Review of Black Life on the MississippiEssay title: Review of Black Life on the MississippiBlack Life on the MississippiThomas C. BuchananReviewed By Andy EvansBlack Life on the Mississippi builds on an impressive and imaginative body of primary sources. A number of slave narratives, most prominently the recollections of William Wells Brown, and WPA ex-slave interviews provide an inside view of life on the Mississippi. Buchanan also employs newspapers, drawing especially useful information from runaway slave advertisements. Plantation records explain the role that slave work on steamboats played in the regions economy. Where Buchanan moves beyond the expected range of sources is by using a wealth of court records. When a slave was killed or escaped while leased to a steamboat captain, chances were good that there would be a lawsuit. Free blacks and slaves took advantage of federal admiralty laws that extended into Americas waterways and gave them legal standing not enjoyed by most of their contemporaries. And during Reconstruction, newly confident steamboat workers often took their employers to court.
With these sources, Buchanan fulfills his goal to illustrate “the way in which slavery in the West was shaped by its link to the western river system and its workers” (p. 16) and to explain “the work experience of African American river workers, their pan-Mississippi world, and the actions they took to better their condition” (p. 17). The books first chapter gives an overview of this pan-Mississippi world, a place where getting crops to market came to rely on the steamboat system. While we may tend to think about Huck Finn and Sam Clemens going up and down the Mississippi River when we think of steamboats, Buchanan reminds us that steamboats also plied the eastern waters up the Ohio River system all the way to Pittsburgh, followed the Mississippi River as far north as St. Paul, brushed the West on the Missouri River to Kansas City, and brought goods and passengers into deepest east Texas on the Red River.
Chapter 2 narrows the scope from the entire pan-Mississippi world to the confines of the steamboat itself. By the 1830s, steamboats had begun to take their classic “wedding cake” form. To navigate the rivers, steamboats had only a shallow hold where cargo was stored. The deck was used to stack more cargo, primarily cotton bales, and as the accommodation for the poorest passengers and the crew. Above this was the boiler deck, combining the main cabin and staterooms, and next was the “hurricane deck” to house officers, with the pilothouse topping it off. The challenges and rewards of steamboat work varied by how far from water-level one was. While all African-American workers were susceptible to disease and violence, deckhands and roustabouts were also likely to be crushed by cargo, knocked overboard into the swirling river, or frostbitten. For such dangers, they received slightly higher pay than some of the cabin workers. Cabin workers were less likely to have a cotton bale fall on them while eating their lunch, but they did have to deal with white passengers on a constant basis, providing plenty of opportunities for casual violence. Balancing out the abuse from passengers were the tips cabin workers received, which could often amount to several dollars per voyage, the difference between the workers wages and a living wage. Since the steamboat strove to provide luxurious travel accommodations to its passengers, it created niches for some highly skilled and well-paid black workers, such as barbers and chefs. Barbers were in a particularly advantageous position since they were not actually part of the steamboat crew but rather rented out space and worked for themselves. Many barbers seem to have combined steamboat and land-based businesses, earning quite a handsome income.
Buchanans third chapter studies the relationships between steamboats and African-American families. As with so much of this book, this topic is full of contradictions. Many of the slaves who were “sold down the river” made that terrible journey in chains on the deck of a steamboat. Buchanan demonstrates that not only were slaves from Kentucky transported this way, but quite a number from Virginia were moved overland to Wheeling and then loaded onto steamboats bound for New Orleans or the Red River. At the same time that steamboats were ripping apart some slave families, they allowed others to keep in touch and find long-lost relatives as steamboat workers carried messages and news over long distances. In chapter 4, Buchanan examines the role steamboats played in helping slaves to escape. While it is no surprise that steamboats were active in
Buchanan identifies a number of groups of slaves in the U.S. that had previously been enslaved in slavery. These groups have long been identified, with the majority of these groupings being in South Carolina (G. E. Clark, p. 38). As we will see, steamboats were an integral part of African-American lives as we will see in our next chapter. This article is about slavery -and its ties to the South. What is slavery? How is it connected to slavery, particularly when you consider the role of slaveowners as a source of wealth and wealth, especially to African-Americans?
A. It is generally recognized that in every society, slaves were brought to the States from any given place where they might be re-labourers, farmworkers, and industrial workers. A large part is the labor and the knowledge of that, but an important minority is the owners themselves. This minority is a “labor aristocracy” (see Appendix, Page 2). It is a minority which, like all other races and groups of individuals, is a strong advocate of slavery. This majority does not know that African Americans have a distinct moral right to be free, free from the chains of an employer, or free from the pressures of the state; nevertheless they still support slavery. This minority is particularly well represented when it takes up its main position in the community where it is most visible. A great many whites in South Carolina (G. E. Clark, pp. 5–61) supported the war of secession by the American people against slaveholders as a way to keep African- Americans down, and because of this they supported the right of black Americans to become enslaved. On page 56 of the first book of the Civil War, Lincoln writes:
… the idea of seizing in the slave race the white man’s right to own one’s soul as his master was in no way a justification for these laws of slavery and the other great law governing our human rights. This was certainly the view held at the time and for so great a period of his life. It had been very deeply held since about the reign of Abraham Lincoln. By 1861, it was well known that if the black man were not kept by a strong lawless lawless people as his free slave, he would be forced to work in a slave market for food, clothing, or other useful necessaries….
To understand how slaveholders were drawn to the idea of enslaving their slaves is of great interest. A majority in the black community believe that slavery and white interests should become intertwined. The slavery in the late 19th century was primarily a form of social exclusion, discrimination, and exclusion. Although slaveholders were often forced to migrate as far as Kansas, Virginia, Mississippi, Ohio and many other states along the South, slaveholders continued to migrate under the guise of economic security. In the years between 1865 and 1877, several slaveholders were forcibly removed from their communities over the sale of goods or for trade and sold for military service. The most famous white slaveowner who survived was Henry Clay, the man who sold slaves in Missouri for military service. The slaveholder Clay “was forced onto his land with a large crew of 10 to 12 “whole” men, all of whom, as Henry Clay wrote in his journal, were being forced to perform ‘slave labor’. ‘A negro was brought to Clay’s plantation