Hirelings

Hull Dorsey Jennifer

Description

In Hirelings, Jennifer Dorsey recreates the social and economic milieu of Maryland's Eastern Shore at a time when black slavery and black freedom existed side by side. She follows a generation of manumitted African Americans and their freeborn children and grandchildren through the process of inventing new identities, associations, and communities in the early nineteenth century. Free Africans and their descendants had lived in Maryland since the seventeenth century, but before the American Revolution they were always few in number and lacking in economic resources or political leverage. By contrast, manumitted and freeborn African Americans in the early republic refashioned the Eastern Shore's economy and society, earning their livings as wage laborers while establishing thriving African American communities.As free workers in a slave society, these African Americans contested the legitimacy of the slave system even while they remained dependent laborers. They limited white planters' authority over their time and labor by reuniting their families in autonomous households, settling into free black neighborhoods, negotiating labor contracts that suited the needs of their households, and worshipping in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Some moved to the cities, but many others migrated between employers as a strategy for meeting their needs and thwarting employers' control. They demonstrated that independent and free African American communities could thrive on their own terms. In all of these actions the free black workers of the Eastern Shore played a pivotal role in ongoing debates about the merits of a free labor system.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• United States of America
• Local history
• Ethnic studies
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• Maryland

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460678
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Hirelings

Hirelings

African American Workers and Free Labor in Early Maryland

Jennifer Hull Dorsey

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2011 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Dorsey, Jennifer Hull, 1969–  Hirelings : African American workers and free labor in early Maryland / Jennifer Hull Dorsey.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801447785 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Free African Americans—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History— 18th century. 2. Free African Americans—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)— History—19th century. 3. Free African Americans—Employment— Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History—18th century. 4. Free African Americans—Employment—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History— 19th century. 5. Agricultural laborers—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)— History—18th century. 6. Agricultural laborers—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History—19th century. 7. African American agricultural laborers—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History—18th century. 8. African American agricultural laborers—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)— History—19th century. 9. Slaves—Emancipation—Economic aspects—Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.) 10. Wage payment system— Eastern Shore (Md. and Va.)—History. I. Title.  E185.93.M2D67 2011  331.2'160899607521—dc22 2010047915

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Cloth printing

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List of Illustrations Preface

Introduction 1. Work 2. Migration 3. Family 4. Dependency

5. Community

6. Recession Conclusion

Notes Bibliography Index

Contents

vii ix

1 21 45 61 82 100 118 145

161 185 203

Illustrations

Figures 1. Joseph Chain advertisement, 1817 2. House Servants Wanted, 1817 3. A Plea for Charity, 1817

Maps 1. Map of the Upper Eastern Shore of Maryland 2. Map of the Delmarva Peninsula, ca. 1778 3. Map of Talbot County, 1878

Tables 1.1. Average per diem wages earned by freed men, 1789–1823 (in dollars) 1.2. Average per diem wages earned by freed women, 1789–1823 (in dollars) 1.3. Property owners in Trappe and HoleintheWall, Talbot County, 1804–32

40 49 122

xviii 11 101

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v i i i I l l u s t r a t i o n s

2.1. Applicants for Certificates of Freedom as a percentage of whole free black populations, Queen Anne’s and Talbot counties, 1805–34 2.2. Sex and age structures of Certificate of Freedom applicants, Talbot County, 1800–34 2.3. Sex and age structures of Certificate of Freedom applicants, Queen Anne’s County, 1807–34

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Preface

In 1997 historian Wilson J. Moses wished aloud that scholars would find something new to say about nineteenthcentury free African Ameri cans. Moses observed inReviews in American Historythat the scholarship had become predictable, adding that there are “layers of data in support of theses that are no longer subject to serious dispute.” The field is ready for 1 a revolution, he suggested. The exploration in this book into the working lives of manumitted and freeborn African Americans may not revolution ize the field, but it is meant to fill an inexplicable gap in African American studies as well as the history of the early republic. It is a history of free African American laborers, their families, and communities, but it is also an exploration of the relationship between the early republic manumis sions and the nascent wage labor system. It is the story of how agricultural employers made slaves into wage laborers and how two generations of Af rican Americans experienced this transition from slavery to wage work. With a few noteworthy exceptions, most historians have ignored the working lives of those African Americans manumitted in the first