The Untold Story of Shields Green. Louis A. Decaro, Jr.
being “dark copper-colored,” and by a white Baltimore journalist as “quite a black Negro.”19 The notion put forth by Quarles, that Green called himself Emperor because he believed himself to be the descendant of an African prince, is thoughtful speculation.20
Of all people, a physician named Alban Payne (whose pen name was Nicholas Spicer) who espoused “scientific” knowledge of alleged black inferiority, provided another physical description of Shields Green. Payne described him as “a negro with a thick, broad neck” and as “uncommonly strong and active.” After visiting him in jail, Payne concluded that Emperor had “the appearance of being as tough as a ‘pine knot.’”21 In fact, Payne’s description is more reliable than a more familiar one provided by the antislavery journalist Richard Hinton, written long after the Harper’s Ferry raid. Hinton, who was an antislavery racist like many others in his time, seems never to have seen Green in person, but presumptively described him in bigoted caricature as “the negro man with Congo face . . . and huge feet.”22
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Although Shields Green’s origin in slavery is a reasonable conclusion of historians, this point too is open to question. Certainly, Green knew the pangs of oppression in the South, but his experience probably is more nuanced in historical terms. While incarcerated in Virginia, Green and the other raiders were interviewed by a man whose description of the prisoners appeared in a New York publication, Spirit of the Times, in early December 1859. After describing the black Ohioan John Copeland, the writer summarily reported: “Shields Green, the other black, born, he says, in South Carolina of free parents.”23 This heretofore unknown statement in which Green himself claims free parentage requires us to reconsider his background in South Carolina, as well as the circumstances that brought about his flight to the North.
Certainly, there is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of the report. Neither the writer (known to us only as “J.T.”) nor Shields Green himself had any reason to lie about having had free parents in the South. In fact, Green probably had revealed his free parentage to his lawyer, who may have chosen to keep the point hidden during the trial.24 By doing so, Green’s lawyer could undermine the count of treason against him because the court found that slaves were not citizens and therefore could not commit treason. After his trial, Green may have found some satisfaction in announcing his freeborn status to Southern visitors.
Green’s claim of free parentage may be accepted, although none of the available records from this period thus far examined either verify or contradict it.25 Assuming his words to be true, however, his flight from the South more likely was a reaction to a changed condition in his status, perhaps one that reflected the racist realities of antebellum South Carolina. In other words, what if Shields Green had lived in South Carolina as a free man, but somehow had found himself threatened with imprisonment or even enslavement? Might not such tragic circumstances have prompted him to flee the South?
As Ira Berlin observed in his seminal work, Slaves without Masters, “Southern free Negroes balanced precariously between abject slavery, which they rejected, and full freedom which was denied them.”26 Berlin’s study, which highlights the differences between slavery in the Upper and Lower South, is useful in understanding Green’s original context. In South Carolina, like the rest of the Lower South, freemen lived in a tenuous position between whites and their enslaved black brethren, a position that “allowed them just enough room to create their own life under the hateful glare of whites and within the slave society.” Unless self-employed, free blacks often were obligated to hire themselves out to whites who exploited their labor and deducted expenses from their salaries, often ensnaring them in “perennial indebtedness.” If a free black man like Green had found himself either deeply in debt or involved in some other legal problem involving fines, taxes, or jail fees, he would have been imprisoned and possibly sold into virtual slavery without hope of relief or deliverance.27 Likewise, in his vital study Black Charlestonians, Bernard Powers Jr. affirms that, apart from the experience of the most elite free blacks, free persons of color in Charleston led an “imperiled” existence. Not only could they be legally sold into slavery due to the aforementioned financial and legal burdens that were imposed upon them, but sometimes they were also kidnapped and sold into slavery.28
According to an abolitionist who knew him after he had fled to the North, Green told her, “I have suffered cruel blows from men who said they owned me.”29 These words might just as likely have come from a freeman who had fallen prey to slavery’s grip than from one born into slavery. In the late antebellum era, free people of color in the South found themselves increasingly under assault as both previously unenforced laws and new laws were imposed upon them, restricting every aspect of black life.30 Free blacks convicted of crimes were punished more harshly; for failure to pay city taxes, for example, they were subject to extended periods of forced labor, whereas whites were issued fines. Charleston’s free black men between the ages of twenty-one and sixty had to pay a tax of ten dollars if they practiced any kind of trade or art in the city. Likewise, free black males between eighteen and fifty years of age were subjected to a poll tax of two dollars. If a free black man failed to pay this tax, he could be handed over to the sheriff, who was then authorized “to sell him for a period of service not more than five years, sufficient to pay the costs.”31 While enslaved people were routinely beaten, in the 1850s free blacks increasingly were also whipped for violations that whites were only fined for committing. As Leonard P. Curry concluded, free blacks now “lived between two worlds with an unsteady foot in each.”32
Perhaps Shields Green, born free in Charleston, had somehow found himself in a situation where he was jailed, whipped, and vulnerable to some sort of indentured enslavement. Whether or not he was permanently reduced to the status of slavery or subjected to an extended time of servitude is not clear, although Emperor found the injustice of this treatment intolerable and decided to flee. At this point, too, his manner of flight—as a stowaway on a ship loaded with cotton and bound for New York City—bears consideration, for it may reflect the means by which he had fallen victim to slavery as a freeman.
Recall that Frederick Douglass was able to secure his freedom in 1838 by borrowing a free black sailor’s papers, and jumping aboard a northbound train from Baltimore, then going by steamboat to Philadelphia, and thence to New York City. Douglass noted that sailors enjoyed popular favor at the time in Maryland, and that the conductor so readily trusted “the sailor’s protection” in lieu of free papers, that he was able to make the risky sojourn to freedom.33 Green apparently also drew upon the assistance of black seamen, but under very different circumstances.
By the later years of the antebellum era, many states in the Lower South were highly suspicious of free black mariners, particularly South Carolina, which remembered their association with the Denmark Vesey conspiracy of 1822 in Charleston. Beginning with South Carolina, many slave states had passed Seaman Acts, based upon the popularly held belief that the influence of free black sailors upon enslaved people was tantamount to a “moral contagion.” The Seaman Acts functioned as “quarantines,” whereby free black sailors were immediately detained when coming ashore in port cities like Charleston. Despite this white fixation on keeping “vulnerable” slaves from being exposed to free black sailors, the detainment facilities for free black sailors were also used to imprison delinquent local slaves and free people of color. The contradictions of this racist practice are evident, not only in that both free and enslaved blacks were exposed to the “morally contagious” black seamen while in detention, but also that enslaved black sailors were not detained.34 In Charleston, had Shields Green actually been arrested and jailed due to unfortunate circumstances, he would have been incarcerated in the looming, cheerless, and rat-infested city jail, exposed not only to criminals of all stripes, but also to free black sailors and white Charleston’s other black victims.35 Certainly, in order for him to have gained access to a sailing ship bound for New York City, most likely he had made connections with blacks on board, either free or enslaved. Did he come into contact with a “morally contagious” free black sailor under detention, and was it through this contact that he arranged to be smuggled aboard?
As to Emperor’s former life as a freeman in the Lower South, consideration of other details may provide insight, such as his apparent education. Benjamin Quarles not only assumed that Green was born in slavery, but attributed illiteracy to him—once more