BLACK HISTORY

DEFINING MOVEMENTS AND EVENTS: 1800-1850

1800
• Noah's Curse as slavery rationale: In the biblical account, Noah and his family are not described in racial terms. But as the story echoed through the centuries and around the world, variously interpreted by Islamic, Christian and Jewish scholars, Ham came to be widely portrayed as black; blackness, servitude and the idea of racial hierarchy became inextricably linked. By the 19th century, many historians agree, the belief that African-Americans were descendants of Ham was a primary justification for slavery among Southern Christians
  
• Gabriel Prosser organizes 1,000 armed slaves in Virginia. Prosser and 35 other slaves are executed
  
• Free Blacks made into Slaves(1800's)
  
• U.S. Congress rejects, 85 to 1, an antislavery petition offered by free Philadelphia blacks
  
  1802
• from 1802-1805 Ohio constitution abolishes slavery, then prohibits free blacks from voting and passes the first Black Laws, restricting rights of blacks in North
  
• Congress defeats an amendment to the 1793 Fugitive Slave Law requiring Blacks seeking jobs to show certificates of freedom
  
• Slave boatmen plot rebellion along Roanoke River in Virginia: Sancho was a ferryman who operated his master's ferry on the Roanoke River, quite a distance from Amelia County, where his master lived. He was among a large group of slaves, many of whom were literate, whose occupations required them to live apart from their owners. The waterways proved a blessing and a curse: They gave the slave and free black organizers quick access to a wider geographic region and simultaneously encouraged the rise of more autonomous leaders. This particular plot was betrayed, due to the vast number of individuals involved
  
  1804
• Haitian Independence Declared
  
  1805
• African Baptist Church founded in Boston
  
  1806
• Benjamin Banneker dies. born in 1731, and a self taught astronomer, mathematician and engineer, Banneker was known as "the man who saved the capitol. When a dispute arose with the French architect, Pierre L'Enfant, and he'd left with his plans for the new capitol, Banneker, reproduced the plans from memory in two days. Prior to Banneker's death, he wrote to then-president Thomas Jefferson, urging an end to slavery and submitting himself and his work as evidence that the superiority of whites over blacks was an unfounded myth
  
  1807
• U.S. Congress prohibits importation of new slaves into U.S., effective Jan. 1, 1808. Between 1808 and 1860, approximately 250,000 slaves are illegally imported
  
• Great Britain abolishes slave trade
  
• The British West African Squadron is established at Sierra Leone to suppress any illegal slave trading by British citizens. Between 1810-1865, nearly 150,000 people are freed by anti-slavery squadrons
  
  1809
• New York legally recognizes marriage within black community
  
  1810
• U.S. Congress prohibits blacks from carrying mail for postal service
  
  1811
• Louisiana Revolt: he known facts are minimal. On January 8, 1811, Charles Deslondes, a free mulatto from St. Domingo, led a body of slaves in a rebellion west of New Orleans along Louisiana's "German Coast." The slaves fought with cane knives and clubs before securing a few firearms. By January 11, local militia and army regulars had crushed the rebels. 82 blacks were killed or executed in the suppression of the revolt, with seventeen others either escaping or being left for dead. As a warning executioners placed the severed heads of sixteen black rebels on posts along the road leading to the plantation where the uprising started
  
  1812
• First appearance of Black "Codes" or laws in Washington, D.C. that curtail Blacks from assembly, "disturbing the peace", playing cards, dice or games for money, or travel after dark
  
  1814
• Two black regiments formed in New York to fight in War of 1812; the African Free School in New York City is burned
  
  1815
• The British government adopts a policy to "civilize" the Indian (as a result of propaganda in Britain and North America to Christianize all men) and to encourage the Indian to adopt European values. Initiated as an experiment in which Indian reserves are set up in isolated areas and Indians are encouraged to gather and settle in these villages, where they will be taught to farm and receive European religious instruction and education
  
• Abiel Smith, a wealthy white businessman dies and leaves funds to educate Black students in Boston. In his honor, the African School is renamed the Abiel Smith School
  
  1816
• Ft. Blount Revolt: Three hundred fugitive slaves and Florida Indians battled U.S. Army troops at Apalachicola Bay in Florida
  
• Rev. Richard Allen, founder of the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, is named the first Black Bishop in America
  
• Prince Sauders publishes the "Haytian Papers" as an answer to prejudice against Blacks
  
• Bussa's slave rebellion in Barbados, inspired by the Haitian revolution, causese huge damage in the harvest season before being brutally crushed
  
  1817
• Slave Registration Act forces all slave owners to provide a list of all the enslaved people they own every two years
  
  1820
• The Missouri Crisis paralyzes national politics, as southerners and northerners argue over the admission of new slave states to the Union. Eventually, Missouri is admitted as a slave state, balanced by the admission of Maine as a free state. The Missouri Compromise also includes an agreement to bar slavery from northern federal territories -- a compromise that holds until 1854
  
• President James Monroe orders first U.S. Navy patrol against slave ships on West African coast
  
• Congress declares international slave trade piracy punishable by death
  
  1821
• New York restricts black male voting
  
• Thomas L. Jenningsbecame the first Black to earn a U.S. patent with his type of dry cleaning called "dry scouring." Jennings' patent number was 3306X
  
• Benjamin Lundry starts publishing his anti-slavery paper, the Genius of Universal Emancipation
  
  1822
• Denmark Vesey, free black carpenter, organizes plot to seize Charleston, SC. he and followers executed
  
• The first settlers found the colony of Liberia, for freed African American slaves returning to Africa. Over the 1820s, some 1,400 blacks immigrate from the U.S. to the colony
  
• South Carolina passes Negro Seamen Acts requiring imprisonment of black sailors while in port to prevent their inciting slave revolts. Similar acts later passed in Alabama, Louisiana, and Cuba
  
• Pedro Blanco, former Spanish slave-ship captain, establishes slave factory at Lomboko on the Gallinas River in present Sierra Leone
  
• Public schools for Blacks open in Philadelphia
  
  1823
• The Monroe Doctrine: Between 1815 and 1822, Argentina, Chile and Venezuela guided their countries out of colonialism. Russia and France proposed that England join in helping Spain regain her New World colonies. The United States was also negotiating with Spain to purchase the Floridas while recognizing new Latin American republics. There was talk between France, Spain and the "Holy Alliance" (Russia, Prussia and Austria) of entering South America as Colonist. Meanwhile, the United States began to articulate the "Monroe Doctrine" President Monroe, in a speech to congress Monroe stated that the American continents were no longer open to European colonization, and that any effort to extend European political influence into the New World would be considered by the United States "as dangerous to our peace and safety." The United States would not interfere in European wars or internal affairs, and expected Europe to stay out of American affairs. Future Presidential administrations were bound to the Monroe Doctrine as a matter of course. In practice, the Monroe Doctrine was more than a warning to European nations and not quite a message of allegiance and alliance with Latin American countries. The doctrine was a notice that The United States would enforce it's own economic interest, in the manner of "new colonialism" to stage coups, terrorize workers, and dictate policy, mostly in the name of big business
  
• Alexander Twilight became the First Black College Graduate upon receiving his degree from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1823. He was a teacher and eventually would become the first elected black official in the United States
  
• Slave rising in Demerara is brutally suppressed by British forces: 250 enslaved people die, and Rev. John Smith of the London Missionary Society is sentanced to death for his part, causing outrage in Britain
  
  1824
• Bureau of Indian Affairs, Indian Board created: Secretary of War John C. Calhoun created what he called the Bureau of Indian Affairs without authorization from the Congress. McKenney, formerly superintendent of Indian trade, was appointed to head the office, with two clerks assigned to him as assistants. McKenney was instructed to take charge of the appropriations for annuities and current expenses, to examine and approve all vouchers for expenditures, to administer the funds for the civilization of the Indians, to decide on claims arising between Indians and whites under the intercourse act, and to handle the ordinary Indian correspondence of the War Department
  
  1825
• The Antelope Case: The U.S. Revenue Cutter Dallas seizes a slave ship, the Antelope, sailing under a Venezualan flag, with a cargo of 281 Africans, claimed by Portuguese and Spanish owners, in international waters. The U.S. Supreme Court hears five days of arguments before packed courtrooms. March 16: John Marshall delivers a unaminous opinion declaring the slave trade a violation of natural law, meaning it can be upheld only by positive law. But the ruling sets only 80% of the Africans free. U.S. law by this point defined the slave trade as piracy, but the court held that U.S. could not prescribe law for other nations -- and noted that the slave trade was legal as far as Spain, Portugal, Venezuela were concerned. Vessel was restored. Those Africans designated as Spanish property (numbering 39) the court recognized as property and sold into slavery on behalf of claimants. Portuguese claims the court found shakier, setting those Africans free
  
• Chile abolishes slavery
  
  1826
• Levi Coffin establishes Underground Railroad: Levi Coffin had just moved to Newport, Indiana, an ideal location in which to help fugitive slaves. Despite being born and raised in the slave state of North Carolina, Coffin was an adamant opponent of slavery. In 1826 he and his wife welcomed to their home and aided their first fugitives. Word of his help spread, and he soon "became extensively known to the friends of the slaves." Levi Coffin would ultimately help over 3,000 slaves escape bondage
  
  1827
• Slavery officially abolished in New York; 10,000 blacks freed
  
• Mexico prohibits the introduction of slaves into Texas
  
• Jim Pembroke, a slave in Maryland, escapes and begins making his way northward, where he will rename himself James W.C. Pennington and rise to prominence within the African-American abolition movement
  
  1828
• William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist writer, attacks slavery in Bennington, VT, periodical
  
• On the floor of the U.S. Congress, Rep. Henry Martindal lauds Black military service in the Revolutionary War
  
• The Anti-Slavery journal "Rights of All" is first published
  
  1829
• David Walker, a free African-American, publishes Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a radical pamphlet attacking slavery and the colonization movement. The Appeal invokes the rhetoric and spirit of the American Revolution, demanding: "See your Declaration, Americans!!! Do you understand your own language?" Copies of the Appeal soon begin turning up in Southern ports, probably secretly distributed by free African-American seamen. A year later, Walker is found dead near the doorway of his shop in Boston
  
• Mexico abolishes slavery
  
  1830
• The first annual Convention of the People of Colour assembles in Philadelphia to organize African-American opposition to slavery and to discrimination in the free states
  
  1831
• William Lloyd Garrision begins publishing anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator
  
• 'The History of Mary Prince' is published in London and becomes an important part of the anti-slavery literature
  
• The Liberator publishes the first proposal for the use of "African-American" as a term for Blacks
  
• The Virginia legislature begins debating emancipation -- the last viable movement for abolition coming from within a southern state until the Civil War
  
• Maria W. Steward, America's first Black political writer, championed women's rights and Black self-improvement in a series of speeches and essays. One of the first Black Americans to lecture publicly in defense of women's rights
  
• Nat Turner's Rebellion. Nat Turner was born in Southampton County, Virginia on October 2, 1800. As a young boy, Turner was recognized as being highly intelligent. His unique sense was noticed when he was about three or four years old. While he was playing with other children, his mother overheard him telling them about something that had happened before he was born. She asked him details about the incident, and it confirmed that he knew about this past event. Thereafter, other slaves believed that in addition to his unique perception, his physical markings were a sign that he would be a prophet. Turner had a number of visions which lead him to believe he must lead a revolt. In 1825 after seeing lights in the sky. He prayed to find out what it meant. He believed that his prayers were answered when he saw ". . . drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven. He believed that this was a sign that Jesus was returning to earth as dew and judgment day was soon. On May 12, 1828, he had another vision. He believed that the Spirit spoke to him and told him to fight the "Serpent." According to his vision, a sign from heaven would reveal when the revolt should take place. In February 1831, an eclipse of the sun occurred, and Turner believed that this was a sign to begin planning. On August 20, Turner and six other men met in the woods. At 2:00 a.m., they went to the home of Turner's master. They killed his master's entire family. Then they went house-to-house, killing other whites. In the process, they gained the assistance of fifty to sixty slaves who helped kill at least 55 white people. The rebellion ended when the militia began pursuing Turner and the other slaves. 15 were hanged. Turner escaped and hid out for about six weeks until he was captured. While in prison, he dictated his confession. On November 11, 1831 he was hanged and skinned
  
  1832
• The Great Reform Act introduces new members of Parliament from groups who are more likely to oppose slavery
  
• The New England Anti-Slavery Society is founded
  
• The Salem, Mass. Female Anti-Slavery Society is founded, the first such organization founded by Black women
  
• The Rhode Island Anti-Slaver Society is founded
  
  1833
• First meeting of the New York Anti-slavery society is held
  
• The first Maine Antislavery society is founded in hallowell
  
• The American antislavery society is founded and pledges "immediate emancipation without expatriation
  
• Connecticut passes the Black Law, barring blacks from attending private schools outside their resident towns without permission from town leaders. In Canterbury, CT, Prudence Crandell, a white school teacher, is prosecuted several times under this law
  
• Oberlin College in Ohio is founded as an integrated institution and becomes a center of abolitionist and underground railroad activity
  
  1834
• New York Blacks celebrate emancipation day
  
• An anti-abolitionist mob sacks the home of prominent New York abolitionist Lewis Tappan, part of a savage riot that also destroys the home and church of African-American Episcopal Reverend Peter Williams
  
• South Africa abolishes slavery
  
  1835
• Black/Seminole Rebellion: From 1835-1838 in Florida, the Black Seminoles, the African allies of Seminole Indians, led the largest slave rebellion in U.S. history. The uprising peaked in 1836 when hundreds of slaves fled their plantations to join the rebel forces in the Second Seminole War. At the heights of the revolt, at least 385 slaves fought alongside the black and Indian Seminole allies, helping them destroy more than twenty-one sugar plantations in central Florida, at the time one of the most highly developed agricultural regions in North America
  
• A committee of vigilance if founded in New York City to protect Blacks from slave catchers
  
  1836
• Alexander Lucius Twilight becomes the first black elected to public office; he serves in the Vermont legislature. Also one of the first African-American college graduates
  
• John B. Russwurm becomes governor of a colony of emigrant black Americans in Liberia
  
• In response to petitions calling on Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, The House of Representatives implements "The Gag Rule", automatically tabling abolitionist petitions. The policy is repeatedly renewed over the coming years
  
• Texans declare independence from Mexico they name Sam Houston commander of their army, and adopt a constitution that formally legalizes slavery in Texas
  
  1837
• Abolitionist and editor Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy is murdered by an anti-abolitionist mob in Alton, Illinois
  
• An Antislavery Convention of American Women meets in New York City with both black and white women participating
  
• African-Americans lose the right to vote in Pennsylvania (by amendment to the State Constitution) and Michigan (by state law)
  
• In New York, African-Americans petition the state legislature for voting rights
  
  1838
• Maryland Slave Frederick Bailey (Frederick Douglass) resolves to escape from bondage and reaches Philadelphia, PA
  
• Pennsylvania takes away voting rights of blacks
  
• A Philadelphia mob destroys the Pennsylvania Hall, where abolitionists have held meetings, then goes on a rampage burning and terrorizing African-American neighborhoods. Municipal authorities do nothing to halt the carnage
  
• Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the first avowed abolitionist Congressman
  
• Rev. James W.C. Pennington, who would minister to the Amistad Africans, pastors an African Congregational Church at Newtown, Connecticut. In 1840 he moves to a new congregation in Hartford. In 1841 he publishes, 'A Textbook of the Origin and History of the Colored People', the first history of its kind
  
  1839
• L'Amistad Mutiny: Sengbe Pieh, the son of a local chief, was born in Mani, Sierra Leone, in about 1815. He became a rice farmer and was married with three children when he was captured by Spanish slave-traders in 1839. The Spanish, who gave him the name Joseph Cinque, took him to Cuba where he was sold to Jose Ruiz. Ruiz purchased 48 other slaves in Havana and hired Ramon Ferrer to take him in his schooner Amistad, to Puerto Principe, a settlement further down the coast of Cuba. On 2nd July, 1839, the slaves, led by Cinque, killed Ramon Ferrer, and took possession of his ship. Cinque ordered the navigator to take them back to Africa but after 63 days at sea the ship was intercepted by Lieutenant Gedney, of the United States brig Washington, half a mile from the shore of Long Island. The Spanish government insisted that the mutineers be returned to Cuba. President Martin van Buren insisted that the men would be first tried for murder. Lewis Tappan and James Pennington took up the African's case. The judge ruled that the Africans had the right to use violence to escape from captivity. The United States government appealed. John Quincy Adams volunteered to represent the African's. He won the argument and the mutineers were released. The anti-slavery movement helped fund the return of the 35 surviving Africans to Sierra Leone. Cinque discovered that his wife and three children had been killed while he had been away
  
• HMS Buzzard escorts two American slave ships into New York, the brig Eagle and the schooner Clara, to be tried by American courts. Two weeks later, several more slavers arrive in New York, the Butterfly and the Catharine, manned by British naval officers as prizes of another royal ship on the Africa squadron. The British had already attempted to try the vessels in Sierra Leone before a mixed Anglo-Spanish commission adjudicating alleged slaving, but that commission had refused to try the vessels on the grounds they sailed under the American flag. At this point the British had escorted their prizes to New York, trying to force the Americans to enforce their laws against slave trading
  
• Pope Gregory XVI condemned slavery and the slave trade
  
• The Liberty Party holds its first national convention in Warsaw, New York, proclaiming its anti-slavery program and nominating James C. Birney for President. Among the Liberty Party's leading supporters is African-American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet
  
• Theodore Dwight Weld publishes American Slavery as it is, a powerful indictment of slavery
  
• Garrisonians take control of the American Anti-Slavery Society and radicalize its platform, demanding the immediate abolition of slavery
  
• President Martin Van Buren orders U.S. Navy to resume West African patrols
  
• first opium war in China
  
  1840
• Division in American Anti-Slavery Society over role of women weakens abolitionist efforts
  
  1841
• The Supreme Court frees the Amistad rebels, who had been enslaved in violation of international treaty and had been tried with murder and piracy, in 1841, 35 leave for Africa and arrive in Sierra Leone
  
• African American slaves rebel aboard the brig Creole revolt en route from Virginia to New Orleans. The rebels force the captain and crew to sail them to Nassau in the Bahamas. There British authorities take nineteen of the rebels into custody but free the remainder, England having abolished slavery in the British West Indies in 1833
  
• Frederick Douglass is hired by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society as a full-time lecturer and successfully campaigns in Rhode Island against the Dorr Constitution, which would repeal black voting right
  
  1842
• Senator John C. Calhoun proposes a resolution calling on President Tyler to protest the British handling of theCreole incident. January 29: U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster issues a dispatch to the ambassador to Great Britain demanding indemnification for the freed slaves
  
• The U.S. and Great Britian sign the Webster-Ashburn Treaty, adjusting boundaries between the U.S. and Canada, and agreeing to cooperate on suppressing the slave trade
  
• In Boston, escaped slave George Lattimore is captured by bounty hunters -- the first in a series of confrontational fugitive slave cases. Abolitionists raise funds to purchase Lattimore's freedom
• In Philadelphia, a parade commemorating the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies is attacked by a proslavery mob
  
• Prigg v. Pennsylvania: On April 1st 1837, Edward Prigg led an assault and abduction on Margaret Morgan an escaped slave from Maryland, taking refuge in Pennsylvania. Prigg took Morgan to Maryland, intending to sell her as a slave. The four men involved in the abduction were arraigned under the 1826 act. The Court convicted him however, the supreme court reversed the decision, and held the Pennsylvania law unconstitutional as a denial of both the right of slaveholders to recover their slaves under Article IV and the Federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which trumped the state law
  
  1843
• Sojourner Truth, an African-American woman who escaped from slavery, begins lecturing for abolitionism
  
• Rev. Henry Highland Garnet delivers a "Call to Rebellion" at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, exhorting African-Americans to resist slavery by means of armed rebellion (and holding up Cinque, among others, as heroes in the cause)
  
• At the party convention for the Liberty Party in Buffalo, African-Americans participate directly for the first time, with Henry Highland Garnet serving on the nominating committee and two other black clergymen, Rev. Charles B. Ray and Rev. Samuel Ringgold, also playing prominent roles
  
  1845
• Frederick Douglass publishes "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"
  
  
• Macon B. Allen became the first Black to practice law. He received his license in Massachusetts
  1846
• First Mexican-American war
  
• Danish West Indies (Virgin Islands) abolishes slavery
  
  1847
• Dred Scott files suit for his freedom in St. Louis, MO, testing Missouri Compromise
  
• New Jersey takes away black voting rights
  
• Henry "Box" Brown escapes to freedom by climbing into a box and shipping himself to Philadelphia
  
  1848
• Frederick Douglass becomes sole editor of the North Star
  
• William A. Leidesdorff, the first Black Millionaire. Leidesdorff got rich from a hotel and steamboat service he started in San Francisco, California where there is a street named after him
  
• Slavery entirely prohibited in Connecticut by state law
  
• Benjamin Roberts tried to enroll his daughter, Sarah, in each of the five public schools that stood between their home and the Smith school. Sarah was denied entrance to all of them, so Roberts sued the city under an 1845 statute providing recovery of damages for any child unlawfully denied public school instruction
  
• The Free Soil movement begins, opposing the spread of slavery into the new territories
  
  1849
• Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland
  
• Benjamin Roberts files first integration suit on behalf of daughter who is denied admission to a Boston school
  
• Joaquim Nabuco & the abolition of slavery in Brazil
  
  1850
• Beginning of "Indian Treaties" granting limited land rights and financial compensation for the European acquisition of territory. One act vests control of all Indian lands and property with the Commissioner of Indian Lands, states that no sale of Indian lands can happen without Crown consent, and exempts Indians and resident spouses from taxes on reserve lands. A second act defines an Indian as all persons of Indian blood, the spouse of an Indian, anyone residing with Indians whose parents on either side were Indian, and anyone adopted in infancy by an Indian who resided on a reserve
  
• Compromise of 1850 admits California as free state, eliminates slave trade in District of Columbia, establishes Utah and New Mexico without restrictions on slavery, and requires return of fugitive slaves
  
  
  

timeline:

previous

next