page_title: Free Negro
section_title: Abolitionism
hierarchical_section_title: Free Negro / Abolitionism
caption_attribution_description: "Learning is wealth. Wilson, Charley, Rebecca, and Rosa. Slaves from New Orleans". Photocard by Chas. Paxson, photographer, New York, 1864. Text on back: "Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1864, by S. Tackaberry, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York" "The nett proceeds from the sale of these photographs will be devoted to the education of colored people in the Department of the Gulf, now under the command of Maj. Gen'l Banks" Notes: The four people shown were from a group of slaves emancipated in Union occupied New Orleans under orders of General Nathanial Banks. 8 were brought to New York City by Colonel George H. Hanks, and put on tour to generate sympathy for emancipation and raise funds for the education of freedmen. This photo is was one of a series sold in this fund raising effort. Half of the former slaves brought north in this effort were very light skinned with Caucasian features, under the presumption that some Whites would be more likely to sympathize with people of White appearance than of more obviously African ancestry. Links with further details: Mirror of Race: “As White As Their Masters”, Quakers &amp; Slavery: "White Slaves"
context_page_description: In United States history, a free Negro or free black was the legal status, in the geographic area of the United States, of African Americans who were not slaves. It included both freed slaves and those who had been born free.
  This term was in use before the independence of the thirteen colonies and elsewhere in British North America, until the abolition of slavery in the United States in December 1865, which rendered the term unnecessary.
context_section_description: Most organized political and social movements to end slavery did not begin until the mid-18th century. The sentiments of the American Revolution and the equality evoked by the Declaration of Independence rallied many black Americans toward the revolutionary cause and their own hopes of emancipation; both enslaved and free black men fought in the Revolution on both sides. In the North, slaves ran away from their owners in the confusion of war, while in the south, some slaves declared themselves free and abandoned their slave work to join the British.
  In the 1770s, blacks throughout New England began sending petitions to northern legislatures demanding freedom; by 1800, all of the northern states had abolished slavery or set measures in place to gradually reduce it. While free, blacks often had to struggle with reduced civil rights, such as restrictions on voting, as well as racism, segregation, or physical violence. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, while it was still independent, and when it joined the United States as the 14th state in 1791 it was the first state to have done so. All the other Northern states abolished slavery between 1780 and 1804, leaving the slave states of the South as defenders of the "peculiar institution". Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780, and several other Northern states adopted gradual emancipation. In 1804, New Jersey became the last original Northern state to embark on gradual emancipation. Slavery was proscribed in the federal Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The free black population increased from 8% to 13.5% from 1790 to 1810; most of whom lived in the Mid-Atlantic States, New England, and the Upper South, where most of the slave population lived at the time.
  The rights of free blacks fluctuated and waned with the gradual rise in power among poor white men during the late 1820s and early 1830s. The National Negro Convention movement began in 1830, with black men holding regular meetings to discuss the future of the black race in America; some women such as Maria Stewart and Sojourner Truth made their voices heard through public lecturing. The National Negro Convention encouraged a boycott of slave-produced goods. These efforts were met with resistance, however, as the early 19th century brought renewed anti-black sentiment after the spirit of the Revolution began to die down.
  Due to the compromise in the Constitution, Southern states could count three-fifths of their slave populations toward the state populations for purposes of Congressional apportionment and the electoral college. This resulted in those states having political power in excess of the white voting population. The South dominated the national government and the presidency for years. Congress adopted legislation that favored slaveholders, such as permitting slavery in territories as the nation began to expand to the West. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 was strengthened by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, part of the Compromise of 1850, requiring even the governments and residents of free states to enforce the capture and return of fugitive slaves. Famous fugitives such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth gained the support of white abolitionists to purchase their freedom, to avoid being captured and returned to the South and slavery. In 1857, the ruling of Dred Scott v. Sandford effectively denied citizenship to black people of all statuses.
  Southern states also passed harsh laws regulating the conduct of free blacks, in several cases banning them from entering or settling in the state. In Mississippi, a free negro could be sold into slavery after spending ten days in state. Arkansas passed a law in 1859 that would have enslaved every free black person still present by 1860; although it was not enforced, it succeeded in reducing Arkansas's population of free blacks to below that of any other slave state. A number of Northern states also restricted the migration of free blacks, with the result that emancipated blacks had difficulty
caption: "Learning is wealth". Wilson, Charley, Rebecca, and Rosa. Mixed-race slaves from New Orleans
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