By Lindsey Burgess
The legacy of slavery in the United States is widely known by the atrocities that African Africans endured on plantation. It’s an assumption that every African-American living during the period of slavery was subjected to the same chattel-type treatment. However, that was not always the case. The story of freed African Americans is usually glossed over because of laws such as the one-sixteenth rule, which designated any person with a single African American great-great-grandparent as black.
But life was more complicated. As in other slave-holding societies throughout the Americas, it was common for white plantation owners to sexually exploit their female slaves and indentured servants, often through rape. Although the child of an enslaved woman took the status of its mother, the father would often grant manumission to the child, and in some cases to the mother. This happens to be William Johnson’s case.
I first came across William Johnson’s name when I visited Natchez, Mississippi, where his home as well as the original manuscript of his diary are located. Johnson was the son of a wealthy plantation owner, also named William Johnson, and a formerly enslaved woman named Anna; his father manumitted his mother. William’s manumission was granted by his father in 1820.
Johnson’s diary is one of the only documents describing in first person the life of freed African-Americans in the South. The book is long, over five hundred pages, with information concerning himself, his family, and his life in Natchez. The book begins in April 1831. He usually starts off each diary entry with a brief comment regarding the day’s events. Sometimes Johnson would include business transactions relating to his barbershop. He was an entrepreneur and owned several properties, including barbershops, and himself owned some African-American slaves.
Regarding the diary, I was most interested in Johnson’s view on the American Colonization Society, especially as a free black man, since many freed African Americans were taken to Liberia against their will. Johnson writes about the Mississippi Colonization Society, an auxiliary of the American Colonization Society, in his entry, on April 5, 1838:
“To morrow and if I can find out about him I will do something Peter Boisaw Open to day in the new Coffee House and to day the Collinizationest had a Large meeting and here is the names of some of the Leading Parties or Head Dogs in the Bone Yard – Tis a pitty that they [are] not doing something Else better for their Country [names omitted by diarist]”
Johnson here expresses opposition to the mission of the Mississippi Colonization Society. It was formally organized in Natchez in 1831 – ironically the same year as Nat Turner’s rebellion in Virginia. Although Johnson did not mention names, he was likely referencing people like Stephen Duncan, one of the most prominent planters in Natchez, as “some of the leading parties/head dogs”.
In Master’s of the Big House, historian William Scarborough notes that many Northern planter families would come to the South toward the latter part of fall and stay until the onset of spring. Afterward, they would return to New York. Stephen Duncan was part of this group. I also managed to glean a few details about Johnson’s life and relations with other white men in Natchez, such as Colonel Andrew Marschalk. On March 16, 1836, Johnson writes:
“I Received of Col Marchalk an Account of his against a Mr John Murrel for $36, payable One day after Date. Said Murrel Lives in New Orleans. I was to send the account Down to Mr Jas. Miller to Collect for Col Marschalk by the 1st Boat or Chance of doing so – I gave my Receit to the Col stating that I had Recevd the above Account of him to sent to Mr Miller for Collection”
This is the first account in his diary mentioning Marshcalk. It opens the question of what type of relationship existed between Marschalk and Johnson, and between Marschalk and other free blacks. There seems to be at least some level of trust between the two, since the favor is a monetary transaction. Marschalk, from New York, was a colonel in the U.S. army and the first to introduce the printing press in Mississippi.
The footnote from this entry in Johnson’s diary from the Adams District Superior Court Minutes reveals that Marschalk was very controversial in Natchez, and in 1802, his third issue of the Mississippi Herald caused him to be indicted by a grand jury citing him as “a malicious and seditious man of depraved mind and wicked diabolical disposition and also deceitfully wicket and maliciously contriving against the members of the Honble House of Representative of Mississippi Territory.” The entry was footnoted by the court in a proceeding. The footnote, however, leaves the mystery of what he published that caused such a reaction, and whether it had anything to do with race relations.
I intend to delve deeper into Johnson’s diary and find the names of other freed African-American families, in hopes of tracing their descendants.