North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860

by Leon F. Litwack

". . . no American can be pleased with the treatment of Negro Americans, North and South, in the years before the Civil War. In his clear, lucid account of the Northern phase of the story Professor Litwack has performed a notable service."—John Hope Franklin, Journal of Negro Education

"For a searching examination of the North Star Legend we are indebted to Leon F. Litwack. . . ."—C. Vann Woodward, The American Scholar

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, American History, Anti Racist, Social Justice, American

325 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Leon Frank Litwack was an American historian whose scholarship focuses on slavery, the Reconstruction Era of the United States, and its aftermath into the 20th century. He received his BA in 1951 and Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of California, Berkeley, and taught the University of Wisconsin, University of South Carolina, Louisiana State University and Colorado College before assuming a position at UC-Berkeley, where he taught until his retirement in 2007.

Reviews

[William West · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was (and remains) one of the few historical studies of the Ante-Bellum North when it was published in 1962. The book retains its power today.

With understated outrage Litwack details the racist nature of the "free" Northern states in the years between American independence and the Civil War. Indeed, it was in the "free" states that the system that would come to be known as Jim Crowe came into being. Non-enslaved Blacks were segregated in all matters of public life. Attacks on African-Americans by white mobs, sinister ancestors of lynchings, occurred in many northeastern cities.

There were only a few New England states, which tellingly had exceptionally low Black populations, in which there was Black suffrage. The majority of politicians publicly laughed at the notion of equal rights between the races by pointing to the US constitution as a document that clearly did not grant citizenship to Black people because its authors were slave-owners.

There are passages that are almost darkly comic in their irony. One of the greatest controversies amongst abolitionist societies was whether or not to allow African-Americans to be members, with the majority banning Black people from their meetings.

Litwack makes clear, however, that as severely abused as the Black populations of the free states were, they were nonetheless fare better off than the enslaved populations of the southern states. For the free Black populace was able to, and did, organize and protest for equal rights, and formed alliances with sympathetic whites. By 1860, the northern Black population was still greatly marginalized and oppressed. But it had, through struggle, greatly improved its condition since 1790.

[Cam's Corner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Litwack argues that white Northerners shared culpability with racist white southerners. His focus emphasizes on how white Northerners also demonstrated complacency in racism like white Southerners, which often impeded if not entirely held back legislation aimed to bring political rights to Black Americans.
Litwack’s book recognizes the efforts made by some white Northerners who fought for Black civil rights, but at the same time notes that many of them still held racial prejudice against Black peoples. During the Missouri Debates from 1820 to 1821, Southerners made it a point to call out the North’s hypocrisy. Senator William Smith from South Carolina, for example, recalled during the debate that the Northern states had prohibited interracial relationships, prohibited Blacks from testifying against whites in courts, and did not give them social equality. In fact, already, “the very act that had authorized Missouri to elect delegates to a constitutional convention had limited the suffrage to free male citizens.”
Even abolitionists held such prejudices pertaining to the social views of Black peoples. For example, Litwack notes that not all abolitionists operated out of altruism. Before 1831, most abolitionists favored colonization which is the process of sending freed Black peoples to Africa. Groups such as the American Colonization Society and the Connecticut Colonization Society would hold conferences and conventions that called “for Negro disfranchisement, anti-immigration laws and other racial restrictions with proposals to promote African colonization” to Liberia and Sierra Leone. Such attitudes stemmed from racial prejudices against Black peoples and the belief that white and Black peoples could not integrate in the same society.
The lack of care for Black education in the North hindered Black peoples greatly. In fact, “[b]y the 1830s, statue or custom placed Negro children in separate schools in nearly every northern community.” Because of the inequalities in education, skilled jobs for Black peoples were harder to come by. Due to extreme prejudice and racism, Black men were forced to be nothing more than “barbers, coachmen, porters [and] second-hand clothing dealers… while the women worked as washerwomen, dressmakers, seamstresses and cooks.” Some Black men, however, were able to obtain skilled-labor jobs despite such barriers put place. Nevertheless, when this happened, white people continued to fight to exclude Black peoples from white dominated jobs out of fear of competing with them. In the same manner, they associated profession with status and believed certain jobs belonged to specific races. For example, “One English traveler concluded that most white men ‘would rather starve than accept a menial office under a black’.” Unfortunately, attitudes like this usually resulted in racial violence against Black people.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good overview of what life was like for African Americans in the North in the lead up to the war, their struggles, and their agency in the coming struggle. Contrary to what many might think, life was not all that rosy for the free black people in the North (though, and this is not at all insignificant, they had the ability to direct their own lives). He looks at a number of significant issues in the lives of free blacks, political participation, education, religion, and the role blacks (and whites) played in the abolition movement. It is a survey book, but some elements, I thought, could have been looked at more. For instance, the chapter on religion is quite extensive in treating of the treatment of blacks in Protestant denominations, but Catholics are reduced to two sentences, one in footnote. There is a good bibliographical essay at the end, which is worth reading for the primary sources, but since this was written several decades ago, the secondary literature is much broader and greatly improved, partly because of Litwack's students.

[Chris McDonald]

A troubling look into the condition of black Americans in the non-slave states prior to 1861. How sad to find that Northern whites enforced a Jim Crow of their own before Jim Crow arose in the South.

[Sandra Oldfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know it is not recent, but this is a very well-researched, quintessential book on the status of free Black Americans in the North before the Civil War.

[Liam Philbin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Litwack’s exhaustive research across multiple aspects of Northern US history concerning the rights of black Americans is keen and thorough.

[Byron Woodson Sr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

William West's review of this book presents several points with which I agree but still misses fundamental understanding of this history and Litwack's perspective. West's viewpoint is the consensus perspective. West writes, "the book retains its power today." It was written in 1962. Agreed, yet it retains its power largely to constrain and distort this history. West writes, "with understated outrage Litwack details..." Agreed, yet Litwack expressed "outrage" not only at the federal government's lack of concern for black Americans in this time frame, but also at white abolitionists and their accomplishments.
Contrary to what the subtitle suggests, North of Slavery does not historicize the conditions and actions of 'The Negro in the Free States.' The book is not about Negroes or black Americans. With justification, it rails against the federal government's indifference toward free black Americans. Litwack was a socialist or leaned that way. He gave very little credit to white abolitionists, who were (because they were) capitalists. He besmirched their accomplishments. Litwack's book does not develop the role of black abolitionists; he was satisfied with painting black Americans only as victims. Litwack does not acknowledge the Second Great Awakening and the moral reform it brought forth. This matters because there is more to human society and thus human history than federal governments and monarchy. State governments, religious institutions, and the press stimulate change and make history as well.

Abolitionists took over the Ohio state government in 1849-50. They repealed black laws, set up an extensive common schools system for blacks. They attracted black students to Oberlin College, established Wilberforce University (an HCBU), and allowed blacks to run for political office before the Civil War began. Black Ohioans sued the City of Cincinnati and won a monumental court victory in the Ohio Supreme Court. As a result of the successes, Black Americans moved at a faster rate to Ohio than to any other state in the 1850s. Litwack did not cover any of that in his book; he failed to follow events to where social change was unfolding.
Litwack was familiar with Gilbert Hobbs Barnes' The Anti-Slavery Impulse 1830-1844, written in 1933. He pushed back on that book's theme without justification.

This is the bottom line. If abolitionists were as unsuccessful as Litwack thought they were, then the South would have had no reason to start the Civil War. The South fired cannons on Fort Sumter. Events do not fall from the clouds; they happen for reasons.

[David]

Reads like a dry history book. I only got 20 pages in.