which they formally celebrated en masse three days later.9 One January 1 celebration in the South took place on the Smith plantation in Port Royal, South Carolina, which served as the state headquarters of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson.10 He described his group’s January 1 celebration: The colors were presented to us. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, there suddenly arose a strong male voice, into which two women’s voices instantly blended, singing as if by an impulse that could be no more repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow, My Country, ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing! Firmly and irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of the colored people joined in. I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last unloosed. Just think of it! – the first day they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people, and here, while mere spectators stood in silence, waiting for my stupid words, these simple souls burst forth in their lay [song], as if they were by their own hearths at home!11

The Emancipation Proclamation set in motion events that led to the demise of slavery. Its immediate impact, however, was limited to the psychological and political lift it gave to the forces of abolition, especially to former slaves. In practical terms it freed no slaves until Union forces overran designated sections of the South that had been in rebellion on January 1, 1863. Slaves in cities and towns were more often the first to hear the news, as these were frequent targets of Union advances, and garrisons were left behind to enforce the new order. For some slaves, the first hint that things were changing could be sensed in the hushed whispers of their masters and mistresses. This might be followed several days later by the sight of bedraggled Confederate forces retreating from the Union army. Finally, as Union forces overran cities, towns, villages and plantations, word of emancipation spread. Word of the proclamation, however, took years to reach many slaves, and some on remote plantations slaves did not hear of it 260

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Emancipation celebration in Washington, D.C. – April 19, 1866.

Black soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation in a slave cabin.

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until long after the war was over. The most famous delay occurred in Texas. General Gordon Granger arrived at the port of Galveston almost two and a half years after the proclamation had been issued. His arrival on June 19, 1865, celebrated today as Juneteenth, brought word of emancipation that spread quickly throughout Texas. Booker T. Washington was nine years old when official word of the proclamation reached his slave plantation in Virginia in 1865. He wrote: Freedom was in the air, and had been for months. The “grape-vine telegraph” was kept busy night and day. The news and mutterings of great events were swiftly carried from one plantation to another. As the great day drew nearer, there was more singing in the slave quarters than usual. Now they gradually threw off the mask, and were not afraid to let it be known that the “freedom” in their songs meant freedom of the body in this world. The night before the eventful day, word was sent to the slave quarters to the effect that something unusual was going to take place at the “big house” the next morning. There was little if any sleep that night. All was excitement and expectancy. The most distinct thing I now recall was that some man who seemed to be a stranger (a United States officer, I presume) made a little speech and then read a rather long paper – the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. After the reading, we were told that we were all free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother, who was standing by my side, leaned over and kissed her children, while tears ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it all meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see. For some minutes there was great rejoicing and thanksgiving and wild scenes of ecstasy.12 One powerful image of the moment of freedom is captured in an illustration of a black soldier reading the Emancipation Proclamation in a slave home (Illustration 20). Other slaves received the message from representatives of the Freedmen’s Bureau, or from local clergy who spread the word. Some were told, ironically, by aggressive planters who were seeking to “hire” new workers to fill recently created gaps in their workforce. Often, no matter how word of the proclamation arrived, slaves could not believe that their freedom was upon them until after the master of the house himself had delivered the message. These slaves “viewed their masters as the primary source of authority – the provider, the protector, the lawmaker and the enforcer, the judge and the jury.”13 For them there could be no truth unless confirmed by their masters. At times the impact of the message would wax and wane with the fortunes of the Union army, as it won and lost control of various regions from the Confederate forces. Ambrose Douglass, a North Carolina slave, recalled, “I guess we musta celebrated ’Mancipation 262

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about twelve times in Harnett County. Every time a bunch of No’thern sojers would come through they would tell us we was free and we’d begin celebratin’. Before we would get through, somebody else would tell us to go back to work, and we would go.”14 The most unusual celebration of freedom occurred in Charleston, South Carolina, after it fell to Union forces in March 1865. Four thousand black men and women paraded to the cheers of ten thousand more. The parade included a processional that recreated the walk of a group of slaves to the auction block. Two women were seated on the wagon and a group of sixty walked behind in chains. A mock slave auctioneer shouted, “How much am I offered?” A cart carrying a coffin with the words “Slavery is dead” inscribed on it followed this group.15 Once the message of emancipation had sunk in, the immediate reaction of newly freed slaves covered a wide gamut, as described by Leon Litwack in Been in the Storm Too Long.16 These diverse reactions paralleled the varied life experiences of the slaves who lived under dissimilar types of masters and slave drivers in cities, towns, farms, and plantations in different regions of the South. On some farms and plantations, the slaves turned on their masters, while on others the former slaves lived, in part, up to the image of the dutiful servant content with his lot. On still others freed slaves simply left their homes and went in search of relatives sold off to parts unknown. Turning on their masters took a multiplicity of forms: destruction of property, especially symbols of slavery (the Big House, cotton gin, slave pens, and cotton house),17 theft justified as compensation for past labor, or occasionally a mock trial and punishment of a master or slave driver. Those who turned on their masters and occupied dwellings that had been abandoned found that “to sleep in the master’s bed and eat at the dining room table with the family silver and china was a novel and exhilarating experience.”18 In contrast, Colonel Higginson was surprised that the black soldiers under his command did not display “feelings of affection or revenge towards their former masters and mistresses.”19 However, as Litwack points out, the blacks responding to questions about their attitudes “were torn between what they really felt and what they thought white reporters wanted to hear.”20 For many slaves, it was unrealistic to act as if power and authority had been reversed. Southern whites were still in control economically and legally, especially at the local level. For these slaves, the reaction to freedom was more subtle and related to the way they went about their business and responded to their daily tasks. White masters, assessing their former slaves’ unwillingness to work as before, characterized them as “demoralized.”21 Ironically, in modern terms we would more likely use the word 263

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“demoralized” to describe southern whites rather than former slaves unwilling to work under the same conditions under which they had lived before. For many slaves the emotion of freedom naturally turned to words and songs of praise of the Lord, just as the Israelites had done privately in their homes on Passover eve and publicly on the shores of the Sea of Reeds. After the fall of Wilmington, North Carolina, Reverend William H. Hunter, chaplain of a black regiment, preached to a throng of sixteen hundred people at the Front Street Methodist Church. “One week ago you were all slaves; now you are all free. (Uproarious screamings.) Thank God the armies of the Lord and of Gideon has triumphed like the chaff before the wind. (Amen! Hallelujah!)”22 When Aunt Sissy, a crippled, bed-ridden Virginia slave, heard the news, she rose from her bed, limped out the door, and stood to sing her favorite hymn: O Father of Mercy, We give thanks to Thee, We give thanks to Thee For thy great glory.23

A black preacher in Nashville compared and contrasted his congregation’s experience to that of the Israelites. “We was all like de chil’en of Israel in Egypt, a cryin’ and cryin’ and a gronin’ and gronin’ and no Moses came wid de Lord’s word to order the de door broke down, dat we might walk t’rough and be free. Now be big ugly door is broke down, bress de Lord, and we know de groans of de captive is heard.”24 The Negro spiritual that best captured this moment opens as follows: Slavery chain done broke at last! Broke at last! Broke at last! Slavery chain done broke at last! Gonna praise God till I die!

Commemorative Celebration The Passover meal, or seder as it is called today, was filled with symbolic acts, most of which continued in future celebrations and remembrances.25 Numerous laws governed the manner in which the paschal lamb was to be prepared and eaten. And the meal of lamb (or goat) was to be complemented by two prominent symbols: unleavened bread and bitter herbs, in Hebrew, matzah and maror. 264

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This first celebration established a precedent: “This day shall be a remembrance for you and you shall celebrate it as a festival for God; for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you celebrate it” (Exodus 12:14). The focus of this celebration and future Passovers until the destruction of the Second Temple was the paschal lamb. The laws governing its consumption emphasized the experience of freedom and new-found nobility. The lamb was to be roasted whole rather than cooked in a stew, as in the manner of the poor. The meat was to be eaten in a group celebration and not in a private individual repast. While the meat was consumed, the bones were not to be broken, as chewing on the bones would be associated with how a poor and hungry person might eat it. At the conclusion of the meal, one was commanded not to eat dessert and instead let the taste of the paschal lamb linger as the last morsel of the night, leaving none of the meat over for the next day. Future generations were to gather in large groups to slaughter the lambs and then cook and consume them in a manner almost identical to that of the first Passover eve. Every year on the afternoon of the fourteenth of the first month of the year, the Israelites were to journey to God’s chosen location (the place of the Tabernacle or, later on, the Temple in Jerusalem), reenact this heroic act of mass rebellion, and slaughter lambs – objects of worship in Egypt – during the same month that Aries is the symbol of the Zodiac. Indeed, when an individual chose not to participate in this nation-building and – reaffirming experience, his “soul would be cut off from its people” (Numbers 9:13).26 The Passover ritual was institutionalized as an act of national identity and unity by its requirement that participants gather into three massive assemblages as they approached the Temple courtyard with their animals for sacrifice.27 On the night of the fifteenth, they were to eat a meal that paralleled the first seder, when they had eaten while waiting for the night to pass and the dawn of freedom to arise. This Passover night was thus designed as a mechanism for annually reaffirming the core belief articulated in the first pronouncement of the Decalogue: “I am the Lord your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” This principle, carved into a stone tablet, is both the wellspring out of which the relationship between God and the Israelites flowed and the foundation from which the binding contract of Jewish law emanates.28 And every Passover, as Jews gather round the seder meal, each individual is explicitly challenged to envision himself as having departed from Egypt, to personalize this cardinal principle as if he had seen it with his own eyes. The symbolic actions that are an integral part of the annual celebration illustrate a Jewish tenet that “actions shape character.” As the author of the 265

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Sefer ha-Chinuch wrote, “Our first appearance in world history, in the role of God’s chosen people as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, took place at this season. It is accordingly fitting that we should commemorate this event by performing such acts as would re-enact within us that spiritual achievement, thus perpetuating its impact on us for all time.”29 During the Temple period, the paschal lamb was the center of the seder, with a supporting cast of unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The paschal lamb symbolized courage, transformation, freedom, and joy. The bitter herbs were to remind the Israelites of oppression. The matzah or unleavened bread was a bridge between past and future, symbolizing both slavery and freedom. It was the bread of affliction eaten by slaves whose time was not their own. It was also the bread prepared at the last moment as they left Egypt. The destruction of the Second Temple not only eliminated the publicnational dimension of the holiday. It also removed the paschal lamb, the unambiguous symbol of freedom, as a ritual item of Passover, leaving matzah as the focus of the evening’s commemorative celebration.30 The paschal lamb was a dramatic symbol of a heroic act, but the symbol was present only from mid-afternoon until midnight. However, even in Temple times, the matzah was the more enduring symbol of the exodus. The eating of matzah was linked to a prohibition against eating or even possessing leavened bread for an entire seven-day period, enabling the message of the exodus to sink in.31 Together, the matzah and the prohibition against leavened bread capture the image of the Israelites waiting expectantly and then hurrying toward a destiny whose full scope they could not foresee. The Israelites embarked on this journey with but “their leftovers [matzah] bound up in their garments upon their shoulders” and no other provision (Exodus 12:34). As for the paschal lamb, “Any of it that is left until morning you shall burn in the fire” (Exodus 12:9). It was thus with the taste of matzah in their mouths rather than that of succulent lamb that the Israelites made their seven-day journey to the shores of the Sea of Reeds.32 God’s declaration of a seven-day holiday to be celebrated by all future generations is called in the Bible not Passover, as it is today, but the Festival of Matzot: “You shall observe the Festival of Matzot; seven days shall you eat matzot, as I have commanded you at the appointed time of the month of springtime, for in it you left Egypt” (Exodus 23:15). This annual celebration is complemented by other commemorative acts the year round. Juxtaposed with the summary pronouncement of the exodus – “It happened on that very day: God took the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, in their legions” – is God’s first commandment that links the events of Passover to the natural cycle of life. “Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first issue of every womb among the Children of Israel, of man and beast, is 266

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Mine” (Exodus 12:51–52). As parents share the joy of the birth of a firstborn son, they are reminded of the miracle of the final plague that struck the Egyptian firstborn but spared the Israelites. This event is similarly recalled at the firstborn birth of all domesticated animals: cattle, sheep, goats, and donkeys. Another commandment is given before the narrative closes on the Israelite sojourn in Egypt: “And it shall be a sign upon your arm, and a reminder between your eyes, so that God’s teaching33 may be in your mouth – for with a strong hand God removed you from Egypt” (Exodus 13:9). Jews observe this commandment with a pair of tefillin (the English word, phylacteries, is taken from the Greek), small boxes connected to leather straps that are worn on the upper part of the arm and on the top of the head during the morning prayer.34 The one on the arm directly corresponds to the symbolism of God’s strong hand guiding the exodus. It is worn opposite the heart and often covered in order to show that God is the source of the wearer’s strength. This commandment surely carried a special message to the freedmen who had once toiled all day under the Egyptian taskmasters. God’s intervention returned to all Israelites the control of their hands to labor for their own needs and also to use them in God’s service.35 The phylacteries worn on the head are intended as a reminder of the fundamental beliefs written on the parchments in each box. The pair of tefillin worn together emphasizes the link between thought and action. The biblical commentator Ha’amek Davar presents a parable to describe the link between the daily wearing of tefillin and the annual celebration of Passover: “It may be compared to the case of a father who tells his child a story to illustrate an important moral lesson, and subsequently reminds him daily, by a brief allusion, till the year comes around again and he once more repeats.”36 The wearing of tefillin is perhaps the most visible and constant allusion to the annual Passover celebration.

African Americans Celebrate Emancipation Although African Americans in the United States today do not celebrate, as a group, the emancipation experience or other aspects of the end of slavery, this was not always the case. Early in the nineteenth century, African Americans celebrated each major advancement in the fight to end slavery. The first important date was January 1, 1808. Prior to that date, the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibited Congress from restricting the importation of slaves.37 In the president’s message to Congress delivered in December 1806, Thomas Jefferson encouraged Congress to abolish the slave trade as of January 1, 1808. Such a bill was passed soon after, which Jefferson signed 267

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into law on March 2, 1807. On January 1, 1808, Absalom Jones of Philadelphia preached a sermon at the St. Thomas African Episcopal Church, beginning with Exodus 3:7–8: “And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt….” He concluded with a call for thanksgiving and remembrance. Let the first of January, the day of abolition of the slave trade in our country, be set apart in every year, as a day of public thanksgiving for that mercy. Let the history of the sufferings of our brethren, and of their deliverance, descend by this means to our children to the remotest generations; and when they shall ask, in time to come, saying, What means the lessons, the psalms, the prayers and the praises in the worship of this day? Let us answer them, by saying, the Lord, on that day of which this is the anniversary, abolished the trade which dragged your fathers from their native country, and sold them as bondmen in the United States of America.38 The January 1 commemorations that arose in New York and Philadelphia centered on the church and included choir singing, reading of sacred texts, and sermons or speeches. The Congressional Act of Abolition that ended the slave trade was read aloud. The celebration included a procession led by a Grand Marshal with parade monitors on horseback dashing up and down the procession. These early celebrations brought together first-generation Africans who spoke diverse languages with American-born blacks. The word “African” appeared on banners, along with this motto of freedom: “Am I not a man and a brother?”39 In Boston, the end of the slave trade was first celebrated belatedly on July 14, 1808, and that date became the focal point of subsequent celebrations. (July 14 was the anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.) The main element of the celebration was a parade of two to three hundred black men through the streets of Boston, often attracting hostile reactions from whites while making a public claim to the freedom that America proclaimed.40 However, the law abolishing the slave trade that motivated these celebrations had no serious means of enforcement. It soon became apparent that significant trans-Atlantic trade was continuing. The brutality of increased interstate trafficking also dampened the celebration of the antiimportation law. These first celebrations died out within a decade.41

Celebrating Gradual Emancipation The 1820 census recorded 10,088 slaves in New York State.42 The official end of slavery for this large slave population came on July 4, 1827, leading to another round of celebrations, not just in New York but in neighboring 268

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“Am I Not a Man and a Brother” – Motto and image that appeared on banners and china.

Program for January 1st Celebration, Columbus, Georgia (1973) 269

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Program for September 20th & 21st Celebration, Gallia County, Ohio (1980).

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states as well.43 These celebrations, although also linked to churches, were more secular than the January 1 celebrations. They involved extensive outdoor activities, gun salutes, picnics, and parades. Choir music was less significant than the martial music of the marching band. It was the public dimension of these activities that was part of a process of developing a national community for blacks. It enabled them to enjoy life and freedom as a people in ways that were otherwise impossible in the racist atmosphere still prevalent at the time. Unlike church services, celebrations in public spaces asserted the rights of blacks in the face of the white majority, even if whites were not present. These public celebrations made a statement that not only did African Americans share a skin color for which they had been segregated and subjected to petty and gross oppression, but they also shared a common bond, a sense of community, that itself could be celebrated. They thus shared a communal responsibility to fight both racism in the North and slavery in the South. Interestingly, the New York-inspired celebrations were held on July 5 rather than July 4. By setting themselves apart from the rest of the nation that celebrated on the day before, blacks were making the point that neither they nor their brother slaves in the South had fully experienced the freedoms that had been promised with the creation of the United States. One of the rituals of the day was a speech that offered a brief account of the horrors of slavery, often by a fugitive slave. Equally important were remarks that described the ideals expressed in the founding documents of the United States, including readings from the Declaration of Independence. As a result, “these celebrations highlighted the tensions between the is and the ought.”44 The speeches, representative of a culture of the spoken word, eventually found their way into written form. They were not only addresses to the blacks in the audience but to broader contemporary audiences, black and white. The speeches were also designed to build racial pride and often included an evaluation of the contribution of black people to building the nation as well as their progress as a race. This theme would be complemented by exhortation to seek moral improvement in order to be worthy of full citizenship. Austin Steward, a runaway slave, spoke in Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1827, interweaving remembrance, thanksgiving, and unfulfilled American ideals while also drawing on the exodus image. Like the people of God in Egypt, you have been afflicted; but like them too, you have been redeemed. You are henceforth free as the mountain winds. Why should we, on this day of congratulation and joy, turn our view upon the origin of slavery? Why should we harrow up our minds by dwelling on the deceit, the forcible fraud and treachery that have 271

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been so longed practiced on your hospitable and unsuspecting countrymen?… Why should we remember, in joy and exuberance, the thousands of our countrymen who are today, in this boasted land of civil and religious liberty, writhing under the lash and groaning beneath the grinding weight of slavery’s chain?… But away with such thoughts as these; we will rejoice, though sobs interrupt the songs of our rejoicing, and tears mingle in the cup we pledge to Freedom.45

There was one additional pre-Civil War event that touched the hearts and souls of all American blacks and raised the expectation that the end of slavery was in sight. On August 1, 1834, the British emancipated 670,000 slaves in the British West Indies. As a result, August 1 became the most widely celebrated holiday for northern blacks.46 August 1 celebrations continued in the face of numerous political setbacks for blacks, including not only losses in Congress (the Fugitive Slave Act, 1850) and the Supreme Court (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857) but also several attempts to restrict the freedom of blacks in the North. These took the form of segregated education and disfranchisement, most egregiously in legislative actions in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, and Oregon that prohibited further entry of blacks into these states.47 Yet in 1859, August 1 celebrations were held in thirteen states and in fifty-seven different places.48 Varied celebrations were well advertised and planned months in advance. Among the celebrations’ goals was a desire to impress whites with ideas and images especially of blacks demonstrating their abilities and achievements. Spirited, well-organized, and disciplined parades were a key element in building this image. Also important were the clothing worn by blacks in these events, which was often formal and even ostentatious, without concern that this might attract ridicule from whites. For blacks, the right to don the finest clothing was a personal right denied to slaves; therefore, their manner of dress was simply an expression of freedom. The emancipation ball became part of celebrations after 1846, notwithstanding opposition from leaders such as Frederick Douglass, who thought that a ball was inconsistent with the solemnity of the day. Nevertheless, emancipation balls and related activities caught on and continued in the post-Civil War era. Today celebrations have continued on more than a dozen different dates, many established on significant anniversaries and others based on local or personal experiences of emancipation.49 One of the oldest annual celebrations is held in Gallia County, Ohio.50 Since 1863, this southeastern Ohio county has held celebrations on or around September 22, the date Abraham Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. This weekend celebration is representative of what Wiggins has termed the 272

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“sacred-secular model” of celebration. Saturday activities are similar to those of a county fair and Sunday is reserved for a mixture of church services and speeches.51 Today, the most widely publicized celebration is known as Juneteenth, which began in Texas commemorating the date, June 19, 1865, that General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston and belatedly read a government order freeing the slaves of east Texas. Juneteenth celebrations tend to be secular in nature. Wiggins found that Columbus, Georgia, celebrated January 1, the date of the final Emancipation Proclamation, with special church services.52 The program began with “Lift Every Voice,” which was later adopted by the NAACP as its anthem. The celebration included a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation and scripture interspersed with the performance of various choral works. In 1941 Richard R. Wright Sr., acting out of concern for the lack of a unified celebration, formed a committee to establish one day to be celebrated as National Freedom Day.53 He chose February 1, since it was on this date in 1865 that President Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment, officially ending slavery throughout the United States. Wright initiated an annual February 1 celebration in Philadelphia and lobbied for congressional action to recognize the date as a holiday. In 1948 President Truman finally signed legislation declaring February 1 to be National Freedom Day. Although it is still celebrated in Philadelphia, the date has never captured broad popular support. Despite the attempts to establish a day of celebration related to the end of slavery, it is unlikely that even one percent of the contemporary black population in the United States has participated in such events. The various celebrations have generally been community affairs with no parallel privatefamilial focus, unlike Passover or America’s Thanksgiving Day. There have been, however, suggestions for private rituals that parallel the Jewish law of eating matzah. In 1979, Benjamin Hooks, executive secretary of the NAACP, mused, “I think that on the first day of January, we ought to call our children in, we ought to eat some bread and water symbolizing the diet of our slave forefathers in the slave ships.”54 No such ritual has been widely adopted, nor is there currently any text similar to that used by Jews at the seder to initiate a discussion of the history of slavery and freedom. The lack of formal ritual remembrance of slavery and emancipation among African Americans may simply reflect a generation that has no living first-hand witnesses to tell their story. Such was not always the case, of course. Noted The Atlanta Daily World in 1941, “During early celebrations, slavery was rehearsed, kept fresh in the mind and emphasis laid indelibly in the minds of youth that the Negro was once a slave.”55 Interestingly, the focus on

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instilling the youth with a sense of their history – as suggested by Benjamin Hooks – is a key aspect of the Passover seder. The failure to develop a common African-American tradition of celebrating emancipation, even in the immediate post-Civil War era, may be attributed to several factors: the lack of a common experience of emancipation, the continued oppression and terror in the South, and shame over the slave experience. The first former slaves who congregated and celebrated freedom lived in the North. They had fled the South to freedom over various routes and reached their destinations at different times. Others experienced legislated emancipation on different dates in their respective states, while others purchased their freedom. There were also secondgeneration freedmen whose parents had won freedom for themselves and their descendants, and those who had fought in the American Revolution and were rewarded for their service. More than two hundred thousand freedmen who had walked diverse paths to freedom lived south of the Mason-Dixon Line bfore the Civil War. Thus the millions of slaves in areas covered by the Emancipation Proclamation did not actually experience freedom at the same time. Often, they knew nothing about the proclamation until the Union army overran their cities, towns, and plantations, as evidenced by the Juneteenth celebration in Texas. In addition, there were more than two hundred thousand slaves in Kentucky, which had not seceded, and were therefore not officially freed until Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution into law. All this contributed to the difficulty in deciding upon a common celebration date. This variability from individual to individual and community to community stands in sharp contrast with the mass daylight exodus of the Israelites from Egypt: “It was on that very day that all of the legions of the Lord left the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:41). This image of legions marching out is a recurring theme of the departure (e.g., “God took the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, in their legions” [Exodus 12:51]). It was this shared experience that the Israelites would commemorate with matzah: “You shall safeguard the matzot, for on this very day I will have taken your legions out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree” (Exodus 12:17). It is this simple piece of unleavened bread, baked year after year in every part of the globe and eaten in the privacy of the home, that links the Jew of today with the children of Israel who were slaves in Egypt. In spite of open racism and public abuse, African Americans have focused on large public celebrations rather than private family rituals. However, at the end of the Civil War, only about five percent of the black 274

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population lived north of the Mason-Dixon line. In the South, where blacks lived in broadly dispersed rural communities, it would have been far more unlikely for such a gathering to be held in the environs of a city such as Montgomery. Nor could the blacks of Natchez or Vicksburg expect safe passage to a city commons to celebrate. Even if public celebrations were possible under martial law that was in force after the war, that right would have disappeared in the South once federal troops were withdrawn after the presidential election of 1876. Juneteenth celebrations in Texas were the exception, however, in that they were typically held on property purchased by blacks for use as fairgrounds, such as Emancipation Parks in Houston and East Austin.56 Another exception was an Emancipation Day Parade held on April 3, 1905, in Richmond that commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the Fall of Richmond.57 The local Times-Dispatch reported that “nearly every man, woman, and child in Richmond, and the surrounding territory took part in or viewed the big emancipation parade yesterday.” A common theme of white southerners after the war was that blacks had become too “uppity” and needed to know their place. It is doubtful that the white populace thought that “their place” included the public spaces used to celebrate their newfound freedom. In addition, the oppression that followed the war at times left blacks with little to celebrate, with chattel slavery simply replaced by wage slavery. In addition, the unequal criminal justice system supported the use of prison farms in places like Mississippi.58

Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, Monday, April 3, 1905.

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West Indian Blacks Choose Not to Look Back While the lack of a common experience and the continued oppression of blacks might explain the state of shared celebrations in the United States, these reasons do not apply to blacks in the British Caribbean. They can point to a common date of emancipation: August 1, 1834. They can also focus on the same date four years later when the British eliminated forced apprenticeship, considered by many to be a last vestige of slavery. Unlike southern blacks, West Indian blacks did not continue to live a life of secondclass status imposed by a smaller white population. Nevertheless, celebrating the day of emancipation did not become a permanent part of any Caribbean nation’s tradition. An additional factor helps to explain the mindset of former slaves in the Caribbean: shame. Succeeding generations of West Indian blacks wished to emphasize the future rather than dwell in the past. Psychologists today treat an analogous sense of shame that accompanies victimization. The victims often feel that they should have been able to prevent the crime and that in some way they were at fault. This sense of powerlessness in the face of attack undermines a person’s sense of self and brings shame, which not only individuals but also whole communities that have been victimized can experience. A generation that experienced emancipation wants to celebrate its newfound freedom and can put into perspective the reality of slavery and the individual’s impotence in the face of state-supported brutality. For them the feeling of joy, relief, and hope for the future overwhelms feelings of shame over the past. They want to celebrate and recall that first emotion. However, their children often have no personal appreciation of the blessing of emancipation and the overwhelming joy that emancipation brought. They look back and see only their ancestors’ impotence and wonder why. West Indian blacks proposed a number of reasons for not celebrating emancipation, even after attempts to revive such events. “Slavery was an injustice, emancipation could not be seen as a blessing.”1 “The past should be forgotten with energies directed to the future.”2 “Slavery was a reminder

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of dark and barbarous days and in order to remove the inferiority complex of the descendants of the slaves, it was necessary to rid the colonies of this ridiculous celebration.”3 Although there were famous voices in favor of celebration, they did not prevail. Marcus Garvey, a leading Jamaican of the 1920s and 1930s, “regretted a disposition of late to forget slavery and emancipation especially among so-called better class of Negroes who seem to be ashamed of the history of slavery.” He argued that “history is a thing no civilized or intelligent person can well ignore.”4 A Baptist minister of Jamaica, George E. Henderson, cited a biblical injunction – “Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord, thy God, has led thee” – adding, “The memory of God’s blessing must outweigh the danger of forgetting and the desire of the young to blot out the past history that reminds them of what they regard as the degradation of their ancestry.”5 But the voices who were unconcerned by such dangers and desires were ultimately more successful. At a celebration held on January 1, 1909, a young black Baptist Minister named Silas X. Floyd noted an interesting anomaly. The Confederacy had been totally defeated, he said, but “did you ever see a Confederate veteran who desired to forget that he once wore the gray?” He compared former slaves to the children of Israel in order to argue that blacks had a great story to tell. And don’t you remember that, when the Children of Israel under the leadership of Moses were on the march from Egypt to Canaan… don’t you remember that after they had crossed the Red Sea, the Lord commanded them to set up memorial stones by which the event should be remembered? And yet some old Negroes wish to forget all about slavery – all about the past – and stoutly maintain that we have no right to be celebrating each year that brought freedom to our race. May God forget my people when they forget this day.6 The 1986 establishment of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a federal holiday diminished further the desire or need to celebrate the end of slavery. This newly established holiday has the advantage of commemorating an ongoing struggle of civil rights and the role of African Americans in shaping their own destiny. King’s life personifies the struggle of every black individual, a struggle that is not yet ended, and his words are capable of inspiring succeeding generations. In contrast, one perceived drawback of other celebrations linked to legislative or executive acts is that they venerate the actions of benevolent whites. Such a celebration ignores the major role that blacks have played in this country and their decades of unceasing efforts to push and elevate the abolition agenda until legal action was finally taken.

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In the Passover celebration, however, there is no such focus on the role of a human leader. Although Moses played an active role in the exodus, arguing and negotiating with Pharaoh and, assisted by his brother Aaron, initiating the various plagues, he is scarcely to be found in the telling of the Passover story in the Haggadah.7 Instead, all eyes are upon God. It was He who heard and saw the suffering of His Israelite children and He who strode through Egypt with a “mighty hand and outstretched arm.” As the Haggadah text recounts, “And God brought us out of Egypt – not by an angel, nor by a seraph, nor by a messenger, rather the Holy One, Blessed be He, in His glory.”

Relevance and Re-experience as Jews Study Their History “The Jew is blessed, or, if you will, burdened, with an experiential memory,” said Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. “He re-experiences events. Events never die for him. Events are living experiences.”8 Indeed, throughout the ages, as Jews have established their roots in diverse societies throughout the globe, history has been their constant companion. To others, the Jew seems obsessed with history, but it can hardly be otherwise when his ancient story is an open chronicle, the Bible. It is both a familial story that began with the Patriarchs and a national story initiated with the exodus. For the Jew, it is a story that must not only be remembered and retold, but also studied. On Passover night, Jews are challenged to personalize the recounting and study of the exodus: In every generation, everyone must look upon themselves as having come out of Egypt, as it is written in Scripture, “You shall tell your child on that day, saying, ‘This is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt” [Exodus 13:8]. For it is not only our fathers whom the Holy One, Blessed be He, redeemed; but we were also redeemed with them, as it is said, “And He brought us out of there, that He might bring us in to give us the land [Israel] of which He swore to our forefathers” [Deuteronomy 6:23].9

The night’s discussion is intended to make the events of the exodus relevant to those sitting around the table more than three thousand years later. The seder participants’ goal that night is to come to believe in a God of history, a God of destiny, as if they had experienced the events themselves, as if they had seen them with their own eyes. This night of remembrance is one key to passing on from generation to generation the acceptance of the biblical narrative of exodus as truth, which is at the core of Jewish doctrine. If the seder participants can suspend time and place, if they can envision themselves transformed from slaves to free people, then they are prepared

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for the next part of the seder service. They are ready “to break forth into spontaneous song, because it is we who left Egypt as well.”10 Therefore it is our duty to thank, praise, pay tribute to, glorify, exalt, acclaim, bless, esteem, and honor the One who performed all these miracles for our ancestors and for us. He brought us out from slavery to freedom, from grief to joy, from mourning to festival, from darkness to great light, and from bondage to salvation, and therefore let us sing before him a new song: Halleluya.11 Why “a new song” after thousands of years of repeated Passover recitation? Because the song is to be made fresh with personal emotions. The Haggadah repeatedly encourages the seder participants to transform the story from one about “them” to a story about “us.” It starts by including the reader in the slave experience with the biblical quote, “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the Lord our God brought us out of there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm” (Deuteronomy 6:21). The Haggadah then builds a bridge that spans more than three millennia, linking the Israelites of old with the Jews of today and tomorrow. “If the Holy One, Blessed be He, had not brought our ancestors out of Egypt, then we, and our children, and our children’s children would still be subjugated to Pharaoh in Egypt.” There would be no Jewish people without the exodus. The Haggadah incorporates an additional element that adds relevance by weaving a thread through the persecution of Jews in every generation. “Not only has one persecutor risen against us to destroy us; in every generation there are those who rise up against us to destroy us. But the Holy One, blessed be He, always saves us from their hands.”12 The exodus is thus representative of “the cycle of danger and redemption that is characteristic of Jewish history.”13 The details may be unique, but the big picture of persecution, redemption, and survival is not. It is important to note that the Haggadah is not a detailed retelling of the biblical narrative. If that had been its goal, large swaths of biblical text would have been included.14 At most, it is a collection of tantalizing tidbits coupled with exaggerated statements regarding the miracle of the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. For example, the story of ten plagues is reduced to little more than listing them and then grouping them into an acrostic. The description of the oppression is summarized by a detailed analysis of only several verses. The author of the Haggadah realized that spending an hour reading the complete story year after year would not foster discussion that leads to a sense of relevance and currency. Instead, the Haggadah and the entire seder meal were designed to foster questions and dialogue, starting with the children and then engaging everyone at the table. In short, the readings at the seder meal are not an orchestrated recital but rather a dynamic learning 279

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experience. Rabbi Soloveitchik explained, “The difference between narrating a story and studying a story is in the principle, the universal motifs, and eternal meaning of the story. A narration is limited to the tale of events that lie in the past. In contrast, a study is concerned with discerning the meaningfulness and the significance of those events and the lessons that people in the present may derive wherefrom. A study has impact on the present as well on the future.”15

Remembering Without Shame But what of the national shame of having once been slaves? This sense of shame in the succeeding generations might have been compounded by the behavior of the Israelites in slavery. During their sojourn in Egypt, the Israelites had adopted the idolatrous practices of the Egyptians and had forsaken the rite of circumcision that was part of God’s covenant with Abraham. Nevertheless, the Talmud requires that the night’s discussion begin with some aspect of the disgrace of the Jewish people before describing the glory of the night of Passover.16 The implication is that in order to appreciate our current stage of freedom and to express deep-seated gratitude to God, Jews must understand where they came from, blemishes and all. Indeed, the goal of the exodus was not political and economic freedom for its own sake. Rather, it was a prerequisite to accepting national responsibility for monotheism in the Israelites’ journey to Mount Sinai. With that in mind, the Haggadah takes the seder participants further back into Jewish history by recalling the shame associated with earlier ancestors of the Jewish people, Abraham’s father, who worshipped idols. This shame is contrasted with the exalted state the Israelites achieved when they became the chosen of God. In the beginning, our ancestors were idol-worshippers. But now God has brought us near to serve him, as it is written, “And Joshua said to all the people, Thus says the Lord God of Israel: Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the river in olden times; Terah was the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor, and they served other gods. I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river, and led him through all the land of Canaan”17 (Joshua 24:2–3).

Again, there is value in recalling even a disgraceful past in order to guide future behavior. This message reverberates throughout the Bible, which would surely be reduced to a short story if every act or reference to Israelite misbehavior were eliminated from the narrative and the words of the Prophets.

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The Egyptian Experience as a Positive Value Rather than look backward with shame or forward without reference to the past, the Bible offered the Israelites an alternative perspective. Remembrance of the Egyptian sojourn served to develop a people sensitive to the needs of the disadvantaged and downtrodden, scrupulous in protecting the rights of second-class citizens and the less powerful. “You shall not taunt or oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not cause pain to any widow or orphan. If you [dare to] cause him pain! – for if he should cry out to Me, I shall surely hear his outcry” (Exodus 22:20–22). This narrative continues by admonishing the Israelites to give the poor equal status before the law. “Do not pervert the judgment of your destitute person in his grievance” (Exodus 23:6). The paragraph concludes, “Do not oppress a stranger; you know the feelings of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:6–9). This last verse captures the essence of the mark the Egyptian sojourn was to leave on Jewish self-awareness. God called upon the Israelites to recall how they had felt as strangers in a strange land so that they would become sensitive individuals with a compassionate national soul. Since the Israelites had gone quickly from strangers to slaves, God commanded them to recall their experience as a hedge against perverting justice for those who lack power such as poor people, widows, and proselytes. “He carries out the judgment of the orphan and widow and loves the proselyte, giving him food and clothing. You shall love the proselyte for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18–19). The Israelites were required to show extra sensitivity toward converts who chose to join the Israelite nation. Converts, who had no family or position in the community, were the archetypal strangers searching for roots. The biblical ideal demanded more than just equal status. It also included a special requirement to demonstrate loving-kindness. “The proselyte who dwells with you shall be like a native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:33–34). If the Israelites did not live up to this ideal when it came to the disadvantaged, God reminded them that he would hear the cries of the oppressed just as He had heard their cries in Egypt. “If he should cry out to Me, I shall surely hear his outcry” (Exodus 22:22). The modern celebration includes practices that link Passover and the requirement to be a caring community.18 Early in the Haggadah an invitation is read aloud: “This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who hunger come and eat. Let all who are in need come and observe Passover.” The matzah, the bread of affliction, the basic symbol 281

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of slavery, is turned into a bread of sharing. In fact, it is traditional during the weeks before Passover to establish a special charity to ensure that poor people have the necessary means to celebrate the seder, not only the matzah but the four cups of wine as well.

Celebration in Darkness While emancipation celebrations did not take root in the African-American community in part due to the severe oppression that continued in the deep South, the exodus provided complete freedom for the Israelites. However, there have been periods throughout Jewish history when the freedom of the exodus was hardly reflective of the time and situation. Nevertheless, the Jewish celebration of Passover has survived periods of even extended oppression primarily because, after the destruction of the Temple, the service was moved completely to the private domain. The Haggadah that is read and discussed at the Passover meal includes in its opening section a cryptic story that hints at this idea. “An incident took place in which Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon were reclining in Bnei Brak and recounting the tale of the exodus from Egypt, until their students came and told them: ‘Our Rabbis! The time for the recitation of the morning shema has arrived.’”19 It is suggested that that this gathering took place shortly after the Bar Kokhba revolt had been crushed and much of the Jewish population of the Land of Israel had been murdered or exiled. By this time, the paschal lamb ritual was no longer performed because the Temple had been destroyed more than sixty years earlier. The Land of Israel was no longer the physical center of the Jewish people. Did it really make sense to continue to celebrate freedom, to celebrate the journey out of Egypt toward a national destiny rooted in the Land of Israel? These four scholars, sitting in the privacy of their own room more than a day’s journey from Jerusalem with their students nearby, explored and discussed the meaning of Passover at a time when all national hopes and aspiration had been crushed. They studied, discussed, debated, and even argued the significance of exodus and freedom. In the process they passed on to their students and to all future generations the meaning of the holiday even in times of darkness, to be recalled no matter where and under what circumstances Jews should find themselves on Passover Eve. The following paragraph of the Haggadah also alludes to the concept of Passover celebrations during periods of oppression and declining fortunes. “Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah said, ‘Behold, I am like a seventy-year-old man, yet I have never been privileged to show that the exodus from Egypt must be said at night until Ben Zoma explained it. It says, So that you will 282

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remember the day of your departure from Egypt all the days of your life. The days of your life indicate the days. All the days of your life indicates the nights.’”20 The night he speaks of can be understood allegorically as the night that was descending upon the Jewish people. It made sense to celebrate Passover in the light of freedom, as the Haggadah states: “He brought us out from slavery to freedom, from grief to joy, from mourning to festival days, from darkness to great light.”21 But how can Jews celebrate during periods of darkness, oppression, exile, and mourning? Rabbi Elazar found in the word “all” preceding “the days of your life” the message that the Passover story had to be told no matter what the days brought, even if the days were filled with endless night. In more recent history, the meaning of Passover was celebrated under the difficult circumstances of the Civil War. In 1862, J.A. Joel and twenty comrades in the 23rd Ohio regiment in Fayette, West Virginia, were permitted by their commanding officer to absent themselves for several days in order to celebrate Passover. They received seven barrels of matzah from Cincinnati and went foraging for other essentials. Horse radish or parsley we could not obtain, but in lieu we found a weed, whose bitterness, I apprehend, exceeded anything our forefathers “enjoyed.” We all had a large portion of the herb ready to eat at the moment I said the blessing; each [ate] his portion, when horrors! What a scene ensued in our little congregation, it is impossible for my pen to describe. The herb was very bitter and fiery like Cayenne pepper, and excited our thirst to such a degree, that we forgot the law authorizing us to drink only four cups. The participants were also unable to obtain ingredients for haroset, a concoction of chopped apple, nuts, and wine that recalls the making of bricks in Egypt.22 “So we got a brick which, rather hard to digest, reminded us by looking at it, for what purpose it intended.” Joel concluded, “There in the wild woods of West Virginia, away from home and friends, we consecrated and offered up to the ever-loving God of Israel our prayers and sacrifice. There is no occasion in my life that gives me more pleasure and satisfaction than when I remember the celebration of Passover of 1862.”23 The commonality of the Passover experience has at times even enabled Jews on opposite sides of a war to come together. Myer Levy of Philadelphia, around Passover time was strolling through the streets of a Virginia town captured by the Federals, and noticed a little boy sitting on the steps of a house eating matzo. When he asked the boy for a piece, the child fled indoors, shouting at the top of his lungs, “Mother! There’s a damnyankee Jew outside!” The boy’s mother

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came out immediately and invited him to return for a Passover dinner that night.24

In February 1865, the Jews of Savannah, Georgia, appealed for help because they no longer had the means to bake matzah. Congregations and individuals in the North responded with contributions that paid for three thousand pounds of unleavened bread to be shipped from New York and two thousand pounds from Philadelphia.25

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CHAPTER 22 FREEDOM’S TROUBLED JOURNEY THROUGH STAGES

EACH OF THE SLAVE HISTORIES includes a single memorable date on the

journey to freedom. For the Israelites it was the eve and first day of Passover, the fourteenth and fifteenth of Nissan, the first month of the new Israelite calendar. For African Americans it was January 1, 1863, when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. However, these dates were only single points in troubled journeys. They reached their respective peaks at Mount Sinai, where the Israelites received the Torah, and with the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the political rights of former slaves, though in both cases mighty struggles remained. In this section, we explore five phases in which slaves were redeemed and transformed, and discuss the challenges they faced and the impact freedom had upon them as individuals and as a people. Just as Moses warned Pharaoh that the plagues were punishment for Egypt’s enslavement of the Israelites, President Lincoln perceived the Civil War as God’s punishment of the United States for having allowed the evil of slavery to persist beyond God’s appointed time. The nation had to be redeemed for its sin of not having lived according to its ideal that “all men are created equal.” However, legal scholar George Fletcher draws a different parallel in his book Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy between Israel’s redemptive experience at Mount Sinai and American redemption that began with the Civil War and concluded with the passage of the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution.1 He argues, “the spilling of blood in a great battle is understood instinctively as the suffering that must precede redemption.”2 The same point was made by John Brown before his execution for having led the abolitionist raid on Harper’s Ferry: “I John Brown am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” When Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg of the nation’s “unfinished work,” he famously declared, “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Sixteen months later, at the conclusion of his second inaugural address, Lincoln continued the thought, exhorting his fellow Americans to “strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne

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the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” It was clear that the end of slavery was imminent, and even clearer that the transition for both former slaves and former slaveowners would be difficult, just as it had been after the exodus. Fletcher argues that the primary goal of the rule of law is to redeem the community of humanity from an indulgence in evil. Law is designed to “bring a reign of justice and harmony to human affairs” and thereby reduce “corruption and arbitrariness of power.” Indeed, this is the essence of the biblical narrative, in which the Israelites’ departure from Egypt sets the stage for their receipt of hundreds of laws designed to bring justice and harmony to the newly-formed nation as it created an innovative social order. The Civil War, with its massive bloodshed, was a first step on this path of national redemption. It was a journey in which bloodlines would no longer define who was a citizen and who was an equal. Fletcher characterizes Lincoln’s actions and words as framing a second American Revolution that redeemed the Founding Fathers’ original declaration that “all men are created equal” and created a new vision of the United States. It supplemented the revolutionary emphasis on freedom with a broader vision of equality and started America’s transformation from a Republic with elitist rules of voting into a broad-based democracy. Perhaps most importantly, it converted the United States from a collection of states into “one nation under God.” Much like the Israelites at Mount Sinai, Lincoln’s words and Congress’s subsequent amendments envisioned a covenantal community whose rules of justice, civil rights, and freedom were to be applied equally to all its national citizens. If necessary, the national government was empowered to guarantee the rights and privileges of all its citizens against the oppressive force of any local or state majority.

Israelite Freedom: Five Stages The Israelites underwent a difficult transformation from slaves to their new status as holy nation, kingdom of priests, and chosen people with a special mission in the service of God. In his first meeting with Moses, God articulated the goals of the exodus and His plans for the people He would bring to freedom. The exodus was a first step to fulfill a promise made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that although their descendants would become slaves in a strange land, they would eventually be redeemed. As part of the exodus, God would demonstrate his omnipotence by punishing the slaveholding nation with a series of plagues. He also told Moses that the Israelites’ physical freedom was linked to a religious covenant that would start with a religious celebration several days’ journey from Egypt. 286

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The goals of the exodus are reiterated in the Book of Deuteronomy, near the end of the forty years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness. There, Moses gives final instructions to the Israelite generation that was soon to embark on the conquest of Canaan. First and foremost, he refers to God’s demonstrated omnipotence. “Has any god ventured to go and take for himself one nation from the midst of another by prodigious acts, signs and portents, by war, by a mighty and outstretched arm and awesome power, as the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? It has been clearly demonstrated to you that the Lord alone is God, there is none beside him” (Deuteronomy 4:34–35). The Maharal quotes the midrashic allegory based on the above verse as well as an earlier one (Deuteronomy 4:20): “He took them out of an iron blast furnace just as a goldsmith might stick his hand into the furnace and take out the gold. So the Blessed Holy One took Israel out of Egypt. As a fetus in a cow’s womb into which the cattle herder puts his hand and removes it, so the Lord ventured to take for himself one nation from the midst of another.”3 The allegory of the blast furnace characterizes the Egyptian enslavement as a process designed to remove the dross from the Israelites and purify them as a nation. God’s role and miraculous intervention is described as a goldsmith who passes his hands through the fire and removes the gold. The barrier to their escape was the searing flame that surrounded them. The second image of a shepherd reaching into the cow’s womb suggests that the dangers facing the Israelite were not simply the external forces of slavery. The Israelite people had developed within Egyptian culture as a fetus develops in the womb. The Maharal declares that the taking of one nation from the midst of another was the greatest miracle of all.4 It required God to use “prodigious acts, signs and portents, by war, by a mighty and outstretched arm and awesome power.” In his final days, Moses also recalled God’s promise to the Patriarchs and the inheritance of Canaan: “You shall tell your children: ‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lord wrought before our eyes marvelous and destructive signs and portents in Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household. He freed us from there that He might take us and give us the land that He had promised on oath to our forefathers’” (Deuteronomy 6:21–23). Finally, Moses noted the Israelites’ destiny. “You are a people consecrated to the Lord your God: of all the peoples on earth, the Lord your God chose you to be His treasured people…. But it was because the Lord favored you and kept the oath He made to your forefathers that the Lord freed you with a mighty hand and rescued you from the house of bondage, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 7:6, 8).

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Earlier, we discussed how the plagues were designed to address core psychological needs of Israelite victims of slavery as God guided their transformation from slaves to freemen. These included compensation, punishment of their oppressors, destruction of symbols of Egyptian superiority, authority, and culture, and suppression of their fears regarding their vulnerability to the reassertion of Egyptian power as well as attacks from nearby armies. The paschal lamb provided them with an opportunity to demonstrate their belief in God as well as to act like free human beings. Here we explore four stages of freedom that they experienced immediately, clarify the goals of freedom’s journey, and note a fifth stage that was yet to come. When Moses complained about the initial failure of his mission, God reiterated his covenant with the Patriarchs and told Moses to convey to the Israelites the following: “I am the Lord. I shall take you out from under the burdens of Egypt, “and I shall rescue you from their service (slavery), “and I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments (Exodus 6:6). “And I shall take you to Me for a people and I shall be a God to you. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt (Exodus 6:7). “And I shall bring you to the land about which I raised My hand to give it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I shall give it to you as a heritage – I am God” (Exodus 6:8).

The first three stages are described in a single verse and involve the removal of various aspects of slavery as described below. This was accomplished through the plagues in Egypt and drowning the Egyptian army in the Sea of Reeds. The fourth stage elevated the former slaves and made them a chosen people, an act that was confirmed in the revelation and covenant at Mount Sinai. The fifth and last stage, in which the Israelites assumed the status of a nation with a homeland, was delayed for several decades as they were forced to wander in the Sinai Desert.

Stage 1: Burden Lifted The first stage relieved the Israelites of the massive physical burden of slavery – a crushing weight under which Israelites’ backs were bent and their spirit broken. This is captured in the image of Israelites working in the hot sun to gather straw, trample it into raw material for bricks, and ultimately

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transport the heavy bricks to the construction sites. From the slaves’ perspective it was their most oppressing need that required alleviation. God recognized the primary importance of the relief from this burden. He concluded the description of the four stages with the summary statement “I am the Lord your God, Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt.” Hirsch sees in God’s action not just an alleviation of the physical burden but also a reduction in “the degrading and mocking harshness which Egypt heaped on their tasks.” The Bible does not record when the backbreaking work lessened, but the Midrash dates the end of the physical labors of slavery six months before the exodus on the day that would have corresponded to Rosh ha-Shanah, the traditional Jewish New Year.5 Biblical commentators align this date with the fourth plague, swarms of wild beasts. During this plague, God declared that He would “set apart the region of Goshen where My people dwell” (exodus 8:18). As a result of this plague and further discussion with Moses, Pharaoh promised for the first time to allow the Israelites to leave the immediate vicinity but not to travel far to worship their God.6

Stage 2: Saved Although the Israelites’ oppressive burden had been relieved, their status as slaves had not changed. They were still the lowest caste in Egypt and subject to Pharaoh’s decrees. They were still deprived of their liberty and in imminent danger of being ordered back to slave labor. God’s action in the second stage is described as “save or rescue” and the verse refers specifically to slavery. The Hebrew verb “hatzel” is used to characterize an action taken when an individual is in imminent danger of losing his life or property. The imagery of the last plague provides the greatest sense that God protected and saved them from imminent danger. “When the Lord goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and the Lord will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home” (Exodus 12:23). The Israelites were told to recount this event as “He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians, but saved our houses” (Exodus 12:27). This plague resulted in Pharaoh freeing them to travel. Stage 3: Redeemed Even with the end of slavery, the Israelites were strangers in a foreign land with no real rights. They were homeless and stateless, outside the protection of the law, even though the miracles God performed on their behalf repeatedly demonstrated His omnipotence. The plague upon the first-born both concluded the second stage and began the third. From the very beginning, God pointed toward this 289

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culminating event: “Then you shall tell Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is my first-born. I have said to you, Let my son go that he may worship Me, yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your first-born son”’” (Exodus 4:22–23). In the words of Hirsch, God declared at this stage, “I stand as your relation, I am injured, I am hurt, when any one of My children is hurt.”7 God redeemed the Israelites “with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.” In essence, God fulfilled the biblical role of the go’el ha-dam, the blood avenger, which refers to the relative of a murder victim who assumes responsibility for ensuring that the murderer is justly punished. (The term “redemption” is often used in the Bible also in the context of a family member helping a relative who has fallen on hard times.8) In this way, God asserted His jurisdiction over all of humanity and declared that the stateless and unprotected have a place to turn for justice. The stage of redemption drew to a close along the shores of the Sea of Reeds when Moses and the people sang, Who is like you, O Lord, among the celestials? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, Awesome in splendor, working wonders? You put out Your right hand, The earth swallowed them. In Your love You lead the people You redeemed; In your strength, You guide them to Your holy abode. (Exodus 15:11– 13)

This experience of collective redemption is a major element of the daily Jewish prayers that are recited morning and evening. The central element of daily Jewish prayer is called the amidah (from the Hebrew word meaning “to stand,” because this prayer is recited standing) or shemoneh esreh (after its original eighteen blessings). It is a silent prayer that addresses broad categories of personal and communal needs such as health, wisdom, livelihood, forgiveness for sin, wise leadership, and the reconstruction of Jerusalem. In preparation for this personal appeal to God, Jews elevate their awareness of the Divine by recalling God’s redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt. The prayer recited before beginning the shemoneh esreh quotes the Song at the Sea: From Egypt You redeemed us, O Lord our God, and from the house of slavery You liberated us.

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All their firstborn You slew, but Your firstborn You redeemed; the Sea of Reeds You split, the wanton sinners You drowned.

As Jews prepare to commune with God, they are challenged to recall from national historical memory the wonder and emotions that the Israelites felt as they witnessed the miraculous splitting of the Sea of Reeds. The recollection should be filled with a sense of freshness and the words recited as if they were part of a new song rather than simply a rote recitation: Who is like you, O Lord, among the celestials, Who is like you, majestic in holiness, Awesome in splendor, working wonders! With a new song the redeemed ones praised Your Name at the seashore. All of them in unison gave thanks, acknowledged Your sovereignty and said, “God shall reign for all eternity.” (Exodus 15:18)

Stage 4: Chosen People and Holy Nation As the waters of the Sea of Reeds returned, the Israelites completed a critical stage in their transformation. “And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31). They had come to believe in the Lord and could now proceed to their destiny as a chosen people. At the Lake of Bitter Waters, God laid the foundation for a direct relationship between His chosen people and God’s beneficence. “There He established for [the people] a decree and an ordinance, and there He tested it. He said: If you hearken diligently to the voice of the Lord your God and do what is just in His eyes, giving ear to His commandments and observing all of His decrees, then any of the diseases that I placed upon Egypt, I will not bring upon you, for I am God your Healer” (Exodus 15:25–26). One Jewish tradition is that on the shores of this lake, God gave the Israelites a subset of the commandments as exemplars of these decrees, ordinances, and commandments: the Sabbath, the rule of law in social order, and the honoring of one’s parents.9 The essence of chosenness is reflected in this message from God. It is a reciprocal agreement, a contract that requires the Israelite people to accept responsibilities in return for direct and immediate linkage between their behavior and God’s oversight and intervention in their daily lives. The responsibility has four broad elements: decrees, ordinance, righteousness in 291

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God’s eyes, and the observance of His commandments. The corresponding Hebrew terms are chok, mishpat, yashar be-enav, and mitzvah. The concept of a chosen people is a main theme of the Hebrew Bible and its analysis is far beyond our scope. We limit our remarks to a brief description of the four categories of responsibilities that the Israelites accepted as part of the exodus contract. The word mitzvah, which is the broadest of the Hebrew terms, has entered the English lexicon. In colloquial English it is used to refer to a good deed. However, it derives from the Hebrew root meaning “command” and implies a direct link between God and the individual. It also means that there is accountability. Take the classic example of charity, which is naturally categorized as a good deed. However, in Judaism it is more than that – it is a binding commandment. The term mitzvah is used to cover all 613 commandments of Jewish law. When placed alongside the other terms mishpat and chok, the term takes on a more narrow meaning referring to commandments that have a logical basis such as charity or honoring one’s parents. It can also refer to the laws of the Sabbath or festivals, which have obvious significance even if every detail cannot be explained. The term mishpat applies to a broad range of issues that arise in social situations that may or may not involve adjudication in a Jewish court system. It deals with issues such as theft and robbery, tort, the structure and functioning of the judicial system, including rules of evidence and punishment appropriate for the crime. It describes both normative behavior as well as contexts that require judicial action or intervention. The most unusual of all concepts is chok, which includes the laws of kosher food and those of ritual impurity, such as the red heifer. Formally, these laws are characterized as having no obvious justification or motivation. They are decrees from God to the Jewish people that require Jews to submit to Divine rule over many aspects of their daily lives without necessarily understanding why. Hirsch sees these laws as a means to “beget people inclined towards spiritual matters and morality.”10 Their goal is to “limit and subject all your own drives and animal acts under the Law of God, so that they, too, be used in a manner purely human and sacred for the upbuilding of the sacred purpose of mankind.”11 The least clearly defined of the four obligations is to “do right in the eyes of the Lord.” This challenge is also described as following in the footsteps of God – imitatio Dei. For example, it broadly obligated the people to be merciful, just as God is merciful, or righteous, just as God is righteous, even in the absence of a specific commandment. More specifically, the Midrash interprets this phrase to mean that an individual’s commercial dealings 292

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should be absolutely trustworthy and above reproach.12 Ramban frames God’s expectation. After He has provided numerous commandments designed to improve social interaction, such as the prohibition against gossip or standing idly by while one’s friend is at risk, there is a catchall requirement to “do that which is forthright and good in God’s eyes” (Deuteronomy 6:18). Israelites are expected to go beyond the letter of the law and search for compromise, and at all times an individual’s style of communication should engender good will.13 Throughout the exodus, the Children of Israel are referred to as a people. The Hebrew term for people is am, closely related (with the same consonants but different vowels) to another Hebrew word, im, which means “together.” The relationship between these words suggests that a people is defined by sharing something in common: an experience, attitude, value, or opinion. Interestingly, it was Pharaoh who was the first to call the Israelites a people. He distinguishes between them and his people when he initiated their descent into slavery. In God’s first appearance to Moses, He refers to them – for the first time – as His people: “God said, ‘I have truly seen the oppression of My people that are in Egypt’” (Exodus 3:7). When Moses first spoke to Pharaoh, he demanded in God’s name that Pharaoh “send My people out so that they may celebrate with Me” (Exodus 5:1), which became the basis for the Negro spiritual “Let My People Go.” When the Israelites complained as a group to God or to Moses, they are also called a people (Exodus 15:24, 17:3). After the sin of the golden calf, God declared that the people shared an unfortunate trait: they are a stiff-necked people.14 Judaism uniquely characterizes its core formative religious experiences as publicly shared by an entire people. The Exodus, the splitting of the Sea of Reeds, and the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai were all perceived by the masses. The Mount Sinai experience is considered the ultimate shared communal encounter with God. To point out that the people were truly united at this pivotal moment, the Bible records that “all the people answered together and said, ‘Whatever God says, we will do’” (Exodus 19:8). The biblical narrative highlights this defining moment by using the term “people” in almost every verse leading up to God’s pronouncements. In Exodus 19:7–25, the Bible refers to the Israelites as am, a people, seventeen times. Their defining moment in history occurred when God articulated their broad mission to Moses as soon as they set up camp at Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, here God does not use the word am for “nation,” but rather another term: goy. “‘You have seen what I did in Egypt, how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me. Now then, if you obey Me faithfully and keep My Covenant, you shall be my treasured possession amongst all 293

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peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine. But you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation [goy]; these are the words you shall speak to the Children of Israel” (Exodus 19:4–6). The choice of word for “nation” lends another dimension to this special relationship between God and the Israelites: how they will be perceived by others. I argue that am is a description of internal dynamics and mission, whereas goy refers to the external image.15 Thus, Exodus 19:6 describes the world’s view should the Israelites live up to their mission statement. “You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation [goy].” If the Israelites fulfill their destiny individually and collectively, the world will perceive them individually as priests, persons whose lives are dedicated to God and filled with spirituality. This cloak of spiritually will envelop not just those individuals who are priests – kohanim – but the entire nation as well. Hirsch rephrases this mission: “You are to be a unique nation among the nations, a nation which does not exist for its own fame, its own greatness, its own glory, but the foundation and glorification of the Kingdom of God on Earth, a nation which is not to seek its greatness in power and might but in the absolute rule of the Divine Law.”16 As Moses exhorted the Israelites to prepare to assume full nation status with their entrance into Canaan, he linked the world’s perception of their identity to the strict observance of statutes and social regulations. If they fulfill their spiritual mission, their national greatness will be characterized as a “wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6). Once again, Hirsch frames the unique national glory of the Jewish people and nation: “Whatever arts and sciences may form the characteristic inheritance of the culture of other nations, yours, the Jewish science and art, is the science of building up the whole of personal and national life on the fundamental basis of the consciousness of God and the duties to one’s fellow men; it is the science and art of the knowledge and practice of the Laws of God, the science and art of the Truth and the harmony of Life.”17 The Israelites took on the trappings of a nation when they crossed into their homeland. Interestingly, the Book of Joshua repeatedly applies goy to the Children of Israel as they cross the Jordan and enter the Land of Israel for the first time (Joshua 4:1). It uses the term again when soon after crossing the Jordan, they reestablish circumcision and erase the disgrace of Egypt (Joshua 5:8). Thus, the biblical narrative coupled the term nation with the Israelites’ first steps into their new homeland as well as when they assumed the rite of circumcision that was decreed to Abraham the patriarch, who had first been promised a national homeland. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik places the distinction between an Israelite people and a nation in the contexts of two covenants between God and the 294

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Israelites. The first is a Covenant of Fate that God imposed on the Israelites in Egypt when He declared, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be a God to you” (Exodus 6:7). The second was a Covenant of Destiny that the Israelites accepted of their own free will at Mount Sinai as God characterized the mission to become a holy nation. The Jews of the Covenant of Fate share four elements: historical circumstances suffering responsibility and liability activity in the form of charity and loving kindness.

Soloveitchik argued that “our fate does not distinguish between aristocrats and common folk, between rich and poor, between prince garbed in the royal purple and the pauper begging from door to door, between a pietist and an assimilationist.” He buttressed this description with Mordechai’s challenge to Esther: “Do not think that you, of all the Jews, will escape in the king’s house” (Esther 4:13). The shared history naturally leads to shared suffering that creates a unifying feeling of sympathy. This is reflected in the Jewish rituals of prayer and condolence. Jewish prayer uses the plural throughout. Prayers for a sick relative are to be embedded in a prayer for all the sick of Israel. Similarly, visitors to the house of a mourner say before they leave, “May you be comforted among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.” The Jewish people also share responsibility and liability for one another’s behavior. They are obligated to help each other perform commandments and induce those who are not fulfilling their obligations to repent. Soloveitchik also points out that this shared accountability is not only a theoretical legalistic idea but also a fact of Jewish history, that “our neighbors have always condemned all of us for the sins of one of us.” It is also reflected in the Jewish concept of desecration of God’s Name. “Any sin a Jew commits besmirches the name of Israel in world…. If he behaves properly, he sanctifies the Name of the God of Israel; if he sins, he casts shame and disgrace on the people and desecrates the Name of its God.” Lastly, Jewish peoplehood creates shared activity around the requirements to give charity generously, perform acts of loving kindness, and, in general, foster a sense of brotherhood. “Do not harden your heart or close your hand to your needy brother…. You must surely open your hand to your poor and needy brother in your land” (Deuteronomy 15:7, 11). “The obligation to love one another stems from the consciousness of this people

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of fate…. It is this obligation of love that stands at the very heart of the covenant made in Egypt.”18 The people’s covenant of fate was transformed into a national covenant of destiny with the mission to achieve holiness. It is a life of free will “suffused with eternal ethical and religious values.” It is a life and national existence committed to continuous self-improvement guided by God’s law with the aspiration to scale the heights of Mount Sinai.19

The First Four Stages and the Four Cups of Wine at the Seder The Seder meal on Passover eve in part recreates the first Passover. In Temple times, the central element of the meal was the paschal lamb. With the Temple’s destruction, the matzah and bitter herbs that accompanied the eating of the lamb gained prominence. However, these symbols stand passively for much of the Seder service that is dominated by the reading of the Haggadah, whose critical elements are punctuated by a rabbinic requirement to drink four cups of wine. The four cups are a reminder of the four stages of freedom during the exodus.20 The first cup is drunk after reciting the Kiddush, a prayer that declares the sanctity of the day. It affirms that the meal is part of a religious ceremony reflecting the chosenness of the Jewish people. The second cup is drunk after recalling the events at the Sea of Reeds when the Israelites were redeemed. The third cup is drunk after reciting the grace after meals, reinforcing the idea that a family assembling to eat and celebrate is itself a symbol of freedom. The last cup is drunk only after all the seder participants have overflowed with songs of praise and thanks for God’s beneficence. It includes a call to humanity to recognize and acknowledge the greatness and benevolence of the Lord God. The matzah conveys a mixed message of slavery and freedom. It reminds the participants of the slaves’ bread of affliction but also recalls the hastiness of the departure from Egypt. The wine, however, is solely a symbol of freedom that both physically and psychologically brings the drinker into a freer, more relaxed state.21 (The same cannot be said about the digestive impact of eating matzah.) There is also a tradition of a fifth cup wine, which is filled but not drunk as it is reserved for Messiah. It recalls the promise of a fifth stage, of Israel living in the land of Canaan at peace with a world that recognizes God’s dominion, a promise that will come to pass in the Messianic age. Stage 5: Canaan: The Promised Land The final stage of the exodus was rooted in a patriarchal covenant made hundreds of years earlier. God confronted Abraham, challenging him to journey far from his family and cultural roots to an as-yet-unspecified land. Upon arriving in Canaan, God appeared to Abraham and promised that his 296

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descendants would inherit the land of Canaan. In response Abraham built an altar to God and began his mission of spreading monotheism. There was a clear link between his mission and the Promised Land. On numerous other occasions God repeated the promise with minor variations; He clarified the boundaries and the timeline of full inheritance, and specified Isaac as Abraham’s inheritor of land and mission. Abraham traveled the length and breadth of the Promised Land to better appreciate this gift as well as possible while spreading the message of monotheism by symbolically building altars to the One God. A long time, fraught with difficulties, passed from promise to fulfillment. Shortly after arriving, there was a famine in Canaan and Abraham was forced to leave. At the Covenant of the Pieces (Genesis 15), Abraham was informed through frightening imagery that four generations would pass before his descendants would take actual possession of the land. In the interim, his descendants would experience an oppressive slavery elsewhere that would be comparable to a blazing furnace. Abraham did not accept God’s gift passively. He worked to improve the land by digging wells and signing treaties with local leaders. In one of his last recorded acts, Abraham sought to establish a permanent claim to at least part of the Promised Land through purchase of a family burial plot. He paid a premium to bury his wife Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah on the outskirts of Hebron. This burial plot was an anchor that would link succeeding generations to the Promised Land. The last of the patriarchs, Jacob, made his son promise to bury him there. A month after his death, an entourage of his descendants fulfilled this wish and in so doing reaffirmed the status of Canaan as the future home of the Israelite people. Joseph’s deathbed wish paralleled his father’s; he stipulated that his bones be buried in Canaan after the promised exodus. The symbolism of Joseph’s bones and their link to a Promised Land was so powerful that during the exodus, Moses himself carried Joseph’s bones out of Egypt and Joshua interred them as his last recorded official act. God’s promise to Abraham was repeated to both Isaac and Jacob in order to emphasize that each was deserving of the inheritance in his own right. Isaac followed in his father’s footsteps by digging wells, contributing to the local economy, and concluding a treaty with the local potentate. Jacob, like his grandfather, was forced to leave the Promised Land not once but twice. He left Canaan the first time in order to escape Esau’s murderous plot and left the second time to escape famine. Because he was concerned each time about the risks of leaving, God appeared to him in dreams and assuaged his fears about the future of Canaan and his children.

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Jacob’s life in Canaan involved conflict with his neighbors. His daughter, Dinah, was kidnapped, raped, and held captive. An internal family conflict left him unsettled in the Promised Land when his favored son, Joseph, disappeared and was presumed dead. In summary, although God’s promise contained complications, the Patriarchs yearned to live out their days in Canaan and remain connected with it even in death. This connection was reaffirmed in God’s first communication with Moses: “I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). When God described to Moses the stages of the exodus, he culminated His promise with “I shall bring you to the land about which I raised My hand to give it to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I shall give it to you as a heritage – I am God” (Exodus 6:8). Reaching the Promised Land was a critical element of God’s plan to transform the Jewish people into a holy nation. The Jewish religion in its ideal formulation is an all-encompassing societal state religion. Without an independent homeland, the concept of a Jewish legal system is severely compromised. Many of the agricultural laws apply only in the Land of Israel. The laws of animal sacrifices are limited to one central place of worship – the Temple. Most important, the bounty of the land was designed to reflect the strength of the relationship between God and His people. God did not choose a land like Egypt with its ever-present Nile River. In contrast, Canaan lacked natural water resources, which made it totally dependent on rain. It therefore required and offered evidence of God’s direct supervision. “It is a land which the Lord your God looks after, on which the Lord your God always keeps His eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end” (Deuteronomy 11:12). Jews recite twice daily a key paragraph that reiterates the principle that God linked the Israelite nation’s observance of commandments to the provision of bountiful rains and His maintenance of the Israelite presence in the land. The paragraph concludes, “To the end that you and your children may endure, in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers to assign to them as long as heaven is over the earth” (Deuteronomy 11:21). Interestingly, despite the Patriarchs’ yearnings and God’s repeated references to Moses about a future homeland, there is no evidence that the people themselves longed for it at the time of the exodus. When they were faced with difficulties on the journey to Canaan, they often seemed nostalgic about various aspects of their lives in Egypt. The report of the spies triggered not only weeping and a wish for a quicker death but also the suggestion that “‘it would be better for us to go back to Egypt.’ They said to 298

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one another, ‘Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt’” (Numbers 14:3, 4). Earlier, the lack of food as they entered the Sinai Desert made the people nostalgic about the abundant bread they had eaten while inhaling the aroma of the fleshpots of Egypt (Exodus 16). This final stage of political and economic freedom as well as national identity turned out to be beyond the reach of the generation that left Egypt. They were unable to leave their slave mentality behind and totally adopt and absorb the religious values God offered. Leibowitz remarks, “They had still not shaken off the dust and mortar of Egypt; the taskmaster’s shout was still ringing in their ears and the swish of his whip was still not forgotten.”22 Ultimately, the challenge of conquering a new land was too much for them and they spurned God’s offer. This generation was to live out their lives in a barren wilderness where their bodies would fall. “Your children, who you said would be carried off – these I allow to enter. They shall know the land you have rejected” (Numbers 14:31).

African-American Freedom: Five Stages African Americans also passed through five stages on freedom’s road during and immediately after the Civil War. These overlapping stages were associated with a sequence of legislation with regard to the following: the contraband of war the emancipation and the right to military service permanent freedom and citizenship civil and legal rights political rights

Stage 1: Contraband Within weeks of the first shots fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, fugitive slaves began arriving at Union lines. At that time the official policy of the U.S. Government was that the outbreak of war had made no change in the status of slaves. Lincoln repeatedly denied that his aim was to undermine the institution of slavery. As the individuals leaving their plantations turned into wagonloads and ultimately a “stampede from the patriarchal relation,”23 Secretary of War Simon Cameron was silent. Each field commander was left to his own decision on the matter. Legally, the Fugitive Slave Act was still in force. Thus in the early months of the war, it was not uncommon for a southerner under a white flag to approach Union lines and demand that his fugitive slaves be returned. A number of commanders, such as William S. Harney, Commander of the 299

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Department of the West, obliged. Others simply refused to allow runaways to cross their lines and enter their domain in the first place, a position backed by the notorious General Order No. 3 issued by H.W. Halleck, Commander of the Department of the West.24 Confederate Major John B. Cary’s request on May 25, 1861, for the return of fugitive slaves elicited a different reaction from his compatriot General Benjamin Butler, commander of Fortress Monroe, Virginia. He pointed out a major contradiction in Major Cary’s request that the general abide by the Constitution of the United States. He argued that secession cast Virginia as a foreign country and therefore its representatives could not employ the U.S. Constitution to insist on the return of a fugitive slave. General Butler declared, “I shall detain the Negroes as contraband of war. You are using them on the batteries. It is merely a question of whether they shall be used for or against the government.”25 General Butler’s term contraband of war was well chosen. While he did not actually proclaim slaves to be free, a status that northerners were not yet ready to support, he prevented their return to slave labor. Within a week, dozens more slaves escaped and arrived at the fortress. By the end of July there were a thousand. Ironically, the fort was located close to the spot where John Rolfe had landed the first slaves of the English colonies in 1619. On August 6, Congress responded by passing the First Confiscation Act, which created the official status of contraband of war but limited its application to slaves who had been forced to work in “aid of the rebellion.” The Second Confiscation Act a year later clarified the status of this contraband, declaring that any slave who made it across Union lines was free. One slave personalized the law’s impact: “I was a slave, but I’s free now, I’s ’fiscated.”26 Runaway slaves who had not worked in support of the Confederacy were not covered by the first act and were subject to the whims of the military commanders they encountered. However, as the war progressed, Congress provided more and more normative rules of behavior as public opinion turned against the absurdity of returning slaves to the enemy. Less than a year into the war, Congress forbade officers from assisting in the capture of slaves. Individual abolitionist commanders were emboldened by the dynamics around them. General John C. Fremont declared martial law in Missouri on August 30, 1861, confiscating and freeing all slaves of Rebel owners. His order was later modified by Lincoln to be aligned with the First Confiscation Act. Similarly, commanders and soldiers from Kansas consistently refused to be slave catchers.

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Two hundred thousand runaway slaves became contraband, often joined army camps, and took up critical functions. They built batteries and defenses, served as cooks, and provided all forms of logistics support: “Whenever a Negro appeared with a shovel in his hands, a white soldier took his gun and returned to the ranks.”27 These often heroic efforts, including their role as spies, undermined the popular racist myths that blacks would not work unless they were enslaved and forced to do so. Their service proved that if freed they would be able to fend for themselves and their families. It also laid the groundwork for another phase in their march to freedom when they joined the army and their slaves’ rags were replaced by Union blues.

Stage 2: Emancipation and Military Service The plagues had helped to ameliorate the slavery of the Israelites before they started their journey out of Egypt’s house of bondage with Pharaoh’s authorization. There was no such amelioration during bondage for African Americans, many of whom did not experience their first relief from slavery until the Civil War, when they fled the plantations while their owners were away at war. As these slaves headed for the nearest Union Army camp, however, their official status as property remained unchanged, a situation that did not improve until the official end of slavery in the United States. Northern abolitionists and blacks drew renewed energy from the war effort as they pushed for abolition, equal rights, and respect for the Negro race. The limited pre-war effort of this modest-sized group gained new momentum when much larger numbers joined organizations such as the Emancipation League. However, Lincoln had his own timeline for the end of slavery and a strategy to deal with a large free black population. His core idea was gradual compensated emancipation. This was coupled with a commitment to support the emigration of African Americans to either the Caribbean or Liberia. He envisioned a thirty-year plan to be developed state by state. Lincoln’s biggest concern involved the slaveholding border states. He strove to win at least one of them over to gradual compensated emancipation, first targeting Delaware, which had fewer than two thousand slaves, but was rebuffed. On April 10, 1862, Congress passed the following resolution: Resolved: That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.

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Congress set an example for these states by immediately emancipating the slaves in the District of Columbia and providing three hundred dollars in compensation to slave owners to be paid out of the U.S. Treasury.28 The newspaper Anglo-African declared, “We can point to our Capital and say to all nations, ‘It is Free!’ Americans abroad can hold up their heads when interrogated as to what the Federal government is fighting for, and answer, ‘there, look at our Capital and see what he have fought for.’”29 However, none of the border states seriously pursued Lincoln’s proposal or responded to his warnings that the Civil War would bring about the end of slavery. As a result of his rebuff by Delaware, in July 1862 Lincoln drafted the Emancipation Proclamation with two war-related goals in mind: depriving the South of slave labor and providing a basis and motivation for recruiting blacks into the Union Army. Secretary of State William H. Seward advised him to delay the proclamation until a major northern victory so that it would not seem to be an act of desperation. Lincoln and his cabinet thus kept the proclamation secret for two months even as the president was often attacked in the press for failing to take direct action to end slavery. On September 22, after a partial victory at Antietam, Lincoln issued the preliminary proclamation, signing the final version proclamation one hundred tension-filled days later, on January 1, 1863. Despite Lincoln’s own observation that the effectiveness of a proclamation might be construed as analogous to the Papal Bull against a comet, Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation would be perceived as a dramatic act. The details of who was and was not covered by the proclamation and whether or not it was legal or could be enforced were irrelevant. The mere words “Emancipation Proclamation” formally stated that the war was in fact a battle for freedom. It created major disruptions in the South as word spread to the slave population by grapevine telegraph even as southern politicians railed against its absurdity and impotence. The closing part of the proclamation stated that African Americans would be “received into the armed services of the United States, to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said services.” This set the stage for the next phase of the war, in which blacks formed regiment after regiment at both the state and national levels, filling the quotas that had become increasingly difficult to meet. The development of black regiments had a dramatic impact on the selfimage of African Americans as well as white northerners’ perception of them. This point was discussed in Chapter 17. Recall Frederick Douglass’s words: “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters US; let him get an eagle on his button and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in 302

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his pocket, and there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.”30 Both before and after the Emancipation Proclamation welcomed African Americans into the armed services, there were many ups and downs on the path to creating black regiments and eventually allowing them to play a significant role in combat. In the earliest days of the Civil War, northern blacks expressed an interest in volunteering for the armed forces. However, federal law prohibited blacks from serving in state militias. A black man in Washington wrote to the secretary of war offering three hundred black volunteers. A Cleveland group issued a resolution, “That to-day as in times of ’76, and the days of 1812, we are ready to go forth and do battle in the common cause of the country.” In Boston blacks petitioned “to display their patriotic zeal and unwavering loyalty in the most effective manner in this trial-hour of the republic.” Frederick Douglass railed at the stupidity of not allowing blacks to fight and described it as fighting with one hand tied behind one’s back: “They were good enough to help win American independence, but they are not good enough to help preserve that independence against treason and rebellion.” When Union general David Hunter gained control of the Sea Islands he formed some of the first black regiments, but the regiments were never recognized by the War Department. Most amazingly, the Confederates had a black regiment in New Orleans in 1861. However, that unit offered to switch sides in the spring of 1862, when Union general Benjamin Butler gained control of the city. He eventually welcomed black assistance to ward off a pending attack in August 1862. These units were also not officially recognized in Washington. It was not until July 17, 1862, that Congress repealed the ban on blacks serving in state militias. The first official unit, First South Carolina Volunteers, was mustered on November 7, 1862, under the command of Colonel Thomas Higginson of Massachusetts. After one raid, he declared that blacks “have in every instance come off not only with unblemished honor but with undisputed triumph.” Based on his experiences, General Hunter wrote that “they are imbued with a burning faith that now is the time appointed by God, in His All-wise Providence, for the deliverance of their race; and under heroic incitement of this faith, I believe them capable of courage and persistence of purpose which must in the end extort both victory and admiration.” He also noted the decline of prejudice among white soldiers. These sporadic efforts to use black soldiers and the resulting successes led to more widespread recruiting efforts, beginning with Massachusetts in the North and in the Lower Mississippi Valley in the South. Ultimately a coordinated nationwide effort began in late May 1863. Massachusetts was 303

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then followed by Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. The process of organizing a militia regiment required an initiating action by the state’s governor, and so the pace at which state recruitment developed was a function of the governor’s attitude on the matter. Democratic governor Horatio Seymour of New York, for example, refused to approve a black regiment. Ultimately, Secretary of War Stanton authorized a New York volunteer organization to recruit blacks, and the first black regiment from New York went off to war in March 1864. Although numerous black regiments fought in battle, their primary role throughout the war was supportive rather than on the frontlines. The Emancipation Proclamation purposefully did not refer to recruiting blacks to serve in combat roles. They garrisoned forts and arsenals and provided infrastructure construction and logistics support, including “building bridges, draining marshes, filling sandbags, unloading vessels, throwing up entrenchments, and drawing cannon to the front and mounting them.” These tasks could be boring and demoralizing: blacks were treated more as common laborers than as soldiers. Nevertheless, the former slave found less reason to gripe than his white peers at the numbness of extended encampments; his new situation was a dramatic improvement over the boredom and numbness, not to mention pain and humiliation, associated with plantation life.31 Service in combat roles was subject to the attitude and whim of the local commander. General Sherman did not believe blacks should be used in combat. In his march through Georgia their role in logistics support was crucial to the success of his campaign since its most amazing aspect was the speed at which he moved his sixty-five thousand troops across the terrain, averaging ten miles per day. African Americans had the job of clearing or widening roads and rebuilding bridges and train tracks. In addition, as the troops moved from place to place, blacks in Sherman’s camp partnered with local former slaves to uncover hidden stores of supplies and forage the countryside to meet the daily nutritional and other needs of this fast-moving army. In contrast, General Ulysses S. Grant found blacks to be worthy combat soldiers, and they played important roles in several critical battles in his Virginia campaign.

Stage 3: Constitutional Freedom The Emancipation Proclamation freed neither the hundreds of thousands of slaves who lived in border states nor those in parts of the South that were not in rebellion at the time because Lincoln did not want to antagonize border states such as Kentucky. Perhaps, even more importantly, 304

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it was an exigency of war under the sole authority of the president. There was serious concern, even from Lincoln, that the proclamation would not stand the test of judicial review once the war was over. Also, during the summer of 1864, there was no clear victory in sight for the North. As the presidential campaign unfolded, Lincoln was apprehensive that his political opponents would offer a policy of peace at any price that would lead to his defeat and the reversal of the proclamation. With that in mind, he even explored the ramifications of a negotiated peace with the Confederacy that brought the Union back together but did not require the southern states to abolish slavery immediately as a condition of rejoining the Union.32 He discussed with Frederick Douglass the idea of assisting many slaves to flee their bondage in advance of a negotiated peace settlement. Fortunately, the taking of Atlanta on September 3 and other Union victories led to Lincoln’s reelection and an overwhelming victory of the Republican Party in congressional elections. This set the stage for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that officially ended slavery. Even prior to these events, the Emancipation Proclamation set in motion the development and passage of state constitutional amendments that ended slavery in West Virginia (1863), Maryland (1864), and Missouri (1865). Although Kentucky did not follow suit, its slave population declined because of a March 1865 joint resolution of Congress that freed the children, wives, and mothers of black soldiers. Local Kentuckians set up patrols to prevent local blacks from enlisting but with limited success, as in the case of William Jones, who enlisted along with three sons and a son-in-law.33 Kentucky ended the war with more slaves than any other, an estimated sixtyfive thousand blacks out of the 225,483 recorded for that state in the 1860 census. Lincoln’s Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction of December 8, 1863 included a Ten Percent Plan. This allowed a loyal minority of the population of a secessionist state to establish a new state government. The minority had to number at least ten percent of the votes cast in 1860. One condition for federal recognition of this newly-created state government was that its state constitution must abolish slavery. Under this plan, Arkansas ended slavery in March 1864 and Union-occupied New Orleans hosted a state convention in September that abolished slavery in Louisiana.34 However, the views of slaveholders were largely entrenched. As it became clear that the South was going to lose the war, many southern politicians clung to the belief that they would still be able to retain control of their slave population. Many even argued at post-war state conventions that they should be compensated for the emancipation of their slaves.35

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Stage 4: Citizenship and Civil Rights By the end of the Civil War, many members of the Republican Party had come to view slavery as the root cause of the war and a fundamental flaw in American society that undermined many of the rights that the Constitution guaranteed. The antebellum Supreme Court generally interpreted the Constitutional rights of freedom of speech, press, and assembly that we take for granted today as restricting actions of the federal government only. As a result, slave states routinely passed laws abridging these rights in order to silence discussion or debate over slavery as much as possible. They were aided by the federal postal service, which helped limit the use of mail to distribute abolitionist material to slave states. Congress also curbed the right of petition on issues related to slavery. Republicans saw a similar pattern of rights abridgment emerging at the end of the Civil War. Although the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery, individual states revised their Black Codes to restrict the rights of newlyfreed blacks. These codes included labor contract laws that severely limited the economic options of former slaves. They combined with harsh vagrancy laws that provided for indirect enforcement of these contracts. There were also financial penalties for landowners who sought to lure away contracted workers during a period when agricultural labor resources were relatively scarce. Leading the way were the Black Codes of Mississippi and South Carolina. In Mississippi, if a black were to leave his job before the end of the year, he would forfeit all his back wages. In South Carolina, blacks had to pay a substantial annual tax if they chose an occupation other than farmer or servant. South Carolina defined the workday as sunup to sundown and banned leaving the plantation without the owner’s permission. At times it seemed that the only difference between the old black codes and the new ones was that the word “slave” was replaced with “servant.”36 As a result, in early 1866 blacks throughout the South were forced into signing year-long labor service contracts that provided them with little leverage. In the antebellum period, each slave owner defined the limits of the personal and economic freedom of his chattel. He enforced his plantation’s rules and regulations according to whim, with little interference and much support from local and state authorities. After the Civil War, states defined and restricted the freedoms of blacks and constrained and enforced the relationship between black workers and plantation owners. In essence, the personal chattel of the antebellum South was replaced by political slavery of the state. The state replaced the individual as the primary keeper and enforcer of the status quo.

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The Union Congress was determined not to allow southern states to assume their rightful position in Congress until it was clear that they understood that their former slaves were to be accorded all the rights and privileges of United States citizenship. As a result, Republicans who controlled Congress in 1866 kept its doors closed to representatives from former slave states. They were concerned not only about the fate of blacks but also about the minority of southern whites who had supported the Union cause, as well as new immigrants from the North. The congressional elections in late 1866 gave these same Republicans an overwhelming vote of support for their policies, which conflicted with and eventually overrode repeated vetoes by President Andrew Johnson. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in 1866 over Johnson’s veto – the first such override in American history. The act prohibited governmental discrimination on the basis of race and provided for an extensive federal role for enforcement. It paralleled the passage of an extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau. However, southern states simply responded by deleting from their laws explicit reference to blacks, leaving local practice by courts and sheriffs and other public officials to ensure that de facto discrimination continued as before. The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 were passed so as to provide a comprehensive structure for federal enforcement. The acts disbanded all state governments that President Johnson had recognized, with the exception of his home state of Tennessee. It established five military regions, essentially usurping the power of local government. It also extended the charter and authority of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which often served as the primary mechanism for appeals by blacks of violations of their rights. Most importantly, these acts laid out the framework for readmission to the Union, which guaranteed that the southern states would ultimately ratify congressionally-passed amendments to the Constitution. Fearful that congressional acts would not stand the test of time, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment in June 1866, with state ratification completed in July 1868. The amendment guaranteed that states could not abridge the inalienable rights of all persons and also authorized Congress to pass laws that would enable the federal government to protect these rights against state action. The opening clause made blacks citizens of both the United States and the state of their residency: “Nor should any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The most important clause from the perspective of blacks was the “equal protection” that reaffirmed their innate equality with regard to rights. The amendment articulated a broad statement of rights and reinforced the 307

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legality of the earlier Civil Rights Act, which provided details as to rights concerning, for example, entering into contracts and serving as witnesses.

Stage 5: Political Rights Even before the war ended, blacks rallied for the right to vote. For example, in January 1865 blacks petitioned a Union convention in Nashville, Tennessee. They argued, “If we are called on to do military duty against the rebel armies in the field why should we be denied the privilege of voting against rebel citizens at the ballot box? The latter is as necessary to save the Government as the former.” Similarly, they contended that the government “can afford to trust him with a vote as safely as it trusted him with a bayonet.” They also articulated the social uplifting value of suffrage. “Again, the granting of this privilege would stimulate the colored man to greater exertion to make himself an intelligent, respected, useful citizen.”37 In 1865 and 1866, southern blacks demonstrated growing political activism, first with mass meetings in numerous locales and then with statewide conventions throughout the South. Leadership tended initially to be drawn from the upper class of blacks, but later more and more ex-slaves, especially those with military experience, took up leadership roles. Their main goals were seeking equality before the law and suffrage. Their tone was generally conciliatory toward southern whites who were proffered “the right hand of fellowship.” These conventions often energized the attendees to bring political education to their locales. The Georgia Equal Rights and Educational Association organized local meetings in fifty counties in 1866.38 However, at this stage of American history, voting was not viewed as a natural right of citizenship but rather as a privilege under the control of state governments, which had the right to restrict this privilege. Only five states, all in the northeast, afforded blacks the right to vote. In 1865 referenda for black suffrage failed in Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, but in each case votes in favor unexpectedly totaled more than forty percent of the vote.39 Unlike civil rights, during the post-war period there was no broad moral or philosophical movement to provide a constitutional amendment offering suffrage to southern blacks, a right not yet provided to their northern peers. Although a group of Radical Republicans supported it on principle, the drive for black suffrage progressed because of more practical concerns. Some believed that if blacks were given the vote, they would ultimately be able to protect themselves by using political power to guarantee their civil rights, thereby reducing the need to deploy federal resources.40 Senator Richard Yates of Illinois succinctly argued, “Sir, the ballot is the freeman’s Moses.”41 Also, emancipation had created a potential unintended consequence: an 308

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increase in the national political power of southern states. Blacks now counted as full citizens instead of three-fifths of a person, affecting the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives. With black suffrage, southern states would be better represented in Congress than ever before. The path to black suffrage gained momentum in January 1867 when Congress enfranchised blacks in Washington D.C., a right that they exercised a month later.42 Shortly thereafter, Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, which penalized states that restricted male voting by limiting the apportioning of representatives in direct proportion to the eligible male population that was afforded suffrage. It was estimated that southern states would lose one-third of their representatives if they did not extend suffrage to blacks. However, this tactic did not work because southerners were willing to forgo some national political power in order to maintain the local political status quo.43 The Reconstruction Acts addressed the issue more directly. They prevented the establishment of permanent state governments without black suffrage, stipulating that federal agencies and their local representatives must register all male citizens above the age of twenty-one before September 1, 1867. This registration was a prerequisite for convening state conventions to draft new state constitutions that were to include civil rights guarantees for all citizens and also provide for black suffrage. Passage of these constitutions was a condition for readmission into the Union and the assumption of local control of state government. (The Reconstruction Acts also disenfranchised most white antebellum leaders.) In anticipation of suffrage, blacks began joining and participating in the Union League. They attended regular meetings at least once a month in which they engaged in lively debate about the political topics of the day. The Union Leagues for blacks were more than debating societies, however. Members used the meetings to collaborate on critical problems, one of the most important of which was stopping the forced apprenticing of black children to white men. The league councils “encouraged freed people to negotiate better contracts, contest the abuses of their employers, engage in strikes, claim their just wages and share of the crop, and generally alter the balance of power on the land.”44 Blacks also participated in statewide Republican Conventions in preparation for the constitutional conventions. In both sets of conventions, they played a major role but held few leadership positions even when they constituted the majority. These conventions offered blacks their first opportunity to sit side by side with whites as political equals, demonstrated black political sophistication to state and national audiences,45 and were designed to be aligned with the U.S. Constitution in compliance with the 309

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requirements for readmission into the Union. Most importantly, these conventions caused county government offices, such as that of sheriff, to become elected positions. At the national level on February 26, 1869, Congress passed the Fifteenth Amendment, which stated in part, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” State ratification was completed almost a year later, on February 3, 1870. These were heady days for blacks, who went en masse to the polls despite threats of violence.46 They worked hard to elect their white Republican allies to state leadership positions while also running for many offices themselves. During the period of Reconstruction, more than one hundred blacks held statewide positions either by election or appointment. The state legislature of Mississippi first elected freeborn Hiram R. Revels in 1871 to the Senate seat that had been held by Jefferson Davis, and later voted Blanche K. Bruce, a former slave and sheriff, to a full Senate term from 1875 to 1881.47 One state position of particular interest was superintendent of education, as blacks pushed hard for state investment in widespread availability of public-school education. The number of blacks elected to state legislatures approached eight hundred. In 1868 the South Carolina legislature featured 87 blacks in a body of 127 legislators, and maintained a black majority until 1874. More than a thousand served in local government offices, primarily in rural areas and small towns throughout the South.48 Local government positions irked whites the most. Henry McNeal Turner, Georgia’s black Republican leader, put it simply: “They [whites] do not care so much about Congress admitting negroes to their halls… but they do not want the negroes over them at home.” The South of the Reconstruction era was less “a society turned bottomside up.”49

African Americans as a Nation African imports to the New World came from a broad expanse of black Africa, with the geographic foci of the slave trade shifting over the centuries. Although their respective cultures had common core elements as described earlier, these Africans shared no national or social identity. Ultimately, one defining feature came to characterize their identity: the color of their skin. Because of it, they shared the fate and history of slavery and prejudice. Although the blackness of their skin did not define their national identity, it affected who was included in the group and thus could not escape its shared communal oppression. Toward the end of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, these shared life experiences coalesced 310

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around the biblical story of the exodus and helped develop a language of nation. This national self-defining image achieved almost universal black acceptance by the 1840s.50 Northern and southern whites read the Bible and imagined that, like the Children of Israel, they were the chosen people who had reached the Promised Land. This self-conception gained greater acceptance during the Second Great Awakening of 1770–1820. In contrast, blacks appropriated for themselves the earlier part of the story, in which the Israelites were enslaved by Pharaoh in the land of Egypt. Like the Israelites of old, their national identity was rooted in their day-to-day oppression and was shared by both southern slaves and northern freemen. Although their anguish was as bitter as that of the Israelite nation, they were consoled by the knowledge that the just God of Israel took notice of it: “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people that is in Egypt and I have heard its outcry because of its taskmasters, for I have known of its sufferings” (Exodus 3:7). More importantly, this shared national history carried with it a message of hope. The Bible declared that God was active in the history of nations. Therefore, it was only a matter of time before they too would be able to rejoice in their freedom and chosenness. Richard Allen, who helped found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, used the language of exodus not just for internal discussion but also to challenge and warn the slaveholders of America. “We wish you to consider God Himself was the first pleader of the cause of the slaves…. If you love your children, if you love your country, if you love the God of love, clear your hands of slavery.”51 Southern slaves could do little to advance the sense and perception that they were a nation within a nation. The task of defining their shared identity fell to their free fellow blacks in the north. The informal legislative and executive body of this nation was the Black church. Despite its decentralized structure, the church carried on analogous organizational and leadership roles across the north. Church leaders led the effort to address their local community’s educational and social needs, and fought for equal funding for education and social services and against discrimination. They spoke out and wrote on behalf of their enslaved fellow blacks and maintained the Underground Railroad. They harbored their fugitive compatriots and cared for the indigent. They also articulated and framed the discussion of a covenant that was intrinsic to the Israelite story. Blacks could not simply stand by and watch God’s salvation arrive; they had to earn the right to freedom and equal treatment. When the Civil War and emancipation put an end to their slavery, blacks across America could stand up and declare that hundreds of 311

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thousands of them had not simply sat idly, awaiting God’s deliverance. During the war, they had worked in the background to provide logistics, fought on the front, and assisted northern invaders in their march across the South. The church leaders preached that in order to become God’s chosen, they must accept and live by Divine law so that God would shine His countenance upon them. Blacks also hoped that if they elevated themselves to respectability through duty, hard work, temperance, and economic selfsufficiency, then they, like the Israelites before them, would find favor in the eyes of their neighbors (Exodus 12:36). That was not to be in the South, but the heroic acts of black troops during the war changed the attitude of many northerners, especially its leadership. The sense of black community and nationhood gained momentum as abolition advanced across the northern states in the early 1800s and in the Caribbean. Large outdoor public communal celebrations commemorated each advance in the fight to end slavery. These public events had three common elements: thanksgiving for freedom, retelling the experience of slavery and oppression, and acceptance of a duty to bring freedom to their southern compatriots who were still enslaved. The first black newspaper and growing literacy in the 1820s also contributed to the development of a shared sense of nation. The meaning of community took on new meaning in 1830 with the first of a series of national conventions that were the “secular adjunct of the black church” and reinforced church efforts of self-reliance and social uplift.52 Black leaders from diverse social classes met to discuss common concerns and debate a national agenda and strategy, arguing the merits of emigration and colonization. During their first convention in Philadelphia, they established a committee to explore the option of buying a large tract of land in Canada as a refuge for black emigrés because of a perceived increase in persecution and violence against blacks. However, the issue was dropped within several years and the conventions turned inward in search of answers to the following questions: “How to do we improve our lot? What must we do to correct the ills of our community?”53 The 1834 convention framed its mission thus: “We rejoice that we are thrown into a revolution where the contest is not for landed territory, but for freedom; the weapons not carnal, but spiritual; where struggle is not for blood, but for right.”54 The concept of race as a definer of a people gained increasing acceptance as the nineteenth century progressed, although Thomas Jefferson articulated his own stereotyping even earlier. He wrote that “Afro-Americans were superior to whites in music, and equal to them in courage, memory and 312

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adventurousness and the moral sense but inferior to Caucasians in reasoning powers, forethought, poetry and imagination.”55 David Walker in his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829) noted that this developing racism made African-American slavery more oppressive than that of the Israelites. “I call upon the professing Christian, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history either sacred or profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains that the Egyptians heaped the insupportable insult upon the Children of Israel, by telling them they were not of the human family…. Have they not… held us up as descending originally from tribes of Monkeys or Orang-Outangs.”56 In the 1840s and 1850s the growing acceptance of the pseudo-science of race increased the solidarity of the African-American community. “Racial science did not give any attention to wealth or manner of comportment among black elites; all were naturally inferior.”57 Consequently, respectability for the middle class could only be achieved if they succeeded in elevating their entire race. Thus, blacks as a people were born rooted in the superficiality of skin color. Ultimately, it was transformed by shared concerns for enslaved brethren of the South and shared experiences of everyday discrimination and economic disadvantage in the North.

Americans: One People and One Nation Under God We have characterized the distinction between a people and a nation regarding the Israelites. The former reflects an internal unity developed around an experience or value, while the latter corresponds to the external image as the Israelites took their place among the nations of the world. There is no such distinction to be made for African Americans. Fletcher, however, develops a different people/nation dichotomy within the framework of the American experience as a whole. He argues that Lincoln envisioned a historical transformation of the United States from “one people” to “one nation under God.” The Declaration of Independence opens, “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another….” Later, it refers to “the right of the people to alter or to abolish” a form of government that denies its citizens’ basic rights. The signers argued that the authority of government rested in the consent of the governed, the people. Similarly, eleven years later, the Constitution of the United States begins, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union….” Within this construct, it would seem the people of any generation have the right to articulate a new compact around a new vision, in essence to change their mind. Secession 313

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would appear to be a legitimate right within this framework, as the leaders of the seceding states argued. However, Lincoln did not believe that such a right existed because over the period of “four score and seven years” the people had become transformed into a nation through a shared history, language, folklore, and sense of mission “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” A nation does not simply exist in the present; it exists across time. It has a past and a destiny that cannot be dissolved by the people of one time period even though the nation and its government come to life through the people of each generation. “We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln envisioned a nation that had a covenant with God in perhaps the same way that Moses imagined, toward the end of his life, that his words were directed to all Israelites who would follow. “You stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God…. I make this covenant, with its sanctions, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us before the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here this day” (Deuteronomy 29:9–14). A central government is a necessary building block in a nation’s development. By its role in ruling over a specific geographic area, it declares in practical terms that a nation exists. A national government also defines the people’s “legal personality” and how it will function, but a central government does not automatically make an “organic and inseparable nation.” Needless to say, Lincoln’s vision of a nation was not shared by those who saw just a collection of states who voluntarily agreed to join an association. And even in the North, the language of nation was more in the realm of poets such as Walt Whitman or political philosophers than in the language of the masses as the war began. However, the Civil War itself helped spread a sense of nationhood. Soldiers from diverse states, social status, and native languages shared a common battlefield language. Their counterparts at home could read and share the same war accounts rapidly spread by telegraph. They were all part of a nation at war. It was this organic nation that Lincoln prayed for in his second inaugural address when he asked for God’s help “to bind up the nation’s wounds,” and care for the nation’s widows and orphans of both North and South, without distinction. Lastly, the war brought one-eighth of the populace, the African Americans, within the definition of the nation. With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, citizenship was no longer defined by individual states. The amendment declared: “All persons born or naturalized in the 314

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United States… are citizens of the United States and of the States wherein they reside.”

Searching in the Wilderness Only a year after the exodus, the Israelites demonstrated their fear and unwillingness to tackle the challenge of establishing a country in a hostile environment. When the twelve spies returned from traversing the length and breadth of Canaan, they lamented that “we cannot attack that people, for it is stronger than we,” and, as a result, “the whole community broke into loud cries and the people wept that night” (Numbers 13:31, 14:1). The Israelites were then sentenced to wander in the wilderness of Sinai for forty years until a new generation of people and leaders could develop who were untouched by the slave mentality of Egypt. This might be considered the Israelite Reconstruction period, in which the Israelite nation slowly shed the damaged self-esteem of slaves and strengthened themselves before their conquest of Canaan. However, African Americans were far less unified in even attempting to reach such a “promised land.” Most fought hard in order to shed their bonded status and at the same time defeat anti-black discrimination in the same country where they had been enslaved. Also, unlike the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness for only forty years, African Americans wandered and struggled in a political wilderness for almost a century. Escaped slaves and, later, former slaves looked to the northern states as a promised land. Frederick Douglass noted that “singing the spiritual ‘I am bound for the land of Canaan’ meant something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the North, the North was our Canaan.”58 For slaves dreaming of freedom, the North Star served as a beacon that guided them to a Promised Land.59 However, it was a distant Promised Land with no clearly marked route, especially for those slaves who lived in the Deep South. Although many slaves escaped from plantation slavery, more often than not it was just for a respite. For those who tried to escape permanently by reaching the North, probably fewer than a thousand succeeded each year. With luck and planning, some found a helping hand along the way on the Underground Railroad. For others, the Promised Land was a heavenly dream, as in the spiritual: “I am bound for the Promised Land./When I get to heaven I’ll set and tell, I am bound for the Promised Land.”60 Crossing the border into the so-called Promised Land usually meant seeking the obscurity of a big city with the help of a black vigilante committee. There, former slaves settled down to find work and support themselves, together with the family members who came with them in many 315

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cases. Unfortunately for African Americans, however, the North flowed neither with milk and honey nor with the milk of human kindness. Border states were concerned that their proximity would make them a haven for a disproportionate number of blacks. The state constitutions of Illinois (1848) and Indiana (1851) barred blacks from moving into their states, although these rules were rarely enforced. Ohio required blacks entering their state to post a five-hundred-dollar bond to guarantee good behavior, and they had to certify that they were freemen. In New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, blacks were denied the right to vote.61 Racism created discriminatory rules that placed blacks in an inferior position in their day-to-day lives. In almost every aspect of public life they were either excluded or relegated to separate facilities. Schools, hospitals and cemeteries were routinely segregated. One observer noted that “racial prejudice haunts its victims wherever he goes, – in the hospitals where humanity suffers, – in the churches where it kneels to God, – in the prisons where it expiates its offences, – in the graveyards where it sleeps the last sleep.”62 African Americans protested, filing lawsuits and petitions in order to abolish the most egregious discriminatory rules. Long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, Frederick Douglass had to be dragged from the white section of a train in Lynn, Massachusetts. His highly publicized removal was one factor in eventually ending segregation of public transport in that state. Periodically, this racism burst into the flames of a race riot, as in Cincinnati in 1829 and five times in Philadelphia between 1832 and 1849. The most infamous was the Draft Riot of New York City in 1863, when Negroes were lynched from trees and lampposts. The race riots of Cincinnati drove many of its citizens to a new promised land, Canada. Emigration to Canada gained momentum with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 and subsequent, highly-publicized efforts to enforce it. The black population of Canada peaked in 1860 at an estimated fifty thousand. Yet although Canada provided a safe haven, it was no Promised Land. When slavery ended in the United States, approximately sixty percent of the African Americans returned to the United States, leaving the Canadian black population at 21,500 in 1871. The black population was below twenty thousand as recently as 1951, accounting for 0.1 percent of the population.

The American Colonization Society: an Alternative One alternative offered to blacks was voluntary relocation to a homeland of their own with financial incentives and support provided by the U.S. 316

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government. This effort was termed colonization, and the most famous experiment was the establishment of communities in Liberia for American black freedmen. Other proposals focused on relocating freedmen to various islands in the Caribbean, parts of Central America, and regions in South America. The American Colonization Society was established in 1816 in Washington, D.C. under the leadership of Robert Finley, a retired Presbyterian minister, together with Elias Caldwell and Francis Scott Key. It claimed to seek a humane and just solution for the growing population of freedmen. The members perceived the prejudice of white America as intractable even in the face of communal efforts by blacks to advance their social status through education, hard work, and religious commitment. President Monroe, Senator Henry Clay, and other leading politicians were among many prominent Americans who supported these efforts. The Society’s first president was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, B. Washington. Monroe and several other politicians saw the Society’s existence as a necessary step to encourage states to adopt gradual emancipation because it would solve the post-emancipation problem of a large black population in their midst.63 In the 1850s Abraham Lincoln served on the Illinois colonization commission, and later, as president, signed legislation in April 1862 authorizing the allocation of one hundred thousand dollars to support the resettlement of Washington slaves who had just been freed. As the Civil War progressed, Lincoln accurately perceived America’s extreme reluctance to assimilate as equals the four million people who were on the verge of freedom. He pursued settlement in Haiti and Panama in a region with extensive coal deposits.64 Southerners favored these efforts to rid themselves of the freedmen. Northerners also sought to relieve themselves of what they considered a nuisance and a negative moral influence, as well as to limit competition between blacks and recent immigrants for low-paying jobs. Small groups of blacks also supported these efforts at various times because they sought dignity and self-respect as equals. Their attitude is captured in an 1827 message to black Americans from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia (named for James Monroe): “Forming a community of our own… we know nothing of that debasing inferiority with which our very colour stamped us in America;… The burden is gone from our shoulders; we now breathe and move freely; and know not… the empty name of liberty, which you endeavor to content yourselves with, in a country that is not yours.”65 Martin Delaney was one of the most prominent black proponents of an independent colony; in a speech to an 1854 National Emigration Convention, he laid out the various arguments for emigration to Central and 317

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South America or the West Indies. Pessimistic about black political rights and power, he said, “The color of blacks is a badge of degradation, acknowledged by statute, organic law, and the common consent of the people.”66 One New Yorker gave a realistic assessment of black interest in emigration when he said, “Of the colored population of this State, there are not fifty persons, all told, who desire to emigrate to Africa and that the American Colonization Society is a gigantic fraud.” By 1860, a total of 10,517 blacks had been transported to Liberia, including William Burke and his family; their journey was subsidized by Robert E. Lee, who had freed them in 1853. Many of these emigrants were required to move to Liberia as a condition of their emancipation.67 Blacks generally opposed colonization for three reasons: the United States, not Africa, was their home, they were optimistic about America living up to its ideals, and they did not want to abandon their enslaved fellow blacks. Groups of blacks often reacted by issuing a formal resolution, such as this one from Richmond on January 24, 1817: “While we thus express our approbation of a measure laudable in its purposes, and beneficial in its designs, it may not be improper for us to say, that we prefer being colonized in the most remote corner of the land of our nativity, to being exiled to a foreign country.” Philadelphia blacks were stronger in their language and referred to the proposed home as the “savage wilds of Africa.” They issued the following resolutions: Resolved, that we view with deep abhorrence the unmerited stigma attempted to be cast upon the reputation of the free people of color, by the promoters of this measure. Resolved, that we never will separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of this country… we feel there is more virtue in suffering privations with them, than fancied advantages for a season. Resolved, that having the strongest confidence in the justice of God, and philanthropy of the free states, we cheerfully submit our destinies to the guidance of Him who suffers not a sparrow to fall, without His special providence.68

When the issued resurfaced in 1831, a convention of northern blacks responded that the time must come when the Declaration of Independence will be felt in the heart, as well as uttered from the mouth, and when the rights of all shall be properly acknowledged and appreciated. God hasten that time. This is our home, and this is our country. Beneath its sod lie the

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bones of our fathers; for it, some of them fought, bled, and died. Here we were born, and here we will die.69

And in 1852 blacks declared, “Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, may evil betide us when the hope of gain, or fear of oppression, shall compel or persuade us to forsake them to the rayless gloom of perpetual slavery.”70 Finally, when Lincoln met with a group of African Americans on August 14, 1862, to hear their reaction to his latest colonization plan, he received this response: This is our country by birth. Consequently we are acclimated, and in other respects better adapted to it than any other country. This is our native country; we have as strong attachment naturally to our native hills, valleys, plains, luxuriant forests, flowing streams, mighty rivers, and lofty mountains, as any other people…. Shall we sacrifice this, forsake our birth-place, and flee to a strange land, to appease the anger and prejudice of the traitors now in arms against the Government?71

Un-Promised Land As the Civil War progressed and the light of freedom grew brighter, blacks dreamed of a new promised land. They sought to take possession of property in their home locales or be allocated confiscated or governmentowned lands. Some simply took over the property of their absent masters, arguing that it was their efforts that had made the plantation economically efficient and that they had earned a piece of every plantation though the blood and sweat of generations of slaves. This position was not legally sustainable, however, and efforts to purchase land were similarly thwarted. One of the earliest such opportunities arose in November 1861 in Port Royal, South Carolina, which was occupied by the U.S. Navy. When whites fled their nearby Sea Island plantations, blacks hoped that this was a prelude to ownership. However, when Sea Island plantations were auctioned in 1863 and 1864 for non-payment of taxes, much of the land was bought by “army officers, government officials, and Northern speculators and cotton companies.”72 After the war, groups of blacks, especially soldiers, pooled resources and sought opportunities to purchase or to lease the land but to no avail, as whites conspired and pressured their neighbors not to sell at any price.73 An ad-hoc situation developed in southeastern Virginia as blacks began working and in some cases renting abandoned plantations that the U.S. government had confiscated. Francis W. Bird reported to a War Department commission on December 24, 1863, about blacks working on these “government farms.” “All that is needed to establish there a truly loyal and prosperous community is that the men and women who have watered the 319

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soil with their tears and blood should be allowed to own it when they have earned it by their labor.”74 Black hopes for land of their own gained momentum on January 12, 1865, when Secretary of War Edwin W. Stanton met with twenty black leaders in General Sherman’s headquarters in Savannah, Georgia, asking them to “state in what manner can you take care of yourselves.” They answered, “The way we can best take care of our selves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor…. We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own.” They did not expect that the land would be given to them outright. Rather, they wanted the right to work a piece of property so that they might save up enough money to eventually purchase the lands from the government.75 Shortly thereafter, General Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15, which designated the islands south of Charleston and parts of the low country of South Carolina as far as thirty miles inland for exclusive settlement by blacks. He allocated forty acres per family and directed the army to loan mules as well as help with transport. By June, forty thousand freedmen went to work on four hundred thousand acres of “Sherman land.” They focused much of their energy on growing food for sustenance, since they had an aversion to growing the cash crop of cotton because of its association with slavery. On March 3, 1865, the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established with the authorization to divide up land into fortyacre plots and rent to freedmen and loyal refugees. At its peak, the Bureau controlled eight hundred fifty thousand acres in 1865. However, the partial redistribution of land survived for the most part just one planting season. On May 29, 1865, President Johnson issued a general pardon which included returning the vast majority of confiscated property to the original southern owners. Several generals and bureau administrators initially refused to take away property provided to blacks for development and continued to push for settlement of blacks along the lines spelled out originally by General Sherman and supported by Secretary Stanton. Without presidential review and approval, General Oliver Otis Howard, the head of the Freemen’s Bureau, issued Circular 13 at the end of July, which instructed Bureau agents to distribute forty-acre parcels as soon as possible. General Rufus Saxton (in charge of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida), General Clinton B. Fisk in Tennessee, and Mr. Thomas W. Conway76 in Louisiana, all supported continued disbursement of land to blacks. President Johnson insisted on compliance with his pardon and the restoration of property, ordering General Howard to rescind Circular 13. As 320

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a result, in September General Howard issued Circular 15 and traveled to the Sea Islands off Charleston to deliver personally the heartbreaking news and explain to blacks the requirement to sign labor contracts with their former owners. In one October meeting with two thousand former slaves on Edisto Island, he was faced with the repeated question, “Why do you take away our lands?” They could not understand why the government chose to “befriend its late enemies and to neglect to observe the common principles of faith between itself and us its allies in its war.” They perceived that “land was the foundation of freedom,” and with the hope for land ownership replaced by work contracts they were as bad off as before.77 Like the Elders of Israel approaching Pharaoh, black representatives petitioned President Johnson, arguing their case based on loyalty to the government – in contrast to the plantation owners – and the fact that they had developed the lands: “If Government Does not make some provision by which we as Freedmen can obtain A Homestead, we have Not bettered our condition.” Although the September circular practically ended the Bureau’s efforts to redistribute land, black dreams and white fears of widespread black homesteads lingered on through the Christmas season of 1865 and into the first weeks of the next year. The hopes and dreams of blacks and their core belief that they had a just claim to the lands that they had cultivated helped nurture rampant rumors of imminent redistribution. One rumor stated “that a Great Document has been received by the Freemen’s Bureau sealed with four seals… to be broken on the 1st of January 1866.” Whites feared and propagated a complementary rumor that eighty-five thousand black soldiers, who accounted for more than one-third of the occupation forces in the South, would, before the year’s end, forcibly redistribute the land with or without government approval. Neither happened, and agonizingly freedmen were pressured and forced to sign one-year contracts for modest wages to work the same fields in which they had performed slave labor.78 The Promised Land of dreams vanished in the winter of 1866 as many freedmen returned to their former plantations, not as slaves but as low-wage servants of the same masters.

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CHAPTER 23 FREEDOM’S TRANSFORMATION AND CONSEQUENCES

THIS

on the six weeks between the Israelites’ crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the covenant at Sinai, a period in which the Israelites were indoctrinated into God’s ways in order to prepare them for their most important transformation from slavery. After the Israelites crossed the seabed safely and witnessed the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, the Bible acknowledges their affirmation of faith: “They believed in God and Moses His servant” (Exodus 14:31), leading to a lengthy song of praise. Nevertheless, within days and weeks of leaving Egypt, the Israelites questioned both their belief in God and His immediate presence when they experienced shortages of water and food and were attacked by the Amalekites. Below we explore each of these events from the perspective of the lessons that were taught but not necessarily learned, lessons that were both personal and national. The transformation of black America extended over a much longer period, from 1863 to 1870. As discussed earlier, it began with the Emancipation Proclamation and reached a critical phase after passage of three amendments to the Constitution. Here we study the personal revolution that blacks experienced in education, marriage and family reunification, and economic freedom.1 In each case we explore parallels and contrasts with the Israelite experience. We conclude with a brief discussion of how their rights and privileges came under attack by the Ku Klux Klan, the arch-enemy of southern blacks, their own Amalekites. SECTION CONCENTRATES

Education and Freedom Education was a defining but dissimilar dimension of both journeys to freedom. In both instances, education was a primary value associated with freedom, and in each case the benefits extended to a broader society. The world ultimately gained from the education provided to the Israelites, and the South gained from the public education initiated by and for blacks. For the Israelites, the primary goal of freedom was a religious transformation accomplished through education and study. That educational experience became transcribed as the Bible and led to the Israelites’ becoming forever known as “the People of the Book.”

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In the exodus narrative, the vision and yearning for spirituality and knowledge did not originate with the Israelites but rather with God. He envisioned a people who would strive to develop into a holy nation, and he challenged and made a covenant with the Israelites. “Now then, if you will obey Me faithfully and keep My covenant, you shall be My treasured possession among all the peoples. Indeed, all the earth is Mine but you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). The educational journey to holiness took them from the slavery of Egypt to the service of God at Mount Sinai. This educational pilgrimage began dramatically at the base of Mount Sinai and continued in the wilderness for forty years. At Mount Sinai they declared “We will do and we will understand” (Exodus 24:7). First they committed themselves to follow God’s law without asking why or understanding its complexity. Then they dedicated themselves to understanding what was being asked of them.2 The book that the Israelites accepted was ultimately shared with the world; the rest is religious history. Enslaved blacks were generally barred from education, and this contributed to education becoming a symbol of freedom. Put simply, “to remain in ignorance was to remain in bondage,”3 a sentiment shared by former masters and former slaves alike. As one freedman told another, “Charles, you is a free man they say, but Ah tells you now, you is still a slave and if you lives to be a hundred, you’ll STILL be a slave, cause you got no education, and education is what makes a man free!”4 Blacks had a deep desire for education and yearned for it both for themselves and for their children. In the words of one Mississippi freedman, “If I nebber does nothing more while I live, I shall give my children a chance to go to school, for I considers education next best ting to liberty.”5 Or in the words of a white Tennessee official, “The colored people are far more zealous in the cause of education than the whites. They will starve themselves, and go without clothes in order to send their children to school.”6 Adult blacks also understood that obtaining an education after working all day would be difficult but necessary: “We’ll come to you in the evening for learning, and we want you to make us learn; we’re dull, but we want you to beat it into us.”7 Emancipation enabled African Americans to make dramatic strides in fulfilling this yearning. The development of public education for blacks also had a spillover effect: whereas antebellum southern education was generally limited to the upper class, the public school movement for blacks led to a parallel growth in public education for the white masses. Finally, the teachers of both Israelites and blacks had a common message: freedom brings with it added duties and responsibilities. On a 323

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personal level, free people are accountable for their own moral behavior and have greater opportunities to define their relationships with God. On a communal level, they have the duty to nurture a culture and participate in the establishment of organizations that further the development of a just, caring, and religiously inspired society. In the Bible this education begins with the Passover rituals and continues with the Ten Commandments and numerous regulations relating to social interaction (Exodus 21:1–23:9). This is followed by the announcement of three major holidays (Exodus 23:14–17) and the details of the construction of the Tabernacle (Exodus 25:1–30:38). The parallels for the post-Civil War black community may be found in their establishment of their own churches and community organizations to meet their social and economic needs. These broader educational and communal issues are beyond the scope of our discussion.

Experiential Education on the Road to Mt. Sinai In Egypt, the Israelites witnessed an omnipotent God unleashing every force of nature against their Egyptian oppressors. This God of Israel controlled Egypt’s greatest resource, the Nile, together with its creatures. Locusts and wild animals responded to His call. He could spread pestilence among animals and human beings or unleash fiery hail from the heavens. Finally, He could withhold sunlight for days on end or snuff out a person’s life in a moment. However, the forces that God released were under His complete control at all times. God could protect the Israelites even as they lived side by side with their Egyptian neighbors. This was an avenging God before whom they stood in awe on the shores of the Sea of Reeds and declared: “This is my God and I will glorify Him” (15:2). Now the Israelites needed to learn about God the nurturer and provider, the God who would play a role in their daily lives and not only at certain points in history. This God cared about the daily needs of individuals and expected to be acknowledged daily. The Israelites must worship God at all times, not only with their backs to the sea and Egyptians in hot pursuit. Likewise, they were not to limit their praise and thanks to miracles that rescued them from certain destruction. This message of a sole, all-powerful, and all-encompassing God gained strength as the Israelites journeyed to their historic rendezvous at Mount Sinai. At the same time, it was necessary to clarify the role and powers of Moses, the man who seemed, at times, a god himself. The Israelites saw the Moses who had laid Egypt low and drowned its army simply by waving his staff. It was hard for them to understand that a mortal could be in constant communication with the one God and that Moses was acting on God’s 324

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orders rather than on his own initiative. As a result, with almost every hardship that befell them the people complained, charging Moses with poor decision-making rather than turning directly to God themselves.8 The covenant between God and the Israelites and the corresponding link between responsibility and freedom is a theme throughout the Bible. This linkage begins with the very first set of commandments, the Passover rituals, that God gave to the Israelites. They were told to reinstitute circumcision for themselves and their children in order to be allowed to partake of the paschal lamb. In doing so, they affirmed that they were part of the destiny of the Jewish people that had begun with God’s selection of Abraham. The Israelites then had to demonstrate their trust and faith in God by selecting a lamb, a god of Egypt, for sacrifice in the mid-afternoon of the day before the exodus. They then smeared its blood on their doorposts and lintels and waited in the safety of their homes, performing God’s commandments associated with the Passover meal, as the final plague took place outside. New dimensions of this linkage developed at each encampment during the Israelites’ first days in the wilderness of Shur, as God introduced Himself as the ultimate provider. Just as the first plague in Egypt involved water, so too did the first challenge to the Israelites’ trust in God. In Egypt, Moses’s staff was used to convert the life-giving flow of the Nile into a deadly stream of blood. However, God reversed His role at the encampment in Marah when he showed Moses a tree to throw into the water to make it sweet. At the very moment the water was transformed, the Bible declares that “He established for it [the nation] a decree and an ordinance, and there He tested it” (Exodus 15:25). God made His responsiveness to the Israelites’ basic needs conditional upon their listening to Him and understanding what He was asking them to do. He characterized His close relationship with the Israelites as one between a physician and a patient. This physician could not only cure the people’s ills, but He was also capable of offering preventive medicine if the Israelites agreed to follow His guidance. The reward would be that “all of the ills that I placed on Egypt, I will not place on you” (Exodus 15:26). At the next encampment at Elim, God demonstrated His proactive anticipatory capability. The Israelites found an oasis established seemingly in preparation for their arrival. There were twelve fresh springs, one corresponding to each tribe. The seventy date trees recalled the seventy Israelites who had journeyed down to Egypt and the seventy elders who led them as they left Egypt. One month into the journey, the Israelites’ food ran out. They turned against Moses, accusing him of having led them into the wilderness to starve. 325

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They pined for their former lives in Egypt, where they sat around stew-pots, eating as much bread as they wished (Exodus 16:3). God’s complex answer and the Israelites’ subsequent behavior contained many messages and lessons. That night, they were served a one-time, unlimited feast of quail to satisfy their desire for meat. In contrast, their daily hunger was to be satisfied only one day at a time with manna from heaven. Unlike the quail, manna was a supernatural food that had never been seen before on earth. It was described as “like coriander seed, it was white, and it tasted like a cake fried in honey” (Exodus 16:31). God’s provision of these two foods, quail and manna, contrasted with two Egyptian plagues. Quail covered the entire Israelite camp with food – “In the evening quail appeared and covered the camp” (Exodus 16:13). By contrast, in Egypt God had sent locusts to consume the grasses and fruits of the trees. “And they shall cover the surface of the land so that no one will able to see the land” (Exodus 10:5). In Sinai, the life-sustaining manna from heaven contrasted with the life-destroying hailstorm in Egypt. The manna arrived outside the encampment each morning under the cover of darkness and dew, and there were specific regulations governing its gathering and consumption. Each family was to gather only enough for its daily needs and not store any for the future. Any attempt at hoarding would prove fruitless because the manna would spoil overnight. On Friday, the Israelites received a double portion that was to be cooked in advance of the Sabbath. This portion, which would not spoil overnight, would suffice for two days. The Israelites were also prohibited from going out to gather on the Sabbath. This experience and its related regulations conveyed a fundamental message about the relationship between God the provider and each Israelite family. God wanted the Israelites to understand that daily sustenance was ultimately a gift from God rather than simply a result of hard work and planning. For almost forty years this dependence was reinforced daily by eliminating the possibility of saving from one day to the next. Moses summarized the message as follows: “He gave you the manna to eat, which neither you nor your forebears had ever known, in order to teach you that human beings do not live by bread alone, but that human beings may live on anything that God decrees” (Deuteronomy 8:3). However, it was understood that the manna would cease once the Israelites entered Canaan and that they would establish an agricultural society subject to ordinary, natural law. Nevertheless, they were expected to have learned the lesson of manna and to take it with them across the Jordan River: daily bread earned seemingly through the sweat of one’s brow is still ultimately a gift from God. To ensure that the message would last beyond 326

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the wilderness experience, Moses ordered Aaron to “take one jar and put a full omer of manna into it; place it before God for safekeeping for your generations” (Exodus 16:33).9 In addition to the manna, the Israelites were introduced to the gift of the Sabbath. The minimal effort associated with gathering the manna was prohibited on the Sabbath, a holy day. Not even God “worked”; God delivered the manna for the Sabbath the day before. The Sabbath experience and its corresponding laws contained the message that abstaining from work every seventh day would not jeopardize the Israelites’ survival because God would compensate them for the lost income. The concept of a weekly holiday dedicated to the God who had redeemed them was a powerful idea for the formerly-enslaved Israelites. As slaves, they had had no regular day of rest. Their servitude was endless, stretching week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. There was no respite from the obligation to meet their daily quota of bricks. Now their daily quota of work in Egypt was replaced by one of manna – a consumption quota instead of a work quota. These former slaves of Egypt, who had been too worn out to heed Moses’s predictions of the end of their slavery, were now commanded to prepare themselves every seven days for a sacred day of rest. It was not easy for the recently-freed Israelites, who were still mentally enslaved to their past, to absorb the message of dependence on an invisible God. Some individuals attempted to store manna from one day to the next, only to see it grow wormy overnight. Others went out on the Sabbath in order to gather fresh manna. Both God and Moses learned an important lesson from these violations: it would be a challenge to educate and train the Israelites to adopt new behaviors and beliefs. Moses became angry over the attempt to hoard manna, while God reacted to those who violated the Sabbath by asking for the first but not the last time, “How long will you refuse to observe My commandments and My teachings?” (Exodus 16:28). The people’s fear of a water shortage intensified when they arrived at Refidim, almost within sight of Mount Sinai. Their supplies thinned out further and they began to suffer thirst. Many Israelites rose individually to challenge Moses, saying, “Why did you bring me from Egypt, to kill me and my children and my livestock with thirst?” (Exodus 17:3). In His response, God highlights His transformation from destroyer to provider by telling Moses to take the same staff used to strike the Nile and use it to create a permanent source of water from a rock. However, the quarrel over water represented a more basic concern. The Israelites wondered: “Is the Lord present among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7)10 327

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Yet the Israelites’ suffering of hunger, thirst, and weariness were not yet over. As Moses later noted, the Amalekites “surprised [them] on the march, and cut down all the stragglers in the rear when [they] were famished and weary” (Deuteronomy 25:18). At that time, Moses ordered Joshua to assemble an army and go into battle while Moses positioned himself on a hill overlooking the battlefield from which he could have visual contact with the troops below. The Bible records an unusual battlefield dynamic: “Then, whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed; but whenever he let down his hand, Amalek prevailed” (Exodus 17:11). The Talmud asks what Moses’s uplifted or dropped hands had to do with success in battle. The answer given is that Moses’s raised arms reflected the strength of the Israelites’ whole-hearted prayers for victory. These fervent prayers gave Moses the strength to keep his arms raised. However, when their religious fervor waned, Moses’s arms grew tired and drooped, and the battle turned against the Israelites.11 This experience demonstrated concretely, almost as a designed experiment, what it would take to conquer the land of Canaan. The Israelite army and people would need to partner unreservedly with God in order to be victorious. Might alone would not win the day; nor would the Sea of Reeds experience, in which all they had to do was push forward and watch God destroy their enemy, be repeated. The Israelites also learned that despite – and perhaps because of – their Godly mission, natural enemies would arise and attack them, apparently without cause.

African-American Experiential Education For the Israelites, experiential education preceded formal public education, which began with the Ten Commandments. For African Americans, both experiential and formal learning began during the Civil War. Their willingness to do the dirty work of war as well as their heroism on the battlefield, which won them respect and changed political attitudes among large population segments of the North. These hastened the eventual passage of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. Volunteer teachers in army camps and occupied territories also were motivated by goodwill and religious fervor. Yet not everyone in the North would be won over. Blatant racism was not easily conquered. More importantly, by the end of 1865, blacks in the South realized that attitudes on the home front would not change. The legal, political, economic, and physical battles required blacks to be vigilant and activist. They realized that they would need to unite with the small minority of southerners who had opposed slavery, northern immigrants to the south, the federal government, and the Republican Party. This often meant backing 328

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the most supportive white candidate rather than putting forward a black candidate. State-level political activism for African Americans began with a convention in New Orleans in January 1865. The primary outcomes of the convention were petitions that addressed the federal government rather than the Louisiana legislature, arguing for the principle of national citizenship that would provide civil and political rights.12 Throughout the South, blacks became active in local chapters of the Union League, which became the prime mover of broad political education and activism at both the county and state level in every corner of the South. They also quickly learned that political activism included major risks. On July 30, 1866, when blacks held a convention in New Orleans for equal rights, they were attacked together with their supporters. Several dozen, including three white radicals, were murdered in the convention hall and on the streets of New Orleans before federal authorities stopped the attack.13 Blacks also learned quickly that the current federal administration was antagonistic to their economic goals. The Andrew Johnson administration destroyed any hopes of widespread economic independence for African Americans that derived from ownership of confiscated property. By the end of 1865 and the first weeks of 1866, all optimism had disappeared as blacks were forced to sign contracts in which they agreed to work land belonging to former slaveholders for minimal wages. Especially disconcerting was that the message was delivered by the representatives of the Freedmen’s Bureau Interestingly, because the African Americans were awaiting a Christmas 1865 miracle, they did not yield to pressure to sign contracts immediately. Finding that the delays increased their bargaining power, they won modest concessions before most of them signed up in middle to late January 1866. Since the growing seasons of 1866 and 1867 were poor harvest years, blacks often had difficulty collecting on their contracts. Local authorities did nothing to protect or support their economic claims. Once again, they realized that they would have to fight for every dollar that they earned, and sought the help of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Blacks also strove to change the basic structure of their contractual relationships. They increasingly moved toward some form of sharecropping or property rental in which they collected their own payments by keeping the crops they raised. This type of relationship had the added benefit of eliminating white supervision of their day-to-day work.14

African Americans: Education Frees the Slave Blacks viewed formal education from three main perspectives: practical, religious, and mystical. For practical reasons they needed to become literate 329

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in order to fight for an equitable relationship with the all-encompassing white power structure. Even before the war ended, plantation owners struggled to keep their former slaves at home by offering them contracts that would define the new relationship. However, illiteracy placed freedmen at great risk of being cheated both in the contract’s terms and its enforcement.15 As a result, one elderly Louisiana freedman said, “Leaving learning to your children was better than leaving them a fortune; because if you left them even five hundred dollars, some man having more education than they had would come along and cheat them out of it all.”16 The second dimension revolved around the desire to read the Bible. Preaching by their masters and the white clergy had emphasized those portions of the Bible that called on servants to show obedience to their masters and emphasized the immorality of stealing and lying. They grew weary of sermons: “Serve your masters. Don’t steal your master’s turkey. Do whatsoever your master tells you to do.”17 Slaves dealt with the incongruity of the message in white churches with what they believed by imagining there must be two Bibles, the Bible used by their masters and a real Bible from God.18 For generations they had heard about the Israelites, of their slavery and Exodus, but many knew only a sketchy outline of the story. This outline formed the core of many slave spirituals. They identified with the Israelites’ suffering and were given hope by God’s response to the Israelites’ prayers; they imagined God inflicting a new set of plagues as retribution for their current slavery and looked forward to the day they would cross their own River Jordan into the Promised Land. Blacks yearned to read the full story themselves – “Because I want to read de Word of de Lord.”19 However, illiteracy was not an impenetrable barrier to knowing the Bible chapter and verse. Blacks would memorize whole chapters of the Bible that had been read to them by a master’s child or a literate black preacher at an illicit religious meeting. Sojourner Truth, the renowned preacher, abolitionist, suffragette, and ex-slave from New York, never learned to read but mastered the Bible by having children read to her wherever she went. She preferred children to adults because “children would reread the same passages as many times as requested without adding comment, but adults began to explain and give their version of it when she asked for repetition.”20 As tens of thousands of southern blacks escaped slavery with each advance of Union forces, an army of teachers and missionaries, men and women, white and black, went south. They were supported by a broad array of Christian churches in almost every northern city; the teachers numbered in the thousands.21 There was also a small indigenous literate black population that played a leading role in this educational initiative.22 By 1867 330

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an estimated one-third of the teachers were African Americans.23 The practical education they provided included reading and writing, weights and measures, monetary units, and basic calculations or arithmetic. However, their goal was not simply literacy. These teachers were on a mission “to undo the moral depravity, self-debasement and dependency which slavery had fostered in its victims.”24 They came to teach not just letters but also the idea that with freedom came responsibility and duties. These teachers aspired to instill in former slaves the “virtues esteemed by mid–nineteenth-century Americans: industry, frugality, honesty, sobriety, marital fidelity, self-reliance, godliness, and love of country.”25 This last point was especially new since for the first time blacks had a country that offered them hope and protection. These teachers came with biases and preconceived notions of what needed to be taught and what former slaves needed to unlearn. One point of conflict arose from the northern perception and assessment of southern black religious practices and worship. Some clergy admired the simple childlike faith of southern blacks and the sincerity and emotional impact of their music, hymns, and prayer services. However, a more common opinion was that the former slaves had crude conceptions of God and that their worship services were primitive, “filled with emotional wildness and unlettered preaching.”26 Lastly, for the slave and freedman there was magic in the ability to read: “They had seen the magic of a scrap of writing sent from a master to an overseer.”27 Blacks saw the mysterious impact of education in the classconscious southern society in which “power, influence, and wealth were invariably associated with literacy and monopolized by the better educated class of whites.”28 Even the image of someone reading aloud from a newspaper could be a mystery: “For a long time I could not get it out of my head that the readers were talking to the paper, rather than the paper talking to them.”29 Almost all southern states had passed laws against teaching slaves to read.30 The movement to limit education was in large part a response to periodic rebellions led by intelligent and educated blacks, most prominently Gabriel Prosser (1800), Denmark Vesey (1822), and Nat Turner (1831).31 This effort turned back the clock on the intellectual progress of southern African Americans. Henry Berry, speaking to the Virginia House of Delegates, summarized this anti-education success in 1832: “We have as far as possible closed every avenue by which light may enter their minds. We have only to go one step farther: to extinguish the capacity to see the light, and our work would be completed; they would then be on a level with the beasts of the field and we should be safe.” Berry, however, goes on to 331

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declare that these barriers to education cannot extinguish the drive for freedom. “And can man be in the midst of freemen, and not know what freedom is? Can he feel that he has the power to assert his liberty, and will he not do it?”32 Each owner also had a more practical fear: a slave who could read and write could forge his own travel pass and flee slavery. Reverend John Sella Martin, a pastor in Washington, D.C., learned to read and write as a ten-yearold slave in Columbus, Georgia. He recalled that after the very first lesson, “I saw myself already writing a free-pass, and with it traveling to find my mother and sister; and then, with another that I should write, leading them to Canada.”33 When Booker T. Washington’s mother explained to him that whites considered it dangerous to educate blacks, “I resolved that I should never be satisfied until I learned what the dangerous practice was like.” He recalled seeing white children inside a schoolhouse. “I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise.”34 Slave masters believed that education would lead slaves to be discontented with their lot. There were too many incendiary ideas about freedom and equality in abolitionist pamphlets, stories about Toussaint L’Ouverture, writings of the French Revolution, slavery debates in Congress and the Bible. Abolitionist writings and newspapers from the north threatened the tranquility of the slave plantation and laws were passed prohibiting their distribution.35 Conversely, masters took advantage of the slave’s illiteracy and concomitant lack of knowledge about the outside world. For example, they lied about the horrible lives of freedmen who had fled to the North to escape slavery, claiming they were desperate to return to the plantation and the good old days. Thus when the chains of slavery were broken and the anti-education laws became null and void, many former slaves satisfied their yearning for an education by migrating to cities and towns in order to pool resources to establish schools especially for their children.36 “They will starve themselves, and go without clothes, in order to send their children to school.”37 Their living conditions were often abysmal but their thirst for education was unvanquished. In 1863, the Rev. Thomas Calahan, a missionary from the United Presbyterian Church serving among the freedmen in Louisiana, wrote, You have no idea of the state of things here. Go out in any direction and you meet negroes on horses, negroes on mules, negroes with oxen, negroes by the wagon, cart and buggy load, negroes on foot, men, women, and children, negroes in uniform, negroes in rags, negroes in frame houses, negroes living in tents, negroes living in rail pens covered 332

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with brush, and negroes living under brush piles without any rails, negroes living on the bare ground with the sky for their covering; all hopeful, almost all cheerful, every one pleading to be taught, willing to do anything for learning. They are never out of our rooms, and their cry is for “Books! Books!” and “When will school begin?” Negro women come and offer to cook and wash for us, if we will only teach them to read the Bible.38

Often a classroom included multi-generational students, as depicted in Illustration 25. J.W. Alvord described a scene that included “a child of six years old, her mother, grandmother, and great grandmother, the latter over 75 years of age.”39 The school classroom was anything that was available, ranging from private shacks to abandoned hotels. The freedmen formed societies, taxed themselves, and/or imposed a modest tuition charge, whatever it took to fund education. Those remaining on plantations wrote into contracts with their former masters a requirement that education be provided on the plantation.40 One Louisiana contract required the planter to pay a fivepercent tax to be used for education.41 By 1869, the Freedmen’s Bureau reported two hundred fifty thousand students in more than four thousand schools with three-quarters of the schools run directly by the bureau. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these schools were in towns inaccessible to the majority of blacks in remote rural areas. It is estimated that less than ten percent of the black school-age population was able to attend these schools. However, these were supplemented by numerous church-run Sabbath schools that educated at least another hundred thousand students, using spelling books alongside the Bible. Much of the development in literacy was informal and went unreported in statistics. As one member in a family became literate, he or she shared the learning with immediate family or neighbors, helping them to learn the alphabet one letter at a time until the Bible became an open book. Significantly, the actions by blacks to make education widely available spurred the development of southern public education for whites as well. Blacks helped to institutionalize public education through active participation with Republican allies in state constitutional conventions of the late 1860s. As a result, every southern state constitution provided for public funding for a public-school system.42 Black soldiers had a natural opportunity to learn to read and write in almost every military camp, especially during winter encampment. They had spare time and readily available teachers. The regimental commanders, chaplains, and accompanying wives volunteered to teach. Frances Beecher, wife of Colonel James Beecher, commander of the Thirty-fifth U.S. Colored 333

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Infantry, recalled, “My mornings were spent in teaching the men of our regiment to read and write, and it became my pleasing duty and habit, wherever our moving tents were pitched, there to set up our school. Sometimes the chaplain assisted, and sometimes the officers; and the result was that when the men came to be mustered out each one of them could proudly sign his name to the pay-roll in a good legible hand.”43 Joseph T. Wilson, a black trooper in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Regiment, later wrote that “every camp had a teacher, in fact every company had some one to instruct the soldiers in reading, if nothing more. Since the war I have known of more than one who have taken up the profession of preaching and law making, whose first letter was learned in camp; and not a few who have entered college."44 Military-sponsored education spilled over into the surrounding areas. The Fifty-ninth U.S. Colored Infantry went into winter quarters in Memphis in 1863, where it built a schoolhouse that was used not only by soldiers but also by local residents. Colonel Robert Cowden wrote, It was astonishing to note the eagerness with which these poor, ignorant creatures entered into the work of study, and also the rapid progress they made in learning. Such intense interest was created that men going on duty were generally seen carrying their spelling-books or Testaments under their belts to their posts of duty and spending their time when off post in learning their lessons. In this way about two hundred and fifty of the enlisted men of this regiment learned to read and write.45 After the war, the drive for education was documented by J.W. Alvord, Inspector of Schools and Finances of the Freeman’s Bureau. After a travelogue of four thousand miles through eight southern states in the fall of 1865 he reported the following: They have a natural thirst for knowledge common to all men. They have seen power and influence among white people always coupled with learning – it is the sign of elevation to which they all aspire. Its mysteries, hitherto hidden from them in literature, excite them to the special study of books. Their freedom has given wonderful impetus to all efforts indicating a vitality that augurs well for their whole future condition and character.46

The Family Unit Political slavery in Egypt did not pose as direct a threat to family life as did the chattel slavery of African Americans. The Bible records one child of mixed Israelite and Egyptian parentage, leading the Midrash to cite this as an exception and to praise the Israelites for maintaining marital fidelity.47 334

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A New England carpetbagger teacher at a beginners’ reading class in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

The Barrow Plantation: Oglethorpe County Georgie – 2,000 acres; 1860: Communal Slave quarters. 1881: Sharecroppers Disbursed.

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However, the brutality of political slavery undermines family life in other ways. Pharaoh, in a bid to reduce population growth, separated husbands from their families by shipping them off to distant work camps to build him monuments. The decree to kill all male newborns created a moral dilemma for every couple. The Midrash suggests that for a period of time many husbands and wives separated voluntarily rather than gamble on having a boy. In general, when family members work at the direction and discretion of outside forces, normal family routines such as eating together may become uncommon events. Booker T. Washington noted, “I cannot remember a single instance during my childhood or early boyhood when our entire family sat down to the table together, and God’s blessing was asked, and the family ate a meal in a civilized manner.”48 It is therefore understandable that the Passover ritual, the first commandment given to the masses, included a requirement that the paschal lamb be eaten at a sit-down family meal held in the privacy of the Israelite home. A key element of the meal is that parents have an annual opportunity to pass on Jewish traditions to their children. The brutality of all forms of slavery can undermine the natural respect between child and parent. As we grow, we expect our parents and even older siblings to protect us from those more powerful than we. The sight of a parent being whipped drives home the parent’s impotence in the face of greater strength. Worse yet is the situation in which a parent is unable to save his or her child from punishment. In essence, the slave state and its representative power figures assume the prerogatives and authority that normally reside with parents. Perhaps this is the reason that the commandment to honor one’s father and mother was given such prominence in the Ten Commandments, the only commandment to mention the reward of long life for its observance. The challenges facing the southern slave family were more direct. Southern states did not recognize the legal status of an African-American slave marriage and the master could easily disrupt marital and other family relationships by selling off part of the family to a neighboring plantation or to a distant state. Less common was the master or his sons taking advantage of a married or betrothed woman within his domain. To the enslaved, marriages that were not sanctioned by the injunction “What God done jined, cain’t no man pull asunder” were inherently weak and subject to severance.49 Slaves recognized the casualness and impermanent state of their unions: Most all de slave weddin’s was jest de maser says ter de man, “Slave Mose, you laks Nancy and wants ter marry her? Does you love her? Will you work fer her and bring home food to her? And some other foolish questions. And Mose says, “Yas, Sah.” And den de maser says, “Now 336

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both of you jump over dis broomstick,” and den he says, “You is married.” Some of de masers would make de slaves git married by a preacher; dat would be about one slave owner out of ten, though. De rest would do de marryin’ demselves and has a lot of fun out of de ones dat was gittin’ married.50

Nevertheless, there are significant data documenting, for example, the existence and strength of two-parent households among slaves in eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Lowcountry areas. That period’s stable slave markets and the large size of plantations enabled many slaves to live out their lives in one locale while developing a large extended family network. When slaves were sold and families split, often the forced transfers were within the same general region. However, that changed with the rise of cotton as a major crop in the Deep South, leading to transfers of many slaves away from their families to cotton-growing regions.51 Nevertheless, even with the constant threat of family breakup, enslaved parents played important roles in the development of their children. When both parents were present, it was not a matriarchal society. The father would teach his children how to cope with slave life and how to avoid youthful anger and rebelliousness that would get them into trouble. He would help supplement their basic diet by teaching them hunting, fishing, and other useful skills.52 The intrinsic value of marriage to slaves was confirmed en masse during and after the Civil War, when tens of thousands of freedmen and women quickly acted to legalize their marriages. One former slave woman, the mother of several children, declared that she and her “husband” had “lived together fifteen years and we wants to be married over again now.” Mass weddings involving over seventy couples at once became a regular occurrence just after the war.53 In Vicksburg in 1864, three thousand couples married during an eight-month period. Chaplain Asa S. Fiske married one hundred nineteen couples in a single hour in the Memphis district. In order to encourage the sanctification of pre-existing relationships, the First African Baptist Church of New Orleans passed a rule stipulating that “Any persons wishing to become members of this church who may be living in a state of illegitimate marriage shall first procure a license and marry.” To facilitate one marriage, Colonel Thomas W. Higginson loaned a soldier a dollar and seventy-five cents to buy a wedding outfit and noted that “matrimony on such moderate terms ought to be encouraged.”54 The former slaves had spiritual, social, and sensible reasons for legalizing their marriages. They recognized marriage as a method to employ their recently-won civil rights. They wanted their children to be legitimate. Wives wanted access to the pensions that their husbands had acquired through 337

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military service during the war and to the land the government allegedly would distribute among newly-freed heads of households. Stable legitimate unions were thought to contribute to economic success and encourage productivity.55 Marriage also reflected a key element of freedom: the right to choose. Former slaves were free to dissolve unions that had been forced upon them by their masters and select partners of their own choosing.56 The restructuring of work life also redefined roles within the family. Black men assumed a more defined role as head of the family unit. They took pride in reducing the fieldwork responsibilities of their wives and young children. Former masters who contracted men to work often mistakenly assumed that black wives would work as well in their previous roles. One freedman told his employer, “When I married my wife, I married her to wait on me and she has got all she can do right here for me and the children.”57 Although women and children continued to contribute to the southern economy, the extent and control of their work hours and environment was removed from white control. Blacks were able to develop extended family networks, both informally and formally, some known as societies, associations, and joint-stock companies that increased their leverage with potential employers. African Americans also pooled resources to buy the limited tracts that were made available to them for purchase. They also joined in shared labor contracts. For example, one contract for work in a large former plantation in Edenton, North Carolina, in 1867 covered sixty freed people with just three surnames, Capehart, Williams, and Bolin. Another in Alabama employed fifty freed people that involved nine distinct families but only two surnames, Dawson and Terrell.58 In addition, because many blacks barely made ends meet, the extended family unit provided an economic support network that involved sharing limited resources. The extended family had special value to blacks who during slavery had often seen a close relative sold down the river.59

Economic Security and Freedom The period of freedom, which began with similar dreams for Israelites and African Americans, brought different economic experiences. Both groups left slavery with a promise of their own land. God promised the Patriarchs and their descendants a land flowing with milk and honey. Blacks anticipated forty acres and a mule, based on the early actions of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Special Field Order 15, issued by General William T. Sherman. Neither dream was fulfilled as intended, however.60 After Moses sent out spies to scout the land of Canaan, the first generation of Israelites reacted to the spies’ frightening report on the strength of the land’s residents by concluding that they could not conquer 338

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the land even with divine assistance. God responded to this lack of faith by sentencing the Israelites to an extended sojourn in the wilderness during which all but two of the first generation would die before the Israelites could enter Canaan. African Americans lost their dream with the ascendance of Andrew Johnson to the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination. Through a broad amnesty program, he quickly reversed all efforts to allocate confiscated property for the settlement and economic independence of blacks. Denied entrance into their promised land, the Israelites spent their first forty years of freedom living on the manna that God brought to their camp every day. The food, which seemed to have a magical look and taste, could be cooked in a variety of ways. The people could “grind it between millstones or pound it in a mortar, boil it in a pot and make it into cakes. It tasted like rich cream” (Numbers 11:8). Fresh water came from a nearby rock wherever they camped. Nor did they have to worry about making new clothing or shoes. As Moses reminded them near the end of the forty years, “The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet” (Deuteronomy 29:4). It would seem to have been a heavenly existence. Economic security was guaranteed and they did not have to live by their own labor. The only great blemish on this idyllic scene was that they had no freedom of choice. Their food did not change from day to day and was restricted: “You had no bread to eat and no wine or intoxicant to drink” (Deuteronomy 29:5). They had little reason to sew new clothes or dress up for festivals. Although they were in the wilderness for forty years, they spent most of this time in several encampments for years on end learning their new religion, commandment by commandment. This monotonous routine, even with the security blanket of daily manna, was viewed as a test, a challenge from God. After just one year they were heard to complain and cry, “If only we had meat to eat. We remember the fish that we used to eat for free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!” (Numbers 11:4–6). Moses heard them crying and felt that he had failed in his mission. The people whom he had hoped to educate to become a holy nation hungered more for meat, onions, and leeks than for Divine teaching. God responded by bringing them a vast flock of quail from the sea to satisfy their desire for meat. He then sent a plague, striking down the people while the meat was still between their teeth. For emancipated blacks, the dream of the government offering them the opportunity to work their own forty acres with a mule evaporated with President Johnson’s general amnesty and his overall hostility to the cause of 339

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African-American economic independence. The dream lingered for several more years after the Civil War with the hope that a Republican Congress would include property distribution as part of Reconstruction. When this did not happen, blacks were on their own. By 1880, however, a small but significant group managed, through their own efforts, to buy up and operate almost ten percent of cultivated agricultural property, although they represented more than half of the agricultural population.61 Blacks struggled for economic survival, particularly during the first several years when crop harvests were poor. However, they had economic freedom in their day-to-day lives. They were free to choose how they spent their hard-earned dollars and their leisure time. They moved their homes away from the centralized slave quarters and made them larger (see Illustration 26). They occasionally supplemented their basic diet with luxuries such as tinned fish, cheese, or candy. Most notably, they bought clothing and jewelry in bright colors that attracted the disapproving attention of the white populace, who often charged blacks with wasting their limited resources on extravagances in order to appear as fancy as their white peers.62 Even their extremely modest growth in discretionary income led to the development of thousands of general merchandise stores at train stations and crossroads in towns and villages.63 After the demise of the black codes, African-Americans’ economic freedom of choice was limited by their financial insecurity, and plantation owners tried to take advantage of their fears. The postwar experience of one former slave illustrates this fearful economic reality: De day dat de news come dat de War was over, Maser Newman calls us slaves tergether and tole us dat we was as free as he was and dat we could go anywhar dat we wanted to and do anything we could, ter make a honest livin’. He said, “Now de War is over and times is hard, and all de slaves is free, and dar is goin ter be jest lots of dem jest driftin’ aroun’, and work is goin’ ter be hard ter get, and remembah, you is all on your own and has got ter hustle fer yourself. And if any of you leave, do your best ter get work as quick as you can. Don’t wait till you get hungry befo’ you tries ter get work, ‘cause if you can’t get it soon enough and have ter go and steal sumpin’, dat will get you in trouble jest as sho’ as you is standin’ here in front of me, and den you will have ter get yourself out of it er go ter jail; fer remembah, you don’t belong ter me er anybody else anymore…. Now you is free ter leave, but if you want ter stay wid me, I will try ter think out some plan that I am able to finance, so we can all make some money out of it and make a good livin’; ‘cause if I couldn’t make a little money out of it and furnish everything, it wouldn’t pay me ter make a trade wid you.64

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Blacks did manage to achieve two major changes in their working relationship. During the first post-Civil War years, blacks generally ended up signing labor contracts that had them working for wages under direct white supervision. However, this arrangement was the antithesis of the ownership and freedom they desired. Through collective action over a period of only a few years, and in part because of ongoing labor shortages, they were able to convert these relationships into either sharecropping or property rentals. Instead of wage payments, sharecroppers received one-third of the annual crop if the landowner made available the seed and tools required and one half of the crop if the tenant provided his own. This offered them a sense of ownership in the crop and significant control of their family’s daily work life without direct white supervision.65 A second parallel development is that members of black households now had the freedom to set their own work hours. Women reduced their fieldwork dramatically in order to devote more time to their roles as mothers and wives. Children were allocated time for their studies. Men reduced their work hours in exchange for more leisure time. Though this was a rational decision, whites often cited these actions as evidence of the natural indolence of blacks, who were no longer willing to work as hard and as long as they had when they were slaves. The result was a reduction of an estimated 28 to 37 percent in the per capita number of hours worked by blacks.66

Travel Travel restriction is a core element of the power that slave owners exert over their slaves. Masters prohibit their slaves from traveling without permission and force them to travel against their will. As noted above, Pharaoh forced the Israelite men to work on national construction projects far from home so as to limit population growth. The first direct conflict between Moses and Pharaoh involved a request for the right to travel three days into the wilderness to worship their God. When Pharaoh rejected the request, he also responded by sending the Israelites on a different kind of journey: “The people scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw” (Exodus 5:12). As the pressure from the plagues increased, Pharaoh agreed to the basic request but attempted to negotiate travel limits. First he offered to allow them to “sacrifice to your God within the land.” When Moses rejected this, Pharaoh expanded their travel space to include the “wilderness; but do not go very far.” When Moses threatened a plague of locusts, Pharaoh was prepared to extend the right of travel but restricted the travel only to the elders, not the

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children. “Clearly you are bent on mischief” (Exodus 10:10), he accused Moses. Interestingly, the penultimate plague, darkness, lasted for three days, the same length as the Israelites’ proposed journey, and in those three days, the darkness was so heavy that no Egyptian could move from his place, much less travel anywhere. When the Israelites left after the last plague and Pharaoh’s scouts reported that they were more than three days’ journey away, Pharaoh, like many a southern slave master, ordered a mission of hot pursuit with himself in the lead. Although the Israelite journey out of Egypt put an end to their slavery, their freedom to travel was still limited. God directed their movements and encampments at every stage. At first, He chose not to take them on the shortest, most direct route to the land of Canaan. To lead the way He created “a pillar of cloud by day to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, that they might travel day and night” (Exodus 13:21). He then had them camp by the sea to set the stage for the pursuit and the eventual drowning of the Egyptian cavalry. At this stage and throughout the first year, it was not obvious to the Israelites that God was directing their everyday travels, as the directions were delivered through Moses. Eventually, there would be no doubt as to who was the master of their travels during their forty years of wandering. And whenever the cloud lifted from the Tent, the Israelites would set out accordingly; and at the spot where the cloud settled, there the Israelites would make camp. At a command of the Lord the Israelites broke camp, and at a command of the Lord they made camp: they remained encamped as long as the cloud stayed over the Tabernacle. When the cloud lingered over the Tabernacle many days, the Israelites observed the Lord’s mandate and did not journey on. At such times as the cloud rested over the Tabernacle for but a few days, they remained encamped at a command of the Lord, and broke camp at a command of the Lord. And at such times as the cloud stayed from evening until morning, they broke camp as soon as the cloud lifted in the morning. Day or night, whenever the cloud lifted, they would break camp. Whether it was two days or a month or a year – however long the cloud lingered over the Tabernacle – the Israelites remained encamped and did not set out; only when it lifted did they break camp. On a sign from the Lord they made camp and on a sign from the Lord they broke camp; they observed the Lord’s mandate at the Lord’s bidding through Moses. (Numbers 9:17–23). God controlled their movements much the way a general might control his army. More importantly, this control reflected the nature of the freedom journey God had offered the Israelites. He expected and demanded of the 342

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Israelites that they accept Him as the new master of their fate, who could, if He chose, control every aspect of their daily lives. In essence, for the Israelites the political slavery of Egypt was replaced with service to God, and the house of bondage replaced with God’s House, the Tabernacle. In only one instance, the Israelites decided to travel without God’s permission. After the negative report of the twelve spies and the resultant Israelite reaction, God decreed, “Your carcasses shall drop in the wilderness. While your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness” (Numbers 14:32–33). Hearing this decree, the people had a dramatic change of heart and “early next morning, they set out toward the crest of the hill country saying, ‘We are prepared to go to the place that the Lord has spoken of, for we were wrong’” (Numbers 14:4). Moses warned that their attempt was unauthorized, that God would not travel in their midst, and that they would be at the mercy of the attacking armies of Canaan and Amalek. They did not listen and the results were catastrophic: “Yet defiantly they marched toward the crest of the hill country, though neither the Lord’s Ark of the Covenant nor Moses stirred from the camp. And the Amalek and the Canaanites who dwelt in the hill country came down and dealt them a shattering blow at Hormah” (Numbers 14:44–45). Slave travel in the South was not dramatically controlled by pillars of cloud and fire, nor were masters as all-seeing as God. The South developed a political and operational strategy to limit slaves’ freedom of movement so as to reduce opportunities for escaping bondage. In general, slaves were not allowed to travel more than a fixed distance from their homes without a written pass from their master. Any white finding them outside their natural authorized domain without written permission could take action. The states used militias to set up patrols along the major escape routes to enforce these state regulations. These efforts were supplemented by a cadre of slave-catchers who made their living pursuing and returning runaway slaves. Overall, these efforts were effective at the macro level, limiting African-American’s rights to take extended trips. Conversely, slaves were forced to travel to carry out jobs if their masters hired them out or if they were sold away from their plantation home and family. In contrast, on a day-to-day basis it was not possible to watch and oversee slaves twenty-four hours a day, especially in the relatively open society of a plantation. Slaves routinely gathered on Sundays without authorization to visit one another and to share religious services and celebrations. They also frequently traveled relatively short distances under the cover of darkness to spend time with friends or family in nearby farms and plantations or gathered in forests to conduct their own prayer services. 343

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They may have been full-time slaves by day but they felt differently at night. They were beyond the watchful eyes of the master and used this partial freedom to hold meetings in the forest or travel to nearby plantations. For slaves, “night is their day.”67 This limited mobility did not assuage the yearnings of a slave who had been separated from his family by more than a few hours’ walk. For them, the travel restrictions were extremely burdensome and galling, as they limited their visits to once a month or less. Frederick Douglass, whose mother had been hired out, could only recall “a few hasty visits made in the night on foot, after the daily tasks were over, and when she was under necessity of returning in time to respond to the driver’s call to the field in the early morning.”68 Consequently, freedom and travel were intimately linked in the minds of slaves. Even before emancipation, fleeing the plantation, whether permanently or even temporarily, was a powerful expression of the slave’s claim to freedom. Thus, as freedom came to different sections of the South both during and after the war, many former slaves jumped at the opportunity to leave the plantations where they had last labored. For example, Henry Adams left his plantation and traveled to “see whether I am free by going without a pass.” A sermon given by a black preacher in 1865 illustrates the perception that movement equaled freedom: You ain’t none o’ you, gwinter feel rale free till you shakes de dus’ ob de Ole Plantashun offen yore feet an’ goes ter a new place whey you kin live out o’ sight o’ de gret house. So long ez de shadder ob de gret house falls acrost you, you ain’t gwine ter feel lak no free man, an’ you ain’t gwine ter feel lak no free ’oman. You mus’ all move – you mus’ move clar away from de ole places what you knows, ter de new places what you don’t know, whey you kin raise up yore head douten no fear o’ Marse Dis ur Marse Tudder. Take yore freedum, my brudders an’ my sisters.69 The link between freedom and travel extended beyond the immediate goal of migration. It affected leisure patterns and created increased demand for trains. They traveled “on all sorts of occasions: holidays, picnics, Sunday school celebrations, church dedications.”70 Slaves took to the roads to locate lost loved ones, to seek better economic opportunities, to escape violence, to move to settings where whites respected their civil rights. No composite of these migrant freedmen exists. Seemingly contented slaves left as regularly as the most discontented. Those who shared close bonds with their former master absented themselves as frequently as those who associated little with their owners. Freedmen abandoned kindly as well as sadistic masters. Wealthy masters 344

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who were known to keep their word had a better chance of retaining former slaves as laborers; conversely, even the kindest master who was in dire economic straits might find himself deserted by the blacks who had served him.71 The freedmen’s postwar migration was largely an intraregional phenomenon. Few slaves moved far from “the region they knew most intimately, the familiar surroundings in which they had been raised.”72 The desire to reside in a familiar locale also explains the return of ex-slaves to plantations from which they had been sold away, as well as the return of former slaves whom planters had removed from the reaches of the Union Army. For example, slaveholders from Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and as far east as South Carolina and Virginia had taken some one hundred twenty-five thousand slaves to Texas during the war. Their return as freedmen to the regions they had originally inhabited created a “steady stream of migrants” across the South.73 One important pattern involved a rural-to-urban migration of freedmen. They sought locations with large black populations away from areas where whites were numerically dominant. In cities, many blacks believed, “freedom was free-er.” The black urban population increased significantly between 1865 and 1870. The number of blacks in the ten largest cities in the South doubled as the white population increased by only ten percent.74 Several Mississippi cities experienced more extreme change. The black population of Vicksburg tripled and that of Natchez more than doubled. The impact on smaller towns could be even more pronounced, especially in those that had restricted black settlement.75 Freedmen migrated to southern urban areas to participate in the development of the nascent black communities. In the cities and towns, the former slaves established black churches, benevolent societies, and schools in the same manner of the free blacks who preceded them. Often Freedmen’s Bureau offices were located in cities, which was an additional lure. For example, for the freedmen of the Sea Islands in South Carolina, “Beaufort was their Mecca and their shrine the office of the General Superintendent of Freemen.”76 These large percentage changes involving tens of thousands of blacks did not change the broader southern landscape that included four million former slaves. The South remained overwhelmingly rural, as did its black population.

Religious Independence Moses requested permission to travel in order to worship the God of the Hebrews. Pharaoh reacted by questioning the very basis for this request and refusing to recognize this new deity. “Who is the Lord that I should heed 345

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Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go” (Exodus 4:2). As the plagues progressed, Pharaoh came to accept God’s importance to the Israelites but tried to keep their worship within the confines of Egypt. “Go and sacrifice to your God within the land” (Exodus 8:21). Besides limiting travel, Pharaoh’s stipulation that the Israelites stay “within the land” demonstrated a belief that the proposed religious practice could be maintained as one of the many religious cults that existed in Egypt. Moses’s response left no doubt of the Israelites’ need for religious independence. The planned sacrifice was in direct conflict with Egyptian beliefs. “It would not be right to do this, for what we sacrifice to the Lord our God is untouchable to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice that which is untouchable to the Egyptians before their very eyes, will they not stone us?” (Exodus 8:22). Ultimately, Pharaoh allowed the Israelites to travel. However, the first sacrifice and celebration did not proceed as Moses had originally requested. Instead, while still in their homes in Egypt, each Israelite family chose a young sheep as the paschal lamb and proceeded to slaughter it publicly at the height of the afternoon sun, in full view of their Egyptian neighbors. The public activity continued as they roasted the animal outdoors. It was only the actual meal that they brought indoors in the evening. By sacrificing the paschal lamb, each Israelite family declared independence from Egypt and its gods. In preparation for this, the Israelites also had to declare their loyalty and connection to the God of their forefathers by reinstating circumcision. The Israelite departure from Egypt may be viewed as an Independence Day parade. The Israelites were dressed in the fine clothing and jewelry that they had received from their Egyptian neighbors. Matzah, a symbol of both slavery and freedom, hung in a bag over their shoulders. Flags flew and music played. Whole families left Egypt together toward a meeting with God at Mount Sinai, together with a covenant built on ideals and action that was far removed from Egyptian slave society. In declaring their independence they took with them the experience of bitter slavery that would be transformed into religious requirements to be sensitive to the disadvantaged in society. They were even challenged not to hate Egyptians because of the many years before enslavement during which Egypt had hosted them as honored guests: “Do not abhor the Egyptian because you were a stranger in his land” (Deuteronomy 23:9). Southern blacks, especially those in cities and towns, yearned for religious independence long before emancipation. They were tired of white preachers who spoke of the duty to obey their masters or the evils of stealing when their own lives, spouses, and families were in danger of being stolen

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from them or had already been stolen. Worse yet was the hypocrisy of preachers who were slave-owners themselves. Southern states required that all black congregations have white preachers.77 In biracial churches, blacks also faced routine discrimination that mocked the fundamental biblical belief that all humanity was created in the image of God. They were forced to sit in separate sections or in a gallery. As a result, the vast majority of blacks withdrew from biracial congregations with the exception of blacks in Catholic parishes of New Orleans, where a measure of equality reigned on Sundays within the church walls. Needless to say, during the antebellum period there was no opportunity to develop a native educated black clergy, especially after the Vesey Rebellion of 1822, which had its roots in the first attempt at developing an independent black church in Charleston.78 With freedom, African Americans quickly moved to take control of the clergy position even from white pastors who thought they had the support of their black congregants. The day after the liberation of Wilmington, North Carolina, black lay leaders of Front Street Methodist Church invited Reverend William H. Hunter, a black military chaplain, to deliver a sermon. Apropos to the occasion, the charged and changing atmosphere was reflected in the words of the hymn they chose, “Sing unto the Lord a New Song.” Soon afterward, the white minister of the church, Reverend L.S. Burkhead, was told he was no longer needed and a black minister was elected.79 All the major northern Christian denominations sent missionaries and volunteers. They saw this as a wonderful opportunity to increase the size and reach of their respective denominations. Their challenge was not to convert these former slaves, who had long ago lost the religion of their ancestors, to Christianity, but rather to inspire them with their branch of Christianity. The white clergy who came, no matter how articulate, were at a substantial disadvantage compared to black clergymen. Simply put, the color of their skin reminded southern blacks too much of their past relationships with whites. No matter how sincere, there was also an undercurrent of belief that white ministers were there to take advantage of the situation, as with the white volunteers in the Sea Islands who bought much of the confiscated land that had been auctioned. One challenge that blacks faced was gaining possession of church property that they had built and consecrated with their hands and prayers but which was owned by white trustees. When they were unsuccessful, they pooled their limited resources to build their own churches, and at times several denominations shared the same facility.

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Rural blacks had already developed an independent church, one that was invisible to the white oligarchy. On Sundays, if they were allowed to attend church, they shared religious rites with their masters much like their urban counterparts. However, at night, they gathered in the unwatched recesses of the dark forest to be touched by the Holy Spirit and led by preachers who had not only been called but also had developed leadership skills. These preachers stepped forth under the light of emancipation and brought their followers with them as they affiliated with one of the many denominations reaching out to them. The white clergy, as well as many blacks and volunteer teachers from the North, arrived with a bias against the way southern blacks practiced their religion. They believed slavery had left an almost indelible “barbaric” imprint on the psyche of the former slave that left him “degraded and scarred” and living in “moral chaos.” The church service, which included shouting as a key element, was characterized as “heathenish,” and dancing up and down the aisle was viewed as “unchristian.” The official publication of the African Methodist Episcopal church, The Christian Recorder, wrote, “There was a time when colored ministers could glory in their own ignorance before a congregation, and succeed in making the people believe they were Divinely inspired, and secure their respect and homage. There was a time when clownishness and incorrect speech were admired.”80 These zealous missionaries pushed for “orderly churches under the care of an educated man.” This meant that local illiterate preachers were not given the status and respect that they deserved in the new arrangements. To some, it seemed that the northern missionaries were bringing a new religion. It was a religion in which God was distant and refined, not the God they knew who touched them and inspired them to dance and shout. The AME Church, which was most notable for its emphasis on an educated clergy, flourished in the larger cities. Overall, the combined Baptist denominations were the most successful because “their decentralized democratic structure and fervor of their services that slave preachers could establish churches without being beholden to bishops promoting an educated ministry.”81 Even renowned and respected illiterate preachers recognized their failings and lamented their inability to read the Bible while encouraging the next generation to strive for an education. The black church was more than an ecclesiastical body that provided religious inspiration. The church wove and sustained the social fabric that unified the black community and was intimately linked with the new educational initiatives and provided social services. Picnics and other social events were often scheduled as part of the church calendar. The independent

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church also offered blacks the opportunity to develop the leadership skills necessary to run an effective church. When it came to local and state politics, the church played a leading role in developing the former slaves’ political awareness and leading the fight for civil and political rights. Not surprisingly, the clergy, who were generally among the most respected members of the community, often assumed the mantle of political leadership as well. During Reconstruction, more than one hundred members of the clergy were elected to legislative seats. Also not surprisingly, the symbolic and all-encompassing role of the church in African-American communities made churches and clergy ideal targets for the Ku Klux Klan.82

Archenemies and Never-Ending Struggles Only a month after the exodus, the tribe of Amalek launched an unprovoked attack on the Israelite traveling camp, becoming the prototypical arch-enemy of the Jews. The Amalekites attacked in a cowardly manner, as Moses later noted, since their target was “all the stragglers in the rear when you were famished and weary” (Deuteronomy 25:18). The battle was relatively shortlived, however, as “Joshua overwhelmed the people of Amalek with the sword” (Exodus 17:13). However, God informed Moses that this first battle symbolized a never-ending war between Amalek on the one side and God and Israel on the other: “The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages” (Exodus 17:16). After the incident of the spies, when the Israelites changed their minds and attempted to journey toward Israel without God’s authorization, the Amalekites, joined by the Canaanites, struck them mercilessly at Hormah (Deuteronomy 14:45). Eventually the physical nation of Amalek disappeared from history, but its spiritual heirs continued their incessant hatred and unprovoked attacks. As related in the Book of Esther, Haman schemed to annihilate the Jews throughout the Persian Empire. To name only a few, there were the perpetrators of the Spanish Inquisition in the fifteenth century, the Nazis of the twentieth century and the radical Islamists of today. In their unbridled hatred for the Jewish people and their God, each group committed one atrocity after another in its attempts to make Jews vanish from the world. Although the Bible predicts a never-ending war, it does not articulate the motivations of these enemies. Hirsch sees Amalek as the prototypical warmongering nation that seeks glory in conquest. Amalek attacked the Israelites because the God of Israel had just defeated the Egyptians, who were the mightiest power of that time.

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The war between Amalek and Israel, God’s representative people, is a conflict of fundamental values: a conflict between the power of the sword and the power of the word. Amalek’s fame and glory were linked to its success on the battlefield. Israel’s claim to everlasting existence is its mission to bring the word and rule of God into the world. Hirsch describes Amalek as seeking renown by the force of arms and therefore is the first and last enemy of the happiness of mankind and of the Kingdom of God on earth…. Amalek’s renown-seeking sword knows no rest so long as one single pulse beats in freedom, and pays no homage to it, so long as any modest quiet happiness exists which does not tremble before its might…. In Israel he sees an object of mortal hate and complete disdain, where one thinks the sword is dispensable, where one dares trust in spiritual-moral powers. Hirsch concludes that this battle will only end “when the divine laws of morals have become the sole criterion as to the worth of the greatest and smallest men,… then and only then will the reign of Amalek cease for ever in the world” (commentary on Exodus 17:8–16). It was only a matter of months after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery that the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in early 1866. For the next hundred years, they were the symbol of the arch-enemy of black claims to equal rights and economic status. The Klan’s establishment was followed by kindred organizations throughout the South. These included the White Brotherhood of North Carolina, the Knights of the White Camelia in Louisiana, the Washington Brothers of Mississippi and numerous other local organizations, each with its own distinguishing garb and rituals but all united in opposition to the changing order. These organizations grew naturally out of the antebellum militias, slave patrols, and southern quasi-military traditions that had been the building blocks of the Confederate Army. After the war, Confederate veterans kept their weapons as well as their values, returning home defeated from the battlefront but unbowed in their belief in their right to subjugate and control African Americans. A Tennessee legislative committee report in 1868 that investigated the Klan reported, “There is an eternal hatred existing against all men that voted the Republican ticket, or who belong to the Loyal League, or [are] engaged in teaching schools, and giving instruction to the humbler class of their fellow men.”83 These groups, which were often led by respectable community leaders, generally operated at the county or regional level with little coordinated planning between groups. They were broadly supported by the masses. Even the old southern oligarchy that opposed their tactics did not speak out 350

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against their actions because their goals were aligned. The refined leadership of the Old South, which was just as horrified by the changing order, used harsh and extreme rhetoric to describe carpetbaggers, scalawags, the Republican Party, and liberated blacks. They, thereby, contributed to a culture that tolerated the humiliation, beatings, and murders of blacks and their white supporters. The victims included Congressman James Hinds from Arkansas and three state legislators from South Carolina, several other blacks who had participated in the state’s constitutional convention, and three scalawag legislators in Georgia. As part of the strategy to limit economic independence, the Klan also attacked whites who offered blacks a fair deal, such as Jewish merchant Samuel Fleischman. He was among one hundred and fifty people who were murdered during a reign of terror in the Florida panhandle.84 The Klan usually sought their targets under cover of darkness, in overwhelming numbers and with their faces hidden (see illustration 27). They targeted black political activists and successful businessmen both because of their leadership and organizational skills. Their goal was to demoralize those who strove to better their situations. Teachers were preferred targets since Klan members saw them as incendiaries who undermined the old order with their ideas. On occasion, Klan members attacked large gatherings, often under the leadership of a local official such as a sheriff. They were most effective in Georgia and Louisiana during the 1868 presidential election. They destroyed the Republican Party’s infrastructure, leading to the victory of Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour in both states. Republican candidates received no votes in several Georgia counties with black majorities. Blacks and Republicans fought back. In some states they were successful in limiting the Klan, especially in states that had a strong and committed governor and a supportive legislature that quickly established militias, often with large numbers of black veterans. Governor Powell Clayton of Arkansas, a carpetbagger, led his state in putting an end to the Klan before it became an intimidating force. Nevertheless, the actions of the Klan eventually grew so bold and extreme that Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Acts of 1871. These were the last in a series of laws that for the first time declared that an individual who violated a person’s civil rights could be prosecuted for a federal crime. Although the Klan declined in power and influence, their spiritual heirs, such as the Rifle Leagues, were even better organized and more effective in turning back the clock on political, social, and economic rights. (See Illustration 28.) Their state-by-state strategy of force, which they used in

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order to intimidate blacks and Republicans, turned the South into a Democratic stronghold for more than one hundred years.85

The Ku Klux Klan.

Vote Democratic. 352

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GOD

the Israelites’ physical enslavement through a number of actions, such as the paschal sacrifice, that were intended to remedy the psychological effects of extended oppression and slavery. Nevertheless, if it had been up to the Israelites, they would have been happy to see their enslavement end while they remained in Egypt, a land and culture that they understood. They were prepared neither for a hostile desert environment nor for the battles that lay ahead once they reached the Promised Land. Nor were they comfortable with a God Who demanded so much of them and warned that He would be watching their every move in their new homeland, “a land which the Lord your God looks after, on which the Lord your God always keeps His eye, from year’s beginning to year’s end” (Deuteronomy 11:12). Within weeks of the exodus, God laid out for the Israelites a vision and challenge to become a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), to which they responded, “We will do and we will listen” (Exodus 24:7). They stood at the foot of Mount Sinai with great aspirations as God proclaimed the Ten Commandments. Nevertheless, despite three days of preparation, they were not ready for an encounter with the Divine. As God’s voice penetrated their hearts and minds, they begged Moses to act as intermediary, and Moses agreed. Even after the Israelites camped for a year near Mount Sinai while continuing to learn about their new religion, they still yearned for the varied diet they had experienced in Egypt rather than the manna which, although it came directly from God, was their only food at the time. Finally, during the Israelites’ second summer of freedom, ten out of twelve spies, each one the leader of his tribe, returned with a negative report about the Land of Israel and its inhabitants. They described both their perception of the enemy and of themselves as follows: “All the people we saw in it were men of great size…. We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (Numbers 13:32–33). In response, the Israelites rejected God’s gift of a homeland. “They said to one another: let us head back to Egypt” (Numbers 14:4). God concluded that the generation of Israelites that had emerged from Egypt was not suited to ENDED

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conquer the Promised Land, and sentenced its members to wander in the desert until they died out. Fortunately, the generation that reached maturity during the desert sojourn did not inherit the scars of slavery. Once the Israelites crossed the Jordan River, the conquest proceeded smoothly under Joshua’s leadership and a new generation of tribal leaders. They began by rededicating themselves to their national mission. Immediately after crossing the river, they reinstated the custom of circumcision, as God described in these terms: “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt” (Joshua 5:9). They then offered the Passover sacrifice, a re-creation of the eve of the exodus from Egypt so many years before. It was then that they tasted the first grains of their new homeland. As they conquered and divided the land, they displayed none of the slave mentality of their parents’ generation. In contrast, emancipated blacks gained their freedom in territory that was familiar to them agriculturally, socially, and religiously, rather than in some distant promised land. They established their new lives where they stood, often not more than two days’ journey from the homes where they had lived as slaves. Unlike the Israelites’ initial backsliding, they quickly shed many of the vestiges of slavery. To the surprise of many slave owners, former slaves did not yearn for the past. They used their freedom to rebuild and invigorate their family unit, pursue education for themselves and their children, build and support a public education infrastructure, and develop limited economic independence. They rejoiced in the independence of their church, in their freedom to travel, and their ability to assert their newfound political and civil rights. Their steady progress and success led to the election of a large numbers of blacks to all southern state legislatures and to Congress, though few assumed leadership positions. Unfortunately, the antagonist forces were quick to regroup, first in Georgia and then in one southern state after another. Using terror in order to regain control of the ballot box and state legislatures, they established legal and social barriers to economic independence for blacks. Over time, the political will and energy of blacks’ northern supporters waned, along with a commitment to use federal military force to back constitutional guarantees. Finally, in the compromise of 1877 that placed Rutherford B. Hayes in the White House, an agreement was made to withdraw Federal troops from the South, thus ending the period of Reconstruction. In 1875 there were eight blacks in Congress. In 1877, there were three. Black elected officials stayed in office in various pockets throughout the South until, by 1901, there was not a single black congressman in the Fiftyseventh Congress. Ultimately, state after state legislated restrictions on black 354

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voting privileges, and these laws remained on the books until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The U.S. Supreme Court was a co-conspirator in the failure to protect the rights that had been supposedly guaranteed by constitutional amendments. The infamous Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 supported a segregationist strategy under the doctrine of “separate but equal.” The Court even went so far as to declare: “If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane.”1 However, federal and state backsliding did not diminish black progress in family, education, and religious independence. By 1900 the literacy rate of southern blacks surpassed fifty percent for the first time, and dozens of black colleges were well established throughout the South.2 However, blacks’ return to greater social equality would require their heroic participation in two world wars. Jackie Robinson, the grandson of a slave, integrated major league baseball in 1947, less than three years after he had been court-martialed as a second lieutenant in the army for refusing to move to the back of a bus. He was later acquitted.3 In Executive Order 9980, President Truman unilaterally forced integration on the federal bureaucracy. In Executive Order 9981, he integrated the armed forces. The motivation that he offered echoed northern arguments that had arisen eighty-five years earlier when blacks began to serve in the Civil War: “It is essential that there be maintained in the armed services of the United States the highest standards of democracy, with equality of treatment and opportunity for all those who serve in our country’s defense.”4 However, implementation was slow and not finished until President Eisenhower, with his strong military credentials, completed the task in his first term.5 The Supreme Court began desegregating public school education in 1954. This process took on new meaning in late September 1957, when President Eisenhower ordered federal troops to protect black children as they attempted to enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, under court-ordered desegregation.6 President Eisenhower’s executive action was coupled with a legislative agenda that led to passage of the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960. These were the first new legal protection provided to blacks and guaranteed by the federal government in over eighty years.7 Progress was being made, but slowly and unevenly, building to August 28, 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream:

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Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.8

The civil rights movement of the 1960s helped to develop the critical mass and irreversible momentum toward legal and political equality. Since then, “the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination” have formally been dissolved. Yet although this has been coupled with progress toward social and educational equality, success in these areas has not matched expectations. Although there are no sanctioned barriers to higher education and educational equality, America’s inner-city schools, which are often predominantly black, are not providing a generation of black students, especially males, with the skills necessary to compete equally with their peers. Instead, the well-documented breakdown of the inner-city black family unit has contributed to unprecedented numbers of blacks receiving a different kind of education – one acquired behind prison walls. As a result, King’s vision is still only a dream on a distant horizon, as debate continues regarding how much the legacy of slavery continues to be a barrier to full equality for African Americans. However, there is new optimism in the United States regarding black progress towards equality. In 2008, the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama, an African American, as its candidate in that year’s presidential elections. Obama’s first major step towards earning this nomination involved winning the Democrat caucuses in Iowa, a state in which blacks comprise an estimated 2.5 percent of the population. On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, during a time of global economic and political turmoil, Senator Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois was elected the first African-American president of the United States. Clearly, Barack Obama is an individual for whom King’s observation that “the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself in exile in his own land” no longer applies.

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NOTES Preface 1

Glaude, Eddie S. Jr. Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2000.

Introduction

1 For now, I am using the term “African American” because it is the preferred choice at the start of the twenty-first century. Later, as I discuss experiences of slavery and use source material, I often use terms such as “colored people,” “black” or “Negro.” All are consistent with the way slaves and freemen referred to themselves. During the nineteenth century, the preferred term was “colored people” or “people of color,” as evidenced by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). In fact, in the early nineteenth century the vast majority of blacks would have been offended by the term “African American,” as it was linked to the proposal to send free American blacks back to Africa. 2 The census at the time of the exodus produced a count of approximately six hundred thousand Israelite males between the ages of twenty and sixty. Including the elderly, women and children, the total number of Israelites approached two million. The 1860 census in the United States reported that the African-American population included almost four million slaves and another half million who were free. They accounted for 14.7% of the total population of the U.S. 3 Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself, edited with an introduction by David W. Blight. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1993, 42. 4 Illustration 1 is a photograph of a former Mississippi slave named Gordon and was taken by Assistant Surgeon T.W. Mercer of the Forty-seventh Massachusetts Infantry. The photograph was reproduced in Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. NY: The Free Press, 1990, after page 242. (MOLLUSMassachusetts Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute) 5 Buckmaster, Henrietta. Let My People Go: The Story of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolition Movement. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992, 214–215. 6 The paschal lamb is the name of the sacrifice offered by the Israelites on Passover eve. 7 Richards, David A.J. Conscience and the Constitution; History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, 63. 8 Pease, William H., and Jane H. Pease, eds. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1965, 278 and 313. 9 Richards, Conscience and the Constitution, 63.

Part I: Journey into Slavery: Wagons and Ships 1

Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa. London, 1788. Reprinted in Mintz, Steven, ed. African-American Voices: Life Cycle of Slavery. St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1993, 57. Falconbridge reported on his roughly three-month stay on the coast as batches of slaves were bought and loaded.

Chapter 1: The Israelite Beginnings of Slavery 1

At the time of this vision, God had not yet changed Abram’s name to Abraham. However, since the name Abraham became his permanent name, I have used it throughout except in direct quotes pre-dating the name change. 2 Ramban on Genesis 15:13.

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3

Biblical commentaries generally assume that the birth of Isaac is the beginning point of the four hundred years (e.g., Rashi on Genesis 15:13). 4 Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Bereshit (Genesis), translated by Aryeh Newman. Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 1981, 501. 5 Aqaydat Yitzchaq: Commentary of Rabbi Yitzchaq Arama on the Torah, translated and condensed by Eliyahu Munk. Jerusalem:Rubin Mass, 1986. Chapter 28, Va-yeshev. 6 Rambam, Book of Knowledge, Laws of Repentance, Chapter 6, Law 5. Maimonides argued that God’s decree of Israelite slavery in Egypt was a general decree. The decree did not impinge on the free will of any specific individual as no individuals were chosen or ordered to carry out the enslavement. Therefore, the Egyptians were punished for their actions. Ramban on Genesis 15:14 argues that Egyptian accountability was a result of their going beyond God’s intent and treating the Israelites with a harshness not decreed by God – for example, drowning the male children. The Rabad’s comments on the Rambam are logically consistent with those of the Ramban. God’s guiding hand on the voyage through Jewish history is best illustrated by the story of Joseph’s journey to find his brothers. When Joseph was unable to find them, a mysterious individual appeared and directed Joseph to his brothers’ encampment. God’s intercession to prevent Joseph’s confrontation with his brothers from being delayed cannot take away any of the guilt from the brothers’ decision. 7 Barbot, John. “Prepossessed of the Opinion… that Europeans are fond of their flesh,” reprinted in Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 31–32. 8 Rashi (Genesis 37:2) states that Joseph’s evil reports pertained to the children of Leah, whom he had seen treating the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah with contempt and calling them slaves. Ramban disagrees and states that Joseph’s reports related to the brothers whom he was with, namely the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Midrashic tradition claims Joseph’s defamation of his brothers included charges of eating flesh cut from a living animal, treating the sons of the handmaidens with contempt, and sexual immorality. Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:3, n. 36. Jerusalem: Mechon Torah Shelemah, 1973, 1393–1396. 9 Although the Hebrew term ketonet passim is popularly translated as “multi-colored garment,” most commentaries translate it differently. Rashi simply calls it a garment of fine wool. Hirsch pictures it as having impressive trim at its hems as a mark of importance. Ibn Ezra characterizes it as embroidered. 10 See, for example, Seforno and Hirsch on Genesis 37:18, and Or ha-Chaim on Genesis 37:20. 11 Genesis 49. 12 The Midrashic literature and the commentaries suggest there was as an unrecorded prophecy indicating that Jacob would have twelve children who would presage the rapid expansion of the core family, which in turn would grow into a nation. For example, see Rashi on Genesis 29:34. The Matriarchs, who were prophets, knew that Jacob would beget twelve tribes. Bereshit Rabbah 70:17 points out that Jacob was aware of this prophecy as well. (Note: BT Megillah 14a names only seven women prophets. The list, which starts with Sarah, does not mention any of the other matriarchs – not even Rivka, who was described in the Bible as seeking and communicating with God [Genesis 25:23].) 13 The report of the birth of each of Jacob’s first eleven sons appears in Genesis 29:31– 30:24. Immediately after Joseph’s birth, Jacob asked his father-in-law’s permission to return home. One might assume that this occurred soon after he kept his promise to work a second set of seven years for the right to marry Rachel after having been tricked into marrying Leah first. In that case, the eleven births occurred during a seven-year period and Joseph was no more than a year or two younger than Zebulun. It has been calculated that Jacob was eightyfour when he married Rachel and ninety-one at the birth of Joseph. See Chavel, Charles B. Ramban (Nachmanides): Commentary on the Torah: Genesis, Translated and Annotated. New York: Shilo Publishing House, 1971, 451, and n. 36. Also see Hirsch, Genesis 30:26. 14 Chavel, Ramban, 452. This is the intent of the sages when they said: “Whatever Jacob had learned from Shem and Eber, he transmitted to him,” meaning that he passed teachings of wisdom and secrets of the Torah to him, and that the father found the son to be intelligent and profound in these areas as if he were a mature elder.

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15 Armstrong, Karen. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996, 101. 16 Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:17, n. 121, page 1420. This Midrash, which is not extant, is quoted by Rashi (BT Sanhedrin 102a). 17 Leibowitz, New Studies in Bereshit, 400–409. The actual sequence of the sales is obscured in the text by the use of pronouns and contradictory references to both Ishmaelites and Midianites. The brothers decided to sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites (Genesis 37:27). However, in the next verse, “When Midianite traders passed by, they pulled Joseph up out of the pit.” The pronoun “they” could refer either to Joseph’s brothers or to the Midianites. The next verse confuses the issue further. “They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt.” Again the pronoun “they” is ambiguous. Verse 36 further confounds the problem. “The Midianites sold him to Egypt.” All classic Biblical commentaries attempt to address the ambiguities and seeming contradictions that arise in these verses. The Ramban offers the explanation that the camel drivers were Ishmaelites but the merchants were Midianites. Thus the caravan included both Midianites, who owned Joseph the slave, and Ishmaelites, who transported Joseph. 18 Midrash Tanchumah Vayeshev B. Quoted by Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:28, n. 167, page 1429. 19 Mann, Thomas. Joseph and His Brothers. Translated from the German by H.T. Lowe-Porter. London: Vintage, 1999, 380–383. 20 Ibid., 386. In Mann’s narrative, Joseph spends three full days in the pit. The biblical text offers no specific statement as to how long Joseph was there. The verse which records Joseph being cast into a pit, Genesis 37:24, concludes a paragraph. Verse 25 begins the subsequent paragraph with “They sat down to eat a meal.” The impression is that this meal began immediately afterward. However, that need not have been the case. Mann seems to split verse 35. Mann places the first part referring to the meal immediately after Joseph was thrown into the pit. His narrative has all of the brothers present at this meal and they could hear Joseph’s pleas from the pit. He describes an event three days later when eight brothers, excluding Reuben, are lounging under a tree and a ninth, Naphtali, comes running with news of a caravan moving in their direction. Ibid., 380 and 400. 21 Ibid., 384–391. 22 Rashi on Genesis 37:25 asks: “Why does Scripture announce what they were laden with? It is to tell how great is the reward of the righteous. It is not usual for Arabs to carry anything but naphtha and itran (tar), which are evil-smelling, but for this one (Joseph the righteous) it was specially arranged that they should be carrying fragrant spices so that he should not suffer from a bad odor.” Translated into English and annotated by Rosenbaum, Rev. M.and Silbermann, Dr. A.M. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1935, 183. 23 Equiano, Olaudah. “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” excerpted in The Atlantic Slave Trade, 2nd ed., edited by David Northrup, 69. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. 24 Malbim on Genesis 42:51–52.

Chapter 2: Beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade

1 Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997, 55–58. 2 Ibid., 69. Approximately one hundred thousand slaves were imported to Lisbon during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Elmina on the Gold Coast, which was a major trading factory that the Portuguese established in 1482, was captured by the Dutch in 1637. It was a key commercial center for Africans and Europeans. See Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998, 19. 3 Ibid., 92. 4 Ibid., 98–99. 5 This contrasts with an average of sixty thousand who were shipped per year during the peak period of the slave trade, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. 6 Thomas, Slave Trade, 108–110. 7 Ibid., 739.

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8

For example, in West Africa in the 1790s, Manson, King of Bambarra, took nine hundred prisoners of war in one day. Of this total, only seventy had been free men at the time of capture. Park, Mungo. Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: Performed in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797 (London: John Murray, 1816), reprinted in part in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 33–34. Also, Joseph Miller argues that in general those captured or otherwise enslaved were generally the least physically able and healthy denizens of the region. Joseph C. Miller, “The Way of Death,” reprinted in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 45–51. 9 Thornton, John. “Warfare and Slavery,” reprinted in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 55–63. At its peak, Atlantic exports would have approximated natural population growth. This would have at most delayed population growth and competition for resources but not undermined the economy. Thomas, Slave Trade, 795. 10 In the 1860 census of the United States, the ratio of slaves to white freemen was almost one to one in the chain of southern states of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. In ancient Greece the slave population was between twenty and thirty-five percent, as was the case in ancient Rome. In other societies in which slaves were an important part of the economy, they often comprised ten or fewer percent of the population. Drescher, Seymour and Engerman, Stanley L., editors, A Historical Guide to World Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 169. 11 Northrup, David. Africa’s Discovery of Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 110. Alford Terry, Prince among Slaves, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977, 4–5. 12 Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 110. These wars revolved around what became the Sokoto Caliphate, which in 1810 was largest state in Western Africa. 13 Smith, Venture. “The Narrative of the Life of Venture.” Reprinted in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 70–75. 14 The specific discussion focuses on an instance of taking a beautiful woman as a captive. The law describes the steps that are to be followed if the Israelite wishes to make the captive woman his wife. Should he later change his mind, she does not revert to her status as a slave. Her husband must divorce her as he would an Israelite woman, and let her go free (Deuteronomy 21:11–14). 15 Barbot, “Prepossessed of the Opinion… that Europeans are fond of their flesh,” reprinted in Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 31. 16 Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper and Row, 1988, 173. If the planter (landowner) provided the implements, fertilizer, work animals, and seed, he received two-thirds of the crop, with the black sharecropper keeping only one-third. 17 On July 17, 1850, Brazil adopted a bill abolishing the slave trade and defining the import of slaves as piracy. This provided added impetus for the British naval superpower that took responsibility for enforcing this and other agreements that slowly abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Cuba remained the only country to continue to support the importation of slaves. 18 Hair, P.E.H. “African Narratives of Enslavement.” Excerpted from “The Enslavements of Koelle’s Informants.” Journal of African History 6:2 (1965): 193–201, reprinted in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 38–44. 19 Kidnapping was common in past centuries as well. A hundred years earlier, Olaudah Equiano reported how he had first been abducted into slavery: “One day, when all our people were out to their works as usual, and only I and my dear sister were left to mind the house, two men and a woman got over our walls, and in a moment seized us both and, without giving us time to cry out, or to make resistance, they stopped our mouths, and ran off with us into the nearest wood.” Olaudah Equiano, “The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African,” excerpted in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 66. 20 Ibid., 38–44. 21 Ibid., 43. 22 Ibid., Barbot, 31.

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23 Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:17, n. 121, page 1413. See also Zalman Sorotzkin, Oznaim la-Torah, Genesis 37:24. 24 In Biblical times as well as in eighteenth-century Africa, family members might be held accountable for the wrongs committed or debts incurred by other members of the broad family unit. 25 One prophecy of Amos is traditionally interpreted as alluding to the sale of Joseph and that the money was in turn used to buy shoes. “Thus said the Lord: For three transgressions of Israel [you can be forgiven]; for four, I will not revoke it: Because they have sold for silver those whose cause was just, and the needy for a pair of sandals” (Amos 2:6). The prophecy is that God will not forgive the tribes of Israel for accepting bribes because they perverted justice. The individual sold for silver is referred to as a “tzaddik” – the traditional term used to describe Joseph. In modern Jewish practice, every Sabbath a section of the Five Books of Moses is read and a reading from the Prophets follows. On the Sabbath that the sale of Joseph is read, this verse from Amos is part of accompanying reading from the Prophets. 26 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:28, n. 166, 1427. The Midrash cannot be factual since the ten scholars who were martyred were not all contemporaries. Ibid., note 150, page 1421. See also Bereshit Rabbah, quoted in ibid., Genesis 37:24, note 148, page 1420. Another Midrashic tradition focuses on the brothers’ hard-heartedness. While Joseph cried out from a nearby pit, “they sat down to a meal” (Genesis 37:25). This Midrash notes that the travails of the Jews in Persia followed a similar sequence. After the decree to destroy the Jews was published and distributed, “the king and Haman sat down to feast, but the city of Shushan was dumfounded” (Esther 3:15). 27 Barbot, “Prepossessed of the Opinion… that Europeans are fond of their flesh.” Reprinted in Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 32. 28 Equiano, “Interesting Narrative,” in Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 68. 29 Ibid., 68–69. 30 Midrash, Bereshit Rabbah, quoted in Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, Part 6, Genesis 37:36, n. 210, 1440–1442. One opinion counts five different sales. The brothers sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, the Ishmaelites sold him to merchants, the merchants sold him to the Midianites, the Midianites sold Joseph to a state official, and the state official sold him to Potiphar. See end of n. 210 for an explanation as to how this pattern can be made to fit into the biblical verses. 31 Venture Smith also reported walking with a rope around his neck. Northrup, Atlantic Slave Trade, 74. 32 This description is assumed to refer to his experience as a slave in Egypt rather than his journey to Egypt. 33 Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 107–109.

Chapter 3: Group Journey into Slavery 1

The verse mentions that sixty-six descendants of Jacob left Canaan but records that seventy arrived in Egypt. When Joseph and his two sons are added to the sixty-six, one remains unaccounted for. One tradition, as noted by Rashi, is that Yocheved was born on the way to Egypt (Genesis 46:26). Alternatively, the Da’at Zekenim (Genesis 46:27) suggests that the seventieth person was Jacob himself. 2 Ramban Genesis 45:16, “For it was a disgrace to them to be ruled by a stranger, a servant.” 3 The Midrash suggests that there was hidden symbolism in the gift that Joseph sent. It implied that Joseph, remembering the teachings of his father, Jacob, had not assimilated the Egyptian religion. Rashi (Genesis 45:27) paraphrases the Midrash Rabbah, 94:3. 4 The dualism of the Jacob-Israel name reflects the ups and downs of the status of Jews throughout their history in exile. 5 The implication is that he was not called Israel during the years he mourned for Joseph. However, in Genesis 43:6, there is a rare exception to this principle. Hirsch notes this exception and suggests that Jacob aroused himself out of his depressed state to convince his sons that it was a bad idea to take Benjamin down to Egypt. 6 Numerous commentators, including Ramban and Rashi, have explored why Isaac is singled out in the phrase “God of his father Isaac.” Jacob could have mentioned both Abraham and

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Isaac, or neither. Seforno suggested simply that Isaac in a similar situation was prevented from journeying to Egypt. Jacob therefore wanted to clarify his right to make a journey, given that his father had been prevented from traveling. Hirsch develops a more complex analysis. He argues that the end of all of Jacob’s travails at this point was analogous to the stage in Isaac’s life after surviving the akedah, his binding as a sacrifice. (See note 8 below.) 7 The use of both names Israel and Jacob in the same verse suggests the confusion and tension he felt at the impending descent into Egypt. 8 This phrase has a parallel in the story of the akedah, which begins with God’s call to Abraham and his response, “Here I am” (Genesis 22:1). Later, as Abraham prepares to complete the test of his faith, “an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham, and he answered, ‘Here I am’” (Genesis 22:11). Both at the start and end of this perilous journey Abraham declared, “Here I am.” Similarly, Joseph declared, “Here I am” when he accepted his father’s assignment to journey and find his brothers, a journey that ended in his enslavement. Like Abraham and Joseph, Jacob’s “Here I am” signaled a willingness to start on a treacherous life passage without a clear vision of where it would take him and his descendants. This dialogue pattern arose again when God called Moses to accept the mission of leading the Israelites out of slavery. (Exodus 3:4). 9 Maimonides, in the Guide for the Perplexed, and Ramban, in his commentary on this verse, discuss at length the anthropomorphic language that describes God as going down into Egypt and later leaving with the Israelites. 10 Hirsch on Genesis 46:5. This dual perspective is reflected in that his children were called “sons of Israel” while he is referred to as Jacob. 11 The Bible tells us little about most of the wives of Jacob’s descendants. Judah married an unnamed Canaanite woman, the daughter of a man named Shua, and his son Er married Tamar. Joseph’s wife was Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian priest. 12 Biblical commentaries debate whether the Hebrew term to’evah means simply “disgusting” or is a derogatory Hebrew word for a foreign god. In the first interpretation, cattle ranchers would belong to a lower caste. Therefore, the Israelites had to be kept away from the rest of the population. In contrast, the Abrabanel interprets it as an indirect reference to the Egyptian god and, as a result, cattle ranchers would have been of high status. According to this interpretation, the Israelites were given a special place to live because of their elevated status. 13 The Abrabanel, a late-fifteenth and early-sixteenth-century Bible scholar whose lifework encompassed the corridors of court power and intrigue from Spain to Italy, analyzed in depth the structure of the dialogue. 14 “But on that day I will set apart the region of Goshen, where my people dwell” (Exodus 8:18). “Only in the region of Goshen, where the Israelites were, there was no hail” (Exodus 9:26). The Netziv rejects this thesis that the Israelites remained solely in Goshen. He interprets the phrase in Exodus 1:7 that the “land filled with them” as referring to the entire land of Egypt. He argued the Israelites violated the original plan of Joseph and Jacob of isolation and segregation and chose to spread out so as to assimilate into the Egyptian population and culture. Netziv, Ha-amek Davar, Exodus 1:7. 15 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 1:2, Vol. 8, n. 26. 16 Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African American Experience, A Chronology. Washington, DC: Civitas, 1999, 66, 148. 17 The word “factory” in its original meaning is a place in which representatives – factors – carry out negotiations and trade. The Portuguese established the slave factory, Sao Jorge da Mina, on the Gold Coast in 1482. The Portuguese had interacted with Africans in their search for gold on the Atlantic coast and had sold enslaved men and women from Africa in Portugal as early as 1425. They established slave factories on the Cape Verde Islands, on Sao Tome, and on Fernando Po by the 1470s. These slave factories either held Africans captive until ships arrived to transport them initially to Mediterranean Europe, or sold them to other Africans and later to the estates and plantations of the New World. The term barracoon is derived from the Spanish word for hut.

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18 Drescher and Engerman, eds. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. 290; Johnson, Charles, and Patricia Smith. Africans in the Americas: America’s Journey through Slavery. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998, 6. Thomas, The Slave Trade, 55, 71, 73. The Portuguese established the São Jorge da Mina slave factory on the Gold Coast in 1482. 19 Eltis, David and Richardson, David, eds. Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass, 1997, 16, 17, 19, 20. The Portuguese dominated the traffic in the Bight of Benin, although French, Dutch, English, and CubanSpanish slavers maintained a significant presence as well. The English controlled the trade on the Gold Coast with competition mostly from the Dutch. In the Bight of Biafra, the English again acted as the nation most involved in the slave trade, with the French and later CubanSpanish traders supplanting the English after the passage of the 1808 Abolition Act. 20 Ibid., 23. The enslaved from the Bight of Benin ports of Little and Grand Popo were known as Popos. Those embarked at the ports of Bonny and Calabar on the Bight of Biafra were known by these appellations in the New World. These designations show, in effect, one of the major difficulties in determining the ethnic composition of enslaved people embarked on the African coast or, likewise, those disembarked in the New World. Eltis and Richardson list thirteen ports in the Gold Coast region during the period from 1662–1863, with the major ones being Anomabu and Cape Coast Castle. The authors have identified 477 slave ships departing from this region. They list twelve ports in the Bight of Benin, of which Costa da Mina and Whydah played a major part, with 2,773 ships departing from this region. Of the thirteen ports listed in the Bight of Biafra, Bonny and Old Calabar witnessed the largest embarkations of enslaved Africans. Some 1,686 ships left from this region, making it the second most important in West Africa. 21 Morgan, Philip D. “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations and New World Developments.” In Eltis and Richardson, Routes to Slavery, 123, 130. Morgan disagrees with historian John Thorton, who proposed the homogenous model based on the notion of “[t]he concentration of African departures from… a few sites” in which “particular African national groups tended to dominate particular slave societies in the Americas…. In most parts of the Americas, it is now contended, slaves perceived themselves as part of communities that had distinct ethnic or national roots.” Morgan emphatically rejects “the homogenizing tendency of stressing cultural unity in Africa, of emphasizing the non-random character of the slave trade, and of seeing the dominance of particular African coastal regions or ethnicities in most American settings… [as] at variance with the central forces shaping the early modern Atlantic world.” See Thorton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 1998. Thorton contends that

[t]he slave trade and subsequent transfer to New World plantations was not, therefore, quite as randomizing a process as posited by those who argue that Africans had to start from scratch culturally upon their arrival in the New World. Quite the contrary, though the process of enslavement, sale, transfer, shipment, and relocation on a plantation was certainly disruptive to the personal and family lives of those people who endured it, its effect on culture may have been much less than many suggest. Slaves, although no longer surrounded by their familiar home environment, village, and family, were nevertheless not in a cultural wilderness when they arrived in America. They could easily find others who spoke their language and shared their norms in the new environment, especially if they were on a large estate or in an urban area…. [T]hey might even meet relatives, friends, and associates whom they had known in Africa, thanks to patterns of enslavement and the slave trade that served to concentrate, rather than disperse, people, though such cases might be rare and were probably not typical.

22 Morgan, “Cultural Implications,” 132–136. For an examination of how the erosion of ethnicity or the creation of a psuedo-ethnicity developed in West Central Africa, see Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. 23 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 104.

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24 Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 117; Drescher and Engerman, Historical Guide to World Slavery, 275, 276. 25 This quote is from a Pende oral tradition quoted in Thomas, Slave Trade, 128. 26 Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 113–114. 27 Ibid., 117–118; Miller, Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 415; Eltis and Richardson, eds., Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 30, 31; Drescher and Engerman, eds., A Historical Guide to World Slavery, 278. The three West African regions – the Bight of Benin, the Bight of Biafra, and the Gold Coast – shared a pattern of proffering more men and children and fewer women over time. However, slavers traded women extensively in the East African and internal trades. In the period between the eighteenth and nineteenth century, at the ports of Bonny and Calabar, the ratio of children involved in the trade increased fourfold. 28 Drescher and Engerman, Historical Guide to World Slavery, 290, 277; Mintz, African-American Voices: The Life Cycle of Slavery, 60. 29 Mintz, African-American Voices, 60; Miller, Way of Death, 421; Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 116. 30 Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe, 115; Miller, Way of Death, 426. 31 Miller, Way of Death, 427; Obi, T.J. Desch. “Combat and the Crossing of the Kalunga,” 354–355, 360; Thorton, John. “Religious and Ceremonial Life in the Kongo and Mbundu Areas, 1500–1700,” 75; and Schuler, Monica. “Liberated Central Africans in NineteenthCentury Guyana,” 336, 342, 346–347; all in Heywood, Linda M., ed., Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; Creel, Margaret Washington. “Gullah Attitudes toward Life and Death,” 81–83, and Thompson, Robert Farris. “Kongo Influences on African American Artistic Culture,” 151, both in Holloway, Joseph E. ed., Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. 32 Thomas, Slave Trade, 311–313. Behrendt, Stephen D. “Crew Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Eighteenth Century.” Slavery and Abolition 18/1 (April 1997): 51–53, 60, 63, 65–66, 67. The majority of sailors died on the African coast and during the Middle Passage, but one in four died in the New World. On the coast, mortality rates for ship crews averaged 45.8 deaths per thousand per month. Most crew deaths occurred during the rainy season, with the increase in malaria and yellow fever during that period. Surgeons and those employed on their first slaving voyage had the highest mortality. English ships had even higher death rates for crewmembers than did the French. On French ships between 1711 and 1795, about seventeen percent of the crew died during the voyage from Africa to the New World. Voyages originating from West Central Africa and the Bights of Benin and Biafra showed especially high rates of mortality for crews of slave ships, ranging from 19.4 per thousand per month to 18.3 and 17.3 per thousand per month, respectively. 33 Klein, Herbert S., and Stanley L. Engerman. “Long-Term Trends in African Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade.” In Eltis and Richardson, Routes to Slavery, 37–45; Drescher and Engerman, Historical Guide to World Slavery, 275; Steckel, Richard H., and Richard A. Jensen, “New Evidence on the Causes of Slave and Crew Mortality in the Atlantic Slave Trade.” The Journal of Economic History 46/1 (March 1986): 57, 61, 70, 74. Slave ships stowed four to five times the captives as passenger ships, although no direct correlation exists between overcrowding and mortality. The majority of deaths occurred during the middle period of the crossing, peaking at between twenty-five and thirty-one days into the voyage when diseases harbored prior to embarkation had begun to manifest themselves and food and water supplies were subject to tighter rationing.

Part II: Slave Experience: Political Slavery vs. Personal Chattel

1 The title Pharaoh is based upon two Egyptian words that mean the “Great House.” Sarna, Nahum M. Exploring Exodus. New York: Schocken Books, 1986, 18. 2 Moses used this phrase as the opening remark in the answer to an inquisitive child’s question regarding the meaning of the laws of the Bible. The essence of the answer is that observance of the laws was part of the Israelite contractual obligation that was linked to God’s freeing them from Egypt and taking them to the Land of Canaan.

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Chapter 4: Evolution and Institutionalization of Slavery 1

Spanish biblical commentaries of the fifteenth century (Abrabanel and Akedat Yitzchak) interpreted the Hebrew term “to’evah” fundamentally differently than the translation cited above. They interpret to’evah as a Biblical reference to gods, and believe that shepherds were high status people within Egyptian society. Their proof for this position lies in Pharaoh’s concluding comment about Joseph’s brothers. “And if you know any capable men among them, put them in charge of my livestock” (Genesis 47:6). His request would be inconsistent with a view that shepherds were an abhorrent class. 2 The Bible records that Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten (Genesis 50:26). Midrash Seder Olam calculates that Levi was the last brother to die, at the age of one hundred and thirty-seven. The Bible records that the decline in status began with his death. That leaves one hundred and sixteen years of second-class status, most of that time spent as slaves. One tradition says that the oppression took a further turn for the worse around the time of the birth of Miriam, who was reported to be eighty-six years old at the time of the exodus. 3 The Hyksos were an Asiatic ethnic people that invaded Egypt and ruled for a century and a half. Their capital was in the eastern part of Nile Delta, near the biblical land of Goshen. Sarna suggests that the period of Joseph coincided with Hyksos rule. Joseph rose to power within a court leadership that was not indigenous to Egypt. The appointment of a new king who knew not Joseph (Exodus 1:8) represented a return to power of the indigenous Egyptian monarchy. Not surprisingly, an indigenous Pharaoh was concerned about a future invasion and the assistance the Israelites might provide the invaders. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 7–20. For a contradictory view see Wilson, Ian. Exodus: The True Story. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985. Chapter 1: “The Exodus Pharaoh Mystery,” 19–31. 4 In verses Exodus 1:10 through 12, I have chosen to follow the Artscroll Stone Edition translation rather than the JPS translation. The table below contrasts the two translations. In these verses, the Stone Edition translation of the Hebrew text consistently uses singular third person pronouns that are translated as “it,” “he,” or “him” when referring to the Israelite people. Our thesis is that the Hebrew singular is intended to emphasize that the actions taken affected the Israelites as an undifferentiated single entity. In verse 14, the text changes to a plural form, thereby suggesting that the nature of oppression became differentiated. For reasons of clarity of language, the JPS translation uses instead the plural forms, “they” and “them.” In his work, Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible (New York; Doubleday 1999), 123–124, William H.C. Propp discusses the use of singular and plural terms in various early translations of the Bible. Exodus 1:10–14 JPS Stone Edition – ArtScroll 10. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they 10. Come, let us outsmart it lest it become may not increase; otherwise in event of war they numerous and it may be that if a war will occur, may join our enemies in fighting against us and it, too, may join our enemies, and wage war rise from the ground. against us and go up from the land. 11: So they set taskmasters over them to oppress 11: So they appointed taskmasters over it in them with forced labor; and they built garrison order to afflict it with their burdens; it built cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Ramses. storage cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Ramses. But as much as they were to afflict it, so it 12: But the more they were oppressed, the more 12: increase and so it would spread out; and they increased to spread out, so that the would they became disgusted because of the Children [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites of Israel. Egypt enslaved the Children with 13–14: The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon 13–14: crushing They embittered their lives the Israelites the various labors that they made with hardharshness. work, with mortar and bricks, and them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter with every labor of the field; all their labors that for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks they performed with them were with crushing and with all sorts of tasks in the field. harshness.

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5 The last part of the accusation, “(they will) rise up from the ground,” is mysterious. The simplest meaning is that they will use the pretext of war to get up and leave Egypt. But this explanation is problematic since such an action would seem to address Pharaoh’s concern. For a variety of other interpretations see also Propp, Exodus 1–18, 132. 6 The Midrash Lekach Tov (Exodus 1:9) makes note of this first use of am, nation, as applied to the Children of Israel. This Midrash is quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Vol. 8, n. 90. 7 Ramban, Exodus 1:10. 8 Shemot Rabbah 1:15. 9 Talmon, Shemaryahu, editor-in-chief. Olam ha-Tanach: Shemot. Tel Aviv: Davidson-Iti, 1993, 22. The biblical word is “sivlot.” This word is a noun that has a technical meaning in old Near Eastern languages. It refers to the conscription of forced labor that is analogous to conscription into the military. 10 Ramses II established his government in the eastern Delta where he built his new capital, Pi-Ramesse, “Domain of Ramses.” He ruled for sixty-six years and was known for the grandiose building projects that he carried out with foreign conscripts. The project referred to in Exodus 1 is also the name of the region in which Joseph settled his brothers. “So Joseph settled his father and his brothers, giving them holdings in the choicest part of the Land of Egypt, in the region of Ramses, as Pharaoh had commanded” (Genesis 47:11). Pithom is another city that can be dated back to the reign of Ramses II and is near Succoth, a starting point on the exodus journey. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 18–20. 11 Rashi and Ramban, Exodus 1:11. The Netziv offers an alternative translation. The Hebrew word mas can also mean “melting” or “dissolving.” He sees their role as destroying the spirit of the people. Netziv, Ha-amek Davar, Exodus 1:11. 12 This interpretation links the tax to the subsequent labor involved in building the monumental cities. Hirsch and Abrabanel see this as two separate phases. The first phase was a pure monetary tax. That was followed by the requirement to participate in massive publicworks projects. 13 Savlut and its variants, sevel and sivlot, have two meanings that can be complementary. The term appears repeatedly in the first chapters of Exodus as well as referring to the workers whom Solomon used for the construction of the first Temple. The meaning emphasized in this section of the book relates to a work quota and a tax provided by a conscripted workforce. In a later section that discusses oppression, I will highlight the second, more common interpretation: a heavy burden born on the shoulder. Moses went out to see his brethren’s sivlot (Exodus 2:11). Pharaoh repeatedly referred to their sivlot in his reaction to Moses’s initial request (Exodus 5:4 and 5:5). God characterized the exodus as follows: “I will take you out from under the sivlot (burden) of Egypt” (Exodus 6:6–7). Solomon built the Temple with conscripted labor. One of the two jobs that were performed by conscripted workers was described as nosei sabol, translated as porters (I Kings: 5:27–30). The term also appears as sevel bet yosef, translated as “forced labor of the House of Joseph” (I Kings 11:28). The term is placed in the context of a shoulder in Psalms 81:7 and Isaiah 10:27 and 14:25. The verse in Psalms refers specifically to the Egyptian exodus. “I relieved his shoulders of the burden.” 14 Propp, Exodus 1–18, 133. 15 Ramban, Exodus 1:9. 16 If these were store cities, there would have been an added reason for the Israelites not to complain or refuse to participate. Joseph, their original protector, had created the concept of store cities. Hirsch prefers the “store city” translation and suggests that this type of project was selected as a “double-barreled act of derision” (Hirsch, Exodus 1:11). 17 Sarna makes the case that Ramses II was the reigning Pharaoh at this time in the exodus narrative (Exploring Exodus, 10). 18 There is a Midrashic tradition that describes the process as unfolding voluntarily and is developed as a play on words. The Hebrew word be-farech if split in two becomes be-feh rach, which means soft-spoken. According to this tradition, Pharaoh laid the cornerstone of the

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first building. After setting an example, he recruited the Israelites as willing and even enthusiastic volunteers interested in currying the favor of Pharaoh. In the first days, their fervor produced impressive results. Pharaoh then converted this initial high standard into a daily quota (Midrash Tanchuma, Be-ha’alotcha 23, quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, n. 135). It should be noted that the purpose of the Midrash is not to provide facts or alternative scenarios for the sake of history. The Midrash is attempting to guide Jews throughout history. This interpretation warns Jews of the Diaspora about the danger of volunteering for a state project in order to outdo the local populace in fidelity to the ruling power. 19 Leibowitz, Nechama. Studies in Shemot (Exodus). Jerusalem: Haomanim Press, 1983, 26. 20 The only other instance of a formal command from Pharaoh arose in response to his first confrontation with Moses. The command was given to the overseers of the Israelites and was narrowly focused. “That same day Pharaoh charged the taskmasters and the foreman of the people saying, ‘You shall no longer provide the people with straw for making bricks as heretofore’” (Exodus 5:6–7). 21 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, nn. 98–106. 22 BT Sotah 11a. The Hebrew verb for “disgust” is similar to its word for “thorn.” Similar language of “disgust” is used to characterize Moab’s reaction upon seeing the mass of Israelites. “Moab became frightened of the people, because it was numerous, and Moab was disgusted in the face of the Children of Israel” (Numbers 22:3). I have chosen the Hirsch translation, which uses the word “disgust,” instead of the JPS Edition, which uses the word “dread.” The former is consistent with both Rashi and Rashbam on Exodus 1:12. The Ramban, however, interprets the word as “dread.” Propp, Exodus 1–18, 133, notes that Hebrew root implies both fear and loathing. 23 Yalkut, quoted by Hirsch, Exodus 1:12. 24 Hirsch, Exodus 1:13. 25 Later, we discuss the details of the oppression as well as provide insight as to the nature of the work the Israelites performed. 26 Hirsch, Exodus 1:14. 27 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 29. Jamestown, Virginia, was the first permanent English settlement on the continent. 28 Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 3. 29 Ibid., 1. 30 Degler, Carl N. “Slavery and the Genesis of American Race Prejudice,” in Donald L. Noel, ed., The Origins of American Slavery and Racism. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill, 1972, 68. The three men were all given thirty lashes as well. 31 Ibid., 271. 32 Ibid., 261. 33 This table is based on an initial discussion in Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 8–11, and which is elaborated throughout the book. 34 The original colony was named Carolina. In 1729, the colony finalized a split between North and South Carolina. Slaves as a percent of the population in South Carolina were more than double that of North Carolina. At the time of the split, slaves were only sixteen percent of the North Carolina’s population. See Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 3rd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967, 78–83. 35 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 95–97. Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 369–371. 36 Census of 1860. In the 1830 census, the slave population of Virginia dropped below forty percent of the population for the first time and declined to thirty-one percent by the time of the Civil War. In North Carolina, slaves made up approximately one-third of the population in the decades leading up to the war. 37 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 47–54 and 177–179. Slaves often accounted for much higher percentages in certain agricultural counties and port cities of the North. In New Amsterdam in 1638, the hundred slaves were thirty percent of the total population and slaves were still

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twenty percent of the total when the British took over in 1664. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, slaves were one-sixth of the population of Philadelphia. 38 In the following section we limit our discussion to the changing legal and political structures that supported the institutionalization and growth of southern slavery. Later, we discuss how these changes paralleled and affected the nature of the slave experience. Our focus will be on the states of Virginia, Maryland, and North and South Carolina. Throughout the eighteenth century, more than seventy-five percent of the slaves in the continental United States lived in these states. 39 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 91. 40 Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., From Slavery to Freedom, 6th ed. New York: Knopf, 1988, 55. 41 Ibid, 3rd edition, 78. 42 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 12. 43 Ibid., 70. 44 Ibid., 119, 123. 45 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 68. 46 Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996, 379. 47 Ibid., 304. 48 Census of 1790. That year, states south of the Mason-Dixon line, including Kentucky which was not yet a state, had a white population of 1.27 million, which was 39.8 percent of the 3.2 million non-slave population of the United States. If all blacks, slave and free alike, were counted alongside whites, the South’s share of the total population of the United States would have risen to 49.5 percent. The three-fifths clause reduced the South’s share of the United States total to 45.8 percent. 49 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 264. 50 Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, 333. 51 Ibid., 326. 52 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 198. 53 Ibid., 78. 54 Ibid., 87. 55 The Catholic Church exerted a moderating influence on some of the worst aspects of slavery related to family life. It strongly urged slave masters and the society as a whole to be concerned with the religious and moral development of the Negro. 56 France transferred to Spain the burden of an unprofitable Louisiana shortly after losing the French and Indian Wars. It ceded all lands east of the Mississippi to England. King Louis XV of France gave Louisiana to his cousin King Charles III of Spain. 57 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 330–334. 58 The Supreme Court’s decision declared that Congress had no authority to restrict owners from bringing slaves into “so-called” free territories of 1857. The decision also stated that in retrospect Congress really did not have the right to restrict slavery on any lands that the United States took possession of after the Constitution was ratified. 59 Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 93–109. 60 Hirsch. Exodus 1:14. 61 Miller, John Chester. The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991, 46–59. 62 This ordinance prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory. This region north of the Ohio River encompassed the future states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. 63 Ibid., 22–30. 142–147, 243–246. Later in life, Jefferson sided with the states’ rights group when he was faced with a choice of states’ rights and property rights on one side and the prohibition of the expansion of slavery on the other. He was a vocal leader in the effort to bring Missouri in as a slave state with no compromise attached to its admission. In the 1820s,

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he believed that the expansion of slavery was necessary to protect the fragile political equality with the North. Earlier in his career, Jefferson was unwilling to place his political stature on the line in any frontal assault on the institution of slavery. He was willing to fight only one revolution in his lifetime, and taking on the issue of slavery would have compromised his ability to be a political leader of the South. He felt that the new nation and its principles were a delicate balance with forces constantly at work that he feared would give too much power to the federal government. 64 Ibid., 47–50. 65 Ibid., 53. 66 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 271–272. 67 The word “cod” has at its root English meaning a bag or pouch. (This usage is not related to its other use as the name of a fish.) The quote is from 1798. During that time cod was used to refer to the scrotum or testicles. An earlier usage relates to the belly or stomach, which would seem to fit the sequence of anatomy in the quote. 68 The first century of slavery in America was not yet driven by racial factors. However, as white indentured servants began to disappear from the American landscape, the predominant and later exclusive use of blacks as servants and slaves coincided with the development of a racial theory and justification for black slavery. These racial theories had the added, unfortunate impact of denigrating and impugning the character of even those blacks who had obtained freedom and achieved success in their own right (see Noel, ed., The Origins of American Slavery and Racism). After the Civil War, the racial theories did not disappear but gained new strength from pseudo-scientific socio-biological research. These theories helped support a South that was desperate to keep all newly freed slaves in their proper place, on the lowest rungs or on the fringes of proper society. 69 Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993, 181–185. 70 While Midrash Rabbah (Exodus 1:7) describes these births as multiples of six, it does not suggest any derogatory connotation. Various midrashim compare Israelites to fish, mice, and scorpions. One version speaks only of an increase in the number of twins (Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, nn. 70–77). In a later section on population growth, I will explore the increase from seventy members of Jacob’s family to a population of more than six hundred thousand males between the ages of twenty and sixty. This is approximately equivalent to a total population of over two million. The term sheretz first appears in the narrative of creation and refers to “swarms” coming out of the waters (Genesis 1:20–21). It is also translated as “creeping” and used as the descriptor of the animal category, those “creeping things on the earth” (Genesis 1:24–26, 28). In exodus, the term is used to describe the plague in which swarms of frogs rise out of the waters and invade every corner of Egyptian homes. 71 “But anything in the seas or in the streams that has no fins and scales, among all the swarming things [sheratzim] of the water and among all other living creatures that are in the water – they are an abomination for you” (Leviticus 11:10). “All winged swarming [sheratzim] things that walk on fours shall be an abomination for you” (Leviticus 11:20). “The following shall be unclean for you from among the things that swarm [sheretz] on the earth: the mole, the mouse, and great lizards of every variety” (Leviticus 11:29). 72 For a critical analysis of Seforno’s interpretation see Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. New York: Doubleday, 2000, 18–21. 73 Here I stray from the JPS translation. The Hebrew text uses the word hayyot, which means “animals.” The JPS translation uses the phrase “they are vigorous” instead of the “they were like animals.”

Chapter 5: Breaking the Human Spirit

1 Brent, Linda. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973, 63. 2 Although several instances of infanticide were reported, this was an extreme and relatively rare response to the conflict that mothers felt. The actual number is unknowable because the high rate of neonatal and infant mortality made it easy to cover up any such acts. However, the rate of population growth that African-American slavery experienced in the nineteenth

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century belies any suggestion that mothers frequently took drastic action to limit births. (See Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage Books, 1974, 496–500.) 3 Ibid. Typically, slave mothers were given only a few months off around the birth of their child. During the workday, they were allowed several short interruptions to nurse their infants. At the end of the workday, they then had to prepare the family’s food. While the mothers worked, elderly slaves cared for the infants. 4 Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South. Revised and enlarged ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, 180–181. 5 Ibid. 6 Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994, 5. 7 Katz, William Loren. Eyewitness: The Negro in American History. New York: Pitman Publishing, 1968, 111. 8 de Zurara, Gomes Eannes. Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea. Quoted in Thomas, The Slave Trade, 21–22. 9 Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996, 167. 10 Ibid., 33–34. 11 BT Sotah 12a. The basis for this tradition is the opening verse of Exodus 2. “A man from the House of Levi took a wife from the tribe of Levi.” The Midrash interprets this seemingly superfluous introduction to the birth of Moses as a reversal of an earlier decision not to marry while Pharaoh’s decree was in force. In this tradition, six-year-old Miriam confronted her parents, arguing that they were even worse than Pharaoh. While Pharaoh had decreed the death of only the males, Amram and his wife were preventing any children from being born. 12 Lehmann, Marcus. Passover Hagadah. New York: n.p., 1974, 121–124. 13 Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man. New York: John S. Taylor, 1837, 39. Available at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Libraries, Documenting the American South, electronic edition, 1999. In the immediate post-Civil War period, contemporary writers noted the hordes of ex-slaves roaming the southern countryside attempting to reconnect with relatives who had been sold off to distant locations. (See also Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm Too Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979, 229–232.) 14 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 175–179. 15 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 512–519. 16 The Baal ha-Turim’s commentary on exodus 1:11 notes the link between that verse and the rape of King David’s daughter, Tamar. See also Deuteronomy 21:14 and 22:29. The first reference refers to a woman captive taken in battle, while the second relates to a single girl who is raped. 17 Shemot Rabbah 1:33. Others consider this single recorded instance as prototypical rather than atypical. The Midrash attributes this rape to the Egyptian whom Moses found beating the Israelite who had discovered, and dared to protest, the rape of his wife. 18 Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember – An Oral History. New York: Avon Books, 1988, 297. 19 Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 26–27. 20 Lerner, Gerda. Black Women in White America: A Documentary History. New York: Vintage Books, 1992, 50. 21 Mintz, African-American Voices, 99. 22 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 239. 23 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 154–155, 172–173. 24 Ibid. 25 Walzer, Michael. Exodus and Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985. 26 Hirsch, Exodus 1:14.

Chapter 6: The Burdens of Slavery 1 2

Ve-hotzeti etchem mi-tachat sivlot mitzrayim (Exodus 6:6). Many of the Egyptian monuments, including pyramids, were made of brick rather than massive stones.

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3 4 5 6 7 8

Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 20–23. Ibid. Ramban, Exodus 1:11. Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 74. Fox-Genovese, Within the Plantation Household, 293. Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 119. For another discussion of the methods used to make slaves submissive and deferential, see Blassingame, The Slave Community, 256–257. 9 Ibid., 125. 10 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 74. 11 Loguen, Jermaine W. The Rev. J. W. Loguen: As a Slave and as a Freeman – A Narrative of Real Life. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968. 12 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 309. In the story, Lucy would not have met her quota if Tom and Cassy had not shared their cotton with her. 13 These remarks are not intended to suggest that working one’s own field and working as a slave for someone else were equivalent psychological and social experiences. They were not. 14 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 57–60. Southerners published articles in journals such as Du Bow’s Review that compared slaves’ working conditions with those of non-slaves in other countries. European travelers and some immigrants noted that black slaves were economically better. A German living in Texas wrote, “One third of the population in a German village is not better off than the Texas Negro.” The Italian historian Raimondo Luraghi declared that slaves fared better materially than “the mass of the Russian, Hungarian, Polish, and even Italian peasants.” 15 The mills of New England were not as harsh on their workers, who had available to them the option of heading west toward the frontier and working their own property. In the early industrial revolution period in the United States, there was a relative shortage of workers willing to work in factories. This mitigated the worst practices of factory owners. 16 Tuttle, Carolyn. Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999, 112. 17 Checkland, Sydney. British Public Policy 1776–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1983, 84– 97. Changes in British election law led to the election of the Reform Parliament of 1832. The state became an agent for social improvement. Numerous commissions submitted reports, and laws were passed protecting mainly children and women. The worse scenarios involved a category labeled “parish apprentices.” Cartloads of pauper children were recruited from workhouses. They worked from age nine until age eighteen and were fed and housed, but received little or no pay. Tuttle, Hard at Work in Factories and Mines, 19. 18 Hindman, Hugh H. Child Labor: An American History. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002, 19–27. The situation of children in America, when compared to England, was better because of the wider range of economic opportunities. However, the assumption was that children would be industriously employed. Work under parental supervision was deemed important in order to prepare a child for a productive life. 19 Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 29. 20 One-fourth of the slaves lived in units of at least fifty. More than half lived in groups of twenty or more. Nevertheless, fifty percent of the slaveholders had five or fewer slaves. The numeric distribution of slaves varied significantly from region to region. There were fewer than three thousand large plantations with at least one hundred slaves. See Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South. New York: Vintage Books, 1956, 30– 32. 21 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 125. 22 Midrash Shemot Rabbah 1:16 and BT Sotah 11b. 23 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, Shemot 5:5, n. 45. 24 Interestingly, sugar cane – the dominant crop in the growth of slavery in the New World that employed millions of Caribbean and South American slaves – was a minor factor in slavery in the United States. Only a small section of Louisiana was well suited to growing this crop (Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 342–343). Dislocated planters who fled Saint Domingue and brought their expertise with them controlled this segment of the economy. Small crops

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of sugar were also produced in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Texas. Cold weather was the main drawback to sugar production in the American South. The flooding of the Mississippi River also presented obstacles. (See Sitterson, J. Carlyle. Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1953, 13–44.) 25 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 165; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 31, 97, 116. Berlin notes that as the workforce switched from indentured laborers in the seventeenth century to slave labor in the eighteenth, the number and length of workdays increased, supervision and discipline intensified, holidays were reduced, and breaks were shortened or eliminated. Labor in the slack season also increased and slaves often completed their labors in the shorter days of winter by firelight. 26 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 166–168. 27 Ibid. 28 For a comparison of the task and gang systems see Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Norton, 1989, 159. 29 Joyner, Charles. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984, 44–45. 30 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 311–312, 314, 343. The size of the bales also increased from about two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds. 31 Davis, Charles S. The Cotton Kingdom in Alabama. Montgomery: Alabama State Department of Archives and History, 1939, 62. 32 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 250, 279; Davis, Cotton Kingdom, 62–63. The insatiable demands of an owner and the pressure of quotas is the dominant theme of the concluding sections of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 33 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 394–395. 34 Ibid., 388–398; Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 135–138. Rice-growing required a greater number of skilled workers than cotton did. In the nineteenth century, as cotton dominated a broad swath of the southern slave economy, opportunities for slaves to develop skills declined. See also Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 49–59. 35 Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 154–162. Fogel reviews the changing interpretations of the charges of laziness. Melville J. Herskovits, an anthropologist who published Myth of the Negro Past (Boston: Beacon Press, 1941), and Kenneth M. Stampp, the historian who wrote The Peculiar Institution, argued that shirking, malingering, and destruction of property were widespread forms of indirect protest and resistance. 36 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 285, 295, 299, 300. 37 Ibid., 286. 38 It is beyond the scope of this essay to explore the concept of work within the value system of African Americans after the Civil War. 39 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 304–305; Mellon, ed., Bullwhip Days, 448. 40 Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 159. Slave labor on plantations was organized into either the task system or gang system. Under the gang system, a quota was set for the entire crew and all slaves worked until they were discharged as a group in the evening. Under the task system, individual slaves were given specific responsibilities and were allowed leave the field when they were completed. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, 54–55. 41 Dalberg-Acton, John E.E. Lord Acton. “Letter to Bishop Mandel Creighton, April 5, 1887”, quoted in Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations, Fourteenth Edition. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1968), 750a. 42 Some translators substitute the word “shrewdly” for “wisely” (see Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 24). 43 The Hebrew verb used earlier is amar, which means “say” or “speak.” Only in this final stage is the Hebrew word tzav (command) used. 44 The word be-farech is translated as “backbreaking.” However, it consists of two syllables, befeh and rach, which, translated as such, mean “with a soft word” or “with a soft mouth.” 45 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Vol. 8, n. 113. 46 Ibid., n. 135.

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47 Ibid., Vol. 8, n. 99. The intent of these alternative scenarios is to provide future generations of Jews early warning signs that their status as an invited and tolerated minority was changing. 48 Moses does not actually remove the frogs. The curious thing about this encounter is that while both Pharaoh and Moses use the word “remove,” and Moses states that frogs will only remain in the river, in fact the frogs die and lie in putrid heaps, making the second plague more like two in one. This can be contrasted with the fourth plague, when the wild animals actually leave, since their carcasses would be valuable. This might have been an excuse for Pharaoh to renege, but Scripture simply states “Pharaoh saw that there had been relief” before recording that he hardened his heart (Exodus 8:11). 49 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 28. 50 George Washington’s will called for freeing his slaves when Martha Washington died. However, she freed the 123 slaves on January 1, 1801, only two years after his death. Several states passed laws prohibiting or restricting manumission. (See Berlin, Ira. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in Antebellum South. New York: The New Press, 1974, 139–157.) 51 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 609–612. 52 Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 43. 53 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 90. 54 Blassingame, The Slave Community: 34, 202. 55 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 39. 56 Ibid., 309. 57 Ibid., 339. 58 Lerner, ed. Black Women in White America, 288. 59 For example, see Ohr ha-Chaim on Exodus 3:12. Moses’s request was not an outright lie because he never said that the Israelites would return after the holiday. The three days refers to the distance to travel. “Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness” (Exodus 5:3). Under normal circumstances that do not involve a confrontation with evil, Jewish law prohibits leaving a false impression (Choshen Mishpat 228). However, in Jewish law, the requirement to tell the truth is not a supreme value and can be waived in face of more important values. The first biblical example involved Abraham lying about his relationship with Sarah in order to save his life (Genesis 12:11–13). A second instance involved God speaking to Abraham about Sarah’s skeptical reaction to the prophecy of Isaac’s birth. God quoted Sarah’s words only partially, omitting her remarks about her husband so as not to hurt Abraham’s feelings (Genesis 18:12–13). This example is cited as a justification for telling white lies in order to preserve harmony in the household (BT Bava Metzia 87a). 60 Abrabanel, Exodus 3:18. 61 Ran Derashot, quoted by Abrabanel, Exodus 3:18. 62 A formal equitable legal system would have difficulty allowing individuals to take the law into their own hands to recover property owed them. Jewish law covers a wide range of societies in which Jews were dispersed. In systems in which the entire legal structure is corrupt and the rule of law is a matter of unlimited power, Jewish law recognizes the right to extralegal means to achieve justice. Dealing with the Egyptians was such an instance. 63 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 183–192. 64 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 609–612. 65 Clarke, Lewis and Milton. Narratives and Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, selection reprinted in Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies, edited by John W. Blassingame, 152–154. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. 66 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 611.

Chapter 7: Cultural Identity

1 The religious beliefs of these two groups will be expanded upon in a later section. We will discuss how prior beliefs may have influenced or been integrated into their new religious value system. 2 The Midrash cites two additional reasons: they maintained family purity and kept group secrets from their masters (Bamidbar Rabbah 20:21). See also Mechilta quoted by Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8:1, n. 26. There is a popular belief that another reason is that

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the Israelites also kept their distinctive dress. None of the extant Midrashic sources include dress in the list. For a discussion see two essays in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, addition number 3 to Parshat Shemot and addition number 2 to Parshat Va-era. There is historical evidence that the Midrashic collection Lekach Tov included a reference to clothing since the sixteenth-century commentator Abrabanel mentions this Midrash. The antiassimilationist message in this Midrash resonates with modern Jewish Bible commentaries struggling to counter the wave of assimilation that has plagued world Jewry since the nineteenth century. This suggestion contradicts the Biblical narrative in which God commands the Israelites to ask their neighbors for gifts of clothing (Exodus 3:22, 12:35). 3 Herskovits suggests that there was significant common linguistic structure over a broad expanse of the west coast of Africa. As a result in a limited time of intermingling, slaves bound for the New World would have found ways to communicate. Their loss of language occurred primarily in the New World as generations grew up in total isolation from their African roots. See Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past, 78–81, 294–296. Since the publication of Herskovits’s original essay in 1941, there has been extensive research into differences in African languages. For a summary of relevant research see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 559–565. 4 One midrashic tradition states that the Egyptian whom Moses saw beating the Israelite had used his position of authority in order to take advantage of an Israelite married woman. The Midrash views this as an exception to the norm rather than as illustrative of routine sexual abuse (Shemot Rabbah 1:32). 5 Shemot Rabbah, Chapter 26. Quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, nn. 49, 145. 6 Abrabanel notes that Aaron’s name also reflected the slave experience, although he does not explain how. The Midrash also says that Moses’s given name was Tuvya (as suggested by ki tov hu – “because he was good" – Exodus 2:2), which seems to reflect optimism. 7 Vayikra Rabbah 1:8 provides a list of ten Hebraic names of Moses. 8 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 8:2, n. 74. 9 Maharsha on BT Sotah 12a. 10 For a detailed discussion of the paradox embedded in the naming of Joseph’s sons, see Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis. New York: Image Books, 1995, 284–290. See also Malbim and Ha-amek Davar. 11 The Marranos and other underground Jews gave their children Hebrew names at birth even if they did not dare tell them the names until much later in life. 12 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 112. 13 The large slave ships of the eighteenth century, which carried hundreds of slaves, usually stayed for months along the coast of West Africa. Since these ships made purchases at multiple ports, their African slave cargo was generally an amalgamation of slaves from several locales. Although the languages varied, there often was enough commonality for slaves to communicate with each other. However, the diversity of language would have been significantly greater on the plantation as owners bought small numbers of slaves each year from various shipments. While some owners had preferences for specific tribal groups, that was more the exception than the rule (see Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 62–70). 14 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 120. 15 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 443–450. 16 Alford, Prince Among Slaves, 37. 17 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 453–455. 18 Ibid., 454. 19 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 182–183. 20 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 447. 21 Berlin claimed, “While slaves answered to the name imposed upon them, many clandestinely kept their African names.” Many Thousands Gone, 120 and endnote 24. 22 Ibid., 130. See also Jones, Jacqueline. “My Mother Was Much of a Woman: Black Women, Work and the Family under Slavery.” In Black Women in American History: From Colonial Times through the Nineteenth Century, vol. 3, edited by Darlene Clark Hine, 253. New York: Carlson Publishing, 1990.

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23 24 25 26 27 28

Ibid., 445. Blassingame, The Slave Community, 182–183. Ibid., 444. Ibid., 447. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. Five Addresses. Jerusalem: Tal Orot Institute, 1973, 116. The Origins of American Slavery and Racism, edited by Donald L. Noel, explores through a series of conflicting essays various views as to the relationship and precedence between slavery and racism in America. See also Smedley, Race in North America. 29 I have taken literary license to simplify the resolution of internal conflict that might arise if one believed in the equality of human beings and nevertheless accepted slavery. For a discussion that focuses on Jefferson’s own words see Smedley, Race in North America, 192– 202, and Miller, The Wolf by the Ears. 30 Smedley, Race in North America, 197. 31 Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. In Du Bois, W.E.B. Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1984, 364–365. 32 In the Caribbean and South America the large ratio of blacks to white owners or supervisors and other environmental factors afforded greater opportunity for blacks to maintain African traditions in religion and secular life. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, Chapter 5. 33 Piersen, William Dillon. Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage, Chapter 8, “Mammy Indeed,” (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993). 34 Ibid., Chapter 7. Herskovits notes that white revivalist meetings tend to lead to a few individuals becoming possessed; whereas in African-American churches possession embraces a broader segment of the church audience. Other Christian groups and religions such as Judaism envision inspiration or possession as a private affair. 35 Ibid., 228–232. 36 Africanisms in American Culture, ed. Holloway, 167–173. Some of the traditions regarding ornaments placed on or in the grave have African antecedents. Charles Ball, a slave in western Maryland, described how he helped a family include a small bow and arrows in the grave of an infant to be used by the child in the afterlife (Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 110). 37 Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, 197–206. 38 Mullin, Michael. Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992, 185–186. 39 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 540–543. 40 Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina: From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: W.W. Norton, 1974, 120–121. See also Piersen, Black Legacy, Chapter 5, “Duh Root Doctuh Wuz All We Needed.” 41 Hine, Black Women in American History, 255–256. 42 The biblical commentaries debate whether or not that geographic isolation diminished over time. In Exodus 1:7, the population growth is described as follows: “The land was filled with them.” Netziv in Ha-amek Davar states that this phrase means they spread outside of the Land of Goshen, their original home. This led to the perception that they were everywhere. Ibn Ezra and, later, Hirsch, saw no reason to interpret the term “land” as anything other than Goshen. In a number of the later plagues, the Bible specifically notes the exemption for the Land of Goshen. These references buttress the narrower interpretation of Ibn Ezra and Hirsch. 43 Herskovits, Myth of the Negro Past, 120–121.

Chapter 8: Population Growth and Fears 1

The first census, that of 1790, reported 757,208 African Americans, and the census in 1810 reported 1.37 million. The population tripled in the fifty years leading up to the Civil War after slave importation became illegal (Christian, Black Saga, 66, 81, 169). By contrast, in order for the Israelite population to grow at the rate it did, the population would have had to triple every twenty-five years. Let us assume that women had, on average, eight healthy children by their mid-twenties. Each succeeding generation would be four times as large as

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the previous one, and there would be eight generations over a period of two hundred and ten years. The number four raised to the eighth power (48), equals 65,536. When this is multiplied by the original family total of seventy, the product is over 4.5 million. These hypothesized birth rates are even more amazing when we recognize that historical data suggest that the age of menarche was much later than it is now. Studies of several European countries in the mid-nineteenth century placed this age between sixteen and seventeen years, whereas the median age in the United States now is under thirteen years. (See David, Paul A., Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright. Reckoning with Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, 144–145.) 2 Wood, Black Majority, 152. 3 Thomas, The Slave Trade, 567. The quoted observation was made by H.M. Brackenridge, who traveled Brazil in 1817. 4 Ibid., 567, 571. Robert William Fogel argues that the main difference between the United States and other regions was related to higher fertility rates and not the result of differences in mortality (Fogel, Without Consent or Contract). In one study he found mortality rates in Jamaica and the United States to be nearly equal, but that fertility rates were eighty percent higher in the United States (Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 116–132). 5 Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, 90. 6 Midrash Shemot Rabbah 1:7. 7 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 13. 8 Midrash Shemot Rabbah 1:7. 9 Indeed, one Midrash suggests that woman averaged six children per family (Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Shemot Chapter 1, n. 60). 10 Interestingly, similar descriptions of population growth appear in God’s statement to Abraham about his descendants. “I will make you exceedingly fertile, and make nations of you. Kings shall come forth from you” (Genesis 17:6). More specifically, it is repeated in the context of a blessing for his son Ishmael. “As for Ishmael, I have heeded you. I hereby bless him. I will make him fertile and exceedingly numerous” (Genesis 17:20). Two of the verbs from the verse in Exodus, paru and va-yirbu (from the same root as revu, “to be numerous”), as well as me’od me’od, occur in this blessing for Ishmael. 11 Rashbam, Exodus 1:7. The Kli Yakar interprets the last term, va-ya’aztmu, coupled with the following phrase, bi-me’od me’od (“very greatly”), as referring to the accumulation of great wealth and power. This interpretation provides even greater justification for the new Pharaoh’s negative attitude toward the Israelites and his wish to limit their growth. The combination va-ya’aztmu me’od is interestingly repeated in Exodus 1:20, when God blessed the midwives for their courageous defiance of Pharaoh’s decree. 12 It cannot mean that Pharaoh was afraid that Egypt would lose its slave labor, since at this stage the Israelites had not yet been enslaved. Rashi on the verse suggests the interpretation that the Israelites will take over Egypt, whereas the Ramban suggests that Pharaoh feared that they will leave and return to Canaan. 13 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Shemot Chapter 1, n. 129. 14 Ibid. 15 Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, 137–141. Data on slave imports are estimates and different sources report dissimilar numbers. 16 Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 62. 17 In the 2000 census in the United States, African Americans accounted for 12.3 percent of the population. 18 Mississippi and Louisiana were the only other states ever to report a majority of African Americans. These two states still have the highest proportion of African Americans. They accounted for more than thirty percent of the respective populations in 2000. 19 David et al., Reckoning with Slavery, 143. 20 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 91. Morgan reported a mean birth interval of twenty-seven months.

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21 22 23 24

Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 147–153. Ibid., 123–132. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 89–90. Ibid., 91. Morgan reported that almost one-third of the children died before the age of four. 25 Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750–1925. New York: Vintage Books, 1976, 50–51, 114–115. Similar statistics are reported for the Stirling Plantation, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. The data were for families in which the first child was born between 1807 and 1855. In more than half the households, there were more than seven siblings. One couple, Nelson and Clarinda, had fifteen children born between 1833 and 1859. 26 In Egypt this fear led to slavery, while in the South, slavery already existed and their fears led to the instituting of many regulations in order to control the slave population. These issues of control are discussed in a later section. 27 Wood, Black Majority, 165–166. 28 Christian, Black Saga, 48–54. 29 Ibid. The Continental Congress offered one thousand dollars to slave owners in South Carolina and Georgia in exchange for each slave serving in the army. Slaves who fought were guaranteed freedom at the end of the war. The states rejected this offer. 30 Ibid., 56. 31 In chapter ten, we review the various rebellions and the white reaction. 32 Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publishers, 1983, 49, 50. 33 Ibid., 18–24, 30–36, 51, 52. 34 The actions of former slaves during the Civil War are discussed in chapter twenty two.

Chapter 9: Controlling the Population 1 2

Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 1, n. 117. Shemot Rabbah 1:32 quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah Exodus 2, note 94. The midrashic literature describes a scenario in which the Egyptian taskmaster took sexual advantage of the wife of an Israelite slave or overseer who had been sent out to work. The slave who was being beaten was the rape victim’s husband, who had discovered what had happened to his wife. 3 Straw served as both a binding agent and a chemical additive. As it decays, it releases an acid contained in its vegetable matter. This acid increased the bricks’ strength and plasticity and reduced shrinkage, cracking, and deformation. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 65. 4 Propp, The Anchor Bible: Exodus, 244. 5 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 305–308. 6 Ibid., 308–309. 7 Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, 120. Franklin notes that “since overseers came from a non-slaveholding and frequently landless group, they had no interest other than a contemporary concern in the group…. The owners demanded that the overseers get work out of the slaves and produce a superior crop. With such a mandate the overseers were ruthless and excessively cruel in their treatment of slaves”. In contrast, Eugene Genovese attributes much of the cruelty associated with overseers to the planters themselves. The planters often absented themselves or had knowledge of their overseers’ harsh treatment because of the close working relationship between the two. He acknowledges that a small number of overseers originated from the landless class of poor whites or, conversely, were the sons or other relatives of the planters. However, he asserts that the majority of overseers consisted of “a semiprofessional class of men who expected to spend their lives overseeing or wanted to earn enough money to buy a farm.” (Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 12–13) 8 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 240. 9 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 15–17. 10 Ibid., 17–23. 11 Ibid., 365. 12 Ibid., 367.

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13 14 15

Ibid., 370–371. Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 138–139. In many instances the marks were brands, burned in by their masters, that served as simple identifiers that were included in descriptions of runaway slaves. (See Franklin, John Hope, and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, 24, 216–218.) 16 Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 345. 17 In 1723 the Virginia assembly prohibited the emancipation of slaves except with the approval of the governor or the assembly. Manumission was restricted to be used as a reward for an act of public service, such as revealing a conspiracy (Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia New York: W.W. Norton, 1975, 29, 337). In 1782 after the American Revolution, the assembly repealed the law (Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 138–143. See 138n for a state-by-state review of legislation in the last three decades leading up to the Civil War.) In his description of the struggle of free blacks to live under these restrictions, Berlin points out that they often ignored or circumvented them. They often did not register or bother to carry papers attesting to their status as freemen. For example, in 1851 a review of census data in a Virginia county found that only fifty-one of three hundred free blacks were registered. Similarly, the majority of free blacks in St. Louis were not registered after the 1850 census (ibid., 316–334). 18 Yarema, Allan. The American Colonization Society. Lanham: University Press of America, 2006, 28; Staudenraus, P.J. The African Colonization Movement 1816–1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, 179–184.

Chapter 10: Rebellion

1 This phrase appears repeatedly in various forms in the Bible (Exodus 33:3, 33:5, 34:9, Deuteronomy 9:6, 9:13; 10:16, 31:27). The last reference is part of Moses’s final admonition to the Israelite nation shortly before his death. “Well I know how defiant and stiff-necked you are. Even now while I am in your midst, you have been defiant towards the Lord. How much more when I am dead” (Deuteronomy 31:27). 2 Zohar Rabbah 2:19, quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Shemot 2, n. 4. 3 Hirsch on Exodus 2:1 offered a narrow explanation of the term “good.” He explained that the infant was good in the sense that he did not cry, and as a result his mother was able to conceal him for several months. 4 BT Sotah 12a. The first three letters of the name in Hebrew, tov, mean “good.” The second part, yah, is a two-letter name of God – the first half of the four-letter Divine Name that is transliterated as “Jehovah.” An alternative reading of the name renders it as Tuvyah. The Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah 1:3 offers a long list of hypothetical Hebrew names for Moses including Yered (similar to Jared), Avigdor, and Yekutiel. 5 In this section, I assume that the midwives were Hebrews. However, the biblical wording can also be translated as the “midwives of the Hebrews.” Many commentaries assume the latter translation and that these midwives were Egyptian. The commentaries were motivated by the unanswered question, “Why would Pharaoh assume that Hebrews would go along with his plan?” In a later section entitled “Righteous Gentiles,” I use the alternative reading, “midwives of the Hebrews,” and assume they were Egyptian. 6 The Bible uses the word “speak” and not “command” to describe Pharaoh’s discussion with the midwives (Exodus 1:15, 16). However, when he mentioned the specific act of killing, Scripture uses the Hebrew imperative form. 7 This parallels a comment by Vincent Harding when he described the massive numbers of blacks who fled slavery during the Civil War. “Black people avoided the deadly prospects of massive, sustained confrontation, for their ultimate goal was freedom, not martyrdom.” (See Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1981, 235.) 8 Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 25. 9 BT Sotah 12a. Quoted by Rashi on Exodus 1:17. 10 Ibid., 24. 11 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Shemot 1, n. 184.

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12 Sarna wonders how only two midwives could have been responsible for all Hebrew births. He suggests that they were either the midwives’ leaders or that the names correspond to guilds or teams of midwives that were named after their founders. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 25. 13 Ibid, 34–35. 14 Schuler, Monica. “Slave Resistance and Rebellion in the Caribbean and South America During the Eighteenth Century.” Unpublished paper, n.d.; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 626. 15 Joyner, Down by the Riverside, 232, Harding, There Is a River, 113. 16 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 218, 252, 282. 17 Harding, There Is a River, 38, 58, 107, 196, 218; Schuler, “Slave Resistance,” 36, 10. Genovese notes: “Poison held a special place in the arsenal of slave weapons throughout the Americas. The planters of the British and French Caribbean in particular lived in terror of being poisoned by their slaves. Long before Africans fell prey to the slave trade they had mastered the art of poisoning as a means of dealing with enemies. From the moment they embarked for the New World, they resorted to poison against the whites, and they continued to practice the art throughout the eighteenth century. Poisoning, at least as reported in an era of growing self-censorship by the press, declined during the nineteenth century but recurred often enough to suggest a passive nervousness” (Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 616). 18 Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 329–332. The Virginia Assembly passed a law in 1667 that stated that conversion to Christianity did not change the status of a slave. 19 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 71–73. Although the Spanish crown made this offer of freedom in 1693, it was not always honored. Some runaways were sold back into local slavery or shipped to Havana. 20 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 307–309. 21 Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 37–42. 22 The word “maroon” refers to runaway slaves. It represents a corruption of the Spanish word “cimarron,” which means wild and untamed. It is possibly related to the modern common usage of lost in the wilderness, such as “marooned on an island.” See the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). “Outlyer” was another term used to describe runaway slaves living on the outskirts of their former homes. 23 Schuler, “Slave Resistance,” 43; Jane Landers, “Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose: A Free Black Town in Spanish Colonial Florida,” American Historical Review 95/1 (February 1990): 9–30; Harding, There Is a River, 48, 64–65, 39, 73, 74; Schuler, “Slave Resistance,” 64, 66. 24 Price, Richard, ed. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, 170–190, 202–203. 25 Harding, There Is a River, 157, 114–115. 26 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 626. 27 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 305. 28 Ibid., 303. 29 Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 19–23. 30 The leaders were not always captured immediately. It took a month or longer to capture Gabriel Prosser and Denmark Vesey after their respective rebellions were defeated. 31 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 79–113. For an excellent portrayal of the Maroon wars in South America and the Caribbean see Price, Richard. The First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1983. Vividly accurate accounts of rebellions in Guyana include Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demarara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994; Themes in Afro-Guyanese History, edited by McGowan,Winston F., James G. Rose, and David A. Granger. Georgetown, Guyana: Free Press, 1998; and Williams, Brackette F. “Dutchman Ghosts and the History Mystery: Ritual, Colonizer, and Colonized Interpretations of the 1763 Berbice Slave Rebellion.” Journal of Historical Sociology 3/2 (June 1990): 133–165. For accounts of the ethnic factor of rebellions in Jamaica, Antigua, and Bahia, see Schuler, Monica. “Slave Resistance and Rebellion,” and Gaspar, David Barry. Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua. Durham: Duke University Press, 1985, 1993.

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Concerning Brazil/Bahia, see Reis, João José. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising in Bahia. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993, and Conrad, Robert Edgar. Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1994. The Haitian Revolution is covered in detail in James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1989; Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990; idem, “The French Revolution in Saint Domingue: A Triumph or Failure?” In A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean, edited by Gaspar, David Barry and David Patrick Geggus. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997; and Lacerte, Robert K. “The Evolution of Land and Labor in the Haitian Revolution, 1791–1820.” The Americas 34 (1978): 449–459. 32 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 114, 172, 174, 187, 264. 33 Historians have documented the ethnic groups of some of the participants, in this case Akan from the Gold Coast and Popo from the Bight of Benin. They also have noted that ethnic groups participated in a blood oath, received from a free person of color a magic powder that made them invisible, and were assisted by Indian allies. 34 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 172–173; Harding, There Is a River, 32–33. For a discussion of the exportation of specific ethnic groups of enslaved Africans by the various European nations competing in the slave trade, see Eltis and Richardson, eds., Routes to Slavery, and especially Philip D. Morgan, “The Cultural Implications of the Atlantic Slave Trade: African Regional Origins, American Destinations, and New World Developments,” 122–145. 35 Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 175–176; Harding, There Is a River, 33. Fifteen slaves belonging to a “Mr. Percivall,” an absentee planter, planned to stage an attack, hire a pilot, and escape to St. Augustine in Florida, a Spanish colony. The slaves took advantage of their owners’ absence and reportedly performed very little work, evidently preferring to use the opportunity to attempt to secure their freedom. Poor whites and Indians exposed the slaves’ plot and they fled and briefly hid, but then were captured by a battalion from Savannah after local Creek rebuffed the slaves’ entreaties to join them or pilot them to safety. Upon capture, the rebels received punishments of burning, hanging, and banishment. A report to the King noted the rapid increase in population in South Carolina and went on to state that had the rebellion been successful it “would have been attended by utter extirpation of all” white subjects of South Carolina. 36 Aptheker, Amrican Negro Slave Revolts, 187–189; Peter Wood, Black Majority, 308–318. The timing of the rebellion coincided with a yellow fever epidemic in Charleston, during a year of increasing incidences of both petit and grand maronnage. It was to take place on a Sunday, when many of the slave owners attended church, giving the enslaved an opportunity to gather. Also, the enslaved had knowledge of an ordinance due to be passed on September 29 requiring all white men to carry arms to church or risk high fines. Another possible significant factor was the report of war between England and Spain. 37 Harding, There Is a River, 71. 38 Greenberg, Kenneth S., ed., The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996), 1–3. In Greenberg’s introduction he notes, “it seems clear that one should not look for the causes of the revolt in any unusual economic conditions in the county. It was not a prosperous area, but neither was it in serious decline. Moreover, the relative isolation of Southampton County, its inaccessible swampy areas, along with its heavily African-American population, suggest why Nat Turner might have thought he had a chance of success. Finally, study of the demographic and economic landscape of Southampton County enables us to understand what may be the most significant feature of the rebellion: Blacks and whites in Nat Turner’s world faced each other every day. This was not a terrain of absentee landowners who ruled anonymous slaves. On most farms, including Nat Turner’s, masters and slaves lived and worked together in small numbers and in close proximity. Hence, this would be an ‘intimate’ rebellion. Many of the 200 black and white casualties knew the people who killed them.” See also Aptheker, American Negro Slave Revolts, 293–324; Harding, There Is a River, 94–99.

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Chapter 11: Righteous Among the Nations 1

Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 2, n. 24. The Midrash also teaches Jews throughout history to assume that the lowest castes in society are likely to side with the leadership when Jews are oppressed rather than join them in a common fight. 3 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 2, n. 72. 4 Moses obviously knew his ethnic identity since the Bible describes him as “going out to his kinfolk” (Exodus 2:11). 5 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 2, nn. 40, 42. 6 Langston, Scott M. Exodus through the Centuries. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 23–29. 7 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 1, n. 166. 8 Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionist Movement and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997, 11–18. Stewart explores the socio-religious dynamics that went on within the Quaker movement in mid-eighteenth century that led to this public commitment to the end of slavery. 9 Tyler, Alice Felt. Freedom’s Ferment. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962, 464–465. 10 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 111. 11 Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 143–144. 12 Stewart, Holy Warriors, 51–52. Non-Quaker abolitionists took the lead in the 1830s to work for the abolition of slavery. They too took many personal risks in their fight to end slavery. However, I have chosen to limit this section’s discussion to the role of Quakers, who were consistent activists in the effort to end the slave trade and, ultimately, slavery. 13 Clinton, Catherine. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Back Bay Books, 2004, 64. 14 Quakers could not hold political office because they refused to take oaths. A 1761British law required all office holders to take an oath of allegiance. 15 Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848. London: Verso, 1988, 136– 146. Quakers had been catalysts in placing the end to the slave trade on the British political agenda. However, it does not seem that they were major contributors in the revitalization of the political debate that led to British passage in 1807 of a law that ended the Atlantic slave trade on January 1, 1808. Ibid., 293–314. They were, however, influential in the political discussion in the 1820s that ultimately delivered emancipation in the 1830s to slaves in the British colonies of the West Indies. Ibid. 421–422. 16 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 143–144. 2

Chapter 12: Religion of the Slave 1

Although the Bible introduces God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it does not address the uniqueness of God until the revelation at Mount Sinai. Jewish tradition points out that Abraham was an iconoclast and that he destroyed his father’s idols. The narrative describes Abraham’s missionary efforts to popularize the name of God by building altars and naming them appropriately. However, we are never told of a parallel goal of ridding the world of a belief in multiple gods or in the use of idols. The one incident relating to idols arises when Rachel took her father’s idols when her husband Jacob fled to Canaan with his family. Although Jewish tradition describes her motivation as attempting to rid her father of these false gods, the text itself does not note her motivation. 2 The angel interrupted the sacrifice and declared, “Now I know that you fear God: because you have done this and not withheld your son, your favored one.” 3 Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, 66–68. 4 Ezekiel 20 and Shemot Rabbah 16:2. 5 Moses used a similar description in a message that he sent to the King of Edom. There, too, in his brief review of the Israelite cries that precipitated God’s intercession, Moses said, “We cried to the Lord and He heard our plea” (Numbers 20:16). There is also a Talmudic tradition that these pleas were part of a process of repentance (JT Taanit 3a). The Talmud interprets the phrase “God saw the children of Israel” as saying that God saw the repentance in their hearts (Exodus 2:25).

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6

The Midrash and Biblical commentaries offer various interpretations as to the symbolism behind each of these actions. See Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 60. For example, the rod and the snake were symbols of imperial authority. 7 Ibid., 58. 8 Ibid, 59. Sarna points out that Moses was generally called upon to use seemingly magical symbols when he reached the limits of his ability. Thus the Bible clearly indicates the power behind these events. 9 Shemot Rabbah 19:6. 10 In general, an uncircumcised male is not prevented from participating in Jewish rituals. 11 After the first year in the wilderness, the Israelites did not perform the ritual of the paschal lamb until just after entering Canaan. In parallel, the rite of circumcision was set aside until Joshua ordered a mass circumcision in preparation for resumption of the paschal ritual. The Bible offers no explanation for the lapse of either of these two rituals. The Talmudic reference suggests that the Israelites did not practice circumcision in the wilderness because they were always uncertain as to when they would have to travel even though, in actuality, they spent most of the final thirty-eight years in just two encampments. I would argue that the non-observance of both commandments was by divine design, so as to add religious symbolism and drama to the Israelites’ entry into and possession of the Land of Canaan. For thirty-eight years, the Israelites had lost the privilege of fulfilling the covenant of Abraham and recreating Passover eve because they had spurned God’s gift of the Land of Israel. Just as they prepared to leave Egypt by observing Divine commandments, so too they were required to perform these same two rituals in order to take possession of God’s gift. The mass circumcision just after entering also highlighted and reaffirmed that their claim to the land of Israel was the fulfillment of a promise made to Abraham centuries earlier. 12 The importance to each Israelite of participating in the national Passover rite led to an unusual addition to Jewish law. Israelites who were ritually impure at the time of Passover were afforded an opportunity a month later to participate in a scaled-down version of Passover eve. 13 Nahum Sarna argues that the use of a bull idol did not parallel Egyptian ritual. He argues that it was unlikely that the Israelites would choose a replica of an Egyptian god as the symbol of their own God who had won their freedom from Egypt. In addition, Egypt worshiped living bulls, not images of them. However, images of bulls were worshipped widely throughout the Near East (218–219). 14 Shemot Rabbah 16:2. The Midrash reinterprets the phrase mishechu in Exodus 12:21. It normally is translated simply as the imperative form of “select,” but the Midrash interprets it as “remove,” meaning to remove all forms of idolatry from their hands. 15 Long, Charles H. “Perspectives for a Study of African-American Religion in the United States.” Chapter 2 of African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture, edited by Timothy E. Fulop and Albert J. Raboteau, 25. New York: Routledge, 1997. 16 Slaves in the Caribbean and in South America were able to maintain more of their rituals. However, the scope is a subject of continuing research that is compounded by the fact that throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was continuing trade between these regions and Africa and many of the sailors on these routes were Africans. The continuing flow in both directions makes it difficult to say that specific behaviors were the result of African slaves clinging to their roots. 17 There is a wide spectrum of opinions as to how to interpret early African-American Christianity and its linkage to African values. One broad question relates to the issue of how much of it was focused on escapism from the reality of the slave world and the nature of the slaves’ core beliefs as compared to their outward behaviors. For a brief discussion of the various schools of thought ranging from E. Franklin Frazier to Melville J. Herskovits and Sterling Stuckey see Joyner, Charles. “Believer I Know: The Emergence of African American Christianity,” Chapter 2. In African-American Christianity: Essays in History, edited by Paul E. Johnson. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, 38. 18 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 66, 100, 108, 125–126.

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19 Raboteau, Albert J. “The Black Experience in American Evangelicalism: The Meaning of Slavery.” In African American Religion, edited by Fulop and Raboteau, 93. 20 Ibid., 97. 21 Ibid., 94. 22 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 212. 23 Levine, Lawrence W. “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness: An Exploration of Neglected Sources.” In African-American Religion, 74. 24 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 11. 25 Not all songs necessarily had a spiritual message, though scholars often debate whether there was a hidden message. 26 Among the Yoruba and Fon, a specific song and dance might be associated with a particular deity. Participation in a particular ritual meant that the individual had been “mounted” – in other words, possessed – by the deity (Raboteau, Slave Religion, 15). There is a debate as to the direction of influence between African-American churches and other U.S. churches. Methodist hymns had many of the characteristics that we associate with Negro spirituals. Syncretism suggests that within the array of Christian sects, blacks, because of their heritage, adopted and adapted to those Christian sects in which music and dance were significant elements. 27 Joyner, “Believer I Know,” 24. 28 Ibid., 31. 29 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 64. 30 Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness,” 75. 31 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 213. 32 Ibid., 227. 33 Joyner, “Believer I Know,” 31–35. Smith, Theosophus. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. One concept not discussed here was the African-American view of the Devil as a trickster. See Levine, “Slave songs and slave consciousness,” 68. 34 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 311–312. 35 This quote was the observation of a white Union army chaplain. Raboteau, Albert J. “Exodus and the American Israel.” In Johnson, ed. African American Christianity. 36 Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness,” 77, and Raboteau, “Exodus and the American Israel,” 12–13. 37 Levine, “Slave Songs and Slave Consciousness,” 78. 38 Ibid., 76. 39 Ibid., 75. 40 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 291. 41 Joyner, “Believer I Know,” 24. 42 Vincent Harding, “Religion and Resistance among Antebellum Slaves, 1800–1860.” In African American Religion.

Chapter 13: Hope 1 2 3

Ramban on Exodus 2:23. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Work without Hope, 1825. Henry Bibb wrote many letters to his former owner from the safety of Canada. In one letter he wrote, “I wish to be remembered in love to my aged mother, and friends.” Blassingame, ed. Slave Testimony, 49. 4 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 648. He reported that during the 1850s, an average of one thousand slaves escaped each year. 5 Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 41. 6 Ibid., 649. 7 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 37. Some slaves obtained their freedom as a result of organized groups of free slaves in either their locale or in the North who worked to raise money to buy their freedom.

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Maryland (83,942), Virginia (58,042), and North Carolina (30,463) accounted for more than seventy percent of the total. In Maryland, the free black population was almost fifty percent of the total African-American population. In contrast, Mississippi reported only 773 freemen alongside 436,631 slaves. 9 Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 155. 10 State laws varied significantly from state to state and changed over time with the prevailing political and social climate. Enforcement was often sporadic and was even sensitive to the specific regions within a state. Ibid., 138-145 11 Ibid., 143–144. 12 Ibid., 152. 13 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 28–29. 14 Ibid., 13. 15 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 140. 16 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 47. 17 Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk, reprinted in DuBois Writings, 544.

Chapter 14: Children’s Voices 1

In the section about the plagues, we develop the concept of measure for measure. We suggest that the second plague of frogs was retaliation in kind for the murder of Israelite children. These frogs arose out of the same river into which the baby boys had been thrown. Whereas the children’s cries went unheard, Pharaoh and his people could not avoid these croaking voices. Also, unlike the Israelite dead whose bodies may have been washed out to sea, the frogs’ decaying bodies filled Egypt with a terrible stench. 2 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 2, n. 1. 3 Often, a puzzling choice of phrases or an anomalous recording of events motivates a Midrash. For example, this Midrash is bothered by the fact that only Moses’s sister watched to see what would happen to her brother, and no mention was made of his parents. 4 Hurmence, Belinda. Slavery Time: When I was Chillun. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997, 27. 5 The material in this section is taken from Blassingame, The Slave Community, 181–191, and Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 502–519. 6 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 184–185. 7 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 42. 8 Hurmence, Slavery Time, 3. 9 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 503. 10 A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States Volume I, From Colonial Times through the Civil War, edited by Herbert Aptheker. New York: Citadel Press, 1990, 157–158.

Chapter 15: Leadership 1 2 3

Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 2. Ibid., 34. Stamp, Kenneth M. “The Daily Life of the Southern Slave.” In Key Issues in the AfroAmerican Experience, edited by Nathan I. Huggins, Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox, 122. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971; Palmer, Colin A. Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America, 1619–1863, vol. 1. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998, 159–160. 4 Palmer, Passageways, 163; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 212, 216–217, 225–237. 5 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 218, 220, 223–224. 6 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 382-387; Stampp, “Life of the Southern Slave,” 121. 7 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 382-387; Van DeBurg, William L. The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979, 53; Stampp, “Life of the Southern Slave,” 121. 8 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 222–223. 9 Hine, Darlene Clark, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. The African American Odyssey, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003, 107–108, 155–163, 194–195.

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Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African-American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997, 4, 11, 162, 160. 11 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 109–110, 113; Palmer, Passageways, 163; Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 620–621; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 217–218. 12 Blassingame, Slave Community, 131; Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 13; Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 258; DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk, 138. 13 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 273. 14 Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 384–385. 15 The fact that these seventy elders were chosen to escort Moses part of the way as he approached Mount Sinai to communicate with God suggests that, in some sense, they were already perceived as spiritual leaders. Their level of spirituality was such that “they saw the God of Israel; under his feet there was the likeness of a pavement of sapphire, like the very sky for purity” (Exodus 24:10). However, at the peak of this spiritual experience, “they beheld God, and they ate and drank” (Exodus 24:11). They also seemed to have some judicial responsibility. “To the elders he [Moses] had said, Wait here for us until we return to you. You have Aaron and Hur with you; let anyone who has a legal matter approach them” (Exodus 24:14). 16 Seventy leaders means that the twelve tribes were not each represented by the same number of elders. When Moses picked seventy leaders, two men, Eldad and Medad, remained behind in the camp and delivered an unstated prophecy. The Midrash explains that at first, six members of each tribe were selected. When the lots were drawn, these two were told that they would not be in the final count of seventy. See Rashi on Numbers 11:26. 17 For a modern discussion of the significance of the firstborn and their redemption, see a letter from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik to Reverend James S. Walsh of the Park Street Catholic Information Center in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, edited by Nathaniel Helfgot, 293–302. Jersey City: Ktav, 2005. 18 Hirsch on Exodus 13:2 and 13:13. 19 Onkelos, Rashi, and Rashbam (Exodus 24:5) state that the firstborn performed the rituals associated with animal sacrifices that were offered at the foot of Mount Sinai. 20 Rashi (Number 3:12) and Hirsch (Exodus 13:13). The exchange of Levites for the firstborn did not eliminate the principle that firstborn males are sacred and require redemption. There is a midrashic tradition that implicitly explains why the post-exodus Levites were suited for spiritual leadership. According to this tradition, the Levites avoided falling prey to Pharaoh’s strategy of slowly enslaving the Israelites by encouraging them to first donate time to massive public works projects that eventually became mandatory (Kasher, Torah Shelemah, Shemot 1:13, n. 136). Ramban (Numbers 3:14) uses this tradition to explain why the Levite tribe was so much smaller in number when compared to the other tribes. In the beginning of the Book of Exodus, God responds to Pharaoh’s harsh decrees by dramatically increasing the fertility of the average Israelite. Ramban argues that because the Levites had been spared the enslavement, God did not interfere with their normal rate of increase. 21 Mosheh Lichtenstein, Moses; Envoy of God, Envoy of His People, KTAV, Jersey City, 2008 22 Ibn Ezra (Exodus 2:3). 23 The drawing of water for the women as well as the animals is reminiscent of Rebecca’s actions when Abraham’s servant met her at the culmination of his mission to find a wife for Isaac (Genesis 24:44–46). 24 Soloveitchik, Joseph B. The Emergence of Ethical Man. New York: Ktav Publishing House, 2005, 182. 25 Derashot Harav: Selected Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Summarized and annotated by Arnold Lustiger. Union, NJ: Ohr Publishing, 2003, 77–102. 26 Ibid., 88. 27 Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man, 186.

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28 Sojourner Truth, a former slave in New York State, was an active speaker at both abolitionist and woman’s suffrage meetings. She captured the attention of the audience with her gritty speech, which was in its own way as eloquent as that of Frederick Douglass. Whereas Douglass spoke the language of the educated class, Sojourner Truth spoke the dialect of the illiterate slave. Although she was illiterate, she often quoted the Bible, which she had read to her at every opportunity. 29 Clinton, Harriet Tubman, 221. 30 Bradford, Sarah. Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People. Mineola: Dover, 2004, 33. 31 Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. New York: Amistad, 2005, 344–355; Hine, African-American Odyssey, 248–249. 32 Bradford, Harriet Tubman, 70–71. 33 Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 39–53. 34 Ibid., 57–61, 95–96. 35 Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993, 185–198. Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 39–53–57, 61, 95–96, 103– 104. 36 Clinton, Harriet Tubman, 56. 37 Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Vol. I, 330–332. 38 Douglass, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 39–53–57, 61, 95–96, 103–104; Hine, African-American Odyssey, 243, 297.

Part III: Freedom’s Road: Exodus and Emancipation 1

The third paragraph of the Shema (Numbers 15:37–41) includes this reference. The requirement to recite this paragraph is based on BT Berachot 12b and the verse in Deuteronomy 16:3: “So that you will remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt all the days of your life.” 2 The second paragraph in the Grace after Meals includes the following prayer: “We thank you, God, our Lord… for having brought us out, Lord our God, from the Land of Egypt, and redeeming us from the house of slaves.” 3 Deuteronomy 5:12–15. 4 Leviticus 19:33–34. 5 Leviticus 19:36. See Rashi on this verse. 6 Genesis 15:13–16.

Chapter 16: The Social and Psychological Needs of the Oppressed

1 Jewish law is built around the concept of the criminal compensating the victim. Whether the crime is assault and battery, burglary, or robbery, the primary action that the law mandates is for the criminal to compensate the victim. In the Judaic system, crimes are primarily viewed as having been perpetrated against the individual and secondarily against God. The American legal system views crimes as having been committed against society, which has the responsibility to punish the criminal. Compensation is of secondary importance. 2 The popular name given to the location is the Red Sea. However, the Red Sea is far away from where the story of exodus took place and is not an accurate translation of the Hebrew phrase yam suf. The Sea of Reeds is a better translation. 3 Lincoln’s use of the phrase “His appointed time” has a direct parallel in the Hebrew slavery in Egypt. The standard interpretation of Exodus 12:42 is that the night of Passover was one that God had anticipated for a long time. 4 Stowe, Harriet Beecher. “A Reply.” Atlantic Monthly 11 (January 1863): 120–133. Reprinted in Louis P. Mansur, The Real War Will Never Get in the Books: Selections from Writers during the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 245. 5 Exodus 7:20–21. 6 Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every boy who is born must be thrown into the river.” Exodus 1:22. 7 Abrabanel, commentary on the verses following Exodus 7:14.

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8 Midrash ha-Gadol 15:4. “He removed the wheels of their chariots and caused them to drive with difficulty” (Exodus 14:25). Both Abrabanel and Cassuto suggest that the seabed’s reversion to mud caused the wheels to fall off. Others such as Rashi suggest that searing heat burned off the wheels. The Midrash also notes another aspect of measure-for-measure in the phrase “to drive with difficulty.” The Hebrew word used here for “difficulty” is the same term that characterized the “difficulties” that the Egyptians had imposed on the Israelites (Exodus 5:9). Mechilta, Exodus 14:25. 9 Ibid. 10 Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, Exodus 8:12, n. 33 and footnote. Vol. 9, 1973, 64. 11 Both verses 10:22 and 10:23 mention three days of darkness. Many biblical commentators see these as two distinct periods of three days each. It was during the second three-day period that people felt confined to one spot. 12 Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 74. Mr. Covey was a slave-breaker. Frederick Douglass’s master gave him to Mr. Covey for one year in order to have him broken. 13 Blassingame, The Slave Community, 302–303. 14 Hirsch commentary, Exodus 4:22–23. The Ha-amek Davar commentary on these verses discusses the death of the firstborn as a symbolic attack on the monarchy. The Seforno’s commentary emphasizes the punishment aspect of measure for measure. 15 Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Press, 1983, 80–81. 16 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 147. 17 The biblical commentaries discuss the inclusion of the firstborn of the lowest caste in this decree. According to Rashi, these groups had rejoiced in the pain and suffering of the Israelites. This is a common phenomenon in history. Lower-class whites in the South who, if anything, were hurt economically by slavery, took great pride in their own freedom and contributed to the daily anguish of black slaves. 18 Numbers 33:4. 19 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 189. 20 Ibid., 179. 21 The material in this section is drawn primarily from Ott, Thomas O. The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973. 22 “And all of you, let no one go out the door of his house until morning” (Exodus 12:22). 23 Foner, Nothing but Freedom, 12–13. 24 The Kli Yakar on Exodus 11:2 interprets this as compensation for years of servitude. The Malbim on Exodus 3:21 sees the gifts as compensation for the property that the Israelites were leaving behind. 25 An interesting exegetical question arises as to why the task of asking for money was originally given to the women, but later on, in chapter 11, it is given to both men and women without the reference to clothing. 26 Rashi, Exodus 11:2. 27 Christian, Black Saga, 192. 28 Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum, 1935, 148–150. 29 Berlin, Many Thousands Gone, 232. 30 Foner, Nothing but Freedom, 80–81. 31 Ibid. 32 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880, 254. 33 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 405. 34 At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the debate over compensation for African Americans for their collective history slavery has been revived. Although the debate is rooted in the lack of compensation when slavery ended, the modern issue is far more complex than “Were the emancipated blacks owed money?” The current plight of the African-American community, for example, with regard to the breakdown of the black family, high incarceration rates, low economic status, and relatively poor progress on the educational

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front, is at most indirectly linked to their slave experience. Nor is it clear that compensation could have much positive impact on these core social problems. However, one argument in opposition to compensation, that it would be hard to trace whether or not an African American is descended from slaves, is illogical. It is safe to say that more than ninety-five percent of the African Americans who were born in the United States before 1950 were descended from slaves. In 1860, ninety percent of the African Americans were still enslaved, and those who were free had almost all descended from slaves. 35 Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, 16. 36 Litwack, Leon F. North of Slavery: The Negro on the Free State, 1790–1860. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961, 93–94. 37 Ibid. 38 US Constitution, Article IV, section 3. It was reinforced by a federal statute passed in 1783. 39 Harding, There Is a River, 161. 40 The placard is found in Hughes, Langston, Milton Meltzer, C. Eric Lincoln, and Jon Michael Spencer. A Pictorial History of African Americans: From 1619 to the Present. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995, 139. 41 Ibid., 141. This incident was the last time the courts and police of Boston were used to return a fugitive slave. “During the first six years of the Act, more than two hundred alleged fugitives were arrested, approximately twelve of whom successfully defended their claim of freedom.” Litwack, North of Slavery, 249. 42 Litwack, North of Slavery, 100. 43 Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, 288, n. 8. 44 Ibid., 26–31. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880, 103. 45 Smith, Page. Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Penguin Books, 1980, 479. George Templeton Strong was one of the founders of the Sanitary Commission. Its goal was to improve the sanitary conditions amongst the military, especially within its hospitals. 46 Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, 199; and Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985, 64. 47 Christian, Black Saga, 213. Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest was also the commander in charge at the time of the infamous Fort Pillow massacre of black soldiers. (See http://www.nathanbedfordforrest.net/.) 48 Ramban commentary on Exodus 14:19. 49 Exodus 14:19–20. 50 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 281. The riot took the lives of forty-six blacks and two whites. 51 Hughes, et al., A Pictorial History of African-Americans, 199. 52 Ibid. 53 Later sections of this book explore the years following the Civil War and discuss at length the role of the Ku Klux Klan and other similarly focused organizations in instilling fear and taking away the rights of blacks throughout the South. Smith, Trial by Fire, 843–856. 54 “This was a night of anticipation for the Lord to bring them out of the land of Egypt. This night remains a night unto the Lord, a protection for the Children of Israel for their generations” (Exodus 12:42). The complex phrasing of this verse has led to subtle differences of interpretation amongst biblical commentators. 55 “But against all the Children of Israel no dog whet its tongue, against neither man nor beast, so that you shall know that God will have differentiated between Egypt and Israel” (Exodus 11:7). 56 Franklin and Schweninger, Runaway Slaves, 160–164. The original source of the specific quote is Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836–1846, as reflected in the Diary of Bennett H. Barrow, edited by Edwin Adams Davis, 48–49. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.

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57

This law relates specifically to the permissibility of the marriage of an original Israelite to an Egyptian who had converted to Judaism. The talmudic interpretation of the biblical verses was that the marriage was allowed if the Egyptian was at least two generations removed from the exodus generation. 58 “You shall no longer return on this road again” (Deuteronomy 17:16). JT Sanhedrin 10:9 interprets this verse as a prohibition against settling in the land of Egypt (see Maimonides, Laws of Kings 5:7). It is also implied in BT Sukkah 51b. 59 Sefer ha-Hinuch, Law 500. 60 Douglass, Frederick. “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” In Crossing the Danger Water, edited by Deirdre Mullane, 158. New York: Anchor Books, 1993. 61 This Psalm opens the Jewish prayer service known as Hallel, which is recited on all festivals as well as during the Seder as part of the Haggadah that is read on Passover night. 62 The Hebrew word “sho’el,” which describes the Israelite request, can be translated as “ask for.” However, it also can be translated as “borrow.” The exact translation is subject to debate. If the word is “borrow,” then the request was part of God’s ongoing deception that the Israelites were leaving for a three-day religious celebration and wanted jewelry and clothes to dress properly for it. 63 The phrase “found favor in the eyes of Egyptians” could be construed narrowly as a means to obtain riches. The phrase “found favor in the eyes of” does appear in numerous other biblical contexts with that limited perspective. However, the term also has broader and more powerful implications. It is first used in the Bible in the verse that introduces Noah. The Bible contrasts him with the world’s population: “Noah found favor in the eyes of God” (Genesis 6:8). The phrase also occurs when Moses argues with God after the sin of the Golden Calf. He repeatedly asks God to discuss with him what it would take for Moses the individual and for the Israelite people as a whole “to find favor in God’s eyes” (Exodus 33:13). 64 The Living Lincoln, edited by Paul M. Angle and Earl S. Miers, 265. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1992. 65 Ibid., 202. 66 Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War. New York: De Capo Press, 1989, 145. 67 Oshinsky, David M. “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press, 1996, 14. 68 Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998, 72. Corporal Gooding served in the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. 69 BT Pesachim 96a. The Mishnah lists the basic distinctions between the manner in which the paschal lamb was brought and eaten in Egypt and how the commandment relates to later generations. 70 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus) part 1, 198–199. 71 Exodus 12:3. The text clearly states that the blood was a sign for “you,” the Israelites. As a result, several biblical commentaries suggest the blood was smeared indoors, invisible to passing Egyptians. The verse continues with God asserting, “When I see the blood and I shall pass over you.” The simplest interpretation is that the Israelites were to understand through the symbolism of blood that their courageous act of faith, slaughtering, and eating the Passover lamb had earned them the right to be passed over as God released the powerful forces that would strike every firstborn Egyptian. 72 Sefer ha-Hinuch, Law 7. 73 Joshua 5:9. Although this verse refers to the mass circumcision that took place when the Israelites entered Canaan, it clearly is a dual reference to the Israelites who had left Egypt. The midrashic literature notes that Abraham’s descendamts had long ceased practicing circumcision. 74 Ezekiel 16:6; see Rashi’s commentary on that verse. This verse is read at modern-day circumcision rites. The linkage between circumcision and the paschal sacrifice is unique in Jewish law. A Jewish male who has not been circumcised is still considered Jewish. He is

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allowed to participate in all Jewish ceremonies, including marriage, and is obligated to keep all rituals. 75 Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 138. 76 Abraham Lincoln’s assessment was that “some of our commanders of our armies in the field who have given us our most important successes, believe the emancipation policy, and the use of colored troops, constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the rebellion; and that, at least one of the most important successes could not have been achieved when it was, but for the aid of black soldiers.” Letter to Hon. James Conling of Illinois, August 26, 1863. See Angle and Miers, The Living Lincoln, 577. 77 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 101. 78 Jimerson, Randall C. The Private Civil War: Popular Thought during the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988, 108. 79 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 64. 80 Quoted in Jimerson, The Private Civil War, 107. 81 Hughes, Meltzer, Lincoln, and Spencer, A Pictorial History of African Americans, 178. 82 Ibid., 181. 83 An 1862 writer to The New York Times, quoted in McPherson, James M., The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union. New York: Vintage Books, 1965, 163–164. 84 Jimerson, The Private Civil War, 93. 85 Ibid., 94. 86 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880, 102. 87 Jimerson, The Private Civil War, 107. 88 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 164. 89 Ibid. 90 Angle and Miers, eds., The Living Lincoln, 436. 91 Individual army commanders operating in the South, such as General David Hunter, sought permission to recruit blacks formally. He organized a regiment but was never able to get its members officially mustered into the army. His precedent laid the foundation for his successor, Brigadier General Rufus Saxton, to recruit the authorized formation of the First South Carolina Volunteers. General Benjamin Butler, also without initial authorization, recruited and mustered in the First Regiment Louisiana Native Guards. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 109–119. 92 Charles G. Halpine, a New York journalist on General David Hunter’s staff, wrote the song. Halpine used the pseudonym Private Miles O’Reilly. Jimerson, The Private Civil War, 99. 93 Glatthaar, Forged in Battle, after page 242. “Men of Color, To Arms” was the title of an editorial addressed to the colored citizens of the North by Frederick Douglass and published in his newspaper in March of 1863. Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage and His Complete History. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993, 329. It later became the basis for a recruiting flyer. 94 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 185. 95 Ibid., 224. 96 Ibid., 234. 97 Ibid., 213. 98 Jimerson, The Private Civil War, 108. 99 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 163. 100 The actual number of African-American victims of the massacre is subject to debate. The original federal investigation stated that they numbered three hundred but more recent analyses suggest they numbered in the scores. Ibid., 217. 101 Ibid., 174. 102 Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 8. 103 It is estimated that the total number of black commissioned officers was fewer than one hundred. Most of them had been appointed in Louisiana only to be replaced later by white officers. McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 242–243.

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104 Redkey, Edwin S., ed. A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 48. 105 I discuss the complex issue of equality and its link to exodus further in the final chapter. 106 The introduction to this section is adapted from an article entitled “Pageants,” which appears in the Encyclopedia Britannica on the Web, accessed in September 2000. 107 Library of Congress. 108 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880, 97. 109 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 236. 110 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 95. 111 Ibid., 69. 112 Ibid., 97. 113 Ibid., 96. 114 Ibid., 103. 115 Quarles, Benjamin. Lincoln and the Negro. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962, 223– 224. 116 The term “with upraised arm” appears in two other contexts in the Bible. “Our hand was raised in triumph and it was not God who had accomplished this” (Deuteronomy 32:27). The meaning here parallels that of the exodus. The upraised hand was a symbol of victory. Elsewhere it is translated as “high-handedly” (Numbers 15:30), where it refers to someone transgressing a prohibition deliberately. 117 Ramban on Exodus 14:8 interprets the phrase “upraised hand” as a reference to a parade: “They made themselves a flag and banner for display and went out with mirth and with songs.” 118 Exodus 14:18. 119 Exodus 12:34. 120 Exodus 4:22 and 12:35. 121 Exodus 12:38. 122 Exodus 13:19. 123 Genesis 50:25. The text is often interpreted to mean that when God would free the Children of Israel, the brothers were sworn to carry Joseph’s bones with them. However, a careful reading of the text suggests that the oath they swore included the affirmation that they believed God would redeem the Children of Israel from bondage. Nothing in the text suggests the phrase should be viewed a conditional adverbial clause that starts with the word “When.” 124 Exodus 12:41. 125 Mechilta midrashic collection on Exodus 12:12. Also quoted by Rashi on the same verse. 126 The firstborn was an important structural element of biblical society. Firstborn sons inherited a greater portion than their younger siblings. In addition, they were the presumed heads of the family in a society whose social and political structure was built around the tribal family unit. 127 Jews of other times and places have similarly tried to assimilate into the “superior” culture by adopting or adapting the religious beliefs of the dominant society and discarding their own “primitive” beliefs and practices. One example involved Jewish adoption of Hellenist culture in the second and third centuries B.C.E. More recently, Jews have attempted to assimilate German culture and American culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, this concept extends far beyond the Jewish experience and even beyond religion. Success in the economic sphere may generate claims of cultural superiority as evidenced by claims surrounding the seesaw battle between the U.S. and Japan for economic supremacy at the end of the twentieth century. Throughout the 1980s, the Japanese economy was ascendant and the business press in America overflowed with praise of the fundamentals of the Japanese economic model and culture. Only ten years later, as the world prepared to enter the twenty-first century, the Japanese economy stagnated and the U.S. economy was in an unprecedented continuous growth spurt. President Clinton often lectured the world about the superiority of the American free enterprise economy, with its emphasis on entrepreneurship and innovation unfettered by excessive government involvement.

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128

The Bible does not mention this failure explicitly. The requirement of circumcision as a prerequisite for participating in the paschal meal suggests that this practice had been neglected. In addition, when Joshua orders a mass circumcision after entering Israel, he refers to the lack of circumcision as the blemish of Egypt. 129 Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 78–80. Other sources suggest that Heqt was also the god of resurrection. The massive death of frogs would have attacked this symbolism as well. 130 When Moses informs the Israelites of the paschal lamb sacrifice, he uses the word mishechu, meaning to draw forth, followed by a seemingly redundant statement to “take” (Exodus 12:21). However, the Midrash Mechilta records Rabbi Yosé ha-Gelili’s observation that the word suggested the Israelites had to remove from their hands any form of idolatry before they took an animal for the paschal lamb. Hirsch interprets the verse allegorically, “Withdraw from all ideas of your past.” See also Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 194– 197. 131 The Midrash and biblical commentaries generally take a negative view of this group, which they accuse of having played a major role in the sin of the Golden Calf as well as in other misadventures in the Sinai wilderness. 132 Exodus 14:8. 133 Researchers continue to explore at what point in American history the concept of racial inferiority became a pillar of the institution of slavery. Until the early 1700s, there is little evidence of widespread support for or use of this argument. 134 McPherson, James M. For Cause And Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 105. 135 Roland, Charles P. An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991, 3–4. 136 Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1980, 7–11, 119–124. The term “Lost Cause” appeared as the title of a book written immediately after the war. Pollard, Edward A., The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. New York: E.B. Treat, 1866. 137 Library of Congress. 138 Chesebrough, David B. “No Sorrow like Our Sorrow”: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994, 113–126. 139 Ibid. 140 Gerster, Patrick, and Nicholas Cords. “The Northern Origins of Southern Mythology.” The Journal of Southern History, 43:4 (1977): 567–582. For a detailed analysis of the concept of honor, which was at the root of the southern white aristocrat’s self-image, see Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. 141 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 105. Chapter 7 is titled “The Negro’s Response to the Charge of Racial Inferiority.” 142 Ibid., 104. 143 Ibid., 102. 144 Ibid., 103. 145 Robert Russa later joined the faculty of Tuskegee Institute and assumed the role of president after the founder, Booker T. Washington, died. 146 Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, 163.

Chapter 17: Hasty Departures 1

Many details regarding the manner of cooking and eating the Passover lamb were applicable to Jews throughout the generations. The details mentioned in this verse were not a requirement for future generations. Unlike most Jews of Ashkenazic descent, Sephardi Jews have customs at the Passover Seder that reenact the Israelites’ hasty departure from Egypt. Syrian Jews wrap the afikoman in an embroidered napkin, throw it over their shoulders and quote Exodus 12:34. In order to commemorate Exodus 12:11 – “So shall you eat: your loins girded, your shoes on your feet and your staff in your hand” – Moroccan Jews include a staff in this re-creation and Judeo-Spanish Jews include the symbol of a tightened belt.

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(Dobrinsky, Herbert C. A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1986, 256, 262, 276.) 2 Hirsch on Deuteronomy 16:3. 3 Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the Maharal of Prague). Gevurot ha-Shem, Chapter 60. This late sixteenth-century text, Gevurot ha-Shem, contains a comprehensive analysis of the events surrounding the exodus and the commandment to remember the exodus from Egypt. 4 In Moses’s advance warning to Pharaoh, he specifies “at about midnight” (Exodus 11:4). The Bible records God acting “at midnight.” The biblical commentaries note the subtle distinction between the two references to midnight. They point out that the ability of human beings to tell and appreciate time is only approximate in contrast to God’s perception of time. 5 Rashi’s commentary explains that the first “strong hand” refers to God. 6 This period corresponds to the seven-day confused journey from slavery in Egypt to the shores of the Sea of Reeds. 7 The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War, edited by Richard M. Ketchum, 422. New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1960. 8 Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, originally published in 1851–1852 as a serial. 9 Brent, Linda (a.k.a. Harriet Jacobs). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. First printed in 1861. 10 Harding, There is a River, 226. 11 The First Confiscation Act of August 1861 offered freedom to slaves who had been used to help with the rebellion (U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties and Proclamations of the United States of America, vol. 12. Boston: 1863, 319. The Second Act, of July 1862, expanded the right of freedom to include all slaves whose masters were actively involved in the rebellion (U.S. Statutes at Large, Treaties and Proclamations of the United States of America, vol. 12. Boston: 1863, 589–592). 12 Ibid., 227. 13 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 93–94. 14 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 106.

Chapter 18: Knowing and Perceiving God - Seeing is Believing

1 In Hebrew the words for “to see” and “to revere” sound similar, and this verse, which has an unusual construction, plays upon the similarity. Its opening phrase is in the singular: Israel saw the events as one people. The experience of reverence and faith is unique to every individual, and those verbs appear in plural form. 2 The colloquial phrase “Let My people go” is an inaccurate translation of the Hebrew verb shalach. This word implies active “sending out” by Pharaoh rather than simply “letting go.” 3 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), part I, 170–174. The nine instances in Exodus are: (1) 7:5, general introduction to plagues; (2) 7:17, direct speech to Pharaoh before plague of blood; (3) 8:6, dialogue with Pharaoh regarding the end of the plague of frogs; (4) 8:18, introduction to plague of wild beasts with emphasis that God is present and in control on the ground; (5) 9:14, plague of hail, to emphasize the uniqueness of the Lord; (6) 9:29, stoppage of hail; (7) 10:2, summary statement regarding the continuation of the plagues; (8) 11:7, Moses’s closing speech to Pharaoh in which the upcoming death of the firstborn is announced; (9) 14:4, God reviews with Moses the plan to motivate Pharaoh to pursue the Israelites; (10) 14:18, just before the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. 4 This is taken from the Exodus summary that pilgrims to the Temple recited when they brought the first fruits of the harvest as an offering. 5 Deuteronomy 34:11–12. 6 Exodus 8:18. 7 In the fourth, fifth, seventh, ninth and tenth plagues, God spells out how He differentiated between Israelites and Egyptians or between the Land of Goshen, home of the Israelites, and the rest of Egypt: Wild animals would not invade the land of Goshen as a sign (8:18–19); in the epidemic that attacked animals, God distinguished between the Egyptian and Israelite flocks (9:4), and the Bible records that Pharaoh ascertained that none of the Israelite cattle had died (9:7); the hail

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did not rain down on the land of Goshen (9:26); during the darkness, the Children of Israel had light in their homes (10:23); and only firstborn Egyptians were killed (11:7). 8 The Midrash notes that the power of God’s hand was observed at the Sea of Reeds but only the power of His finger was seen in Egypt. The conclusion is that the events at the Sea were five-fold more powerful than the plagues. “Rabbi Yosé the Galilean asked, “From what passage can it be inferred that the Egyptians who were smitten with ten plagues in Egypt were afterwards smitten with fifty at the Sea? In Egypt what expression was used? ‘Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, That is the finger of God.’ On the Sea what expression was used? ‘And Yisrael saw the great hand which the Lord laid upon the Egyptians.” The Yeshiva Haggada, edited by Steven F. Cohen and Kenneth Brander, 20. New York: Student Organization of Yeshiva, SOY, 1985. 9 Jewish law specifies that that the supplicant must refer to God as redeemer of the Jewish people immediately before reciting the Eighteen Benedictions in both the morning and evening prayer services. The liturgy describes God as Israel’s redeemer in broad terms, using the splitting of the Sea of Reeds as the concrete representation of this aspect of God’s relationship with the Jewish people (BT Berachot 9b). 10 General George B. McClellan, the commander of the Union Army of the Ohio, could proclaim even after the Civil War had begun: “Not only will we abstain from all interference with your slaves, but we will, with an iron hand, crush any attempt at insurrection on their part.” Harding, There is a River, 225. 11 Raboteau, Albert J. “African Americans, Exodus and the American Israel.” In Johnson, ed. African-American Christianity, 12. 12 Harding, There Is a River, 222. 13 Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, 122. 14 Ibid., 124. 15 This timbrel is associated with the parade led by Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses (Exodus 15:20). An alternative opening reads, “Shout the glad tidings o’er Egypt’s dark sea.” 16 Harding, There is a River, 236. 17 Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll, 253. 18 Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, 140. 19 The Stone edition of the Tanach (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1996) does not translate this phrase accurately. It uses singular terms throughout the verse. The Hirsch translation does the exact opposite, using a plural pronoun. In this verse, the possessive pronoun actually moves back and forth between “its” and “their,” which is meant to reflect God’s knowledge of both the national and individual experiences. 20 Exodus 2:23 includes both cries of pain and prayer. The language of the first half of the verse neither includes a reference to God nor implies prayer: “Israel groaned because of the work and they cried out.” The second half refers to God and may be viewed as prayer: “Their outcry because of the work went up to God.” See the Or ha-Chaim’s commentary on this verse. 21 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html, Library of Congress, American Memory, Born in Slavery, Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936–1938. Narrator: Alice Sewell, 307. Reprinted in Yetman, Norman R. Life Under the “Peculiar Institution”: Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970, 264. 22 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 305. 23 Ibid., 303. 24 Newman, Richard, Go Down, Moses: A Celebration of the African-American Spiritual. New York: Roundtable Press, 1998, 78. 25 Ibid., 46. This is an excerpt from the spiritual “Nobody Knows the Trouble I See, Lord!” 26 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 291–293. 27 The Atlantic Monthly, February 1862. Smith, Trial By Fire, 141–142. 28 Exodus 6:2–4. 29 Exodus 3:13–14.

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30 “Almighty God” is the Hertz Bible’s translation of El Shaddai. The Pentateuch and Haftorahs: Hebrew Text, English Translation and Commentary. Dr. J.H. Hertz, editor. 31 Rashi states in his comments on 3:14 that God’s message was that He would be with the Israelite nation for all time. Rav Saadia Gaon and Rambam state in their philosophical works that the terms refer to God’s absolute existence, which is not bound by time. Rashi interprets 6:2–4 to mean that God had made promises to the Patriarchs that He was capable of fulfilling, but the Patriarchs had not seen their fulfillment. Their descendants were about to perceive one of God’s attributes: He rewards those who walk in His ways. 32 Hirsch’s commentary on Exodus 3:14. 33 Hirsch’s commentary on Exodus 6:3. 34 Ramban interprets this name of God to mean the creator of the universe and the laws of nature. This leads him to the message for the Israelites that God is about to set aside the laws of nature and step visibly onto the world’s stage. 35 Exodus 9:18–19. 36 Midrash Tanchuma Yashan, Va-era 20, quoted in Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 177. 37 Exodus 20:3. I have chosen the Hertz Bible translation of this phrase because of its more classic sound. 38 Deuteronomy 4:34. 39 Hirsch, Exodus 5:1. This quote is slightly modified to make this English translation of Hirsch’s writing more readable. 40 “It is not like the land of Egypt that you left, where you would plant your seed and water it on foot like a vegetable garden,” God tells the Israelites in the last year of their sojourn in the wilderness. “The land to which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys. It drinks water from the rain of heaven. It is a land that the Lord your God seeks out. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to year’s end” (Deuteronomy 11:10–12). 41 Glaude, Exodus!, 73. 42 Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775, in a speech to the Virginia Provincial Convention that was assembled after the Virginia Assembly had been suspended by Lord Dunsmore. 43 Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865. In Angle and Miers, The Living Lincoln, 638–640. 44 Ibid., 499. 45 Ibid., 474–475 (May 13, 1862). 46 Had slavery in the South ended gradually, the process might have gone according to the following timeline. It would have taken at least a decade or more before one of the border states responded to the lessening role of slavery in the state by initiating a law to emancipate the slaves gradually. It would then have taken another decade or more for political and economic pressure to build on states in the deep South to follow suit. Legislated gradual emancipation would have taken decades longer to put an end to slavery. In New York, slaves were not freed until twenty years after the law was passed, and their children could remain as forced apprentices for years after their parents were freed. In 1846 New Jersey abolished slavery, but the law applied only to children yet unborn, with no provision for freeing existing slaves. Thus there were still slaves in New Jersey at the start of the Civil War. Lincoln proposed financial incentives to encourage border states to develop and carry out gradual emancipation plans in his special message to Congress on March 6, 1862 (Angle and Miers, The Living Lincoln, 465). 47 Angle and Miers, The Living Lincoln, 499 (September 2, 1862). These ideas were developed more fully in the Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address and were quoted earlier in the text. 48 Ramsdell, Charles W. “The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 16 (1929): 151–171. Reprinted in Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, edited by Edwin C. Rozwenc. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1963, 66. 49 The fraudulent constitution came to be known as Lecompton, after the name of the city in Kansas where the original state legislature met and passed pro-slavery state laws. This legislature was elected through massive voting fraud committed by people from Missouri who had crossed the border in order to vote.

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50 Ramsdell, “The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion.” Reprinted in Rozwenc, ed., Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, 66. 51 Singleteon, Otho Robards. “Resistance to Black Republican Domination from the Congressional Globe, 1859–60.” Part IV (appendix), 51, 53, abridged. Reprinted in Rozwenc, Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, 20–23. 52 Ramsdell, “The Natural Limits of Slavery Expansion.” Reprinted in Rozwenc, Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, 59–71. Political economists have attacked this “Natural Limits” thesis. See, for example, the analysis by Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989, 94–102. 53 At the time of the Civil War, a day of fasting was usually termed a day of “fasting and humiliation.” 54 Silver, James W. Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967, 34. 55 Ibid., 34. This day of thanksgiving was distinct from the national day of thanksgiving currently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November. Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of a popular women’s magazine called Godey’s Lady’s Book, launched a campaign in 1846 to establish a national Thanksgiving Day on the last Thursday in November. Her campaign finally succeeded when Lincoln established a presidential tradition of declaring Thanksgiving Day on a Thursday in late November (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia, © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.). 56 Reverend Judah Wechsler of Portsmouth, Ohio, July 31, 1863. Quoted in Bertram W. Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, Marietta: R. Bemis Publishing, 1995, 26. This was a typical viewpoint of Jewish congregations in the North, where the leadership tended to be muted in their support of the war as a way to stop the secession of southern states. Once the war began, however, their support for the Union side was wholehearted. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid., 31. 59 Ibid., 32. 60 Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986, 366. Kenneth M. Stampp offered the thesis that slaveholders and other southerners who had doubts about the morality of slavery undermined southern morale and contributed to its defeat (“The Southern Road to Appomattox.” In Stampp, Kenneth M. The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981). 61 At the time of the Civil War, only Brazil and Cuba still maintained legalized slavery in the New World. 62 These beliefs followed the development of scientific racism in the 1830s and 1840s. Glaude, Exodus!, 128–131. 63 Alexander H. Stephens, “The Chief Stone of the Corner in Our New Edifice” (1861). Reprinted in Rowencz, Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, 42–46. Italics added for emphasis. 64 Wilson, Baptized in Blood, 69. Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 354. 65 Ibid., 68. 66 Ibid., 71. 67 Ibid., 72, quoting Job 13:15. 68 Ibid., 76. 69 Ibid., 68. 70 Ibid., 23. 71 Ibid., 60. Over his career, Father Abram Ryan was not only a parish priest but also the editor of several newspapers, most notably The Banner of the South, and traveled the lecture circuit. He was known by the title “Poet-Priest of the Confederacy” or “Poet-Priest of the South.” Ibid., 59–61.

Chapter 19: Breaking the Will of the Oppressors

1 We have taken some literary license with this image. Pharaoh is referred to in the classic spiritual “Go Down, Moses.” More commonly, slaves described their personal taskmaster as the devil incarnate.

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2 3 4

Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, 6–7. Hirsch on Exodus 8:13. The phrase “master race” is a direct quote. The biblical commentaries struggle with an obvious narrative incongruity. The Bible records that “all of the animals died,” but the next plague, boils, and future plagues refer to attacks on Egyptian cattle. Where did these cattle come from? Two answers are given: God’s original warning mentioned animals in the “field,” which suggests that animals taken indoors were not attacked by the plague. Egyptians could replace their lost cattle by buying from the Israelites or from traders, or simply taking the livestock of their Israelite slaves. 5 The set of plagues numbered four through six stresses that God had a special interest in the Israelite nation’s destiny. Thus, God emphasizes that He will distinguish between the Land of Goshen, where the Israelites live, and the rest of Egypt. However, the Israelites were spared the effects of all of the plagues. This point was not made in the first three plagues because their main goal was to demonstrate that God existed and that His actions should not be confused with magic. Nevertheless, regarding the first two plagues, the text specifically mentions the impact on the Egyptian people or Pharaoh’s nation. It is only regarding the plague of lice that the text does not provide evidence that the Israelites were excluded. The Rambam noted this point in his commentary on Mishneh Avot 5:4, and the commentary Oznaim la-Torah on Exodus 8:13 also discusses it in detail. 6 The plague of hail did not strike the land of Goshen where the Israelites lived: “Only in the land of Goshen, where the Children of Israel were, there was no hail” (Exodus 9:26). This exclusion is not mentioned regarding the plague of locusts, though several times the text mentions that the locusts consumed whatever the hail had spared. It is reasonable to assume that the locusts arrived only several weeks before the exodus. Even if the locusts also attacked Goshen, this would not have imposed a hardship on the Israelites during the brief time remaining until Passover and the exodus. Don Isaac Abrabanel, in his comments on Exodus 10:12, suggests that Goshen was excluded. Seeing the destruction, Pharaoh rushed to Moses and Aaron to have them pray to remove the locusts immediately. The commentator Ha-amek Davar suggests that by this time, the locusts had destroyed the greenery on the trees but had not yet attacked the bark of the tree itself. Pharaoh’s quick action spared Egypt the permanent destruction of its fruit trees and bushes. 7 www.civilwarhome.com/civilwarmedicine.htm. Excerpts from Civil War Society’s Encyclopedia of the Civil War. 8 Macrae, David. “The Devastated South.” In America’s History: Volume 1: To 1877, edited by James A. Henretta, Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2000, 480. 9 Lawrence, Kansas, and Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, were two cities in non-secessionist states that experienced massive devastation. Confederate guerrillas under William C. Quantrill sacked Lawrence in August 1863. Confederate Lieutenant General Jubal A. Early burned Chambersburg to the ground in reprisal for the burning of the Virginia Military Institute some weeks earlier. 10 Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 3. In his book he qualifies his categorization by recognizing that policy implementation varied by location and by the personal beliefs of the generals who carried out the policy. In addition, these phases overlapped. 11 Ibid., 9. Lincoln excluded from this generalization South Carolina, which was clearly the leader in the secessionist movement. It was the first state to secede and had previously initiated the Nullification Crisis in 1832. In South Carolina, slaves represented fifty-seven percent of the population, the highest percentage in the United States. For a discussion of the leadership role of South Carolina see Osterweis, Rollin G. “South Carolina and the Idea of Southern Nationalism.” Reprinted in Rozwenc, ed., Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War. 12 Ibid., 64. 13 The sacking of Athens, Alabama, on May 2, 1862, by a brigade under the command of Colonel John B. Turchin was an egregious example of the violation of this general order. Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 81–85. 14 Ibid., 89. 15 Ibid., 91. 16 Ibid., 100.

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17 18

Ibid., 142. Ibid., 151–152. Grant ordered that the property owner be left with a sixty-day supply of food. Ibid., 101. For example, Confederate Major General Joseph Wheeler’s cavalry received no government rations from the middle of 1864 onward and had to live off the land. In addition, they had the difficult responsibility of destroying southern property in order to prevent it from being used by Sherman’s army, which was moving rapidly through Georgia and South Carolina. Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, 120, 151-152. 19 Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978, 111–112. 20 Ibid., 104, and Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, 121. Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 102–105. 21 Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 113. 22 Ibid., 5. 23 Ibid., 100. 24 Ibid., 191. 25 Ibid., 118. The letter was dated October 4, 1862. 26 Ibid., 191. Atlanta was the industrial war center. The name Atlanta frequently appeared on guns and other instruments of war. 27 Ibid., 169. 28 Glatthaar, The March to the Sea and Beyond, 135. 29 Ibid. 30 Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 202. The extent of the destruction of Columbia is the subject of historical debate. Marion B. Lucas in Sherman and the Burning of Columbia (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1976) has argued that only one-third of the city was destroyed by fire and that recklessness by Confederate authorities also contributed to the conflagration. 31 Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 53. 32 Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 435. 33 Grimsley, The Hard Hand of War, 199. 34 Beringer et al., Why the South Lost the Civil War, 169–173. The book contains extensive discussion and analysis of the potential for guerrilla warfare. It begins in the section noted above and is expanded upon later in the book. The Spanish waged the prototypical successful guerrilla war against Napoleon from 1808 to 1814. The term guerrilla war comes from that conflict. Goya’s paintings captured the horrors of that war. 35 Foner, Reconstruction, 199. This was Radical F. Flanders’s prediction for the Louisiana legislature as it assembled. 36 Ibid., 199–201. Britain’s failed attempt in the 1830s to use an apprenticeship system as a transition from slavery to free labor in the Caribbean is discussed by Eric Foner in Nothing but Freedom, 15–19. 37 The production of cotton recovered more quickly than that of other crops. In 1870 total production was 4,352,000 bales, which was five percent less than the average for 1859 and 1860, 4,614,000. This average was exceeded in 1875. Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965, 371. 38 Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 89. 39 The slaves who became free were not lost to the South because most of them settled near the places where they had been slaves. The losses incurred by slaveowners as a result of the emancipation of four million slaves exceeded two billion dollars. 40 Davis, David Brion and Steven Mintz, The Boisterous Sea of Liberty: A Documentary History of America from Discovery through the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, 555. 41 Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 44–50. 42 Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996, 322–326. Ransom and Sutch reject the claim that the breakup of plantations into smaller fields resulted in less efficient methods of farming. However, they do suggest that the structure of the share-cropping arrangements created

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disincentives for investing in long-term improvements of property. Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 99–103. 43 Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 106–125. 44 Fogel, Without Consent or Contract, 84. 45 Boom, Aaron M. “We Sowed and We Have Reaped: A Postwar Letter from Braxton Bragg.” Journal of Southern History 31:1 (1965): 75–79. 46 Macrae, “The Devastated South.” In America’s History, edited by James A. Henretta, 480. 47 Beck, John J. “Building the New South: A Revolution from Above in a Piedmont County.” Journal of Southern History 53:3 (1987): 441. 48 Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 94. Sarna uses the Bible to support his claims about firstborn sons in ancient society. He does not present independent sources. 49 See, for example, Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 149–160. 50 The Bible uses the word eved (servant), but the colloquial meaning of the English word does not reflect the role anymore than the word “secretary” in the title “secretary of state” matches its nominal definition. For the purposes of this exposition, the more appropriate term “aide” is used. 51 This summary of Lincoln’s views is taken from Boritt, Gabor S. “And the War Came: Abraham Lincoln and the Question of Individual Responsibility.” In Why the Civil War Came, edited by Gabor S. Boritt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996, 2–30. 52 Ellis, Richard E., The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. In 1828 during the administration of John Quincy Adams, a protective tariff was imposed that South Carolina felt undermined its economy. The hope was that when Andrew Jackson assumed the presidency in 1829, he would move quickly to reduce or eliminate this onerous tariff. It was not until July 1832 that the tariff was reduced, but the reduction was inadequate to address the concerns of South Carolina. A state convention nullified both tariffs, claiming they were unconstitutional and declared as a result that they were not applicable to Sourh Carolina. South Carolina was supported in its view by Vice President John C. Calhoun who resigned as a result of conflicts with Jackson and was appointed to the Senate to represent South Carolina in the midst of the Nullification Crisis. 53 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 83–102. Rashi adopts the midrashic interpretation that states, “Where have the elders got to? For they are no longer listed though the Almighty had commanded Moses: ‘You must go, you and the elders of Israel.’ Our rabbis said: The elders went along at the beginning but stealthily slipped away, one by one, two by two and disappeared. By the time they reached Pharaoh’s palace not one of them remained. This is witnessed by the text: After that Moses and Aaron arrived. But where were the elders? They had slipped away” (Shemot Rabbah 5:14). In her essay Leibowitz also presents other commentaries (Ramban, Avraham son of Ramban, Kaspi, and Shadal) that claim that the elders did accompany Moses and Aaron even though the biblical text does not explicitly mention this fact. Leibowitz uses this change in plans to explain a subtle problem in their choice of language in speaking to Pharaoh. Their opening remarks refer to the God of Israel. After Pharaoh’s response, they speak of the God of the Hebrews; this was the wording God had originally given Moses. Perhaps they had thought that it would be inappropriate to open with reference to the God of the Hebrews given that the leaders of the Hebrews had abandoned them on their way to Pharaoh. 54 See the website www.uselectionsatlas.org, which contains detailed results of every United States presidential election and includes data both on the popular vote and on that of the Electoral College. In the website, the “data” button on the U.S. map provides the vote totals for each state. At the time, New Jersey was unique in that it was not governed by the “winner take all” rule typical of the Electoral College system. The fact that Lincoln was elected with less than a majority of the popular vote was not unusual. It had happened several times in the preceding decades. However, in all prior elections with popular voting, the winner had captured at least forty-five percent of the popular vote. The popular vote data are somewhat distorted because the Republican Party was excluded from the ballot in all the states of the Deep South. There were four strong candidates. Abraham Lincoln, the Republican, battled

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his old foe Stephen A. Douglas, the Democrat in the northern states. In many states, particularly in the Midwest, Douglas won more than forty percent of the states’ votes but lost all of the electoral votes to Lincoln with the exception of part of New Jersey. John C. Breckenridge, the southern Democrat, battled John Bell, of the Constitutional Union Party, throughout the South. Breckenridge won most of the South, losing only Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia to Bell and Missouri to Douglas. However, even if all of the Lincoln’s opposition votes had been combined, Lincoln still would have won a significant Electoral College majority. California and Oregon (and their combined twelve electoral votes) were the only states won by Lincoln with less than a majority of that state’s popular vote. In total, Lincoln won one hundred and eighty electoral votes and needed only one hundred and fifty-two to win the election. 55 The term “black,” which is derogatory here, exaggerated the Republican Party’s support for eventually ending slavery. 56 Singleton, Otho Robards. “Resistance to Black Republican Domination.” Reprinted in Rozwenc, ed., Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War, 23. This speech was given before Lincoln received the Republican nomination. Singleton expected one of the following three United States senators to receive the nomination: John Parker Hale or Salmon P. Chase of New Hampshire, or William H. Seward of New York. 57 Boritt, ed., Why the Civil War Came, 23. Toward the close of his first inaugural address, Lincoln stated his support for the passage of an irrevocable amendment guaranteeing the right to slaves where it already existed: “A proposed amendment to the constitution… has passed Congress, to the effect that the federal government, shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the states, including that of persons held to service… holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express, and irrevocable.” Angle and Miers, eds., The Living Lincoln, 388. 58 Letter to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862. Angle and Miers, eds. The Living Lincoln, 496. 59 In the demonstration for the Israelites, the staff was turned into a snake (nachash). However, a different Hebrew word, tanin, is used when the transformation is carried out before Pharaoh and his aides. 60 Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 58. 61 Abrabanel on Exodus 9:1. 62 The last plague in each set of three (numbers three, six, and nine) includes no advance warning. 63 Ramban on Exodus 9:4. 64 Abrabanel on Exodus 9:1. 65 Ramban on Exodus 9:11. 66 Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York: Free Press, 1988, 248. 67 Lonn, Ella. Desertion during the Civil War. New York: Century Co., 1928. 68 Representative Duncan Kenner of Louisiana was one of the first to discuss these ideas with Judah Benjamin. Kenner was eventually sent to France and Great Britain on a mission in early 1865 to explore whether either power would enter the war on the side of the South if the South emancipated its slaves. The answer was no. Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 262–264, 279. 69 Ibid., 279. 70 Ibid., 289. 71 Robert Toombs had opposed the firing on Fort Sumter. Johnson, Ludwell H. “Fort Sumter and Confederate Diplomacy.” Journal of Southern History 25 (1959): 445. 72 Evans, Judah P. Benjamin, 289–291. 73 Exodus 10:6 closes with the phrase “They turned and left Pharaoh’s presence.” This suggests they did not go far. The Midrash Shemot Rabbah 13:5 asks, “What does ‘and they turned’ mean? They [Moses and Aaron] saw those who were turning to one another [whispering], who believed their [Moses’s and Aaron’s] words and they [Moses and Aaron] left to give them an opportunity to repent.” 74 Ha-amek Davar on Exodus 10:8. 75 Abrabanel on Exodus 10:1–11. He interprets the dialogue as a give-and-take between negotiators, similar to that of a buyer and seller. Pharaoh saw Moses’s request as one extreme

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(everybody plus the cattle) – and Pharaoh responded with the other extreme (just the men of stature). Pharaoh’s expectation was that they would compromise on a middle ground. The Hebrew word ha-gevarim can be translated as “the men” but also can suggest something more specific. It is related to the word gibor (hero). 76 Ballard, Michael B. A Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997, 7, 17, 18. 77 Ibid., 19. 78 The Senate ratified the Thirteenth Amendment on April 8, 1864. The states completed the ratification on December 18, 1865. In the discussions, Lincoln raised the possibility that slave owners would be partially compensated for their losses. 79 McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989, 824. 80 Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: Harper Collins 1991, 594. 81 Ballard, A Long Shadow, 40. 82 A postscript: children of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis died during the Civil War. Lincoln’s third son, William, died of disease at the age of eleven in early 1862. Jefferson Davis’s fourth child, Joe, died from a fall in the spring of 1864 at the age of five. At the time, Mrs. Davis was pregnant with Winnie Davis, who became known as the “Daughter of the Confederacy.” 83 Allen, Jefferson Davis, 490, 526–527. 84 Ibid., 563–567.

Chapter 20: The Celebration of Freedom

1 The month in which Passover occurs is now called Nissan. The first of Nissan is one of the four dates that the Talmud names as the start of a new year (BT Rosh ha-Shanah 2a). The New Year date that is more commonly mentioned is called Rosh ha-Shanah and it occurs, in fact, in the seventh month of the calendar as referred to in the Bible. Nissan’s status as the first month is reflected in the rule that if a year is to be declared a leap year with an extra month, then that month, Adar II, is added at the close of the year, the month before Nissan. Rosh ha-Shanah’s status as a new year’s date is linked to the Jewish belief that it is the Day of Judgment for the year to come, a concept that is not mentioned in the Bible. 2 Nachmanides, Exodus 12:3. The link between the sacrifice of the paschal lamb and the zodiac sign emphasized that the Israelite nation’s destiny was not influenced by astrological signs. 3 Exodus 12:28 contains a similar statement. 4 BT Pesachim 95a. The Talmud specifies a modern-day requirement to recite Hallel (Psalms 113–118) at the Passover meal. The Talmud interprets the verse “The song will be yours like the night of the festival’s consecration” (Isaiah 30:29) as referring to songs praising God that are sung on the first Passover night. See also Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, vol. 12, paragraph 400 (Exodus 12:29). Midrash Rabbah, Exodus, Chapter 17 notes that the Israelites were reciting Hallel as part of their Passover eve celebration as the plague against the Egyptian firstborn was taking place. 5 There is a lone midrashic statement that interprets the verse “There was a great outcry in Egypt” as referring also to the cries of rejoicing and singing in the Israelite household. “Rabbi Judah says: All that night the Israelites ate, drank, rejoiced, and sang praises of God in a loud voice” (Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 48). Found in Kasher, Chumash: Torah Shelemah, vol. 12, paragraph 431 (Exodus 12:30). 6 Lincoln had planned to sign the proclamation in the early morning of January 1. However, minor changes in wording delayed the signing until after the traditional New Year’s Day open-house activities were held in the White House. The Washington Evening Post published the Emancipation Proclamation in its 8:00 P.M. edition. That evening, telegraph operators sent out the text of the proclamation. 7 Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 343–344. 8 Smith, Trial by Fire, 301.

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9

An act of Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia on April 16, 1862. The act also included compensation for the slave owners. Almost one million dollars were paid for the freedom of approximately 3,100 slaves (Christian, Black Saga, 191–192). 10 Higginson was the white commander of the First South Carolina Volunteers. This was the first official regiment made up of former slaves. It was mustered in on November 7, 1862. Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 119, 178–179. 11 Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, 225–226. 12 Washington, Up From Slavery, 19–21. 13 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 186. 14 Ibid., 173. 15 Ibid., 177. 16 Ibid., chapters. 3–4. 17 Ibid., 145. 18 Ibid., 141. 19 Ibid., 199. 20 Ibid., 200. 21 In this context, an earlier meaning of “demoralized” makes sense. It describes one whose morals have been corrupted, or whose normal functioning has been destroyed or thrown into disorder. 22 Ibid., 466. 23 Ibid., 218. 24 Ibid. 25 Two symbols unique to this first Passover were placing paschal lamb blood on the doorpost and lintel and eating the paschal lamb with “your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff on your hand.” 26 The individual need to feel a part of the Israelite nation led to one of the most unusual incidents in the Bible, in which God validated the complaint lodged by a group of Israelites. Exactly a year after the first Passover, Moses conveyed a reminder from God to celebrate Passover at “its appointed time” (Numbers 9:2). It was to be the first commemorative celebration, a reenactment of the original Passover. All of Israel was preparing to rejoice in freedom in the wilderness of Sinai, within sight of Mount Sinai. Nevertheless, one group was ritually impure and therefore could not participate (as mandated by Numbers 5:2): “We are contaminated by contact with a human corpse. Why should we be diminished by not making God’s offering in its appointed time among the Children of Israel?” (Numbers 9:7). Their sorrow that they will not be “among the Children of Israel” on this occasion is evident. It was no consolation that because of their ritual impurity, which was no fault of theirs, they were technically exempt and therefore not culpable. Moses, who had no answer, sought Divine guidance. God validated the group’s complaint and offered an alternative date for the Passover sacrifice – exactly one month later: “In the second month on the fourteenth day, in the afternoon, shall he make it; with matzot and bitter herbs shall he eat it” (Numbers 9:11). Those who had missed out on the Passover experience could still participate in a group setting that paralleled the regular Passover. The paschal lamb would be offered at exactly the same time in the lunar cycle, as the moon reached its zenith. As in the regular Passover, it would be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, and would be subject to all the other laws about the preparation and consumption of the paschal sacrifice. God’s response also expanded on those eligible to participate on the alternative date, including those who found themselves far from the locus of the original celebration. At the time, this extension for travelers had no meaning, since all of Israel was then camped around the Tabernacle, but future generations scattered throughout the land of Israel would eventually benefit from it. 27 BT Pesachim 64. The Talmud records that the three groups correspond to the words “congregation,” “assemblage,” and “Israel” that appear in Exodus 12:6. 28 In the second recording of the Ten Commandments, which appears in Deuteronomy, the commandment to keep the Sabbath is linked to the exodus. Rashi on Deuteronomy 5:15 comments that the Israelite nation was redeemed from Egypt on the condition that they

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accept the Sabbath. This explanation based on quid pro quo is also used to explain other instances when the exodus is juxtaposed to other unrelated commandments such as keeping honest weights and measures. 29 Sefer ha-Chinuch, Commandment 16. 30 The destruction of the Second Temple led to another profound change in the Passover celebration. During Temple times, the center of the celebration was Jerusalem. Jews were commanded to bring the paschal sacrifice in the place where God had chosen to make His presence known. Pilgrims from various locations would have to form groups that would eat a designated paschal lamb. The group would have to be large enough to consume the entire lamb and then eat the entire Passover eve meal together. The meals were held in rooms that were rented for this purpose. It is unlikely that entire families with young children, especially those that lived far from Jerusalem, would have been able to make the journey. The destruction of the Temple moved the center of the celebration from Jerusalem to the individual family home. (The Gospels Mark 14:12-17 and Luke 22:7-14 discuss finding a room for Jesus and his Apostles to eat the Passover meal.) 31 This essay focuses on the evening celebration and the symbol of matzah. However, from the broader perspective of the whole holiday, the negative prohibition against eating leavened bread is seemingly of greater importance. One indication of this is that violating the negative prohibition at any time during the seven days carries a punishment that Scripture mentions specifically. “For a seven-day period shall you eat matzot, but on the previous day you shall remove the leaven from your homes – for if anyone eats leavened food, that soul shall be cut off from Israel – from the first day to the seventh day” (Exodus 12:15). In addition, the prohibition against possessing leaven begins in the afternoon when the paschal lamb is slaughtered, based on the Talmudic interpretation of the verse, “You shall not slaughter My blood offering [the paschal lamb] upon leavened bread” (Exodus 34:25, BT Pesachim 5a and 63b). The Talmud interprets the various verses regarding matzah as requiring Jews to eat matzah only during the first evening meal. For the rest of the seven days, eating matzah is only a means to avoid violating the prohibition against eating leavened bread. The elimination of leavened bread and the sacrifice of the paschal lamb share a common theme. They both symbolize a break with the past and rededication to God. The removal of leavened products signifies a change in the normal daily rhythm of life, while the sacrifice of the paschal lamb illustrates the discarding of idols that had been formerly considered sacred. 32 Jewish tradition believes that the crossing of the Sea of Reeds occurred on the seventh day after the Exodus. Although the Bible itself is silent about the date of the crossing, it declares this seventh day as a holy day concluding the Festival of Matzot. 33 The Hebrew word in the text is “Torah,” which Hirsch translates as “teaching.” 34 Sefer ha-Chinuch, Commandments 421 and 422. 35 Hirsch, commentary on Exodus 13:9. The Civil War and the Constitutional amendments of that era accomplished the same goal, giving former slaves control over their own labor. One of Lincoln’s favorite biblical verses was “By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread” (Genesis 2:19). He would often point out to Bible-reading southerners that the Scripture does not say “by the sweat of someone else’s brow or the sweat of your slave’s brow.” 36 Ha-amek Davar, commentary on Exodus 13:9 quoted and translated in Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), 219. 37 United States Constitution, Article 1, Section 9. 38 Glaude, Exodus, 82–83. 39 Fabre, Genevieve. “African-American Commemorative Celebrations in the Nineteenth Century.” In History and Memory in African American Culture, edited by Genevieve Fabre and Robert O’Meally. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, 72–91. The illustration is from Hughes, et al., A Pictorial History of African Americans, 104. The image was originally designed by Josiah Wedgwood as noted by Thomas, The Slave Trade 382ff. 40 White, Shane. “It was a Proud Day: African Americans, Festivals, and Parades in the North, 1741–1834.” The Journal of American History 81:1 (1994): 13–50.

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41 Glaude, Exodus, 82–104. This entire discussion of early nineteenth-century celebrations is drawn from chapter 5. 42 In 1820 New Jersey reported 7,557 slaves and Delaware 4,509. By 1830, the numbers had declined to 2,254 in New Jersey and 3,292 in Delaware. By 1850 there were still several hundred elderly people listed as slaves in New Jersey and more than two thousand in Delaware. The State of New Jersey did not want to abolish slavery outright since that would have freed their masters from the responsibility of taking care of their elderly, formerly productive slaves. 43 In the 1820 census, New York reported 10,088 slaves. New York passed its moderate abolition law in 1817. All slaves born before July 4, 1799, would be declared free as of July 4, 1827. However, on that date not everyone was technically free. Minors were allowed to be held in indentured servitude until they reached the age of twenty-eight for males and twentyfive for females. Sojourner Truth left three of her children behind when she asserted her right to freedom a year early, as part of an agreement with her master. She walked off with her youngest child who was then only one year old and of little immediate value to her master. Painter, Sojourner Truth, 23–25. 44 Fabre, “African-American Commemorative Celebrations in the Nineteenth Century,” 88. 45 Ibid., 98. 46 Ibid., 86. British emancipation created an unusual dilemma for African Americans. Great Britain, the tyrant and villain of the American Revolution, was now a hero to blacks worldwide. It was seen as morally superior to its stepchild, the United States, and a symbol “of humility and honest repentance.” Ibid., 83. 47 Litwack, North of Slavery, 75–87, 114–129, 263. 48 Ibid., 84. 49 In 1972 William H. Wiggins Jr. began a series of trips in which he interviewed participants in various emancipation celebrations around the country. He documented his travelogue in his book O Freedom! Wiggins links these modern-day events to their roots in both the preand post-Civil War periods. Wiggins, William H., Jr. O Freedom!: Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987. 50 Upson County, Georgia, makes a similar claim to the longest-running annual celebration. The county celebrates on the fourth Saturday in May to commemorate news of the Emancipation Proclamation that arrived on May 29, 1863. See http://www.legis.state.ga.us /Legis/1995_96/leg/fulltext/hr859.htm. 51 Wiggins Jr., O Freedom!, 37. 52 Ibid., 35. 53 Richard R. Wright, Sr. (1855–1947) was founder and first president of Georgia State Industrial College for Colored Youth. The first public historically black college of Georgia is now called Savannah State University. Wright’s biography is maintained on a website established by Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA). See http://www.loc.gov /bicentennial/propgae/PA/pa–2_h_fattah1.html/. President Truman signed the declaration on June 30, 1948, one year after Wright’s death. 54 Wiggins Jr., O Freedom!, 79. 55 Ibid., 49. At various times and places, stage productions were developed that presented the Afro-American saga. One of the most famous was The Star of Ethiopia, written by W.E.B. Du Bois. It was staged at New York City’s 1913 Emancipation Exposition, celebrating fifty years of progress. Born to Be Free, a Juneteenth drama, was presented in the 1890s in Texas. Ibid., 49–78. 56 See http://www/tsl.stttate.tx.us/ref/abouttx/juneteenth.html, Texas State Library and Archives Commission website. 57 See http://www/library.vcu.edu/jbc/speccoll/vbha/freedom.htm, which is maintained by Virginia Commonwealth University. The print is in the Virginia Commonwealth University Library as well as at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division. It is based on a postcard printed by the Detroit Publishing Company. “The parade is shown here marching at 10th and Main Streets with the Shafer Building at the corner and the old Custom House and Richmond Post Office building in the background. It was one of the few buildings to

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survive the evacuation fire of 1865. To the right of that building is the Mutual Assurance Society Building. The parade marked the fall of Richmond and not the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.” 58 Oshinsky, “Worse than Slavery.”

Chapter 21: Remembering

1 Higman, B.W. “Remembering Slavery: The Rise, Decline and Revival of Emancipation Day in the English-speaking Caribbean.” Slavery and Abolition 19:1 (1998): 91. 2 Ibid., 94. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., 93, 94. 5 Ibid., 94. 6 Blight, David W. “Fifty Years of Freedom: The Memory of Emancipation at the Civil War Semicentennial, 1911–1915.” Slavery and Abolition 19:1 (1998): 121. 7 In the entire Haggadah there is only one passing reference to Moses. The Haggadah refers to the Israelite reaction to the miracles at the Sea of Reeds by quoting the verse, “And Israel saw the great hand which God laid upon the Egyptians: and the people feared God, and they believed in God and in His servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31). 8 Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, quoted in translation in Noraot Harav – Volume 8: Lecture on Rambam: Laws of Chometz and Matzoh: Chapter 8, and a Speech on Aspects of the Haggadah, edited by B. David Schreiber. New York: Schreiber, 1998, 70. 9 Cohen and Brander, eds., The Yeshiva University Haggada, 26. 10 Soloveitchik, Joseph B. “The Nine Aspects of the Haggada.” In The Yeshiva University Haggada, edited by Cohen and Brander, [10]. 11 Ibid, 26. 12 Ibid, 11. 13 Ibid., [10]. 14 Schreiber, Noraot Harav – Volume 8, 58–59. 15 Ibid., 64. 16 BT Pesachim 116a. The amora Shmuel suggests that the discussion begin with a reference to the disgrace of slavery, while his friend and study partner Rav suggests going all the way back to the history of Abraham’s father, who was an idol-worshipper. 17 Joshua’s motivation for recalling Abraham’s ancestry is understandable. His primary concern was that the Israelites might imitate the idolatrous ways of their immediate neighbors or return to their own roots as idol-worshippers. Less obvious is the reason why recalling this ancestry is an important part of the Passover narrative. 18 Soloveitchik, Joseph B. “The Seder Meal.” Speech given March 30, 1969 at Yeshiva University. Reprinted in Shiurei Harav: A Conspectus of the Public Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, edited by Joseph Epstein. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1974, 91–93. 19 Cohen and Brander, eds., The Yeshiva University Haggada, 6. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid, 26. 22 This symbol is of Talmudic origin (BT Pesachim 115a). There the Talmud states that the reason for dipping the maror into the charoset is to mitigate the harshness of the taste. (Tosefot claim that the purpose is to kill an insect.) 23 Korn, American Jewry and the Civil War, 90–92. 24 Ibid., 93. 25 Ibid., 112.

Chapter 22: Freedom’s Troubled Journey through Stages

1 Fletcher, George P. Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 15–34, 48–52. 2 Ibid., 19. Christianity has a clearly defined link between blood and suffering and the concept of redemption because of the symbolism of Jesus shedding his blood and suffering on the cross for the sake of all humanity. While the concept exists in Judaism, it is a less prominent element of its theology. For example, many non-intentional sins require an animal

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sacrifice as expiation. The most important part of the sacrificial rite is sprinkling the animal’s blood upon the tabernacle’s altar. This sprinkling of the blood – which is viewed as the life force – upon the altar suggests that the sinner must rededicate himself to God’s laws, become more aware of his actions, and take care not to repeat his transgression. 3 Midrash Shochar Tov, Psalm 116. 4 Maharal, Gevurot ha-Shem, Chapter 3. 5 BT Rosh ha-Shanah 11b. 6 Ibn Ezra, Exodus 8:19, Ha-amek Davar, Exodus 6:6 and 8:28. 7 Hirsch, Exodus 6:6. 8 The term appears frequently in Leviticus 25. The text addresses the situation of an impoverished Israelite who sells his property, home, or even himself as an indentured servant in order to raise cash. Family members are encouraged to redeem his assets. 9 BT Sanhedrin 56b. 10 Hirsch, Deuteronomy 4:1. 11 Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Nineteen Letters on Judaism. New York: Feldheim, 1969, 78–79. 12 Mechilta, Exodus 15:26. 13 Ramban, Deuteronomy 6:18. 14 See Exodus 33:3 and 33:5 for examples. 15 The idea that the word goy (“nation”) represents primarily others’ perceptions of the Israelites is reflected in Deuteronomy 4:6–8. 16 Hirsch, Exodus 19:6. 17 Hirsch, Deuteronomy 4:6. 18 Soloveitchik, Joseph B. Fate and Destiny: From the Holocaust to the State of Israel. New York: Ktav, 2000, 52–54. 19 Ibid., 42–57, 74. 20 JT Pesachim, Chapter 10, Law 1, 68b. The Babylonian Talmud describes the points in the service at which the cups are to be drunk. Only the Jerusalem Talmud mentions the link between the cups of wine and four freedoms. However, this Talmudic reference also includes several other reasons for drinking four cups, none of which have gained much prominence. 21 Mordechai, Commentary on BT Pesachim 99b. He asks why four cups of wine are used to correspond to the four stages rather than four bites of matzah, but offers a different answer than my suggestion that wine transforms a person both physically and emotionally. 22 Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), Part I, 278. 23 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 58. 24 Ibid., 69. 25 Ibid., 59–60. 26 Ibid., 76. 27 Ibid., 95. 28 Ibid., 132–162. 29 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 45. 30 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 184. 31 Ibid., 205, 210, 211. 32 Ibid., 258–259. 33 Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War, edited by Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, 510–511. New York: The New Press, 1992. 34 Foner, Reconstruction, 35–50; Berlin et al., Free at Last, xxxi–xxxiii. 35 Foner, Reconstruction, 193–194. 36 Ibid., 198–200. 37 Berlin et al., Free at Last, 496–505. 38 Ibid., 112–118. 39 Ibid., 223.

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40 Many believed that ingrained servility among blacks would prevent them from exercising an independent vote and that they would simply follow the directives of their former masters. 41 Ibid., 278. 42 Ibid., 272. 43 Ibid., 259. 44 Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2004, 186. 45 Ibid., 203–210. 46 Ibid., 205–210. Typically more than seventy-five percent of the registered blacks voted for the constitutional conventions and supported the Republican candidates to the conventions. Overall, blacks accounted for more than twenty-five percent of the delegates to the state constitutional conventions and were in the majority in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. 47 No other blacks have ever held a Senate seat from the South. Since Reconstruction, only three blacks have been elected to the U.S. Senate – one from Massachusetts and two from Illinois. In 1985 Virginia elected the first black governor in American history. 48 Ibid., 216–264. Hahn discusses in detail the distribution of elected officials state by state as well as their roles in local government. 49 Ibid., 216–219. 50Glaude, Exodus, 46. 51 Ibid. 52 Ibid., 113. 53 Ibid., 118. 54 Ibid., 126. 55 Miller, The Wolf by the Ears, 46–59. 56 Ibid., 36. 57 Glaude, Exodus, 122. 58 Newman, Go Down Moses, 73. 59 Mintz, ed., African-American Voices, 159–162. 60 Ibid., 85. 61 Litwack, North of Slavery, 64–75. 62 Ibid., 97. 63 Yarema, The American Colonization Society. 64 Staudenraus, The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865, 245–248. 65 Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, 148–149. 66 The Afro-Americans: Selected Documents, edited by John H. Bracey, Jr., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972, 192–214. Martin Delaney’s plans never succeeded. Interestingly, during the Civil War, he returned to the United States and was commissioned an officer with the rank of major. 67 Yarema, The American Colonization Society, 47–48. 68 Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Volume 1, 70–72. 69 Ibid., 109. 70 Ibid., 330. 71 Ibid., 471–476. 72 Foner, Reconstruction, 50–60. 73 Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 141–142. 74 Berlin et al., Free at Last, 284. 75 James, Josef C. “Sherman at Savannah.” The Journal of Negro History 39 (2): 127–137. Of the twenty black leaders in the meeting, nine had been slaves at the start of the war, three had purchased their freedom, three had been freed in their masters’ wills, and five had been born free. 76 Thomas W. Conway was a civilian who later became General Superintendent of Freedmen, Department of the Gulf. 77 Foner, Reconstruction, 156–164.

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78

Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 127–154.

Chapter 23: Freedom’s Transformation and Consequences

1 A longer-term view would explore educational progress in the thirty-five-year post-Civil War period up until the end of the nineteenth century, comparing it to the forty-year period of Israelite education in the wilderness. 2 Traditional Jewish interpretation highlights the importance of the sequence of the verbs “do” and “understand.” The Israelites committed to a behavior pattern without first requesting an explanation of what they were being asked to do. The Hebrew word nishma is often translated as “we will hear.” Soloveitchik interpreted this act of “hearing” as not the physical act but rather as an intellectual process. Therefore, “we will understand” is his preferred translation. 3 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 473. 4 Ibid., 472. 5 Ibid. Only the desire to have the family unit officially recognized and not under constant threat of disruption stood higher in their vision of what freedom would mean. 6 Katz, Eyewitness: the Negro in American History, 242. 7 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 475. 8 There is one exception to this sequence. When the Israelites saw Egyptians advancing against them at the Sea of Reeds, they first cried out to God. Then they turned on Moses, complaining with bitter sarcasm: “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:10–11). 9 The biblical narrative at this point incorporates an unusual look ahead, noting that the Israelites ate manna for forty years until they reached the very border of Canaan (Exodus 16:35). 10 This question, which was not actually stated by the Israelites but rather by Moses, reflected Moses’s perception of what was really bothering the people. 11 BT Rosh ha-Shanah 29a. 12 Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 108. 13 Foner, Reconstruction, 262–264. 14 Litwack, Been in the Storm too Long; Foner, Reconstruction. 15 According to one estimate, ninety percent of the adult blacks in the South were illiterate. Foner, Reconstruction, 96. 16 Ibid., 473. 17 Raboteau, Slave Religion, 214. 18 Ibid., 295. 19 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 474. 20 Painter, Sojourner Truth, 86. 21 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 452. One of the leading organizing groups was the American Missionary Society. “Many men and women gave up comfortable homes and occupations in the North to come south and teach the freedmen how to read and write, or to help supervise the Negroes’ transition from slave labor to free labor. Nearly every Northern city organized a freedmen’s aid society; nearly every Northern church helped to support Christian missionaries and teachers of the freedmen” (McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 113). The federal government began its involvement in educating recently-freed slaves in 1862 under the direction of the Secretary of Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, who appointed Edward Pierce as superintendent of the Sea Islands. When Pierce appealed to relief agencies for help in educating Sea Island freemen, fifty-one teachers were sent to the Sea Islands. Similar programs for education developed in Virginia at Port Royal, Roanoke Island, and Arlington (Wesley, Charles H. and Patricia W. Romero, Negro Americans in the Civil War: From Slavery to Citizenship. New York: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1967, 148). General Banks began the federal initiative in the Gulf States when he issued an order creating a Board of Education for the Department of the Gulf in March 1864. By October 1864, seventy-eight colored schools were teaching 7,900 students with 125 teachers. In the city of New Orleans, fifteen schools were established with forty-one teachers serving 1,900 students ranging in age from five to eighteen (McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 130–131).

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22 Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988, 4–32. Anderson argues that blacks played the more significant role in these early educational initiatives and that too much credit has been given to the northern missionary efforts. 23 Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 279. 24 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 457. 25 Ibid., 452. 26 Ibid., 459. 27 Ibid., 473. 28 Ibid., 473. 29 Reverend John Sella Martin’s autobiography is quoted in Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony, 702–735. He learned to read and write by partnering with a white boy who was a poor marble player. John Sella Martin provided the boy with marbles in exchange for reading lessons. 30 Woodson, Carter G. The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. New York; Arno Press, 1968, 151–178. These laws also restricted the right of assembly and often required that prayer services include white slaveowners. Tennessee and Kentucky were slave-state exceptions and did not pass anti-black education laws. Although educating blacks was not illegal there, local custom strongly discouraged any efforts to provide blacks with an education. Tragically, many racially-biased northern politicians and their supporters also saw a danger in educating blacks alongside whites. Almost all northern states set up separate public schools for white and black students. Massachusetts, the heart of abolition country, was the leader in integrating schools. By 1845, major cities other than Boston had integrated schools. When Boston integrated its schools in 1855, the integration went smoothly and without any violence, to the surprise of many. Blacks fought for at least equal funding for their separate schools. The New York Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Children filed a detailed document to a governor-appointed commission studying the city’s schools. They documented an inequitable expenditure of tax dollars on white and colored school buildings even though they were paying their fair share of taxes. In 1855 1.6 million dollars were allocated to white schools and only one thousand dollars to black schools. The petition reported a total of 1,153 African-American children in public schools, which represented 2.5 percent of the public school attendees. The rate of participation was one out every 2.8 African-Americans of school age as compared to one of every 3.4 for whites. (When private school students are included, black and white rates of attendance were approximately equal.) As a result of the petition, one old school was torn down and a modern one built in its place, a second school was moved from a bad neighborhood to a better location in the fifth ward, and a third school house was remodeled (Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, Volume 1, 398–402). 31 Woodson also linked this change to the Industrial Revolution that created tremendous demand for cotton as a cash crop. This in turn fueled expansion of the large plantations and less personal contact between slaves and masters. Masters felt that those slaves who were needed to grow and process cotton were most content when kept illiterate (Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, 152–154). 32 Ibid., 170–171. Coffin, Joshua, collector. An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860, 33-34. 33 Blassingame, Slave Testimony, 710. 34 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 473. 35 For example, Louisiana passed a law in 1830 that “whoever should write, print, publish, or distribute anything having the tendency to produce discontent among the slaves, should on conviction thereof be imprisoned at hard labor for life or suffer death at the discretion of the court” (Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, 161). 36 Decades before the Civil War, northern blacks had established the pattern of self-help in building and funding their own urban education. For example, in 1840, 166 black children in Cincinnati attended three different schools. The majority paid tuition of $3 per quarter. By

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1844, the community established a high school. Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy. Anyplace But Here. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997, 75-77. 37 Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, 242. 38 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 211. 39 Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History, 242. 40 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 476; Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935, 4–32. 41 Foner, Reconstruction, 96. 42 Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935, 4–32. It is estimated that five percent of the blacks were literate during slavery and that number grew to thirty percent by 1880. Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 23–26. 43 McPherson, The Negro’s Civil War, 111. 44 Ibid., 212. 45 Ibid. 46 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 292–296. 47 Mechilta, Bo, chapter 5, quoted in Kasher, Chumash Torah Shelemah, vol. 3, 292, n. 70. The biblical record describes an incident that started as a fight between a child of an Egyptian father and Israelite mother and another Israelite. The child of this mixed relationship ends up cursing God and is punished. Leviticus 24:10–16. 48 Washington, Up from Slavery, 9. 49 Litwack, Been in the Storm, 239. 50 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 428. 51 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 498–558. 52 Ibid. 53 Litwack, Been in the Storm, 240–241. 54 Quarles, The Negro in the Civil War, 289–290. 55 Litwack, Been in the Storm, 241. 56 Ibid., 242; Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 423. 57 Litwack, Been in the Storm, 245. 58 Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 166–170. 59 Rachleff, Peter. Black Labor in Richmond, 1865–1890. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989, 16–23. 60 Foner, Reconstruction, 70–71. 61 Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 83. Their share of total property, not just cultivated, was much lower. In Georgia, they owned an estimated 1.6 percent in 1880. 62 Ibid., 5–6. 63 Foner, Reconstruction, 406–408. 64 Mellon, Bullwhip Days, 433–434. 65 Foner, Reconstruction, 173–174. 66 Ransom and Sutch, One Kind of Freedom, 5–7. 67 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 524–529. 68 Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, 3. 69 Quoted in Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 296–297. 70 Foner, Reconstruction, 80–81. 71 Litwack, Been in the Storm, 297–299. 72 Ibid., 307. 73 Ibid., 306–307. 74 Foner, Reconstruction, 80–84. 75 Quoted in Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 310, 313. 76 Ibid., 312. 77 The experiences of all black congregations with white preachers varied greatly depending upon the individual who served in that position. At least in these churches, blacks had an opportunity to develop and exercise leadership skills. 78 In 1818, the blacks of Charleston established an independent black church. However, in 1821 the city ordered the closure of the leading church of that time, the Hamstead church,

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where Denmark Vesey and many of his co-conspirators had been members. Harding, There Is a River, 67–70. 79 The battle between Reverend Burkhead and his former congregants did not end when they appointed a black minister. For a while, the church had two ministers and held two separate Sunday services for blacks and whites. When the minority of whites eventually gained full control, blacks left and formed their own church. Foner, Reconstruction, 88–94. 80 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 459. 81 Foner, Reconstruction, 92. 82 Litwack, Been in the Storm Too Long, 455–471; Foner, Reconstruction, 88-94. 83 Ibid., 276. 84 Ibid., 431. 85 Ibid., 425–44, 454–59; Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet, 265–313.

Epilogue 1 2 3

Christian, Black Saga, 282. Ibid., 286–288. Tygiel, Jules. Baseball’s Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983, 59. 4 Gardner, Michael R. Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002, 109–121. 5 Nichols, David A. A Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007, 274–275. 6 Ibid., 189–213. 7 Ibid., 143–168, 235–257. 8 Hansen, Drew D. The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation. Waterville, Maine: Thorndike Press, 2004.

411

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Jewish Sources Berlin, Naftali Tzvi Yehudah (Netziv). Chumash with Commentary Ha-Amek Davar. Jerusalem: El Hamekoroth, 1970. Hirsch, Samson Raphael. Chamisha Chumshei Torah. Translated by Isaac Levy. Gateshead: Judaica Press, 1963. Ibn Ezra. Commentary on the Bible published in all standard Mikraot Gedolot. Judah Loew ben Bezalel (Maharal). Gevurot Hashem. Kli Yakar. Commentary on the Bible published in all standard Mikraot Gedolot. Maimonides. Guide to the Perplexed. Ohr ha-Chaim. Commentary on the Bible published in all standard Mikraot Gedolot. Ramban. Commentary on the Bible published in all standard Mikraot Gedolot. Rashi. Commentary on the Bible published in all standard Mikraot Gedolot.

Contemporary Sources Alford, Terry. Prince Among Slaves. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Anderson, James D. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Angle, Paul M., and Earl S. Miers, eds. The Living Lincoln. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1992. Aptheker, Herbert. American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: International Publishers, 1983. Aptheker, Herbert, ed. A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States. Volume I: From Colonial Times through the Civil War. New York: Citadel Press, 1990. Armstrong, Karen. In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man. New York: John S. Taylor, 1837. Ballard, Michael B. A Long Shadow: Jefferson Davis and the Final Days of the Confederacy. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1997. Bartlett, John. Familiar Quotations, Fourteenth Edition. Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1968. Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Berlin, Ira. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in Antebellum South. New York: The New Press, 1974. Berlin, Ira, Barbara J. Fields, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland, eds. Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. New York: The New Press, 1992.

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Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Beringer, Richard E., Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still, Jr. Why the South Lost the Civil War. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1986. Blackburn, Robin. The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848. London: Verso, 1988. Blassingame, John W. ed. Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977. Blassingame, John W. The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, revised and enlarged edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Bolster, W. Jeffrey. Black Jacks: African-American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Bontemps, Arna and Jack Conroy. Anyplace But Here. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. Bordewich, Fergus M. Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America. New York: Amistad, 2005. Boritt, Gabor S., ed. Why the Civil War Came. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Bracey, Jr., John H., August Meier, and Elliott Rudwick, eds. The Afro-Americans: Selected Documents. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972. Bradford, Sarah. Harriet Tubman, The Moses of Her People. Mineola: Dover, 2004. Brent, Linda (a.k.a Harriet Jacobs). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973. Buckmaster, Henrietta. Let My People Go: the Story of the Underground Railroad and the Growth of the Abolition Movement. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1992. Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Chavel, Charles B., Ramban (Nachmanides) Commentary on the Torah: Genesis, Translated and Annotated. New York: Shilo Publishing House, 1971. Checkland, Sydney. British Public Policy 1776–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Chesebrough, David B. “No Sorrow like Our Sorrow”: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln. Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994. Christian, Charles M. Black Saga: The African-American Experience: A Chronology. Washington, DC: Civitas, 1999. Civil War Society’s Encyclopedia of the Civil War. Clinton, Catherine. Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom. New York: Back Bay Books, 2004. Coffin, Joshua, collector. An Account of Some of the Principal Slave Insurrections. New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1860. Cohen, Steven F., and Kenneth Brander, eds. The Yeshiva Haggada. New York: Student Organization of Yeshiva, SOY, 1985. Conrad, Robert Edgar. Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 1994.

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Curtin, Philip D. The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. Da Costa, Emilia Viotti. Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. David, Paul A., Herbert G. Gutman, Richard Sutch, Peter Temin, and Gavin Wright. Reckoning with Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Davis, Charles S. The Cotton Kingdom in Alabama. Montgomery: Alabama State Department of Archives and History, 1939. Davis, David Brion, and Steven Mintz. The Boisterous Sea of Liberty: A Documentary History of America from Discovery through the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Davis, Edwin Adams, ed. Plantation Life in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, 1836–1846, as Reflected in the Diary of Bennett H. Barrow. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Davis, William C. Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour. New York: Harper Collins, 1991. Dobrinsky, Herbert C. A Treasury of Sephardic Laws and Customs. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1986. Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage and His Complete History. New York: Gramercy Books, 1993. Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself, edited with an Introduction by David W. Blight. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Drescher, Seymour and Stanley L. Engerman, eds. A Historical Guide to World Slavery. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk included in Du Bois, W.E.B. Writings. New York: The Library of America, 1984. Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880. New York: Atheneum, 1935. Ellis, Richard E. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Eltis, David and David Richardson, eds. Routes to Slavery: Direction, Ethnicity and Mortality in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. London: Frank Cass, 1997. Epstein, Joseph, ed. Shiurei Harav: A Conspectus of the Public Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1974. Escott, Paul D. After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978. Evans, Eli N. Judah P. Benjamin: The Jewish Confederate. New York: Free Press, 1988. Fabre, Genevieve, and Robert O’Meally, eds. History and Memory in African-American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Fick, Carolyn E. The Making of Haiti: The Saint-Domingue Revolution from Below. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990. Fletcher, George P. Our Secret Constitution: How Lincoln Redefined American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Fogel, Robert William, and Stanley L. Engerman. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton, 1989.

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Fogel, Robert William. Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery. New York: Norton, 1989. Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction, 1863–1877. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Franklin, John Hope. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans. 3rd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967. Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom, 6th ed. New York: Knopf, 1988. Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger. Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Fulop, Timothy E. and Albert J. Raboteau, ed. African-American Religion: Interpretive Essays in History and Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997. Gaspar, David Barry. Bondsmen and Rebels: A Study of Master-Slave Relations in Antigua. Durham: Duke University Press, 1985, 1993. Gaspar, David Barry, and David Patrick Geggus. A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Gates, Paul W. Agriculture and the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965. Genovese, Eugene G. Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Vintage, 1976. Glatthaar, Joseph T. The March to the Sea and Beyond. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985. Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. New York: The Free Press, 1990. MOLLUS-Massachusetts Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute. Glaude Jr., Eddie S. Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2000. Greenberg, Kenneth S., ed. The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1996. Grimsley, Mark. The Hard Hand of War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750–1925. New York: Vintage Books, 1976. Hahn, Steven. A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2004. Harding, Vincent. There Is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1981. Henretta, James A., ed. America’s History: Volume 1: To 1877. Boston: Bedford/ St. Martins, 2000. 415

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Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Heywood, Linda M., ed. Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Hindman, Hugh H. Child Labor: An American History. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. Hine, Darlene Clark, ed. Black Women in American History: From Colonial Times through the Nineteenth Century, Volume 3. New York: Carlson Publishing, 1990. Hine, Darlene Clark, William C. Hine, and Stanley Harrold. The African American Odyssey, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003. Hirsch, Samson Raphael. The Nineteen Letters on Judaism. New York: Feldheim, 1969. Holloway, Joseph E., ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Huggins, Nathan I., Martin Kilson, and Daniel M. Fox. Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience. New York: Harcourt Brace, Jovanovich, 1971. Hughes, Langston, Milton Meltzer, C. Eric Lincoln, and Jon Michael Spencer. A Pictorial History of African Americans: From 1619 to the Present. New York: Crown Publishers, 1995. Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. Hurmence, Belinda. Slavery Time: When I was Chillun. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1997. James, C.L.R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, 2nd ed. New York: Vintage, 1989. Jimerson, Randall C. The Private Civil War: Popular Thought during the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. Johnson, Charles, and Patricia Smith. Africans in the Americas: America’s Journey through Slavery. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998. Johnson, Paul E., ed. African-American Christianity: Essays in History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Joyner, Charles. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Kasher, Menachem M. Chumash: Torah Shlemah. Jerusalem: Beit Torah Shlemah, 1992. Katz, William Loren. Eyewitness: The Negro in American History: A Documentary History. New York: Pitman Publishing, 1968. Ketchum, Richard M., ed. The American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War. New York: American Heritage Publishing, 1960. Korn, Bertram W. American Jewry and the Civil War. Marietta: R. Bemis Publishing, 1995. Langston, Scott M. Exodus through the Centuries. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Lehmann, Marcus. Passover Haggadah. New York: n.p., 1974. Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Bereshit (Genesis). Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 1981. Leibowitz, Nehama. Studies in Shemot (Exodus). Jerusalem: Jewish Agency, 1983. Lerner, Gerda. Black Women in White America. New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. 416

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Litwack, Leon F. North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free State, 1790–1860. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961. Litwack, Leon F. Been in the Storm Too Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Loguen, Jermaine W. The Rev. J.W. Loguen, as a Slave and as a Freeman: A Narrative of Real Life. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968. Lonn, Ella. Desertion during the Civil War. New York: Century Co., 1928. Lucas, Marion B. Sherman and the Burning of Columbia. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1976. Lustiger, Arnold, summarized and annotated. Derashot Harav: Selected Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Union, NJ: Ohr Publishing, 2003. Mann, Thomas. Joseph and His Brothers, translated from the German by H.T. LowePorter. London: Vintage, 1999. Mansur, Louis P. The Real War Will Never Get in the Books: Selections from Writers during the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. McGowan, Winston F., James G. Rose, and David A. Granger, eds. Themes in AfroGuyanese History. Georgetown, Guyana: Free Press, 1998. McPherson, James M. The Negro’s Civil War: How American Negroes Felt and Acted during the War for the Union. New York: Vintage Book, 1965. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Ballantine Books, 1989. McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Mellon, James, ed. Bullwhip Days: The Slaves Remember: An Oral History. New York: Avon Books, 1988. Miller, John Chester. The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. Miller, Joseph C. Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Mintz, Steven ed. African American Voices: Life Cycle of Slavery. St. James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1993. Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975. Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the Eighteenth Century Chesapeake & Lowcountry. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996. Mullane, Deirdre, ed. Crossing the Danger Water. New York: Anchor Books, 1993. Mullin, Michael. Africa in America: Slave Acculturation and Resistance in the American South and the British Caribbean, 1736–1831. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Newman, Richard. Go Down, Moses: A Celebration of the African-American Spiritual. New York: Roundtable Press, 1998.

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Noel, Donald L., ed. The Origins of American Slavery and Racism. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill, 1972. Northrup, David, ed. The Atlantic Slave Trade 2nd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Northrup, David. Africa’s Discovery of Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Oshinsky, David M. Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press, 1996. Ott, Thomas O. The Haitian Revolution, 1789–1804. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973. Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Painter, Nell Irvin. Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. Palmer, Colin A. Passageways: An Interpretive History of Black America, 1619–1863, vol. 1. Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998. Pease, William H. and Jane H. Pease, ed. The Antislavery Argument. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1965. Piersen, William Dillon. Black Legacy: America’s Hidden Heritage. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. Pollard, Edward A. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. New York: E.B. Treat, 1866. Price, Richard. The First Time: The Historical Vision of an Afro-American People. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1983. Price, Richard, ed. Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Propp, William H. C. Exodus 1–18, The Anchor Bible. New York; Doubleday, 1999. Quarles, Benjamin. Lincoln and the Negro. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Quarles, Benjamin. The Negro in the Civil War. New York: Da Capo Press, 1989. Raboteau, Albert J. Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Rachleff, Peter. Black Labor in Richmond, 1865–1890. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Ransom, Roger L., and Richard Sutch. One Kind of Freedom: The Economic Consequences of Emancipation, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Redkey, Edwin S., ed. A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861–1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Reis, João Jose. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising in Bahia. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993. Richards, David A. J. Conscience and the Constitution; History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Roland, Charles P. An American Iliad: The Story of the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991. Rosenbaum, Rev. M. and Dr. A.M. Silbermann. Pentateuch with Targum Onkelos, Haphtaroth and Rashi’s Commentary. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1935. Rozwenc, Edwin C., ed. Slavery as a Cause of the Civil War. Boston: D.C. Heath, 1963. 418

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Sarna, Nahum M. Exploring Exodus. New York: Schocken Books, 1986. Schreiber, B. David, ed. Noraot Harav – Volume 8: Lecture on Rambam: Laws of Chometz and Matzoh: Chapter 8 and a Speech on Aspects of the Haggadah. New York: Schreiber, 1998. Silver, James W. Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda. New York: W.W. Norton, 1967. Sitterson, J. Carlyle. Sugar Country: The Cane Sugar Industry in the South, 1753–1950. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1953. Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder: Westview Press, 1993. Smith, Page. Trial by Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. New York: Penguin Books, 1980. Smith, Theophus. Conjuring Culture: Biblical Formations of Black America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. Five Addresses. Jerusalem: Tal Orot Institute, 1973. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. The Emergence of Ethical Man. New York: Ktav, 2005. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. Fate and Destiny: From the Holocaust to the State of Israel. New York: Ktav, 2000. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, edited by Nathaniel Helfgot. Jersey City: Ktav, 2005. Sorotzkin, Zalman. Oznaim la’Torah. Jerusalem: Ha-de’ah ve-ha-dibur, 1996. Stampp, Kenneth M. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South. New York: Vintage Books, 1956. Stampp, Kenneth M. The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Stampp, Kenneth M. America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Staudenraus, P.J. The African Colonization Movement 1816–1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Stewart, James Brewer. Holy Warriors: The Abolitionist Movement and American Slavery. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New York: W.W. Norton 1994. Talmon, Shemaryahu, editor-in-chief. Olam ha-Tanach: Shemot. Tel Aviv: Davidson-Iti, 1993. Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Thorton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 1998. Trudeau, Noah Andre. Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War, 1862–1865. Boston: Little, Brown, 1998. Tuttle, Carolyn. Hard at Work in Factories and Mines: The Economics of Child Labor during the British Industrial Revolution. Oxford: Westview Press, 1999. Tyler, Alice Felt. Freedom’s Ferment. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1962. 419

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Van DeBurg, William L. The Slave Drivers: Black Agricultural Labor Supervisors in the Antebellum South. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979. Walzer, Michael. Exodus and Revolution. New York: Basic Books, 1985. Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. Wesley, Charles H., and Patricia W. Romero. Negro Americans in the Civil War: From Slavery to Citizenship. New York: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1967. Wiggins, Jr., William H. O Freedom!: Afro-American Emancipation Celebrations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987. Wilson, Ian. Exodus: The True Story Behind the Biblical Account. New York: Harper Row, 1985. Wilson, Charles Reagan. Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865–1920. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1980. Wood, Peter H. Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina – From 1670 through the Stono Rebellion. New York: W. W. Norton, 1974. Woodson, Carter G. The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. New York: Arno Press, 1968. Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics and Behavior in the Old South. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982. Yarema, Allan. The American Colonization Society. Lanham: University Press of America, 2006. Yetman, Norman R. Life under the “Peculiar Institution”: Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970. Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis. New York: Image Books, 1995. Zornberg, Avivah Gottlieb. The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus. New York: Doubleday, 2000.

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HEBREW BIBLE COMMENTATORS AND HEBREW WORDS1 Abrabanel. Isaac ben Judah (1437–1508, Portugal, Spain, and Italy). A statesman

and the treasurer of King Alfonso V of Portugal, he fled Portugal during battles over the succession after King Alfonso’s death. He was in the service of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain when they issued the Edict of Expulsion, which gave all Jews four months to leave Spain, on March 31, 1492. He was familiar with concepts of humanism and the world of the Renaissance. These experiences brought a unique perspective to his commentary on the entire Old Testament. He introduces his commentary on each chapter or section with a list of questions that he answers systematically. (His writings have not yet been translated into English.) Akedat Yitzhak. Biblical commentary authored by Arama, Isaac ben Moses (1420– 1494, Spain). This commentary on the Bible is organized as a collection of homilies and allegorical commentaries. It is organized around 105 portals, each one a complete sermon. Each portal had two parts, an investigation (derishah) and exposition (perishah). He designed his sermons as a response to the conversion sermons that were forced upon many Jews of Aragon. Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar. (1696–1743: North Africa and Israel). Talmudic Scholar and Bible commentator. Author of Biblical commentary titled Or Ha-Chaim. Charoset. A paste mentioned in the Talmud (BT Pesachim 116a) that is made of a fruit, spice, nuts, and wine and placed on the Seder plate. Charoset commemorates the mortar used by the Israelites in Egypt in their construction labors. One recipe calls for apple, walnut, and cinnamon. The bitter herb (maror) is dipped into it before being eaten. Chometz. Leavened bread. During the seven days of Passover, Jews are prohibited not only from eating leavened bread, but also from owning or deriving any benefit from it. Choshen Mishpat. All of practical Jewish law was organized into four major sections, called pillars, in the thirteenth century. Choshen Mishpat is the section that focuses on civil law, criminal law, and torts, excluding those contractual issues that relate to marriage. Da’at Zekenim. A commentary on the Five Books of Moses that is drawn from the writings of Talmudic scholars who lived in northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

1

The Encyclopaedia Judaica is the primary source for the material in this section. A second source was The Rishonim, edited by Hersh Goldwurm (New York: Mesorah Publications, 1982). The Internet and information contained in their respective publications were used in the entries of three late twentieth-century Bible commentators and essayists: Leibowitz, Soloveitchik, and Zornberg.

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Ha-amek Davar. A commentary on the Five Books of Moses written by Naftali

Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1817–1893, known as the Netziv) in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Haggada (Hebrew, “the telling”). A text read aloud by Jews around the world during the evening meal on the first night of Passover (and, in the Diaspora, the second night as well). The core of the work is a small collection of verses from the Bible and related oral traditions that were composed almost two thousand years ago. It also includes the Hallel prayer, which is found in Psalms, that praises God. Nevertheless, it is not a full recounting of the Exodus narrative of the Bible. (There are numerous translations of and commentaries on this work.) Halacha. This term encompasses the Jewish legal system that governs all aspects of Jewish life. Hirsch, Samson Raphael (1808–1888, Germany). Rabbinic leader of the neoorthodoxy movement in nineteenth-century Germany: He believed in integrating modern culture with traditional orthodox Judaism. His commentary on the Five Books of Moses (and selected other portions of the Bible) uses a modern idiom to explain the nation of Israel’s mission to the world. (His work, which was written in German, has since been translated into English.) Ibn Ezra, Avraham (1089–1164, Spain and itinerant traveler from Italy, Provence, and Northern France). Commentator, grammarian, poet, philosopher, scientist. He introduced principles of Hebrew grammar taken from Arabic works to Jewish communities of Europe. His commentary on the Pentateuch often refers to grammatical principles in order to explain the simple meaning of the text. He also offers conceptual insights drawn from his own wanderings and life experiences. He was an independent thinker in his approach to the text. Kli Yakar. A commentary on the Bible written by Rabbi Shlomo Efraim of Luntchitz (1550–1619). An orator who published many sermons, he was the head of a yeshiva in Lvov, Poland, before assuming the position of rabbi of Prague. Leibowitz, Nechama (1905–1997, Israel). A Bible scholar, commentator, and teacher, she was the leading teacher of Bible in modern Israel. Her commentary on the Five Books of Moses began as a self-study guide that closed with a list of questions for further study. Her work is a collection of in-depth analyses of various topics, and her commentary compares and contrasts both classical and modern Jewish commentaries. One important contribution was her analysis of linguistic and thematic patterns. (Her work, which was originally written in Hebrew, has since been translated into English.) Maharal. The acronym by which Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609, Prague) is popularly known. The chief rabbi of Prague, a talmudic scholar, philosopher, and mathematician, he wrote extensively, especially about moral issues. He explored many of the midrashic sections in the Talmud, an area that was often neglected in classic Talmudic commentaries. He was particularly interested in the unique role of the Jewish people as an ethical role model even in Exile. Maharsha. The acronym by which Edels, Samuel Eliezer ben Judah Ha-Levi (1555–1631, Poland) is popularly known. The author of a comprehensive talmudic commentary, he divided the work into two parts. One focused on the legal aspects of the Talmud while the other explored the midrashic statements that are spread 422

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throughout that work. He served both as a communal rabbi and as the head of a yeshiva that he founded. Malbim. The acronym by which Meir Loeb ben Jehiel Michal (1809–1879) was known. He is best known for his commentary on the Pentateuch. One of his main themes was the link between Oral Law and the Biblical text, which he endeavored to demonstrate. Maror. The bitter herb mentioned in the Bible that commemorates the bitter life of the Israelite slaves. It is eaten at the seder both by itself and in a sandwich together with matzah. Matzah. Unleavened bread eaten on the first night of Passover and throughout the festival. It commemorates both the Israelites’ hasty departure from Egypt and the bread of affliction that they ate during slavery. Midrash (aggadah and halacha): A collection of rabbinic literature dating from talmudic and post-talmudic times that interprets words and phrases of the Bible. Midrashic aggadah often draws upon subtle nuances of language in order to convey a homiletic message. The Midrashic halacha focuses on laws that can be derived from the text. Some of the collections cited in this work include Mechilta, Midrash Rabbah, Midrash Tanchuma, Vayikra Rabbah, and Zohar Rabbah. Mikraot Gedolot. A standard collection of more than a dozen Hebrew commentaries on the Bible that range from the first-century Targum Onkelos through Rashi, Ramban, and Ibn Ezra of the early Middle Ages to commentaries from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Netziv, initials for Naphtali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1817–1893: Lithuania). Leading talmudic scholar and head of the most prestigious Yeshiva in Europe, Yeshiva Volozhin which was closed by Russian authorities a year before his death. His commentary on the Bible is titled Ha-amek Davar. Onkelos (35–120 CE, Israel). Convert to Judaism who studied with the leading Jewish scholars of his day. He is credited with producing the standard translation of the Bible into Aramaic, Targum Onkelos. Ohr Ha-chaim. Biblical commentary authored by Chaim ben Moses ibn Attar. Paschal Lamb. The animal sacrifice that the Israelites brought on the day before the Exodus. This sacrifice became a permanent Israelite commandment to be fulfilled on the eve of Passover, the fourteenth day of the Hebrew month of Nissan which is the first month of the Israelite national calendar. (The ancient Israelite calendar has two new years. The modern term Rosh Hashanah or New Year refers to the first day of seventh month of the ancient Israelite calendar.) Rabad, initials of Rabbi Avraham ben David, (1125–1998, Posquieres, Southern France) Talmudic scholar, Halachic authority, author of critical glosses of Maimonides and others works, head of a major yeshiva. Rambam. The acronym by which Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135–1204, Egypt) was popularly known. He was also known as Maimonides (son of Maimon). A talmudic scholar, legal codifier, philosopher, and physician, he was the first person to write a systematic code of all of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, which is required reading for all Talmudic scholars. He was also a leading medieval philosopher whose most famous work was The Guide for the Perplexed (which was originally written in Arabic but has since been translated into English). A leading physician of his time, Rambam served as physician to the sultan of Egypt. 423

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Ramban, the acronym by which Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (1194–1270: Spain and Israel) was known. He was also called Nachmanides (“son of Nachman”). A commentator on the Bible and the Talmud, he was a philosopher and physician as well. His commentary on the Five Books of Moses takes a broader and more analytic view than earlier commentaries. He distinguishes between literal and homiletic interpretations and often explores the broad philosophic issues related to the text. Ramban is also famous for defending the Jewish religion in the Disputation of Barcelona, a religious debate held before Spanish king James of Aragon in 1263. Ran, Nissim the son of Reuven Gerondi (1320–1380, Spain) author of Derashot haRan, a collection of essays about the fundamentals of Judaism. He also wrote an extensive commentary on the Talmud and tended to be anti-philosophical in his writings. Rashbam, acronym of Shmuel ben Meir (1085–1174, France). A biblical and talmudic commentator and a grandson of Rashi, his commentary emphasized the literal meaning of individual words. His approach conflicted with the methodology of Rashi, who often referred to midrashic sources. Rashi, acronym of Rabbi Shlomo ben Isaac (1040–1105, northern France). A commentator on the Bible and the Talmud, he wrote the single most famous and comprehensive commentary on both works. All Hebrew Bibles that contains commentaries includes Rashi’s as the foremost one. It is focused on individual words, phrases and sentences and often draws on the Midrash to clarify the meaning or intent of a verse. His work, which he wrote in concise and clear Hebrew with the occasional use of Old French, has since been translated into English. Saadia ben Joseph Gaon (882–942: Egypt and Babylonia). A Bible commentator, philosopher, polemicist, grammarian, and leader of Babylonian Jewry, Saadia Gaon fought against Karaite influence upon traditional Judaism. He wrote much of his work in Arabic, thereby building literary bridges between the Jewish and Muslim communities. His writings emphasize logic and science. Seder. A Hebrew word whose literal meaning is “order,” it refers to the ritual meal that Jews eat on the first night of Passover (and, outside Israel, on the second night as well). At the seder meal, Jews eat matzah and maror (bitter herbs) and drink four cups of wine while reading and discussing the Haggada. In Biblical and Temple times, the meal’s highlight was the roasted meat of the paschal lamb. Sefer ha-Hinuch (Hebrew, “The Book of Education”). This late thirteenth-century work of unknown authorship is organized around the 613 commandments in the order in which they appear in Scripture. One unique aspect of this work is its explanation of the motivation and ultimate purpose of each of the commandments. Sforno, Obadiah ben Jacob (1475–1550, Italy). A bible commentator, philosopher and physician, he emphasized the literal meaning of the text. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. (1903–1993, Boston and New York). Also known simply as “the Rav,” he was a master of Talmud, halacha, philosophy, and Bible. He taught Talmud for more than forty years at Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University in New York City, where he educated more than one thousand future rabbis. He lived in the Boston area, where he was the chief rabbinic authority. Although he published little in his lifetime, his annual public lectures on halacha, philosophy, and Bible drew thousands and were often delivered from 424

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carefully-written notes that have served as the basis for recent publications. His lectures on individual tractates of Talmud are also being organized and published. Sorotzkin, Zalman (1881–1966, Lithuania, Poland, Israel). A rabbi and the author of the Bible commentary Oznayyim la-Torah. Talmud. This Hebrew word refers to a collection of rabbinic quotes and discussions that were compiled and organized over the first five centuries of the Common Era. This work is believed to have its roots in the oral traditions that God gave to Moses but which were forbidden to be written down. The first systemization was carried out by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi towards the end of the second century and the beginning of the third. Known as the Mishnah, it is written in clear and concise Hebrew. The Gemara is organized around the Mishnah and begins mostly with detailed analysis and expansion of the issues that the Mishnah discusses, and then digresses. The Gemara, which is written in Aramaic, is much more complex in its dialectic flow. It consists of 2.5 million words on 5,894 folio pages, organized into six groupings of sixty-three tractates. Approximately one-third of the text is halakha (Jewish law) and two-thirds is aggadah. The entire texts were studied orally until massive persecutions and constant turmoil in the Jewish community led rabbinic authorities to authorize writing it down for fear of losing the knowledge. There are both a Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud (BT) is the primary foundation for Jewish law. (Modern translations into English include extensive supplementary discussions of the text in order to enable the reader to follow the complex logic.) Torah. This Hebrew word refers to the Five Books of Moses, or the Pentateuch. Torah Shlemah. This encyclopedic work organizes all of the midrashic texts associated with each verse of the Five Books of Moses. Written by Menachem Kasher, it includes extensive discussion of each midrashic statement including divergent texts for each citation. Zornberg, Avivah. A lecturer on the Bible who lives in Israel, her style involves developing sophisticated imagery by drawing on the language of the Midrash and analogies in contemporary and classic literature. Her writings on the Bible are in essay form.

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INDEX Aaron 8, 53, 82, 92, 96, 109-10, 134, 157-60, 171-2, 175, 207, 213, 227, 236, 245-52, 254-6, 258-9, 278, 385, 394, 397, 399, 401 abolition 130, 148, 260, 268, 301, 312, 364, 405 abolitionists 20, 111-12, 185, 196, 259, 330, 332, 386 Abrabanel 362, 366, 373-4, 387, 400-1 Abraham 13, 25-7, 29, 34, 36, 41, 53, 65-6, 96, 103, 131-4, 142, 156, 160, 169-71, 175, 177, 195, 223, 225-6, 280, 286, 288, 294, 296-8, 325, 357, 361-2, 373, 376, 381-2 descendants of 13, 25 abuse 36, 52, 70-1, 111, 161, 171-2, 177, 182, 309 Adams, Henry 344 Adams, John Quincy 399 Africa 23, 33, 40, 44-5, 47, 55, 81, 90, 94-5, 98-100, 116, 136, 152, 211, 318, 357, 362-4, 375, 382 African-Americans 8-9, 16-17, 20, 25, 49, 58, 90, 97-100, 104-5, 107, 134-8, 151, 161, 163-4, 170, 178-9, 187, 193, 195, 203, 208, 222, 267, 271, 273-4, 277, 285, 299, 301-2, 304, 310, 313-16, 319, 328-9, 331, 334, 338-9, 347, 356-7, 372, 375-6, 387-8, 394, 404 children 8, 85, 147, 309, 355, 409-10 freedom 9, 299 religion 136, 383 slave experience 17-18, 169 slavery 16, 18, 54, 74, 313, 369 slaves 8, 19, 25, 43, 67, 69, 71, 74, 76, 88, 99, 105, 119, 123, 139, 144, 150, 171, 188, 224 voices 357-8, 360-1, 364, 370-1, 375 Africans 18, 23, 27, 31, 33, 35, 38, 40, 43-5, 47-8, 90, 98-101, 104, 138, 152, 233, 310, 359-60, 362-4, 379, 382 culture 89, 97-8, 136 names 94-5, 374 slave trade 33, 68 slaves 23, 33, 55, 94

agriculture 79-80, 113, 393, 398 crops 35, 78-80, 96, 112, 120, 172, 240, 309, 329, 337, 341, 360, 371, 398 cotton 16, 78, 80, 148, 247, 320, 337, 371-2, 398, 409 rice 34, 78-80, 100, 217 Ajayi 38-9 Akiva, Rabbi 282 Alabama 57, 60, 68, 121, 147, 316, 338, 360, 398 Allen, Richard 155 Amalek 328, 343, 349-50 Amalekites 322, 328, 349 amendments, constitutional 27, 168, 185-6, 230-1, 243, 249, 255, 273-4, 285-6, 305-10, 314, 322, 328, 350, 355, 357, 400-1, 403 America 18, 37, 40, 45, 61-3, 77, 89, 978, 128, 152, 154, 165, 211, 222-3, 259, 268, 311, 317-18, 356, 360, 363, 368-9, 371, 375, 379-80, 386, 391 American blacks 211, 235, 272 freedom 378-9 American Anti-Slavery Society 129, 410 American Colonization Society 9, 116, 316-18, 378, 407 Amos 361 Amram (Moses’ father) 68-9, 118, 370 Andersonville 210 Andrew, John 202 Angola 363-4 Antigua 380 Appomattox 209-10, 232, 243, 255 Arguin, Bay of 33 Arkansas 305, 351, 355 Armistead, James 107 Armstrong, S.C. 212 artisans 78, 81-2, 152 Asbury, Francis 130 Atlanta 241, 244, 256, 305, 398 Augusta 121, 175, 185 Auld, Sophia 163

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authority 35, 49, 51-2, 58, 60, 81, 109, 111-12, 114-16, 150-3, 155, 262-3, 288, 305, 307, 313, 336, 368 positions of 43, 150-2

slaves' 99, 153, 262-3 Bight of Benin 44, 363-4, 380 Bight of Biafra 44, 363-4 Bird, Francis W. 319 birth 18, 29, 32, 63-4, 66, 91-3, 96, 102, 104-6, 117-19, 157, 161, 207, 235, 267, 319, 358, 365, 369-70, 374 bitter herbs 194, 257, 264, 266, 296, 402 bitter waters 92, 291 black America 322, 383-4 church 154, 311-12, 345, 348 independent 154, 347, 411 codes 174, 243, 306, 340 colleges 355, 404 community 122, 259, 312, 324, 345, 348 congregations 347, 411 delegates 156 families 155, 388 folk 375, 384-5 legacy 375 mariners 154-5 population 58, 273, 316, 330, 345 preacher 155, 264, 330, 344 progress 355-6 republic 122, 165 slave-drivers 79 slaves 19, 57-8, 63, 68, 75, 81, 83, 107, 123, 136, 142, 170, 222, 225, 235, 356, 371, 387 soldiers 11, 165, 195-6, 202, 217, 231, 262-3, 303, 305, 321, 333, 388, 390 students 356, 409 suffrage 308-9 troops 200, 312, 389 blackness 97, 310 blacks 14, 20, 55, 58, 61-4, 83, 86, 88-9, 98, 107-8, 116, 120, 122, 124, 136, 138, 151-2, 154, 156, 165, 168, 177, 179, 182, 185-7, 191-2, 195-6, 199200, 202-3, 205-6, 209, 211, 217-18, 222-3, 231-2, 243, 259, 263, 271-2, 275-7, 301-13, 316-23, 328-33, 33841, 345, 347-9, 351, 354-7, 368-9, 375, 378, 380, 383, 388, 400, 404, 407-11 American 155, 317 emancipated 339, 354, 388 enslaved fellow 311, 318 enslavement of 61, 209 free 60, 107, 115, 136, 143, 154, 156, 178, 180, 244, 306, 345, 378 freedom of 185, 243, 272

baby, slave 67-8, 119, 127, 146 Baltimore 49, 81, 121, 163 Baptist 121, 136, 277, 337, 348 Baquaqua, Mahommad 45 battle 33-4, 36, 41, 53, 103, 107, 130, 138, 176, 199-200, 202, 209, 220, 222, 231, 242, 252, 285-6, 302-4, 328, 349-50, 353, 357, 370, 390, 411 in Africa 33, 36 in Bible 34, 41, 53, 103, 220, 242, 328, 349-50, 353, 370 in Civil War 107, 199-200, 202, 209, 222, 252, 304 battlefield 125, 196, 202-3, 222, 231, 243, 254-5, 328, 350 beaten 19, 38, 67, 76, 79, 109-11, 142, 185, 377 Beecher, Frances and James 333 Beer Sheba 26, 30, 41-2, 102 beliefs 38, 87, 90, 98-9, 128-9, 131-4, 138-9, 150, 162, 169, 178-9, 182, 185, 192, 205-9, 225, 228, 231, 249, 255, 265, 267, 288, 305, 322, 327, 346-7, 350, 373, 381, 391, 396, 401 Bell, John 400 Benezet, Anthony 129 Benjamin 36-7, 91, 361, Benjamin, Judah P. 253, 255, 400-1 Berry, Henry 331 Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church 155 Bibb, Henry 71, 383 Bible 13-16, 26, 30-2, 35, 37, 41-2, 51-4, 59, 65-6, 69-70, 72, 77, 82, 84-5, 88, 91, 96, 102-3, 105, 109, 117-20, 125, 127-8, 131, 133, 136-9, 146, 158-9, 164, 167, 181, 187, 190, 199, 208-9, 213, 215, 221, 225-8, 233, 236-8, 243, 247-8, 250-2, 254-6, 258-9, 266, 278, 280-1, 289-90, 293, 311, 322, 324-5, 328, 330, 332-4, 348-9, 358, 362, 364-5, 375, 378, 381-2, 386, 389, 391-4, 397, 399, 401-3 biblical 16-21, 28, 30-1, 43, 52-3, 64, 84, 117, 123, 138, 146, 158, 169, 172, 203, 213, 215, 245, 255, 278-9, 281, 286, 293-4, 361, 374, 378, 408 Big House Pharoah's 91

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northern 165, 182, 272, 303, 318, 410 recruit, military 11, 107, 165, 200, 252, 302-4, 390 southern 180, 276, 308, 322, 330-1, 346, 348, 355 blacksmiths 81, 152 blessings 32, 102, 149-50, 163-4, 204, 276, 283, 290, 376 God's 102, 149-50 blood 19, 30, 43, 46-7, 67, 133, 146-7, 159, 170-2, 176, 187, 194-5, 207-8, 215-16, 221-2, 236, 242, 250, 257-8, 285, 289-90, 312, 319-20, 325, 37980, 389, 392-3, 396, 402-3, 406 bondage 25-7, 53, 58, 90-2, 123, 137, 142, 154, 159, 161, 163, 169, 190, 217, 219, 223-4, 235, 279, 287, 301, 305, 323, 343, 390-1 bones Joseph's 26, 99, 132-3, 142, 205, 297, 391 Paschal lamb 195, 265 Boston 182, 200, 216, 260, 268, 357, 359, 372, 380, 388-9, 393, 395, 397, 407, 409 boys 53, 68, 70, 113, 118-19, 283, 336, 387, 409 Bragg, Braxton 244 bread 35, 40, 59, 192, 213-15, 266, 273, 282, 299, 326, 339, 403 of affliction 65, 214, 266, 281, 296 leavened 214-15, 266, 403 unleavened 9, 194, 213, 264, 266, 274, 284, 402 Breckenridge, John C. 400 Brent, Linda 66, 70, 77, 85, 369-71, 373, 388, 393 British colonies 104-5, 381 brothers 11, 15, 23, 26, 28-31, 36-7, 423, 51, 67-8, 91-2, 102, 142, 146, 1612, 204, 268, 295, 358-9, 361-2, 365-6, 384, 391 Brown, John 229, 285 Brown, Joseph E. 254 Brown, William Wells 211 Buchanan, James 230-1 burdens 8, 67-8, 72, 82, 87, 110, 157, 202, 289, 317, 365-6, 368, 370 Burke, William 318 burying 175, 203, 205-6 Butler, Benjamin 300, 303, 390

Cambridge 121 Camden 121 camp Civil War 185, 187, 195, 203, 217, 301, 304, 328, 333-4 Israelite 42, 65, 157, 186, 191, 199, 293, 326, 339, 342-3, 349, 353, 382, 385, 403 Canaan 13, 25-6, 29, 35, 40, 42-3, 96, 99-100, 103, 132, 134, 142, 156, 160, 188, 205-6, 208, 224, 226-7, 277, 280, 287, 294, 296-8, 315, 328, 3389, 342-3, 364, 376, 381-2, 386, 408 Canada 123, 129, 142, 181-2, 312, 316, 332, 383 captives 23, 33-5, 37-8, 44-8, 68, 121, 175, 196, 215, 264, 298, 360, 364 caravan 30-1, 359 Cary, Major John B. 300 Catholic 347, 368, 385 celebrate 9, 11, 12, 85, 87, 96, 134, 137, 170, 180, 203, 208, 217, 255, 258-60, 263-8, 271-3, 275-7, 282, 293, 296, 343, 346, 394, 401, 403 census 44, 59, 101, 104-5, 143, 158, 268, 305, 357, 360, 367-8, 375-6, 378, 404 Chambersburg 397 Channing, William E. 20 charity 282, 292, 295 Charles Town 125 Charleston 11, 49, 104-5, 107, 121, 125, 200, 203-4, 212, 244, 263, 320-1, 347, 380, 411 Chase, Salmon P. 400 cheers 196, 203-4, 208, 263 children 23, 29-30, 35, 40, 42, 44, 46, 49, 52, 54-6, 62, 65-9, 74-8, 80, 90, 92-5, 100, 102-3, 105-6, 114, 117-19, 1278, 131, 137, 142-3, 146-8, 158, 162, 168, 171, 182, 185, 193-4, 205-6, 216, 219, 229, 232, 242-4, 254, 258, 262, 266-8, 273-9, 283, 287, 290, 293-4, 297-9, 305, 311, 313, 323, 325, 327, 330, 332-4, 336-8, 341-2, 354, 357-8, 362, 364-7, 370-1, 375-7, 380, 388, 391, 394-5, 397, 401-2, 404, 410 enslaved 81, 86 female 118, 146 male 53, 64, 66, 76, 84, 91-2, 118, 131, 146, 358 white 86, 147, 332 chok 292

Caleb 191 Calhoun, John C. 399

428

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

Christianity 98, 135, 209, 347, 379, 383, 406 Chumash 15, 358-9, 361, 401-2 Chumash Torah Shelemah 361-2, 366-7, 369, 371-2, 374, 376-9, 381, 384, 387, 410 churches 136, 186, 259, 268, 271, 311, 316, 324, 337, 347-9, 354, 380, 383, 411 circumcision 133-4, 195, 207, 354, 382, 389-90, 392 cities 35-6, 40, 52, 72-3, 104, 116, 125, 143, 179, 182, 204, 256, 260, 263, 274-5, 303, 315, 332, 345-6, 348, 361, 366, 396-8, 409, 411 citizens 96, 164, 230, 241-2, 286, 30810, 313, 315-16 civil rights 277, 286, 306, 308-9, 337, 344, 351, 354, 411 Civil Rights Act 243, 307-8, 355 Civil War 9, 14, 20, 44, 57, 61, 70, 86, 96, 104-5, 108, 128, 143, 155, 162, 164-5, 168, 170-1, 175-6, 178-9, 182, 185-7, 192-3, 196, 202, 209-11, 21516, 222-5, 227-9, 231-3, 235-6, 238, 240, 242, 246, 248, 252, 254, 274, 283, 285-6, 299, 301-3, 306, 311, 314, 317, 319, 328, 337, 340, 355, 367, 369, 372, 375, 377-8, 384, 386, 388-403, 405-10 clause, equality 63, 192, clause, slavery 59, 62, 230, 307 59, 62, 230 Clay, Henry 317 Clayton, Powell 351 Cleburne, Patrick 252 clergy 136, 231-3, 331, 349 white 330, 347-8 Clinton. William Jefferson 392 cloud in wilderness, God's 186, 228, 232, 342-3 Cobb, Howell 253 Code Noir (early black code) 60 Coffin, Levi 129 Coke, Thomas 130 colonies 44, 57, 59-60, 98, 101, 134-5, 143, 277, 367 color 11, 20, 74, 97-8, 129, 151, 154, 156, 200, 204, 259-60, 271, 310, 313, 318, 347-8, 380, 409 people of 11, 20, 151, 154, 156, 200, 259-60, 308, 318, 323, 357, 380, 404, 409

colored troops and regiments 200, 202-4, 212, 333-4, 390 Columbia 241, 244, 259, 302, 357, 398, 402 Columbus 12, 273, 332 commanders 174, 299-300, 333, 388, 390, 394 commandments 19, 21, 53, 131-4, 156, 167, 188, 194, 203, 227, 266-7, 2913, 295, 298, 324-5, 327-8, 336, 339, 353, 382, 389, 393, 403 commentaries 16, 29, 84, 88, 350, 358, 362, 378, 387, 395, 397, 399, 403 communities 28, 45, 95, 99, 122, 271, 274, 276, 281, 286, 312, 315, 317, 349, 363, 385, 410 compensation for slavery 9, 13, 85, 16970, 175, 177-80, 188, 190, 239, 243, 263, 288, 302, 386-8, 402 Confederacy 174, 180, 204, 232-3, 2356, 240-1, 249, 252-4, 277, 300, 305, 401 conflict 88, 95, 168, 174, 176, 182, 199, 209, 220, 222, 235-8, 242, 247-8, 254-5, 331, 350, 369, 375, 398-9 congregations 137, 155, 283-4, 348, 403 Congress 156, 178-9, 209, 229-30, 239, 246, 253, 267, 272, 286, 300-1, 303, 305-7, 309-10, 332, 351, 354, 368, 395, 402 conjurers 133, 138, 155, 249 Connecticut 155, 196, 308, 316 Connolly, James A. 242 conscience 53, 141, 143, 175, 357 consciousness, dual 97-8 conspiracies 81, 124-6, 378 Constitution, state 62, 309 Constitution, US 59, 61-2, 115, 164, 180, 182, 185-6, 230-1, 233, 243, 248-9, 267, 274, 285, 300, 305-7, 309, 313, 322, 355, 368, 388, 400 contraband 9, 215, 299-301 contract 14, 161, 168, 219, 291, 306, 308-9, 329-30, 333, 338, 372, 376-7, 398-9 control 80, 84, 86, 109, 114, 119, 125-6, 169, 181, 206, 210, 216, 220-1, 2423, 249, 263, 303, 308, 342-3, 347, 377, 393, 411 controlling African-American slaves 8, 114 conventions 62, 308-10, 312, 318, 329, 407 Conway, Thomas W. 320

429

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couples 118, 243, 336-7, 377 covenant 25, 96, 131, 133-4, 160, 168, 219, 223, 225-6, 288, 293-4, 296-7, 311, 314, 322-3, 325, 343, 346, 382, 385 Covey 73, 75, 173, 387 Cowden, Robert 334 Craft, William and Ellen 123 Crawford, John 86 crew, ship’s 46-7, 364 cries 25, 131-2, 146, 167, 172, 223, 281, 315, 401 crimes 36, 180, 188, 276, 285, 292, 386 criminal 180, 386 Cuffee, Paul 155 culture 90, 95, 97, 206, 209, 211, 220-1, 271, 288, 294, 324, 351, 353, 362-3, 382, 391 dominant 90, 135, 206-7 cups of wine at Passover meal, four 2823, 296, 406 Curtis, George William 20

Jewish or Israelite 26, 28-30. 102, 134, 168, 188, 206, 227-8, 243, 245, 266, 278, 282, 287, 291, 294-6, 325, 397, 401, 406 destruction 9, 83, 88, 187-8, 206, 208, 227, 236-8, 240, 265-6, 279, 282, 288, 324, 328, 361, 397-8, 403 Deuteronomy 34, 49, 53, 68, 132, 167, 188, 214, 220, 227-8, 278-9, 281, 287, 293-5, 298, 314, 326, 328, 339, 346, 349, 353, 360, 370, 378, 386, 389, 391, 393, 395, 403, 406 discrimination 311, 315, 356 diseases 46-8, 97, 173, 251, 253, 291, 364, 401 dogs 64, 187-8 doorposts, blood on 43, 187, 194, 208, 258, 289, 325, 402 Douglass, Frederick 8, 19-20, 67, 73, 75, 81, 114, 122, 144, 147, 161, 163-5, 173, 188, 196, 259, 272, 303, 305, 315-16, 344, 357, 371, 384, 386-7, 389-90, 402, 410 dreams 25, 28-30, 139, 142, 144, 297, 315, 321, 338-40, 355-6, 411 Dred Scott decision 61-2, 129, 230 drunk 296, 406 Du Bois, W.E.B. 98, 144, 375, 384, 3878, 390-1, 393-4, 404 duties 60, 112, 279, 294, 312, 323-4, 331, 334, 346

dances 99, 136-7, 259, 348, 383 Daniel 136, 144, 224 darkness 9, 75, 173, 207, 215, 220, 279, 282-3, 326, 342-3, 351, 387, 394 David 139, 370 Davis, Jefferson 174, 202, 231, 246-7, 252-6, 310, 398, 401 Davis, General Jefferson C. 185 death 31, 37-8, 43, 46-7, 56, 59, 63, 667, 70, 76, 85, 99, 106, 110-11, 122-3, 127, 137, 143, 145, 164, 173-4, 176, 185, 188, 202, 208, 215, 227-9, 2378, 245, 251, 256, 258, 297-8, 360, 363-5, 370, 373, 378, 387, 393, 410 master's 124, 143 deception 84, 87, 389 Declaration of Independence 58, 61-2, 97, 164, 192, 271, 313, 318 Delaware 162, 301-2, 404 departure 13, 67, 205, 208, 213-14, 237, 242, 255, 257, 274, 283, 286, 296, 386 hasty 9, 187, 213-15, 217, 392 (see also escape) Dere 144, 162 descendants 13, 26, 29, 40-1, 43, 141, 170, 177, 188, 214, 225, 274, 277, 286, 297, 338, 361-2, 376, 395 destiny 235, 314 African-American 114, 136 , 222, 243, 277

Early, Jubal 209, 397 education 10, 74, 115, 136, 154, 208, 211, 310-11, 317, 322-4, 330-4, 348, 354-6, 408-10 (see also instruction) public 322-3, 333 Egypt 18, 20, 23, 26, 30-2, 35-8, 40-3, 46, 49, 51-4, 59, 61, 65-6, 69, 71-2, 87-8, 90-3, 96-7, 100-3, 110, 119, 123, 127, 131-4, 139-40, 142, 144, 146, 151, 156-9, 167, 170, 172-3, 175-7, 181, 187-8, 190-1, 194, 199, 203, 205-8, 213-15, 219-21, 223-4, 227-9, 235-7, 242-3, 245, 247, 24954, 257-9, 264-8, 271, 274, 277-83, 286-91, 293-4, 296-9, 311, 315, 3227, 339, 341-3, 346, 353-4, 359, 361-2, 364-6, 376-7, 382, 386, 388-9, 392-5, 397, 401, 403, 408 burdens of 219, 288-9 disgrace of 134, 195, 294, 354 fetishes of 90, 134 firstborn of 187, 242

430

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

gods of 206-7, 227 livestock of 236-7 slaves of Pharaoh in 141, 279 vizier of 30, 32 Egyptian 19, 42-3, 51, 54, 66, 72, 82, 84, 87-8, 96, 103, 109, 111, 117, 119-20, 127-8, 134, 150, 158-60, 170-3, 175, 177-8, 181, 186-8, 190, 193-4, 199, 205-8, 215, 219-20, 227, 236-7, 240, 245, 251-2, 255, 257-8, 280, 289, 291, 298, 313, 324, 342, 346, 349, 358, 362, 365, 370, 373-4, 378, 382, 387, 389, 393-4, 397, 405, 408 army 88, 167, 187-8, 225, 243, 288 beliefs 207, 346 bodies 221, 243 bondage 16, 23, 125 cattle 251, 397 common people 237 culture 131-2, 188, 206-8, 287 enslavement 132, 287 experience 9, 281 firstborn 157, 176, 207, 215, 267, 394, 401 gods 90, 134, 206 homes 258, 369 household 172, 174, 221 magicians 133 neighbors 43, 54, 88, 190, 193, 203, 324, 346 people 49, 53, 59, 65, 109, 205-6, 213, 250, 397 people's self-image 236 plagues 326 population 43, 362 power 142, 288 princess 8, 127 servitude 25, 219 slave bureaucracy 8, 111 slave society 346 society 40, 43, 100, 103, 159, 258, 365 sojourn 167, 259, 281 taskmasters 70, 91, 123, 128, 267, 377 women 64, 119 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 355 Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi 282-3 elders of Israel 87, 90, 100, 132, 152, 156-7, 187, 226, 247, 321, 341, 385, 399 Eliezer, Rabbi 282 emancipation 9, 11, 16, 18-20, 85, 95, 98, 130, 162, 176, 178, 186-7, 191-3, 196, 211, 214, 218, 222, 224-5, 228, 231-2, 252-3, 255, 259-60, 262-3,

272-7, 299, 301, 305, 308, 311, 318, 323, 344, 346, 348, 378, 387, 398, 405 Emancipation Proclamation 11, 20, 168, 170, 182, 185-6, 217, 222-3, 231, 259-60, 262, 273-4, 285, 302-5, 322, 356, 393, 402, 404-5 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 259 emigration 301, 312, 316-18 encampments Civil War 200, 304, 333 Israelite 325-6,339, 342, 382 enemies 34, 51, 103, 107, 176, 181, 186, 193, 199, 206, 231, 239-40, 253, 300, 328, 349-50, 353, 365, 379 enslaved 8, 13, 25, 27, 33, 40, 44-5, 54, 56, 61-3, 78-9, 81-3, 86, 89, 111-13, 120-1, 124-5, 138, 141, 144, 152, 161-2, 171, 199, 222, 225, 235, 301, 311-13, 315, 318, 323, 327, 336-7, 360, 362-3, 365, 376, 380, 388 Africans 27, 33, 36, 44-5, 81, 233, 360, 362-3, 380 blacks 8, 23, 36, 44, 56, 62-3, 70, 78-9, 81-3, 86, 89, 111-13, 120-1, 124-5, 144, 152, 162, 222, 232, 235, 301, 312, 315, 323, 336, 363, 380, 388 Israelites 13, 19, 23, 25-7, 37, 40-1, 49, 52-4, 61, 84, 87, 92, 111, 117, 138, 141, 171-2, 174-5, 190, 225, 311, 327, 346, 358, 376, 385 woman 86, 121 enslavement, political 28, 51, 69-70, 901, 141, 190 equality 16, 63, 163-4, 176, 181, 191-2, 195-6, 199, 202-4, 233, 286, 308, 332, 347, 355-6, 375, 391 era, post-Civil War 272, 274 escape 20, 38, 107, 115, 122-5, 142, 154, 161-3, 181, 185, 215-16, 224, 287, 295, 310, 315, 332, 380, 390 ethnic groups 53, 380 ethnicity 124, 363-4 Europe 45, 48, 63, 76, 360-1, 364 Europeans 27, 34, 37-8, 45, 47, 358-61 Ewing, Thomas C. 240 Exodus 14, 16-20, 25, 42-3, 49, 51-4, 59, 61, 64-6, 69, 71-2, 74, 76, 82, 84-8, 90-2, 96, 99, 102-3, 107, 109-10, 117-19, 123, 127-8, 131-4, 137-41, 146, 156-60, 167-8, 170, 172-3, 1758, 180-1, 186-8, 190-1, 193-4, 199, 203, 205-8, 213-17, 219-29, 235-7, 243, 245-7, 249-54, 256-9, 265-8,

431

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

274, 278-82, 286-91, 293-9, 311-12, 315, 322-8, 330, 341-2, 346, 349-50, 353-4, 357, 362, 364-79, 381-9, 3917, 399-408 Ezekiel 90

free will 27, 188, 194, 245, 247, 252, 295-6, 358 freedmen 61, 96, 116, 155, 162, 179, 181, 192, 195, 223, 267, 274, 317, 320-1, 323, 332-3, 337-8 344-5, 408 second-generation 211, 274 Freedmen's Bureau 165, 180, 262, 307, 329, 333, 338, 345 freedom 9-10, 19, 57-8, 60, 62-3, 85-6, 89, 107-8, 115-16, 121-3, 125-6, 1357, 142-3, 149, 155-6, 161-4, 169-70, 175-7, 181-2, 185-7, 191, 193, 195, 209, 214-18, 226, 244, 248, 252-3, 257, 262-6, 268, 271-4, 277, 279-80, 282-3, 285-6, 288, 296, 301-2, 306, 311-12, 314-15, 317, 319, 321-3, 325, 331-2, 334, 338-9, 341-2, 344, 346-7, 350, 353-4, 367-9, 377-82, 384, 3878, 393, 398-9, 401-2, 404-8, 410 complete 87, 282 economic 60, 180, 280, 299, 306, 322, 340 guaranteed 168, 377 of movement 152, 343 permanent 142, 299 physical 219, 286 symbol of 296, 323 Fremont, General John C. 300 Fugitive Slave Law 115, 123, 164, 182, 209, 229, 272, 299, 316 funerals 99, 137

factories 76-7, 241, 244, 362, 371 faith 87, 118, 131, 139, 142, 144-5, 167, 194, 213, 216, 219, 258, 291, 303, 321-2, 325, 339, 362, 389, 393 (see also beliefs) Falconbridge 46, 357 family size 105-6 famine 26, 35, 40, 54, 59, 93, 131, 160, 297 farms 78, 83, 100, 113, 122, 150, 176, 179, 263, 343, 377, 380 fasting 231-2, 396 fate 20, 27, 38, 88, 227, 295-6, 307, 310, 343 father 15, 26, 29-30, 36-7, 40, 42-3, 51, 68, 75, 89, 118, 123, 132, 146, 15861, 164, 174, 234, 237, 267-8, 278, 280-1, 297-8, 319, 336-7, 358, 361-2, 366, 381 Fayette 283 fears 88, 107-8, 176, 181-2, 187-8, 208, 258-9, 288, 297, 340, 377 fight 16, 95, 123, 176, 182, 185, 193, 196, 202, 209, 230, 242-3, 247, 253, 267, 271, 303, 312, 329-30, 349, 369, 381, 410 Finley, Robert 317 firstborn 127, 157-8, 173-5, 205-6, 215, 237, 245, 256, 258, 266, 291, 385, 387, 389, 391, 393 fish 102, 171-2, 236, 339, 369 Fisk, Clinton B. 320 Florida 57, 121, 125, 320, 372, 380, 407 forefathers 8, 26, 131-2, 156, 214, 278, 283, 287, 346 foremen 76, 109, 111, 141, 152-3 Forrest, Nathan Bedford 186, 388 Fort Sumter 204, 232, 246, 249, 401 Fort Wagner 200, 202 Fortress Monroe 216, 300 Fox, George 128 France 60, 176, 368 Frankfort 121 Franklin 367-8, 377-9, 389 Fredericksburg 121 free people 162, 208, 278, 309, 324, 338 of color 151, 154, 156, 318

gang system 83, 372 Garrett, Thomas 129 Garrison, William Lloyd 164 General Order 239, 398 generations 14, 29, 58, 62, 71, 81, 90-1, 94-5, 97, 99, 102, 131, 137, 157, 173, 188, 190-1, 208, 213-14, 219, 226-7, 242, 245, 257, 265-6, 273-4, 276-80, 282, 297, 299, 313-15, 327, 330, 3389, 348, 354, 356, 373-4, 376, 388-9, 392, 403 Genesis 13, 23, 25-6, 28, 30-2, 34-5, 37, 40-3, 51, 53, 59, 65-6, 70, 93, 96, 99, 102, 118, 131-2, 142, 150-1, 170, 297, 357-9, 361-2, 365-6, 369, 373-4, 376, 385-6, 389, 391, 403 Georgia 12, 44, 57, 60, 69, 96, 107-8, 121, 175, 235, 241, 253-5, 273, 284, 304, 310, 320, 332, 345, 351, 354, 360, 372, 377, 398, 404, 410 Gettysburg 252, 285 Gibbon, Edward 62

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BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

Gill, James 86 Girardeau, John 234 God God Almighty 226, 240 God’s outstretched arm or hand 2145, 220, 222, 278-9, 287-8, 290 God's people 159, 234 God's power 220-1, 250 God's promise 13, 175, 205-6, 297-8 gods 133-4, 168, 205-6, 220, 227, 249, 280, 346, 365 gold 33-4, 82, 88, 177, 193, 287, 362 Gold Coast 44, 359, 362-4 Gooding, James Henry 193 Goshen 42-3, 51, 103, 105, 109, 156, 181, 236, 251, 289, 362, 365, 375, 393-4, 397 government 19, 40, 42, 151, 202, 233, 246, 255, 299-300, 308, 313-14, 317, 319-21, 338-9, 366 Granger, Gordon 262, 273 Grant, Ulysses S. 11, 196, 235, 240-1, 304, 398 Green, Elijah 89 Grimes, William 123

Henson, Josiah 67 Herskovits 100, 372, 374-5 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 200, 260, 263, 303, 402 Hinds, James 351 Hirsch 54, 71-2, 141, 157, 172, 213, 2267, 236, 289-90, 292, 349-50, 358, 361-2, 366-8, 370, 375, 378, 385, 392-3, 395, 397, 403, 406 holy nation 14, 19, 168, 266, 286, 291, 294-5, 298, 323, 339, 353 Home, Henry 62 homes 32, 34, 44, 47, 52, 64, 77, 86, 93, 103, 108-9, 112, 129, 147, 158, 162, 171, 173, 176, 187, 194, 202, 215, 217-18, 227, 242-3, 258-60, 263-4, 274, 283, 289, 297, 310, 314, 318, 325, 330, 336, 340-1, 343, 346, 354, 375, 379, 393-4, 403, 406 house 31, 42-3, 66, 69, 91, 93, 117, 139, 150-1, 178, 185, 190, 216, 227, 237, 239-40, 245, 253, 257-8, 262, 289, 295, 360, 366, 370, 386-7 households 26, 35, 42, 46, 57, 69-70, 91, 119, 127, 134, 150, 157, 194, 215-16, 257-8, 287, 338, 373, 377 Howard, Oliver Otis 320 human beings 27, 63, 169, 188, 221, 226, 324, 326, 375, 393 Hume, David 62 Hunter, David 303, 390 Hunter, William H. 264, 347 Huntsville 121 husbands 52, 68-71, 75, 78, 103, 117, 143, 161, 163, 253, 336-7, 360, 373

Haggadah 68, 128, 278-82, 296, 389, 405 Hahn 407-11 Haiti 108, 124, 165, 176-8, 229, 317, 380 Revolution 175, 177, 214, 380 Hale, John Parker 400 Halleck, General Henry W. 240, 300 Hampton Institute 211-12 Hampton Roads Peace Conference 254 Harney, William S. 299 Hayes, Rutherford B. 354 heart 46, 61, 68-9, 88, 109, 144, 148, 228, 230-1, 235-7, 240-1, 245, 250, 252, 267, 272, 295-6, 318, 343, 353, 373, 382 hardened Pharaoh's 186, 256 heavens 20, 25, 139, 141, 144, 162, 173, 221, 224-5, 228, 232, 251, 298, 315, 324, 326, 362, 395 Hebrew midwives 53, 76, 118-19 names 43, 90, 92-4, 374 terms 226, 292-3, 365 Hebrews 8, 19, 71, 91, 96-8, 110, 119, 123, 131, 146, 158, 171, 205, 208, 247, 250, 264, 345, 365, 378, 393, 399 Henderson, George E. 277 Henry, Patrick 228, 395

Iberian Peninsula 33 identity cultural 8, 43, 90, 93-4, 98, 100, 222, 373 national 17-18, 45, 61, 167, 188, 265, 299, 310-11 idols 381, 403 Illinois 272, 308, 316, 368, 390, 407 image 11, 52, 67, 71-2, 117, 139, 152, 169, 173, 181, 187-8, 193, 206, 20910, 220, 223, 235, 258, 262-3, 266, 272, 274, 287-8, 331, 347, 382, 397, 404 imports 99, 101, 105 incantations 133, 245, 249-50 incidents Biblical 23, 59, 109, 132, 134, 158-9, 349, 381, 402, 410

433

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involving Blacks 125, 369-371, 388 indentured servants 55, 57, 406 independence 74, 81, 121, 136, 147, 164, 176-7, 205, 209, 252-3, 303, 346, 354 Indiana 272, 316, 368 infants 11, 66, 127, 146, 149, 171-2, 370, 375, 378 inferior 61-2, 147, 192, 206, 208, 313, 355 instruction, black 83, 135, 163, 350 insurrection 107-8, 125, 202, 394 Isaac 26, 29, 36, 131-2, 142, 156, 195, 223, 225-6, 286, 288, 297-8, 358, 361-2, 381, 385 Isaiah, Book of 366, 401 Ishmael 29, 376 Ishmaelites 30, 359, 361 Israel 8, 28-30, 41-2, 49, 51-2, 54, 65, 74, 76, 87-8, 90-1, 96, 100, 131-2, 134, 137, 156-8, 167-8, 173, 181, 185, 187, 191, 194, 205-8, 219, 221, 223, 225, 227-9, 232, 237, 242-3, 247, 258, 264, 266, 274, 277-8, 280, 282-3, 285, 287, 290-1, 293-6, 298, 311, 313, 321, 324, 328, 346, 349-50, 353, 361, 365-7, 382, 385, 388, 3914, 397, 399, 402-3, 405-6 Israelite behavior in Egypt 132, 134 camp 157, 186, 191, 199, 326 children 127, 172, 278, 384 community in Egypt 59, 156, 267 family 42, 99, 326, 346 foremen 76, 111 freedom 9, 286 generations 25, 287, 353 history 9, 13-14, 16-17, 19-20, 51, 62, 67, 90, 93, 96-7, 101, 112, 118, 139, 168, 170, 174, 176, 191, 219, 221-2, 226-8, 230-3, 268, 274, 277-8, 283, 293, 313, 324, 349, 357, 361, 367, 381, 383, 387, 399, 404-5 homes 91, 194, 336 journey 137, 257, 342 labor 16, 54, 59, 72-4, 76, 78, 82, 84, 109-10, 141, 172, 177, 180, 247, 283, 288, 365, 367, 370, 377 nation 18, 28, 52, 110, 133, 157, 167, 174, 190, 193, 213, 219, 223-4, 228, 250, 281, 311, 315, 378, 395, 402-3 destiny 397, 401 people 59, 65, 72, 93, 103, 134, 146, 287, 291, 294, 297, 365, 389 population 8, 59, 99, 102, 105, 376

slavery 25, 40, 52, 66, 70, 138, 169, 191, 288, 358, 386 slaves 19, 52, 65, 71-3, 109, 131, 172, 246, 377, 397 Israelites 8, 16, 18, 20, 23, 25-7, 35, 40, 43, 46, 49, 51-4, 61, 64-6, 69-70, 724, 76, 78, 82, 84-5, 87-8, 90-3, 101-3, 109-10, 117, 125, 128, 131-4, 138-42, 144, 146, 156-7, 159-61, 167-72, 175-8, 180-2, 185-8, 190, 193-5, 199, 203, 205-8, 213-16, 219, 221, 223-4, 226-9, 233, 235-8, 242, 245, 247, 250-3, 255-8, 264-7, 274, 279-82, 285-96, 298, 301, 311-15, 322-8, 330, 334, 338-9, 341-3, 346, 349, 353-4, 357-8, 360, 362, 364-7, 369-70, 3734, 376, 382, 384-5, 387, 389, 392-3, 395, 397, 400-2, 405-6, 408, 410 Jackson, Andrew 246, 399 Jacob 23, 26, 28-9, 31, 37, 41-2, 66, 70, 91, 93, 99-100, 102, 122, 131-2, 142, 156-7, 195, 223, 225-6, 286, 288, 297-8, 358, 361-2, 381 children of 29, 41-2 Jacobs, Henry S. 241 Jamestown 55, 104, 367 jealousy 28-9, 36 Jefferson, Thomas 60, 62-3, 98, 233, 267, 312, 368-9, 375 Jeremiah 213 Jerusalem 126, 265, 282, 290, 295, 358, 367, 375, 403 Jesus 68, 138-40, 224, 403, 406 Jethro 157-8 Jewish 13, 16, 26, 28-9, 32, 37, 158, 298, 390 history 41, 279-80, 282, 295, 358 people 160, 279-80, 282-3, 290, 292, 294-6, 298, 325, 349, 394 Jews 20, 37, 51, 53-4, 93, 96-7, 214-15, 221, 265, 267, 273-4, 278-80, 284, 291-2, 295, 298, 349, 361, 367, 373, 381, 391-2, 403 Joel, J.A. 283 Johnson, Andrew 165, 180, 307, 320-1, 339 Johnson, Bradley 196 Johnson, Herschel V. 232 Jonah 139, 144, 224 Jones, James F. 204 Jones, John William 209 Jones, William 305

434

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

Joseph 8, 23, 25-32, 35-7, 39-43, 51, 54, 59, 91, 93, 96-7, 99-100, 102, 131-3, 142, 150-1, 176, 205-6, 297-8, 358-9, 361-2, 364-6, 405 brothers of 29, 36-7, 41, 43, 359, 365 family of 43, 51 journey of 23, 31, 38, 358 Joshua 137, 191, 226, 280, 294, 297, 328, 349, 354, 382, 392, 405 Book of 134, 206, 280, 294, 354, 389 joy 137, 248, 258-9, 266-7, 271-2, 276, 279, 283 Joyner 372, 379, 382-3 JPS 66, 88, 90-1, 141-2, 150-1, 365, 367, 369 Judah 36-7, 42, 91, 253, 362, 400-1 Judaism 227, 292-3, 389, 406 Judges, Book of 70 justice 9, 13, 35, 71, 96, 139, 164, 16970, 179, 188, 225-6, 235, 286, 290, 318, 373, 411

anti-black education 409 Lay, Benjamin 129 laziness 8, 52, 82-4, 88, 110, 120, 372 leaders 8, 28, 30, 37, 72, 75, 118, 125, 127, 146, 154-5, 159-60, 176, 179, 190-1, 230, 235-6, 238, 245-6, 252, 254, 272, 299, 314-15, 347, 353, 379, 397, 399, 409 black 151, 192, 196, 211, 312, 320, 408 leadership 8-9, 23, 150, 152, 154-5, 158, 160-1, 174, 176, 180, 245, 277, 308, 312, 317, 351, 381, 384, 396 Lee, General Robert E. 209-10, 253 legions, Israelite 206, 266, 274 Let My People Go 235, 293, 393 Levi 66, 91, 117-18, 157-8, 365, 370 Levine 383, 392, 394 Levite woman 66, 91, 117-18 Levites 92, 158, 385 Leviticus 35, 64, 70, 190, 281, 369, 386, 406, 410 Lexington 121 Liberia 178, 192, 301, 317-18 liberty 63, 98, 164, 192, 228, 289, 307, 314, 317, 323, 332 lice 172-3, 220-1, 236, 250 Lincoln, Abraham 96, 170, 175, 178, 192, 199, 205, 210, 217, 222, 228-32, 239, 246-9, 254-5, 259, 274, 285, 299-302, 304-5, 313-14, 317, 319, 386, 390-2, 395-7, 399-402 Lincoln, William 401 literacy 135, 154, 163, 331, 333 livestock 34-5, 42-3, 51, 227, 237, 243, 327, 365, 397 Lloyd, Edward 163 Locke, John 58 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 259 Lord 26, 36, 47, 53, 66, 68, 82, 85, 87, 90, 96, 102, 110, 130, 132, 134, 1379, 148-51, 156-8, 162, 175, 177, 190, 207, 219-20, 222, 224-7, 242, 247, 254, 264-5, 268, 274, 277-9, 281, 287-92, 298, 314, 327, 330, 342-3, 345-6, 349, 353, 361-2, 378, 381, 386, 388, 393-5 Lost Cause 9, 209, 232, 234, 253, 255-6, 392 Louisiana 57, 60, 69, 108, 148, 305, 320, 332, 345, 351, 360, 368, 371, 376-7, 391, 400, 407, 410 Lowell, James Russell 20 Lucy 110-11, 371

Kansas 230-1, 246, 300, 396-7 Kansas-Nebraska Act 230 Katz 370, 402, 407-8, 410 Kentucky 121, 182, 199, 274, 304-5, 368, 400, 409 King 36, 41, 51, 54, 60, 87-8, 91, 96, 103, 119, 137, 141, 146, 176, 235, 247-8, 360-1, 365, 380-1 Kings, Book of 366 knowledge 14, 52, 82, 113, 115, 133, 151-3, 155, 211, 219-20, 294, 311, 323, 332, 334, 358, 377, 380 Koelle 35-6 Ku Klux Klan 12, 185-6, 322, 349-52, 388 labor 8, 52, 54, 56, 70, 72-3, 76, 79, 81, 83-4, 88, 109, 111, 119, 127, 152, 154-5, 158, 161, 172, 178-9, 187, 191, 263, 267, 320, 339, 365-6, 372, 380, 403 forced 52, 172, 177, 243, 365-6 Lawrence, Kansas 397 laws 14, 16, 27, 35, 54, 56-60, 71, 77, 98, 105, 114-15, 117, 125, 129, 134-5, 143, 155, 160, 174, 182, 187-8, 203, 210, 228, 233, 243, 246, 249, 257, 264-5, 268, 274, 281, 283, 286, 289, 291-4, 298, 307-8, 327, 331-2, 334, 351, 355, 357-8, 360, 364, 368, 371, 373, 378-9, 381, 386, 389, 395-6, 402, 406, 409-10

435

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Baptist 277 black 154, 2777, 348, 411 Presbyterian 233, 317 Protestant 392 white 317, 347 Minnesota 308 miracles 167, 213, 219, 221, 227-8, 2578, 267, 279, 324, 329, 405 Miriam 8, 92, 118, 137, 146-7, 259, 365, 394 misery 47, 65, 68, 132, 144 Mississippi 12, 57, 60, 69, 80, 108, 174, 242-3, 275, 306, 310, 345, 360, 368, 372, 376, 384, 395 Missouri 230, 240, 300, 305, 368, 396, 400 mistress in slave household 70, 75, 86, 95, 112, 171, 260, 263 Mobile 121 Monroe, James 317 Montgomery 256, 275, 316, 372 mortality 48, 106, 363-4, 376 Moses 8, 16, 19, 34-5, 53, 65, 68, 72, 74, 82, 85-7, 91-2, 96, 103, 109-10, 11720, 123, 126-8, 132-3, 138, 140, 1467, 156-61, 167-8, 172-3, 175, 177, 180-1, 187-8, 190, 192, 194, 205, 207-8, 213-14, 219-24, 226-7, 235-7, 245-52, 254-6, 258, 264, 277-8, 28591, 293-4, 297-8, 314, 322, 324-8, 338-9, 341-3, 345-6, 349, 353, 361-2, 364, 366-7, 370, 373-4, 378, 381-2, 385-6, 389, 392-4, 397, 399, 401-2, 405, 408 name of 92, 128 sister of 91, 118, 384 staff of 159, 325 mothers 38, 58, 67-70, 86, 105-6, 114, 118-19, 128, 146-8, 161, 163, 262, 283, 305, 332-3, 336-7, 341, 344, 369-70, 374, 378 Mount Sinai 20, 65, 157-8, 188, 206, 215, 219, 225-7, 243, 245, 280, 2856, 288, 293, 295-6, 323-4, 327, 346, 353, 381, 385, 402 Murray, John 107 myth 178, 191, 209, 372, 374-5

magicians 236, 245, 249-51, 255, 394 Maharal 214, 287, 393, 406 maidservants 66, 127 Mann 31, 359 manna 326-7, 339, 353, 408 manumission 56, 58, 60, 129, 143, 378 marriage 70, 91, 117, 137, 322, 336-8, 389-90 Mars, James 155 Maryland 57-8, 115-16, 121, 129, 163, 305, 368, 384 Massachusetts 58, 163, 165, 182, 202-3, 210, 303, 316, 407, 409 master-slave relationship 56, 90, 380 masters 8, 56-7, 59-62, 67-71, 74-6, 834, 86, 88-9, 95-6, 100, 107-8, 112-13, 115, 120, 122, 135, 137-9, 141, 143, 147-8, 150-1, 153, 168, 174, 176, 179, 182, 185-7, 192-3, 196, 199, 216-17, 223, 225, 235, 260, 262-3, 321, 323, 330-3, 336, 338, 341-4, 346, 348, 373, 378, 380-1, 383-5, 393, 404, 407-9 maturity 158, 191, 354 matzah 9, 65, 213-15, 218, 257, 264, 266, 274, 281-3, 296, 346, 402-3, 406 Mauritania 33 McClellan, George B. 239, 394 McNeilly, James H. 233 meat 257, 265, 326, 339 Mellon 370, 372-3, 378, 410 Memphis 11, 186, 334 Methodist 121, 130 Michal 137 Michigan 368 Middle Passage 23, 31, 44-8, 121, 364 Middleton, William 174 Midianites 30, 232, 359, 361 Midrash 16, 30, 37, 52, 54, 68, 70, 73, 78, 84, 88, 90, 92, 100, 103, 109, 111, 117-19, 123, 127-8, 132, 146-7, 172, 193, 206, 221, 227, 247-8, 258, 289, 292, 334, 336, 359, 361, 366-7, 370, 373-4, 376, 381-2, 384-5, 387, 392, 394 Midrash Shemot Rabbah 371, 376, 401 midrashic tradition 29, 37, 68, 92, 132-3, 158, 361, 366, 374, 385 midwives 64, 76, 84, 91, 96, 119, 131, 235, 376, 378-9 Miller 81, 363-4, 368, 375, 407 Millikens Bend 200 minister

names 8, 32, 37, 41-2, 61, 63, 90-6, 11718, 127-8, 138, 153, 161, 163-4, 180, 187, 194, 196, 226, 245-6, 248, 257, 291, 295, 334, 349, 357-8, 366, 369, 374, 378-9, 381, 395-6

436

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

Nat Turner 115-16, 124-6, 140, 155, 331, 380 Nashville 239, 264, 308 Natchez 275, 345 nation 8-9, 18-20, 25-7, 29, 33, 40-1, 49, 51-2, 54, 102, 127, 149, 156-7, 15960, 164, 167, 169, 171, 175, 190, 200, 206, 210, 219, 225-9, 235-7, 248-50, 252, 258, 271, 285-8, 293-4, 302, 310-14, 325, 358, 363, 366, 368-9, 376, 381, 406-11 National Freedom Day 273 negotiations 9, 33, 60, 174, 194, 219, 249, 251-2, 254-6, 362 Negro 8, 19, 46, 55, 57-8, 61, 64, 83, 97100, 112, 125, 136, 182, 191, 199200, 233, 264, 273, 277, 293, 300-1, 310, 316, 332-3, 356-7, 368, 372, 374-5, 384, 386, 388-92, 402, 406-7, 408-10 New Hampshire 228, 400 New Jersey 57, 121, 316, 395, 400, 404 New Orleans 121, 186, 204, 256, 303, 329, 409 New World 18, 23, 33, 39, 44-5, 54, 86, 90, 121, 152, 191, 310, 362-4, 371, 374, 379, 396 New York 11, 49, 57, 68, 77, 85, 121, 124-5, 163-4, 185, 202-5, 268, 271, 284, 304, 316, 330, 358-60, 363-5, 367-96, 398-402, 404-7, 409-11 New York Times 196, 200, 217, 390 niggers 83, 86, 114, 196 Nile 53, 66, 73, 127-8, 146-7, 161, 1712, 207, 219, 236, 250, 324-5, 327 Nissan (Hebrew month) 285, 401 Norfolk 122 North America 124, 130 North Carolina 12, 58, 60, 122, 153, 240, 262, 264, 338, 347, 350, 367-8, 370, 384-5, 409 Nullification Crisis 246, 397, 399 Numbers, Book of 90, 101, 117, 157-8, 191, 205-6, 242, 265, 299, 315, 339, 342-3, 353, 367, 381, 385-6, 391, 402,

oppressed 9, 14, 25, 52-3, 61, 65-6, 90-1, 103, 117, 132, 148, 169, 173, 194, 206-7, 222-3, 225, 281, 365, 381, 386 oppression 16, 18, 20, 26, 54, 63, 65-6, 68, 72, 76, 91-3, 109, 132, 144, 169, 171, 173-4, 180, 188, 274-6, 279, 282-3, 293, 311-12, 319, 365-7 oppressors 9, 13, 91, 169, 175, 177, 180, 188, 206, 235, 288, 397 orphan 65-6, 281, 286, 314 outcry 65-6, 71, 131, 223, 237, 257-8, 281, 311, 394, 401 overseers 67, 70, 76, 79, 81, 94, 111-13, 121, 148, 152-3, 161, 214, 225, 331, 367, 377 owners 38, 56, 58, 63, 75-7, 81, 83-6, 94-5, 112-15, 121, 143-4, 152, 161, 174, 178-9, 216, 218, 239, 301, 321, 332, 344, 368, 372, 374, 377, 380, 383 pain 32, 65-6, 69, 122, 174-5, 224, 2368, 241, 281, 304, 387 parades 203-4, 263, 268, 271, 275, 391, 394, 404-5 parents 11, 68-9, 89, 92, 99, 102, 147-9, 171, 274, 291-2, 336-7, 354, 370, 384, 395 paschal lamb 19, 132-4, 157, 187, 193-5, 208, 213-14, 257, 264-6, 288, 296, 325, 336, 346, 357, 382, 389, 392, 401-3 see also Passover lamb or sacrifice Passover 43, 134, 157, 167, 174, 187, 205, 213-15, 257, 259, 265-7, 273, 278, 280-3, 285, 382, 386, 389, 397, 401-2, 405 meal (See seder) sacrifice 194-5, 354, 402 patriarchs 29-30, 131, 141, 223, 225-6, 278, 287-8, 297-8, 338, 395 Payne, John 143 Pennsylvania 121, 161, 316, 397 Petersburg 204 Pharaoh 26, 30-2, 35, 40-3, 49, 51-4, 59, 64-6, 69, 72-4, 76, 82, 84-5, 87-8, 913, 100, 103, 107-11, 117-19, 127-8, 131, 138, 141-2, 146, 151, 156, 15960, 167, 171-6, 180, 186-7, 193-4, 199, 206-8, 213-15, 219-20, 226-8, 235, 237-8, 240, 242-3, 245-56, 2789, 287, 289-90, 293, 311, 321, 336, 341-2, 345-6, 365-7, 370, 373, 376, 378, 384-5, 387, 393-4, 397, 399-401

Obama, Barack Hussein 356 offerings 82, 215, 247, 250-1 Ohio 12, 129, 181-2, 232, 272, 316, 368, 394, 396 Olaudah Equiano 31, 38, 359-60

437

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

advisors of 133, 236, 245, 254 agents of 117, 127, 171 army of 199, 222, 322 confronted 53, 156, 250 daughter of 92, 127-8, 146 decree of 68, 78, 92, 96, 110, 118, 146, 289, 370, 376 dreams of 35, 40, 131 firstborn of 175, 215, 256 heart of 242, 249, 252 house of 119-20 palace of 40, 146, 158, 161, 171, 207, 214-5, 219-20, 222, 238, 248, 250, 399 servants of 190, 227 strategy of 117, 385 taskmasters of 76 wagons of 40, 42 Philadelphia 155, 161, 182, 273, 283-4, 312, 316, 368 Pierce, Franklin 182, 409 Piersen, William Dillon 98 pillars of fire or smoke 182, 186, 205, 228, 232, 342-3, 392 Pithom 52-3, 103, 365-6 plagues 14, 43, 69, 85, 87-8, 103, 160, 170-3, 175-7, 181, 187, 194, 207, 215, 220-1, 223, 225, 227, 235-7, 240, 242, 245, 249-53, 255-6, 278-9, 285-6, 288-9, 301, 330, 339, 341-2, 346, 369, 373, 375, 384, 393-4, 397, 400-1 boils 47, 172-3, 221, 236, 251, 339, 397 final 127, 157, 173-4, 176, 194, 207, 215, 256, 267, 325 first 171-2, 207, 219, 236, 250, 325 frogs 85, 171-2, 207, 221, 236, 250, 369, 373, 384, 392 hail 43, 73, 85, 172-3, 175, 207, 220-1, 227, 237, 242, 252, 362, 393-4, 397 locusts 172-3, 175, 220-1, 237, 253, 324, 326, 397 swarms 236-7, 240, 250, 289, 369 wild animals 250-1 plantations 45, 63, 70, 77-81, 83, 86, 95, 105-6, 108, 111-13, 120, 122, 140, 151-3, 163, 174, 178-9, 193, 204, 243, 260, 262-3, 274, 299, 301, 306, 319, 321, 332-3, 337-8, 343-5, 362-3, 372, 374, 378, 399 planters 64, 78-80, 83, 108, 111-13, 153, 174, 333, 345, 360, 377, 379 poetry 16, 62-3, 313

poisoning 121, 379 Pope, John 239 population 8, 42, 56-7, 59-60, 101, 1035, 109, 124, 141, 221, 275, 305, 316, 356, 360, 362, 367-9, 371, 375-7, 380, 397 growth 52, 102, 109, 336, 341, 369, 375-6 large black 317, 345 Port Hudson 200 Port Royal 217, 319, 409 ports 23, 33, 44, 46, 262, 363 Portuguese 33, 359, 362-3 Potiphar 30-1, 150-1, 361 prayers 67, 85, 122, 131-2, 148, 162, 167, 180, 204, 222-5, 231, 250, 256, 258, 268, 283, 290, 295-6, 330, 347, 386, 394 preachers 125, 137, 155, 233, 337, 347-8 white 89, 346-7, 411 president 62, 91, 129, 165, 174, 180, 233, 247-8, 302, 305, 317, 392, 404 Promised Land 137-8, 142, 161, 191, 224, 243, 258, 296-8, 311, 315-16, 319, 330, 339, 353-4 promises 29, 85, 99, 142-3, 187, 223-4, 286, 296-8, 338, 358, 382, 395 property 38, 41, 54, 58, 70, 81, 120, 124, 135, 143, 179-80, 186, 210, 236, 23840, 252, 263, 275, 289, 301, 307, 319-20, 371-2, 387, 399, 406 prophecy 13, 25-8, 30, 41, 65, 142, 170, 177, 222, 358, 361, 373 protection of Israelites 42-3, 54, 96-7, 123, 142, 186-7, 194, 224, 251, 289, 324, 366, 388 of blacks 59-61, 70, 89, 96, 113, 115, 123, 138, 153, 174, 179, 182, 186-7, 195, 205, 231, 262, 307-8, 329, 331, 355 provider 262, 324, 326-7 Psalms, Book of 39, 190, 366, 401, 406 Puerto Rico 33 punishment 37, 55, 59, 64, 69, 83, 87, 115, 122, 124, 169, 171-2, 174, 1767, 179-80, 188, 206, 232, 240, 263, 285, 288, 292, 336, 380, 403 pursuit of happiness 63, 192 Quakers 8, 121, 128-30, 143, 162, 381 Quantrill, William C. 397 Quimbo 111 Quint, Alonzo H. 210

438

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

quota, slave work 52-3, 72-4, 75-6, 82, 85, 103, 109-11, 141, 180, 247, 302, 327, 366-7, 371-2

righteous 8, 118, 127, 146, 175, 242, 292, 359, 381 rituals 98-9, 133, 152, 167, 207, 271, 273, 350, 379, 382-3, 385, 390 route 181, 199, 217-8, 274, 315, 342-3, 363-4, 380, 382 Roanoke Island 409 Rock, John 222 Rolfe, John 55, 300 Ruffin, Thomas 59

race 17, 98, 191, 193, 196, 200, 211, 233, 260, 271, 277, 303, 307, 310, 312-13, 355, 357 racial inferiority 62-3, 191-2, 211, 392 Ramban 84, 252, 357-9, 361-2, 366-7, 371, 376, 383, 385, 391, 395, 399400, 406 Ramses 52-3, 73, 91, 103, 365-6 ransom 244, 399, 410 rape 69-70, 96, 151, 370 Rashi 358-9, 361, 366-7, 376, 379, 3857, 391, 395, 399, 403 readmission 209, 307, 309-10 rebellion 8, 92, 96, 110, 115, 117-19, 121, 124-6, 139-40, 148, 177, 239, 257, 259-60, 303-4, 377-80, 390, 393 rebels 81, 84, 109, 119-20, 124, 378, 380 reconstruction 171, 290, 305, 310, 340, 349, 354, 360, 388, 390, 398, 407-8, 410-11 Reconstruction Acts 243, 307, 309 redemption 18, 158, 168, 225, 279, 285, 290, 385, 406 Red Sea 277, 386 (see also Sea of Reeds) Reddy, John 114 regiments 125, 202-4, 240, 302-3, 334, 390 black 162, 264, 302-4 rejoice 164, 272, 311-12, 402 (see also celebrate) religion 8, 17, 20, 29, 90, 97-8, 121, 131, 134, 136, 139, 150-1, 223, 225, 232, 339, 347-8, 353, 357, 375, 381, 383, 391-2 denominations 347-8 experience 136 religious independence 10, 345-6, 355 Republican Party 230, 305-7, 328, 351-2, 400 resistance 8, 120-2, 124, 140, 360, 372, 383 resolutions 202, 253, 301, 303, 305, 318, retribution 9, 37, 70, 172, 174, 176, 225, 330 Rhode Island 57 rhythm 78, 137 Richardson 363-4, 380 Richmond 11-12, 49, 121, 125, 203, 234, 239, 244, 253, 256, 275, 318, 405, 410

Sabbath 167, 242, 291-2, 326-7, 361, 403 sacrifice 41, 85, 87, 110, 117, 131, 133-4, 193-5, 213, 250, 257, 265, 283, 319, 325, 341, 346, 357, 362, 381, 401, 403 sale 25, 33, 37, 67-8, 114, 359, 361, 363 of black slaves 33, 67-8, 114, 363 of Joseph 25, 359, 361 Samuel 66, 70, 137 Sandiford, Ralph 129 Saul 137 Savannah 107, 121, 185, 232, 241, 284, 320, 380 Saxton, Rufus 320, 390 schools 8, 148, 154, 186, 211, 310, 316, 323, 332-4, 344-5, 350, 355-6, 40910 sea 11, 20, 27, 33, 39, 44, 46-7, 64, 87-8, 137-8, 155, 160, 167, 174, 177, 181, 199, 221-3, 225, 238, 242, 258, 290, 324, 339, 342, 369, 384, 388, 394, 397-8 Sea Islands 179-80, 303, 319, 321, 345, 347, 409 Sea of Reeds 20, 66, 87-8, 92, 127, 137, 160, 167, 170, 172, 181, 185, 187, 199, 208, 219-22, 243, 258, 264, 266, 279, 288, 290-1, 293, 296, 322, 324, 386, 393-4, 403, 405, 408 secession 179, 229, 231, 239, 246-9, 313, 396 seder (Passover meal) 65, 194-5, 213-4, 221, 257, 264-6, 273, 278-80, 282, 296, 325, 336, 346, 389, 401-3, 405 servants 35-6, 42-3, 51, 54-5, 57-8, 75, 77, 110, 141, 180, 221, 227, 237, 242, 245, 253, 306, 330, 361, 369, 399 servitude 27, 35-7, 55, 59, 62, 215, 310, 327, 387 seventy elders 157, 325, 385 Seward, William Henry 162, 210, 254, 400

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EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

Shadal 399 shame 9, 165, 199, 274, 276, 280-1, 295 Shaw, Robert Gould 202 Shemot Rabbah 366, 370, 374, 377, 3812, 399 shepherds 42, 51, 100, 287, 365 Sherman, General William Tecumseh 179, 235, 238, 240-1, 252, 304, 320, 338, 398 Sherman's march 174, 241 ships 11, 23, 27, 31, 37-8, 45-8, 86, 182, 217, 357, 362-3, 374 signs in Bible 9, 133, 194, 220, 245, 247, 249-51,257, 267, 287, 342, 373, 389, 394, 401 silver 30, 82, 88, 177, 190, 193, 359, 361, 396 sivlot 52, 109, 366 skills 76, 78, 80-2, 151-2, 154-5, 337, 356, 372 slave breaker 73, 75, 387 catchers 115, 142, 300 children 57, 86, 89, 147-8 community 95, 137, 151, 153-5, 370-5, 377, 384-5, 387 distribution 11, 48 drivers 79, 111, 113-14, 151-3, 263 experience 20, 49, 71, 97, 167, 170, 187-8, 274, 279, 364, 368, 374, 388 factories 44, 362 families 19, 60, 69, 124, 179 girl 137, 369-71, 373, 388, 393 histories 21, 285 home 86, 151, 262 imports 101, 376 labor 73, 76, 82, 242, 289, 300, 302, 372, 376, 408 life 67, 137, 337 markets 49, 241 masters 70, 109, 187, 210, 332, 342, 368 mentality 187, 194, 299, 315, 354 mothers 67, 95, 163, 370 narratives 16, 79, 215, 394 owners 56, 60-2, 73-4, 78, 81, 85, 88, 94, 108, 114, 116, 120-1, 143, 153, 175, 178, 186, 209, 230, 242, 286, 302, 305-6, 311, 329, 337, 341, 345, 347, 354, 371, 377, 380, 396, 398, 401-2, 409 parents 62, 95, 161

population 44, 57, 60, 84, 95, 101, 105, 109, 173, 229, 242, 302, 305, 318, 360, 367, 377 preachers 137, 348 property 143, 230 quarters 152, 262 rebellions 8, 124, 214 religion 379, 381, 383, 394, 408 resistance 120, 379 ships 31, 40, 43-7, 81, 273, 363-4 society 55-60, 101, 363 songs 222, 383 spirituals 139, 330 states 115, 129, 182, 231, 306-7, 336, 368 territories 230-1 trade 27, 34, 45, 101, 124, 128, 130, 267-8, 357, 359-60, 363-4, 370, 376, 379-81, 404 traders 38, 216 women 80, 105, 112, 337 slaveholding 56, 193 slaveocracy 115, 230, 232 slavers 36, 44, 364 slavery 16-20, 23, 25-8, 35-41, 53, 55, 57-63, 66-8, 72-3, 75-6, 81, 85-6, 889, 97, 101, 107, 109, 113-14, 117, 121, 123, 128-30, 132, 134-5, 137-8, 140-4, 147-9, 152, 155, 161, 163-4, 167-8, 170-3, 175, 177-8, 181-2, 186, 190-3, 195, 199, 204-5, 208-11, 21417, 219, 224-5, 229-33, 243, 248-9, 253, 255, 260, 263, 266-8, 271-3, 276-7, 279-80, 283, 286-9, 293, 296, 301-2, 305-6, 311-12, 316, 320, 3223, 327, 330-1, 336, 338, 342, 346, 350, 353-4, 356-7, 359-64, 367-71, 374-7, 380-1, 383, 387-8, 393-8, 400, 402, 404-5, 407, 409-10 abolition of 191, 230, 268, 305, 381, 395, 402 American 62, 76, 135, 170, 367, 369, 372, 375, 379 black 19, 21, 369, 380 brutality of 69, 84, 111, 138, 148 chains of 38-9, 46, 120, 142, 148, 164, 263-4, 272, 332 chattel 49, 98, 150, 275, 334 Egyptian 188, 191, 285 ended 170, 305-6 escaped 108, 224, 330 evil of 111, 170, 285 expansion of 60, 62, 230, 368-9, 395-6 hell of 19, 147

440

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

history of 273, 277, 310 house of 53, 219, 265, 290 institution of 63, 101, 114, 129, 181, 208, 299, 369, 392 morality of 141, 396 opposed 121, 130, 328 oppressive 206, 297 political 18, 49, 65, 156, 306, 334, 336, 343, 364 prophecy of 170 scars of 14, 354 slaves 8, 11, 18-20, 23, 27, 33-9, 44-9, 51, 53-63, 66, 68-9, 72, 74-80, 82-6, 89-92, 94-6, 99-101, 103-16, 119-26, 129-31, 135-9, 142-4, 147-8, 150, 152-5, 158, 161, 163-4, 168, 171, 173, 175-9, 182, 187-8, 190, 192-6, 200, 204-5, 208, 214, 216-18, 224-6, 230, 232-3, 239, 244, 249, 252-3, 259-60, 262-4, 266, 268, 272-4, 2778, 280-1, 285-9, 296, 299-302, 304-6, 311, 315, 321, 323, 327, 329-32, 3367, 340-1, 343-5, 354-5, 357-61, 363, 365, 367-75, 377-86, 388-90, 393-5, 397-8, 400, 402, 404, 408-10 chattel 49, 186, 191 Christian 135, 224 educating recently-freed 408 escaped 115, 122, 161, 163, 196, 216, 315 fellow 86, 113, 125, 153 female 58, 70, 77 field 56, 152 fleeing 11, 86, 129, 187, 195, 218 former 16, 31, 35-6, 60, 70, 82, 86, 89, 96, 108, 123, 168-9, 174-6, 179, 186, 192, 195-6, 204, 223-5, 243, 260, 263-4, 274, 276-7, 285-6, 288, 304, 306-7, 310, 315, 321, 323, 327, 3302, 337-8, 340, 344-5, 347-9, 354, 377, 386, 402 freed 98, 115-16, 170, 174, 178-9, 199, 218, 263, 369 fugitive 59, 61, 129, 182, 205, 229-30, 271, 299-300, 388 generations of 95, 319 importation of 27, 59, 62, 104-5, 152, 267, 360, 375 oppressed 25, 214 political 49, 172 recalcitrant 114, 161 recaptured 115

runaway 9, 55, 85, 122-3, 182, 187, 192, 195, 209, 215-16, 271, 300-1, 378-9, 389 pre-Civil War 215 skilled 56, 152 of Washington 260, 317 wretched 123, 224 sleep 25, 52, 108, 242, 262-3, 316 society 42, 55-9, 62, 65, 70, 91, 96-8, 103, 128-9, 172, 188, 249, 278, 317, 322, 338, 346, 360, 368-9, 373, 381, 386, 391 Sojourner Truth 68, 77, 330, 370-1, 386, 404, 408 soldiers 107, 160, 174, 179, 195, 199200, 202-3, 217, 222, 238-9, 241-2, 246, 253, 300, 304, 314, 319, 328, 334, 337 Solomon 366 Soloveitchik, Rabbi Joseph B. 96, 160, 278, 294-5, 375, 385-6, 405-6, 408 songs 20, 44, 88, 92, 99, 120, 136-8, 144, 160, 181, 199, 204, 221-3, 258, 260, 262, 272, 279, 290-1, 322, 347, 383, 390-1, 401 sons 29, 32, 38, 42, 66, 68, 88, 91, 93, 117-18, 128, 131, 147, 155, 171, 173, 177, 216, 245, 256, 290, 305, 336, 358, 361-2, 377, 381 sorrow 38, 144, 148, 164, 175, 234, 392, 402 South Carolina 44, 57-60, 66, 96, 101, 105-7, 120-1, 124, 139, 174, 178-9, 204, 217, 234-5, 241, 243, 246, 260, 263, 306, 310, 319-20, 345, 351, 360, 367-8, 372, 377, 380, 397-9, 407 southern chivalry 210 gentleman 210 history 209, 392, 399, 401 leaders 63, 247 states 27, 105, 115, 230, 248, 305, 307, 309, 331, 334, 336, 347, 354, 360, 396 southerners 108, 141, 171, 175, 178, 192, 209-10, 232-3, 238, 246-7, 299, 309, 317, 328, 371, 396 white 120, 204, 208-9, 275 Spain 60, 176, 362, 368, 380 spies 107, 156, 162, 191, 298, 301, 315, 338, 343, 349, 353 staff 111, 133, 159-60, 171, 207, 213, 249-50, 324, 327, 393, 400, 402 state governments 305, 307-9

441

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

statutes 115, 294, 318, 393 Stephens, Alexander 247, 254-5 storm 263, 370, 387-8, 390-1, 393, 402, 408, 410-11 Stowe, Harriet Beecher 210, 370-1, 373, 377, 384, 386, 393 strangers 13, 18, 25, 36, 58, 65-6, 162, 190, 203, 262, 281, 289, 346, 361 straw 16, 72, 78, 82, 110, 141, 172, 180, 247, 288, 341, 367, 377 Strong, George Templeton 185, 388 Stuart, J.E.B. 196 stubble 72-3, 79, 110, 341 students 16, 282, 333, 409 suffrage 308-9 superiority 88, 90, 173, 207-9, 211, 392 supervise 112-13, 151, 408 Supreme Court 59, 61, 129, 157, 185, 230-1, 272, 317, 355 surnames 95, 338 sweat 143, 319, 326, 403 symbols 17, 71, 114, 116, 122, 133, 141, 171, 186, 205, 207-8, 214, 218, 224, 257, 263-6, 288, 296, 346, 350, 370, 382, 391, 393, 402-5

Toombs, Robert 253 Torah Shelemah 358-9, 361, 385, 401-2 Toussaint L’Ouverture 176-7, 332, 380 towns 38, 81, 121, 217, 241, 260, 263, 274, 310, 332-3, 340, 345-6 trade 268, 362-4, 382 travel 10, 36, 56, 60, 115, 160, 289, 3416, 354, 360, 373, 382 Travis, William 11, 218 trees 99, 136, 147, 162, 185, 188, 237, 255, 316, 325-6, 359, 397 Trenholm, George A. 175 tribe 23, 28, 34, 66, 82, 90, 117-18, 123, 156-8, 313, 325, 349, 353, 358, 361, 370, 385 Trinidad 106 Truman, Harry S. 273, 355, 404 trust 132, 150-1, 153, 165, 187, 213, 233, 308, 325, 350 Tubman, Harriet 8, 19, 122, 161-3, 165, 216-17, 381, 386 Tubman, John 161 Turner, Henry 259 Turner, Henry McNeal 310 Turner, Nat 108, 115-16, 124-6, 140, 155, 331, 380

Tabernacle 82, 156, 265, 324, 342-3, 403 Talmud 381-2, 389, 403, 405-6 BT (Babylonian Talmud) Bava Metziah 373 BT Berachot 386, 394 BT Megillah 358 BT Pesachim 389, 401, 403, 405-6 BT Rosh ha-Shanah 401, 406, 408 BT Sanhedrin 359, 406 BT Sotah 367, 370-1, 374, 378-9 BT Sukkah 389 Taney, Chief Justice Roger 61 Tarfon, Rabbi 282 taskmasters 19, 52, 65, 70-1, 73, 78, 84, 103, 109-11, 223, 235, 311, 367 taxes 52, 54, 84, 96, 366, 409 Taylor, Zachary 187 teachers 12, 159-60, 211, 223, 323, 3301, 333-4, 351, 408-9 Temple, Second 134, 158, 215, 265-6, 282, 296, 298, 366, 393, 403 Tennessee 69, 123, 240, 252-3, 307-8, 320, 350, 400, 409 Texas 214, 262, 273, 345, 371-2, 384, 405 thirst 283, 327-8, 332 threat 51, 66, 114, 229, 246, 249, 256, 310, 334

Uncle Tom's Cabin 67, 69, 75, 85, 10911, 114, 143-4, 187, 210, 215, 370-3, 377, 384, 393 Underground Railroad 122, 129, 162, 182, 311, 315, 357, 386 Union 182, 195, 199, 209, 222, 229-31, 235, 239-41, 247, 249, 254-5, 259-60, 299-300, 303, 305, 307, 309-10, 336, 385, 390, 396, 399 Army 108, 162, 179, 186-7, 192, 195, 199, 215-18, 231, 260, 262, 302, 345, 391, 394 United States 16, 18-20, 27, 61, 98, 1056, 170, 185-7, 191-2, 195-6, 228-31, 244, 246, 248-9, 262, 267-8, 271, 273, 276, 285-6, 300-3, 307, 310, 313, 315-16, 318, 355-7, 360, 368, 370-1, 376, 382, 386, 388, 393, 397, 400, 404, 407, 409 Vermont 246 Vicksburg 12, 275, 337, 345 victimization 9, 169, 177, 180-1, 276 victims 13, 52, 96, 112, 114, 169-70, 175-7, 180-1, 185, 190-1, 206, 276, 316, 331, 351, 386

442

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

victory 204, 231, 238-9, 303, 305, 328, 351, 391 Virginia 12, 44, 57-9, 62, 97, 104, 107-8, 116, 121-2, 125-6, 129-30, 156, 174, 182, 188, 204, 216, 231, 262, 275, 300, 345, 367-8, 384, 400, 407, 409 Voltaire 62 votes 58, 242, 307-8, 310, 316, 351-2, 396, 400 voyage 35, 46, 48, 154, 358, 364

wives 36, 40, 42, 66, 68-9, 71, 78, 103, 109, 182, 205, 244, 305, 333, 336-8, 341, 362 women 46, 66, 70, 73, 75, 77, 82, 100-1, 106, 108, 128, 137, 163, 182, 190, 204, 217, 244, 254, 258-9, 263, 319, 330, 332, 337-8, 341, 357, 362, 364, 371, 376, 385, 387, 408 Woolman, John 129 workers 56, 73-4, 76, 81-2, 262, 366, 371 Wright, Richard R. Sr. 273, 404

war 33-4, 36, 51, 59, 80, 89, 103, 107-8, 122, 138, 156, 162, 174-6, 178-9, 182, 186, 193, 195-6, 199, 202-3, 209-10, 216, 220, 222, 229-35, 23844, 246-7, 249, 253-6, 262, 275, 283, 287, 299-306, 308, 312, 314, 319, 321, 328, 330, 334, 337-8, 340, 3445, 349-50, 360, 365-7, 377, 380, 386, 388-90, 392, 396-400, 408 contraband of 216, 299-300 Washington, Booker T. 67, 262, 332, 336, 392, 410 Washington, D.C. 11, 165, 178, 204, 255, 303, 309, 317, 332, 362 Washington, George 63, 85, 107, 143, 228, 317, 373 wealth 13, 25, 40, 42, 58, 142, 154, 16970, 173, 177-8, 242, 313, 331, 376 Wesley, John 130 West Indian 9, 276 West Virginia 283, 305 Wheeler, Joseph 398 whip 8, 19, 74-5, 113-14, 121-2, 214, 299 whites 55, 62-3, 74, 83, 85-6, 89, 107, 111-12, 115, 121, 124-6, 138, 151-3, 155, 177, 186, 191, 193, 199-200, 202-3, 211, 268, 271-2, 309-10, 312, 319, 321, 323, 331-4, 341, 344-5, 347, 368, 377, 379-80, 388, 409, 411 officers 200, 202, 341, 357, 391 southern 202, 208, 263-4, 307-8, 311 Whittier, John Greenleaf 259 widows 65-6, 71, 281, 286 wilderness 9, 87, 117, 132, 156, 173, 180-1, 191, 199, 208, 213, 219, 228, 247, 251, 287, 315, 323, 325, 339, 341, 343, 373, 379, 382, 395, 408 wills 53, 170, 229, 242, 408 Wilmington 129, 162, 264, 347 wine, four cups of 282, 296, 406 Wisconsin 196, 308, 368

Yankees 86, 255 Yates, Richard 308 Yehoshua, Rabbi 282 Young Israel 14 youth 213-14, 242, 273-4

443

INDEX TO BIBLICAL VERSES [chapter:verse] page

Genesis [1:4, 12] 118; [1:20-21] 369; [1:24-26] 369; [1:28] 102, 369; [2:19] 403; [3:8-9] 151; [6:8] 389; [12:11-13] 373; [15] 25, 297; [15:12] 25; [15:13] 25, 53, 65, 170, 357-8, 386; [15:14] 25, 170, 358, 386; [15:15] 170, 386; [15:16] 386; [16:6, 9] 66; [17:20] 376; [17:6] 376; [18:12-13] 373; [22:1] 362; [22:11] 362; [22:16] 131; [24:44-46] 385; [25:23] 358; [29:31-30:24] 358; [29:33] 66; [29:34] 358; [30:26] 358; [34:2] 70; [37:17] 361; [37:19] 30; [37:2] 358; [37:20] 30, 358; [37:24] 359, 361; [37:25] 31, 359, 361; [37:27] 359; [37:28] 359, 361; [37:3] 358; [37:36] 361; [37:5-7] 28; [39:2] 31; [39:2-6] 150; [39:20] 151; [39:21] 31; [39:23] 151;

[41:45] 93; [41:51-52] 93; [42:21] 30; [42:51-52] 32, 359; [43:6] 361; [43:8] 93; [44:1-17] 37; [45:16] 40; [45:23] 40; [45:27] 361; [45:28] 41; [45:7] 26; [45:8] 26; [46:2] 41; [46:26] 361; [46:27] 361; [46:3] 102; [46:3-4] 26; [46:33-34] 51; [46:34] 42; [46:5] 362; [47:1-6] 43; [47:11] 366; [47:13-26] 35; [47:19] 35, 59, 93; [47:29-31] 99; [47:6] 51, 365; [48:22] 26; [49] 358; [49:29-33] 99; [50:15] 37; [50:18] 37; [50:22] 26; [50:24] 99, 132, 142; [50:25] 99, 391; [50:26] 365 Exodus [1] 366; [1:2] 362; [1:5] 157; [1:7] 362, 369, 375-6; [1:8] 176, 365; [1:9] 366; [1:10] 176, 193, 366; [1:11] 366, 370-1; [1:12] 367;

[1:13] 367; [1:14] 172, 367-8, 370; [1:15-16] 378; [1:17] 131, 379; [1:20] 376; [1:21] 131; [1:22] 387; [2:1] 378; [2:2] 374; [2:3] 385; [2:4] 146; [2:5] 128; [2:7-8] 146; [2:10] 128; [2:11] 366, 381; [2:11-12] 158; [2:15] 382; [2:19] 158; [2:23] 131, 141, 394; [2:24] 223, 226; [3:4] 362; [3:6] 132; [3:7] 223, 293, 311; [3:7-8] 268; [3:8] 224, 298; [3:11] 159; [3:13-14] 395; [3:14] 395; [3:15] 132, 226; [3:16] 132, 156; [3:18] 247, 373; [3:19] 235; [3:21] 177, 387; [3:22] 177, 190, 374; [4:1] 159; [4:2] 346; [4:4] 133; [4:15-16] 159; [4:20] 133; [4:22] 173, 290, 387, 391; [4:23] 173, 290, 387; [4:30-31] 133; [5:1] 293, 395; [5:2] 180, 207, 219, 246; [5:3] 373;

BIBLICAL AND AFRICAN-AMERICAN SLAVERY

[5:4] 246; [5:4-5] 366; [5:6-7] 367; [5:9] 387; [5:12] 341; [5:15-18] 141; [5:21] 159, 180; [6:1] 215; [6:12] 159; [6:2] 226, 395; [6:3] 226, 395; [6:4] 395; [6:6] 288, 366, 370, 406; [6:7] 288, 295, 366; [6:8] 219, 288, 298; [7] 128; [7:1-2] 160; [7:3] 245; [7:5] 220; [7:13] 249; [7:14] 387; [7:16] 219; [7:20-21] 386; [7:23] 250; [8:10] 172; [8:11] 373; [8:12] 387; [8:13] 236, 397; [8:14] 220; [8:15] 250; [8:18] 250, 289, 362, 393; [8:19] 237, 406; [8:20] 236, 250; [8:21] 346; [8:22] 194, 346; [8:24] 251; [8:27] 251; [8:28] 406; [9:1] 400; [9:4] 237, 400; [9:6] 236-7; [9:11] 400; [9:14] 207, 220, 237, 252; [9:18-19] 395; [9:20] 227; [9:24] 237; [9:26] 362, 397; [9:27] 175; [9:28] 252; [9:30] 252; [9:31] 237;

[10:1-11] 401; [10:1-2] 245; [10:5] 253, 326; [10:6] 237, 253, 401; [10:7] 254; [10:10] 254, 342; [10:12] 397; [10:14] 237; [10:15] 237; [10:16] 175; [10:28] 256; [10:29] 256; [11:2] 190, 387; [11:3] 190; [11:4] 393; [11:5] 127; [11:6] 257; [11:7] 388; [11:8] 256; [12:2] 257; [12:3] 257, 389, 401; [12:4] 257; [12:6] 403; [12:9] 266; [12:11] 213; [12:12] 206; [12:13] 187; [12:14] 265; [12:15] 157, 403; [12:17] 274; [12:21] 157, 382, 392; [12:22] 387; [12:23] 187, 289; [12:27] 257, 289; [12:28] 401; [12:29] 175, 215, 401; [12:30] 237, 245, 402; [12:31] 213, 256, 258; [12:32] 256; [12:33] 215, 237; [12:34] 266, 391, 393; [12:35] 177, 190, 391; [12:36] 177, 190, 237, 312; [12:38] 208, 391; [12:39] 213; [12:41] 274, 391; [12:42] 386, 388; [12:46] 257; [12:49] 203; [12:50] 258; [12:51] 267, 274; [12:52] 267; [13:2] 157, 385;

445

[13:8] 278; [13:9] 267, 403; [13:13] 385; [13:16] 199; [13:19] 391; [13:21] 342; [14:5-7] 243; [14:8] 391-2; [14:10] 408; [14:11] 181, 408; [14:12] 181, 199, 208; [14:13] 139, 222; [14:18] 391; [14:19-20] 388; [14:25] 387; [14:26] 160; [14:30] 181; [14:31] 167, 219, 221, 258, 291, 322, 405; [15:1] 223, 258; [15:2] 181; [15:3] 138; [15:5] 223; [15:7] 172; [15:10] 223; [15:11] 221; [15:11-13] 290; [15:14] 258; [15:15] 181; [15:16] 181, 258; [15:18] 222, 291; [15:20] 137, 259, 394; [15:21] 137, 223; [15:24] 293; [15:25] 291, 325; [15:26] 291, 325, 406; [16] 299; [16:13] 326; [16:28] 327; [16:3] 326; [16:31] 326; [16:33] 327; [16:35] 408; [17:3] 327; [17:5-6] 157; [17:7] 327; [17:8-16] 350; [17:11] 328; [17:13] 293, 349; [17:16] 349; [18:13-26] 157; [19:4] 294; [19:5] 294, 323;

EXODUS AND EMANCIPATION

[19:6] 294, 323, 353, 406; [19:7-25] 293; [19:8] 293; [20:2] 219; [20:3] 395; [21:1] 324; [22:20-22] 281; [23:14-17] 324; [23:6] 281; [23:6-9] 281; [23:9] 324; [23:15] 266, 324; [24:1] 157; [24:5] 385; [24:7] 323, 353; [24:10] 157, 385; [24:11] 385; [24:14] 385; [25:1-30:38] 324; [32:1] 134; [32:4] 134; [32:26] 158 [33:3] 378, 406; [33:5] 378, 406; [33:13] 389; [34:9] 378; [34:25] 403 Leviticus [11:10] 369; [11:20] 369; [11:29] 369; [19:33-34] 281, 386; [19:36] 386; [24:10] 70; [24:10-16] 410; [25] 406; [25:39-42] 35; [26:13] 190; Numbers [1:45] 101; [3:11-51] 157, 158, 385; [9:2] 402; [9:7] 402; [9:11] 402; [9:13] 265; [9:17-23] 342; [11:4-6] 339; [11:8] 339; [11:16-17] 157; [13:31] 315;

[13:32-3] 191, 353; [14:1] 191, 315; [14:3, 31] 299; [14:4] 343, 353; [15:30] 391; [15:37-41] 386; [22:3] 367; [14:31] 299; [14:32-3] 343; [14:44-5] 343; [17:17] 157; [20:16] 381; [25] 90; [25:1, 2] 117; [33:3] 242; [33:4] 205-6; Deuteronomy [4:1] 406; [4:6] 294, 406; [4:6-8] 406; [4:20] 287; [4:34] 214, 287, 395; [4:35] 227, 287; [5:12-15] 386; [5:15] 53, 403; [6:18] 293, 406; [6:21] 49, 53; [6:21-23] 287; [6:23] 278-9; [7:6, 8] 287; [8:3] 326; [9:6] 378; [9:13] 378; [10:16] 378; [10:18-19] 281; [11:10-12] 395; [11:12] 298, 353; [11:17] 228; [11:21] 298; [12:10-34] 34; [14:45] 349; [15:7, 11] 295; [16:3] 214, 386, 393; [17:16] 389; [21:11-14] 360; [21:14] 370; [22:29] 370; [23:8] 188; [23:9] 346; [25:18] 328, 349; [26:7] 68, 132; [26:8] 220; [29:4] 339;

446

[29:5] 339; [29:9-14] 314; [31:27] 378; [32:37] 391; [34:11-12] 393; Joshua [4:1] 294; [5:8] 294; [5:9] 134, 354, 389; [24:32] 206; [24:2-3] 280; Judges [20] 70; Kings I [5:27-30] 366; [11:28] 366; Isaiah [10:27] 366; [14:25] 366; [30:29] 401; Jeremiah [2:2] 213; Ezekial [20:7-8] 90; Psalms [81:7] 366; [105:17-8] 39; [113-118] 190, 401; [116] 406; Job [13:15] 396;

ABOUT THE AUTHOR KENNETH

R. CHELST is a professor of operations research in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He received the B.A. degree from Yeshiva College, the M.S. in operations research from New York University and the Ph.D. degree in operations research from M.I.T. He received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University where he studied with Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein. Over a span of thirty years he has taught numerous classes in a wide range of topics in Jewish law and the Bible and is the author of Kaddish: The Unanswered Cry. Dr. Chelst has received a dozen outstanding teaching awards, including several from Ford for his efforts to develop their next generation of technical managers. One of his major projects with Ford led to his designation as a 2000 Edelman Prize Laureate in a global competition that recognizes the most outstanding applications of operations research each year. His research interests include structured decision making in engineering management with an emphasis on risk management, globalization of the engineering and manufacturing management functions and operations research models applied to emergency services. He is working with the International City and County Managers Association (ICMA) to develop its capability to provide consulting services in planning, management, and continuous improvement of police, fire, and emergency medical systems. Dr. Chelst co-directs Project MINDSET, a multi-million dollar NSF funded multi-university multi-state effort that utilizes operations research and industrial engineering to develop real-world contexts to teach high school mathematics. This project builds on his earlier work with Thomas Edwards, Does This Line Ever Move: Real-World Applications of Operations Research, which was published by Key Curriculum Press.