HELL WITHOUT FIRE: BLACKS IN TENNESSEE
BEFORE 1865
DR. JAMES HANEY
INTRODUCTION
Africans were first introduced as slaves
into Tennessee in 1766 when the Commonwealth was still a part of the colony of
North Carolina. North Carolina ceded its claim in 1790 and Tennessee became a
state in 1796. At the time there were 11,000 slaves in a population of
77,000 whites.
PART I
SLAVERY IN TENNESSEE
Hello, I am Dr. James Haney
and this is the story of African American life and culture in the State of
Tennessee between 1796 and the beginning of the Civil War
In reality this is a story of slavery in the United States before its
abolition by the Civil War in 1865. Tennessee is significant for a
number of reasons: First, it had the smallest number of slaves, according to the
Census of 1790, with only 3,417 slaves out of a population of 77,000
whites. It was assumed that economic interest of Tennessee slave holders were
not as intense as they were in Virginia, for examples, where slaves number
293,000 in a population of a 500,000 whites. Virginia's slaves
represented 40 percent of the entire state's population in 1790, next only to
South Carolina, where the 107,094 slaves made up 43 percent of the total
population of the state.
Tennessee, coming into the union in 1796, was
the first state that was not a part of the 13 original English North American
colonies that formed the union in 1787. Tennessee, with such a small number of
slaves, could perhaps lead the United States in eliminating slavery throughout
the nation, and give freedom to over 3 quarters of a million Africans held in
captivity in 1790. (Census
of 1790). Slaves were bought and sold in Tennessee eight years before Daniel Boone
helped open the West to settlement by cutting the wilderness road across the
James River and the Cumberland Mountains.(Wilderness Road)
The wilderness road led to the eventual establishment of Kentucky since it was
the major overland route for immigrants heading West, as depicted in this early
artistic rendition (Artistic Rendition of Westward Movement)
FREE BLACKS
Not all Africans in Tennessee were
slaves, however. The census of 1790 listed 757,363 blacks in the United States,
representing 19.3% of the population. Of these 59,466 were free. In Tennessee
there were 3,417 slaves and 361 free blacks . Free blacks represented
10.56% percent of the African population. Most of these free blacks lived in
Davidson County and represented that transaction period in American history
where slaves were rapidly replacing indentured servants as laborers.
(Census of 1790) This transition into permanent bondage of the
African is viewed as an important step in the evolution of slavery. The life of
Benjamin Bannaker as portrayed by Ossie Davis in "The Man Who Loved the Star,"
is further illustration of how fluid were early race relations in North
America.(Insert Ossie Davis and Benjamin Bannaker) As the artistic
conception of the Western migration indicates,(Insert artist rendition)
the opening years of the 19th century witnessed a steady growth of the
population in the Mississippi territory. Small farmers and planters who moved
into the area following the war of 1812 found new life for slavery in Tennessee,
Alabama, and Mississippi. Dr. Reavis Mitchell, an historian at Fisk
University, Nashville, Tennessee, provided insight into the nature of
slave holding in Tennessee during this period.(Insert video statement of Dr.
Mitchell). Geographically, the Tennessee these farmers and planters
found in their push Westward was divided into three regions: East Tennessee,
West Tennessee and Middle Tennessee. East Tennessee extended from the Great
Smokies to the present day city of Chattanooga.(Insert pictures of this
section of Tennessee) It included the River Valleys of the upper Tennessee
River System, high mountains and part of the Cumberland Plateau. It was not
suitable for the development of large farms and plantations, and consequently
there were fewer blacks in this part of the state. Middle
Tennessee(Insert picture of Middle Tennessee) extended from its Eastern
boundaries to the Tennessee River on the West. It included the chief part of the
state's diversified crops and highly prosperous agricultural land. Middle
Tennessee had more plantations, farms, and slaves than East Tennessee, but very
few large plantations similar to those in Mississippi, South Carolina, and
Georgia. West Tennessee(Insert picture of West Tennessee) stretched
between the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers. It was Delta country great land
for cotton, big plantations and slaves. The slave population gradually shifted
to Middle and West Tennessee as the use of slave labor increased in the West
Slavery was marginally profitable in East Tennessee and Middle Tennessee and
highly profitable in West Tennessee. On the large plantations along the
Mississippi River, the institution of slavery was most profitable. There were
more than 13,000 slave holders in this section alone. Nevertheless,
Tennessee was a state of small farmers. The plantation system as it existed in
the deeper South never dominated. The soil was not sufficiently productive on a
truly large scale. It was more profitable to own one to a half dozen slaves and
work in the field with them than to employ an overseer. While there were 36,000
slave holders in the state in 1860, 26,000 owned less than ten slaves each,
while 18,000 owned less than five each. There were only twenty-two slave holders
who owned more than a hundred slaves in the entire state. (End, Part I)
The Abolition Movement in Tennessee
