The Negro In Virginia

The story of the Negro in Virgina was planned originally as one of a series of racial studies undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration. Although the Federal Writers' Project no longer exists, the assignment has been completed under the administration of the Virginia Writers' Project, whose State supervisor, Mrs. Eudora Ramsay Richardson, has ably and sympathetically edited the manuscript. The only all-Negro unit of a State-wide writers' project, it has enjoyed an administrative and technical cooperation from the entire staff of Virginia writers that has contributed much to the volume. It is appropriate that the first WPA State book on the Negro be produced in Virginia ; for here the first African natives were brought and held in enforced servitude, and here also, more than two centuries later, freedom for some 5,000,000 of their descendants was assured on the surrender ground of Appomattox. -- Preface.

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Throughout the Civil War, newspaper headlines and stories repeatedly asked some variation of the question posed by the New York Times in 1862, "What shall we do with the negro?" The future status of African Americans was a pressing issue for those in both the North and in the South. Consulting a broad range of contemporary newspapers, magazines, books, army records, government documents, publications of citizens’ organizations, letters, diaries, and other sources, Paul D. Escott examines the attitudes and actions of Northerners and Southerners regarding the future of African Americans after the end of slavery. "What Shall We Do with the Negro?" demonstrates how historians together with our larger national popular culture have wrenched the history of this period from its context in order to portray key figures as heroes or exemplars of national virtue. Escott gives especial critical attention to Abraham Lincoln. Since the civil rights movement, many popular books have treated Lincoln as an icon, a mythical leader with thoroughly modern views on all aspects of race. But, focusing on Lincoln’s policies rather than attempting to divine Lincoln’s intentions from his often ambiguous or cryptic statements, Escott reveals a president who placed a higher priority on reunion than on emancipation, who showed an enduring respect for states’ rights, who assumed that the social status of African Americans would change very slowly in freedom, and who offered major incentives to white Southerners at the expense of the interests of blacks.Escott’s approach reveals the depth of slavery’s influence on society and the pervasiveness of assumptions of white supremacy. "What Shall We Do with the Negro?" serves as a corrective in offering a more realistic, more nuanced, and less celebratory approach to understanding this crucial period in American history.

It is one of the least commonly known facts about the Civil War: there were many, many free negroes living in slaveholding states before the Emancipation Proclamation. This monograph on that surprising reality, originally published in 1913, draws on such firsthand documents as court records, contemporary literature and newspaper accounts, and other sources to create the first such portrait of this nearly forgotten chapter of African-American history. From the various origins of the "free negro" classes to their legal and social statuses-regarding everything from their right of travel to their relationship with their enslaved fellows-this "should supply some of the facts upon which the history of the negro race in the United States must be based," wrote author JOHN HENDERSON RUSSELL (b. 1884) in his preface.

The State of Virginia recognizes the 1619 landing of Africans at Point Comfort (present-day Hampton) as a complicated beginning. This collection of new essays reckons with this historical fact, with discussions of the impacts 400 years later. Chapters cover different perspectives about the "20 and odd" who landed, offering insights into how enslavement continues to affect the lives of their descendants. The often overlooked experiences of women in enslavement are discussed.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ...A 6812. "Ibid.. 1840, A6821. "Code (1849), P. 754; Code (1860), p. 816. 45 Acts, 1839, p. 24. "See a petition to the legislature which represents that both free negroes and dogs kill sheep as they prowl through the neighborhood (MS. Petitions, Chesterfield County, 1854, A4321). "Acts, 1847-1848; House Journal, 1847-1848, p. 436. "Acts, 1857-1858, p. 152. out the State passed the House of Delegates in 1848, hut failed to receive the approval of the Senate.52 The laws of Virginia extended their protection not only, as we have already seen, to the property of the free negro, but, as we shall now see, to his life and liberty. In any case in which the freedom' of a negro was disputed the burden of proof was upon the negro to show that he was free. Unlike the recognized principle of English law which demands that every man be regarded as innocent till his guilt is established by evidence, a free negro taken up and deprived of his liberty as being a slave had, in order to procure his release, to produce evidence that he was not a slave. In 1806 George Wythe, chancellor of the State of Virginia, gave as grounds for decreeing the freedom of three persons claimed as slaves that freedom is the birthright of every human being. He laid it down as a general proposition that whenever one person claims to hold another in slavery, the onus probandi lies on the claimant. This application of the Declaration of Independence was completely repudiated by the supreme court of appeals when the case came'up for final review.58 Judge Tucker, who spoke for a unanimous court, asserted that the burden of proof is not upoA the claimant, but upon the negro to show that he is free; whereas with a white man or an Indian held in slavery the burden...