There may well have been very many lodges among illiterate and moneyless
slaves without leaving any tangible record whatever. Those in which the
colored freemen mainly figured were a little more affluent, formal and
conspicuous. Such organizations were a recourse at the same time for mutual
aid and for the enhancement of social prestige. The founding of one of
them at Charleston in 1790, the Brown Fellowship Society, with membership
confined to mulattoes and quadroons, appears to have prompted the free
blacks to found one of their own in emulation.[83] Among the proceedings
of the former was the expulsion of George Logan in 1817 with a consequent
cancelling of his claims and those of his heirs to the rights and benefits
of the institution, on the ground that he had conspired to cause a
free black to be sold as a slave.[84] At Baltimore in 1835 there were
thirty-five or forty of these lodges, with memberships ranging from
thirty-five to one hundred and fifty each.[85]
[Footnote 83: T.D. Jervey, _Robert Y. Hayne and His Times_ (New York,
1909), p. 6.]
[Footnote 84: _Ibid_., pp. 68, 69.]
[Footnote 85: _Niles' Register_, XLIX, 72.]
The tone and purpose of the lodges may be gathered in part from the
constitution and by-laws of one of them, the Union Band Society of New
Orleans, founded in 1860.
Pages:
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806