[Communicated
for the National Republican}
Natchez,
April 7, 1828
“This
letter will be handed to you by a very extraordinary personage — no less than
your old acquaintance Prince, (or Ibrahim,) who is now free, and on his way to
his own country; where he was captured in battle, nearly forty years ago, and
has been in slavery nearly the whole of that period, upon the plantation of Mr.
Thomas Foster, of this county. I am much gratified to have been the
instrument of his emancipation — although from his advanced age (sixty-six
years) he can but possess merely a glimpse of the blessings to which he was
entitled from his birth.”
Thus
begins an article in a national newspaper dated 1828, describing the fight for
the freedom by Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim ibn Sori, an educated African prince who
spent the majority of his life as a slave on Thomas Foster’s Plantation north
of Natchez.
The man
writing it (probably local newspaperman Andrew Marschalk) clearly thinks of
Abdul Rahman not as chattel, but as a person, a man in his own right. Ask
anyone in the South about race and they'll tell you it's complicated. Seems
as though it was complicated in the 1700s as well.
Here was
an African slave, sold into slavery by rival Africans; yet he had powerful
white allies fighting to gain his freedom while ignoring the fact that there
were millions more for whom there was no fight, no hope for freedom.
Born in 1762 in Timbo,
West Africa (present day Guinea, Fouta Djallon), Abdul-Rahman was educated in
Mali at Timbuktu, and served as a leader of one of his father's army divisions.
In 1788, after winning a battle against a warring tribe, he and a handful of
soldiers who had left to report back to his father were ambushed, captured and
sold to slave traders, who brought him to America and sold him to Natchez
plantation owner, Thomas Foster. He was 26 years old.
After a
couple of escape attempts from Foster's plantation, Abdul-Rahman became
resigned to his fate and worked for Foster. Because of his knowledge about
growing cotton in Fouja Djallon and his ability to read and cipher numbers, he
proved a valuable asset to Foster, becoming the plantation's de facto foreman,
allowed to travel and make purchases and sales. In 1794 he married
another Foster slave, Isabella, with whom he had five sons and four daughters.
One day
about 20 years later, he ran into someone whose life he and his family had
saved many years before in Fouta Djallon -- Dr. John Cox, an Irish surgeon who
had served on an English ship that had become marooned off the coast of Africa.
Badly injured and ill, Cox was taken in by Abdul-Rahman's family, who nursed
him back to health.
Abdul-Rahman
was walking down the street one day when Cox happened along and recognized him.
When he learned that his old benefactor was a slave, he vowed to see to it that
he would be given his freedom and returned to his native land. But Foster
would have none of it. Abdul-Rahman was too valuable an asset, and he refused
to release him for any price. Cox worked to gain his friend's freedom
until his death in 1816.
In 1826,
Abdul-Rahman wrote a letter to his relatives in Africa. A local newspaperman,
Andrew Marschalk sent a copy of the letter to Senator Thomas Reed in
Washington, who took it to the US Consulate in Morocco. The Sultan of Morocco
then asked President Adams and Secretary of State Henry Clay to give
Adbul-Rahman his freedom. Finally, in 1828, Foster agreed to free
Abdul-Rahman with the stipulation that he return to Africa and not live as a
free man in America.
Before
leaving the country Abdul-Rahman and his wife went to Washington and tried to
raise enough money to buy their children and take them with them. They were
unable to raise enough funds before Foster found out about it and said it was a
breach of their agreement. So he and Isabella left America and sailed to
Liberia. He was an old man, and had been a slave for more than 40 years. He died of a fever four months after arriving in Liberia, never seeing Fouta Djallon or his children again.
Although
the capture and enslavement of the prince robbed him of his potential kingship
of his home country, his descendants think of him not only as royalty but as a
family patriarch who gives a specific identity to otherwise innumerable
faceless African ancestors.
One of
those descendants, Adams County resident, Beverly Adams, says, “It is a
bittersweet tale, which contrasts his identity with the injustice done to him.
His faith brings honor and nobility from his native country, Futa Jallon, to
Natchez, like jewels dug out of the muddy water of the Mississippi.”
She adds,
“It is ironic that the indignity and suffering of slavery created such a rich
history for my own African-American family, as portrayed by Dr. Terry Alford’s
book, Prince Among Slaves.”
The final paragraph in the
article from 1828 reflects this bittersweet story.
"Prince
called to see us yesterday, with his wife and sons, who are really the finest
looking young men I have seen. They were all genteely drest; and although
they expressed themselves pleased with the freedom of their parents, there was
a look of silent agony in their eyes I could not bear to witness."
Engraving of Abdul-Rahman courtesy of Library of Congress
For further information, see the PBS documentary Prince Among Slaves based on the book Prince Among Slaves by Terry Alford.
