Saying no to freedom in 1838
You can hear the father’s hope and his anguish in the words he sent to the South Carolina Legislature.
Not on his own behalf was he asking, in words that must have been written for him since he himself could not even sign his name.
No, he was asking for his family. His wife, his son, his daughter.
Their names were Sarah, George and Mary.
And the frieze-frame image of a moment in their lives that’s captured in records The Legal Genealogist came across in the South Carolina State Archives yesterday can break your heart.
James Paterson told the legislators sometime before December 1838 that:
he is a free man of Colour, & that by a Long life of Care and industry he has been inabled to buy his wife Sarah, & his two Children George & Mary who are Slaves by the Law of the Land & the property of your Petitioner. Your Petitioner further sheweth That he is very desirous of setting said slaves free, but that by the law of the Land he is unable to do so. Wherefore your Petitioner most humbly intreats your Honorable body to Manumit the said slaves Sarah Paterson George Paterson & Mary Paterson — so that the honest industry the unwearied Pains and untiring effort of a Father & Husband may not be lossed to him intirely. …1
He must have known that the deck was stacked against him. South Carolina had passed a law in 1800 requiring slaveholders to free slaves only by deeds that were approved by local courts, and another even more restrictive law in 1820 to put a solid lid on manumissions: it required that the Legislature concur in any slaveholder’s decision to free a slave.2
So James didn’t rest on his own unsupported application: he submitted as well a petition signed by 16 other men from Columbia. Checking the names against the 1850 census, it’s clear that he put together the strongest case he could: venerable white men from the community. And they wrote:
We the undersigned are well acquainted with James Paterson the within Petitioner. He is an honest careful industrious man who by a life of constant industry has been inabled to buy his wife & children, and we do for the purpose of encouraging similar conduct in others of his grade & for the purpose of doing to him but an act of Justice most cordially recommend that the prayer of the Petitioner by (sic) Granted.3
These are men the legislators themselves described as “persons of the highest respectability, residents of Columbia.”4
And you already know what the Legislature did, on 11 December 1838, right?
They turned James down.
Flat.
The one page decision of the Committee on the Colored Population is chilling:
You can click on the image and see it in a bigger version, If you need a transcription, the gist of it is this:
… it would be inexpedient, except as a reward for great and distinguished merit, to depart from the principles and policy of the law which forbids the emancipation of slaves. However great may be the merit of the present petitioner, your committee are of opinion that it is not such as to call for an extraordinary act of favor on the part of this Legislature, and nothing has been offered to show, that the wife and children of the petitioner, (the persons most concerned in the subject of this petition) have any claims whatsoever to the interposition of the Legislature in their behalf.5
A life of hard work, industry, honesty and care… and it didn’t matter one bit.
I wasn’t able to find out, yesterday, just what happened to James and his family. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how they must have felt when they heard back from the Legislature. I can’t help but wonder how they coped… how they went on with their lives, knowing that their family was horribly at risk when James died.
This is one of those stories where you’re almost afraid to find out how it ends.
And one of those stories that, whenever we find them, we must tell.
SOURCES
- Petition of James Paterson to the South Carolina Legislature, Record Group S165015: Petitions to the General Assembly, Item 2923, c1838; South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Columbia. ↩
- See LaBrenda Garrett-Nelson, A Guide to Researching African American Ancestors in Laurens County, South Carolina and Selected Finding Aids (Bloomington, IN : Xlibris, 2016), 49-51. ↩
- Petition in Support of James Paterson to the South Carolina Legislature, Record Group S165015: Petitions to the General Assembly, Item 2923, c1838; South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Columbia. ↩
- Report of the Committee on the Colored Population on the Petition of James Patterson, Free Black, Asking that his Wife and Children be Freed, Record Group S165015: Petitions to the General Assembly, 1838 Item 91, 11 December 1838; South Carolina Department of Archives & History, Columbia. ↩
- Ibid. ↩
Terrific find! Thanks for sharing this story and research! It is very necessary to expose these past historical finds to better understand the depths of historical slavery in personal narratives. Cheers!
Judy,
What courage it must have taken for James to collect the signatures, and then approach the Legislature to ask them to approve the manumission of his family. He must have known the chances were slim, but his effort speaks to his love for his family, whom he had already purchased. The story is, as you say, incomplete, as we don’t know what happened after the Legislature so cruelly turned him down. Would make a good dissertation project for someone to try to track him and his family.
I’m currently reading the 2007 book “Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America,” by Sylviane A. Diouf. While the transatlantic slave trade was outlawed by the US in 1807, multiple ships continued to illegally make the crossing. The Clotilda was the last, the result of a bet that he could do it and not get caught, by a small-time Mobile plantation owner, just before the outbreak of the Civil War. He won the bet. The author did a lot of research, both in Africa and America. Many of the survivors ended up living very near where the ship was scuttled on the Mobile River. After Emancipation, they founded an all-black town, which still exists on the outskirts of Mobile. The last survivor of the voyage lived until 1935 and was interviewed by Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote a book called “Baracoon.” This wasn’t published in her lifetime, though recently it has been. A fascinating look at slavery from the view of individuals who could remember their origins in Africa and pass at least some of it in oral history to their descendants. Within the last couple of years, a drought exposed what researchers believe to be the wreck of the Clotilda; archaeologists are working on getting it out of the silt so they can preserve it and prove/disprove its identity.
Doris
What a sad story. The Committee’s cruelty (there’s no other way to view their decision) stands a testament to the power of an economic system that warped, and for far too long, threatened to destroy, the basic moral fabric of our nation, embodied in principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence. Like so many others, I hope this column inspires further investigation that will uncover the rest of the Paterson family’s story.
Hi Judy, perhaps someone has already shared: mulattos Sally Paterson, aged 58, George Paterson, aged 38, and Mary Paterson, aged 19, were enumerated in the 1850 Richland Co. SC census. James was not enumerated with them. In 1840 enumeration, James was enumerated with both slaves and FPOC. Interestingly, there’s an 1821 petition to SC judiciary committee from James Paterson, “a mulatto,” asking to inherit his father ‘s [inferred George] estate. I’ve ordered it. (Catnip!). I will order the petition too. See who signed it. Could be interesting. fyi: Really appreciated your talk on DNA ethics in Columbia. Thank you.
Ooooh… neat info, Lahnice, thank you!