The untold story of the experiences of slaves and free blacks who lived and worked on and near the Mississippi River during the 19th century, this book sheds new light on the ways African Americans resisted slavery and developed a vibrant culture and economy. The creative efforts of black steamboat workers to link riverside communities in the North and South facilitated family connections, slave escapes, and the transfer of stolen goods.

THOMAS C. BUCHANAN is assistant professor of history at the University of Adelaide.

Black Life on the Mississippi

Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat WorldBy Thomas C. Buchanan

University of North Carolina Press

Copyright © 2004 Thomas C. Buchanan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780807858134

Chapter One

From Plantation to Freedom

African American Steamboat Workers and the Pan-Mississippi World

William Wells Brown knew the pan-Mississippi world. While most slaves in the antebellum West were concentrated on plantations in Mississippi and Louisiana, Brown traveled thousands of miles through much of the United States. He worked on upper Mississippi packets and lower Mississippi boats, in the Missouri River trade, and on steamboats along the Ohio River. These voyages put him into contact with the heavy trading that took place along the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in the upper and middle South, as well as with the deep South Red River trade to Texas. The plantations along these routes were an important part of his world. He knew the Missouri's emergent "Little Dixie," the tobacco and hemp plantations in Kentucky, the sugar plantations of Louisiana, and the growing cotton economies of Mississippi and Tennessee. He knew the cities of Louisville, St. Louis, Vicksburg, Jefferson City, Davenport, and New Orleans. Brown was a worldly slave indeed.

Brown was not alone in experiencing such mobility. His account reflects the experience of thousands of slaves and free blacks who circulated the rivers with liberties that made them the most widely traveled of southern slaves. Importantly, their movements spanned the regions of the West. Even as the country lurched toward Civil War and divisions between North and South became ever more acute, economic connections between the sections flourished. Along these economic networks, African Americans linked market vendors in New Orleans, plantation hands in Louisiana's cotton and sugar bowls, and slave fugitives and abolitionist activists in Cincinnati's Bucktown. These communities and others like them are often discussed in isolation from one another, but they were intimately joined by river commerce. Riverboats connected city and country, North and South, slavery and freedom.

The world of William Wells Brown and his free black companions has been for too long hidden from view. The western river world shaped African American steamboat workers' mentality and created the intellectual, psychological, and material bases for broad networks that helped African Americans survive slavery. It allowed black workers to create a pan-Mississippi community that nourished collective challenges to authority, as well as opportunities for individual gain. We will travel here from seedy docks, to neighborhood saloons and brothels, to the private landings where steamboat hands talked with plantation slaves about the latest news from the river. These were places where hidden communication networks sustained the slave community.

Before exploring the contours of this world it is important to understand the patterns of mobility, as well as the sorts of riverside contact, that slaves and free blacks variously experienced. Slaves and free blacks often labored side by side on steamboats and mingled in a riverside African American culture, but the contours of their mobility differed. Southern lawmakers restricted free blacks' movement in city and state statutes, and slaves' responsibilities to masters and agents limited their activities. Owners and their agents, for instance, often prevented them from shipping out on Ohio River steamboats, from which escapes frequently occurred. Steamboat owners most commonly employed slaves on deep South rivers, frequently used them in the upper South, and rarely employed them in the lower North. Many slave owners insisted that their steamboat slaves working on the Ohio River be jailed in Louisville or Covington while their boats docked on free soil. Some owners, however, took the risk and had their slaves work all the way to Pittsburgh. Steamboat historian William Tippitt noted the regional concentration of African American workers. "Deck crews were as a general rule [in the deep South] ... Negro slave laborers on most boats." Passenger Benjamin Latrobe noted that on his lower Mississippi steamer the crew members "were almost invariably athletic negroes, or mulattos." On lower North steamers, on the other hand, cabin positions were filled by a mixture of native-born whites, European immigrants, and free blacks. Lillian Foster, traveling through the deep South, noted that all the waiters and attendants on the Ingomar were black. Another traveler commented, "I must say that the stewards and waiters on the steamboats of Louisiana are all Negroes."

While most slave steamboat workers did not work in trades that bordered on free soil, they did travel extensively within the South. The labor needs of steamboat owners, who contracted workers for short periods of time so that they could dismiss them when trade was slack, ensured broad mobility. Unlike in other southern industries, slave owners were generally unable to lease their hands for an entire year to one steamboat owner. Slave owners were forced to move their chattel from boat to boat, and often from trade to trade, in order to keep their hands occupied. By shifting from boat to boat, slaves often also shifted to different rivers and thus were exposed to broader geographical experiences. For example, from 1856 to early 1857, the Louisville merchant James Rudd recorded leasing "Big George" to four boats: the David White, which worked from Louisville to Wheeling, the Fanny Smith, the A. L. Shotwell, and the Woodford, which worked in the Louisville-to-New Orleans trade. Similarly, in 1859, Rudd hired "Little Charley" to at least three steamers, the Alvin Adams, which ran from Louisville to Cincinnati, the Time and Tide, which worked on the upper Mississippi, and the Kentucky, which traveled between Louisville and Memphis.

While such shorter-term leases were often the rule, slave masters were always on the lookout for more efficient, longer-term boat leases. In a September 1, 1846, letter, James Lackland, a slave-leasing agent in St. Charles, Missouri, urged a master to place his slaves on the J. M. White, "where there would be pretty certain employment for them until spring." He added that, "as they are now, they work a few days on one boat and then off to another so that you in reality don't get wages for more than two thirds of their time." Long-term leases often reduced the number of river trades that slaves worked along, but repeat trips strengthened their social networks. Because steamboat owners specialized in certain trades, slaves and free blacks with long-term leases strengthened riverside contacts.

Agents like James Lackland were central to the leasing process and, consequently, to the freedoms of steamboat slaves. Many agents were young entrepreneurs who rented slaves from masters before subleasing them to steamboats at a profit. One slave named William Richeson recalled that a man named Cook "had hired him from his mistress and then hired him, at Memphis, to the boat." Other masters paid agents fees to collect steamboat slave wages. Keeping track of the comings and goings of steamboats was not easy, and some masters were too involved in other business matters to engage in this tiresome task. In either case, slaves often worked far away from their owners. It was not unusual for an agent to collect wages in New Orleans that ended up in a master's pocket in Missouri or Kentucky. Elizabeth Peace, for example, lived in England while her agent managed the leasing of...