The refugee immigration bolstered this tripartite social hierarchy while also altering it. Following the lead of the census, city officials categorized the refugees into three groups based on status and race, something that was familiar to both the then-existing population in Louisiana and the refugees themselves. Official records produced at the time show the immigrants to have been roughly evenly divided between whites, slaves, and free people of color, as illustrated in table 1.1. But these numbers invite criticism and deserve deeper analysis. First of all, as Rebecca Scott has astutely observed, depending on when and the circumstances under which those classified as slaves left the island of Hispaniola, many had been freed by colonial officials, the French National Convention, invading armies, and/or their own martial efforts. Thus, potentially thousands of men, women, and children who had been freed in St. Domingue were reenslaved in Cuba and/or Louisiana.30 In the four decades following the immigration, the various courts of New Orleans heard dozens of lawsuits in which the status of refugees of African descent, as enslaved or free, was disputed.31 Therefore, the numbers assigned to each “category” of people coming from the West Indies to New Orleans were both dubious and temporary.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the refugee immigration from Cuba is the imbalance of the sexes. As shown in table 1.1, among whites there were far more men than women, while among both slaves and, especially, free people of color, there were far more women than men. This is not surprising, however, when viewed in the context of the sex demographics of colonial St. Domingue and the results of the Haitian Revolution. Due to the harsh environment of the French colony, relatively few white women ever settled in colonial St. Domingue. The male-to-female ratio of the white refugee immigrants, therefore, reflected the ratio of the colony before the revolution.32 On the other hand, due to the gendered dimensions of warfare, formerly enslaved men and free men of color were much more likely to stay behind and fight rather than flee.
Table 1.1. Refugee Immigration from Cuba through August 1809
Many of the white refugees had aspirations to be sugar planters, so few of them stayed in the city for long. Anglo-American city and state officials, most of whom were slaveholders themselves, sympathized with their plight but worried that the “preponderance of French influence” would make it much more difficult to Americanize the city.33 Yet none of the white refugees from 1809–10 made as notable an impact on New Orleans as some of the white refugees who had arrived earlier, such as Moreau-Lislet.
Of the three groups, the free colored refugees had the most significant impact on the demography of the city. First of all, free people of color saw the largest percentage increase in New Orleans during the Age of Revolution, primarily as a result of the refugee immigration. Free people of color accounted for 11 percent of the population in 1785, rising to 16.5 percent in 1803, and then to 27 percent in 1810. Refugees accounted for the great majority of New Orleans’s free colored community in 1810. Moreover, the immigration greatly exaggerated the preexisting numerical dominance of women and children over adult men within the free colored community.34 As table 1.1 illustrates, adult men made up less than 14 percent of the 3,102 free colored refugees arriving through July 1809. Because more than 40 percent of the free colored refugees were children under the age of fifteen, the immigration ensured a strong presence of refugees throughout most of the antebellum period.35
The demographics of the immigration had two other important consequences for New Orleans society throughout the antebellum period. First, it further skewed the already imbalanced sex ratios among both whites and free people of color in New Orleans. As late as 1820, men made up almost 60 percent of the white population in New Orleans, while women constituted more than 60 percent of the free colored population.36 These skewed sex ratios among the two groups contributed, in part, to the large number of intimate relationships between white men and women of color in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, a subject that chapter 4 covers in greater depth. Second, as shown in chapter 6, women and, especially, children of African descent were more vulnerable than men of African descent to illegal enslavement. In response to the unusual number of female and minor refugees who brought suits against their enslavers, the courts developed the Adele rule. In making “people of color” a racial category separate from “Negroes” with different presumptions as to status, the courts did something the census makers did not—they made race.
Before the Adele decision, however, anxious white officials in New Orleans had mixed feelings and sent mixed messages about the free colored refugees. In 1806, the territorial legislature passed a law creating a presumption of enslavement for all “free people of color from Hispaniola [then] residing” in New Orleans. While the legislature repealed this act less than a year later, it replaced it with a law that prohibited “the emigration of free Negroes and Mulattoes into the Territory of Orleans.” This act imposed a penalty on free colored violators “in the amount of $20 a day for every day past two weeks” that they remained in the territory and stated that “failure to pay such fine will result in commission to jail and [the violator] may be sold for a time sufficient to pay the fine.”37 During the 1809–10 immigration, however, the government in New Orleans appeared powerless to enforce the law. Claiborne first attempted to selectively enforce it against men of color above the age of fifteen, but even this proved unsuccessful. He then resorted to pleading with American diplomats in Jamaica and Cuba for assistance. In separate letters to Maurice Rogers, in St. Iago, and William Savage, in Kingston, he asked the consulates to “discourage free people of color of every description from emigrating to the Territory of Orleans” because New Orleans already had “as much proportion of that population, than comports with the general Interest.”38
Mayor James Mather defended the free colored immigrants in a letter to the governor, writing that “few characters among the free People of Colour have been represented to me as dangerous for the peace of this Territory.” Mather’s opinion was shaped by his understanding that “these very men possess property, and have useful trades to live upon.” With regard to the territorial law, Mather wrote, “In the application of the Territorial law relative to free people of color, I have been particular in causing such of them as had been informed against, to give bond for their leaving the Territory within the time allowed in such cases—in the mean time there has not been one single complaint that I know of, against any of them concerning their conduct since their coming to this place.”39 Mather appears to have been trying to justify his inability to enforce the territorial law.
The refugees labeled as slaves presented a more pressing legal issue for American officials because Congress had prohibited the importation of slaves from areas outside the United States as of January 1, 1808.40 In 1809, the legislature for the Territory of Orleans passed a law excepting slaves coming from Cuba and Jamaica from the congressional prohibition. After the constitutionality of the act was called into question, Claiborne and other Louisiana officials asked the national government to make an exception in the case of the refugee immigrants. American officials in Orleans tried to convince the national leaders (and, perhaps, themselves) that these slaves from “Santo Domingo” did not pose a threat to security in the territory. Mayor Mather wrote to Governor Claiborne that they were “trained up to the habits of strict discipline, and consist wholly of Affricans bought up from Guineamen in the Island of Cuba, [and] of faithful slaves who have fled with their masters from St. Domingo as early as the year 1803.” Congress passed a law on June 28, 1809, that gave the president the power to suspend enforcement of the law of Congress with regard to these slaves coming from Cuba and Jamaica.41 Like the forced migrants from Africa, the majority of the slaves arriving in New Orleans during the first few years of the nineteenth century were destined for the sugar plantations in the parishes upriver from New Orleans. While the special exception to the slave trade ban was billed as a