During the nineteenth century in the United States, many slaves revolted against the socially structured system they were forced to live under. Despite the presence of the Abolitionist Movement, there was a lacking of significant public support to entirely abandon the practice of slavery across the country. Aside from the major controversial issue, which was slavery, there were many other unresolved consequences that ultimately brought our country to war. The long heated debate about the rights of the individual states, unfair taxation, and both economic and social differences were all issues that President Lincoln needed to address when he took office. Lincoln profoundly viewed the Civil War as a trying challenge to see if our nation could stand, as one, in this time of great stress. By and large, the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln after the Civil War by southerner John Wilkes Booth gave an instantaneous rebirth to the issue of slavery and the rights of African Americans during the Reconstruction Era. In order to bring to light the connectivity of how lynching became an accepted social norm in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s, it is incumbent to examine sociological, historical, and legal entities during this period of history which prevented society from evolving.
To begin with, it is necessary to focus on establishing a clear outline of what assimilation is by definition and through historical examples of time providing an objective idea of the dominant social norms. “Assimilation is the process by which a subordinate individual or group takes on characteristics of the dominant group and is eventually accepted as part of that group” (Shaeffer 24). With this definition in mind, the institution of slavery made assimilating an impossible obstacle to obtain both before and after the Reconstruction Era for all slaves. In the South, slavery provided cheap labor which furnished an economic backbone of wealth because of the large agricultural plantations. Since the practice of slavery was a social norm in the South during the 1800s many people concluded slaves were inferior to whites.
Additionally, the political issue of slavery, which began before the Civil War with several states in the South calling for Democratic support, was being supported by many through medical arguments published by Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright. Samuel Cartwright held the belief that if slave owners acted towards slaves in a compassionate manner it would prevent slaves from running away, and in general, feel almost “human”. He also established a racial stance on slavery that evolved into an enigma of scientific reasoning. In Diseases and Peculiarities of the Negro Race, Dr. Samuel Cartwright states:
“Dysaesthesia Aethiopica is a disease peculiar to negroes, affecting both mind and body in a manner as well expressed by dysaesthesia, the name I have given it, as could be by a single term. There is both mind and sensibility, but both seem to be difficult to reach by impressions from without. There is a partial insensibility of the skin, and so great a hebetude of the intellectual faculties, as to be like a person half asleep, that is with difficulty aroused and kept awake.”(Cartwright)
Given these points, a contention can be made that the teachings of Cartwright influenced and further entrenched the Southern ideology regarding the institution of slavery. Interestingly enough, an opposing counter-argument can be constructed that Cartwright’s teachings (slaves need to be treated with compassion) provided hope for liberty. In The Life of Fredrick Douglas, Douglas describes how his new master treated him like an equal through teaching and compassionate expressions. Although at first, he was uncomfortable with this new feeling it only drove him to want to learn more about the educated world, and more particularly the path to freedom (Douglas). Under these circumstances, it is this writer’s contention that the divided social atmosphere prior to 1861 led to the lynchings and reestablishment of slavery in the South after the Civil War during the Reconstruction Era.
Moving forward, after 1865, the freed slaves faced cultural biases through segregation, sharecropping, and class differences. In Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington states, “After the coming of freedom there were two points upon which practically all people on our place were agreed, and I find that this was generally true throughout the South: that they must change their names, and they must leave the old plantation for at least a few days or weeks in order that they might really feel sure that they were free” (Washington 11). Clearly recognizing freedom and essentially the rebirth of life through renaming greatly influenced Booker T. Washington’s belief of self-sufficiency for African-Americans at a young age. To enumerate, Booker T. Washington believed that before tackling social issues African-Americans needed to establish their own identity through family and education. By the same token, white men whom dominated the social atmosphere of the South, more specifically, plantation owners, had begun a movement with Black Codes in order to restrict any momentum former slaves had made towards the avenues of success through freedom. One historical example of the sociological struggle former slaves faced came from prejudice through pluralism and assimilation in Poll Taxings. “Freedmen faced heavy poll taxes, while those unable to pay were deemed vagrants, who could be hired out to anyone meeting the tax bill” (Foner 96) In other words recently freed slaves, many of whom were extremely poor were now robbed of what little they had by the state and sent to work on plantations. This was slavery with another name. “The legal system of Presidential Reconstruction had profound consequences, limiting blacks’ oppositions, reinforcing whites’ privileged access to economic resources, shielding planters from the full implications of emancipation, and inhibiting the development of a free market in land and labor”(Foner 97).
Another historical example of the South reinstituting slavery surrounds the 14th Amendment and a series of Supreme Court cases which include the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, and Plessy v Ferguson in 1896. In brief, the Slaughterhouse Cases involved the Louisiana legislature granting permission for a slaughterhouse monopoly across the state. This resulted in around 1000 butchers being put out of business and claiming a violation of the 14th Amendment clauses of due process, equal protection, and privilege and immunities. In Supreme Court History The First Hundred Years Alex McBride states:
“The Supreme Court’s decision, written by Justice Samuel Taylor Miller, ruled that the law did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court argued that the “privileges and immunities” clause (“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”) only forbids the states from withholding the privileges and immunities belonging to American citizenship, not state citizenship.”(McBride)
This ruling is noteworthy because it effectively established that former slaves were now citizens of the United States, but not of the states themselves which they resided. In other words, citizenship for former slaves now came with a boundary of jurisdiction. Adjacent to the Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873, are the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. These Civil Rights Cases gave legal sanction to the Jim Crow laws by ruling that amendments against discrimination applied only to federal and state governments, yet not to individuals or private institutions. In other words, the government could not order segregation, but privately based institutions/businesses were able to do so under the ruling. In like manner, in 1896, the Plessy v Ferguson ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court gave way for states to enforce legal segregation among blacks and whites provided the facilities were equal. All in all, these cases establish that the South had effectively won the legal and political battle of essentially emptying the 14th Amendment rights for former slaves. The ideas of Booker T. Washington about establishing an identity through family and education before tackling social issues was now restrained because of these cases. “With the close of Reconstruction in the late 1870s, southern whites were determined to end northern and black participation in the region’s affairs, and northerners exhibited a growing indifference toward the civil rights of black Americans”(Zangrando).
Upon final analysis we are left with the question, why did lynching happen during the late 1800s and early 1900s? The answer simply stated is rooted within history itself. The bottom line here is that differences in social code and racial inequality existed prior to the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, and those practices continued afterward as well. If we look back in history many civilizations and empires had slaves because labor was both cheap and free. The Greeks, Egyptians, and Romans all took part in the slave trade because of the benefits it gave to the economies of their empires. Wealth gained from selling people as slaves was very profitable because the only expenses involved are essentially food and clothing. This inhumane practice was no different for the Europeans who came to the New World in search of wealth and stability. The “Doctrine of Discovery” and the “Manifest Destiny” are both ideologies that pushed expansion through previous economic practices and beliefs which include the institution of indentured servitude and slavery. The fact remains that an edited view of history regarding the social fabric of America beginning as a melting pot which has continued to evolve over time is not an accurate representation because beliefs/practices of slavery have been rooted all throughout the history of mankind. Sociologically, humans often become blinded by their surroundings mainly due to their creature of habit mannerisms that we so often forget to see the bigger picture. It is incumbent upon us all, that we, as a nation, realize that sociological forces based on the extreme circumstances derived from previous historical events and beliefs need to be researched in their entirety in order that we may learn from the past.
Works Cited
Cartwright, Samuel. “Africans in America-De Bow’s Review-Southern & Western States Volume XI.” 1851. PBS. 23 December 2017. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h3106t.html>.
Douglas, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas An American Slave .” 1845. 23 December 2017. <https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Douglass/Narrative/Douglass_Narrative.pdf>.
Foner, Eric. A Short History of Reconstruction. New York;NY: Harper & Row Inc., 1990.
McBride, Alex. Supreme Court History The First Hundred Years . 2007. 24 December 2017. <https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/supremecourt/antebellum/landmark_slaughterhouse.html>.
Shaeffer, Richard T. Racial And Ethnic Groups. Pearson Education Inc., 2012.
Washington, Booker T. Up from Slavery . New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1995.
Zangrando, Robert L. About Lynching . n.d. 23 December 2017. <http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lynching/lynching.htm>.
