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96-776: The Whitney Plantation Historic District is preserved by the Whitney Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to educate the public about the history and legacies of slavery in the Southern United States . The district, including the main house and outbuildings, is preserved near Wallace , in St. John the Baptist Parish , Louisiana , on the River Road along the Mississippi River . What

192-576: A Senegalese scholar specializing in the history of slavery. The grounds contain several memorial sites dedicated to the more than 100,000 men, women, and children who were enslaved in Louisiana. Original art commissioned by Cummings, such as life-size sculptures of children, were added to help tell the history of slavery. The sculptures are representative of people born into slavery before the Civil War. Many survivors were interviewed as adults for

288-522: A slave catcher during the war, and at its end he pressed the British to return the slaves to their masters. With the British certificates of freedom in their belongings, the black loyalists, including Washington's slave Harry, sailed with their white counterparts out of New York harbor to Nova Scotia . More than 3,000 were resettled in Nova Scotia, where they were eventually granted land and formed

384-678: A committee, of which he was chair, to investigate "the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race". Their report, first delivered to the Medical Association in an address, was published in their journal in 1851, and then reprinted in part in the widely circulated DeBow's Review . Whether slavery was to be limited to the Southern states that already had it, or whether it was to be permitted in new states made from

480-534: A famous speech in the Senate in 1837, declared that slavery was "instead of an evil, a good – a positive good". Calhoun supported his view with the following reasoning: in every civilized society one portion of the community must live on the labor of another; learning, science, and the arts are built upon leisure; the African slave, kindly treated by his master and mistress and looked after in his old age,

576-553: A future date, sometimes with an intermediary status of unpaid indentured servant. Abolition was in many cases a gradual process. Some slaveowners, primarily in the Upper South , freed their slaves, and charitable groups bought and freed others. The Atlantic slave trade was outlawed by individual states beginning during the American Revolution. The import trade was banned by Congress in 1808 , although smuggling

672-480: A handful, freed their slaves by personal decision, often providing for manumission in wills but sometimes filing deeds or court papers to free individuals. Numerous slaveholders who freed their slaves cited revolutionary ideals in their documents; others freed slaves as a promised reward for service. From 1790 to 1810, the proportion of blacks free in the United States increased from 8 to 13.5 percent, and in

768-490: A hot topic of debate during the heated Tilden-Hayes Presidential election of 1876 , as the country tried to figure out the confusing nature of the status of the defeated Confederate states. In 1863 the Union Army's "Office of Negro Labor" was sent to Woodland to investigate conditions there. They found that on the plantation "great ill feeling and discontent" existed. The slaves begged to be given permission to enlist in

864-572: A hundred thousand (nearly one in five black slaves) left their homes ... betting on British victory", but Cassandra Pybus states that between 20,000 and 30,000 is a more realistic number of slaves who defected to the British side during the war. Many slaves took advantage of the disruption of war to escape from their plantations to British lines or to fade into the general population. Upon their first sight of British vessels, thousands of slaves in Maryland and Virginia fled from their owners. Throughout

960-587: A leading part in the "Conservative Unionists", a group of businessmen with interests in the South who wanted occupied Louisiana let back into the Union with her 1852 constitution intact. They claimed that the state constitution had not been dissolved and the secession was illegal, so the President should allow the state back into the Union with slavery intact. Johnson and two other plantation owners made their argument in

1056-402: A letter to President Lincoln, reinforced by a personal visit. Lincoln was not impressed. In his dismissive response he wrote "I do not perceive how such committal could facilitate our military operations in Louisiana, I really apprehend it might be so used as to embarrass them." In 1863 Johnson brought a suit against a Union general. The suit claimed that in 1862 the occupying Union Army, under

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1152-758: A new Italianate mansion built in the Garden District at 2343 Prytania Street. The house is now home to the Louise S. McGehee School . The family also had an estate in East Islip, on the South Shore of Long Island, NY, which is where Johnson died on November 3, 1892. Johnson is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn , New York . He was a member of The Boston Club of New Orleans. After Johnson retired to New Orleans, his house at 21st and Broadway

1248-422: A public question from there forward". After the new country's independence was secure, slavery was a topic of contention at the 1787 Constitutional Convention . Many of Founding Fathers of the United States were plantation owners who owned large numbers of enslaved laborers; the original Constitution preserved their right to own slaves, and they further gained a political advantage in owning slaves. Although

1344-550: A punishment for crime is still legal in the United States. By the time of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), the status of enslaved people had been institutionalized as a racial caste associated with African ancestry. During and immediately following the Revolution, abolitionist laws were passed in most Northern states and a movement developed to abolish slavery. The role of slavery under

1440-429: A significantly higher number and proportion of enslaved people in the population overall, as its commodity crops were labor-intensive. Early on, enslaved people in the South worked primarily on farms and plantations growing indigo , rice and tobacco ( cotton did not become a major crop until after the 1790s). In 1720, about 65 percent of South Carolina's population was enslaved. Planters (defined by historians in

1536-405: A stronger. 4. The happiness of the governed is in no sense its object. 5. The temporal improvement or the eternal well-being of the governed is in no sense its object. The object of it has been distinctly stated in one sentence by Judge Ruffin ,— "The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety." Slavery, then, is absolute despotism, of the most unmitigated form. In

1632-663: A sugar plantation there called "Magnolia", where they settled and began to produce sugar. In the 1830s, William Johnson moved his family to a new plantation four miles further up the Mississippi River, in Pointe à la Hache, Louisiana . He named his new plantation " Woodland ". Bradish Johnson, born in 1811, was the third of four sons. He was named after his father's business partner, George Bradish. By 1820, Captain William Johnson had also begun purchasing property on

1728-454: Is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing

1824-582: Is an important architectural example in the state. The plantation has numerous outbuildings or "dependencies": a pigeonnier or dovecote , a plantation store , the only surviving French Creole barn in North America (ca. 1790), a detached kitchen, an overseer's house, a mule barn, and two slave dwellings. The complex includes three archaeological sites. These have been subject to varying degrees of excavation and exploration. The 1884 Mialaret House, and its associated buildings and property, were added to

1920-473: Is better off than the free laborers of Europe; and under the slave system conflicts between capital and labor are avoided. The advantages of slavery in this respect, he concluded, "will become more and more manifest, if left undisturbed by interference from without, as the country advances in wealth and numbers". South Carolina army officer, planter , and railroad executive James Gadsden called slavery "a social blessing" and abolitionists "the greatest curse of

2016-455: Is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. However, as the abolitionist movement's agitation increased and the area developed for plantations expanded, apologies for slavery became more faint in the South. Leaders then described slavery as a beneficial scheme of labor management. John C. Calhoun , in

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2112-797: The Confederacy . Shortly afterward, the Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked the U.S. Army's Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. During the war some jurisdictions abolished slavery and, due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and the Emancipation Proclamation , the war effectively ended slavery in most places. After the Union victory, the Thirteenth Amendment to

2208-668: The Federal Writers Project during the Great Depression in the 1930s. These oral histories of hundreds of the last survivors of slavery in the United States were collected and published by the federal government, to preserve their stories. The transcripts and some audio recordings are held by the Library of Congress . Mr. Cummings donated the entirety of the museum and land to a non-profit in 2019. The French Creole raised-style main house , built in 1790,

2304-620: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 gave effect to the Fugitive Slave Clause. Salmon P. Chase considered the Fugitive Slave Acts unconstitutional because "The Fugitive Slave Clause was a compact among the states, not a grant of power to the federal government". In a section negotiated by James Madison of Virginia, Section   2 of Article   I designated "other persons" (slaves) to be added to

2400-527: The Hudson River , from Ninth Avenue to Eleventh Avenue between 15th and 16th Streets. The distillery was east of Tenth Avenue, while the cow barns and dairy were located west of Tenth. Through his distilleries and his investments in real estate, Johnson became very wealthy. He became one of the directors of the Chemical Bank of New York when it was rechartered in 1844. He served as a director for

2496-612: The Thirteen Colonies that formed the United States. Under the law, an enslaved person was treated as property that could be bought, sold, or given away. Slavery lasted in about half of U.S. states until abolition in 1865, and issues concerning slavery seeped into every aspect of national politics, economics, and social custom. In the decades after the end of Reconstruction in 1877, many of slavery's economic and social functions were continued through segregation , sharecropping , and convict leasing . Involuntary servitude as

2592-621: The United States Congress acted on President Thomas Jefferson 's advice and, without controversy, made importing slaves from abroad a federal crime, effective the first day that the United States Constitution permitted this prohibition: January 1, 1808. During the Revolution and in the following years, all states north of Maryland ( the Mason–Dixon line ) took steps towards abolishing slavery. In 1777,

2688-571: The United States Constitution (1789) was the most contentious issue during its drafting. The Three-Fifths Clause of the Constitution gave slave states disproportionate political power, while the Fugitive Slave Clause ( Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3 ) provided that, if a slave escaped to another state, the other state could not prevent the return of the slave to the person claiming to be his or her owner. All Northern states had abolished slavery to some degree by 1805, sometimes with completion at

2784-473: The Upper South from less than one to nearly ten percent as a result of these actions. Starting in 1777, the rebels outlawed the importation of slaves state by state. They all acted to end the international trade, but, after the war, it was reopened in North Carolina (opened until 1794) and Georgia (opened until 1798) and South Carolina (opened until 1787, and then reopened again in 1803.) In 1807,

2880-660: The Vermont Republic , which was still unrecognized by the United States, passed a state constitution prohibiting slavery . The Pennsylvania Abolition Society , led in part by Benjamin Franklin , was founded in 1775, and Pennsylvania began gradual abolition in 1780. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled in Commonwealth v. Jennison that slavery was unconstitutional under

2976-652: The cotton industry in the Deep South after the invention of the cotton gin greatly increased demand for slave labor, and the Southern states continued as slave societies. The U.S., divided into slave and free states , became ever more polarized over the issue of slavery. Driven by labor demands from new cotton plantations in the Deep South , the Upper South sold more than a million slaves who were taken to

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3072-468: The 19th century, proponents of slavery often defended the institution as a "necessary evil". At that time, it was feared that emancipation of black slaves would have more harmful social and economic consequences than the continuation of slavery. On April 22, 1820, Thomas Jefferson , one of the Founding Fathers of the United States , wrote in a letter to John Holmes , that with slavery, We have

3168-840: The American Continental Army . Rhode Island started enlisting slaves in 1778, and promised compensation to owners whose slaves enlisted and survived to gain freedom. During the course of the war, about one-fifth of the Northern army was black. In 1781, Baron Closen, a German officer in the French Royal Deux-Ponts Regiment at the Battle of Yorktown , estimated the American army to be about one-quarter black. These men included both former slaves and free-born blacks. Thousands of free blacks in

3264-868: The British forces. Historians agree that the proclamation was chiefly designed for practical rather than moral reasons, and slaves owned by American Loyalists were unaffected by the proclamation. About 1,500 slaves owned by patriots escaped and joined Dunmore's forces. A total of 18 slaves fled George Washington 's plantation, one of whom, Harry, served in Dunmore's all-black loyalist regiment called "the Black Pioneers". Escapees who joined Dunmore had "Liberty to Slaves" stitched on to their jackets. Most died of disease before they could do any fighting, but three hundred of these freed slaves made it to freedom in Britain. Historian Jill Lepore writes that "between eighty and

3360-434: The British war effort. Such proclamations were repeatedly issued over the course of the conflict, which resulted in up to 100,000 American slaves fleeing to British lines. Self-emancipated slaves who reached British lines were organized into a variety of military units, which served in all theaters of the war. Formerly enslaved women and children, in lieu of military service, worked instead as laborers and domestic servants. At

3456-597: The Deep South. The total slave population in the South eventually reached four million. As the U.S. expanded, the Southern states attempted to extend slavery into the new Western territories to allow proslavery forces to maintain power in Congress. The new territories acquired by the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession were the subject of major political crises and compromises. Slavery

3552-510: The North had to search for employment. George Fitzhugh used assumptions about white superiority to justify slavery, writing that, "the Negro is but a grown up child, and must be governed as a child." In The Universal Law of Slavery , Fitzhugh argues that slavery provides everything necessary for life and that the slave is unable to survive in a free world because he is lazy, and cannot compete with

3648-494: The North might well have lost. Slavery was a contentious issue in the writing and approval of the Constitution of the United States . The words "slave" and "slavery" did not appear in the Constitution as originally adopted, although several provisions clearly referred to slaves and slavery. Until the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, the Constitution did not prohibit slavery. Section 9 of Article I forbade

3744-551: The Northern states fought in the state militias and Continental Army. In the South, both sides offered freedom to slaves who would perform military service. Roughly 20,000 slaves fought in the American Revolution. After the Revolutionary War broke out, the British realized they lacked the manpower necessary to prosecute the war. In response, British commanders began issuing proclamations to Patriot-owned slaves, offering freedom if they fled to British lines and assisted

3840-583: The Northern states had passed laws outlawing slavery, either immediately or over time. In New York, the last slaves were freed in 1827 (celebrated with a big July   5 parade). Indentured servitude , which had been widespread in the colonies (half the population of Philadelphia had once been indentured servants ), dropped dramatically, and disappeared by 1800. However, there were still forcibly indentured servants in New Jersey in 1860. No Southern state abolished slavery, but some individual owners, more than

3936-496: The Orange Farm. He also acquired two plantations above New Orleans which he renamed after his married daughters: Whitney Plantation and Carroll Plantation. When Johnson's estate was settled in 1900, it included 31 pieces of New York real estate, which together added up to 78 acres. All the lots were purchased by a corporation formed by his heirs for a total of $ 4,769,100. The Johnson & Lazarus distillery at 16th Street

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4032-493: The South, losses of slaves were high, with many due to escapes. Slaves also escaped throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic, with many joining the British who had occupied New York. In the closing months of the war, the British evacuated freedmen and also removed slaves owned by loyalists. Around 15,000 black loyalists left with the British, most of them ending up as free people in England or its colonies. Washington hired

4128-563: The Union Army. They complained that their rations were "unfairly curtailed" by the overseer and that he was "lecherous toward their women". After the inspectors had left, the overseer is said to have "harangued the Negroes, boasted of his unlimited power over them," and "used seditious and insulting language" towards the Union. This report presents a very different picture from the one that appeared in Johnson's New York Times obituary and in

4224-552: The Union Army. He was awarded $ 1750 in damages by the court. When Dow failed to pay him, he sued Dow in Dow's home state of Maine after the war. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which handed down a decision in 1876 against Johnson, pointing out that his holdings were in conquered territory during a time of war, and that it would be very hard to engage in warfare if the enemy could sue for damages. "Johnson v. Dow" became

4320-579: The Union address), went into effect on January 1, 1808, the earliest date on which the importation of slaves could be prohibited under the Constitution. The delegates approved the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution ( Article IV, section 2, clause 3 ), which prohibited states from freeing those "held to Service or Labour" (meaning slaves, indentures, and apprentices) who fled to them from another state and required that they be returned to their owners. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and

4416-688: The United States The legal institution of human chattel slavery , comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans , was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South . Slavery was established throughout European colonization in the Americas . From 1526, during the early colonial period , it was practiced in what became Britain's colonies , including

4512-587: The United States Constitution was ratified on December 6, 1865, prohibiting "slavery [and] involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime." During most of the British colonial period, slavery existed in all the colonies. People enslaved in the North typically worked as house servants, artisans, laborers and craftsmen, with the greater number in cities. Many men worked on the docks and in shipping. In 1703, more than 42 percent of New York City households held enslaved people in bondage,

4608-489: The United States was a variable thing, in "constant flux, driven by the violent pursuit of ever-larger profits." According to demographic calculations by J. David Hacker of the University of Minnesota, approximately four out of five of all of the slaves who ever lived in the United States or the territory that became the United States (beginning in 1619 and including all colonies that were eventually acquired or conquered by

4704-544: The United States) were born in or imported to the United States in the 19th century. Slaves were the labor force of the South, but slave ownership was also the foundation upon which American white supremacy was constructed. Historian Walter Johnson argues that "one of the many miraculous things a slave could do was make a household white...", meaning that the value of whiteness in America was in some ways measured by

4800-474: The Upper South as those who held 20 or more slaves) used enslaved workers to cultivate commodity crops. They also worked in the artisanal trades on large plantations and in many Southern port cities. The later wave of settlers in the 18th century who settled along the Appalachian Mountains and backcountry were backwoods subsistence farmers , and they seldom held enslaved people. Beginning in

4896-577: The West side of Manhattan and had gone into the distillery and sugar refining business in New York. Bradish Johnson, who was born in Louisiana, attended Columbia College in New York City, graduating in the class of 1831. He then studied law and was admitted to the bar. When his father became ill, he abandoned the legal profession to enter the family business. Johnson started out as a partner in

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4992-399: The ability to purchase and maintain black slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe described slavery in the United States in 1853: What, then, is American slavery, as we have seen it exhibited by law, and by the decision of Courts? Let us begin by stating what it is not: 1. It is not apprenticeship. 2. It is not guardianship. 3. It is in no sense a system for the education of a weaker race by

5088-453: The air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill." Hammond believed that in every class one group must accomplish all the menial duties, because without them the leaders in society could not progress. He argued that the hired laborers of the North were slaves too: "The difference   ... is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment," while those in

5184-424: The assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it – when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell". Our new [Confederate] Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to

5280-558: The attitudes of white Southerners, and the concentration of the black population in the South, were bringing the white and black populations to a state of equilibrium, and were a danger to both races. Because of the racial differences between master and slave, he believed that the latter could not be emancipated. In a letter to his wife dated December 27, 1856, in reaction to a message from President Franklin Pierce , Robert E. Lee wrote, There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution

5376-417: The colonial era were unevenly distributed: 14,867 lived in New England , where they were three percent of the population; 34,679 lived in the mid-Atlantic colonies , where they were six percent of the population; and 347,378 in the five Southern Colonies , where they were 31 percent of the population. The South developed an agricultural economy dependent on commodity crops . Its planters rapidly acquired

5472-437: The command of General Neal S. Dow of the 13th Maine Regiment, 'took from Johnson's plantation twenty-five hogsheads of sugar, plundered the dwelling-house hereon and took one silver pitcher, one-half dozen silver knives, one-half dozen silver spoons, one fish knife , one-half dozen silver teaspoons and other articles.' Johnson presented himself as a loyal citizen of the Union, residing in New York, who had simply been robbed by

5568-455: The community of the black Nova Scotians . In the first two decades after the American Revolution, state legislatures and individuals took actions to free slaves. Northern states passed new constitutions that contained language about equal rights or specifically abolished slavery; some states, such as New York and New Jersey, where slavery was more widespread, passed laws by the end of the 18th century to abolish slavery incrementally. By 1804, all

5664-430: The complex by later purchase. They help to represent the long working history of the plantation. It extended well into the 20th century. Some of the extensive land is still planted with sugarcane . The Whitney Plantation historic district was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It is one of 26 sites featured on the Louisiana African American Heritage Trail . The Whitney Plantation's land

5760-410: The differences between the Constitution of the Confederate States and the United States Constitution , laid out the cause for the American Civil War, as he saw it, and defended slavery: The new [Confederate] Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions – African slavery as it exists among us – the proper status of

5856-407: The distilling company William Johnson and Sons. After his father's death, he went into business with a man named Moses Lazarus, the father of poet Emma Lazarus , as Johnson and Lazarus. Upon the retirement of Lazarus, the firm was renamed Bradish Johnson and Sons. The Johnsons owned several properties, including a distillery at 244 Washington Street. The largest facility occupied two city blocks near

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5952-546: The end of the war, freed slaves in British lines either evacuated to other British colonies or to Britain itself, were re-enslaved by the victorious Americans, or fled into the countryside. In early 1775, the royal governor of Virginia , Lord Dunmore , wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth of his intention to free slaves owned by American Patriots in case they staged a rebellion. On November 7, 1775, Dunmore issued Dunmore's Proclamation , which promised freedom to any slaves of American patriots who would leave their masters and join

6048-457: The enslaved of the early Republic were considered sentient property, were not permitted to vote, and had no rights to speak of, they were to be enumerated in population censuses and counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of representation in the national legislature, the U.S. Congress . The rebels began to offer freedom as an incentive to motivate slaves to fight on their side. Washington authorized slaves to be freed who fought with

6144-416: The federal government from prohibiting the importation of slaves, described as "such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit", for twenty years after the Constitution's ratification (until January 1, 1808). The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 , passed by Congress and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson (who had called for its enactment in his 1806 State of

6240-400: The historian James Oliver Horton noted, prominent slaveholder politicians and the commodity crops of the South had a strong influence on United States politics and economy. Horton said, in the 72 years between the election of George Washington and the election of Abraham Lincoln, 50 of those years [had] a slaveholder as president of the United States , and, for that whole period of time, there

6336-463: The intelligent European white race. He states that "The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world." Without the South, "He (slave) would become an insufferable burden to society" and "Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery." On March 21, 1861, Alexander Stephens , Vice President of the Confederacy, delivered his Cornerstone Speech . He explained

6432-450: The lands of the Louisiana Purchase and Mexican Cession , was a major issue in the 1840s and 1850s. It was addressed by the Compromise of 1850 and during the Bleeding Kansas period. Bradish Johnson Bradish Johnson's father, William M. Johnson, was a sea captain from Nova Scotia . In 1795 he purchased land in Plaquemines Parish , Louisiana, along with a partner from Salem, Massachusetts named George Bradish. The partners built

6528-505: The leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away   ... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon

6624-418: The museum and historic district complex. It opened to the public for the first time in December 2014. (The remaining acreage was sold off in the 1970s by the previous owners.) The museum was founded by John Cummings, a trial attorney from New Orleans who has spent more than $ 8 million of his own fortune on this long-term project. He worked on it for nearly 15 years. The director of research is Dr. Ibrahima Seck,

6720-421: The nation". Gadsden was in favor of South Carolina's secession in 1850, and was a leader in efforts to split California into two states, one slave and one free . Other Southern writers who also began to portray slavery as a positive good were James Henry Hammond and George Fitzhugh . They presented several arguments to defend the practice of slavery in the South. Hammond, like Calhoun, believed that slavery

6816-438: The negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of

6912-469: The next twenty years. Johnson was an innovator in the sugar industry, and his refinery was the first to "successfully make use of centrifugal machines in the manufacture of sugar". Johnson bought out his brother's share of the Woodland Plantation before the Civil War and became its sole owner. He eventually purchased a number of other plantations in the area: Pointe Celeste, Bellevue, and

7008-559: The official history of the Chemical Corn Exchange Bank, which claimed that he had freed his slaves prior to the Emancipation Proclamation . Johnson married a New Yorker named Louisa Anna Lawrance around 1834. Together they had ten children. Their New York residence was located near fashionable Madison Square , at 21st Street on the short block between Broadway and Fifth Avenue. In 1874 Johnson retired from business in New York and moved to New Orleans, where he had

7104-489: The owner of the plantation. He renamed it as Whitney, in honor of his daughter who had married a man with that surname. In the late 20th century John Cummings acquired the Whitney complex in 1999, holding it until 2019. He spent more than ten years restoring it before opening it to the public in 2014. He donated the Whitney in 2019, and it is now a 501(c)(3) organization governed by a board of directors. Slavery in

7200-474: The political power of Southern states, as three-fifths of the (non-voting) slave population was counted for congressional apportionment and in the Electoral College , although it did not strengthen Southern states as much as it would have had the Constitution provided for counting all persons, whether slave or free, equally. In addition, many parts of the country were tied to the Southern economy. As

7296-485: The property they had been given by their father. After Marcellin's death in 1839, his widow Marie Azélie Haydel ran the plantation during its most productive time. In this period, it was one of Louisiana's most profitable sugarcane businesses. Marie Haydel was one of Louisiana's largest slaveholders by the time she died in 1860. Later, in 1867, after the American Civil War had ended, Bradish Johnson became

7392-502: The scandal — in fact, he was put in charge of the Board of Health investigation. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper staked out Johnson's mansion at 21st and Broadway, and reported that in the midst of the investigation, Tuomey was observed making late night visits. The Board of Health exonerated the distillers, but public outcry led to the passage of the first food safety laws in the form of milk regulations in 1862. In 1863 Johnson took

7488-493: The second half of the 18th century, a debate emerged over the continued importation of African slaves to the American colonies. Many in the colonies, including the Southern slavocracy , opposed further importation of slaves due to fears that it would destabilize colonies and lead to further slave rebellions . In 1772, prominent Virginians submitted a petition to the Crown , requesting that the slave trade to Virginia be abolished; it

7584-422: The second-highest proportion of any city in the colonies, behind only Charleston, South Carolina . Enslaved people were also used as agricultural workers in farm communities, especially in the South , but also in upstate New York and Long Island , Connecticut , and New Jersey . By 1770, there were 397,924 blacks out of a population of 2.17 million in what would soon become the United States. The slaves of

7680-401: The size of the United States, and it was established at the insistence of Cutler and Putnam as "free soil" – no slavery. This was to prove crucial a few decades later. Had those states been slave states, and their electoral votes gone to Abraham Lincoln's main opponent, Lincoln would not have become president. The Civil War would not have been fought. Even if it eventually had been,

7776-487: The state's new 1780 constitution . New Hampshire began gradual emancipation in 1783, while Connecticut and Rhode Island followed suit in 1784. The New York Manumission Society , which was led by John Jay , Alexander Hamilton , and Aaron Burr , was founded in 1785. New York state began gradual emancipation in 1799, and New Jersey did the same in 1804. Shortly after the Revolution, the Northwest Territory

7872-413: The superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This view of the "Negro race" was backed by pseudoscience . The leading researcher was Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright , a Southerner and the inventor of the mental illnesses of drapetomania (the desire of a slave to run away) and dysaesthesia aethiopica ("rascality"), both cured, according to him, by whipping. The Medical Association of Louisiana set up

7968-547: The total of the state's free population, at the rate of three-fifths of their total number, to establish the state's official population for the purposes of apportionment of congressional representation and federal taxation. The "Three-Fifths Compromise" was reached after a debate in which delegates from Southern (slaveholding) states argued that slaves should be counted in the census just as all other persons were while delegates from Northern (free) states countered that slaves should not be counted at all. The compromise strengthened

8064-530: The wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other. The French writer and traveler Alexis de Tocqueville , in his influential Democracy in America (1835), expressed opposition to slavery while observing its effects on American society. He felt that a multiracial society without slavery was untenable, as he believed that prejudice against blacks increased as they were granted more rights (for example, in Northern states). He believed that

8160-547: Was a legal practise and had become entrenched socially and economically in many societies. The ideals and principles promoted in the Enlightenment and the American Revolution helped to put slavery and the desire for its abolition on the political agenda. As historian Christopher L. Brown put it, slavery "had never been on the agenda in a serious way before", but the American Revolution "forced it to be

8256-408: Was common thereafter, at which point the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (Coast Guard) began enforcing the law on the high seas. It has been estimated that before 1820 a majority of serving congressmen owned slaves, and that about 30 percent of congressmen who were born before 1840 (some of whom served into the 20th century) at some time in their lives, were owners of slaves. The rapid expansion of

8352-568: Was defended in the South as a "positive good" , and the largest religious denominations split over the slavery issue into regional organizations of the North and South. By 1850, the newly rich, cotton-growing South threatened to secede from the Union . Bloody fighting broke out over slavery in the Kansas Territory . When Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election on a platform of halting the expansion of slavery, slave states seceded to form

8448-470: Was established, by Manasseh Cutler and Rufus Putnam (who had been George Washington's chief engineer). Both Cutler and Putnam came from Puritan New England. The Puritans strongly believed that slavery was morally wrong. Their influence on the issue of slavery was long-lasting, and this was provided significantly greater impetus by the Revolution. The Northwest Territory (which became Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota) doubled

8544-413: Was first bought in 1752, by Ambroise Heidal , an immigrant from Germany. At some point his family changed the spelling of their surname to Haydel. Upon Ambroise's death, ownership of the land passed to his youngest son, Jean Jacques Haydel. In 1820, this son bequeathed the property to his own sons, who were named Jean Jacques Jr. and Marcellin. Jean Jacques Jr. and Marcellin later bought a plantation next to

8640-648: Was home to the Lotos Club . In 1918 the Johnson heirs had an office building erected on the site. The building, at 921–925 Broadway, is called the Bradish Johnson Building. An image of "Woodland" was used on the logo of the liqueur Southern Comfort from 1934 to 2001. Since 1997 the site of the Johnson & Lazarus distillery at 16th Street and Ninth Avenue, later the factory of National Biscuit Company , has been home to Chelsea Market . The house at Woodland Plantation has been listed on

8736-462: Was needed to build the rest of society. In a speech to the Senate on March 4, 1858, Hammond developed his "Mudsill Theory", defending his view on slavery by stating: "Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in

8832-497: Was never a person elected to a second term who was not a slaveholder. The power of Southern states in Congress lasted until the Civil War , affecting national policies, legislation, and appointments. One result was that most of the justices appointed to the Supreme Court were slave owners. The planter elite dominated the Southern congressional delegations and the United States presidency for nearly fifty years. Slavery in

8928-463: Was often cut with water and then thickened with chalk or flour. Swill milk was accused of being a major cause of infant mortality — it was sold from pushcarts all over the city, advertised, e.g., as farm-fresh milk from Orange County . Johnson was a supporter of the Tammany Hall politician Alderman Michael Tuomey , known as "Butcher Mike". Tuomey defended the distillers vigorously throughout

9024-399: Was originally known as Habitation Haydel was founded in 1752 by Ambroise Heidal, one of the many German immigrants who colonized the river parishes in the 18th century. His descendants owned it until 1860. In 1867, after the Civil War, it was sold to businessman Bradish Johnson . He renamed it Whitney Plantation. The plantation was an 1,800-acre property. Today, 200 acres are occupied by

9120-399: Was rejected. Rhode Island forbade the importation of slaves in 1774. The influential revolutionary Fairfax Resolves called for an end to the "wicked, cruel and unnatural" Atlantic slave trade. All of the colonies banned slave importations during the Revolutionary War. Slavery had existed for thousands of years, all around the world. In the United States and many parts of the world it

9216-460: Was the subject of a famous muckraking exposé by Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper in 1858. Distilleries in 19th century New York had to dispose of the tons of organic waste they generated, and their solution was to feed the still hot mash to hundreds of sick old cows and then sell the milk. The cows were crowded into filthy stables, and were so sickly that some of them were reportedly held up by slings. The milk, referred to as " swill milk ",

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