An African American and Latinx History of the United States

by Paul Ortiz

  CHAPTER 3: “TO BREAK THE FETTERS OF SLAVES ALL OVER THE WORLD”

  1. Ernesto Galarza, Spiders in the House and Workers in the Field (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970); Natalia Molina, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 91–111; Linda Heidenreich, “This Land Was Mexican Once”: Histories of Resistance from Northern California (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007); Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

  2. Richard Griswold del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990); Acuña, Occupied America, 48–50; Zaragosa Vargas, Crucible of Struggle: A History of Mexican Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 100–3.

  3. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 70. Litwack notes, “Most of the new states, particularly those carved out of the Northwest Territory, either explicitly barred Negroes or permitted them to enter only after they had produced certified proof of their freedom and had posted a bond, ranging from $500 to $1,000, guaranteeing their good behavior.” On repressive legislation against African Americans in Oregon and California, see “The State Constitutional Convention,” Daily Alta California, September 13, 1857; “Free Persons of Color,” Sacramento Daily Union, May 4, 1858; “Illustration of a Disgraceful Law,” Marysville Daily Appeal, March 22, 1862.

  4. “The Workings of the Compromise,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, July 24, 1851.

  5. John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939; New York: Penguin Books, 2002), 231. For the politics of expropriation, see also Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (1991; New York: Verso, 2003).

  6. Franklin and Moss, From Slavery to Freedom, 184–91; Litwack, North of Slavery, 100–102.

  7. “Speech of John S. Rock, Esq.,” Christian Recorder, February 22, 1862. All speech excerpts that follow are from this source.

  8. Ramírez quoted in Jesse Alemán, “The Invention of Mexican America,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature, ed. Russ Castronovo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 92. See also Paul Bryan Gray, A Clamor for Equality: Emergence and Exile of Californio Activist Francisco P. Ramirez (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2012), 25–26. See also Félix Gutiérrez, “Francisco P. Ramírez: Californio Editor and Yanqui Conquest,” in Profiles in Journalistic Courage, ed. Robert Giles, Robert W. Snyder, and Lisa DeLisle (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001), 19–28; José Luis Benavides, “Californios! Whom Do You Support? El Clamor Público’s Contradictory Role in the Racial Formation Process in Early California,” California History 84, no. 2 (Winter 2006–7): 54–66; Arturo Romero Nunez, “Freedom’s Journal and El Clamor Público: African American and Mexican American Cultural Fronts in Nineteenth-Century Newsprint,” PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2010.

  9. Hayes-Bautista, El Cinco de Mayo, 49–50.

  10. “Getting Up to Date on a 19th Century L.A. Activist,” editorial, Los Angeles Times, January 8, 2013.

  11. Gutiérrez, “Francisco P. Ramírez,” 24.

  12. Gómez, Manifest Destinies, 1; Guadalupe T. Luna, “On the Complexities of Race: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and Dred Scott v. Sandford,” University of Miami Law Review 53 (1999), 691–716; William S. Kiser, Turmoil on the Rio Grande: The Territorial History of the Mesilla Valley, 1846–1865 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press), 33–45.

  13. Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race, 215–76; Takaki, A Different Mirror, 166–90; Molina, How Race Is Made in America, 25–26, 87–88.

  14. See, for example, Raúl A. Ramos, Beyond the Alamo: Forging Mexican Ethnicity in San Antonio, 1821–1861 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

  15. Galarza, Farm Workers and Agribusiness in California, 88.

  16. On the decline of the economic and political rights of Latinx people in the West, see Acuña, Occupied America, 109–24; Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society: From Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848–1930 (1979; Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2005), 33–53; Gómez, Manifest Destinies, 47–80; McWilliams, Brothers Under the Skin, 113–39.

  17. Alemán, “Invention of Mexican America,” 92.

  18. Vargas, Crucible of Struggle, 116.

  19. Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 38–39.

  20. William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in the United States, 1848–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race, 228–71; Heidenreich, “This Land Was Mexican Once.”

  21. Carrigan and Webb, Forgotten Dead; Menchaca, Recovering History, Constructing Race, 228–71; Heidenreich, “This Land Was Mexican Once”; Benjamin Heber Johnson, Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion Turned Mexicans into Americans (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).

  22. Benjamin Madley, An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016).

  23. Richard Street, Beasts of the Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913 (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); Stacey L. Smith, Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013).

  24. Ernesto Galarza, Farm Workers and Agri-Business in California, 1947–1960 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), 88.

  25. Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society, 4. Zaragosa Vargas finds that employers paid Mexican miners in Arizona “about a third less than Anglo miners for the same work.” Vargas, Crucible of Struggle, 153.

  26. Ibid., 333.

  27. Litwack, North of Slavery, 69–74.

  28. David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (1991; New York: Verso, 2007); David Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

  29. Gregory R. Nokes, Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2013).

  30. Transactions of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Reunion of the Oregon Pioneer Association for 1897 (Portland: Geo H. Himes and Company, 1898), 42.

  31. Nokes, Breaking Chains; Charles H. Carey, The Oregon Constitution and Proceedings and Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1857 (Salem, OR: State Printing Dept., 1926).

  32. Cheryl A. Brooks, “Race, Politics, and Denial: Why Oregon Forgot to Ratify the Fourteenth Amendment,” Oregon Law Review 83 (2004): 731–62.

  33. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, rev. ed. (1981; New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), 88.

  34. For an overview of scientific racism, see Gould, Mismeasure of Man; Samuel J. Redman, Bone Rooms: From Scientific Racism to Human Prehistory in Museums (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Tony Platt, “Engaging the Past: Charles M. Goethe, American Eugenics, and Sacramento State University,” Social Justice 32, no. 2 (2005): 17–33; Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (New York: Nation Books, 2016); William H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).

  35. “American Slavery—Its Effects Upon the Rights and Interests,” North Star, May 12, 1848.

  36. “South Carolina Declaration of Independence,” Sacramento Daily Union, December 4, 1860.

  37. “Slavery Q
uestion in Oregon,” Sacramento Daily Union, September 30, 1857.

  38. Caitlin Rosenthal, “Plantations Practiced Modern Management,” Harvard Business Review (September 2013), https://hbr.org/2013/09/plantations-practiced-modern-management.

  39. Phil Fixico, interviewed by Ryan Morini, June 6, 2012, Black Seminole/Underground Railroad South Collection, SPOHP; Katz, Black Indians.

  40. “Stampede,” Rome Courier, December 26, 1850; “Texas Rangers—Wild Cat—The Fugitive Law,” National Era, October 30, 1851; “The Mexican Border Troubles,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, November 16, 1855. For an oral account of these border struggles for freedom by a descendent of the Black Seminoles, see William “Dub” Warrior, interviewed by Paul Ortiz, SPOHP, June 21, 2012.

  41. Genevieve Payne Benson, interviewed by Ryan Morini, SPOHP, June 21, 2012. See also Rafaela Brown, interviewed by Marna Weston, SPOHP, June 22, 2012.

  42. Vargas, Crucible of Struggle, 123.

  43. “Slave Stampede and Resistance,” Placer Times, January 5, 1850.

  44. “The Civil War in Ohio,” Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1857.

  45. “The Boston Fugitive Slave Riot,” Daily Alta California, July 2, 1854.

  46. C. L. R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (1939; Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1995), 57.

  47. William Watson Davis, Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida (New York: Columbia University, 1913), 38–42. See also Paul Goodman, “David Donald’s Charles Sumner Reconsidered,” New England Quarterly 37, no. 3 (September 1964): 373–87; and Samuel Proctor, ed., “The Call to Arms: Secession from a Feminine Point of View,” Florida Historical Quarterly 35, no. 3 (January 1957): 269. Davis’s thesis on slavery as the causative factor of the Civil War has encouraged newer generations of Florida historiography. See, for example, Daniel Schafer, Thunder on the River: The Civil War in Northeast Florida (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), x–xi; Paul Ortiz, “The Not So Strange Career of William Watson Davis’s Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida,” in The Dunning School: Historians, Race, and the Meaning of Reconstruction, ed. John David Smith and J. Vincent Lowery (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013).

  48. Constitution or Form of Government for the People of Florida: Ordinance of Secession (Tallahassee: Dyke & Carlisle, 1861), 7, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=dul1.ark:/13960/t8w960178;view=1up;seq=2

  49. “Letter from Niagara,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, July 22, 1847.

  50. “The Pulpit and Press on the War,” Christian Recorder, August 24, 1861.

  51. Adam Goodheart, “The South Rises Again—and Again, and Again,” New York Times, January 27, 2011; Pleasant A. Stovall, Robert Toombs: Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage (New York: Cassell Publishing Co., 1892); William C. Davis, The Union That Shaped the Confederacy: Robert Toombs & Alexander H. Stephens (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).

  52. Edward A. Miller Jr., “Garland H. White, Black Army Chaplain,” Civil War History 43, no. 2 (1997): 201–18.

  53. “Letter from the 25th U.S.C.T.,” Christian Recorder, November 4, 1864.

  54. “Letter from Richmond,” Christian Recorder, April 22, 1865.

  55. Hayes-Bautista, El Cinco De Mayo, 81–84. Whether this was true or not is the subject of debate. Karl Marx argued in 1867 that Maximilian had planned to bring slavery back in Mexico under the guise of peonage. However, what ultimately matters in this instance is the belief among many African Americans in the United States that a European army was in Mexico in order to reestablish empire and slavery. See Jon Elster, ed., Karl Marx: A Reader (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 138.

  56. “Brilliant Achievements,” Hartford Daily Courant, January 30, 1863; “The News from Mexico,” Christian Recorder, July 26, 1862.

  57. “Army of the Potomac,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1863. See also “From Havana and Mexico,” Christian Recorder, December 27, 1862; “The French in Mexico,” Christian Recorder, April 25, 1863.

  58. “The French in Mexico,” Christian Recorder, January 31, 1863.

  59. “Mexico,” Christian Recorder, November 14, 1863.

  60. Hayes-Bautista, El Cinco de Mayo, 81.

  61. “Vera Cruz,” Christian Recorder, May 23, 1863; “Republican Form of Government by Rev. H. M. Turner,” Christian Recorder, October 3, 1863.

  62. Jerry Thompson, Cortina: Defending the Mexican Name in Texas (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), 153–54; John Hope Franklin, George Washington Williams: A Biography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 5–6; “A Mexican War, After Our Rebellion, Shall Maximilian Be Driven Out?” Black Republican (New Orleans), April 15, 1865.

  63. “Opinion,” New Orleans Tribune, July 12, 1867.

  64. “Slavery in Cuba,” and “Maximilian and Slavery,” South Carolina Leader (Charleston), November 25, 1865.

  65. The South sought to emulate the success of the Union Army—much too late—by passing a measure to recruit African American soldiers into their depleted columns. See “Gen. Lee’s Testimony,” Anti-Slavery Advocate, April 1, 1865.

  66. “The Army and the Negroes,” Anti-Slavery Standard, February 18, 1865.

  67. P. K. Rose, “Black Dispatches: Black American Contributions to Union Intelligence During the Civil War,” Central Intelligence Agency, March 16, 2007, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/black-dispatches/.

  68. “Letter from 3rd U.S.C.T.,” Christian Recorder, August 12, 1865.

  69. “‘God Bless the Negroes!’” Anti-Slavery Advocate, April 1, 1865.

  70. Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet: The Moses of Her People (New York: Geo. R. Lockwood & Son, 1886); Catherine Clinton, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom (New York: Little, Brown, 2005); Liane Hansen, “Harriet (Tubman) The Spy,” National Public Radio, Weekend Edition, August 30, 2009, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112384583 (accessed May 9, 2017).

  71. “From Camp WM Penn.,” Christian Recorder, April 15, 1865.

  72. Kate Clifford Larson, Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero (New York: Ballantine Books, 2004), 366.

  73. “Senator Sherman on Suffrage,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, July 1, 1865.

  74. Ibid.

  75. Abraham Lincoln, “Interview with John T. Mills, August 15, 1864,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=591 (accessed May 9, 2017).

  76. John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York: Twelve, 2008), 288; C. L. R. James, “Black Studies and the Contemporary Student,” in At the Rendezvous of Victory: Selected Writings (London: Allison and Busby, 1984), 404.

  77. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935; New York: Meridian Books, 1964), 33–127; C. L. R. James, “The Black Jacobins and Black Reconstruction: A Comparative Analysis,” Small Axe 8 (September 2000): 86; C. L. R. James, American Civilization, ed. Anna Grimshaw and Keith Hart (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), 92.

  78. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 67.

  79. James, “The Black Jacobins and Black Reconstruction.”

  80. Frederick Douglass, “Emancipation, Racism, and the Work Before Us,” in “The Real War Will Never Get in the Books”: Selections from Writers During the Civil War, ed. Louis P. Masur (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 118.

  81. “Black Suffrage,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, April 8, 1865.

  82. “Appeal to the American People,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, June 24, 1865.

  83. Ibid.

  84. “From Boston,” New Orleans Tribune, March 2, 1865.

  CHAPTER 4: GLOBAL VISIONS OF RECONSTRUCTION

  1. Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949; Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). On the development of African American Christianity, see Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (1978; New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); C. Eric Lincoln an
d Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (1990; Durham: Duke University Press, 2003).

  2. Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited, 13.

  3. “Slavery in the West Indies,” Christian Recorder, February 20, 1873.

  4. “The Boston Meetings,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, February 3, 1866.

  5. “Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Esq.” Christian Recorder, February 24, 1866.

  6. “Thirty-Sixth Anniversary of the American Anti-Slavery Society,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 29, 1869.

  7. “Oration,” Elevator (San Francisco), January 24, 1868.

  8. “Liberty in Cuba,” Christian Recorder, March 21, 1878; “The Present Extent of the Slave Trade,” Christian Recorder, March 8, 1877.

  9. “Fifteenth Amendment Address,” Elevator, April 15, 1870. African American Fifteenth Amendment observances in California frequently incorporated messages of solidarity with the Cuban struggle. For a description of one such event held in San Francisco, see “Oration,” Elevator, April 5, 1873. For the fourth-anniversary celebration of the Fifteenth Amendment in Chico, California, where support was expressed for the Cuban patriots, see “Oration,” Elevator, March 1, 1873, and “Oration,” Elevator, April 25, 1874.

  10. “Ratification Celebration of the Colored Citizens of Virginia City, Nevada,” Territorial Enterprise, April 8, 1870.

  11. “The Slavery Question,” Black Republican, May 20, 1865. Reports of slave traders seizing African Americans in Alabama and other states in order to sell them to Cuba also alarmed African Americans. See “Slave Trading,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, March 3, 1866.

  12. Cuban Anti-Slavery Committee, Slavery in Cuba: A Report of the Proceedings of the Meeting Held at Cooper Institute (New York: Powers, Macgowan & Slipper, 1872), 8, https://archive.org/details/slaveryincubarep00cuba. African Americans commonly underplayed the very real tensions within the nationalist movement in Cuba. These included racism and differences over strategies. See Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 9–10.