Kerlyn: Welcome back to Isaac Hopper’s Diary: DeClassified. In this episode we will be discussing some of the tribulations Black people endured during the 19th century.

 

Let’s be clear as day here, there is no doubt that racism shaped the experience of Black people in the United States as it ultimately affected the way they were treated in two of the biggest exploitative systems in the country: slavery and prison.

 

Black people during the Antebellum era in the United States had a significantly hard time juggling discrimination from both the system of slavery and from the penitentiary. Slavery was a system of dehumanization and the penitentiary was no different. The social climate of the Antebellum period involved a lot of tension between the North and the South, which in hindsight is what eventually caused the outbreak of the Civil War.

 

Black writers like Solomon Northup and Austin Reed who wrote about their experiences as free Black men in Antebellum America showcase the oppressive institutions in its worst form.  While Northup details his life as a free Black man kidnapped into slavery, Austin Reed describes his life also as a free Black man in the North that was pulled into the penitentiary numerous times. In these two records, we get personal experiences of how the racist environment of these institutions is reflected in the United States, but also the striking resemblance of slavery and the penitentiary.

 

All this is to say is that if we acknowledge the presence of the penitentiary, it is also important to acknowledge the presence of slavery. After analyzing them, I noticed that these systems were similar in execution but quite different in theory.

 

 In general, in numbers alone, there were not as many incarcerated Black people in prison as compared to White people. But make no mistake, Black people still represented a disproportionately larger sum of prisoners in the North even though the majority of the Black people in the United States during this time were enslaved in the South. Instead of being locked up in the penitentiary, Black people in the South were working extensively long days as slaves. Needless to say, the racism embedded in American society shaped both the systems of slavery and the penitentiary.

 

As we dig into Hopper’s diary, we may forget the actual problems of racism that occurred as he wrote because it is not explicitly told to us, which is why I wrote this podcast. As an active abolitionist and supporter of discharged convicts, I believe Hopper should have made direct mention to the struggles and discrimination Black individuals had to face from either being a slave, a formerly incarcerated person, or even both. That way readers of the diary could gain some contextual knowledge of the severe and varying circumstances of oppressed people in the United States at the time.

 

And to support how slavery affected even people of color in the North, one of the most significant figures in American slave history is Solomon Northup. Northup was a free Black man in New York until he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841 by two White men who told him they were circus performers. He was persuaded that because he was a fiddler, or someone who plays the fiddle, he would be a great recruit and would be paid for performing. Traveling to Washington D.C. Northup was drugged, and when he woke up he was in an underground cell in the South. Even as a free Black man in the rising anti-slavery North, Northup still faced the challenge of being sucked into the South’s coerced plantation environment.

 

He was not set free until 1853 with the help of Henry B. Northup who was a quote “counselor of law” end quote according to Northup. Hence why Solomon Northup’s narrative is called Twelve Years a Slave.

 

Three years before Northup was free from the chains of slavery, there was the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 that became an even greater risk for the lives of Black people in the United States. There’s ultimately no way of denying the overall disproportionate circumstances they faced in both the North and the South because Black people were at risk in both the systems of slavery and the penitentiary. In the North, even though it was not as prominent for Black people to be incarcerated, they were still at risk of being in the system regardless. Outside of the penitentiary, though, the laws set in place for slaves greatly affected the way Black people were being perceived and treated in general.

 

The federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a heavily discernable one passed by Congress during Hopper’s tenure as the chair of the Committee on Discharged Convicts. The slave law enforced in 1850 was a revised law of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 which enabled slave owners, and those who worked with them, to look for their escaped slaves within the borders of free states; free states meaning the ones that did not practice slavery. While still holding the same principal, the newly revised law in 1850 essentially encouraged citizens to search for runaway slaves. Also, compared to the Fugitive Slave Act enacted in 1793, the government was more keenly proactive in their role of returning slaves back to their masters.

 

Tension between the North and South was brewing even more intensely during the 1850s, which is why the law was revised anyway. Abolitionism had been growing in the North since the late 18th century and the fight against slavery kept increasing during Hopper’s writing in the diary; especially if we consider the Underground Railroad was at its peak in the 1850s.

 

The law was so brutal that captured slaves were not given any sort of testimonial or trial in court. Federal marshals and regular citizens who did not enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, or would allow or help slaves escape, were given severe penalties. Not to mention that citizens who would find or capture a runaway slave were actually given monetized incentives. A cash reward, folks. This racist atmosphere plagued both the North and South simultaneously and produced an even more hateful society towards Black people.

 

This is why after assessing and internalizing all of this, I found that Hopper failed to mention the varying struggles of Black people in the country compared to White people in his diary despite being an abolitionist. Yes, the diary was meant to be a record for the Prison Association, but, again, I think that there should have been a clear distinction between the lack of opportunities and harsh treatment towards Black people compared to White people. The circumstances were just not the same and substantially affected Black people more.

 

In addition, not only were Black people affected by racist laws like the Fugitive Slave Acts, but there were also racist scientific ideologies that were believed as truth. For example, pseudoscience is the use of manufactured scientific proof to support mistaken beliefs. The rise of pseudoscience during the early 1800s up to the 1890s affected the ways people viewed Black individuals. They were ultimately being perceived as criminals! It seemed like such a compelling story for people at this time because of the incredibly racist climate of the United States.

 

A form of pseudoscience called phrenology rose as a popular belief in the 1830s and 1840s. The main focus of phrenology was the shape of a person’s facial angle and cranial capacity. It used bumps on the skull as a means of determining the characteristics or mental capacity of a person.

 

It is quite unfathomable to believe that Black people were not only subjected to the worst possible exploitative systems, but they were also on the receiving end of the worst possible insubstantial beliefs like phrenology. What is also interesting, yet not surprising, is that if someone were pro-slavery they would use phrenology to argue that Black individuals were criminals and savages.

 

For example, Dr. Samuel Cartwright had believed that slavery kept Black people out of the criminal system, which to him was a good thing. He claimed that slavery kept the brain of a Black person physically and mentally healthy which wouldn’t be the case if they were out of slavery susceptible to being incarcerated. We basically see here how he uses phrenology to justify the system of slavery.

 

(Take a breath)

 

These are ridiculous beliefs that were prominent at that time, but it just goes to show how much nonsense and unfair treatment Black people were subjected to.

 

To continue, we also see in Hopper’s diary that there were significantly more Black men incarcerated than Black women, which reflects the higher proportions of male incarceration in the nineteenth century at large. There are only nine Black women in Hopper’s diary that were formerly convicted and incarcerated for a crime compared to the sixty-two Black men that were mentioned in the diary.

 

All across the board, the main reason for the incarceration of Black people in Hopper’s diary is due to grand larceny and burglary, which again is reflective of the general population.

 

Despite all of the beliefs and actions taken against Black people, there were still those who managed, or tried, to make a living outside of the systems of slavery and the penitentiary. Fighting against the system that had become the norm was nothing short of challenging, but there were some Black individuals who made it work. An example of an accomplished person of color post incarceration was a man named Henry Gardner. He was incarcerated at Sing Sing for seven years based on the crime of selling stolen goods.

 

To note, Hopper writes in his diary that Gardner is a mulatto. This term shows the terminology of the time, but I am curious as to how one made that distinction between that of a “colored” person and “a mulatto,” because Hopper uses both terms in the diary. Was it because of someone’s story, their facial features, their skin tone..? We don’t know… I just thought it was something interesting to point out.

 

Anyways, after being in contact with Hopper after imprisonment, Gardner decided to start a business as a cooper, which by the help of Hopper was funded through the Prison Association. We get the insight from Hopper that Gardner had already known the ins and outs of the cooper business while he was actually in prison, so there was a comfortability to start his own. You might be wondering what a cooper is so by definition a cooper is someone who works with wood, crafts barrels and drums and so forth; essentially an artisan.

 

But besides working as coopers, the forced labor expected from people incarcerated, especially at Sing Sing, was insanely ruthless. Men would work tirelessly for hours without pay. Some of their tasks would consist of cutting and shaping stone and moving large blocks of marble, which is how Sing Sing was even created and established by 1825. Working in marble quarries, which was a site where marble was extracted and there was one near Sing Sing, was so bestial that even oxen were used to help move them.

 

Another form of prison labor that the incarcerated were used for was factory-style labor. Some business contractors used the incarcerated because it was a less-tasking way to make profit: cheap labor. Again, as the incarcerated made the items they received no pay, the business only kept the profit.

 

What could have possibly incentivized people in the penitentiary to work without labor? Well, for one, life as a penitent meant being forced to work in the new industrial prison, while the other side meant suffering punishment if they did not work. Punishment was one of the worst aspects of the penitentiary that left many people incarcerated physically beaten to the bone, and mentally drained and even unstable. As a whole, life in prison meant being used for institutionalized profit, or a labor force, without remorse.

 

In The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict, Austin Reed details his story as an incarcerated Black man originally from Rochester in the 19th century. He was first convicted and arrested for arson in 1833. He was sentenced to ten years at the House of Refuge, which was a reform institution for youth, located in New York. It even opened a dormitory for quote “colored” people in 1835. But in 1839 a fire broke out and the place was incinerated, and this caused Reed to work as an indentured servant for a farmer. He only worked there for about a year until he decided to leave. Those who worked at the House of Refuge claimed that he had left his master. Mind you, this is still the North.

 

Then in 1840, Reed was convicted of larceny and was sent to Auburn State Prison for a sentence of two years. In May of 1842 Reed was released but in May he was again convicted of larceny. He served a five year sentence. I wish I could say that was the last time, but it wasn’t. Reed was again convicted of larceny after felony and was sent back to Auburn to serve a four year and three month sentence. In July of 1858, he was set free from Auburn, but in November he served a sentence of four years and six months for larceny after felony. Finally, in 1864, Reed goes by the alias of Robert Reed and gets sent to prison yet another time for larceny after prison for three years and three months. He was released from Auburn in 1866.

 

This extensive timeline of Reed’s incarceration history only shows how tough it was to stay free from the chains of the penitentiary if they weren’t in the chains of slavery. Also, because he had been in the system numerous times, he witnessed and experienced the hardships that came with being incarcerated, like merciless punishment.

 

For example, on one occasion, Reed was kept in a dungeon for a night for pulling a knife at an officer. In the morning, he was woken up by the Warden. His next punishment was coming.

 

In the words of Reed he writes,

 

“Taking an heavy iron ball and chain, he made it fast to my leg and put a pair of handcuffs around my wrists and made me hold both hands up straight over my head, where he took a rope, and bringing one end through the handcuffs, he made it fast, and then drew the other end of the rope through a pulley until it brought me right firm upon my tiptoes and made the rope fast. In this tedious and tiresome condition I stood a crying with pain for two hours. At the end of two hours he unfasten the rope and let me loose, but kept the ball and chain on me for three weeks after. My hands was swollen so by the rope that I was not able to work for three weeks after…” End quote.

 

How similar to slavery, no? But, this was just one form of punishment the incarcerated endured. Other forms included flogging, ice cold baths, casted down by an iron yoke, chained, tied up, and so forth. These were some of the ways people were undeniably abused in the penitentiary.

 

While working in the Prison Association, Hopper had sent many Black people to Henry Gardner to be employed in his cooper business after being discharged from prison. The names of these men that received help and that were recorded in Hopper’s diary are Henry Thompson, Israel Boles, Charles Johnson, and Isaac Taylor. Hiram P. Smith was another formerly incarcerated individual who was also referred to Gardner by Hopper, but it was not mentioned that he was a person of color.

 

These men were sent in hopes of gaining employment. According to Hopper, some, like Gardner, learned the cooper trade in prison which is why Hopper mostly referred them to Gardner’s cooper business.

 

The story of Israel Boles is an interesting one because even after being sent to Gardner to work at his cooper business, he only remained there for less than a year until he was arrested in 1848 for the suspicion of attempted burglary after being sentenced seven years for it in 1840. He was later released due to insubstantial evidence.

 

Like Reed and the many other Black men mentioned in Hopper’s diary, burglary, along with larceny, was a common conviction. It could have heavily been due to the fact that Boles was a person of color or formerly incarcerated and that’s why he was convicted so harshly like other Black men. Hopper writes in his diary that Boles hoped to live a better life and future, but he had a troubled life as he tried gaining some stability after prison. Hopper tried to help as best as he could, like helping him pay rent, but nothing about being a Black person in the United States was certain or stable, not even in New York.

 

Overall, though, there seems to be a chain of Black solidarity here. The fact that Garnder started up his own shop as a cooper and Hopper kept referring other Black men to him seemed purposeful. In the times of such hardship as a Black person in the United States, it would probably strike Hopper to use such connections to help as many as he could because as addressed in the first episode, Hopper was a devoted abolitionist who undoubtedly fought for Black rights; a humanitarian through and through.

 

Although, unfortunately enough, Gardner’s business was violated and trashed more than once, and it would be rather unnecessary to explain why these uncalled-for actions happened, but to put it directly, being a successful Black person or business owner came with strong push back from White America. Hopper gives the reason that Gardner had limited supplies which made his experience difficult as a new business owner, and uses the word “malicious” and the phrase “evil disposed person” on two separate occasions to describe the one who burned and trashed Gardner’s business. 

 

On August 14, 1847 Hopper writes,

 

“Henry Gardner, see Register page 267, he succeeded in getting into good business – had several hands employed [and] had supplied himself with a good stock of tools at a cost near one hundred dollars – Just as he had surmounted [illeg.] difficulties incident to commencing business with limited means, some evil disposed person removed the grate [on the] foot way and entered Henry’s shop, which was in the [illeg.] though the vault, – collected all his tools from different parts of the shop and also some wearing apparel, [left] them all in a heap- set them on fire and destroyed [them.] Henry having proved himself to be a sober industrious man, well qualified to carry on business, he was supplied with Tools to the amount of twenty seven dollars 19 [cents.] “ End quote.

 

Then, almost five months later on January 21st of 1848 Hopper again writes,

 

“Henry Gardner had succeeded in getting into good business as a Cooper [when] some malicious person entered his premises in the night and destroyed [illeg.] property to the amount of about one hundred dollars. See page 50. He [was] thereby rendered unable to pay his rent, and as I had become responsible for it I paid Wright & Gillies twenty seven dollars in full of their [illeg.] against him. Henry is a sober industrious man and appears [illeg.] to do well and promises to return the amount loaned him [as soon] as he may be able. $27-” End quote.

 

He did not explicitly mention that this was an act of racism, but by using context it could be reassuring to assume that it was. Who could fathom a successful Black business owner without interruption or discrimination during 19th century America, right? As mentioned, he was later supplied with more tools by Hopper to re-furnish what was lost.

 

It would make sense that Gardner would try to employ other Black men who were discharged from the prison since the varying ways Black people were oppressed were not only limited to slavery and prison, but economically. Overall, Black laborers were relegated to the most difficult conditions and the lowest pay. Besides some opportunities like turning to the cooper business like Gardner and those who were referred to him, some Black men became sailors because it offered a good opportunity to make a living, especially against the odds of slavery. If you wish to know more about Black sailors, this topic is thoroughly tackled in Daniel Greene’s podcast episode titled “Black Sailors of the Nineteenth Century.”

 

As we address the hardships of the life as a slave and life as a person in the penitentiary, where Black people existed in both, it is only fitting that we hear this quote from lawyer and historian Adam J. Hirsch that reads,

 

“The qualifications for enslavement and imprisonment certainly differed. Not even the most vicious white person in the South was eligible for slavery; and no black person in the North qualified for incarceration until he or she had committed an offense…And though they were incarcerated for specific offenses, northern penitentiary inmates were commonly labeled members of a criminal class that included blacks.” End of quote.

 

Because slavery existed due to institutionalized racism and because the penitentiary existed as another form of slavery under a different name, people of color faced severe odds. To put it a different way, if we view the systems of slavery and the penitentiary simultaneously, the penitentiary could also be seen as a form of enslavement, as it promoted the enforced labor and punishment of the incarcerated; and this is a delicate and astute analysis that is still interestingly made today using the 13th amendment.

 

During the 19th century, it was expected that while people were in the penitentiary they were supposed to learn how to be penitent, and the slave was supposed to conform and obey to White American laws and people.

 

Yet as a whole, both of these systems also propelled the idea that slaves and incarcerated peoples should be viewed as innately evil. Phrenology already condemned people of color, so if society could be persuaded that slaves and people in prison were innately evil, it justified why both of these systems even existed.

 

On the other side, the difference lies in who qualifies for which system, like Hirsch had mentioned. Black people could qualify in either system, but White people could only be condemned institutionally to one: the penitentiary.

 

The prison system was set in place for people to become penitent and to think about the crime they were accused of committing. But compared to slavery, Black people were chained and brutalized just for just being Black. There was no crime committed that could even remotely justify the enslaving of Black people, but it was still normalized in American society. By 1861, when the Civil War started, nearly 4 million Black men, women, and children were enslaved in the United States.

 

Evaluating these immeasurable harsh circumstances for Black people in Antebellum America allows us to surely see that they were on the bottom of the two biggest institutions that promoted and supported dehumanization. And to be quite honest it really comes down to the fact that White people could only qualify for the penitentiary, whereas Black people could and were subjected to both throughout their lives.

 

Like what should have been mentioned in Hopper’s diary, Black people had significantly fewer opportunities and were put through the worst possible dehumanizing systems and treatment in the United States.

 

Deeply-rooted racism at its finest.

 

Outro: <<fade in “Night Snow”>>  “Today’s episode was written and produced by Kerlyn Caba. And many thanks to Eric Williams-Bergen and Nicole Roche [Ro-Shay], the podcasting team at St. Lawrence University. Be sure to check out the episode notes on the diary website, Isaac [dash] Hopper [dot org]. There you’ll find a source list for this episode. Thanks for tuning in.”