[Footnote 81: The number of convicts for every 10,000 of the respective populations was about 2.2 for the whites and 13.0 for the free colored (with slave convicts included) at the South, and 2.5 for the whites and 28.7 for the free colored at the North. Compendium of the Seventh Census, p. 166. See also Southern Literary Messenger, IX, 340-352; DeBow's Review, XIV, 593-595; David Christy, Cotton Is King (Cincinnati, 1855), p. 153; E.R. Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, pp. 155-158.]
In some instances the violence of mobs was added to the might of the law. Such was the case at Washington in 1835 when following on the heels of a man's arrest for the crime of possessing incendiary publications and his trial within the jail as a precaution to keep him from the mob's clutches, a new report was spread that Beverly Snow, the free mulatto proprietor of a saloon and restaurant between Brown's and Gadsby's hotels, had spoken in slurring terms of the wives and daughters of white mechanics as a class. "In a very short time he had more customers than both Brown and Gadsby—but the landlord was not to be found although diligent search was made all through the house. Next morning the house was visited by an increased number of guests, but Snow was still absent." The mob then began to search the houses of his associates for him. In that of James Hutton, another free mulatto, some abolition papers were found. The mob hustled Hutton to a magistrate, returned and wrecked Snow's establishment, and then held an organized meeting at the Center Market where an executive committee was appointed with a view to further activity. Meanwhile the city council held session, the mayor issued a proclamation, and the militia was ordered out. Mobs gathered that night, nevertheless, but dispersed after burning a negro hut and breaking the windows of a negro church.[82] Such outrages appear to have been rare in the distinctively Southern communities where the racial subordination was more complete and the antipathy correspondingly fainter.
[Footnote 82: Washington Globe, about August 14, reprinted in the North
Carolina Standard, Aug. 27, 1835.]
Since the whites everywhere held the whip hand and nowhere greatly refrained from the use of their power, the lot of the colored freeman was one hardly to be borne without the aid of habit and philosophy. They submitted to the régime because it was mostly taken as a matter of course, because resistance would surely bring harsher repression, and because there were solaces to be found. The well-to-do quadroons and mulattoes had reason in their prosperity to cherish their own pride of place and carry themselves with a quiet conservative dignity. The less prosperous blacks, together with such of their mulatto confrères as were similarly inert, had the satisfaction at least of not being slaves; and those in the South commonly shared the humorous lightheartedness which is characteristic of both African and Southern negroes. The possession of sincere friends among the whites here and there also helped them to feel that their lives lay in fairly pleasant places; and in their lodges they had a refuge peculiarly their own.
The benevolent secret societies of the negroes, with their special stress upon burial ceremonies, may have had a dim African origin, but they were doubtless influenced strongly by the Masonic and other orders among the whites. Nothing but mere glimpses may be had of the history of these institutions, for lowliness as well as secrecy screened their careers. There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85]
[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (New York, 1909), p. 6.]
[Footnote 84: Ibid., pp. 68, 69.]
[Footnote 85: Niles' Register, XLIX, 72.]
The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New Orleans, founded in 1860. Its motto was "Love, Union, Peace"; its officers were president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, marshal, mother, and six male and twelve female stewards, and its dues fifty cents per month. Members joining the lodge were pledged to obey its laws, to be humble to its officers, to keep its secrets, to live in love and union with fellow members, "to go about once in a while and see one another in love," and to wear the society's regalia on occasion. Any member in three months' arrears of dues was to be expelled unless upon his plea of illness or poverty a subscription could be raised in meeting to meet his deficit. It was the duty of all to report illnesses in the membership, and the function of the official mother to delegate members for the nursing. The secretary was to see to the washing of the sick member's clothes and pay for the work from the lodge's funds, as well as the doctor's fees. The marshal was to have charge of funerals, with power to commandeer the services of such members as might be required. He might fee the officiating minister to the extent of not more than $2.50, and draw pay for himself on a similar schedule. Negotiations with any other lodge were provided for in case of the death of a member who had fellowship also in the other for the custody of the corpse and the sharing of expense; and a provision was included that when a lodge was given the body of an outsider for burial it would furnish coffin, hearse, tomb, minister and marshal at a price of fifty dollars all told.[86] The mortuary stress in the by-laws, however, need not signify that the lodge was more funereal than festive. A negro burial was as sociable as an Irish wake.
[Footnote 86: The By-laws and Constitution of the Union Band Society of
Orleans, organised July 22, 1860: Love, Union, Peace (Caption).]