The origins of Black politics in the US

Van Gosse, Professor of History at Franklin and Marshall College, talks about the origins of black politics.

Van Gosse

Professor of History

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Van Gosse

Professor of History

12 Mar 2021

Key Points

At the founding of the United States, when the Constitution was ratified, a small number of free black men were able to vote. That was the beginning of black politics.
In New York and Ohio, extremely important states where black men had been formerly disenfranchised, they used loopholes in the law to increase their influence in politics.
Britain was a great beneficiary of slavery – all that cotton was going to Manchester. However, when slavery was abolished in 1833, it became a haven for black political figures like Frederick Douglass.

The very beginning

"First Colored Senator and Representatives in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States." 1872. By Currier and Ives. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Black politics begin in the United States when the United States begins, although there is no question that few people understand that today, for the obvious reason that – whether in 1790, which is the functioning beginning of the US, of Congress meeting, or in 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War – 88-90% of African Americans are enslaved and are not participating in conventional electoral politics at all.

However, what very few people know is that, of the original 13 states, 10 of them had no racial bar to voting. So, at the founding of the United States, when the Constitution was ratified, free black men voted in the large majority of those states – in small numbers, but they did vote. That’s the beginning of black politics: non-racial suffrage that they grasped onto and very quickly began to expand upon to make themselves visible. Indeed, they began to be courted by leading white politicians, even in the 1790s, where they were voting freely in places like Boston and New York City.

Increasing their influence in politics

It’s a complex and contradictory story, how free black men increased their influence in American politics between roughly 1790 and 1860 – when Abraham Lincoln was elected, which set off the Civil War. First, they became ever more active in the states where they could always vote, what I would call Upper New England: Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. It is worth noting that those states were a much larger part of the United States then than they are now. Black men were very politically active, especially in the port cities of New England – and they were known to be; Southern newspapers, slaveholders’ newspapers, talked about them all the time, what an abomination this was.

Using loopholes in the law

In New York and Ohio, extremely important states where they had been formerly disenfranchised, they used loopholes in the law and white allies to become significant constituencies.

In 1821, because of black voting power, New York disenfranchised all but a tiny number of black men. It passed a very high property requirement: a large farm was needed for a black man to vote. Nonetheless, by the 1850s, through one means or another, a lot of black men had found their way around this requirement and were completely integrated into the new Republican Party as an organic part of that party, with up to 11,000 of them voting before the Civil War.

At its founding in 1803, Ohio passed white suffrage. In principle, no black men could vote. But in 1831, the Ohio State Supreme Court declared that any man, any person who was preponderantly white, had the privilege of whiteness and, indeed, could vote. On this basis, thousands of black men, not necessarily mixed race, claimed that right, aided by white allies. So, Ohio had a large black electorate – thousands of men – on the eve of the Civil War.

Rhode Island enfranchised its black men again in 1842, to hold off the Irish. So, five New England states plus New York and Ohio meant that black men were voting in much, although hardly all, of the North, as of 1860.

From fugitive slaves to political leaders

It’s quite striking how many of the famous black political leaders before the Civil War were fugitive slaves. Among others, there were Frederick Douglass, Henry Highland Garnet and Samuel Ringgold Ward. They were all from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, all of them runaways; all of them, by the way, famous men in the United Kingdom where they had all been, and travelled and socialised.

A large part of the power that those black men and hundreds of others had was what I would call “the demonstration effect” upon white voters: if a black man spoke out in public and even more showed up at the polls – and voting was very public, you could see how someone was voting by what they deposited in the box and what they said – if a black man voted for a particular political party, that certified that party as a northern party, a party opposed to the South. Even if that party had a whole southern wing, it still sent a message of approval. They could certify which white candidate and which white party to support.

The emergence of anti-slavery politics

The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840, by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

From 1840 onwards, the 20 years leading up to the Civil War, there is the steady emergence of serious anti-slavery politics in the northern states: first, by third parties like the Liberty Party and the Free Soil Party, and finally by the Republican Party. Black men choosing to vote for them instead of one of the major parties had a decisive demonstration effect. This is one aspect of why these men became political leaders.

One more thing that needs to be said to understand this is that politics in this period that we’re discussing revolves around public speaking, around oratory, an almost completely lost art in America. It is not an accident that Douglass and the other men I’ve mentioned were extraordinary orators. Douglass was a fantastic mimic; he was so entertaining, savage and sharp that what we would call “Negro folks”, people who were pro-slavery, would go to see him because he was funny and exciting.

Black American politics and the British Empire

The historian Christopher Brown wrote an excellent book, called Moral Capital, about the antislavery politics of the British Empire from the Revolution onwards, and how the British government, and populace, including many in the upper classes, claimed moral authority over the rebellious Americans by acting against slavery, while the Americans were entrenching it.

We must remember that there were 700,000 slaves in 1790 in the United States and 4 million enslaved people in 1860. That’s the history of the United States right there: from 700,000 to 4 million enslaved people engaged in extremely advanced racial capitalism, which England is the beneficiary of; all that cotton is going to Manchester via Liverpool.

But the defeat of the British Empire by the Americans creates a situation where it is advantageous politically for some of the British elite and much of the public to assert their moral superiority over the “savage colonials”. What this means is that Britain leads the way in abolishing the slave trade, and then enforcing the abolition of the slave trade. The Americans undermine the abolition of the slave trade: every president until Lincoln pardoned men who had been convicted of slave-trading, because it was illegal after 1807. The British Navy didn’t pardon them; it hanged them by the neck, as pirates.

The abolition of slavery in Britain

Britain legally and peacefully abolished slavery between 1833-1834, a generation before the Americans endured a violent civil war to reach that goal. The political steps taken by the British government and the British populace created a very real sense among black Americans, enslaved as well as free, that (to quote a famous pamphlet from 1829): “the English as a Nation are our Friends.”

What this means in practical terms is that inside the United States, at any point from the early 1800s through the Civil War, you know where absolute freedom is. If you can get to Maine or Vermont, you’re probably free – it’s going to be hard for a slave catcher to come and get you in Vermont. If you get to Canada, however, the British army will protect you from slave catchers. Canada was no racial paradise, but it was widely reported by the roughly 30,000 African Americans who emigrated to Canada that they had more rights and more respect there than anywhere in the United States.

Finally, Great Britain was the great place for raising money, generating public acclaim, selling books and going on lecture tours. Not just for Frederick Douglass, but for several dozen other African Americans from the early 1830s onwards. Douglass would never have been able to publish his influential newspaper (originally The North Star, then Frederick Douglass’ Paper) from 1847 on without the money he had raised in Great Britain.

Black participation in the Civil War

Photo by Everett Collection

Under extreme wartime pressure, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Act as a wartime measure to undermine the rebellious Confederate states. As of 1 January 1863, it unilaterally freed all of the enslaved people in those states. Equally important is that the Emancipation Proclamation also authorised the mass enlistment of African Americans in the Union Army. This took on extraordinary characteristics: about 200,000 African-American men served in the American army and the American navy during the Civil War.

The Mississippi Delta is where you would find slave labour camps – what white people like to call plantations – with up to 1,000 human beings working in cotton fields that reached to the horizon. When the Union Army reached the Mississippi Delta in 1863, they enlisted 50,000 men out of those slave labour camps. They lined them up, and they were given muskets, uniforms and training in how to march and fight, and then they went out into the field to kill their masters. This is the hard reality of what the Civil War really was about – it became a war of liberation.

Of course, that changed the position of African Americans. There’s a famous quotation from Frederick Douglass, saying, in effect, once you have given a man a rifle, how can you deny him the vote? The exemplary military service of black men in the Union Army had a large effect on many white soldiers, on many white people in the North. It turned their minds around, seeing how courageously black men fought.