Chapter 5

Records Pertaining to Slavery in Alabama

According to Curtis Brasfield, “Both the status of slaves and the scarcity of slave records severely complicated tracing slaves lineages. Success requires focusing broadly on groups rather than individuals, extracting indirect and direct evidence from the records found, and correlating slave records with sources created after emancipation. Often the results appear tenuous, especially when high quality direct evidence is lacking. As patterns and similarities among records become apparent and consistent, however, researchers tracing slave lineages can have increasing confidence on their conclusions.”[7]

It has been reported that the majority of African Americans are descendants of approximately 400,000 black Africans brought to North America to serve as slaves in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is believed that a small section of the Atlantic Coast between the Congo and Gambia rivers in East Africa supplied the slave population in the United States. R. S. Cotterill[8] gives the figures of the total number of slaves in 1860 as being 3,950,513.

The slave trade started in Alabama before it became a state in 1819. Alabama at the time was part of France’s Louisiana colony. Bienville, the lieutenant governor of the colony, requested African slaves in 1701. He wrote to the French government for workers to cultivate the land. He issued another statement saying “the colonists need more supplies . . . their plantations were not yet adequate for their support.”[9] The area near Mobile River is the land that he was referring to. Sellers states that they were suffered from insufficient agriculture supplies such as horses, oxen and laborers. Bienville proposed that the Native American being used as slaves be sent to the West Indies in exchange for the African slaves. His proposal was denied. In March 1721, the warship The Africana arrived at the port of present-day Mobile with 120 Africans. Other slave ships brought more Africans to the port annually. This was the beginning of slavery in Alabama.[10]

Understanding slavery, and locating the records that were created requires examining the laws that governed this peculiar system in the South and in Alabama specifically. Popular belief encourages the idea that most slaves were on large plantations. However, Robert Reid’s review of James Sellers’s Slavery in Alabama provides insight when he states, “almost two-thirds of the slaveholders of Alabama owned less than ten slaves in 1860, and owners of large number of slaves were the exception rather than the rule throughout the ante-bellum period.”[11] It is also important to “know something about” the dominating class of people in the South. In an 1922 article entitled “Society on the Southern Plantation,”[12] the author describes everyday life on a large plantation by outlining the roles and duties of the owner/planter, his family, the overseer, and lastly the slave. As the author relates the everyday workings of the plantation, it is apparent that slavery was a business, and that business records were kept by those involved in the slavery system. Slavery in Alabama places emphasis on the purchasing, caring, hiring-out, and management of slaves on plantations, thereby providing further evidence that some form of records were kept on most slaves. Records such as diaries, account books, medical care, birth, and death records can sometimes be located at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in the private records collection of individuals who owned slaves in Alabama.

An assumption that your ancestors were slaves prior to the Civil War may prove incorrect. At the beginning of the Civil War in 1861 there were approximately 200,000 free blacks in the North and another 200,000 in the South. By using the 1860 free population census you can determine whether your ancestor was free. However, keep in mind that free blacks were not numerous in Alabama. The blacks that were manumitted (set free by an owner by petitioning the Alabama legislature) before 1845 records are found in the Session Laws of Alabama before 1850. The manumissions that were rejected can be found in the Alabama Senate and House Journals for the years that corresponded with the manumit laws.

In addition to examining the slave laws as mentioned above, looking at every record you can locate and becoming knowledgeable about the slave trade in Alabama will help in locating your ancestor’s owner(s). Records such as slave sales and slave advertisements found in Alabama newspapers may give clues about slaves’ origins in Africa, while county records of final settlements of estates will help to determine how slaves were divided among children and relatives of deceased slave owners. The division of slaves among the children or relatives may account for surnames different than that of an owner, especially if the slaves were willed to a female in the family that might not necessary have the same surname as the deceased.

The capital of Alabama had the distinction of having a thriving trade in slaves. The 1859 Montgomery City Directory listed four slave depots and other trade depots were located in Selma and Mobile. Frederic Bancroft’s Slave-Trade in the Old South[13] summarizes the active slaves trade in Alabama especially in the port cities. Numerous accounts of runaway slaves and slave auctions can be found in Alabama newspapers, many of which can be located at the Alabama Department of Archives and History and public and academic libraries throughout the state. Finding aids are also online at www.archives.alabama.gov in the newspaper database.

The Alabama slave laws were codified in 1833 and 1852. Aiken’s Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama contains all of the laws passed prior to 1833 pertaining to slavery in the state. Similarly the 1852 Code of Alabama contains the ones after and 1833 and prior to 1852. These two documents describe the laws that were to be abided by when owning slaves in the state. Studying these laws relating to slavery in Alabama will give insight into the many records that were kept. Most of the laws carried with them penalties if they were broken. Records of enforcements and fines may be located in several places within the state’s system. For example, in the 1833 slave laws the section on “slave trade” states that “slaves imported contrary to the laws of the U.S., to be condemned and sold.” This could be done by any superior court where the slaves were seized. If slaves were brought into the state in violation of the laws, the governor appointed agents to receive them. The agents were bonded to make sure that the slaves were properly taken care of. If the slaves were claimed, then they were returned, but if they were not, then they were sold to the highest bidder. Auction notices were placed only in the Cahawba, Mobile, Tuscaloosa, Huntsville, and Florence newspapers. Money received from the sale was paid to the Alabama treasury except for one-fourth, which was to be paid to the informant. The circuit judges were the ones who decided on conflicting claims relating to slaves. The 1852 code goes further in stating the fees to be paid when slave laws were broken. When runaway slaves were apprehended and put in jail in any county, twenty dollars was paid to the slave catchers by the owners. The justice had to get the name, age, accurate description, and owner’s name to be placed in the record, which was then filed. The sheriff in the county where the runaway was jailed published descriptive information on a runaway slave in the newspaper. As these are but a few examples of the kinds of records that were kept based on the laws of the state regarding slavery, the slave laws are worth examining to their fullest.

To review some background information on the decisions of Alabama’s higher courts on a variety of legal issues regarding slaves, examine Dwayne Cox’s annotated bibliography on The Alabama Supreme Court on Slaves. Cox describes, “Between statehood and the end of the Civil War, the Alabama Supreme Court rendered numerous decisions on slavery. Most of them pertained to slaves as property, for property they were. Nevertheless, the law recognized slaves as persons under some circumstances, most notably when they were victims or perpetrators of crimes. These notes on decisions, arranged in topical order, reflect the variety of legal issues regarding slaves. They do not necessarily represent the norm of slavery, but rather what the court thought the norm should be. Of course, the original cases appeared in the Alabama Reports and may be located there. This is not an exhaustive bibliography, but it does include most of the cases found in the Alabama Digest. For a more exhaustive list of cases, see [Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery.]”[14] The electronic version can be located at www.lib.auburn.edu/archive/aghy/slaves.htm.

Below are suggested additional readings.

Resources

Aiken, John G. Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama. Tuscaloosa: Marmadeuke J. Slade, 1943.

Alabama Digest, 1820–1937. 19 Vols. Saint Paul: West Publishing Co., 1937.

Alabama House and Senate Journals, 1819–1865.

Baldwin, Joseph G. Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi. San Francisco: S. Whitney and Company, 1853.

Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in American from the Civil War to World War II. Doubleday, 2008.

Catterall, Helen Tunnicliff, ed. “Cases from the courts of Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.” Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery and the Negro. Vol. 3. New York: Negro Universities Press, 1968.

“Confederate Slave Impressment Legislation, 1861–1865.” The Journal of Negro History. 21.4 (October, 1946): 392–410.

Denson, John V. Slavery Laws in Alabama. Third series. Alabama Polytechnic Institute Historical Studies.

Finkelman, Paul. Slavery in the Courtroom: An Annotated Bibliography of American Cases. Washington: Library of Congress, 1985.

Gooddell, William. The American Slave Code in Theory and Practice: Its Distinctive Features Shown by its Statutes, Judicial Decisions, and Illustrative Facts. New York: American And Foreign Anti-Slave Society, 1853.

Haydenfeldt, Solomon. A Communication on the Subject of Slave Immigration, Addressed to Hon. Reuben Chapman, Governor of Alabama. Montgomery: McCormick and Brittain Printers, 1849.

Jordan, Weymouth T. “System of Farming at Beaver Bend, Alabama, 1862.” The Journal of Southern History. 7.1 (February, 1941).

Morris, Thomas D. Southern Slavery and the Law, 1619–1860. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolinia Press.

Pickett, A. J. History of Alabama and Incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi from the Earliest Period. New York: University Publishing Company, 1900.

Rose, James M. and Alice Eichholz. “Slavery.” Black Genesis: A Resource Book for African-American Genealogy. Second edition, chapter 7. 2003. pp 35–43.

Tunshnet, Mark V. The American Law of Slavery, 1810–1860. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Toulmin, Harry. Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama. Cahawba: Ginn and Curtis, 1823.

Williams, Horace Randall, ed. Weren’t No Good Times: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Alabama. Winston Salem: John F. Blair, 2004.

 

[7] Brasfield, Curtis G., “Tracing Slave Ancestors: Batchelor, Bradley, Branch, and Wright of Desha County, Arkansas.” National Genealogical Society Quarterly. 92:1 (March, 2004): 6.

[8] Cotterill, R. S. The Old South. Sec. ed. revised. Glendale, 1939. pp. 274–5.

[9] Sellers, James. Slavery in Alabama. p. 3.

[10] Sellers, James. Slavery in Alabama. p. 4.

[11] Reid, Robert. “Review of Slavery in Alabama.” Journal of Negro History. 34 (1951).

[12] “Society on the Southern Plantation.” Journal of Negro History. 7.1 (1922).

[13] Bancroft, Frederick. “Some Alabama and Mississippi markets.” Slave Trading in the Old South. Chapter 14. Baltimore: J. H. Furst Co., 1931.

[14] Catterall, Helen T. Judicial Cases Concerning American Slavery. 3 (1926–1937): 126–282.