Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 (3 page)

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Authors: Midori Takagi

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BOOK: Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865
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era. The causes for this change, however, have been greatly debated. Some observers, such as Wade, believe city living and working conditions "struck at the very heart of the [slave] institution" and caused its rapid decline.
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As this argument goes, city slave conditions created a "twilight zone" between slavery and freedom within which bond men and women took a "step toward freedom" and became "quasi-free'' or "quasi-wage-laborers."
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This argument is not without precedent. Frederick Douglass, who lived in Baltimore for a short time before escaping north, believed that slavery did not work in urban areas precisely because city conditions made slaves more like free people. In his autobiography Douglass explained: "A city slave is almost a free citizen, in Baltimore, compared with a slave on [a] plantation. He is much better fed and clothed, is less dejected in his appearance, and enjoys privileges altogether unknown to the whip-driven slave on the plantation."
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More recent observers have expanded on these beliefs and have found additional causes for urban slavery's decline stemming from larger economic and political trends. Claudia Goldin, for example, concluded that market forces, not incompatibility with the urban milieu, caused the decline. She argues that city hirers did want slave laborers, but that high prices and the availability of low-cost immigrant workers dampened urban slave employment. Barbara Fields in her work on Maryland makes an even more persuasive argument that many, if not all, southern urban centers were inhospitable to slavery because they lacked the necessary economic foundations on which to base slavery. According to Fields, this was especially evident in Baltimore, where a wheat-based economy and a plentiful supply of immigrant labor prevented the city from becoming economically "subservient to the slave system."
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Although I support many of the arguments raised by Richard Wade and Barbara Fields, I am less emphatic that slavery and urbanization were incompatible. For all intents and purposes, slavery in Richmond did work. Because of its location, the type of crops grown in the surrounding area, the products manufactured and the high dependence on slave labor in the industries, Richmond was a slave city. But I also believe that Richmond's slave system was fraught with terrible problems and tensions that, had the Civil War not erupted, probably would have led to a slow, inexorable decline. Urban industrial conditions did alter slavery in the city, and they did threaten the integrity of the system. My interest, however, is less in the question of compatibility than the opportunities this problem-filled slave system gave to black bond men and women. It is my belief that it was not city living and social conditions per se that compromised the system, but how they increased slave residents' ability to resist slave owner control. To demonstrate how Richmond's
 
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dependence on slave labor unwittingly sowed the seeds for its (potential) demise, this book traces the development of the city's economy, its slave system, their intertwined relationship, and how the two matured over time. Chapters 1 through 3, which begin in the late eighteenth century and end in 1840, follow the city's initial steps toward industrialization and demonstrate how slavery became linked to the city's economy from the very start as the major source of labor. Although slave workers were largely concentrated in the tobacco-processing industry, their presence in other businesses, such as flour milling and boat towing, grew over time and proved as important. Quickly, many business owners came to see slaves not as ancillary laborers to free men but as the principal work-force. As a result, slavery became as much a determinant of Richmond's growth as did the city's geographic location and the type of crops grown nearby.
Moving away from an institutional perspective, chapter 3 centers around slave workers and the impact of Richmond's development on their emerging community. Among the most notable effects of industrialization on city slaves was the creation of a large pool of highly skilled workers. Richmond slaves were not ordinary field hands but craftsmen, ironmakers, blacksmiths, tailors, and of course, tobacco processors. As a result, Richmond's slave community was unlike many of those found on plantations in terms of its diversity of experience, collective ability, individual skills, and knowledge. Many of these workers were accustomed to traveling alone, negotiating their work contracts, and receiving cash payments for their labor. Additional evidence suggests that many also were literate. These privileges and abilities had significant ramifications for the development of the slave community that flourished between 1840 and 1860.
Chapters 4 and 5 continue examining the intertwined relationship among the urban industrial economy, the slave system, and the slave community as they matured during the late antebellum years. By 1850, for example, annual production by the tobacco industry reached more than $4 million, thereby making Richmond the premier tobacco manufacturer in the country. At the same time the city won recognition as a major flour-milling center and the home of a notable iron factory, the Tredegar Iron Works. Crucial to the economic success of Richmond's businesses was none other than slave workers. The labor of thousands of bondmen, and to a smaller degree bondwomen, allowed the factories to become multimillion-dollar industries. For slave residents, however, the real achievement was the success not of the tobacco industry but of their community. The increased number of urban and industrial slave laborers all with varying degrees of privileges and benefits enabled
 
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members to fund, build, and create institutions to help them survive. Most notably black Richmonders were able to build not one but three independent, all-black churches, which gave parishioners spiritual guidance and a venue to develop crucial political, judicial, and leadership skills. Extra cash also helped purchase members from bondage or buy them a ticket on the Underground Railroad to freedom. Aware of the "liberating" effects of the city slave system, and fearful of slave rebellion and escape, owners, employers, and city authorities attempted to curb the "freedoms," the unusual practices of hiring out, living apart, and cash payments. This atmosphere of fear prompted residents to blame the lax city slave system for encouraging slaves to rebel. Critics charged that by allowing slaves some measure of autonomy and self-control, Richmonders had been "rearing wolves to our own destruction.''
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Citizens' efforts to reverse these trends, however, proved ineffectual. Laws and tightened security measures were useless so long as slave residents continued to hire themselves out, live apart, and socialize without supervision. Furthermore, it became clear that these practices had become as much a part of the slave system as it was an integral part of the urban industrial economy. On the eve of the Civil War, then, Richmond authorities, owners, and other white residents found themselves in a kind of stalemate with regard to slave workers: to tighten the lax slave system would threaten the success of the economy, while failing to do so might encourage resistance and rebellion.
The advent of the Civil War, the focus of chapter 6, broke this impasse by eliminating the numerous privileges and benefits Richmond slave workers enjoyed and by providing the necessary soldiers and patrols to enforce the new laws. On the surface, it appeared that the Confederate government through martial law accomplished what white Richmonders had been attempting to do for the past sixty years: secure the slave system and closely monitor slave activities. City authorities, owners, and employers had little to celebrate, however, as the demands of the war of the Confederacy altered the slave system so that it gave few benefits to them. For example, many city slaves were summarily appropriated for wartime use. For slave workers and free black Richmonders, the consequences were even graver. Slaves experienced the total loss of privileges, and free blacks lost their freedom. Wartime life presented even greater hardships for the free and enslaved black Richmonders as food and clothing shortages made survival more difficult and harsh working conditions severely compromised their health and safety. In spite of the terrible conditions, opportunities to live and be free continued to present themselves to slave workers. Hundreds of workers slipped away in the night and made their way toward Federal lines. Although listed as having been "carried away
 
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by the enemy," few actually received assistance from Union soldiers, other than prompting from the Federal troops. In most cases their desire to be free, their knowledge of the terrain, and their survival skills were the only aids slaves had to help them escape. For a smaller group of slave residents, the opportunity to escape bondage came not from the Union troops but from the Confederacy itself through its decision to arm bondmen for battle with the tacit understanding that they would be freed in exchange for their services. No doubt many of those who volunteered believed they had nothing to lose; should the Confederacy win, they would gain their freedom, and should the Union army win, they would still be freed. No city slave resident ever saw battle as a Confederate volunteer, however, as the Union army's successes preempted the use of Richmond slave soldiers. On April 4, 1865, as members of the Confederate government fled the burning city, the first of the Federal troops entered Richmond and declared slavery to be over.
 
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One
Inauspicious Beginnings
In 1782 when Richmond received its formal recognition as a city, it had only a thousand inhabitants and hardly resembled a bustling metropolis; incorporated or not, it was little more than a small port town. But Richmond's newly conferred status did portend the greatness the city would achieve within the next eight decades. During those years Richmond would evolve from a sleepy town to one of the most important political and economic centers of the South.
Many factors contributed to this change. One was the relocation of Virginia's capital in 1780 from Williamsburg to Richmond, a city less vulnerable to enemy attacks during the Revolutionary War. The arrival of the state government acted as an early catalyst for population growth. One study estimates that Richmond's prewar population of 640 increased by 63 percent to 1,031 by 1782.
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Politicians, society figures, office seekers, and their entourages were drawn to the new capital, as were a number of businesses hoping to supply this new wealthy populace with goods and services as evidenced by the sudden availability of silver and gold items, plush coaches, European fashions, and exotic wines and foods. Any doubt that the influx of wealth and people was caused by the city's newfound political status can be removed by looking at Williamsburg. The relocation sounded the death knell for that once bustling town, which, lacking politics, was left with little more than "grass, and several cows, pigs, horses, mules and goats."
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But for Richmond, being the capital of Virginia or even, as it
 
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would later become, the capital of the Confederacy had less impact on the city's growth than several other factors, among them its geographic location.
Situated on the James River just below the rapids, Richmond had access to the ocean and the interior of the state. The river snaked through the upcountry and into the hinterlands, providing planters and small farmers with a means to transport their goods on rafts and bateaux. Richmond was a natural stopping point because of its location just below the fall line. The rapids prevented ships from sailing beyond Richmond either up or downstream. As a result, Richmond, like other river cities such as Alexandria and Fredericksburg, became an ideal spot for commerce and for shipping goods to and from the interior of Virginia.
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Once their goods were in Richmond, farmers traded or sold them to merchants and European agents who then transferred the goods to larger ships bound for the eastern coastline or England.
Richmond's location close to the rapids also gave it the distinct advantage of being able to harness the energy that flowed from the rushing waters. The falls provided residents with a cheap, dependable source of power that helped them mill wheat and corn and in later years run machinery. This energy source would prove crucial to the many emerging factories in Richmond during the antebellum era. Later, when the Kanawha Canal was built around the James to allow navigation, two sources of waterpower became available. With this increased energy, factory owners were able to expand their businesses and production greatly.
Crucial to Richmond's development were the staple crops grown in the surrounding countryside. The two major ones, tobacco and wheat, greatly influenced the nature of Richmond's growth by requiring certain kinds of processing, packaging, and shipping. In the eighteenth century tobacco had been picked, dried, and stemmed on the plantation before being sent to Richmond by cart or bateaux in large wooden hogsheads. Once in Richmond the tobacco was stored in warehouses, its quality inspected by state officials, and its price negotiated with European agents. But by the late eighteenth century, market changes, stricter inspection laws, and increased European demand changed the method of processing and shipping.
The stringent tobacco inspection laws passed during the nineteenth century required that all tobacco exports be reviewed and graded by state-appointed officials on the docks.
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This was an attempt to upgrade the quality of exported tobacco by eliminating trash (lower-grade) weeds. These laws also precluded the more informal tobacco trade among small farmers, country merchants, and ship captains. And because all export tobacco was required to be lodged in warehouses prior

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