After abolishing chattel slavery, the United States welcomed cheap labor from China to build the transcontinental railroads, and to work in mining and agriculture. Similar labor demands today are filled by immigrants working low-wage jobs, and who also do not have access to citizenship.
Immigration in the United States is a system of exclusion and deportation, and the entire premise comes from policies designed to control and regulate slavery, forcibly remove Native Americans, and later on, exploit the labor of Chinese immigrants. At first, deportation was used to punish behavior deemed wrong or unnatural. As early as 1691, laws provided for the banishment of any white person who married a black person, Native American person, or mixed race person.1 In the 1700s, enslaved persons were also punished by branding, flogging, and by banishing them from the colony.
Emancipated black people resisted slavery by organizing efforts to free enslaved persons, and because of this, they were also targeted for deportation. As the population of free black people increased, their status became “a foreign element whose social status might not be secure in this country.”2 The earliest known emancipation plans were actually deportation plans, and were published anonymously. A plan for the emancipation of enslaved persons in 1714 also called for the deportation of all black persons who did not want to continue to be enslaved.3
Abolitionists and pro-slavery deportation supporters came together to encourage deportations of emancipated and freeborn black persons from the United States. Abolitionists supported the cause because they believed black persons would not integrate and could not live freely in the United States, and pro-slavery deportationists because they wanted to quell slave rebellions and uprisings that were often inspired by the mere existence of free black persons. In this era, even those who opposed deportations wanted to design laws that would make it so difficult for black persons to live freely in the United States that they would leave for other lands on their own.4 Today, in immigration circles, this policy is called “attrition through enforcement.”
Even though the Constitution grants Congress the power to make immigration laws, many colonies, and later states, sought to exercise this power to control their own populations. State legislatures created their own laws to remove free black persons or to ban them from entering the state.5 Some state laws allowed local law enforcement, such as sheriffs, to remove free black persons if they refused to leave the state willingly. Over time, the deportation of free black persons to other states removed radical black leaders and anti-slavery supporters from the United States. In this way, many states quelled political dissent to slavery, and prevented liberation efforts, such as the Underground Railroad, from becoming full-scale social movements.
As a country, the United States continued to explore deporting former slaves as a solution to the political challenges created by its racist regime. The same president who emancipated slaves also toyed with plans to remove them to maintain the racial pecking order. Even after signing the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln asked the Dutch, British, Haitians, Colombians, and Ecuadorians to take in the emancipated black persons, and he even got Congress to grant him $500,000 to start a colony of free black persons on the desolate island of Île-à-Vache in the Caribbean.6 But many of these people were removed only to face their deaths: more than 100 of the 450 sent to Île-à-Vache died, and President Lincoln had to send a ship to rescue the survivors.
Free black abolitionists, such as Richard Allen, James Forten, and Robert Purvis, resisted deportation and efforts to send them elsewhere. As the federal government expanded westward through land grabs and gained more power over immigration, Asian immigrants replaced black persons as the unassimilable “others.” They faced a new era of exclusionary laws from the states and federal governments. And well into the twentieth century, states continued to forcibly isolate or remove immigrants and black persons via restrictive housing ordinances and public welfare laws.
The stories of free black persons in this chapter are not intended to recast them as immigrants, but to help us understand that policies designed to exclude immigrants have their basis in the institution of slavery, and in the resistance to the institution. I also include them to acknowledge and celebrate the efforts of African Americans in obtaining citizenship and civil rights, which helped later immigrants live more freely. And finally, these stories show that perhaps our struggles are more interconnected than we thought initially. If so, perhaps non-black immigrants today should fight not just for themselves, but alongside and together with black immigrants who continue to experience higher rates of detention and deportation, and black U.S. citizens who continue to be deprived of the full benefits of citizenship and equality under the law.
Dred Scott
The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to free white persons of good character.7 This meant that Native Americans, indentured servants, enslaved persons, free black persons, and anyone else who was not classified as white could not gain citizenship. Thus, the notion of citizenship became central to the struggle for full equality in America. Many African Americans thought that if they could gain citizenship, they would gain freedom, and with it, full civil, economic, and political rights. This may sound eerily familiar, but few literary works focus on the integral role that black Americans played in winning the right to citizenship, and how that struggle helped immigrants.
Born with slave status in Virginia in 1799, in 1846 Dred Scott sued for his freedom and that of his wife and their two daughters, entering into a legal battle that would last eleven years and change the course of history. The basis of the lawsuit was that even though he had been born born with slave status, Dred Scott had lived with his enslaver and US Army commander Dr. John Emerson in states and territories where slavery was illegal, according to both state laws and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Legal precedent warranted granting him freedom.
His case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney declared in a 7–2 decision that neither Dred Scott nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States, and therefore they had no right to even make a claim in court.8 The decision also noted that Congress did not have the authority to outlaw slavery as it was integral to the United States Constitution.
This decision aroused outrage and deepened existing regional tensions such that after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, the country plunged into a civil war over the economics of slavery and the political control of the country. The Union, representing the Northern states, wanted to keep the United States intact, whereas the Confederates wanted to secede because they believed that the federal government was usurping their authority to exploit labor, skills, and knowledge stolen from enslaved people, and destroying their economies in the process.
With the Confederates losing and finally surrendering in 1865, Congress quickly passed and ratified the Reconstruction Amendments. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery. The Fourteenth granted citizenship to all persons born in the United States, and the Fifteenth gave all men the right to vote.
Of particular importance is the Fourteenth Amendment, which provided citizenship to people who were formerly enslaved, their progeny, and to all persons born in the United States. Besides providing equal rights for citizens, the Fourteenth Amendment provided a basic level of rights to all persons, whether citizens or not. All persons, regardless of immigration status, were to enjoy due process rights with respect to life, liberty, and property, as well as equal protection rights.
Dred Scott never lived to see the Civil War or the enactment of these amendments to the Constitution. On the heels of the unfavorable Supreme Court decision in 1857, he was sold to another family, and was freed by them in 1858. He died from tuberculosis a year after he obtained freedom. However, his fight for citizenship would later help countless immigrants enjoy the benefits that he did not live to enjoy.
German Immigrant Abolitionists
“We hold ourselves as free men who
