Abstract
For African American men the attraction of Mississippi River steamboat work was intense. The slave Josiah Henson remembered that working on the Mississippi was a “sunny spot” in his life and was “one of his most treasured recollections.”1 William Wells Brown found work in a steamboat cabin “pleasant” especially when compared to work on shore.2 Sella Martin “very much desired” river work while Madison Henderson “preferred” to work on Mississippi steamers.3 Free blacks such as Amos Warrick, James Seward, and Charles Brown all sought the benefits of steamboat labor.
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Notes
J. Passmore Edwards, Uncle Tom’s Companions: Facts Stranger than Fiction. A Supplement to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Being Startling Incidents in the Lives of Celebrated Fugitive Slaves (London: Edwards and Company, 1852), 92.
Gilbert Osofsky, ed. Puttin on Ole Massa: The Slave Narratives of Henry Bibb, William Wells Brown, and Solomon Northrup (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 187, 189.
John W. Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews and Autobiographies (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1977), 727; Trials and Confessions of Madison Henderson, alias Blanchard, Alfred Amos Warrick, James W. Steward, and Charles Brown, Murderers of Jacob Weaver: As Given By Themselves and Likeness of Each, Taken in Jail Shortly After Their Arrest (St. Louis, MO: Chambers and Knapp, Republican Office, 1841), 8.
W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil andthe Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian University Press, 1993).
Herbert and Edward Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin’ (New York: Henry Holt, 1926), 235. Coal was loaded from riverside barges which sold to passing steamboats. Firemen loaded coal into and out of large wooden boxes known as coal hoppers, which sat near the fires. See Sophie Pearson, Unpublished Manuscript “The Man -His Boats -the River,” chapter eight, Box three, Sophie Pearson Collection, Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University.
Quick and Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin’ (1926), 179. Firemen on the lower Mississippi checked wood piles for snakes before loading.
Frederika Bremer, Homes of the New World: Impressions of America, Vol. II, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854), 174.
Charles Latrobe, The Rambler in North America, 1832–1833 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1835), 299. Alex Mackay noted the “frantic pace” of African American firemen. See Alex Mackay, The Western World: or, Travels in the United States in 1846–7 (London: Richard Bentley, 1849), 48.
For descriptions of firemen’s work process see Louis C. Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers : An Economic and Technological History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 453; George Byron Merrick, Old Times on the Mississippi River: Recollections of a Steamboat Pilot from 1854 to 1863 (Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clarke, 1909), 59–63; John Gleason, et. al. v. Steamboat Urilda, No. 1519, (1868), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, National Archives Great Plains Region (NAGPR), Kansas City, Missouri; McKinney v. Steamboat Yalla Busha, No. 602, Unreported (1848), Records of Louisiana Supreme Court, Special Collections, University of New Orleans (UNO); Mackay, The Western World; or, Travels in the United States in 1846–7 (1849), 46–48.
John Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (Pittsburgh, PA: McNary and Simpson, 1901), 87. Atlantic deep sea merchant ships had very different hull designs than did western steamboats. While Atlantic ships stored their cargo and shipped their passengers in large holds below water level, steamboats were designed for the shallow western rivers. They had flatter, broader-based hulls that split cargo between the deck and small, six- to seven-foot-high holds.
Testimony of Captain Kinney, Henry James v. Steamboat Cora, No. 1162, Unreported (1866), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, NAGPR.
Testimony of Berry Smith, George Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Mississippi Narratives, Supplement, Series 1, Volume 10, Part 5 (1977), 1981–82.
A complete record of a western river steamboat cargo, including individual shipments and their weight, is contained in the complete bills of lading for several runs of the Missouri River steamer Evening Star in 1867. See Records of the Evening Star, Box 2, Folders 37–47, Trail Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri.
Testimony of William Waymen, Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Texas Narratives, Supplement, Series 2, Volume 10, Part 9 (1979), 4144. For other reports of plantation slaves working with steamboat hands see Rice v. Cade, 10 La 288 (1836), UNO; Charles Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States (Philadelphia: John W. Moore, 1856), 210.
Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States (1856), 167. Olmsted found “negroes lying asleep, in all postures, upon the freight.” Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveler’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, 1853–1861 (Arthur Schlesinger, ed. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 273.
Charles Beadle, A Trip the United States in 1887 (London: J. S. Virtue and Co., nd.), 65.
Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States (1856), 167.
Quick and Quick, Mississippi Steamboatin’ (1926), 252.
Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States (1856), 167.
[Mrs Houstoun, Hesperos: or, Travels in the West (London: John W. Parker, 1850), 54.] For other descriptions of roustabout work see Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 454. See also Sophie Pearson, Unpublished Manuscript “The Man the Boats -the River,” chapter 8, Box 3, Louisiana State University Archives; “The River-Boatmen of the Lower Mississippi,” Annual Reports of the Supervising Surgeon General (Marine Hospital Service, 1873); Williams v. Jacob, No. 1773, Unreported (1870), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, NAGPR; Bennet v. Steamboat Nashville, No. 5210, Unreported (1854), UNO; Rice v. Cade, 10 La 288 (1836).
Testimony of Peter Barber, in Ronnie W. Clayton, ed., Mother Wit: The Ex-Slave Narratives of the Louisiana Writers’ Project (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 25.
Osofsky, ed., Puttin’ on Ole Massa, 187. See also Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon: An American Diary 1857–8. Joseph W. Reed, Jr., ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), 112–13. Workers generally had to purchase their own clothes. This cost cabin laborers more than deck workers. See Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (1901), 28. Charles Rosenberg, “Sexuality, Class and Role in Nineteenth Century America,” in Elizabeth Pleck and Joseph E. Pleck, eds., The American Man (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), 219–57. For further discussion of this ideal and the African American community see James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, “Violence, Protest, and Identity: Black Manhood in Antebellum America,” in Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds., A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Men’s History and Masculinity, vol. 1 (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1999), 382–99.
For an example of the difficulty of meeting passenger demands see Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey to the Seaboard Slave States (New York: Mason Bros., 1861), 569; Blair et. al. v. Steamboat Aunt Letty, No. 183, Unreported (1857), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, NAGPR.
A. Oakey Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans; or, Phases of “Crescent City” Life (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1851), 179.
Hall, The Manhattaner in New Orleans; or Phases of “Crescent City” Life (1851), 179–180.
Testimony of Joseph Jones, Mary Johns v. Henry Brinker, No. 5399, 30 La Ann. 241 (1878), Supreme Court Records of Louisiana, Special Collections, Earl K. Long Library, UNO.
Block v. Steamboat Trent, No. 855, 18 La Ann 664 (1866), UNO.
Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (1901), 153. Deck passengers generally carried their own provisions.
Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (1901), 59–63; Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1901), 400–2; Blair et. al. v. Steamboat Aunt Letty, No. 183, Unreported (1857), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, NAGPR.
This term was occasionally used to describe stewards. See Wm. Patterson v. Steamboat Great Republic, No. 1563, Unreported (1869), United States District Court Records, Eastern District of Missouri, NAGPR.
Carter G. Woodson, “Negroes of Cincinnati Prior to Civil War,” Journal of Negro History 1 (January 1916). This article has been reprinted in Wendell Phillips Dabney, Cincinnati’s Colored Citizens; Historical, Sociological and Biographical (New York: Negro University Press, 1970), 38.
James Thomas, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas, Loren Schweninger, ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 107.
See steamboat crew lists, Manuscript, Seventh Population Census of the United States, Reel 417, City of St. Louis, National Archives. Barbers would have been among the workers least likely to be present on board during landings—a fact that was probably responsible for the small number of barbers the census taker recorded in his riverside enumeration of boat workers. For more on how barbering was considered “nigger work” in the South see Ira Berlin, Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 235–36.
Thomas, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas, Schweninger, ed. (1984), 85.
William Ransom Hogan and Edwin Adams Davis, eds. William Johnson’s Natchez: the Antebellum Diary of a Free Negro (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 508, 743.
For barbers’ work process, and the shifting of workers between riverside barbershops and steamboats, see Hogan and Davis, eds., William Johnson’s Natchez: The Antebellum Diary of a Free Negro (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993); Testimony of Isaac Throgmorton, Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony (1977), 432–33.
Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 272.
Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 290–98. For examples of African Americans killed in boiler explosions see New Orleans Picayune, April 26, 1859; New Orleans Picayune, November 16, 1849; Rountree v. Brilliant Steamboat Company, No. 2804, 8 La Ann 289, (1853).
Robert Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 43–44.
New Orleans Picayune, September 7, 1844; New Orleans Picayune, September 11, 1844; New Orleans Picayune, February 11, 1849; Missouri Republican, November 29, 1847.
When slaves died their masters sometimes sued for negligence see Johnstone v. Arabia, No. 3, Box 584, 24 Mo 86 (1853), Missouri Supreme Court Records, Missouri State Archives, Jefferson City, Missouri; Rice v. Cade, 10 La 228 (1836); Morgan’s Syndics v. Fiveash, No. 1700, 7 Mart (n.s.) 410 (La, 1829); Lacoste v. Sellick, No. 6101,1 La Ann 336 (1846); Poree v. Cannon, No. 6006, 14 La Ann 501 (1859); England v. Gripon, No. 6316, 15 La Ann 304 (1860); Howes v. Red Chief, Nos. 5944, 6487, 15 La Ann 321 (1860); Huntington v. Ricard, No. 2288, 6 La Ann 806 (1851); Barry v. Kimball, No. 3500, 10 La Ann 787 (1855) and No. 4684, 12 La Ann 806 (1851).
Missouri Republican, October 17, 1846. For an African American steward’s drowning death see New Orleans Picayune, December 4, 1849.
Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 430–35.
Quoted in Robert Starobin, Industrial Slavery in the Old South (1970), 65. In this case the master thought the sickness of his slaves’ was caused by damp below deck sleeping quarters.
Testimony of Joseph Jackson, United States v. Louisville, No. 346, Unreported (1863), United States District Court Records, Southern District of Illinois, National Archives Great Lakes Region (NAGLR), Chicago, Illinois.
Testimony of Judy Taylor, United States v. Louisville, No. 346, Unreported (1863), United States District Court Records, Southern District of Illinois, NAGLR.
Testimony of Joseph Jackson, United States v. Louisville, No. 346, Unreported (1863), United States District Court Records, Southern District of Illinois, NAGLR. Slave rivermen received different treatment on shore from other workers. Federally funded marine hospitals, founded to help address the public health threats posed by maritime workers, covered only free workers. While there may have been exceptions, slave workers generally remained in the care of masters and private physicians. In some cases officers took them to urban slave hospitals, though in these instances masters were responsible for treatment costs.
Testimony of Elmo Steele, Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Mississippi Narratives, Supplement, Series 1, Volume 10, Part 5 (1977), 2027.
Lieut-Col Arthur Cunynghame, A Glimpse at the Great Western Republic (London: Richard Bentley, 1851), 143.
Lanman, Adventures in the Wilds of the United States (1856), 167.
Rev. Robert Everest, A Journey Through the United States and Part of Canada (London: John Chapman, 1855), np. For more on the racial fears passengers see, Entry for 5 June n.y., Diary of Sallie Diana Smith, Trail Collection, Box 1, Folder 11, State Historical Society of Missouri.
Shields McIIwaine, Memphis Down in Dixie (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948), 192.
Lient.-Col. Arthur Cunynghame, A Glimpse at the Great Western Republic (London: Richard Bentley, 1851), 142. For an example from the immediate postwar period see Entry for 5 June n.y., Diary of Sallie Diana Smith, Box 1, Folder 8, Trail Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri.
The privacy of cabin rooms gave travelers and officers ample opportunity for sexual advances. See Osofsky, ed., Puttin’ On Ole Massa (1969), 194.
Testimony of Will Long, Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Texas Narratives, Supplement, Series 2, Volume 6, Part 5 (1979), 2409.
Testimony of William H. McCarthy, Rawick, ed., The American Slave, Mississippi Narratives, Supplement, Series 1, Volume 9, Part 4 (1977), 1373.
Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (1901), 87; England v. Gripon, No. 6316, 15 La Ann 304 (1860), UNO.
Lafcadio Hearn, Children of the Levee, O. W. Frost, ed. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957), 81.
Rice v. Cade, et. al., 10 La 288 (1836).
Testimony of Isole Darcole, Barry v. Kimball, No. 4684, 12 La Ann 372 (1857), UNO; M. De Grandfort, The New World, Edward C. Wharton, trans. (New Orleans, LA: Sherman, Harton, and Co., 1855), 81.
Testimony of Ben Lawson, T. Lindsay Baker and Julie P. Baker, eds., The WPA Oklahoma Slave Narratives (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 245.
Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 466.
Hunter, Steamboats on the Western Rivers (1949), 465–66.
Account book of James Rudd, 1830–1860, James Rudd Papers, 1789–1867, Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky.
Cunynghame, A Glimpse at the Western Republic (1851), 143.
Testimony of Judy Taylor, United States v. Louisville, No. 346, (1863), United States District Court Records, Southern District of Illinois, NAGLR.
Louis Hughes, Thirty Years a Slave: From Bondage to Freedom (Milwaukee, WI: South Side Printing Company, 1897), 103.
Frederick Law Olmsted, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), 564.
Account book of James Rudd, 1830–1860, James Rudd Papers, 1789–1867, FC.
Thomas, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas, Schweninger, ed. (1984), 108.
Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy, Late a Slave in the United States of America (Boston: Oliver Johnson, 1844), 30.
Thomas, From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas, Schweninger, ed. (1984), 119. For another account of the custom of tipping see Eliza Potter, A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 158.
Judge William Pope Early Days in Arkansas: Being for the Most Part the Personal Recollections of An Old Settler (Little Rock, AK: Frederick Allsopp, 1895), 7–8. John Habermehl wrote that “those who gave tips” were “sure to get the warmest buckwheat pancakes and the nicest fried eggs.” See Habermehl, Life on the Western Rivers (1901), 48, 155.
Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom (1996), 272.
Testimony of Daniel Tucker, McMaster v. Beckwith, No. 2017, 2 La 329 (1831), UNO.
Testimony of John Eaton, Emmerling v. Beebe, No. 3642, 15 La 251 (1840), UNO.
Cyprian Clamorgan, The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis (St. Louis, MO: S.N., 1858), 17–22.
Trials and Confessions of Madison Henderson, alias Blanchard, Alfred Amos Warrick, James W. Seward, James W. Seward, and Charles Brown, Murderers of Jesse Baker and Jacob Weaver: As Given by Themselves and Likeness of Each, Taken in Jail Shortly After Their Arrest (1841), 20–22.
Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony (1977), 432.
Tyson v. Ewing, 3 J.J. Marsh. 185 (Ky, 1830).
Blassingame, ed., Slave Testimony (1977), 389–90.
Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery (1969), 190. William Anderson reported saving 500 dollars during his 11 years of service as a cook and steward on steamboats. See Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery (1969), 178.
Osofsky, ed., Puttin’ On Ole’ Massa (1969), 188.
Lewis and Milton Clarke, Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of the Revolution, During a Captivity of More Than Twenty Years Among the Slaveholders of Kentucky, One of the So Called Christian States of North America (Boston: Bela Marsh, 1846), 74.
Clarke and Clarke, Narratives of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke (1846), 81.
James Oliver Horton, Free People of Color: Inside the African-American Community (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 69.
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© 2004 Joe Trotter, with Earl Lewis and Tera W. Hunter
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Buchanan, T.C. (2004). Black Life on the Mississippi: African American Steamboat Laborers and the Work Culture of Antebellum Western Steamboats. In: Trotter, J.W., Lewis, E., Hunter, T.W. (eds) African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403979162_4
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