Twenty Negro Law

The "Twenty Negro Law", also known as the "Twenty Slave Law" and the "Twenty Nigger Law",^[1] was a piece of legislation enacted by the Confederate Congress during the American Civil War. The law specifically exempted from Confederate military service one white man for every twenty slaves owned on a Confederate plantation, or for two or more plantations within five miles of each other that collectively had twenty or more slaves.^[2] Passed as part of the Second Conscription Act in 1862, the law was a reaction to United States President Abraham Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued barely three weeks earlier. The law addressed Confederate fears of a slave rebellion due to so many white men being absent from home, as they were fighting in the Confederate Army. The Confederacy enacted the first conscription laws in United States history,^[3] and the percentage of Confederate soldiers who were conscripts was nearly double that of Union soldiers.

YouTube Encyclopedic

1/3
Views:
14 569
7 024
10 012

Transcription

>> Then there's another question related to this, which is, yeah, here's a freed family in the fields picking cotton, okay? This is the ideal for white planters. They'll go back to work, they'll pick cotton, just as it... Now, of course, they're free. You got to pay them something. You can't whip them anymore. But basically, they're working pretty much the same as in the old days. But then there were others who said, you know, maybe they're not going to grow cotton. And here a community of interest begins to arise between these Southern plantation owners and certain very important parts of Northern, of the Northern economic structure, because cotton, despite -- or maybe even because of -- the disruptions of the war, cotton was still the most valuable product produced by the American economy. It was certainly the most important export crop of the United States. What would happen... Let us imagine that African Americans did get land and stopped growing cotton. They started growing food for themselves. Not an irrational thing to want to do. Well, what would happen today? I don't know if they could do this in the desert, let's say the people of Saudi Arabia decided they weren't going to pump oil anymore, they were going to grow food for their families and forget about oil. This would have a very disruptive effect on the world economy. So would the end of cotton production in the United States. Even though other sources had developed in the war, in India, Egypt, you still needed a lot of cotton from the United States. And history was, let us say, not totally reassuring on this matter. You know, every society that abolished slavery in the Western Hemisphere, starting with Haiti in the great revolution of the 1790s and then became independent in 1804, and then the British Caribbean where slavery had been abolished, and then the French Caribbean where slavery had been abolished -- every one of them had this same fight over control of labor. And in every one of those, even in Haiti, the government tried to force the former slaves back on the plantations, and to resume the production of sugar, mostly, or coffee in some cases, in those areas. And in every case, where they could, the former slaves resisted this, tried to get land of their own. In some places where there was a lot of free land or open land, they could, in some places they couldn't. And the plantation system survives, but only by bringing in new labor, as I said, bringing in workers from China, from India, thousands of miles away, to now work, to take the place of African Americans on these plantations. In Haiti, it all falls apart, and the plantations fall apart; export crops decline enormously; and you get a society of very small plots of land, tilled by former slaves and their descendants, growing a little bit of sugar and coffee, but mostly food for themselves. Jamaica, the West Indies... In fact, that's why plantation owners in the United States kept saying, emancipation in the West Indies is a failure. It was a failure. Why was it a failure? Because sugar production declined after the end of slavery. Now sugar production elsewhere rose. The sugar production that declined in Jamaica and these places was, you know, recouped by the tremendous expansion of slavery in Cuba in the 19th century. And so that's where the sugar is coming from now. But they still have slavery in Cuba, until well after the United States abolishes slavery. But in a few places, plantation agriculture survives. For example, Barbados. I don't know if everyone's been down there. Nice place, I'm sure. I've never there. But Barbados, the plantations continue and sugar production continues. Why? Barbados is very small. There is no unoccupied land. All the land was owned by the planters, and therefore, the blacks, the former slaves in Barbados had no alternative but to go back -- or leave. Some of them went to other islands. But if you're staying there, you've got no choice but to go to work. Whereas in Jamaica, which is a large island where there was a lot of what they call "Crown Land," land owned by the king (or the queen, I guess back then, Queen Victoria) or land that's just uncultivated, many, many former slaves just go and squat, as they say, or take over this land, and therefore, the plantations begin to fall apart. Same thing happens in British Guiana. This is what scholars talk about, the difference between "open and closed resources." Open and closed resources. If there's available land, people are not going to go to work on a plantation. Now the South had open resources, geographically. The South is a big place. It's not like Barbados. It's a very big place. And a lot of that land is not cultivated at this point. So the question is, can the open resources be closed, politically? Because it's not just a question of geography, it's a question of political power. We will see this, but one of the first things that the Southern -- when Andrew Johnson sets up Southern governments under the control of whites (blacks have no say whatsoever), one of the first thing these governments do is to pass a set of laws known as the Black Codes. These are enacted in late 1865, early 1866, and in the way I've been discussing it, the Black Codes are an attempt to use political power to close the resources of the South, as far as blacks are concerned. We'll talk about the politics of this nationally next time. The Black Codes recognize certain elements of freedom: they legalize black marriages; they say African Americans can own property with some restrictions; they can go to court and testify against other blacks, not against white people. But the key to these Black Codes is what they call the vagrancy laws. Vagrancy laws. Now, there'd been Vagrancy Laws in the North. If a guy comes into town and can't make a living, they could sometimes kick them out. But that's not an effort to impose a new labor system. These vagrancy laws basically said any black person, adult, must sign a labor contract at the beginning of the year to work for a white employer for the entire year. If you do not sign... (By the way, this did not apply to poor whites. They could do whatever they want.) If you did not sign such a contract, you were a vagrant. If you were working for yourself, you were a vagrant, right? You could have a nice farm supporting your family, you're a vagrant, because you're not signing a contract to work for a white employer. If you are a vagrant and convicted of that, then you're fined. And if you can't pay the fine, you are then auctioned off, just like in slavery, to a white bidder who will agree to pay your fine, and then you have to work that off in working for him for the year. Let us, here's a cartoon, it's called, "Selling a freedman to pay his fine." This is from Harper's Weekly. An auction is taking place of a black man standing there, with a chain on his hands, just like in slavery, and a man is auctioning him off. Not as under slavery, not for lifetime servitude, but just for the year. He's been auctioned off for the year to pay his fine. There were other provisions of Black Codes. It made it illegal for one owner, sorry, planter, to hire away the laborer from another place. This is actually, I was just reading, it's great, we're back to this now: Google and Apple are now being sued because they made such an agreement. They would not hire employees from each other, and that's against the law folks, I'm sorry, even for multibillion dollar companies, you cannot just suppress the labor market by saying I'm not going to hire anyone from this other company. That's antitrust, etc. But anyway, you weren't allowed criminally, it was a criminal offense to hire someone who was under contract to some other planter. Mississippi made it illegal for blacks to even own land outside of cities. They want to make absolutely sure they had no alternative in the countryside than to go to work for white employers. Now, these laws were overturned very fast. The Freedmen's Bureau invalidated many of them. And then, very quickly, Congress (as we'll see next week) will pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which invalidates all these Black Codes. The point is not their effectiveness, but this is the white Southern planter definition of black freedom embodied in law. Very, very, very narrow. Very narrow. They're not slaves, but they're certainly not what most people would consider free. They are obligated by the law to go to work for a year at a time for white employers. They can't leave, if they leave their job, they forfeit their wages up to that point, etc., etc.

Background

By the spring of 1862, the Confederate Army was facing the prospect of a severe manpower shortage, since the twelve-month terms of most initial enlistees were expiring, and far fewer men were re-enlisting than had been hoped for. The First Conscription Act, passed by the Confederate Congress in April 1862, attempted to address this problem by making all white Southern men between 18 and 35 liable for compulsory military service.^[4] Though the South exempted several categories of men in occupations related to transportation, communications, the ministry, teaching and medicine,^[5] it did not exempt overseers. This left many plantations entirely in the charge of white women, elderly white men, or minors; these were not seen as being particularly able to maintain slave discipline, or to react effectively to prevent or suppress any unrest.^[2]

The Conscription Act proved extremely unpopular with many Confederate soldiers. Sam Watkins, a private in Company H, 1st Tennessee Infantry, wrote about his reaction and those of several of his service mates to this new law, in his book Company Aytch:

Soldiers had enlisted for twelve months only, and had faithfully complied with their volunteer obligations; the terms for which they had enlisted had expired, and they naturally looked upon it that they had a right to go home. They had done their duty faithfully and well. They wanted to see their families; in fact, wanted to go home anyhow. War had become a reality; they were tired of it. A law had been passed by the Confederate States Congress called the conscript act. A soldier had no right to volunteer and to choose the branch of service he preferred. He was conscripted. From this time on till the end of the war, a soldier was simply a machine, a conscript. It was mighty rough on rebels. We cursed the war, we cursed Bragg, we cursed the Southern Confederacy. All our pride and valor had gone, and we were sick of war and the Southern Confederacy.^[6]

Enactment of the law

When Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, many in the Confederacy (and in the North, including George McClellan)^[7] believed that the Union president was specifically trying to foment a slave rebellion. Partly to address this concern, and partly to address other issues related to the First Conscription Act, the Confederate Congress passed its Second Conscription Act on October 11, 1862, which included a provision that read:

To secure the proper police of the country, one person, either as agent, owner or overseer on each plantation on which one white person is required to be kept by the laws or ordinances of any State, and on which there is no white male adult not liable to do military service, and in States having no such law, one person as agent, owner or overseer, on each plantation of twenty negroes, and on which there is no white male adult not liable to military service; And furthermore, For additional police for every twenty negroes on two or more plantations, within five miles of each other, and each having less than twenty negroes, and of which there is no white male adult not liable to military duty, one person, being the oldest of the owners or overseers on such plantations;… are hereby exempted from military service in the armies of the Confederate States;… Provided, further, That the exemptions herein above enumerated and granted hereby, shall only continue whilst the persons exempted are actually engaged in their respective pursuits or occupations.^[8]

While this new provision provoked little criticism in some areas of the Confederacy, such as Virginia,^[2] it proved extremely unpopular with much of the rank-and-file soldiery in the Confederate Army. Sam Watkins writes of his own feelings toward this particular provision:

A law was made by the Confederate States Congress about this time allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home. It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of "rich man's war, poor man's fight." The glory of the war, the glory of the South, the glory and the pride of our volunteers had no charms for the conscript.^[9]

According to historian Eric Foner:

The impression that planters were not bearing their fair share of the war’s burdens spread quickly in the upcountry. Committed to Southern independence, most planters were also devoted to the survival of plantation slavery, and when these goals clashed, the latter often took precedence.
— Eric Foner, "The South's Inner Civil War" (March 1989), American Heritage.^[10]

In spite of the great displeasure the law caused, few men actually were affected by the law. For example, out of the roughly 38,000 overseers living in the South in 1860, 200 in Virginia, 120 in North Carolina, 201 in Georgia, and 300 in South Carolina won exemptions.^[11]

Later developments

Partly in response to such criticism, the Confederate Congress amended the Second Conscription Act in May 1863, requiring among other things that any person exempted under the so-called "Twenty Negro Law" had to have been an overseer prior to April 16, 1862, on plantations that had not been divided after October 11, 1862 (as some plantation owners had been dividing their holdings so as to exempt more overseers). Furthermore, only plantations under the control of a minor, a single woman, a person of unsound mind, or a person who was serving in the Confederate military could qualify, and a $500 fee was required to process the application.^[2] The Third Conscription Act of February 1864 dropped the number of slaves from 20 to 15, but in turn required the person so exempted to sell to the Confederacy at government-set prices one hundred pounds of bacon and/or beef for each slave, with the surplus to be sold to soldiers' families, also at government prices.^[2]

With the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, the "Twenty Negro Law" ceased to exist.

References

^ Loewen, James W. (April 8, 2008). Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: The New Press. pp. 224–226. ISBN 978-1-56584-100-0. OCLC 29877812. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "Twenty-Slave Law". www.encyclopediavirginia.org.
^ Foner, Eric (December 13, 2011). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877. p. 15. ISBN 9780062035868. Retrieved March 2, 2016. [T]he Confederacy enacted the first conscription laws in American history...
^ First Conscription Law see Ch. XXXI: "An Act to Provide Further for the Public Defense."
^ First Conscription Law see Ch. LXXIV: "An Act to Exempt Certain Persons From Enrollment in the Armies of the Confederate States."
^ Watkins, Sam R. "Chapter III "Corinth"". Company Aytch.
^ Howard Jones, Blue and Grey Diplomacy, 230; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 417; Philip Leigh, Confederacy at Flood Tide, 192-95; Louis Masur, Lincoln's Hundred Days, 123-24
^ "The Twenty Negro Law - Teaching American History". teachingamericanhistory.org.
^ Company Aytch, by Sam R. Watkins. Chapter III "Corinth"
^ Foner, Eric (March 1989). "The South's Inner Civil War: The more fiercely the Confederacy fought for its independence, the more bitterly divided it became. To fully understand the vast changes the war unleashed on the country, you must first understand the plight of the Southerners who didn't want secession". American Heritage. Vol. 40, no. 2. American Heritage Publishing Company. p. 3. Archived from the original on January 3, 2015. Retrieved December 18, 2013.{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
^ Woodward, Colin Edward. Marching Masters: Slavery, Race, and the Confederate Army during the Civil War. University of Virginia Press, 2014.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia