Chapter 3: Nat Turner's Long Shadow - Between Freedom and Equality

Main Points

Nat Turner’s rebellion changed the behavior of both white slave owners and the lives of Black people in the south.
The leaders of the Maryland Colonization Society, including Francis Scott Key, made a list of all eligible free Black people to be returned to Africa. George Pointer’s oldest daughter was on that list.
The C&O Canal Company refused to hire any Black men, affecting the Pointers’ son.
Race riots in downtown Washington likely pushed the Pointers’ granddaughter to move her family to a rural part of the District.

George and Betty Pointer’s children lived in a very different world than their parents. The Pointers had raised their children on the eastern bank of the Potomac River five miles north of the port of Georgetown. Their neighbors were immigrants, white tradesmen and other free Black families. Plantation owners and their slave workers worked on the palisades above them. In 1831, however, everything changed after the armed rebellion led by Nat Turner, a literate and enslaved man in nearby Virginia. In the two-day rebellion more than 50 white people were killed, then in retaliation afterward more than 100 Black people were killed.¹

Cover of an 1832 pamphlet by the Colonization Society. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

In the aftermath of Nat Turner’s rebellion some leaders, including Francis Scott Key, resurrected an old idea to send free Black people to Africa. The Maryland Colonization society made a list of Black people whose voyage to Africa they would sponsor. The Pointers’ oldest daughter Elizabeth appeared on their list, but she never appeared on any of the ships’ manifests. Only 627 free Black people from Maryland ever went to Africa, about 1 percent of the total. ²

In the 1830s the Pointers’ son was living in Georgetown. But after the Nat Turner rebellion the port town became a hostile place for Black people. They could not run businesses, nor be out at night. They were harassed daily in the streets. William Pointer moved his young family back to his childhood home on the river. His parents had likely already died in the 1832 cholera epidemic but his niece Mary Ann was still in the Pointer cottage . Unfortunately, after the rebellion the C&O Canal Company refused to hire any Black men so he likely had to work for himself.

In 1843 the Potomac River flooded twice. C&O Canal records documented major damage around Lock Six near the Pointer cottage. Most of the people who had lived there in the 1840 census were gone in 1850, including William Pointer’s family. They eventually moved to Annapolis, Maryland, where the new Naval Academy was hiring Black Maryland residents. ³

The Pointers’ granddaughter married early and when she was pregnant with her first child she applied for a certificate of freedom so that he would have proof that his mother was born free. She needed two white people to verify her freedom; one was a well-known midwife. The second witness was the white son of George Pointer’s original owner. He was born the same year as Pointer and the two boys grew up together. ⁴

An 1835 map of the District of Columbia showing the city of Washington, Georgetown, Alexandria, and Washington County. Click on the image for a larger version, so that you can read the “References” key (lower left of the map) to the numbered areas. Map by Bradford, T.G., courtesy of Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division.

In 1835 race riots in downtown Washington lasted two weeks and in 1837 there was an economic panic that caused more racial violence. With her certificate of freedom in hand Mary Ann and her husband moved to the farthest rural corner of the District, as far away as they could move from the slave pens in Washington City without moving into the slave state of Maryland.⁵

Did you know…?

The successful Haitian revolution at the beginning of the 19^th century was American slave owners’ “worst nightmare.”
After Nat Turner’s armed rebellion in 1831 Maryland’s Colonization Society (to resettle free Black Americans to Africa) became the best funded colonization society in the United States.
Francis Scott Key, who wrote the National Anthem, was one of the leaders of the colonization movement in the US.

Questions for Students

Was it a good idea for American states to pay for the passage of their Black populations to West Africa?
Why didn’t colonization succeed?
Why did the Nat Turner rebellion have such a strong effect on people in Washington, D.C.
Why would freed Black people want to move into the towns and cities of 19^th century America?
Why would some of the free Black people in the towns eventually want to move back to rural areas ?

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Endnotes

Barbara Boyle Torrey and Clara Myrick Green, Between Freedom and Equality, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021, 8-10, 40
Torrey and Green, 41
Torrey and Green, 43
Torrey and Green, 49
Torrey and Green, 52

Other Sources

Ira Berlin. Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the
Antebellum South. New York: Pantheon Books, 1974.
Jeffrey Richardson Brackett, The Negro in Maryland: A Study of the Institution of Slavery. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1889.
Robert J. Brugger. Maryland: A Middle Temperament: 1634-1988. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press in association With Maryland Historical Society.
James M. Wright. The Free Negro in Maryland, 1634-1860. Vol. 97, no. 3 of Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law
(Columbia University) Whitefish MT: Kessinger Legacy Reprints 2010.

Chapter 3: Nat Turner’s Long Shadow