A Distinct Case in the Antebellum U.S.

The general perspective arrived at here is that Berlin's categories need detailed elaboration within each of his three major regions. Freed African-Americans formed local communities and unique personal identities that cannot be forced into Berlin's neat categories, which remain useful in showing how regional differences shaped the different outlooks of freed "Negroes," but are limited insofar as they impose a fixed identity on such persons. Examination of specific communities within his three regions shows that there was no one, or even three, fixed communal or individual identities among African-American freemen during the antebellum period.

Persons of African descent first arrived in the British, Dutch, Spanish, and French colonies as slaves, after the settlers discovered that the native Americans simply could not successfully be enslaved and forced to work. With perhaps rare individual exc

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1848 the leadership divided into two. One group of activists resolved to conform to the white concept of black leadership . . . limited the scope of their activism and abandoned any cause that they believed would provoke a hostile reaction from whites. Their opponents . . . rejecting the attempts of whites to determine how they exercised their authority, . . . agitated for the recognition of the civil and political rights of blacks in Pennsylvania. The activist elite that emerged . . . was smaller but far more cohesive than the earlier group. . . . [It] emerged as the true leaders of the black community in the 1850s and eventually mobilized that community in support of the Union cause (Winch, 1988, p. 169). One can thus see that within the space of about a decade the leadership of the Philadelphia African-American community managed to transform itself and its community from great resemblance to a laissez-faire Lower South elite into a force for African-American solidarity. The Philadelphia community thus straddled the divide between two of Berlin's categories, calling their relevance into question. Horton: Free People of Color In a chapter entitled "Shades of Color: The Mulatto in Three Antebellum Northern Communities,"
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Lower South, Upper South, North South, Episcopal Church, Orleans Louisiana, War Cincinnati, War African-Americans, South African-Americans, African-Americans Charleston, South North, african-american population, horton 1993, lower south, percent african-american, african-american community, civil war, percent african-american population, upper south, mixed ancestry, berlin 1976, african-american communities, southern port cities, african-americans lower south, percent free african-americans, blassingame 1973 pp,
Approximate Word count = 4999
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)

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