White slave propaganda

{{See also|Children of the plantation|Slave breeding in the United States|Fancy girls}}

Sexual exploitation of slaves by their masters, master's sons, overseers, or other powerful white men was common in the United States. By the 1860 Census, mixed-race slaves constituted about 10% of the 4 million slaves enumerated; they were more numerous in the Upper South. Slavery had existed for a longer time there, and in the generally smaller holdings, slaves had lived more closely with white workers and masters, leading to more contact between the groups. The scale of the sexual exploitation is suggested by research that show the DNA of contemporary African Americans is, on average, 24% European in origin.{{Cite web |title=Genetic study reveals surprising ancestry of many Americans |author=Lizzy Wade |work=Science |date=18 December 2014 |access-date=11 October 2021 |url= https://www.science.org/content/article/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans-rev2 |quote=The average African-American genome, for example, is 73.2% African, 24% European, and 0.8% Native American. }}

An analysis of the WPA Slave Narrative Collection, collected in the 1930s, shows that, when women discussed parentage at all, about one-third of these women ex-slaves said they had given birth to a child with a white father, or were themselves the child of a white father.{{cite web|title=Free at Last? Slavery in Pittsburgh in the 18th and 19th Centuries|url=http://www.library.pitt.edu/freeatlast/fugitive_laws.html|website=University Library System|publisher=University of Pittsburgh|access-date=July 7, 2016|date=2009|archive-date=June 26, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626003737/http://exhibit.library.pitt.edu/freeatlast/fugitive_laws.html|url-status=dead}} The plight of these mixed-race slaves, especially as children, was often publicized as a way to further the abolitionist cause.

Some pro-slavery activists wanted slavery legalized nationwide, overruling state prohibitions. They suggested there was no reason why slavery should be limited to blacks. They said that Northern white laborers would actually have better lives as slaves.{{cite journal

|title=The Slave Power Conspiracy: 1830–1860

|first=Russel B.

|last=Nye

|journal=Science & Society

|volume=10

|number=3

|date=Summer 1946

|pages=262–274

|jstor=40399768}}

The first abolitionist novel,{{cite book|last1=Tenzer|first1=Lawrence Raymond|title=The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue, Chapter III|date=1997|publisher=Scholars' Publishing House|url=http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2001/10/01/white-slaves/|access-date=2016-07-08|archive-date=2016-03-21|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321005248/http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2001/10/01/white-slaves/|url-status=dead}} The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore, published in 1836 by historian Richard Hildreth, features an enslaved mixed-race hero, son of a white planter and an enslaved mother, who is herself the daughter of a white planter. He can state that "both on the father's and the mother's side, I had running in my veins, the best blood of Virginia".{{citation|title=The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore|at=p. 19|language=en|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/moore1/moore1.html#p19|access-date=2020-04-12}} When he and his sister decide to escape, they have no problems "in passing ourselves as white citizens."{{citation|title=The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore|at=p. 62|language=en|url=http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/moore1/moore1.html#p62|access-date=2020-04-12}} The title of the 1852 edition refers to the appearance of the hero: The White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive.{{citation|title=The White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive|at=p. 62|language=en|url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/hildreth/menu.html|access-date=2020-04-12}}

File:Eliza, she thought she heard the trader make and offer for her boy; could she be mistaken? LCCN2003674768.jpg

The character of Eliza in the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was described as a quadroon slave (one-quarter black ancestry), whose child also appeared to be "all-but-white".{{cite book|last1=Stowe|first1=Harriet Beecher|title=Uncle Tom's Cabin|publisher=George Routledge & Company|date=1852|page=[https://archive.org/details/uncletomscabin09stowgoog/page/n22 20]|url=https://archive.org/details/uncletomscabin09stowgoog|accessdate=July 5, 2016}} See, in particular, Chapter II{{cite web|last1=Goodman|first1=Carol|title="As White As Their Masters": Visualizing the Color Line|url=http://www.mirrorofrace.org/carol.html|website=mirrorofrace.org|accessdate=July 5, 2016}}

Another popular abolitionist novel of the time was Mary Hayden Pike's Ida May: a Story of Things Actual and Possible (1854), a story about a "white" slave. In 1855, Mary Mildred Botts, a young mixed-race slave who appeared white, gained freedom after her father got financial support from abolitionists to purchase her freedom as well as that of his wife and two other children. Among those who helped was US Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. She was considered the embodiment of Ida May. Articles were published about her in the Boston Telegraph and the New York Times, and copies of her photograph were widely publicized.{{cite news|title=A White Slave from Virginia.|url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B0CE4D6133DE034BC4153DFB566838E649FDE&legacy=true|accessdate=July 5, 2016|work=New York Times|date=March 9, 1855}}{{cite web|last1=Gage|first1=Joan|title=A White Slave Girl "Mulatto Raised by Charles Sumner"|url=http://mirrorofrace.org/joan-gage/|website=Mirror of Race|accessdate=July 5, 2016}}{{cite web|last1=Morgan-Owens|first1=Jessie|title=Poster Child: There's Something About Mary|url=http://www.morgan-owens.com/blog/2015/2/18/theres-something-about-mary|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160731125506/http://www.morgan-owens.com/blog/2015/2/18/theres-something-about-mary|url-status=usurped|archive-date=July 31, 2016|publisher=Massachusetts Historical Society|access-date=July 6, 2016|date=February 19, 2015}} Botts accompanied Sumner and other abolitionists on stage; she sat with them while they lectured, and was described as a former slave. On May 19 and 20, 1856, Sumner spoke in the Senate, comparing Southern political positions to the sexual exploitation of slaves then taking place in the South. Two days later Sumner was beaten almost to death on the floor of the Senate in the Capitol by Representative Preston Brooks from South Carolina, known as a hothead.

Three decades after the Emancipation Proclamation, Frances Harper's 1892 novel Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted tells the story of a "colored" family before and after emancipation. With the exception of Iola's grandmother, who is "unmistakably colored",{{citation|title=Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted|at=p. 206|language=en|url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/harper/harper.html#p206|access-date=2020-04-13

}} all members of the family have so much European ancestry that they can easily pass for white. When Iola's uncle, Robert Johnson, escapes from slavery and distinguishes himself in the Union army, a white officer compares him to the other former slaves among his soldiers: "You do not look like them, you do not talk like them. It is a burning shame to have held such a man as you in slavery." Johnson answers: "I don't think it was any worse to have held me in slavery than the blackest man in the South."{{citation|title=Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted|at=p. 44|language=en|url=https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/harper/harper.html#p44|access-date=2020-04-13

}}

Nonfiction accounts written by escaped mixed-race slaves who used their European appearance to "pass for white" and gain freedom include Ellen Craft: Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom (coauthored with her husband William).{{cite book|last1=Craft|first1=William and Ellen|title=Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom|date=1860|pages=63|publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=9781625585325|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0znsAgAAQBAJ|accessdate=July 6, 2016}} With majority-white ancestry, Craft often also appeared as a speaker on the abolitionist lecture circuit.[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-622 Barbara McCaskill, "William and Ellen Craft"], New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2010, accessed July 6, 2016

The Crafts and other abolitionists also publicized the life of Salomé Müller, a German immigrant orphaned as an infant soon after arrival in New Orleans. Though Muller (later known as Sally Miller) was completely of European descent, she became enslaved as an infant, and was assumed to be a mixed-race slave. The threat of white girls being seized and thrown into slavery prompted Parker Pillsbury to write to William Lloyd Garrison: "A white skin is no security whatsoever. I should no more dare to send white children out to play alone, especially at night...than I should dare send them into a forest of tigers and hyenas."[https://www.jstor.org/pss/4233569 Carol Wilson, "Sally Muller, the White Slave"], Louisiana History, Vol. 40, 1999, accessed July 7, 2016

Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence was a young white slave freed in early 1863. She was adopted by Catherine S. Lawrence of New York and baptized by Henry Ward Beecher at the Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, New York. Carte de visite photographs of her were also sold to raise money for the abolitionist cause.{{cite web|last1=Brown|first1=Tanya Ballard|title=A Black And White 1860s Fundraiser|url=https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2012/12/10/166093470/a-black-and-white-1860s-fundraiser|website=NPR|accessdate=July 5, 2016|date=December 10, 2012}}

File:Mary Mildred Botts.jpg|Mary Mildred Botts/Williams in an 1855 daguerreotype

File:Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence 1863.jpg|Fannie Virginia Casseopia Lawrence, a slave freed in early 1863

File:Ellen Craft escaped slave.jpg|Etching of Ellen Craft, based on a c. 1860 photo

File:Learning is Wealth.jpg, an adult man, all with books in their hands; the image is entitled "Learning is Wealth"]]

By 1863 in Louisiana, ninety-five schools for freedmen, serving 9,500 students, were active in areas controlled by the Union Army. Funding was needed to continue to run the schools. The National Freedman's Association, the American Missionary Association, and Union officers launched a publicity campaign to raise money by selling carte de visite (CDV) photographs of eight former slaves, five children and three adults. The former slaves were accompanied on a tour of Philadelphia and New York by Colonel George H. Hanks. A woodcut, based on a photograph of the former slaves, appeared in Harper's Weekly in January 1864 with the caption "EMANCIPATED SLAVES, WHITE AND COLORED."{{cite web|last=Caust-Ellenbogen|first=Celia|title=White Slaves|url=http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/white_slaves.php|publisher=Bryn Mawr College, Swarthmore College|accessdate=11 July 2013|archive-date=24 January 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124143157/http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/speccoll/quakersandslavery/commentary/themes/white_slaves.php|url-status=dead}} Four of the children were predominantly white in appearance, although born into slavery.

The former slaves traveled from New Orleans to the North. Of these, four children appeared to be white or octoroon. According to the Harper's Weekly article, they were, {{" '}}perfectly white;' 'very fair;' 'of unmixed white race.' Their light complexions contrasted sharply with those of the three adults, Wilson, Mary, and Robert; and that of the fifth child, Isaac—'a black boy of eight years; but none the less intelligent than his whiter companions.{{' "}}{{cite news|title='White' slave children of New Orleans|url=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/white-slave-children-new-orleans-1860s-propaganda-campaign-gallery-1.1164989|accessdate=31 August 2013|newspaper=New York Daily News|date=21 September 2012}}

The group was accompanied by Colonel Hanks from the 18th Infantry Regiment. They posed for photos in New York City and in Philadelphia. The resulting images were produced in the carte de visite format and were sold for twenty-five cents each, with the profits of the sale being directed to Major General Nathaniel P. Banks back in Louisiana to support education of freedmen. Each of the photos noted that sale proceeds would be "devoted to the education of colored people".

Of the many prints that were commissioned, at least twenty-two remain in existence today. Most of these were produced by Charles Paxson and Myron Kimball, who took the group photo that later appeared as a woodcut in Harper's Weekly. A portrait of Rebecca was taken by James E. McClees of Philadelphia.

File:Freedoms Banner Charley a slave boy from New Orelans 1864.jpg and one of Withers's slaves. Withers sold Charley to a slave dealer and he was sold again in New Orleans.]]

Modern scholars have examined the white slave campaign's motives and success. Mary Niall Mitchell, in "Rosebloom and Pure White, Or So It Seemed",{{cite web|last1=Mitchell|first1=Mary Niall|title='Rosebloom and Pure White,' Or So It Seemed|url=http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=hist_facpubs|website=ScholarWorks@UNO|publisher=University of New Orleans|accessdate=June 29, 2016}} also published in American Quarterly 54:3 (September 2002): 369-410 argues that because the slaves were depicted as being white, through both their skin color and style of dress, abolitionists could argue that the Civil War was independent of class status. Supporters of the war believed that this was needed after the New York City draft riots that year. Predominantly ethnic Irish mobs had protested the draft law, as wealthier men could buy substitutes rather than serve in the war.

Carol Goodman, in "Visualizing the Color Line", has argued that the photos alluded to physical and sexual abuse of the children's mothers. When publishing the photo of the eight former slaves, the editor of Harper's Weekly wrote that slavery permits slave-holding {{"'}}gentlemen' [to] seduce [the] most friendless and defenseless of women." The specter of "white" girls being sold as "fancy girls" or concubines in Southern slave markets may have caused Northern families to fear for the safety of their own daughters. Similarly, the idea that white slave-master fathers would sell their own children in slave markets raised Northerners' concerns.

Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, in "Portraits of a People", has argued that the usage of props, such as the American flag and books, helped to provide context for Northern viewers, and also to emphasize that the purpose of the photos was to raise money for education of former slaves by funding schools in Louisiana. She also noted that the use of "white" children to illustrate the damage caused by institutional slavery, whose victims were overwhelmingly visibly people of color, demonstrated the contemporary racism of both Southern and Northern societies.

• Julia Chinn, common-law wife of vice president Richard Mentor Johnson
• Wilson Chinn
• Sally Hemings, whose children are generally regarded as having been fathered by president Thomas Jefferson
• Irish slaves myth
• Garafilia Mohalbi, a Greek girl rescued from slavery in the Ottoman Empire
• Louisa Picquet
• Passing (racial identity)
• White slavery
• Mary Mildred Williams

Notes

{{Reflist}}

Further reading

• {{cite book|last1=Tenzer|first1=Lawrence Raymond|title=The Forgotten Cause of the Civil War: A New Look at the Slavery Issue|date=1997|publisher=Scholars' Publishing House|isbn=9780962834806|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EGkOAQAAMAAJ}} See especially [http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2001/10/01/white-slaves/ Ch.III] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160321005248/http://multiracial.com/site/index.php/2001/10/01/white-slaves/ |date=2016-03-21 }}
• [https://books.google.com/books?id=p5U-AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA32-IA29 Fremont Campaign Literature, 1856]
• Henry Louis Gates, Jr., [http://www.theroot.com/articles/history/2013/02/how_mixed_are_african_americans/ Exactly How ‘Black’ Is Black America?]
• {{cite book|last1=Janken|first1=Kenneth Robert|title=Walter White: Mr. NAACP|date=2006|publisher=UNC Press Books|isbn=9780807857809|pages=3–5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cTVZ6N9vHxsC}}

{{Commons category-inline|White slave propaganda}}

{{Wikisource-inline|The Barbarism of Slavery}}

• [http://www.nydailynews.com/news/white-slave-children-new-orleans-1860s-propaganda-campaign-gallery-1.1164989?pmSlide=0 Image gallery]

Category:Abolitionism in the United States

Category:Discrimination based on skin tone

Category:Propaganda in the United States

Category:Human skin color

Category:Slavery in the United States