The Code Noir and the Missouri Compromise: Slavery in St. Louis

The title page of a 1743 book, "Black Code, or Collection of Edicts, Declarations and Decrees Concerning the Negro Slaves of America." The Historic New Orleans Collection.

This page is part of the National Park Service series The History of Slavery in St. Louis, from Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site.

French and Spanish rule

France and then Spain governed St. Louis for nearly forty years, from 1764 to 1803. Slavery there was justified and regulated by the Code Noir, French for "Black Code", which the French government set up to regulate the lives of free and enslaved Black residents of its territories.

Its sixty articles, or rules:

• required enslavers to feed, clothe and care for enslaved people, and forbade them to break up enslaved families by sale;
• let enslaved people, unlike later U.S. laws, receive an education and, with permission, own property and run businesses;
• required enslaved people to be baptised as Catholics, and barred forcing them to work on Sundays or holidays. Many resented the government dictating their religion.

Under Spanish rule, enslaved people had the right to buy their freedom if their enslavers let them work Sundays and save the money.

The Code also held Black residents in slavery through violence and intimidation:

• an enslaved person who struck an enslaver or a member of the enslaver's family was to be executed;
• enslaved people could not leave the enslaver's property without permission, and could not own guns;
• other punishments allowed included whipping, branding with a fleur-de-lis and cutting off ears.

The fleur-de-lis is a prominent symbol of St. Louis today, used on the city's flag and by Saint Louis University.

St. Louis's colonial headquarters, 1768 to 1804. Missouri Historical Society.

French and Spanish officials enforced the Code Noir from this headquarters building, built in 1768 at the corner of Main and Walnut streets.

York

The Lewis and Clark expedition from St. Louis to the Pacific coast is famous; the story of York (about 1770 to about 1834) much less so. William Clark enslaved York, who was forced to leave his family and go with the Corps of Discovery when it left St. Louis in May 1804.

York hunted and provided food for the expedition, although laws banned enslaved people from using guns. He also saved Clark, Sacagawea (a Lemhi Shoshone woman who assisted the expedition) and her son from drowning in a flash flood.

When the Corps returned to St. Louis in 1806, its members received cash bonuses and 320 acres of land each for their service. York remained enslaved by Clark for at least another decade. Although York had saved his life, Clark wrote at one point that York could not be freed because "I do not think . . . that his services [have] been so great [so that] my situation would permit me to liberate him." Clark claimed in 1832 that he had freed York, but no legal document confirms that York was ever freed. A statue of York stands in Louisville, Kentucky; there is none in St. Louis, where Lewis and Clark are often commemorated.

Statehood and the Missouri Compromise

When Missouri came under the United States in 1803, its legislature set out to define who counted as "Black": "any person who shall have one-fourth part or more of negro blood." Black Missourians were subjected to "Black Codes" that succeeded the Code Noir, and a person with three white grandparents and one Black grandparent could be legally enslaved.

When Missouri applied for statehood in 1819, Congressman James Tallmadge of New York proposed ending slavery gradually, freeing all enslaved children once they reached the age of 25. Missouri's political leaders overwhelmingly supported keeping slavery. Thomas Hart Benton, later a senator from St. Louis, even argued that enslaved people would welcome living in Missouri rather than the Deep South, believing they would be treated well and enjoy a better climate there. Benton was an enslaver for most of his adult life, and had a personal interest in Missouri becoming a slave state.

Senator Thomas Hart Benton, painted by Ferdinand Thomas Lee Boyle. Smithsonian Institution.

In 1820 Congress passed the Missouri Compromise. Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state, and slavery would be banned in all federal territory north and west of Missouri. As Missouri became a state, most of the Code Noir's protections for enslaved people, such as those against abuse by enslavers or the breaking up of families at the auction block, were disregarded.

The Missouri Compromise. Library of Congress.

Sources

• National Park Service, Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site, "The Code Noir and the Missouri Compromise." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-code-noir-and-the-missouri-compromise.htm
• In the same series: previous, A Society Built Upon Enslaved Labor; next, Slavery and the Law.
• A photograph of the statue of York in Louisville, under a Creative Commons licence (Don Sniegowski), is not reproduced here.
• Corrected: "Smithsonian Institute" to "Smithsonian Institution".