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grasshoppers

juggling of freight rates

After the Revolution some 3,000 former slaves had been transported from New York to Nova Scotia, where they became known as Black Loyalists

Equiano was appointed to an expedition to resettle London's Black Poor in Freetown, a new British colony founded on the west coast of Africa, at present-day Sierra Leone. The blacks from London were joined by more than 1,200 Black Loyalists who chose to leave Nova Scotia.

He was one of the leading members of the Sons of Africa, a small abolitionist group composed of free Africans in London

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797),[3] known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa (/ˈvæsə/),[4] was a prominent African in London, a freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade.

His last master was Robert King, an American Quaker merchant who allowed Equiano to trade on his own account and purchase his freedom in 1766.

Equiano settled in England in 1767 and worked and traveled for another 20 years as a seafarer, merchant, and explorer in the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, South and Central America, and the United Kingdom.

in 1792 Equiano married an English woman named Susannah Cullen and they had two daughters.

In Virginia, Equiano was bought in 1754 by Michael Pascal,

He was transported with 244 other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the West Indies.

He and a few other slaves were sent on to the British colony of Virginia.

Pascal took Equiano with him when he returned to England, and had him accompany him as a valet during the Seven Years' War with France. Also trained in seamanship, Equiano was expected to assist the ship's crew in times of battle; his duty was to haul gunpowder to the gun decks. Pascal favoured Equiano and sent him to his sister-in-law in Great Britain, so that the youth could attend school and learn to read and write.

At this time, Equiano converted to Christianity

Pascal sold Equiano to Captain James Doran of the Charming Sally at Gravesend, from where he was transported back to the Caribbean, to Montserrat, in the Leeward Islands. There he was sold to Robert King, an American Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean.[1

King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765, when Equiano was about 20 years old, King promised that for his purchase price of 40 pounds, the slave could buy his freedom.[14] King taught him to read and write more fluently, guided him along the path of religion, and allowed Equiano to engage in profitable trading for his own account, as well as on his master's behalf

The merchant urged Equiano to stay on as a business partner, but the African found it dangerous and limiting to remain in the British colonies as a freedman. While loading a ship in Georgia, he was almost kidnapped back into slavery.

By about 1767, Equiano had gained his freedom and went to England. He continued to work at sea, travelling sometimes as a deckhand based in England. In 1773 on the British Royal Navy ship Racehorse, he travelled to the Arctic in an expedition to find a northern route to India.[15] On that voyage he worked with Dr. Charles Irving, who had developed a process to distill seawater and later made a fortune from it. Two years later, Irving recruited Vassa for a project on the Mosquito Coast in South America, where he was to use his African background and Igbo language to help select slaves and manage them as labourers on sugar cane plantations. I

Equiano expanded his activities in London, learning the French horn and joining debating societies, including the London Corresponding Society. He continued his travels, visiting Philadelphia and New York in 1785 and 1786, respectively.

n the 1780s he became involved in the abolitionist movement.

Equiano was befriended and supported by abolitionists, many of whom encouraged him to write and publish his life story. He was supported financially in this effort by philanthropic abolitionists and religious benefactors.

As part of settling in Britain, Equiano/Vassa decided to marry and have a family. On 7 April 1792, he married Susannah Cullen, a local girl

The couple settled in the area and had two mixed-race daughters, Anna Maria (1793–1797) and Joanna (1795–1857).

It would, however, be rash hence to infer, that immediate and unconditional emancipation works better than the gradual and conditioned abolition of slavery.

In studying these precedents it must be re- membered that the slaves in our Southern States are at least ten times as numerous as the slaves in either the British or the French colonies.

t is pretty well understood that President Lincoln agrees with Senator Doolittle in advo- cating colonization of the blacks

Those who have read “Sewell's Or- deal of Free Labor in the British West Indies,” will understand this prejudice. In Jamaica and Barbados the mulattoes are steadily gaining pow- er and influence, and the end can not be mis- taken. The white race must eventually go to the wall. To avoid this result, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Doolittle, Mr. Blair, and those who agree with them, propose to colonize the negroes of our Southern States—to send them to Hayti, or Cen- tral America, or somewhere else.

To be effectual this remedy must be thorough. The entire four millions must be exported.

Capitol Men

Dray's

It does not really offer an assessment of Reconstruction's successes and failings

Twelve years earlier, Smalls had piloted the Planter, on which he worked as a slave crewman, out of Charleston harbor and delivered it to the Union navy, a deed that made him a national hero. In 1864, while the ship was undergoing repairs in Philadelphia, a conductor evicted Smalls from a streetcar when he refused to give up his seat to a white passenger. Ninety years before a similar incident involving Rosa Parks sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, Smalls's ordeal inspired a movement of black and white reformers to persuade the Pennsylvania legislature to ban discrimination in public transportation.

Stephens offered a long argument based on states' rights as to why the bill was unconstitutional.

The subject of their exchange was a civil rights bill banning racial discrimination in places of public accommodation.

Elliott launched into a learned and impassioned address explaining why the recently enacted Fourteenth Amendment justified the measure (which was signed into law by President Grant the following year), then reminded Congress of an infamous speech Stephens had delivered on the eve of the Civil War: "It is scarcely twelve years since that gentleman shocked the civilized world by announcing the birth of a government which rested on human slavery as its cornerstone." Elliott already had proved that he refused to be intimidated by whites: in 1869 he whipped a white man in the streets of Columbia for writing inappropriate notes to his wife. A black man assaulting a white man in defense of his wife's good name was not a common occurrence in nineteenth-century South Carolina.

Congressmen Dray profiles came from diverse origins and differed in their approach to public policies. Some had been free before the Civil War, others enslaved

Some favored government action to distribute land to former slaves; others insisted that in a market society the only way to acquire land was to purchase it. Some ran for office as representatives of their race, others as exemplars of the ideal that, with the end of slavery and the advent of legal equality, race no longer mattered. Reconstruction's black Congressmen did not see themselves simply as spokesmen for the black community

was one of the more conservative black leaders; yet in the Senate he spoke out for more humane treatment of Native Americans and opposed legislation banning immigration from China

sixteen black members of Congress

had enjoyed opportunities and advantages unknown to most African-Americans

had been born free in North Carolina

was the slave son of his owner and was educated by the same tutor who taught his white half-siblings.

Some Congressmen had enjoyed unique privileges as slaves.

wner allowed him to learn to read and write and to run a hotel and livery stable in Selma

Others, however, had experienced slavery in all its brutality.

Jeremiah Haralson

None of these men fit the old stereotype of Reconstruction officials as ignorant, incompetent and corrupt.

All were literate, most were seasoned political organizers by the time of their election and nearly all were honest.

ne who does fit the image of venality wa

of Louisiana, whose career combined staunch advocacy of civil rights with a sharp eye for opportunities to line his pockets

Pinchback grew up and attended school in Cincinnati. In the 1850s he worked as a cabin boy on an Ohio River steamboat. He fell in with a group of riverboat gamblers and learned their trade. He turned up in New Orleans in 1862 and expertly navigated the byzantine world of Louisiana's Reconstruction politics. Pinchback was undoubtedly corrupt (he accumulated a small fortune while in office) but also an accomplished politician.

Reconstruction ended in 1877, when President Rutherford B. Hayes abandoned the idea of federal intervention to protect the rights of black citizens in the South, essentially leaving their fate in the hands of local whites.

black political power, while substantially diminished, did not vanish until around 1900, when the Southern states disenfranchised black voters. Six more African-Americans served in Congress before the end of the nineteenth century. Some of their Reconstruction predecessors remained active in politics

of Planter fame, served as customs collector at Beaufort until 1913, when he was removed as part of a purge of blacks from the federal bureaucracy by Woodrow Wilson, the first Southern-born president since Reconstruction.

Pinchback and Bruce moved to Washington, where they became leaders of the city's black elite and arbiters of federal patronage appointments for African-Americans. Bruce worked tirelessly but unsuccessfully to persuade Congress to reimburse blacks who had deposited money in the Freedman's Savings Bank, which failed during the Panic of 1873. Like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in our own time, the bank was a private corporation chartered by Congress that enjoyed the implicit but not statutory backing of the federal government. Its counterparts today are being bailed out with billions of taxpayer dollars, as they have been deemed too big to fail. The Freedman's Savings Bank was too black to rescue.

The last black Congressman of the post-Reconstruction era wa

of North Carolina, whose term ended in 1901. From then until 1929, when

took his seat representing Chicago, Congress remained lily-white. Not until 1972, with

election in Georgia and

in Texas, did black representation resume from states that had experienced Reconstruction. Today the Congressional Black Caucus numbers forty-two members, seventeen of them from the states of the old Confederacy.

One such episode involves

who in 1874 was elected to Congress from Beaufort County, South Carolina.

Equally riveting is the 1874 confrontation between

he former vice president of the Confederacy, then representing Georgia in the House of Representatives, and another black South Carolinian,

Robert Brown Elliott (1842-1884) was an African American member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina. Robert Brown Elliott's early life is a mystery. Although he claimed to have been born in Liverpool, England to West Indian immigrants, and to have graduated from Eton College, biographers have been unable to corroborate these facts. He moved to South Carolina in 1867 and established a law practice. Elliott helped organize the local Republican Party and served in the state constitutional convention. In 1868 he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The next year he was appointed assistant adjutant-general; he was the first African American commanding general of the South Carolina National Guard. As part of his job, he helped form a state militia to fight the Ku Klux Klan. Elliott was elected as a Republican to the Forty-second and Forty-third United States Congress. He "delivered a celebrated speech" in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1875.[1] He resigned on November 1, 1874, to fight political corruption in South Carolina. He served again in the South Carolina House of Representatives, where he was elected as Speaker of the House. He ran unsuccessfully for South Carolina Attorney General in 1876. Reconstruction ended that year and he was forced out of office.[] He set up a private law practice in New Orleans.

Did You Know? Howard University, a historically all-black school in Washington, D.C., was established in 1867 and named for Oliver Howard, one of its founders and the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He served as the university's president from 1869 to 1874.

There was no tradition of government responsibility for a huge refugee population and no bureaucracy to administer a large welfare, employment and land reform program

4 million newly freed blacks

When Congress introduced a bill in February 1866 to extend the bureau’s tenure and give it new legal powers, Johnson vetoed the proposed legislation on the grounds that it interfered with states’ rights, gave preference to one group of citizens over another and would impose a huge financial burden on the federal government, among other issues.

as well as removing bureau employees he thought were too sympathetic to blacks

Johnson’s actions, which included pardoning many former Confederates and restoring their land,

there was disagreement over what type of assistance the government should provide and for how long.

covering the 11 former rebel states, the border states of Maryland, Kentucky and West Virginia and Washington, D.C. Each district was headed by an assistant commissioner.

achievements varied

the bureau was underfunded and understaffed,

Bureau agents, who acted essentially as social workers

were subjected to ridicule and violence

Ku Klux Klan) who viewed the agents as interfering in local affairs by trying to assist blacks

fed millions of people,

medical aid,

settled labor disputes.

locate lost relatives

building thousands of schools for blacks

found such colleges as Howard University in Washington, D.C

Fisk University in Nashville

Hampton University

most of the confiscated or abandoned Confederate land was eventually restored to the original owners

dismantled the Freedmen’s Bureau

summer of 1872,

the bureau’s efforts did signal the introduction of the federal government into issues of social welfare and labor relations

Bryan delivered one of the greatest political speeches in American history, the "Cross of Gold" Speech

Several third parties were active in 1896. By far the most prominent was the Populist Party

Formed in 1892, the Populists represented agrarian interests in the South, West, and rural Midwest.

In the 1892 presidential election Populist candidate James B. Weaver had carried four states, and in 1894 the Populists had scored victories in congressional and state legislature races in a number of Southern and Western states.

By 1896 some Populists believed that they could replace the Democrats as the main opposition party to the Republicans.

At their national convention in 1896, the Populists chose Bryan as their presidential nominee.

With this election, the Populists began to be absorbed into the Democratic Party; within a few elections the party would disappear completely

He sought and achieved Congressional authority to create the First Bank of the United States in 1791; the charter lasted until 1811.[17]

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed a strong central government (and, consequently, most of Hamilton's economic policies), but they could not stop Hamilton,

As president in 1811 Madison let the bank charter expire, but the War of 1812 proved the need for a national bank and Madison reversed positions. The Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816, with a 20 year charter.[18]

Cotton, at first a small-scale crop in the South, boomed following Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin,

Millions moved to the more fertile farmland of the Midwest. States built roads and waterways, such as the Cumberland Pike (1818) and the Erie Canal (1825), opening up markets for western farm products.

The Whig Party supported Clay's American System, which proposed to build internal improvements (e.g. roads, canals and harbors), protect industry, and create a strong national bank

President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837), leader of the new Democratic Party, opposed the Second Bank of the United States, which he believed favored the entrenched interests of rich. When he was elected for a second term, Jackson blocked the renewal of the bank's charter. Jackson opposed paper money and demanded the government be paid in gold and silver coins. The Panic of 1837 stopped business growth for three years

Railroads made a decisive impact on the U.S. economy especially in the 1850-1873 era, making possible the transition to an urban industrial nation with high finance and advanced managerial skills. Railroads opened up remote areas, drastically cut the cost of moving freight as well as passenger travel, and stimulated new industries such as steel and telegraphy, as well as the profession of civil engineering.

Atlanta, Billings, Chicago, and Dallas

the railroad became the first large-scale business enterprise and the model for most large corporations.[24]

Panics did not curtail rapid U.S. economic growth during the 19th century. Long term demographic growth, expansion into new farmlands, and creation of new factories continued. New inventions and capital investment led to the creation of new industries and economic growth. As transportation improved, new markets continuously opened.

By 1860, on the eve of Civil War, 16% of the people lived in cities with 2500 or more people; a third of the nation's income came from manufacturing. Urbanized industry was limited primarily to the Northeast; cotton cloth production was the leading industry, with the manufacture of shoes, woolen clothing, and machinery also expanding. Most of the workers in the new factories were immigrants or their children. Between 1845 and 1855, some 300,000 European immigrants arrived annually. Many remained in eastern cities, especially mill towns and mining camps, while those with farm experience and some savings bought farms in the West.[26]

The industrial advantages of the North over the South helped secure a Northern victory in the American Civil War

Industrialists came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and political affairs.[26]

the region maintained its dependence on cotton

An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the "Second Industrial Revolution."

By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.[2

The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy.

Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation's industrial infrastructure

unsuccessfully invaded Mexico.

invasions of Nicaragua.

Knights of the Golden Circle, developed plans to create an independent slave empire stretching from Maryland and Texas to northern South America and the West Indies.

short-term loan contracts provided by bankers (asientos)

[18]

Initially, since Portugal had unimpeded rights in West Africa via its 1494 treaty it dominated the European slave trade of Africans.

the Spanish fiscal authorities gave individual asientos to merchants, primarily from Portugal, to bring slaves to the Americas.

Following the establishment of the Portuguese colony of Angola in 1575,

Angolan interests came to dominate the trade,

he period of the Iberian Union.

those holding asientos for the Brazilian slave trade often also trading slaves in Spanish America.

Till 1622 half of the slaves were destined for Mexico.