Negrophobia

This article refers to Negrophobia, the political viewpoint in the antebellum United States. For the word "negrophobia", defined as a fear of Black people, see phobias.

Negrophobia is a term used to refer to the prejudicial and discriminatory fear of African American freedmen, or former slaves, in the northern United States before the American Civil War.

Nineteenth century negrophobia was common among white laborers, especially in the midwest, who viewed free blacks as competition for work and sought to exclude them, both through custom and statute, from northern territories. Negrophobia was often a driving force behind the adoption of Black Codes to restrict the freedoms of African-Americans. Though often forgotten today, negrophobia was one of the factors that drove many northerners to join the Free Soil movement in the 1850's.

Abraham Lincoln was also criticized in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 for altering his positions on black equality to appeal to negrophobe audiences. One of Lincoln's most controversial statements of this kind was made in the debate with Stephen Douglas on August 18, 1858:

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

Alexis de Tocqueville observed and condemned negrophobia in the northern "free states" during his visit to the United States in the 1830's:

"It is true that in the North of the Union marriages may be legally contracted between Negroes and whites; but public opinion would stigmatize as infamous a man who should connect himself with a Negress, and it would be difficult to cite a single instance of such a union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites among their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice repels them from that office. The same schools do not receive the children of the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the same God as the whites, it must be at a different altar and in their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of heaven are not closed against them, but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world. When the Negro dies, his bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death. Thus the Negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or in death." (Democracy in America Book I, Chapter 18)[1] (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch18.htm)

See also

• Afrophobia

References

• Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville
• Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780-1860 by Joanne Pope Melish (ISBN 0801434130).
• Rozett, John M. "Racism and Republican Emergence in Illinois, 1848-1860: a Re-Evaluation of Republican Negrophobia." Civil War History 22 (June 1976): 101-15.
• Jackson, W. Sherman. "Emancipation, Negrophobia, and Civil War Politics in Ohio" Journal of Negro History 65 (Summer 1980)
• Berwanger, Eugene. "Negrophobia in Northern Proslavery and Antislavery Thought." Phylon 33 (3rd Quarter, 1972)
• Klement, Frank L. "Midwestern Opposition to Lincoln's Emancipation Policy." Journal of Negro History 49 (July 1964)