The African American Experience in Louisiana

freeing slaves in all its colonies, the plot of a slave rebellion at Pointe Coupée was discovered.
Although the revolt at Pointe Coupée was stopped before anything actually happened, its
discovery confirmed planter’s worst fears. In response, the government quickly tightened
regulations regarding not just slaves, but also Free People of Color. 37 Although many free blacks
had little to gain and much to lose by association with a slave insurrection, they were assumed to
be sympathetic and viewed as possible accomplices and threats to the slavery regime. Support of
an all out ban on the importation of slaves also grew out of the fear of a revolt, even as planter’s
needed more and more laborers for their agricultural pursuits. In 1796, the governor granted a
request from the cabildo to extend a ban on the slave trade that began two-years prior when
Spain declared war on France. 38 In October of 1800 Louisiana was quietly returned to France by
the treaty of San Ildefonso, but the Spanish government remained in control until December of
1803. A month after the signing of the treaty, the ban of the slave trade was lifted and the
importation of Africans resumed with an ongoing restriction on slaves from other colonies. 39
Though the French would only rule the colony of Louisiana for three weeks of 1803, they left
their mark by reimposing the Code Noir. 40 Thus, when the United States took control of its new
territory following the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, it inherited a place actively trading in
enslaved Africans with a lengthy set of regulations on the treatment and conduct of its black
population.
Diminishing Liberties and Growing Tensions: African Americans in the American
Territorial Period and Antebellum Statehood, 1803-1861
The United States did not act immediately to impose any revised laws on its new
territory. The first American governor William C. C. Claiborne followed the policy to maintain
the status quo until new legislation divided Louisiana into two territories and established laws of
the territorial government in 1804. Most audacious and offensive to Louisiana planters of the
news laws was a new restriction on the importation any slaves other than those born in the
United States or imported prior to 1798. But it was not long before a loophole in the act
provisioning for the second grade of territorial government in 1805 enabled Louisianans to once
again import slaves born in Africa. 41
Between the renewed spurts of African slave importation, the new influx of Anglo-
American slaves, and the numbers of slaves that refugees from Saint Domingue were able to
bring with them, Louisiana’s slave population increased dramatically in the first decade of the
nineteenth century. Thomas Ingersoll asserts that, “The Louisiana Purchase marked a new phase
in the development of the black community in New Orleans that gave it a truly remarkable
degree of ethnic diversity. Indeed, New Orleans came to have the most diverse black population
in the United States.” 42 This assessment has implications not only in understanding the many
influences that came together to create New Orleans’ black community and the larger Louisiana
black community, but also for considering the many challenges that such a diverse group of
37 Holmes, in Vincent, 114; Ingersoll, in Vincent, 166.
38 Lachance, in Vincent, 125.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid, 133.
41 Ibid., 134.
42 Ingersoll, in Vincent, 61.
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