At the time of her death, Kimberly S. Hanger was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tulsa.

Bounded Lives, Bounded Places

Free Black Society in Colonial New Orleans, 1769–1803

By Kimberly S. Hanger

Duke University Press

Copyright © 1997 Duke University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8223-1906-1

Contents

List of Abbreviations,
List of Figures and Tables,
Figures,
Tables,
Acknowledgement,
Introduction,
Chapter 1 Avenues to Freedom,
Chapter 2 Work and Property Accumulation,
Chapter 3 “Family Values” and Kinship Strategies,
Chapter 4 A Privilege and Honor to Serve,
Chapter 5 Cultural and Political Activities,
Epilogue,
Appendix Regulations Governing the Free Black Militia,
Notes,
Glossary,
Bibliography,
Primary Sources,
Secondary Sources,

CHAPTER 1

AVENUES TO FREEDOM

Before free blacks could begin to develop a group consciousness, there had to be enough of them to make up a group, and it was during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that libres in New Orleans and other circum-Caribbean cities came to constitute a substantial segment of their populations. Evidence from Louisiana supports Arnold A. Sio’s argument that “the development of group consciousness among the freedmen occurred in conjunction with an increase in population size and density and with the growth of social organization.” Although one must use census figures with caution, they do point to a growing libre presence within the populace over the era of Spanish rule: from 3.1 percent of New Orleanians in 1771 to 19.0 percent in 1805 (table 1.1). As important as size and density, however, was an increasing proportion of native-born blacks (creoles) among the libre population. These Creoles were able to forge the kinship networks, join corporate entities like the militia and the church, accumulate the capital to invest in businesses, slaves, and other property, and in general develop the social organization needed to create libre cohesiveness and identity. Whereas a slave’s legal status usually changed immediately once he or she became free, manumission did not entail a rapid, automatic alteration in condition (unless the ex-slave had support from other libres and whites) but rather was a process that could take generations to consolidate, with freeborn blacks benefiting from the struggles of their parents. And even well-to-do second- and third-generation free blacks remained part of a subordinate group within New Orleans’ hierarchical society.

Once libres reached a critical mass, however, which appears to have happened by the end of the Spanish period, they could begin to forge a group identity, a sense of distinctiveness, and exert some influence in the society. Demographic increase and the attainment of a critical mass among libres in New Orleans can be attributed primarily to manumission but also to natural increase and migration as well as escape and “passing” as free. Several factors contributed to the growth of the libre population in colonial New Orleans, among them the city’s demographic profile, a demand for manual and skilled laborers, internal and external defensive needs, natural increase, and favorable legislation. The emergence of a free black group existing in an anomalous but constantly coalescing position between whites and slaves dated from the early years of European conquest and colonization of the Americas. The ease and frequency of this transition from bondage to freedom varied spatially and temporally. The Tannenbaum-Elkins school has argued that such institutions as the church and the state influenced slave treatment and access to freedom. Reality often did not match institutional ideals, but in general Tannenbaum correctly observed that the Spanish and Portuguese colonists most readily manumitted their slave property, with the French somewhere in the middle of the spectrum and the British and Dutch most reluctant to part with their bondmen.

Although cultural attitudes influenced this trend, material factors, especially demographic patterns and economic trends, played a much more substantial role. The historian Eugene D. Genovese has labeled this debate as one between idealist and materialist approaches, and it underlies much of the scholarship on slavery and race relations conducted by North and South American, Caribbean, and European scholars. A leading figure among the materialists is anthropologist Marvin Harris, who identified two key demographic variables: (1) the black-to-white ratio and (2) the sex ratio among whites. Where white males heavily outnumbered white females, racial intermixture prevailed and white fathers tended to manumit their light-skinned offspring, and occasionally consorts, over other slaves. Societies that boasted a large black slave population and a small white planter group lacked persons who could perform the artisan, service, and transportation tasks of a middle sector. Both these demographic scenarios gave impetus to the creation of a free black and casta group, and these situations were found most commonly in areas held by Spain and Portugal.

Other materialists argue that market considerations rather than demographics or preexisting European racial attitudes most influenced an individual’s or a society’s propensity to manumit African slaves. Slave treatment and manumission rates followed economic cycles. During boom periods of rising expectations and prosperity, planters worked their slaves intensively, the value of slaves escalated, and manumissions dropped off. Not only were masters reluctant to part with increasingly scarce labor, but also slaves found it difficult to raise the extra money required to purchase their freedom. On the downside of the economic cycle conditions for slaves could even worsen as slave owners struggled to return to the days of prosperity and worked their slaves harder still. At the very top and bottom of the cycle, however, manumission opportunities for slaves improved. Riding comfortable and secure at the peak of their material good fortune, masters could afford to part with bondmen, especially if slaves reimbursed their owners at inflated self-purchase prices. Inversely, slave owners strapped for cash during periods of extreme hardship also welcomed income from slave self-purchases, as well as release from the burden of caring for elderly or unproductive charges. All too frequently masters reduced their costs by manumitting old, crippled, ill, or retarded slaves.

A combination of all the above—demographic, economic, legal, and cultural influences—as well as the special circumstances prevailing in a frontier society, contributed to the expansion of New Orleans’ libre population during the Spanish era. Manumission in particular, along with natural increase and migration/immigration, boosted the number of free blacks and created what can be considered a critical mass. The average number of slave manumissions per year increased with each decade of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (figure 1.1). In addition, the proportion of slaves obtaining liberty through their own or a third party’s efforts with compensation to the master, rather than those given their freedom gratis (graciosa), rose from slightly less than half of all manumissions in the 1770s to more than two-thirds in the early 1800s (table 1.2). Along with the various legal avenues to freedom available to and pursued by persons of African descent were those methods deemed illegal and antisocial by the dominant white society: rebelling, running away, passing as free. They have been adequately investigated by other scholars and will be referred to only occasionally in this work.

The Setting: Demographic, Economic, and Legal Conditions

At the time of Spain’s acquisition, blacks outnumbered whites and white males outnumbered white females in most regions of Louisiana. Thus there existed within the colony demographic elements favoring the growth of a free black population. In addition, Spanish administrators faced French merchants and planters who professed questionable loyalty and at times outright hostility toward Spain’s rule in the colony. According to one author,

the slaves were the wedge between countervailing French planter power and official Spanish authority, and the governors seem at times to have sought the approval of slaves in order to make them a counterpoise to the planters, whose allegiance to Spain was far from certain.

Faced with a potentially restless multitude of African slaves and a small but vocal ensemble of resentful colonials, Spain courted the favor of any and all segments of Louisiana’s society and encouraged the immigration of loyal subjects.

Data presented in table 1.3 detail the city’s demographic character over the period by status and sex. Although census figures conflict and provide only approximate accuracy, they can be used to study trends and as such reveal a growing population. During the Spanish period the white population of New Orleans almost doubled, while the slave population grew two and a half times. As a result of restrictions on slave importations, the number of slaves in New Orleans decreased in the 1790s but then multiplied in the early 1800s in response to the growing demand for slave labor and the lifting of import bans. The number of free blacks increased sixteenfold, and this group reportedly was undercounted throughout the period! By the end of the Spanish period libres made up almost one-fifth of the New Orleans populace (table 1.1).

As in many frontier regions, white males consistently outnumbered white females, with a sex ratio ranging from a high of 175 (175 males to every 100 females) in 1777 to a low of 115 in 1805 (table 1.3); the opposite held true for slaves and free blacks. Sex ratios among slaves were much more balanced than among libres and almost evened out in the early 1790s. In most urban centers like New Orleans, there were more slave females—mainly domestics—than males, in contrast to the countryside, where planters preferred men slaves to work the fields and perform skilled and managerial tasks. Among libres, however, the disparity was much greater: females outnumbered males about two to one, primarily because about twice as many females as males acquired cartas de libertad (certificates of manumission) and because male libres tended to die at very young ages. For libres of childbearing age, sex ratios were even more unbalanced; the census of 1791, which categorized residents into three age groups (0–13, 14–49, 50+), shows that the sex ratio for those libres age fourteen through forty-nine was 39 (108 for ages 0–13 and 21 for 50+). High sex ratios among presumably non-sexually active children skewed the overall ratios upward and when factored out, reveal the very disproportionate numbers of adult libre females, who even if they had wanted to would have had difficulties finding a free black mate.

Such uneven sex ratios contributed to racial mixture in New Orleans and other American frontier territories, where white females were scarce and women of indigenous or African descent were plentiful. White conquerors, no matter what their nationality, believed that one of the rewards of conquest consisted of sexual favors from subordinated peoples, and thus there emerged a casta population. During the years of Spanish rule New Orleans became less of a frontier town and more of a cosmopolitan commercial city, and sex ratios reflect the transition. By the early nineteenth century, sex ratios for whites and free blacks had narrowed and more closely approached parity, thereby giving libres more opportunities to establish relationships with each other and promoting the emergence of a distinct free black community and identity. Indeed, marriages and consensual arrangements among free blacks, rather than between them and whites or slaves, increased toward the turn of the century (see chapter 3).

Offspring resulting from these interracial and intraracial unions often added to the free black populace. The percentage of libres increased not only in the total but also in the free and nonwhite populations over the period of Spanish rule (table 1.1). In fact, between 1788 and 1791 free blacks were the only group that grew. The percentage of libres expanded foremost among nonwhites, followed by free persons and then all persons. Primarily an urban phenomenon, the growth of a libre population in New Orleans was not replicated throughout Louisiana, where in rural areas free blacks remained small in both numbers and percentage of the populace, especially when compared to slaves. In Louisiana, as throughout the American colonies, “all legal forms of manumission seem to have been more beneficent for the urban slave,” who had closer relationships with the master (voluntary and involuntary), opportunities to learn skills, and easier access to borrowed credit sources and the judicial system. Thus the libre population grew not only in size but also in density, concentrating more and more in New Orleans, a tendency that accelerated with the influx of Saint-Domingue refugees in 1809 and diminished only with increased repression after 1840.

In Louisiana, as in many areas of Spanish America, the crown fostered the growth of a free black population in order to fill middle-sector occupations, defend the colony from external and internal foes, and give African and Creole slaves an officially approved means to realize their desires for freedom. Colonial policymakers envisioned a society in which Africans would seek their freedom through legal channels, complete with compensation for their masters, rather than by running away or rising in revolt. In turn, slaves would look to the Spanish government to “rescatarnos de 1a esclavitud” (rescue/ransom us from slavery) and subsequently protect their rights and privileges as freedmen.

With this vision in mind, Spain, upon acquiring Louisiana from France, made colonial laws conform to those prevailing throughout the empire. For the governing of slaves and free blacks, Spanish Louisiana codes (commonly referred to as “O’Reilly’s Laws” for the early Spanish governor who proclaimed them) primarily drew upon provisions of Las Siete Partidas and the Recopilación de leyes de los reinos de las Indias (Compilation of the Laws of the Kingdoms of the Indies, which drew together diverse legislation applying to Spain’s New World empire in 1681) and also were influenced by the French Code noir (Black code) that had been issued for the French West Indies in 1685 and introduced in Louisiana in 1724. The Code noir imposed harsh penalties upon erring slaves and “proved to be one of the more oppressive slave codes in the Americas.” It did, however, grant free blacks full legal rights to citizenship, even though this provision was inconsistent with preceding articles of the code that provided for unequal punishments and restricted their behavior. In addition, local regulations frequently impinged on these rights, denying free blacks legal equality with white citizens. When Spain took effective control of Louisiana in 1769, it imposed its laws on the colony, overriding the Code noir in the face of French planter resistance. By and large, Spanish officials enforced their government’s laws, at least in the capital of New Orleans, where the bureaucratic and judicial structure was strongest. For example, even though the planter-dominated cabildo wrote and passed a much harsher slave code than the Spanish ones in 1778, the crown never approved it and judges continued to follow imperial law. Included in Spanish law emanating from Cuba and implemented in Louisiana was the codification of a customary practice known as coartación, the right of slaves “to purchase their freedom for a stipulated sum of money agreed upon by their masters or arbitrated in the courts.” Louisiana’s Code noir had permitted masters over the age of twenty-five to manumit their slaves, with prior consent from the superior council (the French colonial governing body). Spanish regulations, however, did not require official permission for a master to free his or her slave and even allowed slaves to initiate manumission proceedings on their own behalf. The slave, a friend, or a relative could request a carta de libertad in front of the governor’s tribunal. Two and sometimes three assessors declared the slave’s monetary value, and upon receipt ofthat sum the tribunal issued the slave his or her carta. Under Spanish law a slave did not have to depend on the generosity of the master to attain freedom; rather, the slave relied on his or her own efforts and the aid of a favorable legal system. Louisiana slaves and parties arguing on their behalf recognized support from Spanish officials for “a cause so recommended by the law as that of liberty” and began to realize that their “aspirations for liberty rested on the administration of justice by the Spanish in the colony.” In addition, the institution of self-purchase “expressed the Spanish recognition (1) that slavery was not the natural condition of men; (2) that slaves had a right to aspire to freedom; and (3) that masters had a right to just return for their property.” It also recognized the slave’s property rights (peculium).

Indeed, the text of several Spanish documents indicates that slaves and free persons acting in the interest of slaves were aware of and acted upon the privileges extended to them by Spain. In all likelihood, as the Spanish period unfolded, New Orleans slaves and interests acting on their behalf gained greater experience, which allowed them to take advantage of the privileges Spain’s judicial system offered. With the exception of the last decade, the number of cases brought before governors’ and alcaldes’ tribunals rose dramatically during the era under study. Like Africans in other colonial regions, slaves in New Orleans often had to struggle to secure their rights. Slave and master frequently haggled over the purchase price: in the absence of a written contract the slave encountered difficulties proving the existence of an agreement; sometimes courts denied slaves’ petitions for freedom or set the purchase price prohibitively high; and if written in a will, provisions for self-purchase or gratis manumission could be—but rarely were—disputed by heirs.

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