The historiography of the Servile Insurrection of 1870 has been long dominated by the highlighting of grand sweeping historical trends and impersonal factors, particularly in the root causes and long lasting effects. Any history on the subject lingers long on such traditional causes as the increasing radicalization of Northern abolitionists after the passage of the Crittenden Compromises, the deepening malaise in cotton prices , the reduction of Southern armories by a skittish federal government and the modernizing effects of the telegram and photograph.
When individual choices and motivation are considered, it has always been from a white-centric and Northern perspective. This is foolish, as most of the main actors in the Insurrection were of course, black. The brutalized field hands who initially rose up, the town based craftsmen who wavered and the handful of northern organizers who snuck South were all black. The primary instigators of the revolt came from varied backgrounds (and genders) but were all united in their shared racial caste. Despite this obvious fact, historians have too often ignored the motivations and independent agency of the insurrectionists. This history will seek to redress this gross imbalance, in favor of a more nuanced and personality driven outlook.
However, with that said, it does behoove the historian to look at the macro trends swirling in the United States of America in 1870, because even the strongest and most independent personalities are shaped by the context they find themselves in. The modern idea that the period was full of powerful, cascading forces would have been quite surprising to a Southron contemporary. To him (and surely our hypothetical Southron would have been a white man of property), the South seemed in a state of quiet stasis, with all seemingly as it should be.
To a Southron, a picture of an productive plantation.
The violent and hot-headed secessionists of the 1860’s had been pushed to the fringe, after their dire warnings of federal overreach had turned out to be mere hot air. Despite the dire picture painted of ‘Black’ Republicans in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular, they had proved quite willing to compromise when push came to shove. Granted, some concessions had been made in those heated months of 1860, but they seemed minor to protect the interests of the South and it’s way of life. Slavery seemed beyond the reach of any would-be abolitionist, and frankly most Northern politicians seemed unwilling to reopen the can of worms. Closer to home, the Southern states were all firmly controlled by pro-slavery Democrats who were quite capable of handling both would be outside interlopers as well as home-grown radicals. Indeed, even their power in Washington seemed undiminished, as they had made sure that Lincoln’s successor, Democratic Horatio Seymour was fully in agreement about the compromises made to favor the South.
In other ways too, our theoretical planter would have been pleased at the trend of affairs over the last decades. His homeland remained the preserve of an entrenched rural elite that controlled all the levers of power, while the cities remained quiet, nearly somnolent places compared to the conurbations of the North. Immigrants too gravitated to the North, and the southern states were relieved to avoid the masses of European migrants which seemed the source of so much social unrest. Indeed, the proponents of slavery’s argument that ‘wage slavery’ as practiced by the industrial North was the worse evil, only seemed to gain more strength as the slums of New York and Pittsburgh grew into sprawling areas of poverty and degrgdation. Our planter would be quite quick to point out that such places did not exist south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Cotton production was rising, as former frontier regions in Texas and Arkansas were brought fully into production. Connections with Europe had never been greater, and more than a few sons and daughters of planters took Grand Tours of the continent, with some even attending elite schools in Britain or France. The critical commercial and cultural ties with the Old World seemed as strong as ever. Indeed, many observers noted that Southron planters were far more comfortable among the moneyed aristocrats of Europe then among their fellow citizens of the North.
There were even signs of growth and expansion for the South. The southern route of the Transcontinental Railway was suffering financial difficulties, but many Southrons still considered it a critical conduit of their values into the vast Southwest. Other aspects of modernity were being actively encouraged as well. Telegraph and railways lines crisscrossed the South, allowing exports to flow at ever greater rates. Prices of distant markets were relayed directly into the cotton exchanges all throughout the South, and for the very pinnacle of the elite, into their very drawing rooms. Shipping rates were dropping as steamships replaced sail, as well as making cotton deliveries ever more reliable. The modern age seemed to be treating the South very well indeed.
And yet, underneath this superficial gloss of modernity and prosperity, there were danger signals as yet unnoticed by our composite planter. The most concerning sign would have been quite evident to him though. The cotton trade, the fundamental bedrock the entire South was founded on, was stagnating. Throughout the 1850’s and 1860’s the South had grown fat off rising prices, as they supplied Britain's seemingly endless need for cheaper cotton, to feed the vast Manchester clothing mills. However, in some ways the South was a victim of their own success. The American planters had produced so much cotton, so cheaply, they had created a glut on the market which even the mills could not devour. Perversely, as prices plateaued and planters saw their margins thin, they reacted in only one way. Frenetic attempts to produce yet more cotton and make up the difference in scale. So they brought more acres into cultivation, bought more gins to process it and worked the slaves ever harder. It was a futile race but Southron planters were so invested in cotton production, they could concieve of no alternatives.
There were other signs that the comfortable Southron ascendancy was in trouble. In Washington, the iron grip of pro-slavery Democrat congress men was slipping. It was still subtle, but growing. As more northern and western states joined the Union with little interest in Southron concerns, the various battles had started tilting against them. They were only skirmishes as yet, but portended worse to come. The issues of tariffs, bank reform, immigration law, all were areas where the Democrats were giving ground. Granted, none of these assaulted the real core of Southron strength, but cracks were showing in the once impervious armor. Even the Presidency seemed to have slipped into the hands of northern men, an office that had once been the preserve of Southrons. While few of these new men were aboltionists, indifference to the cause of slavery could be just as harmful.
Jefferson Davis, one of the many veteran Deep South congressmen who held considerable power in DC.
All of these factors were present in 1870, but have often overshadowed another dramatic set of changed circumstances, missed by both many historians and our contemporary planters because it concerned the class of humans most ignored by all Americans, past and present. The enslaved Africans.
It is easy to cast the mass of toiling black slaves as a monolithic entity, with identical motivations and identities. A group that history happened to, not one that interacted with it. This is, of course, incorrect. For all the image of stasis slavery pretended to conjure, the nature of slavery was constantly in flux, and for those with eyes to see, was clearly shifting in 1870. A sense of desperation and despair was seeping into the already bleak outlook of the black population. A generation ago it had been possible to imagine slavery in the United States fading away, either through market forces or abolitionist federal laws. By 1870 however, it was clear this was nothing but a wishful fantasy. Even in the Upper South, where the cotton plantation was not the primary economic motor, the sale of ‘surplus’ slaves to the Deep South was so lucrative that many plantation owners made more money front hat trade then front heir crops. Emancipation was totally beyond reach.
How many slaves truly understood this is impossible to tell, but even a people literally in chains can react. The numbers of fugitive slaves exploded in the late 1860’s, many of them taking advantage of an ever-larger and more militant Underground Railroad. While the Fugitive Slave Acts were still the law, even in the north, few planters bothered to chase down escaped slaves due to their unwelcome reception in northern cities. More then a few slave owners had confronted riots in Boston or Albany in the attempt to track down escaped men and women. Others simply escaped to the great swamps of the South, vanishing into the dark depths. Some of these communities in places like the Great Dismal swamps, had populations in the thousands. More than a few stowawayed on visiting ships, only emerging once they had reached the high seas. This latter became such a problem that special costal squadrons were posted outside major Southron harbors, to inspect out-going vessels for escaped slaves.
Slaves caught attempting to escape on a Prussian merchantman.
Still, while on the rise, these actions were the work of only the bravest or boldest slaves (or those given unusual opportunities to make good their escape). Thousands, millions, toiled away on plantations filled with a rising sense of desperation and nihilism. The Servile Insurrection was building, like a great powder keg slowly being filled, one grain at a time. With every fall of the lash, the slave-owners heaped the very seeds of the revolt that would soon explode across the Southern United States with unheard of violence and brutality.
When individual choices and motivation are considered, it has always been from a white-centric and Northern perspective. This is foolish, as most of the main actors in the Insurrection were of course, black. The brutalized field hands who initially rose up, the town based craftsmen who wavered and the handful of northern organizers who snuck South were all black. The primary instigators of the revolt came from varied backgrounds (and genders) but were all united in their shared racial caste. Despite this obvious fact, historians have too often ignored the motivations and independent agency of the insurrectionists. This history will seek to redress this gross imbalance, in favor of a more nuanced and personality driven outlook.
However, with that said, it does behoove the historian to look at the macro trends swirling in the United States of America in 1870, because even the strongest and most independent personalities are shaped by the context they find themselves in. The modern idea that the period was full of powerful, cascading forces would have been quite surprising to a Southron contemporary. To him (and surely our hypothetical Southron would have been a white man of property), the South seemed in a state of quiet stasis, with all seemingly as it should be.
To a Southron, a picture of an productive plantation.
The violent and hot-headed secessionists of the 1860’s had been pushed to the fringe, after their dire warnings of federal overreach had turned out to be mere hot air. Despite the dire picture painted of ‘Black’ Republicans in general and Abraham Lincoln in particular, they had proved quite willing to compromise when push came to shove. Granted, some concessions had been made in those heated months of 1860, but they seemed minor to protect the interests of the South and it’s way of life. Slavery seemed beyond the reach of any would-be abolitionist, and frankly most Northern politicians seemed unwilling to reopen the can of worms. Closer to home, the Southern states were all firmly controlled by pro-slavery Democrats who were quite capable of handling both would be outside interlopers as well as home-grown radicals. Indeed, even their power in Washington seemed undiminished, as they had made sure that Lincoln’s successor, Democratic Horatio Seymour was fully in agreement about the compromises made to favor the South.
In other ways too, our theoretical planter would have been pleased at the trend of affairs over the last decades. His homeland remained the preserve of an entrenched rural elite that controlled all the levers of power, while the cities remained quiet, nearly somnolent places compared to the conurbations of the North. Immigrants too gravitated to the North, and the southern states were relieved to avoid the masses of European migrants which seemed the source of so much social unrest. Indeed, the proponents of slavery’s argument that ‘wage slavery’ as practiced by the industrial North was the worse evil, only seemed to gain more strength as the slums of New York and Pittsburgh grew into sprawling areas of poverty and degrgdation. Our planter would be quite quick to point out that such places did not exist south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Cotton production was rising, as former frontier regions in Texas and Arkansas were brought fully into production. Connections with Europe had never been greater, and more than a few sons and daughters of planters took Grand Tours of the continent, with some even attending elite schools in Britain or France. The critical commercial and cultural ties with the Old World seemed as strong as ever. Indeed, many observers noted that Southron planters were far more comfortable among the moneyed aristocrats of Europe then among their fellow citizens of the North.
There were even signs of growth and expansion for the South. The southern route of the Transcontinental Railway was suffering financial difficulties, but many Southrons still considered it a critical conduit of their values into the vast Southwest. Other aspects of modernity were being actively encouraged as well. Telegraph and railways lines crisscrossed the South, allowing exports to flow at ever greater rates. Prices of distant markets were relayed directly into the cotton exchanges all throughout the South, and for the very pinnacle of the elite, into their very drawing rooms. Shipping rates were dropping as steamships replaced sail, as well as making cotton deliveries ever more reliable. The modern age seemed to be treating the South very well indeed.
And yet, underneath this superficial gloss of modernity and prosperity, there were danger signals as yet unnoticed by our composite planter. The most concerning sign would have been quite evident to him though. The cotton trade, the fundamental bedrock the entire South was founded on, was stagnating. Throughout the 1850’s and 1860’s the South had grown fat off rising prices, as they supplied Britain's seemingly endless need for cheaper cotton, to feed the vast Manchester clothing mills. However, in some ways the South was a victim of their own success. The American planters had produced so much cotton, so cheaply, they had created a glut on the market which even the mills could not devour. Perversely, as prices plateaued and planters saw their margins thin, they reacted in only one way. Frenetic attempts to produce yet more cotton and make up the difference in scale. So they brought more acres into cultivation, bought more gins to process it and worked the slaves ever harder. It was a futile race but Southron planters were so invested in cotton production, they could concieve of no alternatives.
There were other signs that the comfortable Southron ascendancy was in trouble. In Washington, the iron grip of pro-slavery Democrat congress men was slipping. It was still subtle, but growing. As more northern and western states joined the Union with little interest in Southron concerns, the various battles had started tilting against them. They were only skirmishes as yet, but portended worse to come. The issues of tariffs, bank reform, immigration law, all were areas where the Democrats were giving ground. Granted, none of these assaulted the real core of Southron strength, but cracks were showing in the once impervious armor. Even the Presidency seemed to have slipped into the hands of northern men, an office that had once been the preserve of Southrons. While few of these new men were aboltionists, indifference to the cause of slavery could be just as harmful.
Jefferson Davis, one of the many veteran Deep South congressmen who held considerable power in DC.
All of these factors were present in 1870, but have often overshadowed another dramatic set of changed circumstances, missed by both many historians and our contemporary planters because it concerned the class of humans most ignored by all Americans, past and present. The enslaved Africans.
It is easy to cast the mass of toiling black slaves as a monolithic entity, with identical motivations and identities. A group that history happened to, not one that interacted with it. This is, of course, incorrect. For all the image of stasis slavery pretended to conjure, the nature of slavery was constantly in flux, and for those with eyes to see, was clearly shifting in 1870. A sense of desperation and despair was seeping into the already bleak outlook of the black population. A generation ago it had been possible to imagine slavery in the United States fading away, either through market forces or abolitionist federal laws. By 1870 however, it was clear this was nothing but a wishful fantasy. Even in the Upper South, where the cotton plantation was not the primary economic motor, the sale of ‘surplus’ slaves to the Deep South was so lucrative that many plantation owners made more money front hat trade then front heir crops. Emancipation was totally beyond reach.
How many slaves truly understood this is impossible to tell, but even a people literally in chains can react. The numbers of fugitive slaves exploded in the late 1860’s, many of them taking advantage of an ever-larger and more militant Underground Railroad. While the Fugitive Slave Acts were still the law, even in the north, few planters bothered to chase down escaped slaves due to their unwelcome reception in northern cities. More then a few slave owners had confronted riots in Boston or Albany in the attempt to track down escaped men and women. Others simply escaped to the great swamps of the South, vanishing into the dark depths. Some of these communities in places like the Great Dismal swamps, had populations in the thousands. More than a few stowawayed on visiting ships, only emerging once they had reached the high seas. This latter became such a problem that special costal squadrons were posted outside major Southron harbors, to inspect out-going vessels for escaped slaves.
Slaves caught attempting to escape on a Prussian merchantman.
Still, while on the rise, these actions were the work of only the bravest or boldest slaves (or those given unusual opportunities to make good their escape). Thousands, millions, toiled away on plantations filled with a rising sense of desperation and nihilism. The Servile Insurrection was building, like a great powder keg slowly being filled, one grain at a time. With every fall of the lash, the slave-owners heaped the very seeds of the revolt that would soon explode across the Southern United States with unheard of violence and brutality.