History of slavery in California

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Slavery in California existed among the native peoples of that region long before the arrival of the first European colonists. However, the arrival of the Spanish colonists, themselves being participants in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and owners of both Indian and African slaves, introduced such concepts as chattel slavery and involuntary servitude to the future colony and state. The Anglo-American settlers from the Eastern United States who followed took up similar habits.

[edit] Slavery under Mexican rule

Mexico, which inherited California and other constituencies upon independence from Spain in 1821, passed a law which abolished slavery within Mexican territory; this law was intended by its proponents as a counter-measure against the settlement of Anglo-Americans, who used slave labor in the sustenance of cotton plantations, in Texas. However, the law was barely enforced in most Mexican territories, including California.

[edit] Slavery under US rule

With the 1847 defeat of Mexico, California and several other Mexican territories were ceded to US rule. However, at the time, the 26-state nation was divided equally between 13 Free states and 13 Slave states. With the addition of vast new, agriculturally-rich territories, including California, to the growing transcontinental hegemony, the debate and division over the permission of slavery intensified dramatically. California, itself, was divided over the issue, as a great deal of slave-owning Southerners had travelled to California to seek their fortunes in the 1849 Gold Rush, not a few of which brought their slaves along with them.

In October 1849, California held its first Constitutional Convention; one of the most heated debates of the Convention was on the status of slavery in the new state. While Southern Émigrés were staunchly in favor of giving official sanction to slavery in California, Northern abolitionists and Anglo-American miners (who did not want competition from the slave-holders in the gold fields) were well represented within the ranks of the convention. The Chairman of the convention, William Gwin, was himself a slave-holder from Tennessee; however, Gwin was much more interested in gaining control of California's Democratic Party than he was in favoring either side of the debate. Hence, to the later chagrin of his fellow Southern Congressmen, he didn't write the institution of slavery into the 1849 Constitution. By the end of 1849, California was admitted to the Union as a free state, and both Gwin and war hero John C. Frémont became California's first Senators.

However, while it had entered the Union as a free state, it had also written into the constitution the systematic denial of suffrage and other civil rights to non-white minorities. The effort to do so went as far as attempts to deny the right of entry of all African-Americans - both free and slave - from entering California. However, when a bill that would ban the immigration of free blacks to California was passed by the Legislature in Sacramento, State Senator David C. Broderick - a fierce opponent of slavery and former firefighter from San Francisco - managed to kill the bill through parliamentary maneuver.

Furthermore, slavery persisted in California in spite of the lack of legal permission to the institution, as enforcement of anti-slavery laws in the new state was weak at best. Some slaveowners simply refused to notify their slaves of the prohibition, and continued to trade slaves within the state. However, even the hold of the slaveowners was steadily weakening, and numerous, lengthy state-level trials ruled in the favor of the slave.

  • In 1849, a white man lost a case against a black man who was accused of both being a slave and being in debt to the accuser. At the time, California was not under US rule, and Mexican law, which illegalized slavery, was used in the case. This resulted in the legal precedent of the official non-acknowledgement of slavery in California.
  • In 1851, a runaway slave named Frank was recaptured by his owner in San Francisco; Frank then sued the owner in court. The judge ruled in favor of Frank because the slave had taken his freedom in California and didn't cross state lines in the process, thus ruling the application of the Fugitive Slave Law, which was passed in Congress the previous year, invalid in this case. Furthermore, a California law passed in 1850 had ruled the testimony of non-whites in court inadmissible; hence, even though Frank had admitted to being the owner's slave, the case had proceeded in his favor because his own admission was invalid.
  • In 1852, a State Fugitive Slave Law was passed in Sacramento, but and was unsuccessfully challenged in the Perkins escapee case. However, when the law had lapsed in 1855, the Legislature failed in renewing it, and the Mitchell case in San Jose resulted in freedom for Mitchell, a runaway slave.
  • In 1858, in one of the most protracted cases over the state-level status of slavery, Archy Lee, a slave who had ran away from his owner, Mississippi native Terry Stovall, was arrested four times as his fate - as a slave bound for return to Mississippi with his master, or continued residence in California as a free man - was decided in a flip-flop manner by some three local judges and a United States Commissioner. Archy won the case through the support of the local freed black community in San Francisco, but eventually fled to Canada, where he died, to avoid further legal reprisals by his former owner.

A backlash against these legal wins for the Freed Black community in California whipped up in the State government; a Chinese Exclusion Act was also being debated at that time. Fearful of the hostile maneuvers against them, many freed African-Americans fled California for the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in Canada.

Slavery was abolished in California and other U.S. states by the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865, and slavery in California dissipated.

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